tian
blood. "It is not the first time," exclaimed a voice from the crowd,
"that you have drank, O emperor, the blood of your Christian subjects."
Manuel Comnenus was twice married, to the virtuous Bertha or Irene
of Germany, and to the beauteous Maria, a French or Latin princess of
Antioch. The only daughter of his first wife was destined for Bela, a
Hungarian prince, who was educated at Constantinople under the name of
Alexius; and the consummation of their nuptials might have transferred
the Roman sceptre to a race of free and warlike Barbarians. But as
soon as Maria of Antioch had given a son and heir to the empire, the
presumptive rights of Bela were abolished, and he was deprived of
his promised bride; but the Hungarian prince resumed his name and the
kingdom of his fathers, and displayed such virtues as might excite the
regret and envy of the Greeks. The son of Maria was named Alexius; and
at the age of ten years he ascended the Byzantine throne, after his
father's decease had closed the glories of the Comnenian line.

The fraternal concord of the two sons of the great Alexius had been
sometimes clouded by an opposition of interest and passion. By ambition,
Isaac the Sebastocrator was excited to flight and rebellion, from whence
he was reclaimed by the firmness and clemency of John the Handsome. The
errors of Isaac, the father of the emperors of Trebizond, were short and
venial; but John, the elder of his sons, renounced forever his religion.
Provoked by a real or imaginary insult of his uncle, he escaped from the
Roman to the Turkish camp: his apostasy was rewarded with the sultan's
daughter, the title of Chelebi, or noble, and the inheritance of a
princely estate; and in the fifteenth century, Mahomet the Second
boasted of his Imperial descent from the Comnenian family. Andronicus,
the younger brother of John, son of Isaac, and grandson of Alexius
Comnenus, is one of the most conspicuous characters of the age; and his
genuine adventures might form the subject of a very singular romance. To
justify the choice of three ladies of royal birth, it is incumbent on me
to observe, that their fortunate lover was cast in the best proportions
of strength and beauty; and that the want of the softer graces was
supplied by a manly countenance, a lofty stature, athletic muscles, and
the air and deportment of a soldier. The preservation, in his old age,
of health and vigor, was the reward of temperance and exercise. A piece
of