er by Charles VI., who saluted him with a cordial embrace.
He was clothed in a robe of white silk, and mounted on a milk-white
steed--a circumstance of great importance in the French ceremonial,
white being considered as the emblem of sovereignty. He was lodged
in the Louvre, and a succession of feasts and balls, varied by the
pleasures of the chase, was got up for his amusement. Having
satisfied his curiosity, but without any prospect of assistance, he
resolved to visit England. In his progress from Dover, he was
entertained at Canterbury by the prior and monks of St Austin; and
on Blackheath Henry IV. saluted the Greek hero, who for several days
was honoured and treated in London as Emperor of the East. Having
failed in the object of his journey, he returned to Constantinople
(1402), and was allowed to finish his reign in prosperity and peace
in 1425.

In his declining age, he had appointed as his associate his eldest
son John, the second of the name. The corruptions of the church,
divided between two popes, and the disputes of the clergy, afforded
him ample scope for the exercise of his religious zeal, and it was
to heal these ecclesiastical schisms that he undertook a voyage to
Italy. But the downfall of his race and of the Grecian dynasty was
approaching. At his decease (1448), there were five princes of the
imperial house; but the death of Andronicus, and the monastic
profession of Isidore, had reduced them to three--Constantine,
Demetrius, and Thomas. Constantine ascended the vacant throne, the
factious opposition of his brothers having been appeased by the
interposition of the empress-mother, the senate, the soldiers, and
the clergy, who allowed them the possession of the Morea.

The first act of the new emperor was to despatch an embassy to
Georgia to bring home a princess whom he had chosen for his royal
consort. His next care was to inquire into the state of public
affairs, which had been completely neglected by the weakness or
absence of his predecessor. But the imperial drama had reached its
last act. The danger which had long brooded over the doomed house of
the Palaeologi was ready to burst in resistless fury upon the city of
the Caesars. Mohammed II. had vowed to become master of
Constantinople, and vast were the preparations and the implements of
war which he had provided for its capture or its destruction. The
story of the siege need not here be told; nowhere has it been
recorded with more picturesq