ue and energetic brevity than in the
glowing pages of Gibbon. Operations were carried on with
unprecedented vigour and effect, rendered more terrible by the
lavish use of gunpowder and artillery, then almost new elements in
the art of war. Constantine did all that a Christian prince and a
brave general could do. By his example he animated the courage of
his soldiers, and revived the hearts of the citizens, sinking in
despair. The scene on the day before the assault is thus described
by an eye-witness:--'The emperor and some faithful companions
entered the dome of St Sophia, which in a few hours was to be
converted into a mosque, and devoutly received with tears and
prayers the sacrament of the holy communion. He reposed some moments
in the palace, which resounded with cries and lamentations;
solicited the pardon of all he might have injured; and mounted on
horseback to visit the guards and explore the motions of the enemy.'
But the dreaded 29th of May had come; the last hour of the city and
the empire had struck. After a siege of fifty-three days,
Constantinople, to use the words of Gibbon, 'which had defied the
power of Chosroes, the chazan, and the caliphs, was irretrievably
subdued by the arms of Mohammed II. Her empire only had been
subverted by the Latins; her religion was trampled in the dust by
the Moslem conquerors.'

Constantine had nobly done his duty. Amidst the swarms of the enemy
who had climbed the walls and were pursuing the flying Greeks
through the streets, he was long seen with his bravest officers
fighting round his person, and finally lost. His only fear was that
of falling alive into the hands of the Infidels, and this fate he
sought to avert by prudently casting away the purple. Amidst the
tumult he was pierced by an unknown hand, and his body was buried
under a mountain of the slain. The last words he was heard to utter
was the mournful exclamation: 'Cannot there be found a Christian to
cut off my head?' His death put an end to resistance and order, and
left the capital to be sacked and pillaged by the victorious Turks.
Truly has it been said, that the distress and fall of the last
Constantine are more glorious than the long prosperity of the
Byzantine Caesars.

The difficulties and dying moments of the emperor have been
faithfully and pathetically dramatised by Miss Joanna Baillie in her
tragedy of _Constantine Palaeologus_. She adheres closely to history,
only she makes her hero receive his