they implicitly transcribe
the rules and maxims which had been confirmed by victories. It was
unskilled in the propriety of style and method; they blindly confound
the most distant and discordant institutions, the phalanx of Sparta
and that of Macedon, the legions of Cato and Trajan, of Augustus and
Theodosius. Even the use, or at least the importance, of these military
rudiments may be fairly questioned: their general theory is dictated
by reason; but the merit, as well as difficulty, consists in the
application. The discipline of a soldier is formed by exercise rather
than by study: the talents of a commander are appropriated to those
calm, though rapid, minds, which nature produces to decide the fate of
armies and nations: the former is the habit of a life, the latter the
glance of a moment; and the battles won by lessons of tactics may be
numbered with the epic poems created from the rules of criticism.
The book of ceremonies is a recital, tedious yet imperfect, of the
despicable pageantry which had infected the church and state since the
gradual decay of the purity of the one and the power of the other.
A review of the themes or provinces might promise such authentic and
useful information, as the curiosity of government only can obtain,
instead of traditionary fables on the origin of the cities, and
malicious epigrams on the vices of their inhabitants. [10] Such
information the historian would have been pleased to record; nor should
his silence be condemned if the most interesting objects, the population
of the capital and provinces, the amount of the taxes and revenues,
the numbers of subjects and strangers who served under the Imperial
standard, have been unnoticed by Leo the philosopher, and his son
Constantine. His treatise of the public administration is stained with
the same blemishes; yet it is discriminated by peculiar merit; the
antiquities of the nations may be doubtful or fabulous; but the
geography and manners of the Barbaric world are delineated with curious
accuracy. Of these nations, the Franks alone were qualified to observe
in their turn, and to describe, the metropolis of the East. The
ambassador of the great Otho, a bishop of Cremona, has painted the state
of Constantinople about the middle of the tenth century: his style
is glowing, his narrative lively, his observation keen; and even the
prejudices and passions of Liutprand are stamped with an original
character of freedom and genius. [11] Fro