the choir, and preceding the pontiff to the altar.
Alexander, after reciting the gospel, preached to the people. The
Emperor put himself close to the pulpit in the attitude of listening;
and the pontiff, touched by this mark of his attention (for he knew that
Frederic did not understand a word he said), commanded the patriarch of
Aquileja to translate the Latin discourse into the German tongue. The
creed was then chanted. Frederic made his oblation, and kissed the
Pope's feet, and, mass being over, led him by the hand to his white
horse. He held the stirrup, and would have led the horse's rein to the
water side, had not the Pope accepted of the inclination for the
performance, and affectionately dismissed him with his benediction. Such
is the substance of the account left by the archbishop of Salerno, who
was present at the ceremony, and whose story is confirmed by every
subsequent narration. It would be not worth so minute a record, were it
not the triumph of liberty as well as of superstition. The states of
Lombardy owed to it the confirmation of their privileges; and Alexander
had reason to thank the Almighty, who had enabled an infirm, unarmed
old man to subdue a terrible and potent sovereign.[560]

5.

Oh for one hour of blind old Dandolo!
Th' octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering foe.
Stanza xii. lines 8 and 9.

The reader will recollect the exclamation of the Highlander, "_Oh, for
one hour of Dundee_!" Henry Dandolo, when elected Doge, in 1192, was
eighty-five years of age. When he commanded the Venetians at the taking
of Constantinople, he was consequently ninety-seven years old. At this
age he annexed the fourth and a half of the whole empire of
Romania,[561] for so the Roman empire was then called, to the title and
to the territories of the Venetian Doge. The three-eighths of this
empire were preserved in the diplomas until the Dukedom of Giovanni
Dolfino, who made use of the above designation in the year 1357.[562]

Dandolo led the attack on Constantinople in person. Two ships, the
Paradise and the Pilgrim, were tied together, and a drawbridge or ladder
let down from their higher yards to the walls. The Doge was one of the
first to rush into the city. Then was completed, said the Venetians, the
prophecy of the Erythraean sibyl:--"A gathering together of the powerful
shall be made amidst the waves of the Adriatic, un