adventures; and almost all the Asiatic branches were dissevered from the
Roman trunk by the Turkish conquerors. After these losses, the
emperors of the Comnenian family continued to reign from the Danube
to Peloponnesus, and from Belgrade to Nice, Trebizond, and the winding
stream of the Meander. The spacious provinces of Thrace, Macedonia,
and Greece, were obedient to their sceptre; the possession of Cyprus,
Rhodes, and Crete, was accompanied by the fifty islands of the AEgean or
Holy Sea; and the remnant of their empire transcends the measure of the
largest of the European kingdoms.

The same princes might assert, with dignity and truth, that of all the
monarchs of Christendom they possessed the greatest city, the most ample
revenue, the most flourishing and populous state. With the decline and
fall of the empire, the cities of the West had decayed and fallen; nor
could the ruins of Rome, or the mud walls, wooden hovels, and narrow
precincts of Paris and London, prepare the Latin stranger to contemplate
the situation and extent of Constantinople, her stately palaces
and churches, and the arts and luxury of an innumerable people. Her
treasures might attract, but her virgin strength had repelled, and still
promised to repel, the audacious invasion of the Persian and Bulgarian,
the Arab and the Russian. The provinces were less fortunate and
impregnable; and few districts, few cities, could be discovered which
had not been violated by some fierce Barbarian, impatient to despoil,
because he was hopeless to possess. From the age of Justinian the
Eastern empire was sinking below its former level; the powers of
destruction were more active than those of improvement; and the
calamities of war were imbittered by the more permanent evils of
civil and ecclesiastical tyranny. The captive who had escaped from the
Barbarians was often stripped and imprisoned by the ministers of his
sovereign: the Greek superstition relaxed the mind by prayer, and
emaciated the body by fasting; and the multitude of convents and
festivals diverted many hands and many days from the temporal service
of mankind. Yet the subjects of the Byzantine empire were still the most
dexterous and diligent of nations; their country was blessed by nature
with every advantage of soil, climate, and situation; and, in the
support and restoration of the arts, their patient and peaceful temper
was more useful than the warlike spirit and feudal anarchy of Europe.
The pro