s on raw silk. The northern climates are less propitious to
the education of the silkworm; but the industry of France and England is
supplied and enriched by the productions of Italy and China.

Chapter LIII: Fate Of The Eastern Empire.--Part II.

I must repeat the complaint that the vague and scanty memorials of the
times will not afford any just estimate of the taxes, the revenue, and
the resources of the Greek empire. From every province of Europe and
Asia the rivulets of gold and silver discharged into the Imperial
reservoir a copious and perennial stream. The separation of the branches
from the trunk increased the relative magnitude of Constantinople; and
the maxims of despotism contracted the state to the capital, the capital
to the palace, and the palace to the royal person. A Jewish traveller,
who visited the East in the twelfth century, is lost in his admiration
of the Byzantine riches. "It is here," says Benjamin of Tudela, "in
the queen of cities, that the tributes of the Greek empire are annually
deposited and the lofty towers are filled with precious magazines of
silk, purple, and gold. It is said, that Constantinople pays each day
to her sovereign twenty thousand pieces of gold; which are levied on the
shops, taverns, and markets, on the merchants of Persia and Egypt, of
Russia and Hungary, of Italy and Spain, who frequent the capital by sea
and land." In all pecuniary matters, the authority of a Jew is doubtless
respectable; but as the three hundred and sixty-five days would produce
a yearly income exceeding seven millions sterling, I am tempted to
retrench at least the numerous festivals of the Greek calendar. The mass
of treasure that was saved by Theodora and Basil the Second will suggest
a splendid, though indefinite, idea of their supplies and resources. The
mother of Michael, before she retired to a cloister, attempted to check
or expose the prodigality of her ungrateful son, by a free and faithful
account of the wealth which he inherited; one hundred and nine thousand
pounds of gold, and three hundred thousand of silver, the fruits of her
own economy and that of her deceased husband. The avarice of Basil is
not less renowned than his valor and fortune: his victorious armies were
paid and rewarded without breaking into the mass of two hundred thousand
pounds of gold, (about eight millions sterling,) which he had buried in
the subterraneous vaults of the palace. Such accumulation of treasure
is