or three years
of gentle labor, that the work was done. It is, however, impossible to
enumerate all the undertakings of Pope Nicholas. He did something to
reestablish or decorate almost all the great basilicas. It is feared--but
here our later historians speak with bated breath, not liking to bring
such an accusation against the kind Pope, who loved men of letters--that
the destruction of St. Peter's, afterward ruthlessly carried out by
succeeding popes, was in his plan, on the pretext, so constantly
employed, and possibly believed in, of the instability of the ancient
building. But there is no absolute certainty of evidence, and at all
events he might have repented, for he certainly did not do that deed. He
began the tribune, however, in the ancient church, which may have been a
preparation for the entire renewal of the edifice; and he did much toward
the decoration of another round church, that of the Madonna delle Febbre,
an ill-omened name, attached to the Vatican. He also built the Belvedere
in the gardens, and surrounded the whole with strong walls and towers
(round), one of which, according to Nibby, still remained fifty years
ago, which very little of Nicholas' building has done. His great sin was
one which he shared with all his brother-popes, that he boldly treated
the antique ruins of the city as quarries for his new buildings, not
without protest and remonstrance from many, yet with the calm of a mind
preoccupied and seeing nothing so great and important as the work upon
which his own heart was set.

This excellent Pope died in 1455, soon after having received the news of
the downfall of Constantinople, which is said to have broken his heart.
He had many ailments, and was always a small and spare man of little
strength of constitution; "but nothing transfixed his heart so much as to
hear that the Turks had taken Constantinople and killed the Europeans,
with many thousands of Christians, among them that same 'Imperadore
de Gostantinopli' whom he had seen seated in state at the Council of
Ferrara, listening to his own and other arguments, only a few years
before--as well as the greater part, no doubt, of his own clerical
opponents there. When he was dying, 'being not the less of a strong
spirit,' he called the cardinals round his bed, and many prelates with
them, and made them a last address. His pontificate had lasted a little
more than eight years, and to have carried out so little of his great
plan must ha