rk of national virtue;
and the Imperial series may be continued with some dignity from their
restoration to the Turkish conquest. IX. The Moguls and Tartars. By the
arms of Zingis and his descendants, the globe was shaken from China to
Poland and Greece: the sultans were overthrown: the caliphs fell, and
the Caesars trembled on their throne. The victories of Timour suspended
above fifty years the final ruin of the Byzantine empire. X. I have
already noticed the first appearance of the Turks; and the names of
the fathers, of _Seljuk_ and _Othman_, discriminate the two successive
dynasties of the nation, which emerged in the eleventh century from
the Scythian wilderness. The former established a splendid and potent
kingdom from the banks of the Oxus to Antioch and Nice; and the first
crusade was provoked by the violation of Jerusalem and the danger of
Constantinople. From an humble origin, the _Ottomans_ arose, the scourge
and terror of Christendom. Constantinople was besieged and taken by
Mahomet II., and his triumph annihilates the remnant, the image, the
title, of the Roman empire in the East. The schism of the Greeks will be
connected with their last calamities, and the restoration of learning in
the Western world. I shall return from the captivity of the new, to the
ruins of ancient Rome; and the venerable name, the interesting theme,
will shed a ray of glory on the conclusion of my labors.

The emperor Heraclius had punished a tyrant and ascended his throne; and
the memory of his reign is perpetuated by the transient conquest, and
irreparable loss, of the Eastern provinces. After the death of Eudocia,
his first wife, he disobeyed the patriarch, and violated the laws, by
his second marriage with his niece Martina; and the superstition of the
Greeks beheld the judgment of Heaven in the diseases of the father and
the deformity of his offspring. But the opinion of an illegitimate birth
is sufficient to distract the choice, and loosen the obedience, of the
people: the ambition of Martina was quickened by maternal love, and
perhaps by the envy of a step-mother; and the aged husband was too
feeble to withstand the arts of conjugal allurements. Constantine,
his eldest son, enjoyed in a mature age the title of Augustus; but the
weakness of his constitution required a colleague and a guardian, and
he yielded with secret reluctance to the partition of the empire. The
senate was summoned to the palace to ratify or attest the ass