daughter of the emperor Alexius. His son Andronicus
is conspicuous only by his cowardice. His grandson Isaac punished and
succeeded the tyrant; but he was dethroned by his own vices, and the
ambition of his brother; and their discord introduced the Latins to the
conquest of Constantinople, the first great period in the fall of the
Eastern empire.

If we compute the number and duration of the reigns, it will be
found, that a period of six hundred years is filled by sixty emperors,
including in the Augustan list some female sovereigns; and deducting
some usurpers who were never acknowledged in the capital, and some
princes who did not live to possess their inheritance. The average
proportion will allow ten years for each emperor, far below the
chronological rule of Sir Isaac Newton, who, from the experience of
more recent and regular monarchies, has defined about eighteen or twenty
years as the term of an ordinary reign. The Byzantine empire was
most tranquil and prosperous when it could acquiesce in hereditary
succession; five dynasties, the Heraclian, Isaurian, Amorian, Basilian,
and Comnenian families, enjoyed and transmitted the royal patrimony
during their respective series of five, four, three, six, and four
generations; several princes number the years of their reign with those
of their infancy; and Constantine the Seventh and his two grandsons
occupy the space of an entire century. But in the intervals of the
Byzantine dynasties, the succession is rapid and broken, and the name
of a successful candidate is speedily erased by a more fortunate
competitor. Many were the paths that led to the summit of royalty:
the fabric of rebellion was overthrown by the stroke of conspiracy, or
undermined by the silent arts of intrigue: the favorites of the soldiers
or people, of the senate or clergy, of the women and eunuchs, were
alternately clothed with the purple: the means of their elevation were
base, and their end was often contemptible or tragic. A being of the
nature of man, endowed with the same faculties, but with a longer
measure of existence, would cast down a smile of pity and contempt on
the crimes and follies of human ambition, so eager, in a narrow span,
to grasp at a precarious and short-lived enjoyment. It is thus that
the experience of history exalts and enlarges the horizon of our
intellectual view. In a composition of some days, in a perusal of some
hours, six hundred years have rolled away, and the duration o