Explanations indeed of this extraordinary" life-in-death" are offered to us in countless abundance; every historian has his own favourite theory on the subject, some poetic, some prosaic some ingenious, some absurd; some whimsical, some argumentative; but all unfortunately unsatisfactory. The truth is, that the conservative agency must have been just as diversified as the destructive; simplicity of causation lends more grace to theory than verity to history; there is scarcely a recorded fact, and certainly no succession of facts, that has not resulted from the combination of many circumstances, and therefore he who endeavours to give to historical science the simplicity, the precision, and the certainty of mathematical," dat operam ut cum ratione insaniat;"-he is metaphysically mad. The life of an individual cannot be reduced to abstract propositions of cause and effect; let any one make the effort for himself, and he will find occurrences in his own personal experience that violate all ordinary rules, and are explicable by no common formulæ of calculation; the history of a nation must necessarily present more and greater anomalies, for many matters that in their consequences exercised wondrous influence, may appear, and frequently have appeared at the time of their occurrence, too trivial to be recorded.

The causes separately assigned for the continuance of the Byzantine empire are insufficient to account for the phenomenon, though we have no doubt that each had some share in its preservation; and as their effects can be traced by a double analysis, (for the same causes now operate in maintaining the Turkish power in the very same localities,) they are not unworthy of a brief examination. One writer eloquently tells us that the impregnable situation of the capital is a complete solution of the entire mystery. "When," says he, "the barbarians thundered at the gates of Constantinople, when its walls quivered beneath the battering engines, and its battlements were swept by the towers of the besiegers, then was the existence of the empire periled, then did the pillars of its temple bend, and the ark of its safety tremble. in the shrine; but when it was found that the walls, though shaken, could not be levelled, that the battlements, though cleared, could not be mounted, the baffled barbarians withdrew, and the forces of the empire rallied once more to the centre of dominion, where they found the ark still preserved, the temple uninjured and unimpaired." Unfortunately this theory is far more remarkable for poetic beauty than sober reason;-capital, temple, shrine and palladium, all fell before Baldwin and before Dandolo,-but the Byzantine empire survived the catastrophe, and seems to have suffered little in its stability from the shock. Stability indeed is a term little suited to the tottering power of the successors of

Constantine, but language has not as yet supplied us with a proper designation for the strength of weakness, and the vitality of decay.

But we by no means wish to deny that the position of Constantinople contributed in no small degree to protect the duration of the empire; the appearance of the Russian cross on the dome of Saint Sophia would now be the Ichabod of the Mohammedan reign, and the combatants during the late war felt a thorough conviction that Turkey would cease to exist when" the dogs of Moscow "had entered the gates of Stamboul. There are certain feelings of hereditary respect, certain reminiscences of glory, that sometimes take the name and not unfrequently produce the effect of patriotism, and these are for the most part identified with localities, and lead to a mental union of the fate of the metropolis with the fate of the kingdom.

Another and perhaps more plausible theory accounts for the continuance of the Byzantine empire, by the unity of purpose which it derived from the completeness of its despotism. The Cæsars, it is said, were limited monarchs compared with the successors of Constantine, and the Russian autocrat a constitutional sovereign when contrasted with the rulers of Byzantium. We more than doubt the existence of this perfect despotism; both the clergy and the populace claimed and often exercised a controul over the emperors; there was, we grant, always an autocracy in theory, but it was rarely to be found in practice. Still we do not in this instance deny the conservative energies of despotism; no other form of government can possess a centralizing power in periods of weakness and demoralization, when patriotism is an empty name, honour a mockery, and virtue regarded as a delusive dream, -let not despotic power be deprived of its legitimate boast, it is the only support of vicious weakness, and the last stay of an empire in its decline. We do not reject it wholly from the causes that maintained a tottering throne, but we doubt if, unaided by other matters, it would have been able to support it alone.

Pride in the Roman or Grecian name is generally rejected by historians from the list of causes assigned for the duration of the Byzantine empire, but, as we think, on very insufficient grounds. Every page of the historians of the lower empire proves that they claimed as their own the proud recollections both of Greek and Roman story; that Alexander and Cæsar were equally regarded as authors of their claims to dominion, and that they clung to these delusive shadows as if memory had been identified with hope, as if the past were certain to be renewed in the future, and the fortunes of their uation a revolving cycle, which should restore all former pride, pomp and circumstance, when its revolution was

completed. It is true that these claims were wholly unfounded, "dream of a dream and shadow of a shade," that on examination they would be found as futile and ridiculous as the claim of the Britons to descent from Trojan ancestors, or the boast of the Irish that they possessed civilization before the deluge. But the truth or falsehood of the claim is a matter indifferent to the issue, because national pride is equally strong whether founded on fact or fiction; it is not true that one Englishman can beat three Frenchmen, but it is true that the belief in so flattering a proposition has often contributed in no small degree to the triumph of the British arms: it is not true that a troop of Houris are ready to escort to Paradise every follower of Mohammed that dies in the service of the faith; it is true that this creed has not been the least influential of the causes that made the crescent wave in so many fields of victory. The effect of this " gilded halo hovering round decay" was that which we have witnessed in another country within the memory of the present generation; it engendered a passive obstinacy, a dogged endurance, infinitely more dangerous to an invader than courage and active exertion. Spain and Greece amply illustrate the workings of pride in a degraded nation; it made them insensible of dishonour and reckless of defeat; it changed the sabre to the dagger; it moulded the soldier into an assassin; the battle-field was the least of the victor's dangers, and the only mode left him of destroying national existence was national extermination. Twice were the French taught this lesson; once when their counts founded a Latin empire in Constantinople, and again when Napoleon placed a new dynasty in Madrid.

There were certain prophecies current among the Byzantines, which the Turks seem to have inherited with the dominions. These all declared that a fatal day should arrive when Constantinople should fall before the men of the north, and a Scythian prince sit on the throne of the Constantines. It required a marvellously small share of inspiration to predict such an event, when tribe after tribe of barbarians passed the frontier lines of the empire and ravaged both Thrace and Greece at their pleasure; but it is curious to find this guess, originally founded on an estimate of probabilities, assuming the form of an inspired prediction, and forming a part of the traditionary creed of two nations. We allude to it, however, principally as a probable conservative cause; in their wars with the Saracens and the Turks, the courage of the Greeks was supported by the belief that these were not the people whom fate had destined to be their conquerors; on the other hand, the Turks to this hour point out the

gate through which the victorious Russians shall enter Constantinople.

The study of Byzantine history is much more popular on the continent than in England, simply because it is much more intimately connected with the annals of continental nations. Germany, France, Italy, and, more than all, Russia, find in the Greek writers illustrations of some important periods of their history; we do not, therefore, assent to the reasoning of those who deem it a blot on the literary fame of our country that England can shew no such work as the collection of the Byzantine historians in thirty-six folio volumes, published in France during the reign of Louis XIV., nor any attempt to form such a series as that before us. The sketch of the eastern empire, given by our eloquent historian Gibbon, and which in the main merits the praise of accuracy, is fully sufficient for the purposes of ordinary historical students; still there is much of interesting and important matter that he has left untouched, or at least very partially noticed, that will amply reward the labours of research. The eastern empire is the link between the history, the social condition and the literature of ancient and modern Europe. When Godfrey and his crusaders stood before the throne of Alexis, the representatives of feudalism and chivalry were contrasted with the possessors of classic civilization, and the decaying relics of imperial Rome brought into contact with the germs of the system that succeeded to its power. They mutually passed sentence on each other, and proved that their co-existence was impossible. It is infinitely amusing to compare the historians on both sides, and see their reciprocation of contempt and misrepresentation, each abusing in no measured terms the customs of the other, generally without understanding them, sometimes even without ascertaining their existence.

The ecclesiastical antiquities of the Byzantine empire are topics of more painful interest; they are little more than the annals of controversies on subjects transcending human reason, in which the violence and fury of the controversies are in direct proportion with the ignorance and folly of the controversialists. Plato and Aristotle, who have every reason to curse all their followers and commentators, have respectively to answer for about nine tenths of the heresies in the eastern and western churches; the natural tendency of the Greeks to mysticism led them to adopt the dreamy speculations of the Alexandrian Platonists, while the colder Westerns found exercise for perverted ingenuity in the dialectics of Aristotle. Of the theological rancour between the Greek and Latin churches we find some very strange

instances, especially in the history of Nicephorus; but that the Latins were by no means inferior to the Greeks in the art of hating, the notes extracted from the French editions of those histories amply testify. A list of the topics discussed by the several polemics would compel Heraclitus himself to relax his muscles in a smile, while even Democritus would shed a tear to see the gospel of peace perverted into an arsenal of war, and hatred of the creature deduced from the love of the Creator. We shall, however, touch but lightly on the intellectual degradation of the eastern theologians, for there is too great a tendency in the present age to visit the follies and sins of the ministry, on the holy religion of which they are the teachers, and by whose precepts bigotry and violence are more emphatically condemned than by any system that has yet been devised by the self-named philosophers. We regret that the editors did not consign a large portion of these theologians to unhonoured oblivion.

Nor is this the only fault we have to find with the managers of the new edition of the Byzantine historians; Edipus himself would be at a loss to assign a reason for the confusion that appears in the order of publication. It has been said that the British government erected the Martello towers in Ireland for the special purpose of puzzling posterity; the proceedings of the German publishers of this series seem to be dictated by the same benevolent design towards critics. There is not a symptom of any thing like arrangement or classification in the series; it seems to have been resolved that each successive volume should be as remote as possible both in period and subject from that which preceded it, and there is, therefore, scarcely an opportunity of collecting from the published volumes any connected view of some one interesting period of history or useful portion of Byzantine literature. By an exquisitely absurd management, also, the least valuable authors are those which have obtained precedence of publication. Procopius, Anna Comnena and Nicetas have been postponed for the chronologies of Malalas and Syncellus, and the treatise on ceremonies by Constantine the Porphyrogennete; as if it had been determined to fill the public with previous disgust, in order to enhance the value of future excellence. The notes and dissertations of the Paris edition are preserved without alteration; no small part of them is employed in explaining matters that are now familiar to schoolboys of the lowest form, and there is an equally large supply of topics that have just as much to do with the explanation of lunar geography as Byzantine history. A note of six pages to prove that the capture of Constantinople was an act of divine vengeance on the Greek church, for rejecting the supremacy of the pope; and another