re of Charlemagne was bounded only by
the conflux of the Danube with the Teyss and the Save: the provinces
of Istria, Liburnia, and Dalmatia, were an easy, though unprofitable,
accession; and it was an effect of his moderation, that he left the
maritime cities under the real or nominal sovereignty of the Greeks. But
these distant possessions added more to the reputation than to the power
of the Latin emperor; nor did he risk any ecclesiastical foundations to
reclaim the Barbarians from their vagrant life and idolatrous worship.
Some canals of communication between the rivers, the Saone and the
Meuse, the Rhine and the Danube, were faintly attempted. Their execution
would have vivified the empire; and more cost and labor were often
wasted in the structure of a cathedral.

Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.--Part V.

If we retrace the outlines of this geographical picture, it will be seen
that the empire of the Franks extended, between east and west, from the
Ebro to the Elbe or Vistula; between the north and south, from the duchy
of Beneventum to the River Eyder, the perpetual boundary of Germany
and Denmark. The personal and political importance of Charlemagne
was magnified by the distress and division of the rest of Europe. The
islands of Great Britain and Ireland were disputed by a crowd of princes
of Saxon or Scottish origin: and, after the loss of Spain, the Christian
and Gothic kingdom of Alphonso the Chaste was confined to the narrow
range of the Asturian mountains. These petty sovereigns revered the
power or virtue of the Carlovingian monarch, implored the honor and
support of his alliance, and styled him their common parent, the sole
and supreme emperor of the West. He maintained a more equal intercourse
with the caliph Harun al Rashid, whose dominion stretched from Africa
to India, and accepted from his ambassadors a tent, a water-clock, an
elephant, and the keys of the Holy Sepulchre. It is not easy to conceive
the private friendship of a Frank and an Arab, who were strangers
to each other's person, and language, and religion: but their public
correspondence was founded on vanity, and their remote situation left no
room for a competition of interest. Two thirds of the Western empire of
Rome were subject to Charlemagne, and the deficiency was amply supplied
by his command of the inaccessible or invincible nations of Germany. But
in the choice of his enemies, we may be reasonably surprised that