lt, also, in the presence of the caliph and the
crescent, was gloriously discomfited. Now if, in the moment of triumph,
some voice in the innumerable crowd had cried out, "How long shall this
great Christian breakwater, against which are shattered into surge and
foam all the mountainous billows of idolaters and misbelievers, stand up
on behalf of infant Christendom?" and if from the clouds some trumpet of
prophecy had replied, "Even yet for eight hundred years!" could any man
have persuaded himself that such a fortress against such
antagonists--such a monument against a millennium of fury--was to be
classed amongst the weak things of this earth? This oriental Rome, it is
true, equally with Persia, was liable to sudden inroads and incursions.
But the difference was this--Persia was strongly protected in all ages
by the wilderness on her main western frontier; if this were passed, and
a hand-to-hand conflict succeeded, where light cavalry or fugitive
archers could be of little value, the essential weakness of the Persian
empire then betrayed itself. Her sovereign was assassinated, and peace
was obtained from the condescension of the invader. But the enemies of
Constantinople, Goths, Avars, Bulgarians, or even Persians, were strong
only by their weakness. Being contemptible, they were neglected; being
chased, they made no stand; and _thus_ only they escaped. They entered
like thieves by means of darkness, and escaped like sheep by means of
dispersion. But, if caught, they were annihilated. No; we resume our
thesis; we close this head by reiterating our correction of history; we
re-affirm our position--that in Eastern Rome lay the salvation of
Western and Central Europe; in Constantinople and the Propontis lay the
_sine-qua-non_ condition of any future Christendom. Emperor and people
_must_ have done their duty; the result, the vast extent of generations
surmounted, furnish the triumphant argument. Finally, indeed, they fell,
king and people, shepherd and flock; but by that time their mission was
fulfilled. And doubtless, as the noble Palaeologus lay on heaps of
carnage, with his noble people, as life was ebbing away, a voice from
heaven sounded in his ears the great words of the Hebrew prophet,
"Behold! YOUR WORK IS DONE; your warfare is accomplished."

III. Such, then, being the unmerited disparagement of the Byzantine
government, and so great the ingratitude of later Christendom to that
sheltering power under which themse