ns, present a dead uniformity of abject vices, which are neither
softened by the weakness of humanity, nor animated by the vigor of
memorable crimes. The freemen of antiquity might repeat with generous
enthusiasm the sentence of Homer, "that on the first day of his
servitude, the captive is deprived of one half of his manly virtue."
But the poet had only seen the effects of civil or domestic slavery, nor
could he foretell that the second moiety of manhood must be annihilated
by the spiritual despotism which shackles not only the actions, but even
the thoughts, of the prostrate votary. By this double yoke, the Greeks
were oppressed under the successors of Heraclius; the tyrant, a law of
eternal justice, was degraded by the vices of his subjects; and on the
throne, in the camp, in the schools, we search, perhaps with fruitless
diligence, the names and characters that may deserve to be rescued from
oblivion. Nor are the defects of the subject compensated by the skill
and variety of the painters. Of a space of eight hundred years, the four
first centuries are overspread with a cloud interrupted by some faint
and broken rays of historic light: in the lives of the emperors, from
Maurice to Alexius, Basil the Macedonian has alone been the theme of a
separate work; and the absence, or loss, or imperfection of contemporary
evidence, must be poorly supplied by the doubtful authority of more
recent compilers. The four last centuries are exempt from the reproach
of penury; and with the Comnenian family, the historic muse of
Constantinople again revives, but her apparel is gaudy, her motions are
without elegance or grace. A succession of priests, or courtiers,
treads in each other's footsteps in the same path of servitude and
superstition: their views are narrow, their judgment is feeble or
corrupt; and we close the volume of copious barrenness, still ignorant
of the causes of events, the characters of the actors, and the manners
of the times which they celebrate or deplore. The observation which
has been applied to a man, may be extended to a whole people, that the
energy of the sword is communicated to the pen; and it will be found by
experience, that the tone of history will rise or fall with the spirit
of the age.

From these considerations, I should have abandoned without regret the
Greek slaves and their servile historians, had I not reflected that the
fate of the Byzantine monarchy is _passively_ connected with the most
splen