us and successful diligence of the emperor
established by degrees the equitable balance of property and payment,
of receipt and expenditure; a peculiar fund was appropriated to each
service; and a public method secured the interest of the prince and
the property of the people. After reforming the luxury, he assigned two
patrimonial estates to supply the decent plenty, of the Imperial table:
the contributions of the subject were reserved for his defence; and the
residue was employed in the embellishment of the capital and provinces.
A taste for building, however costly, may deserve some praise and much
excuse: from thence industry is fed, art is encouraged, and some object
is attained of public emolument or pleasure: the use of a road, an
aqueduct, or a hospital, is obvious and solid; and the hundred churches
that arose by the command of Basil were consecrated to the devotion of
the age. In the character of a judge he was assiduous and impartial;
desirous to save, but not afraid to strike: the oppressors of the people
were severely chastised; but his personal foes, whom it might be unsafe
to pardon, were condemned, after the loss of their eyes, to a life of
solitude and repentance. The change of language and manners demanded a
revision of the obsolete jurisprudence of Justinian: the voluminous body
of his Institutes, Pandects, Code, and Novels, was digested under forty
titles, in the Greek idiom; and the Basilics, which were improved and
completed by his son and grandson, must be referred to the original
genius of the founder of their race. This glorious reign was terminated
by an accident in the chase. A furious stag entangled his horns in
the belt of Basil, and raised him from his horse: he was rescued by an
attendant, who cut the belt and slew the animal; but the fall, or the
fever, exhausted the strength of the aged monarch, and he expired in the
palace amidst the tears of his family and people. If he struck off the
head of the faithful servant for presuming to draw his sword against his
sovereign, the pride of despotism, which had lain dormant in his life,
revived in the last moments of despair, when he no longer wanted or
valued the opinion of mankind.

Of the four sons of the emperor, Constantine died before his father,
whose grief and credulity were amused by a flattering impostor and a
vain apparition. Stephen, the youngest, was content with the honors of
a patriarch and a saint; both Leo and Alexander were alike