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Interest of great historic Epochs.

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the destinies of man; and thus to extract from the past its profound lessons for the present and the future. And of course it is the natural result of such research, to bring into prominence the determining epochs of human history, whether in isolated races, or in mankind at large. For there is in the process of ages an ever-recurring fulness of time, to which converge, and from which issue, the lines of history. This is true of any particular nation; but is more emphatically true of the world at large. The history of mankind necessarily resolves itself into a connected and sublime series of great eras, which mark the progress of human affairs, and illustrate the principles which guide it. The whole extant annals of our race, lodged in the memory, without reference to these epochs, would be a barren encumbrance; but, with these well marked and defined, much of the multifarious and subordinate detail may be safely dispensed with.

But, to take much lower ground than this, there is a specific interest in the contemplation of any one of those leading epochs, those centres of historical confluence, those points which are resplendent with the concentrated lustre of many lines of light. There is a peculiar advantage and pleasure in taking our stand at any one of these points, and making it central to contemporaneous history; in tracing the multitude of influences of which it is the issue, and of which it is the spring; in disposing around it all its accessories; and in making it the vantage-ground for a general survey of the past, the present, and the future. There is an altogether specific pleasure in marking out, into their due prominence, the genuine epochs of the chronology of human progress; in contemplating their characteristics, their determining causes, and the men whose spirits controlled and directed them. There can be no purer delight than to dispose the lights and shades, and group the figures, and order the perspective, of such a study; the general harmony of the whole being both the aim and the reward of the historical artist.

There are some periods of history which can only have any thing like justice done them in this way; such, namely, as belong not to the annals of any one people distinctively, but derive all their significance from their relation to the general progress of events. They have no place but in universal history; and even there they belong rather to its excursus than to its current narrative. They are insignificant, when they are regarded as in the line of any particular annals; viewed locally, they scarcely rise above the ordinary monotony of events: it is only when they are singled out and sharply defined, when they are made the subject of express and comprehensive research, and are placed in relation to the whole circle of history, that they rise into their full grandeur of significance. It is not to be wondered at, that they are often neglected; or, if not neglected,

that they so seldom receive the tribute due to their importance. The historian who shall redeem from obscurity some of these unnoted eras, will deserve well of his generation: for he will not only retrieve many lost links in the great chain, but help to localize and make real much historical knowledge which is at present vague, unsystematic, and useless.

Such an event in history was that which this little book makes its subject. In the year of our Lord 1453, Constantinople was taken by the Turks. Such is the brief theme. Viewed as in relation to the city itself, this event was a mere circumstance, the simple transfer from one people to another of a city which, saving the easily effaced violence of a month's siege, sustained little change in the transfer. Viewed in relation to the nominal Empire of which it was the nominal head, it was but the inevitable issue to which ages had tended, which had been long foreseen, and which only reduced to an avowed nothing what was but a disguised nothing before. It was but the dignified and graceful close of a history which had been languishing to dissolution for ages. Place it in the history of the Ottomans, and it was but the establishment of their dominion in a worthier capital than that which they occupied before, giving them a position which enabled them to defy all Europe with more pride and security. Viewed as an event of ecclesiastical history, it was only the infliction of another blow, severer than any before, upon the prejudices and the hopes of Western Christendom. Regarded as an event of the Middle Ages, occurring in the very fore-front of modern civilization, it was simply a circumstance which gave a mighty impetus to that diffusion of Greek literature and learned men which had been already progressing for half a century. Regarded as an incident in the great struggle between civilization and barbarism, it was but one in a series which had a century longer to run before it was determined. Thus, if we take the chronological epoch of 1453,-the capture of Constantinople by the Turks,-in the annals of any one of these isolated lines of history, it must be regarded as of limited, though still impressive, interest. But if we transfer that date into the annals of the world, and view that event as common to the Roman Empire, the Turks, the affairs of Christendom, the progress of civilization, and the foundation of modern history, it rises into a most imposing and critical relation to them all, and to the history of the world at large. Thus only ought it to be viewed. It must be a study, or it is nothing. It cannot be understood, unless all the lights from all these collateral histories be thrown upon it. But if this is done, and all the subordinate facts which it illustrates, or which are illustrated by it, are arranged with a skilful and discriminating hand around the central event, there are few eras which so amply repay a careful study.

Relations of the Subject.

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But let us look a little more closely at our subject, and cast a preliminary glance over the whole assemblage of inquiries which cluster around it. The city of Constantinople in the middle of the fifteenth century falls as the representative of the ancient Empire of Rome; and the Emperor who dies heroically in the breach, claims to be the lineal successor of those Cæsars whose names shook the earth, and were the symbol of an ambition which attained almost universal dominion. But from the walls of this city the last Emperor of the Romans can see the circumscribed horizon of his dominions: the whole world which the first Augustus taxed at his will, has shrunk, in the hands of the last Augustus, to a narrow strip of contested territory round the walls of a city which, in that former time, was a distant colony. The inquiry naturally arises, What is the true relation of this city to the ancient Empire? and by what process of decay has it dwindled to this abject and shrunken decrepitude? The answer to this question is the history of a millennium of the most varied fates that history recounts,-the decline and fall of the Roman Empire; and this, however condensed and epitomized, is an essential element in the study of this era, the absence of which tends very much to impair the completeness of this volume. This is an omission which we the more regret, because of the exceeding ignorance which reigns in modern literature as to the real position of the Byzantine Empire in history.* Running parallel, for some centuries at least, with the waning fortunes of the Eastern Empire, is the waxing pride of the Turkish power, which under the Ottoman Dynasty turned its infidel countenance towards Europe, and made Constantinople, as the head of a European Empire, the goal of its unbridled ambition. This opens up a subject of profound interest, not only in itself, as penetrating the mysterious origin and tracing the marvellous destiny of one of the most remarkable actors in the drama of human history, but from its connexion with the sympathies of modern times. There is something profoundly affecting in the pertinacious and unrelenting malignity with which the persecutor watched and haunted his victim, devouring earnest after earnest of his possessions, and only waiting upon fate for the final spring upon his all. But our subject widens now towards Western Europe; for it must be remembered that the Turkish aggressions upon the Eastern Empire were a perpetual defiance and insult to Christendom. Just as the Mohammedan power in the Peninsula-the western horn of the Crescent, as some one calls

Or which has reigned till lately. The works of Mr. Finlay, however, have begun effectually to enlighten that ignorance, and to redeem these thousand years from much misconception. We hope shortly to pay our tribute to these most valuable works.

The extraordinary number of books and treatises upon the Turks to which the present war has given birth, defies all enumeration, and is one of the most remarkable phenomena in literature. Von Hammer's ponderous volumes have been most amply compensated for their long neglect.

it was about to be broken for ever, it was preparing to establish itself at the eastern gate of Europe, and that too by the desolation and destruction of its ancient and prescriptive Christian guardian. This gives rise to a new line of inquiry, and complicates our theme with the politics of Europe, as administered by Popes, and Emperors, and Republics. It becomes necessary to follow the phases of public opinion, as it trembled before this great horror of the East; the Crusades which were projected and defeated; the earnest, though impotent, appeals of the rulers of the Roman Church; the insane quarrels of Christian Princes, and still more insane uncharitableness of Christian Prelates, which rendered all European aid abortive. Then rises the vexed question of the schism between the East and the West, with all the pitiful details of the hollow endeavour to terminate that schism, and to preserve a united Christendom from the destroyer. The Pope and the Patriarch strive hard to adjust their respective claims, and end their differences under the pressure of danger: and Constantinople, which had been the greatest polemical centre of Christendom from the beginning, goes out of Christian history amid the strangest controversies the Church had ever known. The episodes of this Western attempt to save the capital of Eastern Christendom are of the most intense interest. Some of the most spirit-stirring among the lesser wars of history, and some of the most heroic and selfsacrificing achievements of patriots, defend her cause, and avert

her ruin for many years. God interposes in an ever-memorable manner, and by Tamerlane humbles the Turk to the dust, that when he rises again, he may remember a Power greater than himself. But he does rise again; and, Europe being too full of war and controversy to. afford any decisive help, the final hour of Constantinople comes. The interest is now concentrated upon the city itself; and, taken all together, no tragedy but one surpasses its fall in all that appeals to the reader's imagination, sympathy, and horror. And at this critical point in the wonderful history of a great city, undergoing a greater revolution than any other in ancient or modern times ever underwent, it seems no more than right to include in this study some memorial of the city herself. "Herself," we say; for it is impossible to contemplate the history of some of the great cities of the world, this one preeminently, without investing them with a certain personality. Here, also, we mourn over an omission on the part of our author, which we must endeavour to supply. Then, finally, comes the relation of this event to the state of the times and to the career of modern civilization. The fall of the city is the riches of the world. The terror of the Turk unlocked the secret treasuries of long-hidden lore, and dispersed over Italy and Europe a host of scholars, who contributed largely to the revival of literature, and in fact laid its foundation: thus falling-in with

Remnant of an Empire.

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the onward tendencies of an age which was preparing for the Reformation and Modern Europe. But semi-barbarism and the Crescent are established in the ancient metropolis of Christianity and mother of Christian cities. The Turkish Empire is consolidated by the wisdom and political skill of the same Mohammed, whose indomitable valour gained the seat in Europe to which his predecessors had aspired in vain. The shock which this event administered to the nations of Western Europe, their continual oscillations between hope and fear for the remainder of the century, are immediately connected with our theme, and, indirectly so, all the subsequent chequered relations of Turkey to Christendom down to our own day, as well as the revival of the Greek name among the nations of Europe.

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The reader of Mr. Rule's book will find this whole subject, or rather this congeries of subjects, amply and-abating the exceptions we have hinted at-exhaustively treated. The work has too much the appearance of being an extract from a larger work there seems wanting the thread which a preparatory chapter would have given. But few treatises so unpretending lay such claims to the dignity of history derived from its original sources. The Corpus Historia Byzantine is not a fountain at second remove to Mr. Rule; nor does he put together his materials with the mechanical heartlessness with which modern compilers pillage their predecessors. His heart is in this work, and he carries his reader's feeling with him. His Christian philosophy also is in it, and he carries with him his reader's judg ment. In short, they who diligently master this volume, will have made a happy accession to their knowledge of one of the most important eras of the world's history, and will heartily wish that a score of similar eras were similarly treated. For ourselves, we shall now take our own course with the subject, which we make our own, supplementing our author where we think his treatment of it faulty.

The Roman, the Eastern, the Lower, the Greek, the Byzantine Empire, are the high-sounding titles with which history dignifies the power which fell with the fall of Constantinople in the fifteenth century. The succession of these names marks the wonderful and unparalleled vicissitudes through which the greatest Empire ever known in the world passed to its final dissolution. The little vestige of dominion which Mohammed trampled under his feet, was regarded by those who died in its defence as the representative of the ancient Empire of the Cæsars; and the last Constantine perished, not only covered with their magnificent titles, but asserting, with heroic dignity, a claim which cannot well be contested, to be their last descendant. More than a thousand years before, Constantinople had been made the capital of the Roman Empire, then scarcely beginning to show any outward marks of decline;

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