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Because King Death had stolen her little It seemed so strange that any should be

Almighty Love! that so unsparing gave Save sighing, as men sigh when Hope is Wealth, Beauty, Honor, holding nought toc

So at the Seventh Gate she stayed forlorn,
And knew, within, that cold Death hid her

CONSTANTINOPLE AS AN HISTORIC CITY.

BY FREDERIC HARRISON.

From The Fortnightly Review. historic fort. Hardly any of the ancient towns of Italy and southern Europe can show so authentic and venerable a record. There is no reason to doubt that Byzantium has been a historic city for some twenty-five hundred and fifty years; during the whole of that period, with no real break in her life, it has been the scene of events recorded in the annals of mankind; it has been fought for and held by men. famous in world history; it has played a substantive part in the drama of civilization. So singular a sequence of historic interest can hardly be claimedi for auy city in Europe, except for Rome herself.

MANY things combine to call renewed attention to Constantinople as an historic city, with her wonderful past and her mysterious future. The picturesque old capital of the Padishal is fast fading away from our eyes, under the influence of the Treaty of San Stefano, railways, European reforms, and the ebb of the Moslem population from Europe. Those who wish to see some remnants of Oriental life and color on this side of the Bosphorus, should hasten to visit the Moslem capital before the turban and the hadji have quite disappeared from her khans. On the other hand an unusual stimulus has been given of late by European scholars to the history and the antiquities of this legendary "mother of dead empires."

For nearly a thousand years before it became the capital of an empire, Byzantium was a Greek city of much importance, the prize of contending nations, and with striking prescience even then chosen out by philosophic historians for its commanding position and immense capabilities. After the OF all the cities of Europe the New lapse of nearly a thousand years, ByRome of the Bosphorus, in its power zantium became Constantinople, the over the imagination of men, can yield centre of the Roman Empire. Since the first place to none save its own then it has been the capital city of an mother, the Old Rome of the Tiber. empire for exactly fifteen hundred and And of all cities of the world she stands sixty-four years and that in a manforemost in beauty of situation, in the ner, and for a period such as no other marvel of her geographical position, as imperial city has been in the annals of the eternal link between the East and civilized man. There is no actual the West. We may almost add that break; although, for the dynasty of she is foremost in the vast continuity the Palæologi, from the Latin Empire and gorgeous multiplicity of her his- down to the capture by the Ottomans, toric interests. For if Constantinople the empire outside the capital has a an present us with nothing that can vie in sublimity and pathos with the emories of Rome, Athens, Jerusaem, it has for the historic mind a peculiar fascination of its own, in the normous persistence of imperial power concentrated under varied forms in one anique spot of our earthly globe.

Byzantium, to use that which has been the ordinary name with all Greek writers from Herodotus down to Pasates in our own day, is one of the oldest cities of Europe; historically peaking, if we neglect mere pre-hisoric legend, little younger than Athens Rome. Like them, Byzantium appears to have been founded on a pre

shrunken and almost phantom dominion. But it is yet true, that for fifteen hundred and sixty-four years Constantinople has ever been, and still is, the sole regular residence of emperors and sultans, the sole and continuous centre of civil and military administration, the supreme court of law and justice, and the official centre of the imperial religion.

During all this period the life of the empire has been concentrated in that most wonderful peninsula, as its heart and its head. It has been concentrated for a far longer period, and in a more definite way, than even it was in the original Seven Hills; for Rome

herself was the local seat of empire for | to kindle our thoughts. History, alas ! scarcely four centuries, and even for is not the record of pure virtue and that in an intermittent form; and vast peaceful happiness; it is the record of as has been the continuity of the Ro- deeds big with fate to races of men, of man Church for at least thirteen cen- passions, crimes, follies, heroisms, and turies, its life, and even its official martyrdoms in the mysterious labygovernment, have had many seats and rinth of human destiny. The stage continual movements. But from the whereon, over SO vast a period of days of Constantine, Constantinople man's memory, ten thousand of such has been, both in the temporal and tragedies have been enacted, holds spiritual domains, the centre, the with a spell the mind of every man home, the palladium of the empire of who is in sympathy with human nathe East. For fifteen centuries the lord | ture, and who loves to meditate on the of Constantinople has never ceased to problem of human progress. be the lord of the contiguous East; and, whilst sea and rock hold in their accustomed places, the lord of Constantinople must continue to be lord of south-eastern Europe and of northwestern Asia.

History and European opinion have been until lately most unjust to the Byzantine empire, whether in its Roman, its Greek, or in its Ottoman form. By a singular fatality its aunals and its true place have been grossly misunThis continuity and concentration of derstood. Foreign scholars, German, imperial rule in an imperial city has no French, Russian, and Greek, have done parallel in the history of mankind. much in recent years to repair this Rome was the local centre of empire error; and English historians, though for barely four centuries, and for six- late in the field, are beginning to atone teen centuries she has wholly lost that for neglect in the past. Finlay worthclaim. The royal cities that once ily led the way, in spite of sympathies flourished in the valleys of the Ganges, and antipathies which almost incapac the Euphrates, or the Nile, were all itate an historian from truly grasping abandoned after some centuries of Byzantine history. Professor Freemar splendor, and have long lost their struck the true note in some of his imperial rank. Memphis, Babylon, most weighty and pregnant pieces, perTyre, Carthage, Alexandria, Syracuse, haps the most original and brilliant o Athens, had periods of glory, but no his essays; and now Professor Bury great continuity of empire. London of Dublin, has undertaken the vas and Paris have been great capitals for task of casting into a scientific and at most a few centuries; and Madrid, systematic history those wonderfu Berlin, Vienna, and St. Petersburg, narratives of which Gibbon gave us de are things of yesterday in the long roll tached and superb sketches, albeit witl of human civilization. There is but limited resources and incomplete knowl one city of the world of which it can be edge. Edwin Pears, in a fine mono said that, for fifteen centuries and a graph, has given us very much mor half, it has been the continuous seat of than the history of the Fourth Cru empire, under all the changes of race, sade.1 And the incessant labors institutions, customs, and religion. foreign scholars are beginning to filte And this may be ultimately traced to even into the ideas of the genera its incomparable physical and geo-reader. Russian and Greek monas

graphical capabilities.

O

an

teries have preserved unknown precious chronicles; and Armenian

Mere duration of imperial power and variety of historical interest are indeed 1 History of Greece, from 146 B.C. to A.D. 186 far different from true greatness or by George Finlay, ed. by H. F. Tozer, 7 vols national dignity. But as an object of Historical Essays, by E. A. Freeman, 3rd Serie the historical imagination, the rich- 1879; The Later Roman Empire, from 395 A.D. ness of the record, in the local annals 1889; The Fall of Constantinople in the Four 800 A.D., by T. B. Bury, Trin. Coll., Dub., 2 vol of some world-famous spot, cannot fail | Crusade, by Edwin Pears, LL.D., 1885.

Saracen, and Persian manuscripts have been brought to the test of a learned lately been added to our annals. The survey on the spot. No one could well terrible corpus of Byzantine histories deal with Byzantine antiquities without becomes less heart-breaking in its dry- a thorough study of the works of the ness and its affectation, with all the light late Dr. Paspates, especially of the that modern scholarship has thrown"Byzantine Palaces," which is now upon that record of romantic and accessible to the English reader in the tremendous events, told by official an- new translation of Mr. Metcalfe (1893). nalists with pedantic dulness and coldblooded commonplace. Krause, Hopf, Heyd, Gfrörer, in Germany; Sabatier, Rambaud, Schlumberger, Drapeyron, Bayet, in France; Byzantios, and Paspates, in Greece, have given a new life to this vast repertory of a thousand years of varying fortune.1

We have all been unjust to this Byzantine empire; and its restoration to its true place in the story of human civilization is beyond doubt the great lacuna of our current histories. What they tell us is mainly the story of its last four hundred years - when the Eastern Empire was dying under the At the same time, the local archæol-mortal blows inflicted on it as it stood ogy of Constantinople has received a between the fanaticism of the East and new impulse. The political and eco- the jealousy of the West. Of the seven nomic changes which resulted from the centuries from Theodosius to the Crucourse of events, from the Crimean sades we hear little save palace inWar of 1853 and the Treaty of San trigues, though these years were the Stefano in 1878, have opened Constan- true years of glory in Byzantine histinople much as Japan was opened tory. This was the period in which thirty years ago. European scholars she handed down, and handed down and resident Greeks have been enabled alone, the ancient world to the modto study the remains; the sultan has eru; when Constantinople was the formed a most interesting museum greatest and most civilized city in Euunder Hamdi Bey, a Turkish archæ-rope, the last refuge of law, arts, and logist; and Dr. Paspates, a Greek an- learning, the precursor of the Crusades Liquarian, has been able in the cuttings in defending Christian civilization by and works of the new railway, almost four centuries. Before the Crusades wholly to reconstruct Byzantine topog-were undertaken by Europe, the Eastraphy. The vague and somewhat ern Empire was falling into corruption traditional localization repeated by and decay. But down to the middle Banduri, Ducange, Gyllius, Busbecq, of the eleventh century, more or less nd the rest, has now been corrected continuously from the opening of the by scientific inspection of ruins and seventh, the history of the eastern artial excavation. The ingenious Romaus may honorably compare with abors of Labarte, Salzenberg, Schlum- the history of western Europe, whilst erger, Bayet, Riant, and others,2 have

Sabatier, Monnaies Byzantines, 1862 ; Rambaud, Empire Grec au Xme. Siècle, 1870; Drapeyron, Empereur Héraclius, 1869; Schlumberger, Un Empereur Byzantin, 1890; Krause, 1869, and Heyd,

, on Commerce in the Levant.

in certain essential elements of civilization, they stood not merely the first in Europe, but practically alone. If Chosroes, or Muaviah, or Haroun, or Crumn, had succeeded in blotting out the empire of the Bosphorus, it is Banduri, Imperium Orientale, 1711, 2 vols. fol.; difficult to imagine from whence we mange, Constantinopolis Christiana; Gyllius, should have been able to recover either Je Topogr. Constantin.; Busbecq, Letters, tr. by Forster and Daniel, 2 vols., 1881; Salzenberg, Alt-Roman law, or Hellenic art, or ancient Christliche Baudenkmale, 1854, fol.; Labarte, Le poetry and learning, or the complex art Palais Impérial de Constantinople, 4to., 1861; of organized government, or the tradi Paspates, Βυζαντιναί Μελέται, 1877; Βυζαντινὰ tions and manufactures of cultured Ανάκτορα, 1885 ; Πολιορκία καὶ ἁλῶσις, 1890; Procivilization. At any rate, the whole or van Millingen, in Murray's Handbook, new 1883: Byzantios, Kwvotavtivovπohis, 1851-9, history of mankind would have taken a different course.