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Nothing has ever surprised us more, we will frankly own, than this coincidence of authors in treating the Byzantine empire as feeble and crazy. On the contrary, to us it is clear that some secret and preternatural strength it must have had, lurking where the eye of man did not in those days penetrate, or by what miracle did it undertake our universal Christian cause, fight for us all, keep the waters open from freezing us up, and through nine centuries prevent the ice of Mahometanism from closing over our heads for ever? Yet does Mr. Finlay (p. 424) describe this empire as laboring, in A. D. 623, equally with Persia, under ‘internal weakness,’ and as ‘equally incapable of offering any popular or national resistance to an active or enterprising enemy.’ In this Mr. Finlay does but agree with other able writers; but he and they should have recollected, that hardly had that very year 623 departed, even yet the knell of its last hour was sounding upon the winds, when this effeminate empire had occasion to show that she could clothe herself with consuming terrors, as a belligerent both defensive and aggressive. In the absence of her great emperor, and of the main imperial forces, the golden capital herself, by her own resources, routed and persecuted into wrecks a Persian army that had come down upon her by stealth and a fraudulent circuit. Even at that same period, she advanced into Persia more than a thousand miles from her own metropolis in Europe, under the blazing ensigns of the cross, kicked the crown of Persia to and fro like a tennis-ball, upset the throne of Artaxerxes, countersigned haughtily the elevation of a new Basileus more friendly to herself, and then recrossed the Tigris homewards, after having torn forcibly out of the heart and palpitating entrails of Persia, whatever trophies that idolatrous empire had formerly wrested from herself. These were not the acts of an effeminate kingdom. In the language of Wordsworth we may say–

‘All power was giv’n her in the dreadful trance;
Infidel kings she wither’d like a flame.’

Indeed, no image that we remember can do justice to the first of these acts, except that Spanish legend of the Cid, which assures us that, long after the death of the mighty cavalier, when the children of those Moors who had fled from his face whilst living, were insulting the marble statue above his grave, suddenly the statue raised its right arm, stretched out its marble lance, and drifted the heathen dogs like snow. The mere sanctity of the Christian champion’s sepulchre was its own protection; and so we must suppose, that, when the Persian hosts came by surprise upon Constantinople–her natural protector being absent by three months’ march–simply the golden statues of the mighty Caesars, half rising on their thrones, must have caused that sudden panic which dissipated the danger. Hardly fifty years later, Mr. Finlay well knows that Constantinople again stood an assault–not from a Persian hourrah, or tempestuous surprise, but from a vast expedition, armaments by land and sea, fitted out elaborately in the early noontide of Mahometan vigor–and that assault, 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 idolators 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 antogonists–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.’