would consent to be at her house at "whatever may be the source of your

half past ten at night.

Without the smallest suspicion, I reached her door punctually at the appointed time, and found her maid waiting to receive me. She urged me to step softly as I ascended to her mistress's apartment, but, guessing what I was to hear, I was not surprised that my visit was surrounded with a little mystery.

My first impulse on seeing Madame d'Avila was to reprove her for a want of decent propriety in her apparel, but I checked myself, thinking it was not wise to begin our interview with reproaches.

Why should I dwell upon this scene? She either believed, or pretended to believe, that I had been brought under the influence of her attractions; that when I came there by appointment it was not to receive her confession, but to participate in her crimes.

No doubt strength from on high was given me in that moment of frightful peril. I disengaged her arms, and seated her in a chair.

corruption. But if you do not know what are the judgments of God against hardness of heart, I warn you they are terrible!".

With that I turned from the poisoned atmosphere of her house, thanking God for strength given me to escape temptation.

Now that my eyes were opened as to Madame d'Avila I began to consider the dangers to which her friendship could not but expose my sister-in-law. It cost me some pangs to make my confession of what had taken place to the count. I was humiliated to think how easily I had been deceived, and how little of my purposes had been accomplished; but I told the count he had seen further than I, and that I hoped from what had passed to draw a lesson of humility.

"Excuse my

Then we spoke of my lady; and the count, with great kindness and considOur conversation lasted some time, eration for me, told me that from the every word I said being misinterpreted, first he had thought the thing to be every word she said increasing my be-done was either to persuade or force wilderment. She held me by the sash my lady to break with Madame d'Avila. I wore around my waist, she looked "I hesitated to interfere myself," he into my eyes; at last she sprang up said, "having so recently become one from her couch and threw her arms of your family, but now Here around me. he paused, and then said, frankness. I think you are not the person who should undertake the task. You could not assume the air of sternness and authority required to coerce "Madame," I said, "if this proceeds your sister-in-law to part with Madame from temporary insanity, or from an d'Avila, which in so delicate a matter I illusion sent you by your ghostly en-have, as I feel, no right to intrude. emy, or from feelings that have escaped There are two things that could be from your own control, arm yourself with the principles I have endeavored to impress on you, believe that Heaven will send help at the moment of temptation. I know now that I ought not to have come here by night to receive your confession. I have exposed you and myself to danger."

done, and only two, to arrest the evil. One it would not be proper for you to take, nor for me, nor, I think, for any one. It is to invoke the authority of the law or of the king, and place my lady in a convent till her husband's return; the other is to speak to her plainly and sternly, and clear her house of all such persons, male or female, as seem likely to lead her astray or give her evil counsel. Lord Tenermill is the proper person to do this

With that I addressed to Heaven, half aloud, a short prayer for its protection. Then she saw that she had failed to triumph, and I saw by her face and attitude that she was mortified and "And he is away," I interrupted. angry. "To wait till his return might render "I pity you, madame," I said, the evil beyond remedy. Patrick may

be home first." In short, I persuaded the count that under the circumstances he was the virtual head of our family, and implored him to undertake the duty that, as such, devolved upon him.

From The Fortnightly Review. THE PROBLEM OF CONSTANTINOPLE. BY FREDERIC HARRISON.

I.

SINCE the works on Byzantine history, produced within the last thirty years by European scholars, it is no longer possible to repeat the stock phrases of the last century about the puerility and impotence of the "Lower Empire." By far the most important contribution to this task by English students, is the "Later Roman Empire " of Professor Bury, whose two solid octavos bring the history of the THE city of the Seven Hills upon the Roman Empire of the East down to Golden Horn is at once the paradox of the foundation of the Roman Empire mediæval history, and the dilemma of of the West, in 800 a.d. When he European statesmen. In the historical has completed his work down to the field it presents a set of problems capture of Constantinople by the which no historian has adequately Turks, or at least to its capture by the solved, the full difficulties of which Crusaders of 1204 A.D., it will be evihave been duly grasped only in our dent how much the history of the Later own age. In the political world it pre- Empire has been distorted by jealousy, sents the great crux, over which former pedantry, and fanaticism. Even the generations labored, fought, and bled; genius of Gibbon could not wholly which our own generation seems will- emancipate him from current prejuing to give up as insoluble, to ignore, dices; and he necessarily worked withand to entrust to chance. out the essential materials which the industry of the last hundred years has collected. What has to be explained is the problem-how a political fabric, built on such foundations of vice and chaos, maintained the longest succession recorded in history; how a state of such discordant elements overcame such a combination of attacks; what was it that made Constantinople, for some five or six centuries after the capture of Rome, the intellectual, artistic, and commercial metropolis of medieval Europe; by what resources did she during eight centuries resist the torrent of Asiatic and Musulman soldiery, before which the feudal chivalry of the West was so frequently baffled and crushed.

There is danger that, in the minute research into local institutions that is now in vogue, the true historical importance of Byzantine story may be forgotten; and danger also that, in the roar of battle round our democratic issues, the political importance of Constantinople as an eternal factor in the European balance of power may be quite lost to sight. Medieval and modern annals offer to the student no subjects of meditation more fascinating and more mysterious than are the fifteen centuries of New Rome. And the dilemma of what is to be the ultimate fate of Constantinople is as urgent as ever, as perplexing as ever; nay, it is much more urgent, more perplexing than ever. The ignorant prejudice of The origin of these prejudices and conventional historians about the rot- of such falsification of history is plain tenuess of the "Lower Empire may enough. The judgment of western be set against the purblind common-Europe on the Eastern Empire was place of conventional politicians about mainly derived from, and colored by, the Turkish question having been that of Catholic Churchmen; and dursolved by the British occupation of ing the eleven centuries which divide Egypt. In this paper it is proposed to offer a few notes, first upon the historical paradox, and then on the political dilemma.

the first Constantine from the last, the Catholic Church has borne an irreconcilable jealousy towards the Orthodox Church. Their very official titles

Empire

the first claiming universal obedience, | find an adequate name to describe the the second claiming absolute truth- empire of which Constantinople was involved them in a war wherein there the capital for at least a thousand could be neither victory nor truce. years. Every one of the conventional The chiefs who claimed to rule as rep-names involves a confusion or misrepresentatives of Charlemagne, and all resentation, great or small. "Lower who depended upon them, or held title "Greek Empire" "Byunder them (that is, the greater part of zantine Empire "Eastern Empire " western Europe), were bound to treat "Later Empire "" "Roman Emthe claims of the Eastern Empire aspire either suggest a wrong idea or preposterous insolence. The traders fail to express the true idea in full. In of the Mediterranean regarded the By- what sense was the empire at Constanzantine wealth and commerce much as tinople "Lower"? It certainly rethe navigators of the sixteenth century garded itself as infinitely higher; an regarded the wealth and trade of the advance even upon the classical Roman Indies as the lawful prize of the Empire. Justinian with justice holds strongest. And lastly, the scholars, his rule to be above that of Aurelian the poets, the chroniclers of the West, and Diocletian; and from his day to from the age of the Crusades to the age the age of the great Charles, there was of Gibbon, have disdained a literature nothing in Europe which could comin which, as they said, spiritless and pare for a moment with the Roman obsequious annalists recorded the do- Empire of the Bosphorus. The Emings of their masters in a bastard Greek. pire was not "Greek," even in tongue, Western genius, Western Christianity, until the seventh century; it was not Western heroism and civilization, much Greek in spirit until the twelfth censurpass the Eastern type; but, with tury; till then hardly any of its emsuch a combination of causes for hos- perors, soldiers, or chiefs had been tility and contempt, the West could not Greek; and it was never quite Greek fail to be grossly unjust to the record by race. If we say "Byzantine " Emof the East. pire, we are localizing a power which The root of the injustice is the treat- was curiously composite in race, naing of a thousand years of continuous tionality, character, and tradition; and history as one uniform piece, and at- the term "Byzantine" has a sense too tributing to the noblest periods and directly contrary to Roman, and also the greatest chiefs the infamies and has acquired a derogatory meaning. crimes which belong to the worst. Un- The great heroes of the empire are utfortunately, we are much more familiar terly unlike what men now understand with the periods of rottenness and de-by Byzantine;" and there could cline than with the ages of heroism | hardly be a more violent contrast than and glory; every one knows something that between the Alexius or Bryennius of the Theodoras, Zoes, and Irenes, of Sir Walter Scott's romance and the and, too often, very little of Heraclius, Nicephorus Phocas or Basil II. of Leo, and Basil. The five centuries actual history. "Eastern Empire" is which intervene from Justinian to the erroneous and ambiguous; for it sugComnenian house a period as long as gests a break with Rome, and it applies that which separates Camillus from to the kingdoms of Persians, Saracens, Marcus Aurelius- is the important or Ottomans, to the sultan of Roum, or part of the Roman Empire of the East; the emperors of Nicea and Trebizond. and the really grand epochs are in the "Roman Empire" is accurate in a seventh, eighth, and tenth centuries sense. But in the fourth and fifth whose heroes, Heraclius, Leo III., and centuries there were often two coBasil II., may hold their own with the ordinate governments; and after the greatest rulers of ancient or of modern coronation of Charlemagne, in 800 A.D., story. there were always two Roman Empires, and sometimes more. The term,

The most urgent problem of all is to

"Later Roman Empire," which Mr. | make difficult. Of his eight octavo volBury adopts, is far better; but it might umes five are devoted to the history of be applied to Valentinian III., or to about five centuries, and three only are Romulus Augustulus; and it fails to given to the remaining eight centuries. suggest the continuance of the empire He himself was struck with the apparfor a thousand years. After the coro-ent paradox, which he seems to excuse nation of Charles, the term, "Later (at the opening of his forty-eighth Roman Empire," is inadequate; and chapter) by his own and the reader's yet that event marks no essential break | fatigue in the melancholy task of rein the empire at Constantinople. cording the annals of the Eastern EmWhat we want is a term which will pire. The genius of the greatest of describe the continuity of the Roman historians has been betrayed into no Empire after its seat had been perma- error more capital than that which led nently removed to the Bosphorus, and him to describe the annals of the emyet distinguish it from the revived pire from Heraclius to the last Conempire of Charles, the Holy Roman stantine as "a tedious and uniform Empire, and all other powers which tale of weakness and misery." Gibbon, claimed a title from Rome. The fea- it is plain, was partly misled by the tures to be connoted are the prolonga- dearth of writings, and partly overtion and evolution of the vast political whelmed by the enormous scale of his organism of Augustus and Trajan, its ever-enlarging survey. But with all unbroken continuity, at any rate, down that we now have at hand, it is wonto the thirteenth century, and the dom-derful to think that he was ever inaut material fact that its permanent tempted to abandon "the Greek slaves centre of government was transferred and their servile historians." If this to the Bosphorus; that it had become is a description of the Iconoclasts Christian, but not Catholic. We go wrong if we drop the title "Roman; " we go wrong if we ignore the fact of the transfer of sovereignty to Constantinople; we go wrong if we fail to mark how much this implied, both in the spiritual and the political sphere. Under the conditions, the proper title is “The Roman Empire, at Constantinople." This is strictly accurate and fairly complete. It denotes the whole period of eleven centuries which separates the first Constantine from the last. It is impossible to suppose it applied either to Romulus Augustulus, Charlemagne, or Otto. And it defines the unbroken continuity of government from its permanent seat on the Bosphorus. A similar equivalent would be the Empire of New Rome.

The next problem is to group the epochs of this immense succession of eleven centuries; to show their diversity in the midst of continuity; to distinguish the true periods of greatness and of growth, and the real eras of corruption and decay. Unfortunately this is what Gibbon has omitted to do, what he has even done not a little to

and the Basils, Leo the Deacon and Nicetas, language must have a new meaning. In truth, "a tedious tale of weakness" would be as aptly applied to the lives of William the Conqueror and the Plantagenet kings as to the exploits and adventures of Leo III., Constantine V., the two Basils, Nicephorus Phocas, John Zimisces, KaloJoannes, and Manuel.

Even in the matter of literary culture and pure Greek, we are apt to compare the Byzantine historians with classical or with our modern authors. Clearly we ought to compare them with their contemporaries in Europe. The iambics in which George of Pisidia celebrated the exploits of Heraclius, or those in which the Deacon Theodosius sang the recovery of Crete by Nicephorus Phocas, are not classical, but rather frigid as poetry; yet they are far less barbarous than any Latin poetry of the seventh and tenth centuries. The Greek of Leo the Deacon in the tenth century does not differ from Xenophon's, from whom he is separated by more than thirteen centuries, so much as the English of Langland

differs from that of Milton. The pro- | Professor Bury sums up the function longation of the Greek language over of the later Roman Empire under the twenty-eight hundred years from Ho-five following heads, of which his mer to Tricoupi, its continual epochs of whole work is an illustration and comrevival, purification, and ultimate re-mentary: turn upon its own classical type, is one of the most extraordinary facts in the evolution of human thought. And the persistence of the same written literature at Constantinople for at least twenty centuries is without parallel, at least in Europe.

1. It was the bulwark of Europe against the Asiatic danger;

2. It kept alive Greek and Roman culture;

3. It maintained European commerce; It preserved the idea of the Roman Empire ;

4.

5.

It embodied a principle of perma

nence.

Happily our most recent historians are in the main agreed as to the essential epochs and the true heroes of Byzantine history. It is agreed that from the age of Justinian to the Crusades ing : —

To these may be added the follow

tion to the whole of the Balkan peninsula, and to all Europe east of the Vistula and the Carpathians;

(b) It was the type of a State Church -a spiritual power dependent on and co-operating with the sovereign power, and not, like the Catholic Church, independent and often antagonistic.

the traditions of law, administration, (a) It was the direct source of civilizaGreek literature, commerce, and artistic manufactures were mainly preserved to Europe by the Roman Empire of the Bosphorus. It is agreed that for all active ends the empire was extinguished by the Fourth Crusade, and had long been in an exhausted condition even at the opening of the First Crusade. The Isaurian and Basilian dynasties, that is the eighth, ninth, tenth, and part of the eleventh centuries, were epochs, on the whole, of The empire of New Rome did much valor, able government, prosperity, and more than preserve the idea of the civilization, if compared with the con- Roman Empire. It prolonged the Rodition of what used to be called the man Empire itself in a new, and even dark ages of Europe. These centuries, in some respects, a more developed with the reigns of Justinian and Hera- form. As Mr. Freeman well puts it, clius in the sixth and seventh centuries," the Eastern Empire is the surest witconstitute an epoch which is worthy to ness to the unity of history," the most rank with the Roman Empire from complete answer to the conventional Julius to Theodosius on the one hand, opposition between "ancient" and and on the other with the Holy Roman "modern" history. That mysterious Empire from Otto the Great to Freder- gulf that unexplained paralysis ick II. The Roman Empire of Charle- which, we were told, occurred in the mague, the Holy Roman Empire of history of European civilization about Otto, both in substance and in ceremo- the fifth century, and was hardly renial, were much more truly imitations moved by the ninth or tenth, has no and rivals of the Roman Empire of the existence whatever if we trace the Bosphorus than they were revivals of internal condition of New Rome from the State of Augustus and Trajan; of the age of Theodosius to the age of whom all real memory was entirely lost Basil II. in the eighth century, whom as hea- We are so greatly influenced by literthens without the semblance of Church ary standards and classical art that we or Patriarch, it was impossible that hasten to condemn an age in which we Franks and Saxons should imitate or find these decay. It is quite true that approve. pure Latinity, elegant Greek, and Attic At the close of his second volume art were not to be found in New Rome,