it may be some consolation to us to think that Constantinople did not fall without a blow; that the city was not surrendered without a defence, which was worthy of this last representative of human greatness; that the emperor was a hero, and that amid the general baseness and degeneracy, he could collect around him a few at least, whom the Romans, whom the conquerors of mankind, might not have disdained to consider as their descendants.

Some melancholy must naturally arise at the termination. of this memorable siege: the extinction of human glory, the distress, the sufferings, the parting agonies of this mistress of the world.

But such sentiments, though in themselves neither useless nor avoidable, it is in vain entirely to indulge. The Grecian as well as the Roman empire, and Constantinople, the last image of both, must for ever remain amongst the innumerable instances presented by history, to prove that it is in vain for a state to expect prosperity, in the absence of private and public virtue; and that every nation, where the honourable qualities of the human character are not cultivated and respected, however fortified by ancient renown, prescriptive veneration, or established power, sooner or later must be levelled with the earth and trampled under the feet of the despoiler.

The fall of Constantinople became, when too late, a subject of the most universal terror and affliction to the rest of Europe.

Yet such is the intermingled nature of all good and evil, that some benefit resulted to the world from the calamities of the empire. Constantinople had always been the great repository of the precious remains of ancient genius. The Greeks had continued to pride themselves on their national superiority over the Barbarians of the west, and they celebrated, as exclusively their own, the great original masters of speculative wisdom and practical eloquence, the dramatists who could awaken all the passions of the heart, and the poets who could fire all the energies of the soul; Plato and Demosthenes, Sophocles and Euripides, Pindar and Homer. But though they admired, they could not emulate the models which they possessed. Century after century rolled away,

and these inestimable treasures, however valued by those who inherited them, were lost to mankind.

Yet as the fortunes of the Greek empire declined, the intercourse between Constantinople and the rest of Europe long contributed to the improvement of the latter; and the splendour of the Greek learning and philosophy, even as early as the thirteenth century, had touched with a morning ray the summits of the great kingdoms of the west. In the public schools and universities of Italy and Spain, France and England, distinguished individuals, like our own Bacon of Oxford, applied themselves with success to the study of science, and even of the Grecian literature. In the fourteenth century the generous emulation of Petrarch and his friends gave a distinct promise of the subsequent revival of learning. While the Turks were encircling with their toils, and closing round their destined prey, the scholars of the east were continually escaping from the terror of their arms or their oppression, and after the destruction of the metropolis of the east, it was in the west alone they could find either freedom or affluence, either dignity or leisure.

In the sack of Constantinople, amid the destruction of the libraries, one hundred and twenty thousand MSS. are said to have disappeared; but the scholars, and such of the MSS. as escaped, were transferred to a new sphere of existence; to nations that were excited by a spirit of independence and emulation, and to states and kingdoms that were not retrograde and degenerating, as was the empire of the Greeks. The result was favourable to the world; like the idol of a pagan temple, the city of the east, though honoured and revered by succeeding generations, was still but an object of worship without life or use. When overthrown, however, and broken into fragments by a barbarian assailant, its riches were disclosed, and restored at once to activity and value.

This great event, the revival of learning, is a subject that from its importance and extent, may occupy indefinitely the liberal inquiry of the student.

There has been an introduction to the subject, or a history, of the more early appearance of the revival of learning, published in 1798 at Cadell's, which seems written by some

author of adequate information, and which is deserving of perusal.

I shall, however, more particularly refer you to the notices of Robertson, in his Introduction to Charles V., to those of Mosheim in his State of Learning in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries; above all, to the latter part of the fifty-third, and of the sixty-sixth chapter of Gibbon and to the lives of Lorenzo de Medici and Leo X., by Mr. Roscoe. The observations and inquiries of writers like these will leave little to be sought after by those who consider this great event only in connection with other events, and attribute to it no more than its relative and philosophic importance. Those who wish to do more, will, in the references of these eminent historians, find original authors and guides very amply sufficient to occupy and amuse the whole leisure even of a literary life.

The leading observations on this subject will not escape your reflections. That Constantinople was attacked by the Arabs in the seventh and eighth centuries, and might have been swept away from the earth by any of the various Barbarians that infested it at an earlier time; when her scholars and her MSS. could have had no effect on the rest of mankind, and when the seeds of future improvement would have fallen on a rocky soil, when no flower would have taken root, and no vegetation quickened. It is not easy to determine how long the darkness of Europe might in this case have continued, and how little we might have known of the sages, the poets, and the orators of antiquity.

Even the Latins themselves, after besieging and capturing Constantinople at the beginning of the thirteenth century, were in possession of the city, and of all that it could boast and display for sixty years, and in vain. Their rude and martial spirits were insensible to any wealth which glittered not in their garments or on their board; and warriors like these could little comprehend the value of those intellectual treasures that can give tranquillity to the heart and enjoyment to the understanding. But at a still later period, when the same city was once more and finally subdued by the Turks, the same western nations had been prepared for the due reception of what had to no purpose been placed within the

reach of their more uncivilized forefathers; and then followed what has been justly denominated the revival of learning.

We may congratulate ourselves that the fall of the empire was postponed so long, and observe on this, as on other occasions, how different is the effect of the same causes and events at different periods of society.

era.

Again, we may observe with admiration and with gratitude the curiosity and zeal of the human mind at this interesting The munificence of the patron and the labour of the scholar, the wealth of the great and the industry of the wise could not then have been more usefully directed; and if the readers of MSS. are now more rare; if the rivals of the great scholars of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries now seldom appear, and if our late Greek professor, the celebrated Porson, for instance, could no longer see the princes and potentates of the earth contending for the encouragement of his genius, it must be remembered that though men like these can never be without their use or their admiration, much of the service which they offer to society has been already rendered; that their office has been already, to a considerable degree, performed; that we have been for some time put in possession of the great classical authors; of the models of taste and the materials of thought, and that we must now labour to emulate what sufficiently for our improvement we already understand. We must reflect that were mankind not to exercise their unceremonious and often somewhat unfeeling criticism upon merit of every description, and applaud it precisely to the extent in which it contributes to their benefit, society would be soon retrograde, or at best but stationary, and each succeeding age would no longer be marked by its own appropriate enlargement of the boundaries of human knowledge.

A concluding observation seems to be, that an obvious alteration has been made in the situation of men of genius. They need no longer hang upon the smiles of a patron; they need no longer debase the muses or themselves; the progress of human prosperity has given them a public who can appreciate and reward their labours; and even from that public, if too slow in intellect, or too poor in virtue, an appeal has been opened to posterity by the invention of printing; and a Locke may see his volumes stigmatized and burnt, or a

Newton the slow progress of his reaonings, with that tranquillity which is the privilege of genuine merit, and with that confident anticipation of the future, which may now be the enjoyment of all those, who are conscious that they have laboured well, and that they deserve to be esteemed the benefactors of mankind.

But you will not long be engaged in the histories I have mentioned, before you will perceive that, at the opening of the sixteenth century, a new and indeed fearful experiment was to be made upon mankind; a spirit not only of literary inquiry, but of religious inquiry, was to go forth; the minds of men were every where to be agitated on concerns the most dear to them, and the church of Rome was to be attacked, not only in its discipline, but in its doctrine; not only in its practice, but in its faith.

Opposition to the papacy in these points, or what was then called heresy, had indeed always existed. The student will be called upon, as he reads the preceding history, to notice and respect the more obvious representatives of this virtuous. struggle of the human mind, the Albigenses, our own Wickliffe and the Lollards, as well as the Hussites in Bohemia. But as it was in vain that the works of literature were placed within the reach of the Franks, who first captured Constantinople, so the doctrines of truth, and the rights of religious inquiry were to little purpose presented to the consideration. of the nations of Europe by the more early reformers; "the light shone in the darkness, but the darkness comprehended it not." At the opening, however, of the sixteenth century, the condition of Europe was in some respects essentially improved; and it now seemed possible that they who asserted the cause of the human mind in its dearest interests might at least obtain attention, and probably see their laudable exertions crowned with success.

But whatever might be the virtues or the success of distinguished individuals in establishing their opinions, it was but too certain that a reformation in the doctrines of religion. could not be accomplished without the most serious evils; these might be indeed entirely overbalanced by the good that was to result, but the most afflicting consequences must necessarily in the first place ensue.