PROGRESS OF MAN. 195 



that time, and did not interfere in the least 

 with the peculiar favour with which Jehovah 

 was popularly supposed to regard the new 

 monarch. 



Justice was utterly unknown in the ancient 

 world. The weak had no protector, and the 

 poor no friend. The vices and cruelties of most 

 of the Eoman Emperors are without a parallel 

 in modern days; and Imperial Borne was at 

 times almost hell a upon earth. Christian Con- 

 stantinople was even worse than Rome, being 

 so utterly base that although Eome could 

 still produce great and noble men, up to the 

 last, the history of Constantinople for many 

 centuries is a dead level of the vilest court 

 intrigues, with scarcely one man of ordinary 

 virtue or eminence rising above the universal 

 baseness. And when the Turks were pouring 

 into this Augean stable, as the Goths 

 had formerly poured into Eome, the last Em- 

 peror, Constantine Palceologus, who was a 

 hero, such as Constantinople had not seen 

 for many centuries, could only find a few 

 hundred volunteers who had the manliness to 

 take up arms, and stand by him when the city 



was in her death-throes. But Constantinople 



o 2 



