peeding times might enrich with an ample supplement. Yet the calmer reflection of a prince would surely suggest that the same acclamations were applied to every character and every reign and if he had risen from a private rank, he might remember, that his own voice had been the loudest and most eager in applause, at the very moment when he envied the fortune, or conspired against the life, of his predecessor."

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The princes of the North, of the nations, says Constantine, without faith or fame, were ambitious of mingling their blood with the blood of the Cæsars, by their marriage with a royal virgin, or by the nuptials of their daughters with a Roman prince. The aged monarch, in his instructions to his son, reveals the secret maxims of policy and pride; and suggests the most decent reasons for refusing these insolent and unreasonable demands. Every animal, says the discreet emperor, is prompted by nature to seek a mate among the animals of his own species; and the human species is divided into various tribes, by the distinction of language, religion, and manners. A just regard to the purity of descent preserves the harmony of public and private life; but the mixture of foreign blood is the fruitful source of disorder and discord. Such had ever been the opinion and practice of the sage Romans: their jurisprudence proscribed the marriage of a citizen and a stranger: in the days of freedom and virtue, a senator would have scorned to match his daughter with a king: the glory of Mark Antony was sullied by an Egyptian wife: 59 and the emperor Titus was compelled, by popular censure, to dismiss with reluctance the reluctant Berenice. This perpetual interdict

p. 80, not. 23, 62; for the adoration, except on Sundays, p. 95. 240, not. 131; the processions, p. 2, &c., not. p. 3, &c.; the acclamations passim, not. 25 &c.; the factions and Hippodrome, p. 177-214, not 9, 93, &c.; the Gothic games, p. 221, not. 111; vintage, p. 217, not 109: much more information is scattered over the work.

57 Et privato Othoni et nuper eadem dicenti nota adulatio, (Tacit. Hist. 1, 85.)

58 The xiiith chapter, de Administratione Imperii, may be explained and rectified by the Familiæ Byzantine of Ducange.

* Sequiturque nefas Ægyptia conjux, (Virgil, Æneid, viii. 688.) Yet this Egyptian wife was the daughter of a long line of kings. Quid te mutavit (says Antony in a private letter to Augustus) an quod reginam ineo? Uxor mea est, (Sueton. in August. c. 69.) Yet I m ich qestion (for I cannot stay to inquire) whether the triumvir ever dared celebrate Lis marriage either with Roman or Egyptian rites.

60 Berenicem invitus invitarn dimisit, (Suetonius in Tito, ..., Have I observed elsewhere, that this Jewish beauty was at this time

was ratified by the fabulous sanction of the great Constantine. The ambassadors of the nations, more especially of the unbe lieving nations, were solemnly admonished, that such strange alliances had been condemned by the founder of the church and city. The irrevocable law was inscribed on the altar of St. Sophia; and the impious prince who should stain the majesty of the purple was excluded from the civil and ecclesiastical communion of the Romans. If the ambassadors were instructed by any false brethren in the Byzantine history, they might produce three memorable examples of the violation of this imaginary law: the marriage of Leo, or rather of his father Constantine the Fourth, with the daughter of the king of the Chozars, the nuptials of the granddaughter of Romanus with a Bulgarian prince, and the union of Bertha of France or Italy with young Romanus, the son of Con stantine Porphyrogenitus himself. To these objections three answers were prepared, which solved the difficulty and established the law. I. The deed and the guilt of Constantine Copronymus were acknowledged. The Isaurian heretic, who sullied the baptismal font, and declared war against the holy images, had indeed embraced a Barbarian wife. By this impious alliance he accomplished the measure of his crimes, and was devoted to the just censure of the church and of posterity. II. Romanus could not be alleged as a legitimate emperor: he was a plebeian usurper, ignorant of the laws, and regardless of the honor, of the monarchy. His son Christopher, the father of the bride, was the third in rank in the college of princes, at once the subject and the accomplice of a rebelious parent. The Bulgarians were sincere and devout Christians; and the safety of the empire, with the redemption of many thousand captives, depended on this preposterous alliance. Yet no consideration could dispense from the law of Constantine: the clergy, the senate, and the people, disapproved the conduct of Romanus; and he was reproached, both in his life and death, as the author of the public disgrace. III. For the marriage of his own son with the daughter of Hugo, king of Italy, a more honorable defence is contrived by the wise Porphyrogenitus. Constantine, the great and holy, esteemed the fidelity and valor of the Franks ;" and

above fifty years of age? The judicious Racine has most discreetly appressed both her age and her country.

Constantine was made to praise the νενεία and περιφανείας σε

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his prophetic spirit beheld the vision of their future greatness. They alone were excepted from the general prohibition: Hugo, king of France, was the lineal descendant of Charle magne; and his daughter Bertha inherited the prerogatives of her family and nation. The voice of truth and malice insensibly betrayed the fraud or error of the Imperial court. The patrimonial estate of Hugo was reduced from the mon archy of France to the simple county of Arles; though it was not denied, that, in the confusion of the times, he had usurped the sovereignty of Provence, and invaded the kingdom of Italy. His father was a private noble; and if Bertha derived her female descent from the Carlovingian line, every step was polluted with illegitimacy or vice. The grandmother of Hugo was the famous Valdrada, the concubine, rather than the wife, of the second Lothair; whose adultery, divorce, and second nuptials, had provoked against him the thunders of the Vatican. His mother, as she was styled, the great Bertha, was successively the wife of the count of Arles and of the marquis of Tuscany: France and Italy were scandalized by her gallantries; and, till the age of threescore, her lovers, of every degree, were the zealous servants of her ambition. The example of maternal incontinence was copied by the king of Italy; and the three favorite concubines of Hugo were decorated with the classic names of Venus, Juno, and Semele. The daughter of Venus was granted to the solicitations of the Byzantine court: her name of Bertha was changed to that of Eudoxia; and she was wedded, or rather betrothed, to young Romanus, the future heir of the empire of the East. The consummation of this foreign alliance was

Franks, with whom he claimed a private and public alliance. The French writers (Isaac Casaubon in Dedicat. Polybii) are highly de lighted with these compliments.

62 Constantine Porphyrogenitus (de Administrat. Imp. c. 36) ex hibits a pedigree and life of the illustrious King Hugo, (TεpiẞXÉRTOZ ῥήγος Οὐγώνος.) A more correct idea may be formed from the Criti ism of Pagi, the Annals of Muratori, and the Abridgment of St. Marc, 1. D. 925-946.

63 After the mention of the three goddesses, Liutp a very natu tally adds, et quoniam non rex solus is abutebatur, earum nati ex ncertis patribus originera ducunt, (Hist. 1. iv. c. 6:) for the marriag of the younger Bertha, seo Hist. l. v. c. 5; for the incontinence of the elder, dulcis exercido Hymenæi, 1. ii. c. 15; for the virtues and vices of Hugo, l. ii. c. 5 Let it must not be forgot, that the bishop of Cremona was a lover of scandal.

suspended by the tender age of the two parties; and, at the end of five years, the union was dissolved by the death of the virgin spouse. The second wife of the emperor Romanus was a maiden of plebeian, but of Roman, birth; and their two daughters, Theophano and Anne, were given in marriage to the princes of the earth. The eldest was bestowed, as the pledge of peace, on the eldest son of the great Otho, whe had solicited this alliance with arms and embassies. It night legally be questioned how far a Saxon was entitled to the privilege of the French nation; but every scruple was silenced by the fame and piety of a hero who had restored the empire of the West. After the death of her father-inlaw and husband, Theophano governed Rome, Italy, and Germany, during the minority of her son, the third Otho; and the Latins have praised the virtues of an empress, who sacrificed to a superior duty the remembrance of her country." In the nuptials of her sister Anne, every prejudice was lost, and every consideration of dignity was superseded, by the stronger argument of necessity and fear. A Pagan of the North, Wolodomir, great prince of Russia, aspired to a daughter of the Roman purple; and his claim was enforced by the threats of war, the promise of conversion, and the offer of a powerful succor against a domestic rebel. A victim of her religion and country, the Grecian princess was torn from the palace of her fathers, and condemned to a savage reign, and a hopeless exile on the banks of the Borysthenes, or in the neighborhood of the Polar circle." Yet the marriage of Anne was fortunate and fruitful: the daughter of her grandson Joroslaus was recommended by her Imperial descent; and the king of France, Henry I., sought a wife on the last borders of Europe and Christendom."

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* Licet illa Imperatrix Græca sibi et aliis fuisset satis utilis et op tima, &c., is the preamble of an inimical writer, apud Pagi, tom. iv. A. D. 989, No. 3. Her marriage and principal actions may be found in Muratori, Pagi, and St. Marc, under the proper years.

65 Cedrenus, tom. ii. p. 699. Zonaras, tom. i. p. 221. Elmacin, Hist. Saracenica, 1. iii. c. 6. Nestor apud Levesque, tom. ii. p. 112 Pagi, Critica, A. D. 987, No. 6: a singular concourse! Wolodomir and Anne are ranked among the saints of the Russian church. Yet we know his vices, and are ignorant of her virtues.

"Henricus primus duxit uxorem Scythicam, Russam, filiam regis Jeroslai. An embassy of bishops was sent into Russia, and the father gratanter filiam cum multis donis misit. This event happened in the year 1051. See the passages of the original chronicles in Bouquet's

In the Byzantine palace, the emperor was the first slave of the ceremonies which he imposed, of the rigid forms which regulated each word and gesture, besieged him in the palace, and violated the leisure of his rural solitude. But the lives and fortunes of millions hung on his arbitrary will; and the firmest minds, superior to the allurements of pomp and luxury, may be seduced by the more active pleas ure of commanding their equals. The legislative and execu tive powers were centred in the person of the monarch, and the last remains of the authority of the senate were finally eradicated by Leo the philosopher." A lethargy of servitude had benumbed the minds of the Greeks: in the wildest tumults of rebellion they never aspired to the idea of a free constitution; and the private character of the prince was the only source and measure of their public happiness. Superstition rivetted their chains; in the church of St. Sophia he was solemnly crowned by the patriarch; at the foot of the altar, they pledged their passive and unconditional obedience to his government and family. On his side he engaged to abstain as much as possible from the capital punishments of death and mutilation; his orthodox creed was subscribed with his own hand, and he promised to obey the decrees of the seven synods, and the canons of the holy church But the assurance of mercy was loose and indefinite: he swore, not to his people, but to an invisible judge; and except in the inexpiable guilt of heresy, the ministers of heaven were always prepared to preach the indefeasible right, and to ab solve the venial transgressions, of their sovereign. The Greek ecclesiastics were themselves the subjects of the civi magistrate at the nod of a tyrant, the bishops were created, or transferred, or deposed, or punished with an ignominious death: whatever might be their wealth or influence, they could never succeed like the Latin clergy in the establish

Historians of France, (tom. xi. p. 29, 159, 161, 319, 384, 481.) Voltaire might wonder at this alliance; but he should not have owned his ignorance of the country, religion, &c., of Jeroslaus-a name so conspicuous in the Russian annals.

67 A constitution of Leo the Philosopher (lxxviii.) ne senatus consulta amplius fiant, speaks the language of naked despotism ἐξ οὗ τὸ μόναρχον κράτος τὴν τουτῶν ἄνεται διοίκησιν, καὶ ἄκαιρον καὶ μάταιον 13 ἄχρηστον μετὰ τῶν χρείαν παρεχομένων συνάπτεσθαι.

68 Codinus (de Officiis, c. xvii. p. 120, 121) gives an idea of this cath so strong to the church πιστὸς καὶ γνήσιος δοῦλος καὶ υἱὸς τὴς ἁγίας ἐκκλησίας, so weak to the people καὶ ἀπέχεσθαι φόνων καὶ ἀκρωτηριασμών καὶ τῶν ὁμοίων τούτοις κατὰ τὸ δυνατόν.