XLVIII. CHAP. or fuperftition of the emperor. In a moment of despair, Angelus defended his life and liberty, flew the executioner, and fled to the church of St. Sophia. The fanctuary was infenfibly filled with a curious and mournful crowd, who, in his fate, prognofticated their own. But their lamentations were foon turned to curfes, and their curfes to threats they dared to afk, Why do we fear? "why do we obey? We are many, and he is one; "our patience is the only bond of our flavery." With the dawn of day the city burft into a general fedition, the prifons were thrown open, the coldest and most fervile were roused to the defence of their country, and Ifaac, the fecond of the name, was raised from the fanctuary to the throne. Unconscious of his danger, the tyrant was absent; withdrawn from the toils of state, in the delicious iflands of the Propontis. He had contracted an indecent marriage with Alice, or Agnes, daughter of Lewis the feventh, of France, and relict of the unfortunate Alexius; and his fociety, more fuitable to his temper than to his age, was compofed of a young wife and a favourite concubine. On the firft alarm he rushed to Conftantinople, impatient for the blood of the guilty; but he was astonished by the filence of the palace, the tumult of the city, and the general defertion of mankind. Andronicus proclaimed a free pardon to his fubjects; they neither desired, nor would grant, forgiveness; he offered to refign the crown to his fon Manuel; but the virtues of the fon could not expiate his father's crimes. The fea was ftill open for his retreat; but the news of the revolution had flown along XLVIII. along the coaft; when fear had ceased, obedience CHAP was no more; the Imperial galley was purfued and taken by an armed brigantine; and the tyrant was dragged to the prefence of Ifaac Angelus, loaded with fetters, and a long chain round his neck. His eloquence, and the tears of his female companions, pleaded in vain for his life; but, inftead of the decencies of a legal execution, the new monarch abandoned the criminal to the numerous fufferers, whom he had deprived of a father, an husband, or a friend. His teeth and hair, an eye and a hand, were torn from him, as a poor compensation for their lofs; and a fhort refpite was allowed, that he might feel the bitterness of death. Aftride on a camel, without any danger of a refcue, he was carried through the city, and the bafeft of the populace rejoiced to trample on the fallen ma jefty of their prince, After a thoufand blows and outrages, Andronicus was hung by the feet, bea tween two pillars that fupported the ftatues of a wolf and a fow; and every hand that could reach the public enemy, inflicted on his body fome mark of ingenious or brutal cruelty, till two friendly or furious Italians, plunging their fwords into his body, releafed him from all human punishment, In this long and painful agony, "Lord have "mercy upon me! and why will you bruise a "broken reed ?" were the only words that efcaped from his mouth. Our hatred for the tyrant is loft in pity for the man; nor can we blame his pufillanimous refignation, fince a Greek Chriftian was no longer master of his life. С НА Р. Ifaac II. A. D. 1185, A. D. 1204, I have been tempted to expatiate on the extraordinary character and adventures of Andronicus ; but I fhall here terminate the feries of the Greek emperors fince the time of Heraclius. The branches that sprang from the Comnenian trunk had infenfibly withered; and the male line was continued only in the posterity of Andronicus himself, who, in the public confufion, ufurped the fovereignty of Trebizond, fo obfcure in hiftory, and fo famous in romance. A private citizen of Philadelphia, Conftantine Angelus, had emerged to wealth and honours, by his marriage with a daughter of the emperor Alexius. Alexius. His fon Andronicus is confpicuous only by his cowardice. His grandfon Ifaac punished and fucceeded the tyrant; but he was dethroned by his own vices, and the ambition of his brother; and their difcord introduced the Latins to the conqueft of Conftantinople, the first great period in the fall of the Eastern empire. If we compute the number and duration of the reigns, it will be found, that a period of fix hundred years is filled by fixty emperors, including in the Auguftan list some female fovereigns; and deducting fome ufurpers who were never acknowledged in the capital, and fome princes who did not live to poffefs their inheritance. The average proportion will allow ten years for each emperor, far below the chronological rule of Sir Ifaac Newton, who, from the experience of more recent and regular monarchies, has defined about eighteen or twenty years as the term of an ordinary reign. The Byzantine empire was moft tranquil and profperous XLVIII. fperous when it could acquiefce in hereditary fuc- CHAP. ceffion; five dynasties, the Heraclian, Ifaurian, Amorian, Bafilian, and Comnenian families, enjoyed and tranfmitted the royal patrimony during their respective feries, of five, four, three, fix, and four generations; feveral princes number the years of their reign with thofe of their infancy; and Conftantine the feventh and his two grandfons occupy the space of an entire century. But in the intervals of the Byzantine dynasties, the fucceffion is rapid and broken, and the name of a fuccessful candidate is speedily erazed by a more fortunate ✓ competitor. Many were the paths that led to the fummit of royalty; the fabric of rebellion was overthrown by the stroke of confpiracy, or undermined by the filent arts of intrigue; the favourites of the foldiers or people, of the fenate or clergy, of the women and eunuchs, were alternately clothed with the purple: the means of their elevation were bafe, and their end was often contemptible or tragic. A being of the nature of man, endowed with the fame faculties, but with a longer measure of existence, would cast down a smile of pity and contempt on the crimes and follies of human ambition, fo eager, in a narrow fpan, to grafp at a precarious and fhort-lived enjoyment. It is thus that the experience of history exalts and enlarges the horizon of our intellectual view. In a compofition of fome days, in a perufal of fome hours, fix hundred years have rolled away, and the du ration of a life or reign is contracted to a fleeting moment: the grave is ever befide the throne; the fuccefs 13 XLVIII. CHAP. fuccefs of a criminal is almost inftantly followed by the lofs of his prize; and our immortal reason furvives and difdains the fixty phantoms of kings who have passed before our eyes, and faintly dwell on our remembrance. The obfervation, that, in every age and climate, ambition has prevailed with the fame commanding energy, may abate the furprize of a philofopher; but while he condemns the vanity, he may fearch the motive, of this univerfal defire to obtain and hold the fceptre of dominion. To the greater part of the Byzantine feries, we cannot reasonably afcribe the love of fame and of mankind. The virtue alone of John Comnenus was beneficent and pure: the most illustrious of the princes, who precede or follow that refpectable name, have trod with some dexterity and vigour the crooked and bloody paths of a selfish policy: in fcrutinizing the imperfect characters of Leo the Ifaurian, Bafil the firft, and Alexius Comnenus, of Theophilus, the fecond Bafil, and Manuel Comnenus, our efteem and cenfure are almoft equally balanced; and the remainder of the Imperial crowd could only defire and expect to be forgotten by pofterity. Was perfonal happiness the aim and object of their ambition? I fhall not defcant on the vulgar topics of the mifery of kings; but I may furely obferve, that their condition, of all others, is the most pregnant with fear, and the leaft fufceptible of hope. For thefe oppofite paffions, a larger scope was allowed in the revolutions of antiquity, than in the fmooth and folid temper of the modern world, which cannot easily repeat either the triumph |