CHAP. I.]

ST. JOHN OF JERUSALEM.

75

word and gesture regulated both in his palace andcountry house. This worse than monkish severityof life, and that few of his rank ever died a naturaldeath, hut that murders and conspiracies were ofnightly occurrence within the imperial residence,endears the more the lot of a private citizen.

Strange, too, the destiny that forces its historianto avow that, in spite of its multitudes of law-doctors and libraries, and all its scientific andliterary establishments, not one discovery was evermade at Constantinople, during a period of a thou-sand years, in favour of the dignity or happiness ofman, “ nor a single idea added to the speculationsof antiquity.” Even then ran the prophecy thatin the last days barbarians should take Constantino-ple, which Mr. Gibbon calls “ an unambiguous andunquestionable date,” and which, it appears, hasnot been supposed executed by Mahomet (thoughI thought so, or might have), but stands good stillwith most persevering superstition.

The Magna Grecia of Pythagoras, which hadbeen rich and full of free cities, and great artistsand philosophers, had dwindled into poverty andits usual concomitants, ignorance and superstitioushabits, when the Normans lifted it for a short timein the ninth century; but now in the eleventh, ithad returned again into terror and obscurity.