38
THE DECLINE AND PALL
CHAP.LX VII.
CHAP. LXVII.
Schism of the Greeks and Latins.—Reign andcharacter of Amur ath the Second.—Crusade ofLadislaus , king of Hungary.—His defeat anddeath.—John Huniades. — Scanderbeg . — Con-stantine Palceologus, last emperor of the East.
THE respective merits of Rome and Constan-tinople are compared and celebrated by an elo-quent Greek, the father of the Italian schools. *The view of the ancient capital, the seat of hisancestors, surpassed the most sanguine expecta-tions of Emanuel Chrysoloras ; and he no lon-ger blamed the exclamation of an old sophist,that Rome was the habitation, not of men, butof gods. Those gods, and those men, had longsince vanished ; but, to the eye of liberal enthu-siasm, the majesty of ruin restored the image ofher ancient prosperity. The monuments of theconsuls and Caesars, of the martyrs and apostles,engaged on all sides the curiosity of the philo-sopher and the Christian; and he confessed, thatin every age the arms and the religion of Rome were destined to reign over the earth. While
* The epistle of Emanuel Chrysoloras to the emperor John Palae-ologits will not offend the eye or ear of a classical student (ad calcemCodini dc Antiquitatibus c. p. p. 107-126). The superscription sug-gests a chronological remark, that John Palaeologus II. was associatedin the empire before the year 1414, the date of Chrysoloras ’s death. Astill earlier date, at least 140S, is deduced from the age of his youngestsons, Demetrius and Thomas, who were both Porphyrogenili (Dnoange,Fain. Byzant. p. 244, 247).