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THE DECLINE AND FALL

CHAP.LX VII.

“ land or water.” Two strong and naturalcauses are alleged for the perfection of the mo-del of New Rome. The royal founder reignedover the most illustrious nations of the globe;and in the accomplishment of his designs, thepower of the Romans was combined with theart and science of the Greeks. Other cities havebeen reared to maturity by accident and time;their beauties are mingled with disorder and de-formity; and the inhabitants, unwilling to movefrom their natal spot, are incapable of correctingthe errors of their ancestors, and the originalvices of situation or climate. But the free ideaof Constantinople was formed and executed bya single mind; and the primitive model was im-proved by the obedient zeal of the subjects andsuccessors of the first monarch. The adjacentisles were stored with an inexhaustible supplyof marble; but the various materials were trans-ported from the most remote shores of Europe and Asia ; and the public and private buildings,the palaces, churches, aqueducts, cisterns, por-ticoes, columns, baths, and hippodromes, wereadapted to the greatness of the capital of the East.The superfluity of wealth was spread along theshores of Europe and Asia; and the Byzantine territory, as far as the Euxine, the Hellespont ,and the long wall, might be considered as a po-pulous suburb and a perpetual garden. In thisflattering picture, the past and the present, thetimes of prosperity and decay, are artfully con-founded ; but a sigh and a confession escape fromthe orator, that his wretched country was theshadow and sepulchre of its former self. The