THE DECLINE AND FALL

234

chap, manship could not be more valuable than thework, and that a fresh supply of visions andmiracles would speedily be renewed by the craftof the priest and the credulity of the people.He will more seriously deplore the loss of theByzantine libraries, which were destroyed orscattered in the general confusion; one hundredand twenty thousand manuscripts are said tohave disappeared ; c ten volumes might be pur-chased for a single ducat; and the same igno-minious price, too high perhaps for a shelf oftheology, include the whole works of Aristotle and Homer, the noblest productions of thescience and literature of ancient Greece. Wemay reflect, with pleasure, that an inestimableportion of our classic treasures w as safely depo-sited in Italy ; and that the mechanics of a Ger-man town had invented an art which derides thehavoc of time and barbarism.

Mahomet From the first hour d of the memorable twenty-theclty.st. ninth of May, disorder and rapine prevailed inpalace ic* Constantinople , till the eighth hour of the sameday; when the sultan himself passed in triumphthrough the gate of St. Romauus. He was at-tended by his vizirs, bashaws, and guards, eachof whom (says a Byzantine historian) w as robustas Hercules, dextrous as Apollo, and equal in. battle to any ten of the race of ordinary mortals.

c See Ducas (c. 43) and an epistle, July 15 th, 1453, from LanrnaQuirinus to pope Nicholas V. (Hody de Giaeris, p. 11)5?, from a MS. inthe Cotton library).

* The Julian calendar, which reckons the days and hours from mid-night, was used at Constantinople . But Ducas stems to understandthe natural hours from sun-rise.