him in Constantinople than the tiara of the pope. They were infinitely too conceited to think that they might with advantage learn a few new lessons. They certainly might with considerable profit to themselves have taken a hint from their enemies, the Turks, whom their great Sultan Amurath had at least taught truth and honesty, as well as valour, by his own noble example. The Turk of those days was undoubtedly a favourable contrast to the Greek, and this was the conviction even of many Christians. The princes of the House of Othman really owed their successes, in part at least, to the superiority of their moral qualities. A Greek official was pretty sure to be greedy and corrupt. If he was proud of his city, he would hardly serve it or fight for it in an honest way. The state was miserably poor, but there were vast hoarded treasures in the possession of a few rich and selfish people, who paraded their fine furniture and wardrobes, and buried their superfluous wealth deep in the earth. In the very last struggle, the emperor could not find the means to pay his troops. He had to ransack the churches for plate and jewels, though his Greeks pretended to believe that their cathedral, St. Sophia, had been desecrated by the celebration within its sacred walls of the union of the Eastern and Western Churches. The people who grudged their blood and treasure in defence of the city of which they boasted as pre-eminently holy and divine, wrangled angrily with the Latins concerning the bread of the Lord's Supper, whether it should be leavened or unleavened, at the very moment when the common enemy of Christendom was thundering at their
