200 THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. than that of the emperor. Their occupants vie with each other in the display of silks, richly embroidered in pearls and in jewelry. As they glide along the Golden Horn strains of music are heard, and the procession passes along, interrupted occasionally by the shouts of pleasure-seekers in other caiques, or of Venetian or Genoese passing across the Pera or Galata. Nor amid such luxury was science, art, and literature for- Leamincrnot gottcn. Constantinople had long been the asylum neglected. ^£ scholars and of artists. From the time when Constantino had issued his edict for the transport to the city which he had chosen as the New Eome of the chief works of art which had embellished the cities of Greece and Asia Minor, columns, statues, and busts had continued to be sent to the capital, until travellers who visited the city in the twelfth or thirteenth centuries were amazed at the number of works of art which they saw around them. As the seat of the most important patriarchate of the eastern division of the empire, the great Christian writers flocked to the capital, and every monastery had its collection of manuscripts. At vari- ous times in the history of the New Home the Hellenic spirit of philosophy seemed on the point of mastering that of Christianity; and the treasures of ancient Greek literature, intelligible to the people in a language which had been com- paratively but little changed, were reproduced and stored up, to become the seed for a new harvest of learning. If the sensual and sensuous pleasures which Constantinople offered in greater profusion than any other European city were not enough for the better minds of the time, they could find sat- isfaction in having access to more literature of a better quality than any other city could afford. The subtile Greek intellect was too often inclined to waste its strength on the useless distinctions of a hair-splitting philosophy or theology which has become to us intolerable and almost incomprehen- sible; but even while accepting the waste of intellectual strength and the valuelessness of the subjects usually dis- cussed, one is compelled to admit that the fact that a consider- able proportion of the population took an interest in these subtiltics implies an amount of education and of literary de-
