tents of those libraries, so far as they had survived the rough treatment of the city at the hands of the Latin Crusaders? Nor can we avoid the reflection that, had he acted—as was surely his duty—with more decision and promptitude, we might possibly have been spared that entail of perplexity and misery which we describe, and perhaps shall long have to describe, as "the Eastern question."
It may, however, be fairly admitted that Nicholas V. could not have seen much to encourage him in the general sentiments and attitude of Europe. He could hardly have appealed with much effect to England or to France. England, even if its people could have been brought to see and understand the nature of the crisis, which, in the absence of a powerful wave of religious enthusiasm, would have been hardly possible, was in the agony of a civil strife that absorbed all its energies. The rival Houses of York and Lancaster were infinitely more to the English people than the peril of a remote city on the Bosporus, which to nine-tenths of them must have been a mere name, could possibly be. France, indeed, might have been reasonably expected to feel that she had some interest, if not a very direct one, in saving Christendom from infidels and barbarians; and the French generally would have been fairly well acquainted with the name of Constantinople, and able in some degree to appreciate what the city represented, and the duty and importance of its preservation. Such an enterprise, if urged and encouraged by the pope, might have seemed to them honourable and glorious, and we can imagine
