5 with a suppliant and lamentable crowd; but the means of transportation were scanty; the Venetians and Genoese selected their countrymen; and, notwithstanding the fairest promises of the sultan, the inhabitants of Galata evacuated their houses and embarked with their most precious effects. tardy angel, the doors were broken with axes; and, as the Turks encountered no resistance, their bloodless hands were employed in selecting and securing the multitude of their prisoners. Youth, beauty, and the appearance of wealth I attracted their choice; and the right of property was decided among themselves by a prior seizure, by personal strength, and by the authority of command. In 10 the space of an hour, the male captives were bounds with cords, the females with their veils and girdles. The senators were linked with their slaves; the prelates with the porters of the church; and young men of a plebeian class with noble maids, whose faces had been invisible to the sun and their nearest kindred. In this common captivity, the ranks of society were confounded; the ties of nature were cut 20 cording to their maxims (the maxims of 15 asunder; and the inexorable soldier was * * * In the fall and the sack of great cities, an historian is condemned to repeat the tale of uniform calamity: the same effects must be produced by the same passions; and, when those passions may be indulged without control, small, alas! is the difference between civilised and savage man. Amidst the vague exclamations of bigotry and hatred, the Turks are not accused of a wanton or immoderate effusion of christian blood; but, ac antiquity), the lives of the vanquished were forfeited; and the legitimate reward of the conqueror was derived from the service, the sale, or the ransom, of his captives of both sexes. The wealth of Constantinople had been granted by the sultan to his victorious troops; and the rapine of an hour is more productive than the industry of years. But, as no 30 regular division was attempted of the spoil, the respective shares were not determined by merit; and the rewards of valor were stolen away by the followers of the camp, who had declined the toil and the danger of the battle. The narrative of their depredations could not afford either amusement or instruction: the total amount, in the last poverty of the empire, has been valued at four millions of ducats; and of this sum a small part was the property of the Venetians, the Genoese, the Florentines, and the merchants of Ancona. Of these foreigners, the stock was improved in quick and perpetual circulation; but the riches of the Greeks were displayed in the idle ostentation of palaces and wardrobes, or deeply buried in treasures of ingots and old coin, lest it should be demanded at their hands for the defence of their country. The profanation and plunder of the monasteries and churches excited the most tragic complaints. The dome of St. Sophia itself, the earthly heaven, the second firmament, the vehicle of the cherubim, the throne of the glory of God, was despoiled of the oblations of ages; 40 45 The chain and entrance of the outward 50 harbor was still occupied by the Italian ships of merchandise and war. They had signalized their valor in the siege: they embraced the moment of retreat, while the Turkish mariners were dis-55 sipated in the pillage of the city. When they hoisted sail the beach was covered 20 and the gold and silver, the pearls and From the first hour of the memorable twenty-ninth of May, disorder and rapine prevailed in Constantinople till the eighth hour of the same day; when the sultan 45 himself passed in triumph through the gate of St. Romanus. He was attended by his vizirs, bashaws, and guards, each of whom (says a Byzantine historian) was robust as Hercules, dexterous as 50 Apollo, and equal in battle to any ten of the race of ordinary mortals. The conqueror gazed with satisfaction and 55 wonder on the strange though splendid appearance of the domes and palaces, so dissimilar from the style of Oriental architecture. In the hippodrome, or 5 atmeidan, his eye was attracted by the twisted column of the three serpents; and, as a trial of his strength, he shattered with his iron mace or battle-axe the under-jaw of one of these monsters, which in the eye of the Turks were the idols or talismans of the city. At the principal door of St. Sophia, he alighted from his horse and entered the dome: and such was his jealous regard for that monument of his glory that, on observing a zealous Mussulman in the act of breaking the marble pavement, he admonished him with his scimitar that, if the spoil and captives were granted to the soldiers, the public and private buildings had been reserved for the prince. By his command the metropolis of the Eastern church was transformed into a mosque: the rich and portable instruments of superstition had been removed; the crosses were thrown down; and the walls, which were covered with images and mosaics, were washed and purified and restored to a state of naked simplicity. On the same day, or on the ensuing Friday, the muezin or crier ascended the most lofty turret, and proclaimed the ezan, or public invitation, in the name of God and his prophet; the imam preached; and Mahomet the Second performed the namaz of prayer and thanksgiving on the great altar, where the christian mysteries had so lately been celebrated before the last of the Cæsars. From St. Sophia he proceeded to the august but desolate mansion of an hundred successors of the great Constantine; but which, in a few hours, had been stripped of the pomp of royalty. A melancholy reflection on the vicissitudes of human greatness forced itself on his mind; and he repeated an elegant distich of Persian poetry, The spider has wove his web in the imperial palace; and the owl hath sung her watch-song on the towers of Afrasiab.' * * (1788) OLIVER GOLDSMITH (1728-1774) The author of The Vicar of Wakefield was the sixth of nine children of an Irish parson farmer and passed most of his boyhood in the little hamlet of Lissoy, which he afterward idealized in The Deserted Village. He was regarded as a stupid blockhead' in the village school and when, in 1749, he succeeded in taking a degree at Trinity College, Dublin, he was lowest on the list. For a number of years he showed little ability and still less inclination to fit himself to practical life. Rejected for holy orders, he taught school for a time and, soon disgusted, tried the law with the same result. He then spent several years in the nominal study of medicine, in the course of which, he made the grand tour of Europe, setting off it is said, with a guinea in his pocket, one shirt to his back, and a flute in his hand. Finding his way to London, in 1756, he existed for a couple of years in a most haphazard manner, as chemist's' assistant, corrector of the press, struggling physician, usher in a school, and hack writer for the Monthly Review. The culmination of this period arrived when he borrowed a suit of clothes to present himself for examination as a hospital mate, failed in the examination. and pawned the clothes. Soon after this, his literary successes began. It was in 1764, that Johnson following close after a guinea with which he had responded to a message of distress, put the cork into the bottle' for which Goldsmith had promptly changed the guinea, carried off the manuscript of The Vicar of Wakefield to a bookseller, and relieved the author from arrest. The Traveler (1764) was now published and The Deserted Village (1770) confirmed the reputation which this had established. His two plays, The Good Natured Man (1768) and She Stoops to Conquer (1773) brought him five hundred pounds apiece; his History of Animated Nature, for which he had no qualification except the ability to write, secured him eight hundred pounds; and similar hack work was similarly paid; but such was his indiscretion that he was seldom long out of difficulty. He had in a high measure the prodigality, not uncommon among clever writers, of bestowing his entire stock of wisdom on the reader and reserving none for the conduct of life. Yet his follies, like those of Steele, were the indexes of a liberal and lovable nature. When he died, at the age of forty-six, leaving debts of two thousand pounds, there was as much tenderness as humor in Johnson's deep ejaculation: 'Was ever poet so trusted?' Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease, 5 Seats of my youth, when every sport could please, How often have I loitered o'er thy green, Where humble happiness endeared each scene! 10 How often have I paused on every charm, The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the For talking age and whispering lovers How often have I blest the coming day, 15 While many a pastime circled in the shade, She only left of all the harmless train, 135 The sad historian of the pensive plain. Near yonder copse, where once the garden smiled, And still where many a garden flower grows wild; There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose, The village preacher's modest maǹsion rose. A man he was to all the country dear, 141 And passing rich with forty pounds a year; Remote from towns he ran his godly race, Nor e'er had changed, nor wished to change his place; Unpracticed he to fawn, or seek for power, By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour; Far other aims his heart had learned to prize, 147 More skilled to raise the wretched than to rise. His house was known to all the vagrant train; He chid their wanderings but relieved their pain: 150 The long-remembered beggar was his guest, Whose beard descending swept his aged breast: The ruined spendthrift, now no longer proud, Claimed kindred there, and had his claims allowed; The broken soldier, kindly bade to stay, 155 Sat by the fire, and talked the night away, Wept o'er his wounds or, tales of sorrow done, Shouldered his crutch and showed how fields |