Puslapio vaizdai
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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

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asunder; and the inexorable soldier was
careless of the father's groans, the tears
of the mother, and the lamentations of
the children. The loudest in their wail-
ings were the nuns, who were torn from 25
the altar with naked bosoms, outstretched
hands, and disheveled hair; and we
should piously believe that few could
be tempted to prefer the vigils of the
haram to those of the monastery. Of
these unfortunate Greeks, of these do-
mestic animals, whole strings were rudely
driven through the streets; and, as the
conquerors were eager to return for more
prey, their trembling pace was quickened 35
with menaces and blows. At the same
hour, a similar rapine was exercised in
all the churches and monasteries, in all
the palaces and habitations of the cap-
ital; nor could any palace, however sacred
or sequestered, protect the persons or the
property of the Greeks. Above sixty
thousand of this devoted people were
transported from the city to the camp and
fleet; exchanged or sold according to the
caprice or interest of their masters, and
dispersed in remote servitude through the
provinces of the Ottoman empire.

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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;

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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

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and the gold and silver, the pearls and
jewels, the vases and sacerdotal orna-
ments, were most wickedly converted to
the service of mankind. After the divine
images had been stripped of all that could
be valuable to a profane eye, the canvas,
or the wood, was torn, or broken, or burnt,
or trod under foot, or applied, in the
stables or the kitchen, to the vilest uses.
The example of sacrilege was imitated, to
however, from the Latin conquerors of
Constantinople; and the treatment which
Christ, the Virgin, and the saints had
sustained from the guilty Catholic
might be inflicted by the zealous Mussul- 15
man on the monuments of idolatry. Per-
haps, instead of joining the public clamor,
a philosopher will observe that in the
decline of the arts the workmanship
could not be more valuable than the work,
and that a fresh supply of visions and
miracles would speedily be renewed by
the craft of the priest and the credulity
of the people. He will more seriously
deplore the loss of the Byzantine libra- 25
ries, which were destroyed or scattered
in the general confusion: one hundred
and twenty thousand manuscripts are
said to have disappeared; ten volumes
might be purchased for a single ducat; and 30
the same ignominous price, too high per-
haps for a shelf of theology, included
the whole works of Aristotle and Homer,
the noblest productions of the science and
literature of ancient Greece. We may 35
reflect with pleasure that an inestimable
portion of our classic treasures was
safely deposited in Italy; and that the
mechanics of a German town had in-
vented an art which derides the havoc 40
of time and barbarism.

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

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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.'

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(1788)

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OLIVER GOLDSMITH (1728-1774)

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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?'

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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!

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How often have I paused on every charm,
The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm,
The never-failing brook, the busy mill,
The decent church that topped the neighbor-
ing hill,

The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the
shade,

For talking age and whispering lovers
made!

How often have I blest the coming day, 15
When toil remitting lent its turn to play,
And all the village train, from labor free,
Led up their sports beneath the spreading
tree,

While many a pastime circled in the shade,
The young contending as the old surveyed;

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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,

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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:

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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

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