[Sidenote: The punishment of Constantinople.] So fell Constantinople, and fell by the parricidal hands of Christians. The days of retribution for the curse she had inflicted on Western civilization were now approaching. In these events she received a first instalment of her punishment. Three hundred years previously, the historian Luitprand, who was sent by the Emperor Otho I. to the court of Nicephorus Phocas, says of her, speaking as an eye-witness, "That city, once so wealthy, so flourishing, is now famished, lying, perjured, deceitful, rapacious, greedy, niggardly, vainglorious;" and since Luitprand's time she had been pursuing a downward career. It might have been expected that the concentration of all the literary and scientific treasures of the Roman empire in Constantinople would have given rise to great mental vigour--that to Europe she would have been a brilliant focus of light. [Sidenote: The literary worthlessness of that city.] But when the works on jurisprudence by Tribonian, under Justinian, have been mentioned, what is there that remains? There is Stephanus, the grammarian, who wrote a dictionary, and Procopius, the historian, who was secretary to Belisarius in his campaigns. There is then a long interval almost without a literary name, to Theophylact Simocatta, and to the Ladder of Paradise of John Climacus. The mental excitement of the iconoclastic dispute presents us with John of Damascus; and the ninth century, the Myriobiblion and Nomacanon of Photius. Then follows Constantine Porphyrogenitus, vainly and voluminously composing; and Basil II. doubtless truly expresses the opinion of the time, as he certainly does the verdict of posterity respecting the works of his country, when he says that learning is useless and unprofitable lumber. The Alexiad of Anna Comnena, and the history of Byzantine affairs by Nicephorous Bryennius, hardly redeem their age. This barrenness and worthlessness was the effect of the system introduced by Constantine the Great. The long line of emperors had been consistent in one policy--the repression or expulsion of philosophy; and yet it is the uniform testimony of those ages that the Eastern convents were full of secret Platonism--that in stealth, the doctrines of Plato were treasured up in the cells of Asiatic monks. The Byzantines had possessed in art and letters all the best models in the world, yet in a thousand years they never produced one original. Millions of Greeks never advanced one step in philosophy or science--never made a single practical discovery, composed no poem, no tragedy worth perusal. The spirit of their superficial literature--if literature it can be called--is well shadowed forth in the story of the patriarch Photius, who composed at Bagdad, at a distance from his library, an analysis of 280 works he had formerly read. [Sidenote: The absurdity of its intellectual pursuits.] The final age of the city was signalized by the Baarlamite controversy respecting the mysterious light