Byzantine architecture was taking more and more the beautiful forms

The appreciation of works of art was probably growing in strength. Byzantine architecture was taking more and more the beautiful forms under which it was to become known to the world as Gothic. The internal decoration of churches, and probably also of private dwellings, had attained a high development.

The mosaics and frescoes of the churches of Constantinople were already renowned in Italy, whither artists had gone, and had already prepared the way for the rapid progress in these forms of mural decoration which was made in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The Church was represented by a fairly educated and married priesthood, whose influence tended to the education of the whole people. The very frequent references to Ilomer, the constant classical allusions, the quotations from Scripture, show not merely comparatively widespread reading on the part of the Greek writers of this period, hut imply a corresponding amount of knowledge on the part of those whom they hoped to find as readers.

But it was in the great body of the people that the most hopeful signs were to be found. The municipal spirit developed among the Greek race had leavened the populations of Constantinople and the chief cities under Byzantine rule. The government of the municipalities had never been altogether surrendered by the people. The education given by the widespread commercial habits of the merchants was developing the intelligence of the people, with the result that they were never so intolerant in religious matters as the people of the West, and wTould never have tolerated among them a feudal system.

The great glory of the Byzantine Empire

Commerce, indeed, was the great glory of the Byzantine Empire. Commerce, with all its advantages and veiopment of all its drawbacks Visit Bulgaria, was the characteristic feature of the empire. ^ew Rome. The wealth, the luxury, the tolerance, the development of household and of ecclesiastical art were largely due to commerce. The neglect of the public weal, the lessening of interest in the management of public affairs, the abandonment of the wealthier classes to effeminacy and idleness, and the low ideal wdiicli was thus presented to the poorer classes, was largely due to the enormous increase of wealthy families which commerce had enriched.

Had the external foes of the New Rome been fewer or had she been able to overcome them, there is reason to believe that Europe might have seen the development of a State in which there would have been an amount of material comfort associated with family life such as is hardly yet to be found in any European country. Side by side with this there would have been an intellectual activity which wrould have enabled the empire to preserve the foremost rank among European nations. On the Bosphorus would have been the capital of an empire which for twelve centuries after Christ had preserved an unbroken tradition of order, of good government, of knowledge of Greek literature, of commercial prosperity, of literary and artistic development.

The imperial city had bridged over the dark centuries of turmoil which intervened between the pagan civilizations and those of Christianity. While the nations of the West had been in course of formation, the Homan Empire had, in the East, been continuing its history in almost unbroken prosperity. We may probably gain the best idea of the forms into which that prosperity would have developed by recalling what her great rival subsequently became. Venice, I repeat, was in her later history the reproduction on the Adriatic of what her former patron had been on the Bosphorus. The rule of the New Borne was over a wider area and under more difficult conditions than that of Venice, but the resemblance is not the less remarkable.

The condition of things in Constantinople

The condition of things in Constantinople at the moment comparison was attacked by the army of the West presents dftVo»e<5Vem- many resemblances, but with some all important Greeks differences, to that which exists in the same city at under Turks. ^he present moment. Then, as now, the people were oppressed, and in the practice of the government seemed to exist mainly for the purpose of paying taxes. Corruption had honeycombed every department of the State. Offices were bought and sold. The influence of the eunuchs was greater than that of ministers of state. Public debts were paid by delegations upon the provinces a mode which then, as now, allowed the local government to share the plunder of the people. Money collected for the State was seized by the palace and diverted from its legitimate purpose. Effeminacy had taken possession of the ruling classes, and had done much to demoralize them.