he animated the courage of his soldiers, and revived the hearts of the citizens, sinking in despair.  The scene on the day before the assault is thus described by an eye-witness:—­’The emperor and some faithful companions entered the dome of St Sophia, which in a few hours was to be converted into a mosque, and devoutly received with tears and prayers the sacrament of the holy communion.  He reposed some moments in the palace, which resounded with cries and lamentations; solicited the pardon of all he might have injured; and mounted on horseback to visit the guards and explore the motions of the enemy.’  But the dreaded 29th of May had come; the last hour of the city and the empire had struck.  After a siege of fifty-three days, Constantinople, to use the words of Gibbon, ’which had defied the power of Chosroes, the chazan, and the caliphs, was irretrievably subdued by the arms of Mohammed ii.  Her empire only had been subverted by the Latins; her religion was trampled in the dust by the Moslem conquerors.’

Constantine had nobly done his duty.  Amidst the swarms of the enemy who had climbed the walls and were pursuing the flying Greeks through the streets, he was long seen with his bravest officers fighting round his person, and finally lost.  His only fear was that of falling alive into the hands of the Infidels, and this fate he sought to avert by prudently casting away the purple.  Amidst the tumult he was pierced by an unknown hand, and his body was buried under a mountain of the slain.  The last words he was heard to utter was the mournful exclamation:  ’Cannot there be found a Christian to cut off my head?’ His death put an end to resistance and order, and left the capital to be sacked and pillaged by the victorious Turks.  Truly has it been said, that the distress and fall of the last Constantine are more glorious than the long prosperity of the Byzantine Caesars.

The difficulties and dying moments of the emperor have been faithfully and pathetically dramatised by Miss Joanna Baillie in her tragedy of Constantine Palaeologus.  She adheres closely to history, only she makes her hero receive his deathblow from the sword of a relenting Turk, who admires his bravery, and pronounces over him a farewell eulogy.  All writers agree that the last of the imperial Palaeologi was the best of his race; and had he not been so ill supported by his worthless subjects, and deserted by every Christian prince in Europe, he might have repelled the tide of Turkish invasion, though he would never have restored the glory of the empire.  Yet gallantly did he front the storm, and perish as became the successor of a long line of kings—­the last of the Romans.