" In one of the most perfect
sentences to be found in English prose he thus describes the Greek
tongue: "In their lowest depths of servitude and depression, the
subjects of the Byzantine throne were still possessed of a golden key
that could unlock the treasures of antiquity, of a musical and
prolific language that gives a soul to the objects of sense and a body
to the abstractions of philosophy." Meanwhile we are made to feel that
the subjects of the Byzantine throne, with their musical speech, that
Constantinople with her libraries and schools, will all soon fall a
prey to the ravening and barbarous Turk. This brightening light of the
Western sky contending with the baleful gloom which is settling down
over the East, is one of the most happy contrasts in historical
literature. Then comes the end, the preparations and skill of the
savage invader, the futile but heroic defence, the overwhelming ruin
which struck down the Cross and erected the Crescent over the city of
Constantine the Great.
It is one of the many proofs of Gibbon's artistic instinct that he did
not end with this great catastrophe.
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