strength, for a resolute defence, should they be again menaced by such a foe.
We have a description of the state of Constantinople and its neighbourhood from a traveller who went thither in the following year. This was a knight from Burgundy, one Bertrandon de la Brocquière, who, as he was returning from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, visited the famous city. Its fortifications struck him as formidable and imposing, but the interior distinctly revealed the most deplorable poverty and desolation; while without, the country was waste, and almost bare of inhabitants. Of the Greeks who yet remained, he gives anything but a flattering picture. "All with whom I have had any concern," he says, "have only made me more suspicious, for I have found more probity in the Turks." The race, there cannot be a doubt, had become wretchedly demoralised. From want of energy and industry they had let their trade slip from them into the hands of the Genoese, Venetians, and Italians, and frittered away their time in those petty trifling amusements which have a charm only for the weak and frivolous. Their ancestors delighted in the games of the hippodrome: these degenerate people found abundant pleasure in staring at royal processions and elaborate religious ceremonies. In their way, indeed, they were religious, and they prided themselves intensely on their orthodoxy. They were as exclusive as were the Pharisees. Latins and all Western Europeans they contemned as heretics; and one of their highest nobles, the Grand Duke Notanas, a typical Greek, declared that the turban of the sultan would be a more welcome sight to
