Page:Constantinople by Brodribb.djvu/292

270 on persistence in heresy), it appears to have confounded Christendom with shame and horror, and men talked of another Crusade. An old and venerable fabric had been destroyed, and the gap was filled by a barbarous and infidel power, whose very nature and instinct it was to make war upon Christian faith and society. But for good and sufficient reasons the Western princes and their peoples could not be shamed or frightened into a common effort for the deliverance of Europe from the Turk. Nothing was done; nothing was likely to be done; though some feeble and fitful attempts were made soon afterwards by Pope Pius II. Yet that very pontiff, before his elevation, had himself, in a sketch of the state of Europe, spoken strongly of the hopelessness of any such project, and described Christendom as "a body without a head." For us, indeed, it has been in many ways a misfortune that the Turk was allowed to retain his prey, though perhaps it was no less difficult then than now to see who was to take his place, even if it had been practicable to dispossess him. It has undoubtedly left us a legacy of perplexity and confusion. The fall of Constantinople is, indeed, a very dark chapter in the annals of mankind. There is little to relieve the darkness. If the scattering of the city's literary treasures helped on the revival of learning, there was, we know, a woeful destruction of manuscripts, which every scholar must deplore. At this point we take leave of its history, which now becomes that of the Ottoman power in Europe.