Page:The Fall of Constantinople.djvu/378

 360 THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. sent to the melting-pot. But it is worth while to note what were these principal objects so destroyed. Before doing so, however, let me again point out that Constantinople had long been the great storehouse of works of art and of Christian relics, the latter of which were usually encased with all the skill that wealth could buy or art fur- nish. It had the great advantage over the Elder Borne that it had never been plundered by hordes of barbarians. Its streets and public places had been adorned for centuries with statues in bronze or marble. In reading the works of the historians of the Lower Empire the reader cannot fail to be struck alike with the abundance of works of art and with the appreciation in which they were held by the writers. First among the buildings as among the works of art, in iiagia Sophia tlic estimation ot every citizen, was llagia bophia. buildings and It was emphatically the Great Church. Tried by any test, it is one of the most beautiful of human creations. Nothing in Western Europe even now gives a spectator, who is able with an educated eye to restore it to something like its former condition, so deep an impression of unity, harmony, richness, and beauty in decoration as does the interior of the masterpiece of Justinian. All that wealth could supply and art produce had been lavished upon its in- terior — at that time, and for long afterwards, the only portion of a church which the Christian architect thought deserving of study. " Internally, at least," says a great authority on architecture, "the verdict seems inevitable that Santa Sophia is the most perfect and most beautiful church which has 3'et been erected by any Christian people. AVhen its furniture was complete the verdict would have been still more strongly in its favor."* AYe have seen that to Nicetas, who knew and ^ Fergusson's " Hist, of Arch." vol. ii. p. 321. I may add that at Mount Athos, where Byzantine architecture fled after the fall of the capital, and •where it became crystallized, I have seen how completely the remark is borne out that the furniture must have greatly improved the appear- ance of a Byzantine church. In the churches of some of the monaster- ies — that, for example, at Yatopedi — a visitor may see what Byzantine architecture was at its best, and may reconstruct the decoration of such beautiful churches as the Karkric jamisi at Constantinojjle.