that it now does between the provinces of an empire.




THE LAST OF THE PALÆOLOGI.


It would be a curious historical problem to trace the families of
emperors and kings, of heroes and conquerors, from the era of their
decline and fall to their ultimate extinction. Some 'Old Mortality'
might find as congenial employment in this field of sepulchral
research as did the original in clearing up the decayed and
moss-grown tombs of the Covenanters. The genealogist makes it his
business rather to flatter the great by blazoning the antiquity of
their pedigrees, than to teach the world a moral lesson on the
instability of earthly grandeur, by chronicling their reverses. Yet
the churchyard has its heraldry, from whose records wisdom might be
extracted for the benefit of the living.

What dynasty in ancient times held a prouder or wider sway than the
illustrious masters of the Roman world? The solid fabric of their
power was the growth of nearly a thousand years, and it cost about
thirteen centuries of revolutions and barbaric invasions before it
was undermined and finally extinguished. If its earlier annals were
disgraced by the crimes of a Tiberius, a Nero, and a Domitian, they
could boast of the virtues and abilities of a Titus, a Trajan, a
Nerva, a Hadrian, the two Antonini, &c.; though it must be admitted
that latterly the balance sadly preponderated on the side of vice
and corruption. If a Justinian or a Constantine appeared, his reign