Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The title of the Palaeologi to the Roman Empire of the East, of the king of Sicily, the king of Sardinia, or the king of Spain for they are all claimants to the kingdom of Jerusalem founded by Godfrey and his crusaders, of the Stuarts to the thrones of England, Ireland, and Scotland, or of the Bourbons to the throne of France, are vacated and not worth the parchment on which they are engrossed.
Pearls were the more sought after, as the luxury of Asia had been introduced into Europe by two ways diametrically opposite: that of Constantinople, where the Palaeologi wore garments covered with strings of pearls; and that of Grenada, the residence of the Moorish kings, who displayed at their court all the luxury of the East.
Duccio is a fine decadent of that Basilian movement which half survived the Latin conquest and came to an exquisite end under the earlier Palaeologi. The peak of that movement rises high above Giotto, though Duccio near its base is below him.
In ascending to the ancient Seraglio, which was founded by Mahomet II., on the site of the palace of the Palaeologi, we passed the Column of Theodosius, a plain Corinthian shaft, about fifty feet high. The Seraglio is now occupied entirely by the servants and guards, and the greater part of it shows a neglect amounting almost to dilapidation.
In the eastern empire there was a certain literary activity, and in the department of history, Byzantine literature was conspicuously prolific. The imperial family of the Comneni, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and the Palaeologi, who reigned from the thirteenth century to the end of the eastern empire, endeavored to revive the taste for literature and learning.
I have seen the beautiful Bosphorus from steamers and caiques; ridden up the valley of Buyukdere, and through the chestnut woods of Belgrade; bathed in the Black Sea, under the lee of the Symplegades, where the marble altar to Apollo still invites an oblation from passing mariners; walked over the flowery meadows beside the "Heavenly Waters of Asia;" galloped around the ivy-grown walls where Dandolo and Mahomet II. conquered, and the last of the Palaeologi fell; and dreamed away many an afternoon-hour under the funereal cypresses of Pera, and beside the Delphian tripod in the Hippodrome.
Word Of The Day