NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13796, 8 July 1908, Page 6

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

. * , s THE GOLDEN AGE OF BYZANTIUM. Jus* as there were great men befon Agamemnon, so also were there multimillionaires before Rockefeller. M. Andreades, a: professor at the University oi Athens, has been lecturing in the Hellenic capital on the Emperors of Byzantium and their profuse expenditure on the construction of churches and monasteries in the maintenance of their legions of ' ' mercenaries, and the cost of representing the Empire in-foreign countries (says the Westminster Gazette). The monasteries and churches were as expensive to keep up as fortresses. The church of St. Sophia, Constantinople, cost to build the fabulous sum of 300,000 gold lires, equal to 394,000,000fr., which in the present day would be equivalent to £60,000,000 I After the taking of Constantinople, the Crusaders guaranteed their Emperor, Bau- • douin, a daily sum of 30,000 gold pieces. I The total annual revenue of the Byzantine Empire was estimated by M. Andreades at an amount which would now be oi the value of not less than £140,000,000. Some of the Emperors left, at their death, more- than £40,000,000 each. It was th« golden age of Byzantium; but it came tt an -end when the successors of Michae? Paleologue deprived the country of fle& and army, and paved the way for the By zantine debacle. ■■'■'■'l'-\-' : 'l THE UNREST OF ASIA. The Spectator, referring to the .unrest !' among the different peoples of Asia, asks: "Is it really the fact that the strength developed by reformed r Japan has lifted the -;■ depression of centuries from all Asiatics, and excited them to an imitation which • must, of course, finally break up the ' ancient quietude? ... The fact is often questioned, but there undoubtedly is j a comity of Asia which is at least as opera-- I,' 1 tive as the comity of Europe. Or is it . possible that an emotion akin to the one which produced the Crusades, and, though "j '~". not so directly connected with any religious • impulse, still fatal to quiescence, 7 is' |- ; : sweeping through Asia from Nagasaki ff to the Bosphorus, stirring up race» 1 waich for ages have slept the sleep of con- ■ ■ tent, but are now. determined to advance' ;• upon some path, mental or physical, which; j; f .i they think open. The thing occurred when | the barbarians rose on Rome, and again | when science in its second revival told men ; that the sun, in spite "of the evidence of their eyes, did not rise and set. Doubt]. '•'.••-.; came then into the world, and all the "world' was shaken. What the result will be we . know as little as our readers but of this) | we feel'assured; that the relation of the ■?" % continents will be permanently altered, or, ; ; it may be more exact to write, the wide-'; ..;■ spread effort to alter that relation will caß;' :•; upon the white men for new exertions^. and, above all, for new and more careful; :,-V meditation." "That we of Europe are the* superiors we all believe' firmly j hut- I*s : ; ; assume too readily," the Spectator thinis^"... - " that this superiority is acknowledged,and'. - are at once. confused and too presumo! ' tuous as to its ultimate reasons." ,/■] .