It must sometimes have occurred to readers of Byzantine literature, after they have perused a number of the occasionally valuable, but almost always dreary, works of which it is composed —lifeless chronicles, polemical and other theology, inflated panegyrics, and grammatical treatises—to ask the question, whether this was really all; whether a quick-witted and intelligent people, such as we know the inhabitants of Constantinople at certain periods to have been, were contented to subsist entirely on such dry mental food. No doubt, religious controversy often ran high, and this, when it fills men's thoughts, is apt to supply the place of intellectual interests; but such discussions did not last for ever, and could not have occupied the minds of the whole of the educated population. A certain source of relief was provided in the numerous poems, songs, and romances in the popular language—some of native growth and dealing with subjects of local or traditional interest, some imitated from the romances of Western Europe—which have been brought to light by the industry of such men as MM. Sathas and Legrand at Paris, Prof. Lambros of Athens, and the late Dr. W. Wagner of Hamburg. But even these do not furnish that element of liveliness, which we should expect to manifest itself in some shape or other in a great centre of activity.