(5) follows such other person with two or more other persons, in a disorderly manner, in or through any street or road, shall be liable to the before-mentioned penalties. Of course a combination to do any of these acts would be punishable as a conspiracy, as mentioned in section 3 above. Seamen are expressly exempted from the operation of this Act. The exceptions as to contracts of service for the supply of gas and water, &c., were supported by the circumstances of the London gas stokers' case above mentioned. Conspiracy at common law is a misdemeanor, and the punishment is fine or imprisonment, or both, to which may be added hard labor in the case of any conspiracy to cheat and defraud, or to extort money or goods, or falsely to accuse of any crime, and to obstruct, pervert, prevent, or defeat the cause of justice. Conspiracy to murder, whether the victim be a subject of the Queen or resident in her dominions or not, is by 24 and 25 Vict. c. 100 punishable by penal servitude. (E. R.) CONSTABLE, in England, an ancient officer of the peace. The name, as well as the office, is, according to Blackstone, borrowed from the French. In the Middle Ages there was a great officer of this name, whose duties related to matters of chivalry. "The office of Lord High Constable," says Blackstone, "hath been disused in England, except only upon great and solemn occasions-as the king's coronation and the like-ever since the attainder of Stafford, duke of Buckingham, under King Henry VIII., as in France it was suppressed about a century after by an edict of Louis XIII., but from that office, says Lambard, this lower constableship was first drawn, and is, as it were, a very finger of that hand." including peers and members of Parliament, judges, justices, The Acts establishing and regulating county constabulary are the 2 and 3 Vict. c. 93, 3 and 4 Vict. c. 88, 19 and 20 Vict. c. 69, 20 Vict. c. 2, and 22 and 23 Vict. c. 32. The police force of every county shall be under the superintendence of a chiefconstable, who, with the approbation of justices in petty sessions, may appoint constables and provisional superintendents. The chief-constable has the general superintendence and direction of the force (including the petty constables where they still exist), and he may dismiss them at his pleasure, subject to the orders of Quarter Sessions, and the rules established for the government of the force. The salaries and other expenses under these Acts are to be paid by a police rate, to be made by the justices at Quarter Sessions. Counties and boroughs may consolidate their police force. The Crown appoints inspectors to report on the efficiency of the police, and whenever a certificate shall be granted by the Secretary of State that the police has been maintained during the preceding year in a state of efficiency as to discipline and numbers, the Treasury shall grant a sum in aid of the expenses not exceeding one-fourth of the charge for pay and clothing. The Statute of Winchester (13 Edw. I. st. 2, c. 6), ordaining every citizen to have armor according to his condition to keep the peace, requires that in every hundred and franchise two constables be chosen to make the view of armor twice a year, and that the said constables "shall present before justices assigned such defaults as they do see in the county about armor, and of the suits, and of watches, and of highways; and also shall present all such as do lodge CONSTABLE, ARCHIBALD (1774-1827), the well-known strangers in uplandish towns, for whom they will not Edinburgh publisher, was born in the parish of Carnbee, answer." These are the officers known as high constables; Fifeshire, on the 24th February, 1774. Having been who are especially charged with the peace of the hundred, educated at the parish school, he was, at his own request, just as the petty constables are charged with the peace of apprenticed to a bookseller in Edinburgh, named Peter the parish or township. They were appointed at the court Hill. From the first he took a great interest in books; of the hundred, or in default thereof by justices at special and he obtained permission from his master to attend book sessions (7 and 8 Vict. c. 33, 8). By a recent Act, 32 and sales, and purchase rare works, of which he drew up care33 Vict. c. 47, they are practically abolished, as the fully-executed catalogues. When not yet twenty-one years justices of each county are required to consider and deter- of age he had married and commenced business on his mine whether it is necessary that the office of high con- own account. He took special interest in Scottish literstable of each hundred, or other like district, should be ature; the rare works in that department which he offered continued. for sale soon brought him into notice, and from this and from his genial disposition and his unprecedented liberality towards authors, his business grew rapidly. In 1801 he became proprietor of the Farmers' Magazine and the Scots' Magazine, and on the 10th October, 1802, he published the first number of the Edinburgh Review. Constable was for many years on the most intimate and friendly relations with Sir Walter Scott. In January, 1802, he had a share in the publication of the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and afterwards published a large proportion of Scott's poems and novels. Besides these, he published the Annual Register, and the works of Dugald Stewart, Brown, Playfair, and Leslie. In 1812 he purchased the copyright of the Encyclopædia Britannica, to which he added the supplement to the 4th, 5th, and 6th editions (1815-1824), extend ing to six volumes, and containing the celebrated disser tations by Stewart, Playfair, and Brande. Not the least important of his undertakings was Constable's Miscellany, projected in 1825, consisting of a series of original works, and standard works republished in a cheap form, the carliest and one of the most famous of the attempts to popularize wholesome literature. In 1826 pecuniary difficulties in which the firm of Constable and Co. became involved (its liabilities exceeding £250,000) obliged it to stop payment. From this time Constable's health gave way, and he died on 21st July, 1827, having, by his generous dealings with authors, his literary enthusiasm, and his efforts to promote the diffusion of standard literature, gained for himself one of the most distinguished names among British publishers. The petty or parish constable unites two offices-the ancient one of head-borough or tithing man, and the modern one, instituted about the reign of Edward III., of assistant to the high constable. Considering what manner of men were for the most part appointed to these offices, Blackstone thought it was well that they should be kept in ignorance of the extent of their powers. Besides their general duties in the preservation of the peace they are charged with the execution of warrants and the service of summonses. No action can be brought against a constable for any act done in the execution of his office unless within six months from the time of its being committed. By 24 Geo. II. c. 44, the justice who signed the warrant must be made a co-defendant in any action against the constable, and on the production of such warrant at the trial the jury must find for the constable, notwithstanding any want of jurisdiction in the magistrate. Petty constables were formerly elected at the court leet or, in default thereof, by two justices. But by 5 and 6 Vict. c. 109, it is ordered that the justices shall annually issue their precept to the overseers of each parish in their county, requiring them to return a list of persons in such parish qualified and liable to serve as constables, and that the justices on special petty | sessions shall revise the list, and select therefrom such number of constables as they may deem necessary. Every able-bodied man resident within the parish, between the ages of twenty-five and fifty-five, rated to the relief of the poor or to the county rate, on any tenements of the net yearly value of £4 and upwards, is qualified and liable to serve as constable for that parish. But large classes of persons are specially exempted from the liability to serve,— See Archibald Constable and His Literary Correspondents, by his son, Thomas Constable (1873). CONSTABLE, HENRY, one of the most considerable of the Elizabethan sonneteers, was born about 1556, in Yorkshire, as it is supposed, and certainly of a Roman Catholic family. He was sent to St. John's College, Cambridge, where in 1579 he took his degree of B.A. In the same year there appeared a volume entitled The Forest of Fancy by H. C., which has been attributed to Henry Chettle, but may with far more probability be assigned to Constable. This is a black-letter romance in prose and verse, of some slight literary value. Until 1592 we lose sight of the poet altogether, but in that year appeared his principal work, the book of sonnets called Diana. The only sonnets in the Italian form which had preceded them were those of Sidney, printed the year before, and as Constable had been writing those poems for many years he deserves credit as being one of the first to introduce this elegant form of verse among us. His sonnets are not merely quatorzains, like Shakespeare's; he preserves the exact arrangement of rhymes, except that he usually closes with a couplet. So popular was Diana that in 1594 a second enlarged edition appeared. But all this time a cloud was gathering round the poet. As a Catholic and a pronounced admirer of the queen of Scots, he came under suspicion of plotting treason against Elizabeth. Almost immediately after ushering Sir Philip Sidney's Apology for Poetry into the world with four magnificent sonnets, in 1595, he was obliged, in October of that year, to fly for his life to France. After a short stay in Paris, he wintered at Rouen, and then set off on a long pilgrimage to Rome, Poland, the Low Countries, and Scotland. In 1600 we find him still an exile, this time in Spain. About the year 1601 he could endure the growing home-sickness no longer, and returned to England in disguise. He was discovered at once and committed to the Tower, where he languished until 1604, when he was released. Of the date of his death we know no more than can be gathered from the fact that he is spoken of as alive in 1606, and as apparently not long dead in 1616. Besides the Diana he was the author of four important poems which were printed in the 1600 edition of England's Helicon. Two of these, the exquisite lyric of "Diaphenia like the Daffadowndilly," and the charming pastoral song of Venus and Adonis, hold a prominent place in our early literature, the latter especially being believed to precede Shakespeare's epic in date of composition. Some very fine Spiritual Sonnets of Constable have been printed in our own day, and it is understood that certain compositions of this "ambrosiac muse," as Ben Jonson styled it, are still awaiting an editor. The style of Constable is fervid and full of color. Mr. Minto has well said that his words flow with happiest impulse "when his whole being is aglow with the rapture of beauty." blindly for something not to be found for many years. In 1802 he attended Brooke's anatomical lectures, exhibited his first picture, and, refusing a drawing mastership offered him by Dr. Fisher, gave himself wholly to his vocation. He exhibited a number of paintings during the next eight years, but it was not till 1811 that he gave to the world, in his Dedham Vale, the first work in which his distinctive manner and excellences are evident. In 1816, having inherited £4000 on his father's death, he emerged from a painful state of poverty with which he had been struggling, and married. In 1818 he exhibited four of his finest works; and next year he sent to Somerset House the largest picture he had yet painted, the landscape known as Constable's White Horse. In the November following he was made associate of the Academy. His power at this time, though unrecognized, was at its highest. In 1823, however, after the exhibition of such masterpieces as the Stratford Mill, the Hay Cart, and the Salisbury Cathedral, he did not disdain to copy two Claudes. In 1824 two of his larger pictures, which he sold, were taken to Paris, and created there a profound sensation. Allowing a great deal for the influence of Bonington, who died four years afterwards, much of the best in contemporary French landscape may be said to date from them. Constable received a gold medal from Charles X., and his pictures were honorably hung in the Louvre. In 1825 he painted his Loch (" silvery, windy, delicious" is his own description of it), and sent his White Horse to Lille for exhibition. It made, like the others, a great impression, and procured the painter a second gold medai. Other great works followed; and in 1829 he was elected Academician, to the astonishment and ill-concealed dis pleasure of many, and began to devote himself, in conjunetion with Lucas, to the preparation of his book of English Landscape Scenery. Hard work brought on ill-health and low spirits; rheumatism laid hold of him, and for some time he could neither write nor paint. In 1832, however, he exhibited his Waterloo Bridge (painted, said his enemies, with his palette-knife only), with three other pictures and four drawings. In 1834 he painted his Salisbury from the Meadows, more generally known as the Rainbow, a picture he valued greatly; and in 1836 he delivered a course of lectures on his art at the Royal Institution. He died suddenly on the 1st of April, 1837, leaving his Arundel Castle and Mill wet on his easel. The principles on which this great painter worked are not far to seek. He himself has said, “Ideal art in landscape is all nonsense;" and this sentence may be said to sum up the whole of his theory and practice of painting. Turner's pictures to him were merely “golden dreams" Both and Berghem were only fit for burning; if CONSTABLE, JOHN (1776-1837), landscape painter, he proclaimed the greatness of Claude and Titian, it was was born at East Bergholt, in the Stour valley, Suffolk, that he recognized their truth. Truth in its broadest and June 11, 1776. Under the guidance of a certain John finest sense was his only aim. He studied the country Dunthune, a plumber, he acquired in early life some in- untiringly and intently, sacrificing mere detail to the larger sight into the first principles of landscape art, together with necessities of tone ("tone is the most seductive and ina habit of studying in the open air that was afterwards of viting quality a picture can possess"), reproducing to an much service to him. His father, who was a yeoman eminent degree the sentiment of what he saw, flooding his farmer, did not care to encourage this tendency, and set canvas with light and shadows as one finds them, and him to work in one of his windmills. The incessant faithfully translating such glimpses as were revealed to him watchfulness of the weather which this occupation required of the geniality of nature. His range was limited; he suc laid the foundation of that wonderful knowledge of atmo- ceeded best with the county familiar to him from his boy spheric changes and effects of which his works give evidence. hood; but his repetitions of manner and subject are in From an introduction to Sir George Beaumont, an amiable reality so many tentatives towards perfection. His merits man but a poor painter, he became acquainted with the were recognized in France; but his studio was full of unworks of Claude and Girtin. In 1795 he was sent to Lon- sold pictures at his death, and it is certain that he could don with a letter to Farington, the landscape painter. not have earned a livelihood by his art without abandonFarington encouraged him with predictions of coming emi-ing his theories. Since his death, however, his pictures nence; and for two years he plodded on, drawing cottages, studying anatomy, and copying and painting, sometimes in London and sometimes in Suffolk. His progress, however, was not encouraging; and in 1797 he returned home, and for some time worked in his father's counting-house. In 1799 he again went to London to perfect himself as a painter; and on the 4th of February he was admitted a student of the Royal Academy. The lights and shadows of his studies from the antique at this period are praised by Leslie, but they were sometimes defective in outline. He worked from dawn tili dusk, and was an untiring copyist of such masters as he had sympathy with, as Wilson, Ruysdael, and Claude. Drawings from nature made during the next year or two, in Suffolk or in Derbyshire, were of no great promise. Being naturally slow, he was yet groping | have greatly increased in value, and his influence on contemporary French and English landscape is recognized as both great and good. See Leslie, Memoirs of the Life of John Constable, R. A., London, second edition, 1845; and English Landscape Scenery, a Series of Forty Mezzotint Engravings on Steel, by David Lu cas, from pictures painted by John Constable, R. A., London, folio, 1855. CONSTANCE, or COSTNITZ, a city of the grand duchy of Baden, and the chief town of a circle of its own name, formerly called the See Kreis, or Lake Circle, is situated on the southern or Swiss side of the Rhine, at its exit from the Lake of Constance, 30 miles east of Schaffhausen by railway. It stands 1298 feet above the level of the sea. | The older portion of the city is still surrounded by its | the Consulate, till 1802, when he was expelled from the ancient walls, but beyond their limits lie extensive suburbs, Tribunate by Napoleon. The circle to which he belonged of which the most remarkable are Brühl, Kreuzlingen, again provoked the anger of the First Consul by its private Paradies, and Petershausen. The last of these, which has opposition to the Government, whereupon Constant, with grown up round a free imperial abbey, is situated on the his celebrated friend Madame de Staël, found it advisother side of the river, and communicates with the city by able to retire from France. Thus arrested in his political means of a long covered bridge raised on stone piers. A career he turned to literature, and proceeded to Weimar, large number of the buildings of Constance are of mediæval where he enjoyed the acquaintance of Goethe and Schiller, origin, and several are of high interest both to the historian translated Wallenstein, and wrote the romance of Adolphe. and antiquary. Most remarkable are the minster, origin- He did not return to France till the overthrow of Napoleon ally founded in 1048, but dating in its present form mainly in 1814. Attracted by the prospect of the restoration of from the beginning of the 16th century; St. Stephen's constitutional government he supported the Bourbons, and, Church, belonging to the 14th; the old Dominican convent apparently for a similar reason, he adhered to Napoleon on the island of Genf (now a cotton-printing factory); the during the Hundred Days. After the violence of the Kaufhaus, or public mart, in the hall of which sat the second Bourbon restoration had subsided Constant reapfamous council of 1414-1418; and the old chancery or peared on the political scene to maintain the principles town-hall, erected in 1503. Besides the various adminis- of constitutionalism. By all legal means, in the journals trative offices of the circle the town further possesses a and in the Chambers, as well as by political tractates and gymnasium, a lyceum, various collections of antiquities, a pamphlets, under Louis XVIII. and Charles X. he compublic collection of books and pictures in the Wessenberg | bated, not without success, the reactionary measures of the Haus, and a valuable series of archives. Since the intro- government. Il health detained him in the country duction of steamboat and railway communication the com- during the revolution of July (1830); but at the urgent mercial prosperity of the city has greatly increased. It request of Lafayette he returned to the capital, and connow contains cotton-factories, linen-factories, carpet-looms, curred in the elevation to the vacant throne of Louis Philand breweries, maintains a considerable activity in printing ippe. Notwithstanding his feeble health Constant continand publishing, and has a vigorous and varied local trade. ned to support the new Government, but an unsuccessful Population in 1864, 8516; in 1872, 10,061. candidature for a seat in the Academy so aggravated his previous complaint that he died a few months after the triumph of the principles to which he had consecrated his life. Adverse circumstances had prevented the champion of representative government from playing a first part in the history of Franee, assuming that he had the faculty to His voice was dry, his manner deficient in ease and grace, and he did not excel in improvising a reply; but his intellect was clear and powerful, his culture wide, and his industry remarkable. do so. Constance probably dates from the 3d or 4th century; but it first began to be of importance in the 6th, when it became the seat of the bishop who had previously been settled at Windisch or Vindonissa in Aargau. It afterwards obtained the rank of an imperial city, and rose to be one of the largest and most flourishing municipalities in Germany. From 1414 to 1418 it was the seat of the great ecclesiastical council which, under the presidency of the emperor Sigismund, and consisting of 26 princes, 140 counts, more than 20 cardinals, 20 archbishops, 91 bishops. 600 prelates and doctors, and about 4000 priests, con. The greater part of his political tractates have been stituted itself the highest authority in the church, condemned collected by himself under the title of Cours de Politique to death the reformers Huss and Jerome of Prague, expelled Constitutionelle. J. P. Pagès collected the speeches dethe three rival popes John XXIII., Gregory XII., and Bene-livered at the Chamber of Deputies, 3 vols. in 8vo (1832diet XIII., and elected Martin V. as the legitimate successor of 1833). His great philosophical work was De la religion St. Peter. Constance joined the Smalkaldic League and refused to accept the "Interim." It was accordingly deprived The most important of his purely literary productions are considérée dans sa source, ses formes, et ses développements. of its imperial privileges, and in 1549 was presented by the the novels, Adolphe and Cécile, and the translation of Walemperor to his brother, the Archduke Ferdinand, in whose territory it remained till 1805, when it was acquired by Baden. lenstein. His philosophical work on religion, which occuThe bishopric, which was secularized in the latter year, had be- pied him more or less almost all his life, is an attempt to come the largest in all Germany, stretching over a great part trace the successive transformations of the religious sentiof Würtemberg, Baden, and Switzerland, and containing 350 ment, his conclusion being that, while the religious instinct conventual establishments and 1760 parsonages. is imperishable, the doctrinal and ceremonial forms by which it expresses itself are transitory. A quotation or two will suffice to indicate his attitude towards the liberalism of the 18th century. "Christianity has introduced moral and political liberty into the world." "If Christianity has been often despised, it is because men have not understood it. Lucian was incapable of understanding Homer; Voltaire has never understood the Bible." CONSTANCE, LAKE OF (German, BODENSEE), a large sheet of water on the confines of Switzerland, surrounded on the S.W. by the cantons of Thurgau and St. Gall, E. by Tyrol, N.Ě. and N.W. by Würtemberg and Baden respectively. It is of an oblong shape, the western extremity being considerably contracted. The length of the lake from Bregenz to Spittelberg is 42 miles, with an average width of 74 miles. It forms the great reservoir of the Rhine, receiving the upper waters of that river near the village of Altenrhein and parting with them at Constance. The mean level of the surface is 1290 feet above the sea. The depth beween Romanshorn and Langenargen is 152 fathoms, between Constance and Friederichshafen 120 fathoms, and between Lindau and the mouth of the Rhine 45 fathoms. CONSTANT DE REBECQUE, HENRI BENJAMIN, an eminent French statesman and publicist, was born at Lausanne, 25th October, 1757, and died at Paris 10th December, 1830. His family was French, and had taken refuge in Switzerland during the religious persecutions. Till the age of thirteen he lived in his father's house at Lausanne; he afterwards studied at Oxford, Erlangen, and Edinburgh successively. It was in these foreign studies that he made a beginning in the cosmopolitan culture which afterwards characterized him; in England especially he learned to admire constitutional government, and made the acquaintance of such men as Erskine and Mackintosh. Shortly before the Revolution he went to Paris, and became aquainted with some of the leading liberal spirits of that city, where, after further travels, he finally settled in 1795. He attached himself to the moderate republican party, and supported it through many changes of fortune, both in the Assemblies and by writing, under the Directory and CONSTANTINE, the capital of the French province of the same name in Algeria, situated in the richest and most populous part of the country, about 50 miles inland from the port of Philippeville, in 36° 22′ 31′′ N. lat. and 6° 36′ 36 E. long. It holds a highly romantic position on a rocky plateau, cut off on all sides but the west by a deep but beautiful ravine, through which the Rummel finds its way. A striking contrast exists between the older and Moorish portion of the city, with its tortuous lanes and Oriental architecture, and the modern and French portion, with its rectangular streets and wide open squares, frequently bordered with trees and adorned with fountains. Of the squares the Place Nemours is the most spacious, but the Place du Palais is of more importance in the commercial and social life of the city. The public buildings may be divided into those dating from before the French conquest and later erections. Among the former are the Kasba or citadel, the mosques, the palace of the bey, and the harem of Salah; among the latter the court-house or palais de justice, the theatre, the Protestant church, and several administrative buildings. The Kasba, which occupies the northern corner of the town, is partly of Roman construction, and preserves in its more modern portions numerous remains of other Roman edifices. It is now turned into barracks, and contains within its precincts a hospital capable of accommodating 1500 patients. The mosque of Sidi el Kattani, which ranks as the finest in the city, dates only from the 18th century; but that of Souk-er | Rezel, now transformed into a Christian Church, and bearing the name of Notre Dame des Sept Douleurs, was built as early as 1143. The Great Mosque, or Djama-Kebir, occupies the site of what was probably an ancient Pantheon. A religious seminary, or Medersa, is maintained in connection with the Sidi el Kattani; and the French support a college and various minor educational establishments for both Arabic and European culture. There is an archæological society, and a collection of local antiquities has been formed. The native industry of Constantine is chiefly confined to leather goods and woollen fabrics. A considerable trade is carried on with Tunis and other places on the Mediterranean, and caravans proceed regularly by Biscara and Tuggurt into the interior. The population of the city, composed of various elements, amounted in 1872 to 30,330. Constantine, or, as it was originally called, Cirta or Kirtha, from the Phoenician word for a city, was in ancient times one of the most important towns of Numidia, and the residence of the kings of the Massylii. Under Micipsa it reached the height of its prosperity, and was able to furnish an army of 10,000 cavalry and 20,000 infantry. Though it afterwards declined, it still continued to be considered an important military post, and consequently its name is frequently mentioned during successive wars. Caesar having bestowed a part of its territory on his supporter Sittius, the latter introduced a Roman settlement, and the town for a time was known as Colonia Sittianorum. In the war of Maxentius against Alexander, the Numidian usurper, it was laid in ruins; and on its restoration in 313 by Constantine it received the name which it still retains. It was left uncaptured during the Vandal invasion of Africa, but on the conquest of the Arabians it shared the same fate as the surrounding country. During the 12th century it was still a place of considerable prosperity; and its commerce was extensive enough to attract the merchants of Pisa, Genoa, and Venice. Frequently taken and retaken by the Turks, it finally became under their dominion the seat of a bey subordinate to the dey of Algiers. In 1826 it asserted its independence of that potentate, and was governed by Hadj Ahmed, the choice of the Kabyles. In 1837 the French under Marshal Valée took possession of the place, and about ten years afterwards it was occupied as a reg ular colony. CONSTANTINE. Of the thirteen emperors of this name, two are here noticed separately. For the others see ROMAN HISTORY and GREEK EMPIRE. CONSTANTINE I. (274-337). Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus, surnamed Magnus, or the Great, was born at Naissus (Nissa),' in upper Mosia, in February, 274. He was the son of Constantius Chlorus and Helena, the wife of obscure origin (a stabularia, or innkeeper, according to St. Ambrose), whom her husband was compelled to repudiate on attaining the dignity of Cæsar in 292.2 The part of the empire assigned to Constantius was the extreme West, including Spain, Gaul, and Britain; but Constantine was detained in the East at the court of Diocletian, doubtless as a pledge for his father's loyalty. He served with such distinction under Diocletian in the campaign in Egypt which closed in 296, and subsequently under Galerius in the war with Persia, that he was appointed a tribune of the first rank. His majestic presence, his personal courage, and his skill in military exercises made him a great favorite with the army, and excited in a corresponding degree the jealousy of the naturally suspicious Galerius, who did not scruple, it is said, to expose him repeatedly to unusual hazards in the hope of getting rid of him. The effect of this was to strengthen in Constantine a constitutional wariness and discretion which were often of advantage to him in after life. In 305 Diocletian and Maximian abdicated, and were succeeded in the supreme rank of Augustus by the two Cæsars, Constantius and Galerius. Constantine, who had naturally the strongest claim to a Cæsarship, was passed over by Galerius, and Constantius could not venture to bestow the office while his son remained at what was virtually a hostile court. It was only after repeated letters from his colleague that Galerius gave a reluctant consent that Constantine should join his father. There was ground for supposing even then that the per 1 The legend that Constantine was a native of Britain has long been generally abandoned. The passage in the panegyrist that speaks of his having ennobled Britain "illic oriendo" refers probably to his accession, as Gibbon suggests. A later tradition, adopted with characteristic credulity by Geoffrey of Monmouth, that Helena was the daughter of a British king, is a pure invertion. mission was given only to be cancelled, and Constantine accordingly acted upon it with the utmost promptitude, making the journey across Europe from Nicomedia to Boulogne in an unusually short time. At Boulogne he found his father on the point of setting out for Britain, and accompanied him. The death of Constantius soon after at York (25th July, 306) brought Constantine to the first great turning-point in his career. The circumstances were critical: it was necessary to avoid on the one hand losing the favor of the army by undue hesitation, and on the other incurring the active hostility of Galerius by undue self-assertion; and Constantine displayed just that union of determination and prudence that the occasion required. Accepting with well-feigned reluctance the enthusiastic nomination of the army to the vacant throne, he wrote at the same time a carefully-worded letter to Galerius, expressing regret that circumstances had not permitted him to could be signified, and begging to be recognized as Augus delay assuming the purple until the imperial approbation tus in succession to his father. On the reception of the news Galerius was greatly incensed, and threatened to give both the letter and its bearer to the flames; but more prudent counsels prevailed, and he ventured to indulge his resent ment only so far as to deny the title of Augustus, which was conferred upon Severus, Constantine being acknowledged as Cæsar. The latter acquiesced in this arrangement with apparent contentment, and at once set himself as the recog nized inheritor of his father's power to carry out his father's wise and vigorous policy. The barbarians of the north sustained repeated defeats, and were permanently held in check by the building of a line of forts on the Rhine; and the internal prosperity of the country was promoted by a confirmation of the tolerant policy adopted by Constantius towards the Christians, the persecuting edict of Galerius being treated as a dead letter. The events of the next few years showed clearly the essential instability of the arrangement devised by Diocletian for the partition of the imperial power among Augustuses and Cæsars. It was in the very nature of the plan that reality rivals, constantly plotting and counter-plotting for under it those who were nominally colleagues should be in the sole supremacy. Accordingly the history of the empire from the period of the division of the imperial power by Diocletian to that of its reconsolidation under Constantine is mainly a record of the struggle for that supremacy. The narrative is necessarily intricate, and can only be fully given in a general historical article. The state of matters was complicated by a rebellion at Rome against Galerius, which had for its final result the contemporaneous reign of no less than six emperors,-Galerius, Licinius, and Maximin in the East, and Maximian, Maxentius, and Constantine in the West (308). Maxentius was the son of Maximian, and Constantine was his son-in-law, having married his daughter Fausta at Arles in 307, on which occasion he received the title of Augustus; but this family relationship did not prevent a conflict of interests. Maxentius claimed to be the sole rightful sovereign of Italy, and being supported by the prætorian guards compelled his father to quit Rome. Maximian, after a brief residence in Illyricum, from which he was driven by Galerius, took refuge at the court of his son-in-law, Constantine, who received him with the respect due to his rank. For the second time he resigned the purple, and affected to have no longer any desire of power. Very soon after, however, he was tempted, during the absence of Constantine on the Rhine, to reassume the imperial dignity and to enter into a plot with Maxentius for the overthrow of his son-in-law. Constantine, on receiving the news, acted with the necessary promptitude. He appeared at once with his troops before Arles, and compelled Maximian to retreat to Marseilles, whither he followed him. The town might have stood a protracted siege, but it preferred to deliver up the usurper, who avoided the execution of the sentence of death pronounced upon him by committing suicide (February, 310). The death of Maximian was the first of a series of events which ended in the establishment of Constantine as the sole emperor of the West. It was seized upon by Maxentius as a pretext for hostile measures, which Constantine, unwilling to engage in war, ignored as long as he safely could. When According to Lactantius (De Mort. Persec., c. 29, 30), Maximian was pardoned for this attempt, and the clemency of Constantine was only exhausted by the discovery of a plot for his assassination in bed, which failed, owing to the conjugal fidelity of Fausta. Gibbon discredits this story. the time came for action, however, he acted, as was his clear; but it is probable that Constantine, having deterwont, with decision. Maxentius was preparing to invade mined to make himself the sole master of the world, did Gaul, when Constantine, encouraged by an embassy from not think it necessary to wait for provocation. The cam Rome, anticipated him by entering Italy at the head of a paign was short but decisive. Licinius was totally defeated large and well-disciplined army. He had crossed the Cot-in a battle fought at Adrianople on the 3d July, 323. This tian Alps (Mont Cenis), and was in the plains of Piedmont was followed by the siege of Byzantium, in which Crispus, before Maxentins knew that he had set out. A series of Constantine's eldest son, who was in command of the fleet, successes at Susa, Turin, and Verona culminated in the co-operated with his father by entering the Hellespont decisive victory of the Milvian Bridge, near Rome (28th and defeating Amandus, the admiral of Licinius, after a October, 312), which left the capital open to the invader. two days' engagement. In a final battle fought at Chrys In the hurried retreat of the defeated army Maxentius was opolis (now Scutari) Licinius was totally routed, and he pressed by the throng over the bridge into the river, and fled to Nicomedia. On the intercession of his wife Conwas drowned. The conduct of the conqueror was marked stantia, the sister of Constantine, the emperor promised to on the whole by wisdom and moderation. The slaughter spare his life; but the promise was not kept. In 324 the of the two sons and of the more intimate favorites of the defeated monarch was put to death by Constantine's orders fallen emperor was a measure deemed essential if the fruits at Thessalonica, which had been fixed as the place of his of the victory were to be retained, and cannot be imputed exile. A treasonable conspiracy was alleged against him, to wanton cruelty, especially as Constantine seems to have but there is no evidence in support of the charge; and abstained from the too common practice of an indiscrim- possible danger in the future rather than any plot actually inate massacre. The final disbanding of the prætorian discovered seems to have prompted Constantine to a deed guards and the destruction of their camp, the imposition which cannot escape the censure of bad faith, if not of of a poll-tax on the senators, and the assumption of the wanton cruelty. title of Pontifex Maximus were the other chief events of Constantine's first residence in Rome, which lasted only a few weeks, a fact in itself significant of the decaying importance of the capital, if not prophetic of the early rise of a Nova Roma. It was in the course of the expedition that ended with the victory of the Milvian Bridge that the celebrated incident occurred, which is said to have caused Constantine's conversion,-the appearance of a flaming cross in the sky at noon-day with the motto 'Ev Tour víka (By this conquer). The story is told by Eusebius, who professes to have had it from the lips of the emperor himself, and also with considerable variation in the details by Lactantius, Nazarius, and Philostorgius. In order to understand the true relation of Constantine to Christianity, however, it is necessary to consider all the incidents bearing upon that relation together, and this, therefore, along with the others. There is the less violence to chronological order in delaying the critical examination of the story, inasmuch as it was first communicated by Constantine to Eusebius several years later, and as the Labarum, or standard of the cross, made in obedience to the heavenly vision was not exhibited to the army, according to Gibbon, till 323. The conversion, whatever its nature and whatever its cause, was followed, indeed, by one more immediate result of a significant kind in the important Edict of Milan (March, 313), issued by Constantine and Licinius conjointly, restoring all forfeited civil and religious rights to the Christians, and securing them full and equal toleration throughout the empire. By the victory of the Milvian Bridge Constantine became the sole emperor of the West. Very soon after a like change took place in the East. Galerius had died in May, 311, and a war ensued between the two surviving emperors in which Maximin was the aggressor and the loser, as Maxentius had been in the West. After a decisive defeat near Heraclea (April, 313), he took to flight, and died at Tarsus, probably by his own hand, in August of the same year. Licinius thus attained the same place in the East as Constantine held in the West. The interests of the two who now divided between them the empire of the world had been apparently identified by the marriage of Licinius to Constantine's sister Constantia, which was celebrated with great pomp at Milan in March, 313. But in little more than a year they were engaged in a war, the origin of which is somewhat obscure, though it probably arose from the treachery of Licinius. After two battles, in which the Eastern emperor suffered severely, he was fain to sue for peace, which Constantine granted only on condition that Illyricum, Pannonia, and Greece should be transferred to his territory. With the war against Licinius the military career of Constantine may be said to have closed. He was now the sole emperor of both East and West. His enlightened policy had made his power throughout the empire so secure that any attempt to usurp it would have been utterly vain. Accordingly the remainder of his reign was passed in undisturbed tranquillity. The period of peace was not inglorious, including among lesser events the convocation of the Council of Nicæa (325) and the foundation of Constantinople (328). But unfortunately it was disgraced by a series of bloody deeds that have left an indelible stain on the emperor's memory. In 326 Constantine visited Rome to celebrate the twentieth anniversary (vicennalia) of his accession. During the festivities his eldest son Crispus was accused of treason by Fausta, and banished to Polo, in Istria, where he was put to death. Licinius, the emperor's nephew, being included in the same charge, likewise fell a victim, and a number of the courtiers also suffered. According to another version of the story, Fausta accused her step-son of attempting incestuous intercourse, and Constantine, discovering when it was too late that the accusation was false, caused her to be suffocated in her bath. The whole circumstances of Fausta's death, however, are involved in uncertainty, owing to the contradictions of the different narratives. The bloody tragedy struck horror into the minds of the citizens, and it was amid ominous indications of unpopularity that Constantine quitted Rome for the last time. It had probably been for some time clear to his mind that the empire required in its new circumstances a new political centre. A Nova Roma would mark in a visible and concrete form the new departure in imperial policy which it had been the main object of the emperor's life to initiate. At least two other places-Sardica in Moesia, and Troy-had been thought of ere his choice was fixed upon Byzantium. No happier selection has ever been made. The natural advantages of the site are probably unsurpassed by those of any capital either in the Old or in the New World, and its political importance is evidenced by the frequency with which it has been the key to the situation in European diplomacy. The new capital, the building of which had been commenced in 328, was solemnly inaugurated on the 11th May, 330, being dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The fact that the ceremonial was performed exclusively by Christian ecclesiastics, and that no pagan temple was permitted to be erected in the new city, marks in an emphatic way the establishment of Christianity as the state religion. The closing years of Constantine's life were unevent ful. One of his last schemes was that for the partition of the empire after his death among his three sons by Fausta The peace lasted for nine years, a period during which-Constantine, Constantius, and Constans; but it proved Constantine's position grew stronger while that of Licinius grew weaker, wise and humane legal reforms and vigorous measures against the barbarians of the north marking the policy of the one, and caprice, indolence, and cruelty being the most conspicuous features in the conduct of the other. When the inevitable struggle for the supremacy came, though the army of Licinius was the larger, the issue was scarcely doubtful. The origin of the war which broke out in 323 is like that of the previous one in 314, not quite even less stable than the analogous scheme of Diocletian. In 337 Sapor II. of Persia asserted by force his claim to the provinces that had been taken from him by Galerius. Constantine was preparing to meet him at the head of an army, when he was taken ill, and after a brief and vain trial of the baths of Helenopolis retired to Nicomedia. Here he died on the 22d May, 337. The significance of his baptism on his deathbed by the Arian bishop, Eusebius of Nicomedia, will be indicated afterwards. Hig |