See Leslie, Memoirs of the Life of John Constable, R.A., London, ond edition, 1845; and English Landscape Scenery, a Series of rty Mezzotint Engravings on Steel, by David Lucas, from pictures inted by John Constable, R.A., London, folio, 1855. CONSTANCE, or COSTNITZ, a city of the grand duchy Baden, and the chief town of a circle of its own name, merly called the See Kreis, or Lake Circle, is situated on southern or Swiss side of the Rhine, at its exit from Lake of Constance, 30 miles east of Schaffhausen by way. It stands 1298 feet above the level of the sea. older portion of the city is still surrounded by its ient walls, but beyond their limits lie extensive suburbs, which the most remarkable are Brühl, Kreuzlingen, adies, and Petershausen. The last of these, which has wn up round a free imperial abbey, is situated on the er side of the river, and communicates with the city by ins of a long covered bridge raised on stone piers. A ge number of the buildings of Constance are of medieval gin, and several are of high interest both to the historian antiquary. Most remarkable are the minster, originally nded in 1048, but dating in its present form mainly in the beginning of the 16th century; St Stephen's arch, belonging to the 14th; the old Dominican convent the island of Genf (now a cotton-printing factory); the tufhaus, or public mart, in the hall of which sat the nous council of 1414-1418; and the old chancery or vn-hall, erected in 1503. Besides the various administrae offices of the circle the town further possesses a mnasium, a lyceum, various collections of antiquities, a blic collection of books and pictures in the Wessenberg us, and a valuable series of archives. Since the introtion of steam-boat and railway communication the amercial prosperity of the city has greatly increased. It contains cotton-factories, linen-factories, carpet-looms, I breweries, maintains a considerable activity in printing I publishing, and has a vigorous and varied local trade. pulation in 1864, 8516; in 1872, 10,061.

Constance probably dates from the 3d or 4th century; but it t began to be of importance in the 6th, when it became the seat the bishop who had previously been settled at Windisch or adonissa in Aargau. It afterwards obtained the rank of an perial city, and rose to be one of the largest and most flourishing unicipalities in Germany. From 1414 to 1418 it was the seat of great ecclesiastical council which, under the presidency of the peror Sigismund, and consisting of 26 princes, 140 counts, more 20 cardinals, 20 archbishops, 91 bishops, 600 prelates and tors, and about 4000 priests, constituted itself the highest hority in the church, condemned to death the reformers Huss Jerome of Prague, expelled the three rival popes John XXIII., gory XII., and Benedict XIII., and elected Martin V. as the itimate successor of St Peter. Constance joined the Smalkaldic igue and refused to accept the "Interim." It was accordingly rived of its imperial privileges, and in 1549 was presented by the peror to his brother, the Archduke Ferdinand, in whose territory emained till 1805, when it was acquired by Baden. The bishopric,

ich was secularized in the latter year, had become the largest in Germany, stretching over a great part of Würtemberg, Baden, d Switzerland, and containing 350 conventual establishments and 60 parsonages.

CONSTANCE, LAKE OF (German, BODENSEE), a large eet of water on the confines of Switzerland, surrounded the S.W. by the cantons of Thurgau and St Gall, E. y Tyrol, N.E. and N.W. by Würtemberg and Baden espectively. It is of an oblong shape, the western extre

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 acquainted 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 the Consulate, till 1802, when he was expelled from the Tribunate by Napoleon. The circle to which he belonged again provoked the anger of the First Consul by its private opposition to the Government, whereupon Constant, with his celebrated friend Madame de Staël, found it advis, able to retire from France. Thus arrested in his political career he turned to literature, and proceeded to Weimar, where he enjoyed the acquaintance of Goethe and Schiller, translated Wallenstein, and wrote the romance of Adolphe. He did not return to France till the overthrow of Napoleon in 1814. Attracted by the prospect of the restoration of constitutional government he supported the Bourbons; and, apparently for a similar reason, he adhered to Napoleon during the Hundred Days. After the violence of the second Bourbon restoration had subsided Constant reappeared on the political scene to maintain the principles of constitutionalism. By all legal means, in the journals and in the Chambers, as well as by political tractates and pamphlets, under Louis XVIII. and Charles X. he combated, not without success, the reactionary measures of the government. Ill-health detained him in the country during the revolution of July (1830); but at the urgent request of Lafayette he returned to the capital, and concurred in the elevation to the vacant throne of Louis Philippe. Notwithstanding his feeble health Constant continued to support the new Government, but an unsuccessful 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 France, assuming that he had the faculty to do so. 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.

The greater part of his political tractates have been collected by himself under the title of Cours de Politique Constitutionelle. J. P. Pagès collected the speeches delivered at the Chamber of Deputies, 3 vols. in 8vo. (18321833). His great philosophical work was De la religion considérée dans sa source, ses formes, et ses développements.

The most important of his purely literary productions are the novels, Adolphe and Cécile, and the translation of Wallenstein. His philosophical work on religion, which occupied him more or less almost all his life, is an attempt to trace the successive transformations of the religious sentiment, his conclusion being that, while the religious instinct 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." 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' 21" 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 construc. tion, 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 or 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. Cæsar 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 surrouné“..., country. During the 12th century it was still a place of conser able prosperity; and its commerce was extensive enough to a the merchants of Pisa, Genoa, and Venice. Frequently taken u retaken by the Turks, it finally became under their dominia seat of a bey subordinate to the dey of Algiers. In 1826 it as its independence of that potentate, and was governed by H. Ahmed, the choice of the Kabyles. In 1837 the French Marshal Valée took possession of the place, and about ten ye afterwards it was occupied as a regular colony.

CONSTANTINE. Of the thirteen emperors of £. name, two are here noticed separately. For the others -:

ROMAN HISTORY and GREEK EMPIRE.

CONSTANTINE I. (274-337). Flavius Valer Aurelius Constantinus, surnamed Magnus, or the Gr.. was born at Naissus (Nissa), in upper Moesia, in Febrar 274. He was the son of Constantius Chlorus and Hek

the wife of obscure origin (a stabularia, or innkeepe according to St Ambrose) whom her husband was e pelled to repudiate on attaining the dignity of Cesar u the extreme West, including Spain, Gaul, and Britain ;}~ 292.2 The part of the empire assigned to Constantius wi Constantine was detained in the East at the court Diocletian, doubtless as a pledge for his father's loyalty campaign in Egypt which closed in 296, and subsequ under Galerius in the war with Persia, that he was appoin a tribune of the first rank. His majestic presence, hiɛje sonal courage, and his skill in military exercises made ir a great favourite with the army, and excited in a correspon who did not scruple, it is said, to expose him repeatedly ing degree the jealousy of the naturally suspicious Galer unusual hazards in the hope of getting rid of him. T effect of this was to strengthen in Constantine a cor tional wariness and discretion which were often of air. tage to him in after life. In 305 Diocletian and Maxin abdicated, and were succeeded in the supreme rack Augustus by the two Cæsars, Constantius and Gal Constantine, who had naturally the strongest claim t. could not venture to bestow the office while his son r Cæsarship, was passed over by Galerius, and Constant mained at what was virtually a hostile court. It was o after repeated letters from his colleague that Galerius ge There was ground for supposing even then that the per a reluctant consent that Constantine should join his fath There was ground for supposing even then that the perr: sion was given only to be cancelled, and Constant accordingly acted upon it with the utmost promptit. making the journey across Europe from Nicomedia! Boulogne in an unusually short time. At Boulogne ! found his father on the point of setting out for Britain, ...... accompanied him. The death of Constantius soon after York (25th July 306) brought Constantine to the i great turning-point in his career. The circumstances we critical it was necessary to avoid on the one hand los. the favour of the army by undue hesitation, and on other incurring the active hostility of Galerius by un self-assertion; and Constantine displayed just that un Accepting with well-feigned reluctance the enthusias determination and prudence that the occasion requir nomination of the army to the vacant throne, he wrote the same time a carefully worded letter to Galerius, expr.sing regret that circumstances had not permitted him delay assuming the purple until the imperial approbata. could be signified, and begging to be recognized as August. in succession to his father. On the reception of the new

He served with such distinction under Diocletian in t

1 The legend that Constantine was a native of Britain has long generally abandoned. The passage in the panegyrist that speak his having ennobled Britain "illic oriendo" refers probably to accession, as Gibbon suggests.

2 A later tradition, adopted with characteristic credulity by Geof of Monmouth, that Helena was the daughter of a British king, in pure invention.

A

The events of the next few years showed clearly the ntial instability of the arrangement devised by Diocletian the partition of the imperial power among Augustuses Caesars. It was in the very nature of the plan that er it those who were nominally colleagues should be in ity rivals, constantly plotting and counter-plotting for sole supremacy. Accordingly the history of the empire the period of the division of the imperial power by cletian to that of its reconsolidation under Constantine ainly a record of the struggle for that supremacy. The ative is necessarily intricate, and can only be fully a in a general historical article. The state of matters complicated by a rebellion at Rome against Galerius, ch had for its final result the contemporaneous reign of ess than six emperors,--Galerius, Licinius, and Maximin he East, and Maximian, Maxentius, and Constantine in West (308). Maxentius was the son of Maximian, and stantine was his son-in-law, having married his daughter ista at Arles in 307, on which occasion he received the e of Augustus; but this family relationship did not vent a conflict of interests. Maxentius claimed to be sole rightful sovereign of Italy, and being supported by prætorian guards compelled his father to quit Rome. ximian, after a brief residence in Illyricum, from which was driven by Galerius, took refuge at the court of his in-law, Constantine, who received him with the respect to his rank. For the second time he resigned the ple, and affected to have no longer any desire of power. y soon after, however, he was tempted, during the ence of Constantine on the Rhine, to reassume the erial dignity and to enter into a plot with Maxentius the overthrow of his son-in-law. Constantine, on iving the news, acted with the necessary promptitude. appeared at once with his troops before Arles, and apelled Maximian to retreat to Marseilles, whither he owed him. The town might have stood a protracted ge, but it preferred to deliver up the usurper, who ided the execution of the sentence of death pronounced on him by committing suicide1 (February 310).

The death of Maximian was the first of a series of events ich ended in the establishment of Constantine as the sole peror of the West. It was seized upon by Maxentius as retext for hostile measures, which Constantine, unwilling engage in war, ignored as long as he safely could. When time came for action, however, he acted, as was his pt, with decision. Maxentius was preparing to invade l, when Constantine, enraged by an embassy from me, anticipated him by ring Italy at the head of a ge and well-disciplined my. He had crossed the tian Alps (Mont Cenis), and was in the plains of

According to Lactantius (De Mort. Persec., c. 29, 30,) Maximian pardoned for this attempt, and the clemency of Constantine was exhausted by the discovery of a plot for his assassination in bed, ch failed, owing to the conjugal fidelity of Fausta. Gibbon disits this story.

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 ToÚTO 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 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.

The peace lasted for nine years, a period during which Constantine's position grew stronger while that of Licinius grew weaker, wise and humane legal reforms and vigorous

ood deal that cannot be so explained. Paganism must ill have been an operative belief with the man who, down most to the close of his life, retained so many pagan perstitions. He was at best only half heathen, half hristian, who could seek to combine the worship of Christ th the worship of Apollo, having the name of the one the figure of the other impressed upon his coins, and laining the observance of Sunday under the name Dies Fas in his celebrated decree of March 321, though such a mbination was far from uncommon in the first Christian aturies. Perhaps the most significant illustration of the biguity of his religious position is furnished by the at that in the same year in which he issued the Sundecree he gave orders that, if lightning struck the perial palace or any other public building, "the haruces, according to ancient usage, should be consulted as what it might signify, and a careful report of the wer should be drawn up for his use." From the time the Council of Nicea there are fewer signs of halting ween two opinions, but the interest of the emperor in istianity was still primarily political and official rather personal. He summoned the council, presided over first meeting, and took a prominent part in its proceedboth before and behind the scenes. The year before net he had, in a noteworthy letter to the Alexandrian 1ops, urged such a scheme of comprehension as might ude Ariaus and orthodox in the one church; and on ground he has been claimed as the earliest of broad rchmen. When the result of its deliberations was the ption, for the first time in the history of the church, a written creed, he cordially approved of the proal, and was thus the earliest to enforce uniformity means of subscription. The two plans were incomible, but the conduct of Constantine in supporting it the one and then the other was perfectly consistent. roughout he acted in the interest of the state. The itting up of the church into a number of bitterly atending factions would be a constant source of danger the unity of the empire, while on the other hand the pire might gain fresh strength from the growing wer of Christianity if that power were embodied in a apact and united organization. It was by this coneration, probably, that Constantine was guided in dealwith the Arian controversy; there are no traces of any rossing personal interest on his part in the cardinalstion of the homoousion. There are not wanting, leed, several facts that show a real concern in the truths Christianity as distinct from its social and political luence. Eusebius has recorded one of his sermons, and seems to have preached frequently in refutation of the ors of paganism and in illustration and defence of the ctrines of the new faith. The same historian speaks of taking part in the ceremonies of worship, and of his long ils at the season of Easter. His delaying to receive ptism until he was on his deathbed does not imply that delayed till then the full acceptance of Christianity, ough it has frequently been so interpreted by those who re unaware that the doctrine that all sin committed fore baptism was washed away by the simple observance the rite not unnaturally made such procrastination very mon. There is no historical foundation for the assertion FBaronius and other Catholic writers that the emperor ived baptism from Pope Sylvester at Rome in 326. ally baseless is the story of the so-called donation of stantine, according to which the emperor after his tism endowed the Pope with temporal dominion. It is this that Dante alludes in his Inferno:

Ah, Constartin! of how much ill was conse, Not thy conversion, but those rich domains That the first wealthy Pope received of thee..

It has been remarked by Stanley that Constantine was entitled to be called Great in virtue rather of what he did than of what he was. Tested by character, indeed, he stands among the lowest of all those to whom the epithet has in ancient or modern times been applied. Fearlessness, decision, political sagacity, and religious tolerance he possessed from first to last; but the generous clemency of which there are traces in his earlier years cannot have any longer worked effectually in him when he sanctioned the treacherous treatment of Licinius and the atrocities that connected themselves with the murder of Crispus. Tried by achievement, however, he stands among the very first of those who have ever won the title. In fact, there are two grounds at least on which as important a place may be claimed for him as for any sovereign who has reigned during the Christian era. What he did as the founder of the complex political system which exists among all civilized nations down to the present day, and what he did as the first Christian emperor, had results of the most enduring and far reaching kind. It belongs to the historian of the empire to give a detailed account of the elaborate scheme he devised by which the civil functions of the state were separated from the military, and both from the spiritual,the very idea of such distinctions having been previously unknown. The empire he by such means revived, though in the East it lasted a thousand years, was never again so strong as it was in his own hands; but the importance of his scheme consisted in this that it gave to empire itself, regarded as a system of government, a new structure and a new power which still survive in the political constitutions of the various nations of Europe. As to Christianity the historically significant fact is not his personal acceptance of it. It is rather that by his policy as a statesman he endowed the new religion for the first time with that instrument of worldly power which has made it-whether for good or for evil or for both is a subject of much discussion-the strongest social and political agent that affects the destinies of the human race.

The chief early sources for the life of Constantine are Eusebius, De Vita Constantini, which is strongly partial from the Christian standpoint of its author, and Zosimus, Historia, lib. ii., which is tinged by Pagan prejudice. Of secondary importance are Eutropius, Aurelius Victor, Lactantius De Mortibus Persecutorum, and the Panegyrici Veteres, vi.-x. The most valuable modern sources are Manso's Leben Constantins des Grossen (1817), Burckhardt's Die Zeit Constantins des Grossen (1853), and Broglie's L'Église et l'empire (W. B., S.)

romain du IVe siècle.

CONSTANTINE, a Roman soldier who, in the time of Honorius, in the 5th century A.D., rose to the dignity of emperor of Gaul, Spain, and Britain, but was finally. conquered and put to death by Honorius. See ROMAN HISTORY.

CONSTANTINE VII., FLAVIUS L'ORPHYROGENITUS (905-959), emperor of the East, author, and patron of literature, born in 905 A.D., was the only son of Leo VI. The Eastern Church sanctioned no marriage beyond the second, and when Leo, being childless by three wives, had a son by his concubine Zoe, his attempt to legitimize his wife and his son was inflexibly resisted by the Patriarch Nicholas, and his will was only carried out at the expense of excommunication. These circumstances were probably the reason why the name Porphyrogenitus, "born in the purple," i.e., in the purple chamber in which the empresses were confined, was, while applicable to all the emperors, emphatically applied to Constantine VII. When Constantine was only six years old Leo died, leaving him under the guardianship of his uncle Alexander; but Alexander also died in the next year; and Romanus Lecapenus, the chief admiral, supported by Zoe, was appointed colleague to Constantine, and held all real power till 944, when he was forced by his sons to entera monastery.