“Angles!” exclaimed he; “they are handsome enough to be ’angels,’ and they should certainly be Christians.” So he sent some missionaries to England to convert the English; to change Angles to Angels. So at last the English, too, became Christians. 41 Nightfall It was 500 o’clock by History Time. Night was coming on. The Dark Ages had begun. At least, that is what people call it now. But people didn’t call it so then. Crazy people don’t think they are crazy. Ignorant people don’t think they are ignorant. So the Dark Ages didn’t think they were dark. The ignorant Teutons were ruling over the pieces of the Western Empire. They couldn’t read; they couldn’t write. They didn’t know much except to fight. They didn’t know ’twas dark as night. At Constantinople, however, a Roman was still ruling over the Eastern Empire. This Roman was named Justinian. Now, up to this time there had been a great many rules or laws by which the people were governed. But there were so many of these rules and they were so mixed up that one law would tell you you could do one thing and another would tell you you couldn’t. It was as if your mother said you could stay up till nine o’clock to-night and your father said you must go to bed at eight. It was hard for people to tell, therefore, what one must do and what one must not do. In order to untangle this snarl, Justinian had a set of laws made for the government of his people, and many of these were so good and so just that they are still the law to-day. If you notice that Justinian begins with “Just,” this will help you to remember that he was the one who made _just_ laws. Another thing Justinian did that has lasted to the present time. He built in Constantinople a very beautiful church called Santa Sophia. Though it is no longer a church, it is still standing after all these years and is a beautiful sight to see. Still another thing he did which you could never guess. It had nothing to do with war or law or buildings. Travelers from the Far East, where China now is, had brought back tales of a wonderful caterpillar that wound itself up with a fine, thin thread over a mile long, and they told stories of how the Chinese unwound this thread and wove it into cloth of the finest and smoothest kind. This thread, as you might guess, was called silk, and the caterpillar that made it was called the silkworm. People in Europe had seen this beautiful silk cloth, but how it was made had been a mystery--a secret. They thought it so wonderfully beautiful that it was supposed to have been made by fairies or elves or even sent down from heaven. Justinian found out about these caterpillars and had men bring these silkworms into Europe so that his people also might make silk cloth and have silk ribbons and fine silk garments, and therefore we give him the honor of starting the manufacture of silk in Europe.