The history of Rome, as all the world knows, is the history of a city which grew into an Empire. It grew in truth into a twofold, perhaps a more than twofold Empire. Out of the village on the Palatine sprang the Rome of the Cæsars and the Rome of the Pontiffs. From Rome came the language, the theology, the code of law, which have had such an undying effect on the whole European world. Amidst all changes, the city itself has been always clothed with a kind of mysterious and superstitious charm, and its possession has carried with it an influence which common military and political considerations cannot always explain. And from the Old Rome on the Tiber many of these attributes passed--some were even heightened in passing--to the new Rome on the Bosporos. From the days of Constantine till now, no man has ever doubted that, in the very nature of things, Constantinople, in whatever hands, must be the seat of empire. To Western eyes this seems mainly the result of her unrivalled geographical situation; over large regions of the East the New Rome wields the same magic influence which in the West has been wielded by the Old. _The_ City,[42] the City of the Cæsars, is in Christian eyes the one great object to be won; in Mahometan eyes it is the one great object to be kept. By the Bosporos, as by the Tiber, it is the city which has grown into the Empire, which has founded it, and which has sustained it. Now of the other capitals of Europe--the capitals of the more modern states--one alone can claim to have been, in this way, the creator of the state of which it is now the head. Berlin, Madrid, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Saint Petersburg, are simply places chosen in later times, for reasons of caprice or convenience, as administrative centres of states which already existed. Vienna has grown from the capital of a Duchy into the capital of something which calls itself an Empire; but Vienna, as a city, has had nothing to do with the growth of that so-called Empire. London may fairly claim a higher place than any of the cities of which we have spoken. It was only by degrees, and after some fluctuations, that London, rather than Winchester, came to be permanently acknowledged as the capital of England. London won its rank, partly by virtue of an unrivalled military and commercial position, partly as the reward of the unflinching patriotism of its citizens in the Danish wars. But London in no way formed England, or guided her destinies. The history of London is simply that the city was found to be the most fitting and worthy head of an already existing kingdom. But Paris has been what London has been, and something more. Paris, like London, earned her pre-eminence in Gaul by a gallant and successful resistance to the Scandinavian enemy. It was the great siege of Paris in the ninth century which made Paris the chief among the cities of Gaul, and its Count the chief among the princes of Gaul. Its position first