Another act that does honour to the reign of Theodosius II. is the codification of the laws enacted since the time of Constantine the Great. The compilation took nine years to be made, and is known as the Theodosian Code. How great a need it supplied is quaintly set forth in the preamble to the Code. “The chaos presented by the state in which the laws were found was such that few persons had an adequate knowledge of the subject, even though their faces have grown pale from late lucubrations.” “When we consider,” to quote Professor Bury’s translation, “the enormous multitude of books, the divers modes of process, and the difficulty of legal cases, and further the hugeness of imperial constitutions, which, hidden as it were under a veil of gross mist and darkness, precludes men’s intellects from gaining a knowledge of them, we feel that we have met a real need of our age, and, dispelling the darkness, have given light to the laws by a short compendium.” [Illustration: CARPET WAREHOUSE The interior of an old Khan now used as a show-room for antique rugs and carpets.] On 23rd December of the year 438, the Code compiled at Constantinople was presented to the Senate of Rome and recognised by that body. It was a curious reversal of the part which the elder city had acted in the world. The teacher had become the pupil. Or is it truer to say, the pupil then did homage to the teacher? The Theodosian Code was superseded by the Code of Justinian the Great, but the earlier compilation retains the honour of being the first great legal instrument to confer upon New Rome the distinction of becoming the tribunal which has guided the most civilised nations of the world into the paths of righteousness and justice in the dealings between man and man. Into the religious controversies which agitated Constantinople while Theodosius II. was upon the throne, this is not the place to enter. But Constantinople would not have been itself without a hard theological problem to discuss, if not to solve, and we do not know the soul, so to speak, of Constantinople unless we recognise what may be termed the religious temperament of the city. At a period, indeed, when a great religious revolution in the faith of men had taken place, and men were called to make clear to themselves what exactly they believed, and how their beliefs were to be harmonised with their philosophy and the general principles of reason, religious questions could not fail to be prominent everywhere. They were as naturally prominent in the fourth and fifth centuries of our era, when Christianity became the religion of the State, as they were at the time of the Reformation. But Constantinople made these questions peculiarly its own. It could not well be otherwise where the seat of the chief bishop of the Church in the East was found, and in the capital of a Government which concerned itself in these debates as matters of political importance. Nor can it be denied that in