represented, secured in one alliance all the bishops of the West. Nor must we forget that the Throne of Peter acknowledged by those bishops as the source of their common faith, the crown of the episcopate, was likewise regarded by the Arian rulers themselves as the great throne of justice, above the sway of local jealousies and subordinate jurisdictions. It represented to their eyes the fabric of Roman law, the wonderful creation of centuries, which the northern conquerors were utterly unable to emulate, and made them feel how inferior brute force was to civil wisdom and equity. In the constitution of the Visigothic kingdom of Spain from the time of Rechared, when it became Catholic, we see the first fruits of the Church's beneficent action on the northern invaders. The barbarian monarchy from its original condition of a military command in time of war, directing a raid of the tribe or people upon its enemies, becomes a settled rule, at the head of estates which meet in annual synod, and in which bishops and barons sit side by side. Government reposes on the peaceable union of the Two Powers. In process of time this sort of political order was established everywhere throughout the West, by the same action and influence of the Church. In the Roman empire the supreme power had been in its origin a mandate conferred by the citizens of a free state on one of their number for the preservation of the commonwealth. The notion of dynastic descent was wanting to it from the beginning. But the power which Augustus had received in successive periods of ten years passed to his successors for their life. Still they were rather life-presidents with royal power than kings. And it may be noticed that in that long line no blessing seemed to rest on the succession of a son to his father; much, on the contrary, on the adoption of a stranger of tried capacity guided by the choice of the actual ruler. But in the lapse of centuries the imperial power had become absolute. Especially in the successors of Constantine, and in the city to which he had given his name and chosen for the home of his empire, not a shadow of the old Roman freedom remained. One after another the successful general or the adventurer in some court intrigue supplanted or murdered a predecessor, and ascended the throne, but with undiminished prerogatives. Great was the contrast in all the new kingdoms at whose birth the influence of the Church presided. There the kings all sat by family descent, in which, however, was involved a free acceptance on the part of their people. The bishops who had had so large a part in the foundation of the several kingdoms had a recognised part in their future government. Holding one faith, and educated in the law of the Romans, and joined on to the preceding ages by their mental culture as well as their belief, they contributed to these kingdoms a stability and cohesion which were wanting to the Teuton invaders in themselves. They incessantly preached peace as a