separate portions of the Empire, and making Milan the capital of the northern half, with a government distinct from Rome. The old racial boundaries were thus restored, and on these lines were built up the many later schemes for the foundation of a Kingdom of Italy. And on these lines there rose within the new ecclesiastical empire which was shaping itself out of the ruins of the old Roman system, an episcopal dominion extending over all Lombardy, and virtually independent of the Church of Rome. Many centuries were to pass, and fierce struggles to take place, before the Church of Milan was brought into subjection to the Papal See. This work of unification, accomplished chiefly by the potent mind of Gregory VII. in the eleventh century, in association with a growing instinct of nationality in the Milanese people themselves, was one of the most important steps in the process by which the various and alien elements of the great Lombard city were converted into a component part of the Italian nation. We cannot pause to search into the origins of the city in that obscure antiquity which Italian legend fills with the figures of diluvian and Trojan heroes, on an equal plane of remoteness, or to inquire closely into the mystery of her name, _Mediolanum_, as it is in the Latin tongue, whence by derivation—influenced, doubtless, by the sweet appellation _Mailand_, Land of May, which her green refreshing aspect suggested to her Teutonic invaders—it has become Milano. The simplest and most generally accepted explanation of the name is that it is a bastard word, between Latin and Teutonic, signifying the Middle Land, and suggested by the city’s central position in the Plain. We must take up our story at the beginning of that barbarian inrush through the yielding barriers of the Empire, which by mingling the vigour of new blood with the effete products of Roman civilisation, generated the travail of mediæval Italy, and out of that travail a nation. Milan had already a great past, closely bound up with the vicissitudes of the later Empire. From Diocletian and Constantine downwards she was honoured almost constantly by the presence of emperors. Julian was proclaimed Cæsar within her walls. Many edicts of Constantius were published there, Valentinian made his residence in the city, and there Theodosius spent long periods, and there died and was buried. The Empress Justina and her young son, Valentinian II., had their seat in Milan, and the slothful and degenerate Honorius ruled from its palace the Empire of the West, till frightened out by the Goths. The wealth and luxury of the city in the fourth century, her culture, her innumerable fine houses, her magnificent walls, built by Maximian, her circus, temples, theatres, baths, are celebrated in a famous epigram by the Latin poet Ausonius, who proclaims her the paragon of Rome.