vagaries of our own enlightened age. There may very possibly have been better feelings in him which inclined him towards Christianity, and we can quite believe that he thought he was putting himself on what was deservedly the winning side. But how far his Christianity was thoroughly genuine it is hard to say. He may have thought that it was on the whole good for the world, and that the time was ripe for a change, but he had scarcely strong enough convictions, we should suppose, to make him feel the immense moral worth and permanent value of the new religion. He has, perhaps, been sometimes judged by too high a standard because he professed Christianity and presided at the general Council of Nice. In many of his notions it is certain that he was thoroughly pagan, though he did what he could outwardly to discourage paganism. To call him a saint looks almost like a wilful untruth. To call him "great" makes us prefer to think of what he did rather than of what he was. The year 324 B.C., however, in which Byzantium became the seat of empire, and was henceforth to be known as the city of Constantine, was assuredly a great epoch in the world's history.
If Constantine cannot be strictly said to have founded a new city, he at least established a new capital, and inaugurated a new order of things, which in many of its features was to last for more than eleven centuries. He wished to be regarded by posterity as its founder, and in obedience to ancient custom he went through a solemn ceremonial, in which paganism and Christianity were strangely blended. In his hands he is said to have
