day he sat and looked into the changing scene outside, and in his own quaint moralizing thoughts, the boy remembered other changes in things and people; for ten long years this pale-faced sickly child had lain always in that lounge chair near the window; he had seen the spring leaves come upon the trees, the tinycrown heads peeping above ground, the flocks of swallows winging their way from far countries; and, again, the long warm summer days when the lattice window lay open, and the breath of flowers and new-mown hay filled the room with a sweet scent; and still the long autumn months, the leafless trees, the faded flowers, and the dull leaden skies raining tears. And after all this, the cold harsh winter, when the trees and shrubs and garden-palings were shrouded with snow; when the harsh March winds drove angrily against his tiny window, when his cough and pain grew worse; and, like the changing seasons, came other new things, other old things passing away; new baby voices had wailed their entrance into the world in distant rooms, and, as the years went by, those little mortals had come to be familiar beings in his home-their voices mingled in the music of the laughing, singing, child-voices which broke the stillness of his solitude, their pattering feet over the boards and on the gravel, their round, rosy, wondering young faces, were all customary, familiar things with him; but how was it that while these baby forms grew and strengthened, while their voices sounded stronger, year after year, their footsteps firmer and surer, he never changed? No new life or strength came to him. He had seen a coffin borne slowly through the snow; the one human being, who, unlike the others, had never seemed to change the one kind strong nature which had sympathized with his weakness, the softhearted, hard-working father, for whose coming home, evening after evening, he had looked forward joy, fully-the change had come to him in another way, that great mysterious change which comes to all in turn; and through his lattice window the little lonely boy had seen that one, strong, true spirit carried away on its long journey to "the

undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns." And this great sorrow weighed upon him, as few sorrows ever weigh upon children, leaving a lasting impression. He had watched the sober train winding slowly along the white road in the cold morning, little snow flakes feathering over the black coffin, and he had stretched out his two thin tiny hands and cried-"Good-bye! oh, father, father! good-bye!" with such a world of yearning, despairing sorrow in his heart, as only the weak and helpless can ever feel. For so he parted from all trace or sight of that which he had loved; he could not, like the other children, wander off in the still sweet evenings to the quiet, lonely churchyard which he had often heard of but never seen; he could not steal away to that quiet place all by himself, and lay his head down in the long summer grass, above a mound of earth, and whisper, "Speak a little," and fancy that the dead heard, that he, who was "but clay and ashes," knew and heard; that while he so knelt and pressed his lips to the cold silent ground, he was near to his beloved-he was with him undivided in death.

No such comfort had this lonely little boy, but yet he had consolation, truer, more perfect consolation still; he looked away to the golden city of the sunset, and he thought, “He is there." He remembered all that Ethel had told him of that city with the jasper gates, and streets of light, and he thought, "He is there." He thought of her words when she told him that in that promised land such things as sorrow and sickness and parting are unknown; it was of that blessed city that she had spoken when she said that there "the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest," there the crooked are made straight, and the sick whole, and that there the chosen of the Lord dwell in peace for ever and ever. And he thought still, "He is there." And Ethel's comforting words gave him a hope, and when he so thought of that promised "land of the hereafter;" he told himself, “And I shall go to him although he cannot return to me."

Little Freddy! your sweet pale face, and sad eyes, your child-voice, and gentle loving words, your pre

sence is ever with me; although yours is one of the dream-lives which belong to dead years, although "the angel with the amaranthine wreath," who whispers "a word that has a sound like death," has long ago gathered you in his arms and carried you beyond the "home of the dying sun" into that garden of Paradise, where among the reapers' flowers

you bloom now and forever. Yet, little Freddy, as the years go by, as other children grow up round me into men and women, I still have you with me, a child always; I still look into your young innocent eyes; I still hear your pretty childish words; and you never change; you will still remain a child to the end! and "of such is the kingdom of heaven."

THE adoption or creation of a system of law is the starting-point in the real' history of every nation. Only at that point does history become worthy of record, and therefore possible.

Modern research has discovered that languages may exist before civilization. Many kingdoms have had fixed languages of whose history we have no records until they adopted some system of law. That point, therefore, is clearly the starting-point of a new period-a period of real, practical, historic existence in the career of every nation.

The successive periods of history are thus distinguished from the time when the nationality of the Jews began under Moses to the successive developments of Greek and Roman culture, all, as far as history is concerned, start from this point; so was it when the new nations fell into their separate forms after the breaking up of the Roman Empire and its division amongst the barbarian rulers; the concrete nationality of each new kingdom was based upon the assumption of a system of law.

In the middle of the sixth century an event took place which perhaps more than any other has had a vital influence upon the social, political, and moral life of every European kingdom. That was the collection under the auspices of the Emperor Justinian of what remained in those times of the ancient Roman law as a legacy to those new nations just consolidating themselves in the two divisions of the Roman Empire.

It has been clearly shown that the

laws adopted by the Visigoths, the Ostrogoths, the Burgundians, the Franks, were nothing more than modifications of this body of ancient Roman law;* and in the twelfth century, the age when learning was revived by the general foundation of universities in different parts of Europe, law became one of the chief studies; and the system of law so studied was this same Roman law as revived at the University of Bologna, and thence promulgated to all the sister institutions. Nor was its influence confined to the state policy of the rising nations. It exerted an influence upon Christianity-that is, upon Christianity not as a religion, but as an organized institution; for we shall endeavour to show hereafter that the canon law, when it was reduced to a complete body, drew its forms from those of the Roman civil law, and was to the discipline of the Church just what the civil law was to that of the state; and that as the civil law had its digest, code, novels, and institutions, so the canon law was arranged in similar forms, and had its decrees or decretals, Clementines, extravagants, and institutions.

We shall first give a brief review of the early state of Roman law to the time of Justinian, and then trace its development down to the point where it became the civil law of modern nations.

The earliest form of Roman government was that of a king chosen by election, who was assisted by a senate and general assembly of the people.

The members of the senate, first 100 (afterwards increased to 300), consisted of nobles and persons of rank, wealth, and talent. The chief magistrates were elected in the general assembly of the people, and that body had the right of rejecting or confirming the measures prepared by the senate. The laws passed in this way by the king through the senate, with the consent of the people, were collected in a body in the reign of Tarquin the Proud by Sextus Papirius, and styled from his name the Jus Civile Papirianum.

Then came the republic, with two consuls chosen annually by the people from the patrician order, and about the year 450 B.C., another modification was made in the government by the election of the decemvirs.

According to Livy these first-chosen decemvirs sent three legates to Athens, who, besides general orders, had a special one to collect what would be likely to be useful for a regeneration of the Roman law. On their return they compiled ten sets of laws, and a year afterwards two more, which were inscribed on tables and placed in the Forum. These laws are mentioned by the Roman writers as the Laws of the Twelve Tables, and are much praised by Cicero, Livy, and Tacitus.

From fragments which have been preserved we can glean that they enacted severe measures against insolvent debtors, who might be imprisoned, kept in chains, and even sold into slavery. Marriage was prohibited between patricians and plebeians. Slander in the shape of lampoons was visited by forfeiture of civil rights. An appeal against all sentences might be made, and no citizen could be tried for his life save by the Comitia Centuriata.

As necessity required, there was during the republic a further gradual development of law. The people assembled in the Campus Martius by Centuries, and the magistrates pro

*

posed new laws which were received or rejected by the general voice, such laws being called "Leges Populi," and the assembly the Comitia Centuriata. A law might be proposed by the Tribunes and be discussed at an assembly of the tribes, when, if accepted, it was binding on the state, and bore the name of the proposer, such as Cassia Lex, Sempronia Lex, Licinia Lex.

Originally the power of the senate was limited to the passing a veto or accepting the laws which had been approved by the people; but during the republic, although the power of the people was enlarged, still the authority of the senate was respected, and few laws were passed in opposition to it.

Under the Empire a change came over the jurisdiction. It was concentrated in the emperor, who, after a time, when his position became firm, issued his Imperial Constitutions, which were of three kinds : edicts or general laws; rescripts or replies made by the emperor to those who consulted him; and decrees or judgments pronounced by him in cases, or appeals from former decisions brought before him. These decisions, however, were not completely arbitrary on the part of the emperor. Some noted lawyers were generally consulted, who formed what was called the "Auditorium Principis."

The fifth century was a great age for jurisprudence; it was the age of Pomponius, Cervidius Scævola, Gaius Ulpian, and Papinian. Commentaries were being continually written, and digests compiled.

In the year 438, Theodosius directed a number of lawyers, under the supervision of Antiochus, to collect the constitutions from the time of Constantine to his own. This was called the Theodosian code, and was at once adopted by the Western Empire under Valentinian II.

We pass on to the next century, when, under the guidance of Justinian, the whole body of Roman

law then in use, was to be collected and settled for ever. And when we consider that in this body of Roman law thus arranged lay the germ of the legislation of modern Europe, we can scarcely overestimate the importance of that event. The first step taken was the selection of ten jurist-consults, who, under the presidency of Tribonian, an eminent civilian, were to collect the imperial constitutions that were extant, and arrange them in order. Fourteen months were spent over this work, and the codex, as it was called, was published in the year 529.

The next year the emperor appointed sixteen qualified persons to make a collection of extracts from the works of all the most noted commentators and writers on Roman law, which selections were to be called the pandects. In three years the task was completed: and we are informed that thirty-nine of the best authors were ransacked, whose works comprised about 2,000 treatises, the principal selections being made from those of Ulpian. The pandects were divided into fifty books, and each book into titles.

Shortly after the issue of the pandects, in the year 534, Justinian ordered four noted jurists to revise the original codex issued in 529, to harmonize it with the new digest. This code was finished the same year, and published under the title of "Codex Repetita Prelectionis."

The year before the revision of the original codex, Justinian caused two noted lawyers, Dorotheus and Theophilus, to compile the celebrated work which bears his name, "The Institutions." This, like the others, was done under the superintendence of Tribonian. It was a hand-book of the Roman law, consisting of four books, divided into 199 titles, and it remains to us as a precious treasure of legal lore.

Another work of Justinian was "The Novels," being a collection of ordinances.

This body of Roman law, as it has come down to us, is in the form as revised and issued at Bologna in the twelfth century, and called the "Corpus Juris Civilis."

We have already noticed that the Roman law was really never extinct, even through the dense night of the

Dark Ages it formed the whole legislation of the Western Empire before its decline, and afterwards was assimilated into that of the Gothic, Burgundian, Lombardic, and Carlovingian kingdoms; so that the traditional story of a long extinction of the Roman law, until a mysterious discovery of a copy of the pandects in the city of the Amalfi, during the twelfth century, may be abandoned. Its revival began in the earliest Italian cities, but principally in the school of Irnerius, established at Bologna, 1120.

The occupation of the early jurists was confined to "glossing"--a species of literary labour which requires a few words of explanation, as it was the first step towards original composition. The earlier form of glossing was confined to the mere interlinear placing of explanations of foreign or difficult words of the text, then whole phrases were interpolated, until at last it developed itself into an interlinear commentary upon the entire text. In the ninth century it was applied to the Scriptures, and later, after the revival of law studies, to the MSS. of the codex, pandects, &c. These glosses were collected, revised, and published in a form by Accursius in or about the year 1220. His collection, enriched by many original observations, though full of gross errors and anachronisms, yet became the standard work on Roman law; the earlier glosses were discarded, everybody bought or borrowed "Accursius." His collection was not merely glossed, but the greatest diligence had been used to condense and purify the text.

So great an impetus did this work of Accursius give to the use of glosses, that they were at length regarded as more valuable than texts.

This body of law, such as it was, collected and revised by the school of Bologna, was introduced at Oxford by Vacarius, through the medium of Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury. We shall hereafter endeavour to describe its career at that university, and in the country generally; but we must at this point turn our attention to that other phase of early mediæval culture, the canon law.

An apostolical authority has been claimed for the canon law, based upon the collection of apostolical

canons, asserted to have been decreed by the apostles. They are contained in a codex, consisting of eight books, comprising eighty-five canons, the last of which settling the authority of the Old and New Testament speaks of "The Acts of us the Apostles." It is quite certain that many of them could not have been passed until two or three centuries after the true apostles, as they refer to customs of which they were ignorant. Hierarchical efforts are frequent which do not indicate apostolical authority. It is thought that Eusebius, Athanasius, and Epiphanius refer to them, but the fathers of the first three centuries are silent concerning them. Had they been apostolical, they would have most surely been incorporated in the canon of the New Testament. The question has been thoroughly investigated by Otto Karsten Krabbe, who endeavours to assign the date to each canon, and he comes to the conclusion that they were enacted at early periods, and subsequently to the fourth century were collected and published as a code.

It has been suggested that the canon was developed out of the civil law, but although in later times it borrowed much from the civil codes, yet we shall be able to show that it sprung quite naturally from the Church to which it belonged.

In the very earliest ages, after the rise of Episcopacy, two or three dioceses were accustomed to meet together to make decrees and canons by vote, to which, in addition to those of general councils they applied in disputed matters. For instance, in the provincial diocese of Asia, Pontus, the East, there were several canons published by the Councils of Ancyra, Neocæsarea, Gangrena, Antioch, and Laodicea. Ultimately all the eastern bishops were bound by the Council of Constantinople.

But the Council of Nice is the point from which the history of canon law starts. After that great assembly had dispersed, all the extant decrees and canons were collected, revised, arranged, and with those of

Nice, published in a body called the Codex Canonum, or by the Latin Church Corpus Canonum. There is no satisfactory evidence as to who was the compiler of this codex: it has been, however, attributed to Stephen of Ephesus. The earliest form contains 138 canons. It was increased at the time of the Council of Chalcedon (451) to 207 canons, by the addition of 25 of the Council of Antioch, 7 of Constantinople. 8 of Ephesus, and 29 of Chalcedon. A century after this code was confirmed by the Emperor Justinian, in the 131st Novel, cap. 1.

The African Church, though using the general code, still compiled one for itself, more adapted to its peculiar wants. This was composed of the canons of the Council of Hippo, the first six Councils of Carthage, the seventh to the fifteenth, and those of the Council of Miletum. In the first instance this code, consisting of of 138 canons, was written in Latin, confirmed by the Council of Carthage, 419, and then translated into Greek, when it was not only inserted in the code of the Oriental Church, but received by Dionysius Exiguus into the "Codex Canonum" of the Roman Church.+

The codex of the Roman Church contained also the Apostolical canons, and those of the Eastern Councils, translated into Latin, in addition to the decrees of several Popes, such as Siricius, Innocent, Zosimus, Boniface I., Celestine, Leo I., Hilary, Simplicius, Hormisda, and Gregory.

Its literary history may be thus summarized-Leo IV. and others have appealed to this code. Cresconius, an African bishop, who lived about 690, made an abridgment of it in 300 canons, omitting many canons of councils and decrees of Popes. Dionysius Exiguus, in the sixth century, under Thedoric, King of the Goths, compiled a code by translating the Greek canons into Latin, at the instigation of Stephen, Bishop of Salona. Soon afterwards an additional collection was made and appended to this, containing the decrees of the Popes from the time of

Justellus Præf. ad Biblioth. Juris.