site to argue the strong probability of its having been, perhaps long before Priam’s time, a great seat of empire, trade, and culture.  If one dug in Constantinople itself, I dare say one should find the remains of cities that had been mighty.  Events of the last seven years have shown how difficult it is to attack, how easy to defend.  Since its foundation by Constantine it has been besieged nine times, and only twice taken by foreign enemies.  When the Turks took it, they had already overflowed all the surrounding territories; and they were the strongest military power in the world, and the Byzantines were among the weakest.—­So it stood there in the fifth century to hold back the hordes of northern Europe from the rich lands of Asia Minor and Syria:  a strength much beyond the power of those barbarians to tackle; while all Europe west-ward was being trampled to death.

Further, the peace imposed on Jovian by Shah Sapor in 364 lasted, with one small intermission of war, and that successful for the Romans, for a hundred and thirty-eight years; during which time, also, the powers that were at Constantinople ruled mainly wisely and with economy.  They were generally not the reigning emperor, but his wife or mother or aunt, or someone like that.

So then, in the year 400 we find the world in this condition:—­ western Europe going

     “With hideous ruin and combustion down
     To bottomless perdition;”

—­the Eastern Empire weakish, but fairly quiet and advancing towards prosperity:  in pralaya certainly, and so to remain for thirteen decades (395 to 527) from the death of Theodosius to the accession of Justinian;—­Persia, under an energetic and intelligent Yazdegird II (399 to 420), a strongish military power:  Yazdegird held his barons well in hand, and even made a brave effort to broaden the religious outlook; he tried to stop the persecution of the Christians, and allowed them to organize a national church, the Nestorian;—­India, still and until 456, at the height of her glory:—­there is a continual rise as you go eastward, with the climax in India.  The next step is China; to which now after all these centuries we return.

As we have seen, since the Hans fell there had been a confusion of ephemeral kingdoms jostling and hustling each other across the stage of time:  there had been too much history altogether; too many wars, heroes, adventures and wild escapades.  Life was too riotous and whirling an affair:  China seemed to have sunk into a mere Europe, a kind of Kilkenny Christendom.  Not that culture ever became extinct; indeed, through this whole period the super-refinement that had grown up under the Hans persisted side by side with the barbarian excursions and alarms.  It was not, as in Rome, a case of major pralaya:  men did not resort to savagery; literary production seems never to have run quite so sterile.  But things were in the melting-pot, centripetalism had gone; little dynasties flared up quickly and expired; and amidst all those lightning changes there was no time for progress, or deep concerns, or for the Soul of the Black-haired People to be stirring to manifestation.