CONSECRATION has retired through wounds or infirmity, the other is exempt. Culprits and felons are not allowed to enlist. A similar law of universal service has existed in Prussia since 1813, and in 1887 it was made even more severe than formerly throughout the whole German empire. Russia, Italy, and all the chief European nations have also adopted this method of recruiting. In the United Kingdom a form of conscription was created by the Ballot Act of 1860 which provides for all males over 5 feet 2 inches between the ages of eighteen and thirty being called upon to serve in the militia, but is held in abeyance by an annual act of parliament. In the Channel Islands, service in the militia is always compulsory for all natives, tradesmen, and owners of real property, who are physically fit, from sixteen to forty-five years of age. Breaches of discipline are punished by the civil magistrate by fine or in.prisonment. Conservatoire, or CONSERVATORIUM (Ital. Italians to schools instituted for the purpose of conservatorio), forms of a name given by the advancing the study of music and maintaining its purity. In the earliest times these schools were hospitals; others, again, partly attached to benevolent institutions and were supported by opulent private individuals. They were origin. ally intended for foundlings, orphans, and the children of poor parents. Some trace their origin to St Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, in the 4th century, or St Leo, who flourished in the 5th. They The scholars, male and female, all received free were largely developed by Gregory the Great. board, lodging, and clothing, and were taught to sing and play. Extra boarders were also admitted on paying a fee. In Naples there were at one time four such schools, while in Consecration is the act of solemnly dedicating Venice there were four expressly for females. In a person or thing to the service of God. In the 1808 the Neapolitan conservatoires were reduced Jewish law, rites of this nature are frequently en- to one, under the name of Reale Collegio di Musica. Joined, the Levites and priests, the tabernacle and The Venetian conservatoires shared in the downaltar, &c. being specially dedicated or consecrated to fall of the Venetian republic. A new grand conGod; and analogous forms occur in most pagan servatoire was founded at Milan in 1808, which nations. Among Christians the word consecration still exists. In France the necessity of a school describes (1) the ordination of bishops. The for educating singers gave rise to the Ecole Royale Nicene Council (can. 4) requires the ceremony to be de Chant et de Declamation in 1784. During the performed by not less than three bishops. This French Revolution, in consequence of the scarcity rule is maintained by the Church of England. of instrumental musicians for the army, the govern Among Roman Catholics the pope may permitment decreed the erection of an Institut National consecration by one bishop and two priests. (2) de Musique in 1793, which was changed into the The hallowing of the elements in the eucharist, present establishment in 1795 under the name of by the words of institution according to Roman the Conservatoire de Musique. The yearly exCatholics and Anglicans; by the invocation of the penses of this conservatoire were fixed at 240,000 Holy Spirit according to the Greeks. (3) The dedi- francs, the number of masters was 125, and the cation of churches; first mentioned by Eusebius, pupils of both sexes amounted to 600. In 1802 Hist. Eccles. x. 3. The rites, originally very simple, the expense was reduced to 100,000 francs, with a have become long and elaborate in the Church of corresponding reduction in the number of masters Rome, though the present form is in substance as and pupils, but the original sum and number of old as the Sacramentary of St Gregory. In the pupils has now been nearly reached again; the English Church the bishop chooses his own form. professors are at present 77 in number. The tuition That most generally used was drawn up by the is divided over more than seventy different classes, Anglican episcopate in 1712. In the American in which all pertaining to music and also declamaEpiscopal Church a form was appointed in 1799. tion is taught by the best masters. The elemen(4) The benediction of abbots and abbesses accordtary works published by this conservatoire for all ing to forms prescribed in the Roman Pontifical. instruments are known over the whole world, and it It is usually performed by a bishop. (5) The con- possesses a library and museum of the first importsecration of altars, chalices, and patens by the ance. The post of director has been held by an bishop with the chrism or hallowed oil. The con- illustrious succession-Cherubini, 1822 42; Auber, secration of altars is mentioned by councils of the 1842 71; and then, M. Ambroise Thomas. Other 6th century, that of chalices and patens in the important conservatoires are those of Brussels Gregorian Sacramentary. (founded 1833), Prague, Vienna (1816), and the great conservatorium of Leipzig, established in 1842 under the auspices of Mendelssohn; also those of Cologne, Munich, Stuttgart, Berlin, &c. Royal College of Music in London, which received a charter in 1882, is designed to rival the conservaConsent is the foundation of all contracts and toires of the Continent. There are several of note legal obligations. The doctrine that the free conin the United States, especially the Boston Consent of the parties bound, and not the will of any servatory of Music (1867), the New England earthly legislator, or the form in which that will is Conservatory of Music (1870), also in Boston, and expressed, constitutes the binding element in conthe Grand Conservatory of Music of the City of tracts, flows as an inevitable logical consequence New York (a corporation); and there are reputable from the doctrines of personal and political free-schools of music, termed conservatories, in almost dom. All that either civil or ecclesiastical author-all the principal cities. The name conservatoire ity can do is to ascertain, at the instance of one is used for other than musical schools in France. or other of the parties, whether consent has or has There is thus a Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers not been given. at Paris. Consecutive, a term in Music. In part writ ing consecutive octaves or consecutive fifths, according to the rules of harmony, are strictly forbidden, though there are many exceptions to this in modern music. Conservation of Energy. See ENERGY. Conservative, as applied to one of the two great parties in English politics, was first used by J. W. Croker in an article in the Quarterly for January 1830, and was by Macaulay in the Edin burgh for 1832 referred to as a new cant word.' The Conservators of the Peace, a title usually applied to knights elected in each shire from the 12th century onwards for the conservation of the peace. They were in fact the predecessors of the Justices of the Peace (q.v.), by whom they were superseded. Conservatory. See PLANT-HOUSE, Conserve. See PRESERVES. Considérant, VICTOR-PROSPER, a French Socialist, was born in 1808 at Salins, in the department of Jura. After being educated at the Poly. technic School of Paris, he entered the army, which, however, he soon left to promulgate the doctrines of the socialist Fourier. On the death of his master (1837), Considérant became the head of his school, and undertook the management of the Phalange, a review devoted to the spread of their opinions. Having gained the support of a young Englishman, Mr Young, who advanced the required sum of money, Considérant established, on a large estate in the department Eure et Loire, a socialist colony or Phalanstère; but the experiment failed, and with it the Phalange fell to the ground. Thereafter he continued to promote his views in the Démocratie Pacifique. Among his numerous writings, the chief is the Destinée Sociale, dedicated to Louis-Philippe. In 1849 Considérant was accused of high treason, and compelled to flee from France. In Texas he founded a socialist community, La Réunion, which flourished for a time, but has since come to nothing. Considérant returned to France in 1869. See FOURIER and SOCIALISM. Consideration, in Law, the thing given, or done, or abstained from by agreement with another, and in view of that other doing, giving, or abstaining from something. An obligation in; curred without consideration is, in England, termed voluntary, in Scotland gratuitous; if for consideration, it is so styled in England, but in Scotland it is called onerous. Considerations are divided in England into good and valuable, the former being affection for a near relative, the latter a pecuniary or other tangible benefit, or marriage. But good as distinguished from valuable' consideration has now no legal effect in England. There is no corresponding division in Scotland, but the fulfilment of a natural obligation, such as that of aliment, is often recognised as supporting a transaction which would otherwise be inoperative against creditors. In Scotland, however, there is, as a general rule, no need for consideration to make a contract valid, while in England no action lies for breach of a contract not under seal, unless there has been valuable consideration, and the courts never enforce specific performance of a gratuitous contract, even though it is under seal. This doctrine does not mean that consideration must be adequate in view of the court. But the excess of consideration is an important fact in the setting aside of obliga tion obtained by means of pressure or undue in fluence. The English doctrine of unconscionable bargains is not, however, recognised in Scotland. Where the consideration for an obligation totally fails, an action of repetition lies. There are some circumstances which, in both countries, warrant the setting aside of obligations without consideration, whether made by deed or not. In England they are void as against bond-fide purchasers, and void as against creditors where the grantor is indebted to such creditors at the time to the extent of insolvency. A similar rule to the latter, with respect to creditors generally, is established in Scotland by the Act 1696, chap. 5, and by 1621, chap. 18, without proof of insolvency when the deed is granted to a near relation, or a person in a confidential situation. As regards sales of land in Scotland, these are made on the faith of the records, and the first registered conveyance prevails And all obligations for which the consideration is illegal or immoral are in both countries void. In the United States, consideration in law has the same general signification as in England, and is subject to the saine general divisions, 'good' or CONSOLIDATION ACTS 'meritorious' and 'valuable.' A consideration is an essential element enforceable in law, and must be actual and expressed, or the instrument must be such as to bear evidence of a consideration. By common-law statutes re-enacted in the United States, negotiable paper and sealed instruments are declared to bear this evidence; but in some states by usage, and in others by statute, courts of equity are empowered to set aside these instruments for want of, or a failure of, a valid and legal consideration upon the ground that the instrument was executed upon a promise or stipulation not fulfilled. Consignment, in Mercantile Law, is the term applied to goods which are placed in the hands of an agent or factor for sale, or for some other specified purpose. If the consigner fails, the consignee has generally a lien on the unsold goods for advances; if the consigner has to pay bills granted by consignee for advances, he may generally get back his consignment so far as unsold. Christian church. Consistory (Lat. consistorium), properly a place of assembly, but in the later Latinity the word came to signify the particular place where the privy-council or cabinet of the Roman emperor met, and after the time of Diocletian and Constantine, the council itself. The form of the imperial consistory passed over into the early consistories; and the highest ecclesiastical court, The bishops established their composed only of cardinals (the College of Cardinals), which meets in the Vatican, under the presidency of the pope, to determine all such matters as the appointment of cardinals, archbishops, bishops, &c., still bears this name, as do also the private councils which the pope can call at his pleasure. The Protestant Church of Germany was induced to perpetuate the consistorial courts, principally because the episcopal authority passed into the hands of territorial princes not familiar with ecclesiastical affairs. The first Luth1542. The Lutheran consistories exercise a supereran consistory was established at Wittenberg in vision and discipline over religion and education, over the clergy and the schoolmasters, and examine the theological candidates on their trials for license and ordination. They have the regulation of divine worship, the administration of church property, and at an earlier period possessed a certain jurisdiction in regard to marriage.-In the French Protestant churches the consistory possesses a more restricted jurisdiction than in Germany. England the word is used to denote the court | Christian or spiritual court. Every archbishop and bishop has a consistorial court, held either in his cathedral or other convenient place, before his chancellor or commissary, for ecclesiastical causes, into the commissaryIn Scotland the consistorial courts have lapsed In Console (Fr.), in Architecture, a projection resembling a bracket, frequently in the form of the letter S, used to support cornices, or for placing busts, vases, or figures on. Consoles were often richly ornamented in the under part. The illustra tion, from Parker's Glossary, is from the palace of Diocletian at Spalatro. Consolidation Acts, acts of parliament which combine or consolidate into one general statute the enactments of several special measures, CONSOLS such as the Railways Clauses Consolidation Act, 1845, the Titles to Land Consolidation Act, 1868, &e. Consols, a contraction of Consolidated Annuities. In incurring the national debt, government borrowed money at different periods on special conditions, being generally the payment of an annuity of so much per cent. on the sum borrowed. Great confusion arose from the variety of stocks thus created, and it was thought expedient to consolidate them into one fund, kept in one account at the Bank of England. The Consolidated Annuities Act was passed in 1749-50, consolidation being completed in 1757. For consolidation of the Funded Debt subsequent to that period, see DEBT (NATIONAL). Consonance is a combination of notes which can sound together without the harshness produced by beats. See SOUND, MUSIC. an unlawful combination. Again, in proving a charge of conspiracy, the prosecution may begin by giving evidence of the existence of a general conspiracy, and such evidence may consist of acts of third parties with which the person accused had no connection. The judges also have exercised their own discretion in deciding whether the objects of a combination were contrary to good morals and public policy or not. But if juries and judges have not always exercised their discretion wisely, it is to be remembered that such discretion must of necessity form part of the law of conspiracy. Acts which are comparatively harmless when done by one or two persons may become intolerably oppressive when they are committed by a large number of persons acting in concert. See PLOT, SEDITION. Conspiracy Bill. See POLITICAL OFFENCES. Constable (Lat. constabulus), the title of an Consonant. See LETTERS. ancient officer, originally of high military rank, but Consort, literally, one who throws in his lot now generally an officer of the peace. The older with another. In English constitutional law, the writers, as Coke and Selden, fancifully derive the term is applied to the husband or wife of the word from koning-stapel, staff and stay of the king.' reigning sovereign, viewed not in a private but in It represents, however, the Latin comes stabuli, a public capacity, as participating to a certain 'count of the stable,' an officer who in the later limited extent in the prerogatives of sovereignty. Roman empire was at first charged with the care A queen-consort is specially so named in distinc- of the stables, and afterwards became captain of a tion from a queen-regnant, who holds the crown military force, and chief officer of the army. The in her own right, as Queen Elizabeth and Queen title was borrowed from the Romans by the Franks. | Victoria, and from a queen-dowager, the widow The Constable of France rose gradually in importof a king. A queen-consort is in all legal pro-ance from the comparatively modest position of an ceedings looked upon as a feme-sole, independent officer of the household, till at last he became ex of her husband's control, as if she were a single officio the commander-in-chief of the army in the woman. Coke gives as the reason for this that the absence of the monarch, the highest judge in mili common law would not have the king, whose care tary offences and in all questions of chivalry and s for public affairs, troubled with the domestic honour, and the supreme regulator and arbitrator concerns of his wife. The queen-consort has also a in all matters connected with tilts, tournaments, particular revenue and peculiar exemptions and and all martial displays. The office was suppressed privileges. One curious and ancient perquisite is by Louis XIII. in 1626. Under Napoleon, the conthat, when a whale, which is a royal fish, is taken stable was the fifth of the great dignitaries of the upon the coast, it by right should be divided be- empire. The office was again abolished on the tween the king and the queen, the head only being restoration of the Bourbons. But besides the the king's property, and the tail the queen's. The Constable of France, almost all the great vassals consort is in all respects a subject of the sovereign; of the crown had constables who filled analogous accordingly the husband of a queen-regnant is her offices at their minor courts. subject, and may be guilty of treason against her. Up to the year 1857 the husband of Queen Victoria possessed no distinctive English title, and no place in court ceremonial except such as was conceded to him by courtesy. In that year the title of PrinceConsort was conferred upon him by letters-patent. Conspiracy, a combination between two or more persons to perpetrate an unlawful act, or to do a lawful act by unlawful means. A person injured by conspiracy has an action at law for the damage done, as when a man is falsely indicted of a crime. In criminal law, conspiracy is a misde. meanour punishable by penal servitude. Few things are left so doubtful in law as the point when a combination for a common object becoines unlaw-made hereditary in the noble family of Erroll, ful Formerly, combinations by workmen to raise the rate of wages were conspiracy, but this is no longer so; and till lately, prevailing judicial opinion was that a trade-union was a conspiracy in restraint of trade.' See COMBINATION. Conspiracy was defined in the reign of Edward I. by the Ordinance of Conspirators, which was aimed at persons binding themselves together to lav false indictments, and otherwise to obstruct the course of justice. But the word came in time to have a wider meaning, and almost every combina tion to do a criminal or even an unlawful act is now aL indictable conspiracy (see COMBINATION). The, vagueness of the law has placed considerable power in the hands of juries. Almost any act, however innocent, may be treated as a crime if the jury choose to impute it to some motive connected with | | The Lord High Constable of England appears shortly after the Conquest as the seventh great officer of the crown, and formerly a judge in the Court of Chivalry. The office went by inheritance to the Earls of Hereford and Essex, and afterwards in the line of Stafford. When Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, was attainted in 1521, the office became forfeit, and has never since been granted except for a special ceremony of state, as when it was conferred on the Duke of Wellington for the coronation of Queen Victoria. The High Constable of Scotland was an officer very similar to the Constable of France and England. The office, now purely honorary, in 1314 was and is reserved both in the Treaty of Union and in the statute of George II. abolishing hereditary jurisdictions, The High Constable is by birth the first subject in Scotland after the bloodroyal. The governor of a royal castle was often called Constable; see TOWER OF LONDON. The Constables of the Hundred, and of the Vill, were the predecessors of the high and petty constables of later times. The statute of Winchester (1285) ordains that in every hundred or franchise there shall be chosen two constables, to make the view of armour, and to see to the conservation of the peace. The petty constable exercised similar functions within the narrower limits of the township or parish, and was subordinate to the high constable of the hundred. The high constables were formerly appointed by the courts leet of the franchise or hundred over which they preside; or, in default of such appointment, by the justices at their special sessions. An act of 1869 made provision for the abolition of the office of high constable throughout England and Wales. The appointment of petty constables is made by the justices, who are directed annually to require from the overseers of parishes a list of those within the parish qualified and liable to serve as constables. When not specially exempted, every ablebodied man, between twenty-five and fifty-five years of age, resident in the parish, and rated to the poor, or a tenant to the value of £4 per annum, must be included in this list.-SPECIAL CONSTABLES are persons sworn in by the justices to preserve the peace, or to execute warrants on special occasions, as in 1848 on account of the Chartists, and in 1887 on account of the unemployed' riots in Trafalgar Square, London. Any two justices of the peace who shall learn that a tumult, riot, or felony has taken place, or is apprehended, may swear in as many householders or others as they may think fit, to act as special constables. The lord-lieutenant may also, by direction of one of the principal secretaries of state, cause special constables to be appointed for the whole county, or any part of it. In Scotland, constables are the officers of the justices of the peace charged with the execution of their warrants and orders, and appointed at quartersessions. In royal burghs they are appointed by the magistrates. It is their duty, without warrant, to apprehend rioters and breakers of the peace, and bring them before the nearest justice. In the United States they are generally elected by the people, but special constables may be appointed by the authorities in emergencies. The title of High Constable is in some American cities given to the principal police officers. For county constabulary, see POLICE, and for the Irish constabulary, IRE LAND. Constable, ARCHIBALD, publisher, was born at Carnbee, Fife, 24th February 1774, and became a bookseller's apprentice in Edinburgh (1788-95). He then started as a bookseller at the Cross of Edin burgh, and speedily gathered round him the chief book-collectors of the time. He gradually drifted into the publishing business, secured the copyright of the Scots Magazine in 1801, and was chosen as the publisher of the afterwards famous Edinburgh Review. He published for all the leading men of the time, and his quick appreciation of the merits of the works of Sir Walter Scott became the envy and wonder of the book-trade. There were several business partners in the career of Constable & Co., but Archibald Constable was from first to last the mainspring of the concern. Had painstaking business qualities kept pace with his shrewdness and large-minded literary transactions, business calamities might have been averted. Among all his myriad of undertakings, I question,' says Lockhart, if any one that really originated with himself, and continued to be superintended by his own care, ever did fail.' In 1812 he purchased for between £13,000 and £14,000 the copyright of the Encyclopædia Britannica. In the commercial crisis of 1826 Constable & Co. failed, the liabilities amounting to upwards of a quarter of a million. The only noteworthy publishing scheme of Constable after this failure was the issue of his celebrated Miscellany. He died July 21, 1827. See Archibald Constable and his Literary Correspond ents, by his son, Thomas Constable (1873). Constable, HENRY, poet, was born in 1562, son of Sir Robert Constable of Newark, a soldier who was knighted by Essex in 1570. At sixteen Henry entered St John's College, Cambridge, early turned Roman Catholic, and betook himself to Paris. He was pensioned by the French king, and seems to have been often employed in confidential missions to England and to Scotland. He died at Liège, 9th October 1613. In 1592 was published his Diana, a collection of twenty-three sonnets; two years later, the second edition, containing seventy-six, but some of these by his devoted friend, Sir Philip Sidney, and other poets. Constable's sonnets are quaint, and sometimes laboured, but they are instinct with fancy and the tremor of genuine poetic feeling. Constable contributed to England's Helicon (1600), and sixteen 'spiritual sonnets to Park's Heliconia. See W. C. Hazlitt's edition of his works (1859). Constable, JOHN, R.A., landscape-painter, was born at East Bergholt, Suffolk, where his father was a well-to-do landowner and miller, 11th June 1776. At the age of eighteen he assisted his father for about a year in the mill; but his love of art was irrepressible, and it was encouraged by Sir George Beaumont, who prevailed upon his family to send him to London. Here he arrived in 1795; and, after an interval of a year spent in his old employ ment, he returned in 1799, and entered the schools of the Royal Academy, to whose exhibition he sent a work in 1802. Hitherto he had been carefully studying the methods of other painters, poring over Sir George's great Claude, and copying Ruysdael, seeking, as he says, 'truth at second hand. He now turned exclusively to nature, resolving to free himself from conventionality, to paint the very fact, to adopt a pure and unaffected manner of representing the scenes that may employ me.' But the public, trained to admire an artificial and pseudoclassical adaptation of nature, cared little for his simple renderings of common subjects, and he was nearly forty before he sold a single landscape he yond the circle of his relatives and personal friends. Meanwhile he supported himself by painting like nesses; he copied portraits by Reynolds for the Earl of Dysart, and executed altar-pieces for the churches of Brantham and Nayland in Suffolk. In 1816 he married Mary Bicknell; and in 1828, on the death of her father, solicitor to the Admi ralty, an inheritance of £20,000 placed the family in easy circumstances, and enabled Constable to devote himself quite exclusively to his beloved but In 1821 he had unremunerative landscape work. won the best artistic triumph of his life, in the applause which greeted the appearance of his ' Haywain (then titled A Landscape-Noon), when it was exhibited in the Paris Salon by a French purchaser. Not less marked was the impression produced by his 'White Horse, at the Lille Exhibition in 1825. Each work gained a gold medal. ! and the former in particular won the warmest enthusiasm of Delacroix and the other leaders of the romantic school, and exercised a definite and powerful influence upon the future of landscape art in France. Appreciation of this sort was more; honours as Constable won in England, than his precious to a true artist than such formal academic ¦ election as Associate in 1819, and his tardy and ungraciously awarded promotion to membership in 1829. His later years were saddened by the deaths health, and by great depression of spirits: but be of his wife and his friend Archdeacon Fisher, by illworked steadily at his art, though his landscapes still were frequently unsold, producing Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows' (1831); Waterloo Bridge, then titled 'Whitehall Stairs (1832); and The Valley Farm' (1835). He was engaged upon Arundel Mill and Castle' at the time of his death. which occurred suddenly, on the 30th of March 1837. The art of Constable marks the first definite departure in the history of English landscape from the conventional treatm of our earlier painters, ences, CONSTANCE CONSTANT DE REBECQUE 431 the breaking away from the traditions of Claude of the Romans), lies between Switzerland and and the Dutch masters, the return to direct and Germany, and on the north side of the Alps of personal impressions of nature. With a broad and Switzerland, and forms a meeting-point of the five rapid touch he renders all the force and variety of territories-Baden, Würtemberg, Bavaria, Vorarlcolouring that full-leafed English landscape pre-berg (Austria), and Switzerland. It has an elevasents; catches, with singular skill, her passing tion of 1306 feet above the sea. Lake Constance effects of rain-cloud and sunlight; suggests, with is traversed by the Rhine from east to west; its swift and unsurpassable power, her sense of glitter greatest length is about 44 miles, and utmost and motion. Mr Ruskin's criticism has, alike in breadth 9 miles, the area being 208 sq. miles; the its general scope and in most of its specific refer- mean depth is 490 feet, while the greatest depth is done much to disparage Constable's art in 906 feet. The southernmost of the two western the estimation of the public of the time that is extremities is called the lower lake, and is separated just passing; but already there is a recoil on the from the main lake by a narrow channel two miles part of both painters and critics from the detailed long, and lies full a yard below the level of the intricacy of pre-Raphaelite methods; Constable's lake. The shores are formed by hilly lands, with works are assuming their true place in the sequence low tracts at the mouths of the Rhine and smaller of our national art; and their painter is being recog. rivers. Cornfields, vineyards, pastures, orchards, nised as one of the very foremost figures of English and wooded declivities, with here and there the landscape-painters. Three of his most important ruins of old castles interspersed, surround the lake. and most powerful landscapes, The Valley Farm,' The water has a dark-green hue, often rises suddenly 'The Cornfield, and The Hay-wain,' were already some ten or twelve feet during a thaw, and rolls in in the National Gallery in 1888, when five more high waves during the prevalence of a strong south, were gifted by the painter's family. His 'Salisbury north-west, or east wind. Without visible cause it Cathedral is at South Kensington, where, as also sometimes rises and falls to a considerable degree. in the British Museum, his work in water-colour Usually the level rises from June onwards to and pencil may be studied. August, when it sinks again. It is seldom frozen, except in very severe winters. The fisheries of this lake are important. Since 1824 steam-navigation has added to the facilities of commerce across the lake, and its commercial importance has been greatly increased by the connection of the chief towns on its shores with the railway systems of The most South Germany and Switzerland. The most important of the engravings after Constable are the mezzotint plates by David Lucas, many of which were supervised with especial care during their progress by the painter himself. See his Life by C. R. Leslie (1845). Constance, or KOSTNITZ, a city of Baden, once a free imperial city, is situated on both sides to Constance, LAKE (called by the Germans Bodenge or Bodmansee-the Lacus Brigantinus | important towns are Constance, Bregenz, Lindau,' and Friedrichshafen. Constans, youngest of the three sons of Constantine the Great, received Illyricum, Italy, and Africa as his share of the empire. After the defeat and death of his elder brother Constantine, in 340 A.D., Constans became sole ruler of the West till his death in 350. Constant, BENJAMIN, subject-painter, was born in Paris, 10th June 1845. He studied in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and under Cabanel, and began to exhibit at the Salon in 1869, with his Hamlet and the King,' a work purchased by the French government. He soon turned to those Eastern subjects for the treatment of which he is best known, producing Prisoners in Morocco' (1875); ⚫ Mahomet II. (1876); The Harem' (1878); The Favourite of the Emir' (1879); The Day after a Victory in the Alhambra (1882); and The Vengeance of the Cherif (1885). His works are characterised by direct and powerful but frequently most repulsive realism, melodramatic feeling, bold portrayal of the nude, and vivid colouring. He is one of the most popular of contemporary French painters, and received medals in 1875 and 1876, and the decoration of the Legion of Honour in 1878. author and politician, was born of French Huguenot On After |