and no nation that ever passes through such a controversy can fail to distinguish itself, and take the lead in the march of intellect, in proportion to the energy which it has displayed in the conflict. Great as the Romans were in arms, they felt their inferiority to the Greeks in all the elegant arts. In Greece alone were the great schools and colleges for young Romans. There alone they could acquire the intellectual accomplishments of the age. It was only in politics that Rome conquered Greece. In literature and art Greece conquered Rome. In the outward acquisition of power Rome was the greatest, but in the inward attainment of intellectual and aesthetical culture, Greece takes the precedence. Rome gave laws to the territorial world, but Greece legislated for the world of taste. And still Greece gives laws in its own peculiar sphere; for every work of God is for ever, and every national mission has its abiding influence, which stretches down to posterity like the comet's tail, though the body of the comet has long ago set beneath the political horizon.

186

ACT THIRD.-The Roman Mission.

SCENE FIRST.

THE ROMANS AND THEIR POLITICAL EMPIRE.

THE Third Act of the Drama not only enlarges the arena of civilisation, but increases its power and magnífies its object. The principle to be developed is now of a very different nature. It is neither the prological and absolute Law as represented by Revelation, nor the logical and the relative Liberty as represented by Philosophy and the Arts, but it is another element equally indispensable for human progress. It is the physical and intellectual development of Power, Military, Civil and Ecclesiastical, in succession, for the reunion and consolidation of the whole civilised world. The Greeks studied everything, and therefore also war and law, as well as philosophy and the arts; but they were not exclusively soldiers and lawyers, like the Romans: their liberality forbade their exclusiveness. The Mission of Rome was Power. It is indicated in the very name, which is merely Greek for strength; it may be physical or spiritual, or both, thus prefiguring the two careers of the Empire.

In the first or Hebrew Mission there was no

power of development. Everything was fixed. In the second or Greek Mission the details of ancient civilisation were all elaborately brought out in a sphere of infinite division, rivalry and competition. In the third, the art of combining and centralising these is alone consulted; so exclusively consulted as to make the Romans pride themselves, not in their genius for any of the refinements of art, or the cultivation of science, but in being Rerum Domini, lords of everything, lords of the world.

Romanos Rerum Dominos, gentemque togatam.

This is another idea of unity-not the Jewish idea, for that was exclusive and religious-involving not only a unity of faith, but a unity of rites and ceremonious observances. This is a political or tributary unity-a unity admitting of diversity of belief and religious customs, in the former part of its mission, but afterwards, when it has passed the bridge from the ancient to the modern world, becoming quasi-Jewish and attempting to enforce uniformity of practice and faith by its own available means-power, spiritual and temporal. The Roman unitary idea, however, is always greater than that of the Jews, less genealogical, more spiritual and universal, affording ample opportunities for all classes of men, and all people and nations, to join the great imperial union, and receive without reference to birth or blood, the rights and privileges of Roman Citizens in ancient

and of Roman Catholics in modern times. In Pagan times it attempts, with a liberal spirit, to establish a unity upon diversity. In Christian times it endeavours to destroy diversity and establish absolute unity.

To realise this unitary idea politically, the first indispensable requisite is that of a compact wellprotected territorial unity, in which the municipal and imperial plant is to be raised. The scene of the first act was continental and secluded; protected chiefly by desert, in which, at the most, only a barren species of liberty can be enjoyed. That of the second was chiefly insular, in which the utmost freedom of social and commercial intercourse that the times permitted was easily attainable; attended, however, by that antagonism which cannot fail to arise from the juxtaposition of rival and independent states. The arena of the third is, very appropriately, a small, compact peninsula, sufficiently large to enable it to exercise all the arts of warof subjugation and organisation-on an extensive scale, before it be compelled to resort to the sea, which is ultimately indispensable for extending the limits of its empire. Such a peninsula is Italy; devised, as if on purpose, to carry on the westward movement of Civilisation. Situated in the only spot where the Drama required such a particular form of territory, and especially adapted for an embryo model of a universal empire, by being placed in the midst of that sea which by the ancients was

regarded as the middle of the earth, and therefore denominated the Mediterranean-it afforded all the facilities for universal conquest that the theatre of civilisation at the time demanded, and could not fail to suggest the idea to a growing and a prosperous people.

Of all the spots in the wide world, there is none so analogically characterised as Italy for the seat of the capital of a juvenile form of universal dominion. It is not only the most conveniently formed and situated peninsula, but the most volcanic region in Europe. Perhaps there is none in the habitable world that exceeds it as a territorial focus of subterranean fire, Iceland alone excepted-an isolated or sterile region beyond the limits of the Orbis Romanus. Europe is the blackest region in a volcanic map, and the blackest spot in Europe is the Italian Peninsula. It is Mount Sinai in Arabia translated into another shape and language-Peter the Rock in a new position, and with new characteristics. It is a bed of lava, volcanic tuff, and scoriæ; a land of earthquakes innumerable and living volcanoes; a fierce, a threatening, alternately cold and hot, stable and tremulous country, in which Nature appears in all her excesses of love and hatred, tenderness and cruelty; ever vigorous, whether in the exercise of mercy or in the discipline of judgment. It is the Rock of Horeb transferred, transformed, and modernised; and the new Roman Law, of which it is the birthplace, is the old endowed with a new