sense of being filled with saints; it was filled with pirates
and petty tyrants, and the first feudal anarchy. But sanctity
was the only ideal those barbarians had, when they had any at all.
And democracy is the only ideal the industrial millions have,
when they have any at all. Sanctity was the light of the Dark Ages,
or if you will the dream of the Dark Ages. And democracy is the dream
of the dark age of industrialism; if it be very much of a dream.
It is this which prophets promise to achieve, and politicians pretend
to achieve, and poets sometimes desire to achieve, and sometimes
only desire to desire. In a word, an equal citizenship is quite
the reverse of the reality in the modern world; but it is still
the ideal in the modern world. At any rate it has no other ideal.
If the figure that has alighted on the column in the Place de la
Bastille be indeed the spirit of liberty, it must see a million growths
in a modern city to make it wish to fly back again into heaven.
But our secular society would not know what goddess to put on
the pillar in its place.

As I looked at that sculptured goddess on that classical column,
my mind went back another historic stage, and I asked myself
where this classic and republican ideal came from, and the answer
was equally clear. The place from which it had come was the place
to which I was going; Rome. And it was not until I had reached Rome
that I adequately realised the next great reality that simplified
the whole story, and even this particular part of the story.
I know nothing more abruptly arresting than that sudden steepness,
as of streets scaling the sky, where stands, now cased in tile and brick
and stone, that small rock that rose and overshadowed the whole earth;
the Capitol. Here in the grey dawn of our history sat the strong
Republic that set her foot upon the necks of kings; and it was from
here assuredly that the spirit of the Republic flew like an eagle
to alight on that far-off pillar in the country of the Gauls.
For it ought to be remembered (and it is too often forgotten)
that if Paris inherited what may be called the authority of Rome,
it is equally true that Rome anticipated all that is sometimes
called the anarchy of Paris. The expansion of the Roman Empire
was accompanied by a sort of permanent Roman Revolution, fully as
furious as the French Revolution. So long as the Roman system was
really strong, it was full of riots and mobs and democratic divisio