from that of the base transmigration of
Druidism or the Drunken Paradise of Woden, where the brave solace
themselves with mead from cups made of the skulls of their enemies
killed in their days upon earth.

[Sidenote: Importance of Roman history in this investigation.]

The European age of inquiry is therefore essentially connected with
Roman affairs. It is distinguished by the religious direction it took.
In place of the dogmas of rival philosophical schools, we have now to
deal with the tenets of conflicting sects. The whole history of those
unhappy times displays the organizing and practical spirit
characteristic of Rome. Greek democracy, tending to the decomposition of
things, led to the Sophists and Sceptics. Roman imperialism, ever
constructive, sought to bring unity out of discords, and draw the line
between orthodoxy and heresy by the authority of councils like that of
Nicea. Following the ideas of St. Augustine in his work, "The City of
God," I adopt, as the most convenient termination of this age, the sack
of Rome by Alaric. This makes it overlap the age of Faith, which had, as
its unmistakable beginning, the foundation of Constantinople.

Greek intellectual life displays all its phases completely, but not so
was it with that of the Romans, who came to an untimely end. They were
men of violence, who disappeared in consequence of their own conquests
and crimes. The consumption of them by war bore, however, an
insignificant proportion to that fatal diminution, that mortal
adulteration occasioned by their merging in the vast mass of humanity
with which they came in contact.

[Sidenote: Great difficulty of treating it.]

I approach the consideration of Roman affairs, which is thus the next
portion of my task, with no little diffidence. It is hard to rise to a
point of view sufficiently elevated and clear, where the extent of
dominion is so great geographically, and the reasons of policy are
obscured by the dimness and clouds of so many centuries. Living in a
social state the origin of which is in the events now to be examined,
our mental vision can hardly free itself from the illusions of
historical perspective, or bring things into their just proportions and
position. Of a thousand acts, all of surpassing interest and importance,
how shall we identify the master ones? How shall we discern with
correctness the true relation of the parts of this wonderful phenomenon
of empire, the vanishing events of which gli