child is even now coming into the world
who will see and inaugurate an era of peace and prosperity: darkness
and despair will after a while pass entirely away, and a regenerate
Italy,--regenerate in religion and morals as in fertility and
wealth,--will lead the world in a new era of happiness and good
government."[584]

But the Golden Age, so fondly hoped for, so vaguely and poetically
conceived, was not to come in the sense in which Virgil, or any other
serious thinker of the day, could dream of it. I may conclude this
chapter with a few sentences which express this most truly and
eloquently. "When there is a fervent aspiration after better things,
springing from a strong feeling of human brotherhood, and a firm
belief in the goodness and righteousness of God, such aspiration
carries with it an invincible confidence that some how, some where,
some when, it must receive its complete fulfilment, for it is prompted
by the Spirit which fills and orders the Universe throughout its whole
development. But if the human organ of inspiration goes on to fix the
how, the where, and the when, and attributes to some nearer object the
glory of the final blessedness, then it inevitably falls into such
mistakes as Virgil's, and finds its golden age in the rule of the
Caesars (which was indeed an essential feature of Christianity),
or perhaps, as in later days, in the establishment of socialism or
imperialism. Well for the seer if he remembers that the kingdom of God
is within us, and that the true golden age must have its foundation in
penitence for misdoing, and be built up in righteousness and loving
kindness."[585]

EPILOGUE

These sketches of social life at the close of the Republican period
have been written without any intention of proving a point, or any
pre-conceived idea of the extent of demoralisation, social, moral, or
political, which the Roman people had then reached. But a perusal of
Mr. Balfour's suggestive lecture on "Decadence" has put me upon making
a very succinct diagnosis of the condition of the patient whose life
and habits I have been describing. The Romans, and the Italians, with
whom they were now socially and politically amalgamated, were not in
the last two centuries B.C. an old or worn-out people. It is at any
rate certain that for a century after the war with Hannibal Rome and
her allies, under the guidance of the Roman senate, achieved an amount
of work in the way of war and organisation such as