were hung up in the baths, and were
disgracefully indecent. Even literature was directed to the flattery of
tyrants and rich men. There was no manly protest from literary men
against the increasing vices of society,--not even from the
philosophers. Philosophy continually declined, like literature and art.
Nothing strikes us more forcibly than the absence of genius in the
second century. There was no reward for genius except when it flattered
and pandered to what was demoralizing. Who dared to utter manly protests
in the Senate? Who discussed the principles of government? Who would
venture to utter anything displeasing to the imperial masters of the
world? In this age of boundless prosperity, where were the great poets,
where the historians, where the writers on political economy, where the
moralists? For one hundred years there were scarcely ten eminent men in
any department of literature whose writings have come down to us. There
was the most marked decay in all branches of knowledge, except in that
knowledge which could be utilized for making money. The imperial regime
cast a dismal shadow over all the efforts of independent genius, on all
lofty aspirations, on all individual freedom. Architects, painters, and
sculptors there were in abundance, and they were employed and well paid;
but where were poets, scholars, sages?--where were politicians even? The
great and honored men were the tools of emperors,--the prefects of their
guards, the generals of their armies, the architects of their palaces,
the purveyors of their banquets. If the emperor happened to be a good
administrator of this complicated despotism, he was sustained, like
Tiberius, whatever his character. If he was weak or frivolous, he was
removed by assassination. It was a government of absolute physical
forces, and it is most marvellous that such a man as Marcus Aurelius
could have been its representative. And what could he have done with his
philosophical inquiries had he not also been a great general and a
practical administrator,--a man of business as well as a man of thought?
But I cannot enumerate the evils which coexisted with all the boasted
prosperity of the Empire, and which were preparing the way for
ruin,--evils so disgraceful and universal that Christianity made no
impression at all on society at large, and did not modify a law or
remove a single object of scandal. Do you call that state of society
prosperous and happy when half of the populati
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