vilization.

At that moment it was that that short scene, in that one chamber,
contrasted the two as clearly as they can be contrasted even in long
centuries.

There is one man, the emperor, who is a precise type, an exact
representative, of the old. That man is brought face to face with
another who is a precise type, an exact representative, of the new.

Only look at them as they stand there! The man who best illustrates the
old civilization owes to it the most careful nurture. From his childhood
he has been its petted darling. Its principal is concentration under one
head. He is that head. When he is a child, men know he will be emperor
of the world. The wise men of the world teach him; the poets of the
world flatter him; the princes of the world bow to him. He is trained in
all elegant accomplishments; he is led forward through a graceful,
luxurious society. His bearing is that of an emperor; his face is the
face of fine physical beauty. Imagine for yourself the sensual
countenance of a young Bacchus, beautiful as Milton's devils; imagine
him clad in splendor before which even English luxury is mean; arrayed
in jewels, to which even Eastern pomp is tinsel; imagine an expression
of tired hate, of low, brutal lust, hanging on those exquisite
licentious features, and you have before you the type of Roman
civilization. It is the boy just budding into manhood, whom later times
will name as the lowest embodiment of meanness and cruelty! You are
looking upon Nero!

Not only is this man an exact type of the ancient civilization, its
central power, its outside beauty, but the precise time of this sketch
of ours is the exact climax of the _moral_ results of the ancient
civilization. We are to look at Nero just when he has returned to Rome
from a Southern journey.[I] That journey had one object, which
succeeded. To his after-life it gives one memory, which never dies. He
has travelled to his beautiful country palace, that he might kill his
mother!

We can picture to ourselves Agrippina, by knowing that she was Nero's
mother, and our picture will not fail in one feature. She has all the
beauty of sense, all the attraction of passion. Indeed, she is the
Empress of Rome, because she is queen of beauty--and of lust. She is
most beautiful among the beautiful of Rome; but what is that beauty of
feature in a state of whose matrons not one is virtuous, of whose
daughters not one is chaste? It is the beauty of sense alone, fit
ad