r publish it as an edict. There is a
touch of the Teacher in this, I think. He has given Rome Peace;
he is master of the world, and now has grown old. He enjoys no
regal splendor, no pomp or retinue; his life is as that of any
other senator, but simpler than most. And his mind is ever
brooding over Rome, watchful for the ideas that may purify Roman
life and raise it to higher levels.

Many things occurred to sadden his old age. His best friends
were dead; Varus was lost with his legions; there had been the
tragedy of Julia, whom he had loved well, and the deaths of the
young princes, her sons. He was a man of extraordinarily keen
affections, and all these losses came home to him sorely.

But against every sadness he had his own achievements to set.
There was Rome in its marble visibly about him, that he had found
in brick and in ruins; Rome now capable of centuries of life,
that had been, when he came to it, a ghastly putridity.

XIX. AN IMPERIAL SACRIFICE

"Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's"

This is the secret of writing: look at the external things until
you see pulsating behind them the rhythm and beauty of the
Eternal. Only look for it, and persist in your search, and
presently the Universal will be revealed shining through the
particular, the sweep of everlasting Law through the little
object, and happenings of a day.

Come to history with the same intent and method, and at last
things appear in their true light. Here, too, as in a landscape,
is the rhythm of the Eternal; here are the Basic Forms. I doubt
if the evidence of the annalists is ever worth much, unless
they had an eye to penetrate to these. When one sees behind
the supposed fact narrated and the judgments pronounced the
glimmering up of a basic form, one guesses one is dealing with a
true historian.

Recently I read a book called _The Tragedy of the Caesars,_ by
the novelist Baring-Gould; and in it the life of a certain man
presented in a sense flatly contradictory to the views of
nineteen centuries anent that man; but it seemed to me at last
an account that had the rhythm, the basic form, showing through.
So in this lecture what I shall try to give you will be Mr.
Baring-Gould's version of this man's life, with efforts of my
own to go further and make quite clear the basic form.

What does one mean by 'basic form'? In truth it is hard to
define. Only, this world, that seems such a heterogeneous
helter