been latterly the capital of civilization; and one of its phases
as such has been to be the capital of the seven deadly sins. The
sins are or were there: Paris provided for the sinners of the
world, in her capacity of world-metropolis; just as she provided
for the artists, the _litteratuers,_ and so on. Foolish people
drew from that the conclusion that therefore Frenchmen were more
wicked than other people: whereas in truth the life of
provincial France all along has probably been among the soundest
of any. So we must offset Martial's and Juvenal's pictures of
the calm and gracious life in the country: virtuous life, often,
with quiet striving after usefulness and the higher things. He
reveals to us, in the last quarter of the century, interiors in
northern Italy, by Lake Como; you should have found the like
anywhere in the empire. And where, since Rome fell, shall you
come on a century in which Britain, Gaul, Spain, Italy, the
Balkans, Asia and Africa, enjoyed a Roman or any kind of peace?
Be not deceived: there has been no such success in Europe since
as the empire that Augustus the Initiate made, and for which
Tiberius his disciple was crucified.

Yet they captured it, as I find things, out of the jaws of
failure and disaster. Failure: that of Pythagoreanism six
centuries before;--disaster: Caesar's conquest of Gaul and
destruction of the Mysteries there. Men come from the Masters of
the World to work on this plane or on that: to found an empire
perhaps, or to start a spiritual movement. Augustus came
commissioned to the former, not to the latter, work. Supposing
in his time the Gaulish Mysteries had been intact. We may trust
him to have established relations somehow: he would have had
close and friendly relations with the Gaulish hierophants; even
if he had conquered the people, he would not have put out their
light. But I imagine he would have found a means to union
without conquest. Then what would have happened? We have seen
that the cyclic impulse did touch Gaul at that time; it made her
vastly rich, hugely industrial;--as Ferero says, the Egypt of the
West. That, and nothing better than that, because she had lost
her spiritual center, and might not figure as the world Teacher
among nations. But, you say, Augustus proscribed Druidism--which
sounds like carrying on Julius' nefarious work. He did, I
believe;--but why? Because Julius had seen to it that the
white side of Druidism had pe