nor the highest who commence, and at first carry on,
a work like this; but those who fill the intermediate spaces. The lowest
are dead as brute matter to such interests; the highest--the rich, the
fashionable, the noble, from opposite causes just as dead; or if they
are alive at all, it is with the rage of denunciation and opposition.
They are supporters of the decent usages sanctioned by antiquity, and
consecrated by the veneration of a long line of the great and noble.
Whether they themselves believe in the system which they uphold or not,
they are equally tenacious of it. They would preserve and perpetuate it,
because it has satisfied, at any rate bound and overawed, the multitude
for ages: and the experiment of alteration or substitution is too
dangerous to be tried. Most indeed reason not, nor philosophize at all,
in the matter. The instinct that makes them Romans in their worship of
the power and greatness of Rome, and attachment to her civil forms,
makes them Romans in their religion, and will summon them, if need be,
to die for the one and the other.

Religion and philosophy have accordingly nothing to hope from this
quarter. It is those whom we may term the substantial middle classes,
who, being least hindered by prejudices and pride of order, on the one
hand, and incapacitated by ignorance on the other, have ever been the
earliest and best friends of progress in any science. Here you find the
retired scholar, the thoughtful and independent farmer, the skilful
mechanic, the enlightened merchant, the curious traveller, the
inquisitive philosopher--all fitted, beyond those of either extreme, for
exercising a sound judgment upon such questions, and all more interested
in them. It is out of these that Christianity has made its converts.
They are accordingly worthy of universal respect. I have examined with
diligence, and can say that there live not in Rome a purer and more
noble company than the Christians. When I say however that it is out of
these whom I have just specified, that Christianity has made its
converts, I do not mean to say out of them exclusively. Some have joined
them in the present age, as well as in every age past, from the most
elevated in rank and power. If in Nero's palace, and among his chief
ministers, there were Christians, if Domitilla, Domitian's niece, was a
Christian, if the emperor Philip was a Christian, so now a few of the
same rank may be counted, who openly, and more who secretly, p