,--then reprove them, as I have reproved
you, for not caring about that for which they ought to care, and
thinking that they are something when they are really nothing. And if
you do this, I and my sons will have received justice at your hands.

The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways--I to die, and you
to live. Which is better God only knows.

* * * * *

_Be of good cheer then, my dear Crito, and say that you
are burying my body only._

_Socrates, in the_ PHAEDO.--PLATO.

LXXXVI. THE EMPIRE OF THE CAESARS.

JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE.--1818-

_From_ CAESAR.

Of Caesar it may be said that he came into the world at a special time
and for a special object. The old religions were dead, from the Pillars
of Hercules to the Euphrates and the Nile, and the principles on which
human society had been constructed were dead also. There remained of
spiritual conviction only the common and human sense of justice and
morality; and out of this sense some ordered system of government had to
be constructed, under which quiet men could live, and labor, and eat the
fruit of their industry. Under a rule of this material kind there can be
no enthusiasm, no chivalry, no saintly aspirations, no patriotism of the
heroic type. It was not to last forever. A new life was about to dawn
for mankind. Poetry, and faith, and devotion were to spring again out of
the seeds which were sleeping in the heart of humanity. But the life
which is to endure grows slowly; and as the soil must be prepared before
the wheat can be sown, so before the Kingdom of Heaven could throw up
its shoots there was needed a kingdom of this world where the nations
were neither torn in pieces by violence nor were rushing after false
ideals and spurious ambitions. Such a kingdom was the Empire of the
Caesars--a kingdom where peaceful men could work, think, and speak as
they pleased, and travel freely among provinces ruled for the most part
by Gallios who protected life and property, and forbade fanatics to tear
each other in pieces for their religious opinions. "It is not lawful for
us to put any man to death," was the complaint of the Jewish priests to
the Roman governor. Had Europe and Asia been covered with independent
nations, each with a local religion represented in its ruling powers,
Christianity must have been stifled in its cradle. If St. Paul had
escaped the Sanhedrim at Jerusalem, he would have b