The Latin language is inferior to the Greek in subtlety and refinement of expression, and is therefore far less adapted for metaphysical speculation or poetical grace—for analysing the nicer diversities of thought, or distinguishing the minuter shades of passion; but in the enunciation of ethical truths and of judicial maxims, it possesses a clearness, force, and majesty, to which no other form of speech can approach. The great foundations of law are good morals and good sense, and these, however simple and plain in their elements, are not mean or common things. On the contrary, they are susceptible of the greatest dignity of expression when embodied in words; and the language in which their principles shall be clothed may be of the utmost importance in rendering them both more portable in the memory and more impressive on the heart. The Roman jurists of the later period of the Republic were not careless students of the Greek philosophy; but they used it in their juridical writings with a wise discretion, and in special reference to the object of law, which is to lay down the broad rules of human conduct and personal rights in a form easily understood, and capable of being easily followed and faithfully observed by the mass of mankind. The unequalled talent of the Roman people for political organisation is evinced by the manner in which the imperial authority was maintained, after the personal character of the nominal sovereigns had degenerated to the very lowest point of profligacy and imbecility. Our Teutonic ancestors had the wisdom to appreciate and adopt much of the machinery which they thus found in operation; and the municipal governments, as well as the judicial constitutions of Europe, are at this day influenced by the models which were thus left. The Popedom itself, on whose probable endurance for the future it would be hazardous to speculate, but whose marvellous ascendancy in time past is beyond dispute, was little else than an adaptation of the imperial organisation to ecclesiastical objects. But the influence of the Roman law on other nations was pre-eminently seen in the wide adoption of its general scheme, as well as of its special rules and maxims. Even the law of England—of all European systems perhaps the least indebted to the civil law—is deeply imbued with the Roman spirit in some of the most important departments of jurisprudence; and where the authority of the Roman law cannot claim a submissive allegiance, it is yet listened to as the best manifestation of the _Recta Ratio_ that can anywhere be found. The vast experience of human transactions, and the endless complexities of social relations, which the Roman empire presented, afforded the best materials for maturing a science which was cultivated for noble objects by minds of the highest order, and embodied in propositions of unrivalled power and precision.