'The world itself is opened up, and becomes from day to day more civilized, and increases the sum of human enjoyment. Every place is reached, has been made known, is full of business. Solitudes, famous of old, have changed their aspects under the richest cultivation. The plough has levelled forests, and the beasts that prey on man have given place to those that serve him. Corn waves on the sea-shores; rocks are opened out into roads, marshes are drained, cities are more numerous now than villages in former times. The island has lost its savageness, and the cliff its desolation. Houses spring up everywhere, and men to dwell in them. On all sides are government and life. What better proof can we have of the multiplication of our race than that man has become a drug, while the very elements scarcely meet our needs; our wants outrun the supplies; and the complaint is general that we have exhausted Nature herself.'[3] Again, he quotes Pliny:-- 'Rome has united the scattered empires. She has given softness to manners; she has made the industry of all peoples, the productiveness of all climates, a common possession. She has given a common language to nations separated by the discordance and the rudeness of their dialects. She has civilized the most savage and most distant tribes. She has taught man humanity.' 'War,' says another writer, 'is now nothing more than a tale of ancient days, which our age refuses to believe; or, if it does chance that we learn that some Moorish or Getulean clan has presumed to provoke the arms of Rome, we seem to dream, as we hear of these distant combats. The world seems to keep perpetual holiday. It has laid aside the sword, and thinks only of rejoicings and feasts. There is no rivalry between cities except in magnificence and luxury; they are made up of porticoes, aqueducts, temples, and colleges. Not cities only, but the earth itself puts on gay attire and cultivation, like that of a sumptuous garden. Rome, in one word, has given to the world something like a new life.' M. de Champagny thinks that our present civilization would 'seem mean and poor to one of the contemporaries of Cicero, or even to one of the subjects of Nero.' ('Les Césars,' vol. ii. 397.) He shows how this would be felt, both as to public and private life, and especially refers to Pompeii. In proof of his assertion we must refer our readers to a passage, much too long to quote, as to the daily life of Rome itself. He follows a Roman, 'not opulent, but merely well off' through his day:--