pearls and diamonds without directly weakening the defence of the frontiers. Indulgence in the luxury of jewels looked almost like high treason. Similar observations might be made on another grave question--the increase of population. One of the most serious effects of individualism that accompanies the increase of civilisation and wealth, is the decrease of the birth-rate. France, which knows how to temper its luxury, which gives to other peoples an example of saving means for the future, has on the other hand given the example of egoism in the family, lowering the birth-rate. England, for a long time so fecund, seems to follow France. The more uniformly settled and well-to-do parts of the North American Union, the Eastern States and New England, are even more sterile than France. However, no one of these nations suffers to-day from the small increase of population; there are yet so many poor and fecund peoples that they can easily fill the gaps. In the ancient world this was not the case; population was always and everywhere so scanty that if for some reason it diminished but slightly, the states could not get on, finding themselves at the mercy of what they called a "famine of men," a malady more serious and troublesome than over-population. In the Roman Empire the Occidental provinces finally fell into the hands of the barbarians, chiefly because the Græco-Latin civilisation sterilised the family, reducing the population incurably. No wonder that the ancients applied the term "corruption" to a momentum of desires which, although increasing culture and the refinements of living, easily menaced the sources of the nation's physical existence. There is, then, a more general conclusion to draw from this experience. It is not by chance, nor the unaccountable caprice of a few ancient writers, that we possess so many small facts on the development of luxury and the transformation of customs in ancient Rome; that, for example, among the records of great wars, of diplomatic missions, of catastrophes political and economic, we find given the date when the art of fattening fowls was imported into Italy. The little facts are not so unworthy of the majesty of Roman history as one at first might think. Everything is bound together in the life of a nation, and nothing without importance; the humblest acts, most personal and deepest hidden in the _penetralia_ of the home, that no one sees, none knows, have an effect, immediate or remote, on the common life of the nation. There is, between these small, insignificant facts and the wars, the revolutions, the tremendous political and social events that bewilder men, a tie, often invisible to most people, yet nevertheless indestructible.