It is natural to those who are possessed by such servile phantasies that their worship should mix in with the whole of their lives and even penetrate to an immoderate degree those spheres of action which a happier and a saner philosophy is content to leave untrammelled. These dreadful deities of theirs afforded names for their leaders and served for a link between the scattered cities of their race: the common worship of Melcarth made an invisible bond for the whole Phœnician world; the greatest of the Carthaginian generals bore the title of “Baal’s Grace.” With this gloomy and compelling faith and with this political arrangement there went such a social spirit as such things will breed. Not only were the Carthaginians content to be ruled by rich men always, but the very richest were even too proud for commerce; they lived as a gentry upon land and saw, beneath the merchants who were their immediate inferiors (and accustomed, it may be presumed, to purchase superior rank) a great herd of despicable and never laborious poor—incapable of rebellion or of foreign service. The very fields around the city were tilled, not by the Carthaginians, but by the half-breeds who had at least inherited something of western vigour and application. When the crowd within the walls was too great, a colony would spring from its overflow into some distant harbour: emigrants led by one of those superiors without whom, as it seemed, the Phœnician was unable to act. It would appear that these daughter-nations were as averse to military sacrifice as their parent, and that they depended for their protection upon no effort of their own, but upon the fleet and the treasury of Carthage. In this way was built up a vast domain of colonies, tributaries and naval bases which was sporadic and ill organised in plan, enormous in extent, and of its nature lacking in permanence. No system more corrupt or more manifestly doomed to extinction could be conceived, nor is it remarkable that when that system disappeared not a trace of it should remain among the millions whom it had attempted to command. Carthage had not desired to create, but only to enjoy: therefore she left us nothing. Her very alphabet was borrowed from our invention. Of seven hundred years during which the Asiatics had dominated Barbary nothing is left. The extinction of their power was indifferent or pleasing to the Mediterranean they had ruled; their language dwindled on through five hundred further years—its literature has been utterly forgotten. A doubtful derivation for the names of Cadiz, of Barcelona, and of Port Mahon, a certain one for Carthagena, are all that can be ascribed to-day to this fanatic and alien people: for they came of necessity into conflict with the Power that was to unify and direct the common forces of Europe.