That this state of things could have existed, by any reasonable probability at this day, in the event of Darius or Xerxes having overrun and occupied Western Europe, with their oriental hordes—in the event of Carthage having subdued Rome, and filled Italy, Greece, Gaul, Spain, Britain, with her bloody fiend-worship, and her base Semitic trade-spirit—in the event of Mark Antony having won the day at Actium, and broken up the heritage of Rome, like that of Alexander, among a dozen jarring dynasties, instead of leaving it to be centralized into an almost universal empire—in the event of the Saracen having destroyed the paladins of Charles Martel at Tours—of the Turks having conquered the Mediterranean at Lepanto, or Continental Europe under the walls of Vienna—few will be found, I think, so hardy as to assert. Strange, therefore, as it may appear at first sight, the first germs of existing institutions may be said to have been sown on the banks of the Ilissus, the Eurotas, and the Tiber; and the deity, whom the blind superstition of the early Romans venerated as the war-god Quirinus guarding the wave-rocked cradle of Rome’s twin founders, was, in truth, the Lord of Hosts, watching over the infancy of that peculiar and appointed people which should make smooth his way before him, and prepare the nations to receive the faith of civil and religious freedom. For all this wonderful accomplishment of wonderful designs, however, we shall find that the instruments are purely human, although the ends may be divine—that, although the men are never wanting to do His work, when done it must be, it is for the most part, if not always, in blindness, in sin, in wrath, and in the madness of ambition, that they do that work, imagining themselves, vainly, busied about their own miserable ends; and for the doing it they are alone accountable. But not so of the nations, which, having no life hereafter, no individual identity in the world to come, meet their rewards or punishments here, where their virtues or their vices have required them, and thrive or perish as they work toward the completion of His infinite designs. Nowhere, perhaps, in the whole course of history, is this supervision of the Most High, which even religious men are wont unthinkingly to call Fortune, more clearly visible, than in the events of the Second Punic War. At home the republic, though undaunted and unequaled of all times in heroism, was weeping tears of blood at every pore, and resisting only with a persistency savoring almost of despair, abroad it was only by the exercise of sacrifices and self-denial almost superhuman, that she was enabled to maintain her foothold in her provinces of Sicily and Spain.