Let us not continually seek little passions in great souls. The success of superior men, and it is a consoling thought, is due rather to the loftiness of their sentiments than to the speculations of selfishness and cunning; this success depends much more on their skill in taking advantage of circumstances, than on that presumption, blind enough to believe itself capable of creating events, which are in the hands of God alone. Certainly, Cæsar had faith in his destiny, and confidence in his genius; but faith is an instinct, not a calculation, and genius foresees the future without understanding its mysterious progress. END OF VOL. I. * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [1] Montesquieu, _Grandeur et Décadence des Romains_, xviii. [2] Suetonius, _Cæsar_, 22. [3] “Cæsar resolved to pass into Britain, the people of which had, in nearly all wars, assisted the Gauls.” (Cæsar, _Gallic War_, IV. 20.) [4] Suetonius, _Cæsar_, 47. [5] Appian, _Civil Wars_, I. 110, 326, edit. Schweighæuser. [6] Cicero, _Epistolæ ad Atticum_, XIV. 10. [7] In fact, how many disturbances, civil wars, and revolutions in Europe since 1815! in France, Spain, Italy, Poland, Belgium, Hungary, Greece, and Germany! [8] _Grandeur et Décadence des Romains._ [9] Titus Livius I. 44.--Dionysius of Halicarnassus, speaking of the portion of the rampart between the Porta Æsquilina and the Porta Collina, says, “Rome is fortified by a fosse thirty feet deep and a hundred or more wide in the narrowest part. Above this fosse rises a wall supported internally by a lofty and wide terrace, so that it cannot be shaken by battering rams, or overthrown by undermining.” (_Antiq. Roman._, IX. 68.) [10] “Since that time (the time of Servius Tullius) Rome has been no farther enlarged ... and if, in face of this spectacle, any one would form a notion of the magnitude of Rome, he would certainly fall into error, for he would not be able to distinguish where the town ends and where it is limited, so close the suburbs come up to the town.... The Aventine, till the reign of Claudius, remained outside the Pomœrium, notwithstanding its numerous inhabitants.” (Aulus Gellius, XIII. 14.--Dionysius of Halicarnassus, IV. 13.) [11] Dionysius of Halicarnassus, IV. 49. [12] “By this treaty, the Romans and their allies engage not to navigate beyond the Bonum Promontorium (a cape situated to the north and opposite Carthage, and now called by navigators the Cape of _Porto-Farino_).... The Carthaginians undertake to respect the Ardeates, the Antiates, the Laurentes, the Circeii, the Tarracinians, and indeed all the Latin peoples subject to Rome.” (Polybius, III. 22.)