The fierce Gaul forsook his savage hut and dress together, robing himself in the graceful toga of the Roman citizen, or the light tunic of the colonial cultivator, and reared his solid and lofty dwelling in clustering cities or villages, whose deep laid foundations yet endure, in lasting testimony of the nature of Roman conquest and civilization. Under his Roman rulers and patrons, he raised piles of art, unequaled in grandeur, beauty and durability, by any similar works in the world. Aqueducts and theaters, still only in incipient ruin, proclaim, in their slow decay, the greatness of those who reared them, in a land so lately savage. The Pont du gard, at Nismes, and the amphitheaters, temples, arches, gates, baths, bridges, and mausolea, which still adorn that city and Arles, Vienne, Rheims, Besancon, Autun and Metz, are the instances, to which I direct those whose knowledge of antiquity is not sufficient to suggest these splendid remains. Almost any well-written book of travels in France will give the striking details of their present condition. Malte-Brun also slightly alludes to them, and may be consulted by those who wish to learn more of the proofs of my assertion than this brief notice can give. The warlike Numidian and the wild Mauritanian, under the same iron instruction, had long ago learned to robe their primitive half-nakedness in the decent garments of civilized man. Even the distant Getulian found the high range of Atlas no sure barrier, against the wave of triumphant arms and arts, which rolled resistlessly over him, and spent itself only on the pathless sands of wide Sahara. So far did that all-subduing genius spread its work, and so deeply did it make its marks, beyond the most distant and impervious boundary of modern civilization, that the latest march of discovery has found far older adventurers before it, even in the great desert; and within a dozen years, European travelers have brought to our knowledge walls and inscriptions, which, after mouldering unknown in the dry, lonely waste, for ages, at last met the astonished eyes of these gazers, with the still striking witness of Roman power. The travels of Denham and Clapperton across the desert, from Tripoli to Bornou,――of Ritchie and Lyon, to Fezzan,――of Horneman and others, will abundantly illustrate this passage.