_Aqueducts._――The common authorities on this subject, refer to none of these mighty Roman works, except those around the city of Rome itself. Those of Nismes and Metz, in Gaul, and that of Segovia, in Spain, are sometimes mentioned; but the reader would be led to suppose, that other portions of the Roman empire were not blessed with these noble works. Rees’s Cyclopædia is very full on this head, in respect to the aqueducts of the great city itself, but conveys the impression that they were not known in many distant parts of the empire. Montfaucon gives no more satisfactory information on the subject. But a reference to books of travels or topography, which describe the remains of Roman art in its ancient provinces in Africa and Asia, will at once give a vivid impression of the extent and frequency of these works. Shaw’s travels in northern Africa, give accounts of aqueducts, cisterns, fountains, and reservoirs, along through all the ancient Roman dominions in that region. The Modern Traveler (by Conder) will give abundant accounts of the remains of these works, in this and various other countries alluded to in the text; and some of them, still so perfect, as to serve the common uses of the inhabitants to this day. All these mighty influences, working for the peace and comfort of mankind, and so favorable to the spread of religious knowledge, had been further secured by the triumphant and firm establishment of the throne of the Caesars. Under the fitful sway of the capricious democracy of Rome, conquest had indeed steadily stretched east, west, north and south, alike over barbarian and Greek, through the wilderness and the city. A long line of illustrious consuls, such as Marcellus, the Scipios, Aemilius, Marius, Sylla, Lucullus and Pompey, had, during the last two centuries of the republic, added triumph to triumph, in bright succession, thronging the streets of the seven-hilled city with captive kings, and more than quadrupling her dominion. But while the corruption of conquest was fast preparing the dissipated people to make a willing exchange of their political privileges, for “bread and amusements;” the enlightened portion of the citizens were getting tired of the distracting and often bloody changes of popular favoritism, and were ready to receive as a welcome deliverer, any man who could give them a calm and rational despotism, in place of the remorseless and ferocious tyranny of a brutal mob. In this turn of the world’s destiny, there arose one, in all points equal to the task of sealing both justice and peace to the vanquished nations, by wringing from the hands of a haughty people, the same political power which they had caused so many to give up to their unsparing gripe. He was one who, while, to common eyes, he seemed devoting the flower of his youth and the strength of his manhood to idleness and debauchery, was learning such wisdom as could never have been learned in the lessons of the