This is literally true, for though we cannot suppose that the conquered populations were the miserable barbarians that the Roman writers represent them to have been, Rome was the most advanced portion of the race, and therefore the embodiment of its civilization and intellectual life. At this moment Paris represents all France; and the city of Rome bore a somewhat similar relation to the populations that composed the empire, however distant they may have been from the capital. It was not an unusual thing for the same general that commanded in Britain or that had conquered in Gaul, to administer the government of the African provinces or to conduct a campaign against the Persians on the bank of the Euphrates. And however much the vanity of Roman authors may have been gratified by assuming that they alone were civilized, it is altogether irrational to suppose that the conquered populations, with the same nature and same capacities as themselves, and moreover, in frequent and often intimate intercourse with themselves, could have differed widely or remained barbarians, even if such when conquered. The Romans advanced far beyond the Greeks in political knowledge, but with them also the state was every thing and the individual nothing. As with the Greeks, the great majority were slaves; and Roman citizenship, or the rights claimed by a Roman citizen, was at best a special privilege; and prior to the advent of Christianity, the idea of individual rights, of equality, of democracy, seems never to have dawned upon the intellectual horizon of the race. Nor did the primitive Christians (even) accept it in theory, though they lived it out in practice. Their mental habits were formed under the old social order, and though the spirit of the new doctrine impelled them to live it out in practice, few, if any, ever adopted it in theory. Christ had said, “love each other,” and “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” that is, “grant to others the rights claimed for yourselves,” but while they often lived together, owning things in common like the modern communists and socialists, perhaps not one in a million ever thought of applying their doctrines to the state, or even supposing for a moment that the artificial distinctions which separated classes could ever be altered or modified. Even the forced and unnatural relation of master and slave, which necessarily violated the fundamental doctrine of their religion, was clung to and respected in theory, and it needed several centuries of practice and faithful obedience to the spirit of the new faith before this ancient barbarism was finally obliterated from the Roman world. The conquest of Rome, by the so-called northern barbarians, was followed by an eclipse of learning—by a mental darkness in Western Europe at least, that is fitly enough denominated the dark ages. Was this irruption of the northern nations into Italy the true cause of this darkness? For several