There was, indeed, under the empire more than one arbitrary decree against the philosophers, but it was always called forth by their entering into political schemes. We may search in vain the Roman law before Constantine for a single passage against freedom of thought; and the history of the imperial government furnishes no instance of a prosecution for entertaining an abstract doctrine. No scientific man was molested. Men like Galen, Lucan, and Plotinus, who would have gone to the stake in the Middle Age, lived tranquilly under the protection of the law. The empire inaugurated liberty in this respect; it extinguished the despotic sovereignty of the family, the town, and the tribe, and replaced or tempered it by that of the state. But despotic power is the more vexatious the narrower its sphere of action. The old republics and the feudal system opprest individuals much more than did the state. The empire at times persecuted Christianity most severely, but at least it did not arrest its progress. Republics, however, would have overcome the new faith. Even Judaism would have smothered it but for the pressure of Roman authority. The Roman magistrates were all that hindered the Pharisees from destroying Christianity at the outset. HIPPOLITE ADOLPHE TAINE Born in 1828, died in 1893; studied medicine and in taking his degree produced as a dissertation his notable "Essai sur les Fables de La Fontaine"; published other essays on Livy, Carlyle, and Mill; professor of esthetics at the École des Beaux Arts in 1864; published a book on the Pyrenees in 1855, one on Italy in 1866, and one on England 1872; his "History of English Literature," his masterpiece, published in 1864-65; "Les Origines de la France Contemporaine" 1875-90; elected to the French Academy in 1878. I THACKERAY AS A SATIRIST[7] The novel of manners in England multiplies, and for this there are several reasons: first, it is born there, and every plant thrives well in its own soil; secondly, it is a natural outlet: there is no music in England as in Germany, or conversation as in France; and men who must think and feel find in it a means of feeling and thinking. On the other hand, women take part in it with eagerness; amidst the stagnation of gallantry and the coldness of religion, it gives scope for imagination and dreams. Finally, by its minute details and practical counsels, it opens up a career to the precise and moral mind. The critic thus is, as it were, swamped in this copiousness; he must select in order to grasp the whole, and confine himself to a few in order to embrace all. [Footnote 7: From Book V, Chapter II of "The History of English Literature." Translated by H. van Laun.]