Romans, who were confederated with their enemies, another party in the island. This brought on the first Punic war with that Republic, then mistress of the sea. In this warfare against Pyrrhus and the Carthaginians, the Romans, who had been hitherto confined within the secluded circle of the petty states of Italy, appeared for the first time on the great historical theatre of the then political world. In that age which was immediately subsequent to the time of Alexander the Great, the different Macedonian and other Greek powers of importance formed, together with Egypt and Carthage, a variously connected system of states, in one respect, not unlike the political system of modern Europe, at the end of the 17th and during the greater part of the 18th century. For, according to a principle of the balance of power, each state sought to strengthen itself by alliances, and to repress an overwhelming ascendancy, without on that account at all relaxing its efforts for its own aggrandizement. That on one hand, the fluctuating condition and internal troubles of those countries, and on the other, the fresh youthful vigour, the steady perseverance and constancy of the Roman people, would soon put an end to this system of equilibrium--to these political oscillations between the different states, and bring about the complete triumph and decided ascendancy of the Romans, might indeed have been easily foreseen, and was in the very nature of things. After the first Punic war, the Romans to the conquest of Sicily added that of Corsica and Sardinia; and they next subdued the Cisalpine Gauls in the North of Italy. When even Hannibal, the most formidable enemy the Roman Republic ever had to encounter, and the one who had the most deeply studied its true character, and the danger threatening the world from that quarter; when even he, after the many great victories which, in a long series of years, he had obtained over the Romans, in the second Punic war; though he shook the power, was unable to break the spirit of this people;--when this was the case, one might regard the great political question of the then civilized world as settled; and it could no longer be a matter of doubt that that city justly denominated Strength, and which even from of old had been the idol of her sons, (who accounted every thing as nought in comparison with her interests); that that city, I say, was destined to conquer the world, and establish an empire, the like whereof had never yet been founded by preceding conquerors. The second Punic war terminated under the elder Scipio before the walls of Carthage, and it completed the destruction of that rival of Rome, at least as a political power. The Princes and states that while it was yet time, should have formed a firm and steadfast league against the common foe, fell now separately under the sword of the victors, and the yoke of conquest. In the further progress of their triumphs, the conquerors knew how to assume a certain character of