The usual transition and natural issue of popular anarchy, when it has lasted long enough to exhaust its own fearful violence, is a perpetual dictatorship or despotism in some shape or other, but devoid of a higher and diviner sanction. This form of government, or (since, strictly speaking, it is not a form) this political condition, must be carefully distinguished from a long-established, legitimate, and hereditary monarchy, with which its whole character has nothing in common. No doubt when the revolutionary evil has reached its greatest height, and when a successful and prudent usurper, like the much-lauded Augustus in ancient Rome, without being personally answerable for the overthrow of the previous constitution, appears pre-eminently in the character of mediator between parties and a general pacificator, the world is ready to accord to him its applause. Gradually his authority is more and more widely acknowledged. Although at first he is recognized conditionally only and relatively, nevertheless, if he remains faithful to his better tendencies, and continues to the last to confer important benefits on his people, he may often give a permanent and historical foundation to his dynasty. But if, on the contrary, under his usurped power, revolution, phenix-like, only renews itself out of its own ashes, and the old anarchy from below revives in another form from above, as a merely military despotism, which, in its resistless and annihilating lust of conquest, honors nothing, but throws the whole world into confusion, then is the second evil worse than the first, which it promised to remedy. By such a course it loses its only moral foundation, inasmuch as it was to the better promise it held out that it owed its temporary and conditional recognition. Such an instance has been brought closely enough before our eyes in the history of very recent times, to enable us at once intuitively to understand its whole character. More slowly, and in a more organized method, and, consequently, with more lasting and historical results, did such transitions shape themselves in the ancient world, and especially in the Roman constitution. The ancient development, therefore, of this phenomenon, and its special form, is highly instructive and pre-eminently calculated to throw a clear light on our whole theory.