The most careful consideration of ancient history leads to the belief that many of the nations which flourished in Italy, long before the Roman empire attained its height of power and splendor, were distinguished by a harmony of culture, an exuberance of being, a diversity of manifestation, and originality of genius, which Rome in her best days never exceeded. They each contained an important element of civilization, but only in an incipient degree; they were of co-operative capacity, and when the predominant quality of the new cycle arose with complete development to its culminating point, martial Rome executed the most fulminating and comprehensive of primordial missions. Had not Greece preceded them with the humanizing influences of the beautiful, the great nation would have been nothing but a remorseless slayer of men, furnishing no compensation for the thralldom which was imposed from land to land by her fiery and bloody arms. The former caused Beauty to dwell as a divinity in the midst of men; the latter erected the god of war as the national deity, and compelled all peoples to the ignoble worship. Rome was destined, through force, to show the world, despite the greatest obstacles, what energetic will, unity, earnestness, and pertinacity of purpose, could do. She was doubtless superior to most nations in military skill, and this gave her great advantage; but her unique peculiarity consisted in the fact, that, till her co-operative work was done, she never despaired, and this attribute of fortitude alone conquered the world. Ruin as often threatened the Romans as it did other champions, and they would have fallen as others fell, had not internal resources increased, and heroical resolution been confirmed, in proportion as outward support failed them. The spectacle of physical force which they presented was the grandest of earth; but it was moral force, something grander still, which fortified the physical force, and rendered it such a mighty agent of civilization. War has numerous advantages which are overruled for good, and the misfortunes of some nations are made to supply prosperity to others. The most fruitful fields have been fertilized by wholesale carnage, that scourge and civilizer of mankind. As the sea retires in one quarter at the same time it advances in another, swallows up the productiveness of this shore to augment the territory and richness of that, so do great natural fluctuations transpire under the control of that sovereign law by which all things are changed but nothing destroyed. The invasion of Persia was virtually the creation of Greece, and the overthrow of the latter enriched the world. When the fair continent had fully emerged from the flood of Pelasgic barbarism, afar in the West, on Latian plains, the infant state of Rome was obscurely struggling into power against the neighboring confederacies in which the old Etruscan culture was rapidly sinking into decay. While the gloomy wilds of Gaul and