It is painful to contemplate the countless battles and destructive wars which so becloud and disfigure the Augustan age. But we should recollect that the annals of past nations, with all their endless and apparently useless contests, are but motes in the sun compared with the great whole of human destiny. Amid the thickest gloom, Tacitus, with searching eye, fathomed the mission of his age, and saw that the great system of pacification which Octavius Cæsar promised to the nations was delusive, and that there were yet more desolating revolutions to transpire before heaven's highest boon of freedom could be enjoyed. The one, imperishable, ever-progressive, and all-devouring city, Rome, was to gather all oriental wealth to herself; and then, as she had taken the sword to reap with, so should the sword become the grand instrument of distribution, and the great West be sown with the spoils. The first repulse was at Numantia, in Spain, when Scipio saw Roman invincibility broken, and the hour sounded when Rome herself must take blows as well as give. Gaul cost her fifteen stubborn battles and a most costly effusion of blood, which were afterward repaid by perpetual levies made on Italian territory and wealth. At this moment, Celts are masters in her capital. Cimbri and Teutones, with wives and children, descended upon the prepared field in whole tribes, directly the time had come for salutary amalgamation in view of prospective destinies; and the knell of the Augustan age resounded from afar, when Varus was defeated by the German Arminius in his native woods. CHAPTER II. ART. Roman genius was somewhat inventive, but it was exercised only in pandering to sensual gratification. There the plow, the pen, and the chisel were all in the hands of slaves. No free-souled Plato enchanted appreciative throngs in the umbrageous walks of a Latin Academy, nor was there a Demosthenes to wave the stormy democracy into a calm from some sunny hill-side. Very few artists of Roman blood possessed talents which might have been symbolized by a precious ring on their finger, such as Pliny says was worn by Pyrrhus, in which nature had produced the figure of Apollo and the nine muses. At their birth, the gods of power may have descended to offer gifts, but it is certain the gentler graces did not attend. In reviewing the arts of Rome, as in the corresponding chapter on the productions of Greece, we will first consider their architecture, and then the subordinate departments of plastic and pictorial works. Roman, Greek, and Egyptian architecture are to be viewed as constituting but one vital and continuous trunk; each having grown out of its predecessor, and the last destined to produce yet another and, perchance, a nobler growth.