Jesus Christ changed neither religion, nor laws, nor duties; but by developing and consummating the primitive law in his own person, and through his disciples, he elevated a religious society into a body politic, the first perfect commonwealth, wherein he designed that all families should ultimately become one family, governed by his own legislation alone, himself their only chief. LEO X.: OR, THE AGE OF SCIENTIFIC INVENTION. PROLOGUE OF MOTTOES. "The entire succession of men, through the whole course of ages, must be regarded as one man, always living and incessantly learning."--Blaise Pascal. "It is hard to find a whole age to imitate, or what century to propose for our example. Some have been far more approvable than others: but virtue and vice, panegyrics and satires, scatteringly to be found in all history, sets down not only things laudable but abominable; things which should never have been, or never have been known. So that noble patterns must be fetched here and there from single persons rather than whole nations, and from whole nations rather than any one."--Sir Thomas Brown. "Always with a change of era, there had to be a change of practice and outward relations brought about, if not peaceably, then by violence, for brought about it had to be; there could be no rest come till then. How many eras and epochs not noted at the moment, which, indeed, is the blessedest condition of epochs, that they come quietly, making no proclamation of themselves, and are only visible long after. A Cromwell Rebellion, a French Revolution, striking on the horologe of time, to tell all mortals what a clock it has become, are too expensive, if one could help it."--Thomas Carlyle. "Stand up: I myself also am a man."--Acts x. 26. PART THIRD. LEO X.--AGE OF SCIENTIFIC INVENTION. CHAPTER I. LITERATURE. The fall of the western empire was a strange phenomenon. The Roman people did not only abandon the government in its struggles against the barbarous invaders, but when left to themselves, did not attempt any resistance on their own behalf. During the whole protracted conflict, the nation endured all the scourges of war, devastation, and famine, and suffered an entire change in its character and condition, without acting, remonstrating, or even appearing. Their passive submission to inevitable destiny at the great crisis of changeful progress was most complete.