Gibbon tells us a tragic history, which has been more amply narrated by Count Montalembert in his “Monks of the West.” The gladiatorial games of Rome were continued until the beginning of the sixth century of our era. They had turned a civilized people into savage cannibals. There, in that enormous amphitheatre, whose tiers rising above tiers remain to this day, tens of thousands of spectators looked down on the bloody spectacle, and thousands of victims were slaughtered. A holy man in the East heard of the deeds of blood. The fire of a righteous indignation seized him. He travelled to Rome; arrived there as the imperial games were being celebrated. His soul burned against the cruelty and the impiety. He entered the Colosseum; burst through the waves of the people all palpitating with ferocious curiosity. He threw himself between the gladiators engaged in the sanguinary combat. In the name of the God of heaven he commanded them to cease their murderous strife. The pagan multitude were for a moment panic-stricken with the holy audacity of the Christian. Then they cried out; they rose on him; they tore up the arches; stones hissed around him; the gladiators completed the work of death. But the blood of the martyr was the last shed in that arena. The horrid custom, which had so long resisted the voice of humanity, ended with that testimony. The nobleness of the sacrifice showed the horror of the abuse. The emperor Honorius proscribed the games of the gladiators, and they have never been revived. Without any such sacrifice you may learn from it the might of a simple act of decision for truth and conscience, and that by such noble deeds your life may have immortal issues. Where the timid will start back in fear, there you may bless the coming ages. The achievements of duty have been grander than those of the warrior. Wordsworth says of duty: “Flowers laugh before her in their beds, And fragrance in her footsteps treads: She does preserve the stars from wrong, And the eternal heavens through her are fresh and strong.”