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portant advantage to mankind. The simple recitation of great deeds will ever possess a charm for the human mind; but the philosophic induction and inference from facts is replete with instruction. for the race, and prepares the future against the errors of the past.

But if such be the philosophy of history, my hearers may fairly ask what right or title have I to take any part in so great a work? Now to this I have but one reply. I have not sought a post, but obeyed a call.* It is a call, the nature of which I had never thought of till it was made; in following it I obeyed another's judgment, not my own. I put my feebleness under the shield of his authority. I recognised him, indeed, as one of the chiefs among the sons of thought, and felt that it was glory enough for me to serve under him. I reflected also that the fortress of error, which we are besieging, is of enormous force; the despotism of self-will, for many a long year ruling undisputed, has filled it full with all the munitions of war; its defenders are proud and stubborn. That the fortress will one day be taken, I know full well: but who will take it, is another story. Many and many a soldier will fall before it; yet, in the day of its capture, their toil, their suffering, their it may be unnoticed fall and unhonoured lot, will

* The Author was appointed, under the rectorship of Dr. Newman, to the post of lecturer on the "Philosophy of History" in the Catholic University of Ireland.

not have been in vain. They will have a portion of the success; for they spent in it their force and their life, which is all that the bravest can do. If such be my portion, I accept it beforehand willingly. The soldier who so fights cannot be presumptuous; for his trust is in his commander and his cause, not in himself. It is not his part to judge whether the work is according to his strength; for it comes to him as a duty to be fulfilled, the spring of which is not ambition, but obedience.

It has been my single object in this Address to answer the question, What is the 'philosophy of history'? and to lay down some chief rules which should attend the scientific treatment of such a subject. When next I have the honour to meet you, I hope to commence a course in which I shall attempt to apply the principles here touched upon to a great subject of study, the 'Formation of Christendom.'

THE

FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOM.

LECTURE I.

THE CONSUMMATION OF THE OLD WORLD.

THE empire of Augustus inherited the whole civilisation of the ancient world. Whatever political and social knowledge, whatever moral or intellectual truth, whatever useful or elegant arts "the enterprising race of Japhet” had acquired, preserved, and accumulated in the long course of centuries since the beginning of history, had descended without a break to Rome, with the dominion of all the countries washed by the Mediterranean. For her the wisdom of Egypt and of all the East had been stored up; for her Pythagoras and Thales, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and all the schools besides of Grecian philosophy suggested by these names, had thought; for her Zoroaster, as well as Solon and Lycurgus, legislated; for her Alexander conquered, the races which he subdued forming but a portion of her empire. Every city in the ears of whose youth the poems of Homer

were familiar as household words owned her sway. Her magistrates, from the Northern Sea to the confines of Arabia, issued their decrees in the language of empire,-the Latin tongue; while, as men of letters, they spoke and wrote in Greek. For her Carthage had risen, founded colonies, discovered distant coasts, set up a world-wide trade, and then fallen, leaving her the empire of Africa and the West, with the lessons of a long experience. Not only so, but likewise Spain, Gaul, and all the frontier provinces, from the Alps to the mouth of the Danube, spent in her service their strength and skill; supplied her armies with their bravest youths; gave to her Senate and her knights their choicest minds. The vigour of new and the culture of long-polished races were alike employed in the vast fabric of her power. In fact, every science and art, all human thought, experience, and discovery, had poured their treasure in one stream into the bosom of that society which, after forty-four years of undisputed rule, Augustus had consolidated into a new system of government, and bequeathed to the charge of Tiberius.

It is hard to conceive adequately what a spectator called "the immense majesty of the Roman peace. Where now in Europe, impatient and uneasy, a group of half-friendly nations jealously

Pliny, Nat. His. xxvii. 1. "Immensa Romanæ pacis majestate, non homines modo diversis inter se terris gentibusque, verum etiam montes et excedentia in nubes juga partusque eorum et herbas quoque invicem ostentante."

watches each other's progress in power, and the acquisition of a province threatens a general war, Rome maintained, from generation to generation, in tranquil sway, an empire of which Gaul and Spain, Britain and North Africa, Switzerland and the greater part of Austria, Turkey in Europe, Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt, formed but single limbs, members of her mighty body. Her roads, which spread like a network over this immense territory from their common centre, the golden mile-stone of her Forum, under the palace of her emperors, did but express the unity of that spirit with which she ruled the earth, her subject, levelling the mountain and filling up the valley, for the march of her armies, the caravans of her merchandise, and the even sweep of her legislation. A moderate fleet of 6000 sailors at Misenum, and another at Ravenna, a flotilla at Forum Julii, and another in the Black Sea, of half that force, preserved the whole Mediterranean from piracy;* and every nation bordering on its shores could freely interchange the productions of their industry. Two smaller armaments of 24 vessels each, on the Rhine and the Danube, secured the empire from northern incursion. In the time of Tiberius a force of 25 legions and 14 cohorts, making 171,500 men, with about an equal number of auxiliary troops, that is, in all an army of 340,000 men, sufficed not so much to preserve internal order, which

Champagny, Les Césars, iii. 386.

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