the nearest road. His plans once matured, no delay occurred in carrying them into effect; but, springing on his prey with a single bound, he either worried it into submission, or tore its heart out. Never before had the world owned so mighty a despot!

were around him

power and pomp

Glory and gladness

were the elements of

his being the weak and the powerful-the savage and the sage-alike submitted to his sway, until, in the language of the gifted author of "Rienzi,”—

"His realm, save the air and the wave, had no wall,

As he strode through the world, like a lord in his hall."

His power has passed away - his empire has crumbled to but the memory of the Roman will never be

dust forgotten!

In one of those frequent conflicts which marked the progress of the rivalry between Carthage and Rome, the consul Regulus, who in virtue of his station as chief magistrate, commanded the armies of the republic, was defeated and taken prisoner. Sent by the Carthaginians to Rome, with offers of accommodation, he was bound by the most solemn oaths to return to Carthage should his mission prove unsuccessful, and what was his conduct? I will tell you the tale as it is recorded in history. Wearied, it seems, with the interminable strife-commiserating the sufferings of their unhappy countryman, who, once the victorious leader of the armies of Rome, was now the captive ambassador of Carthage, and fully aware of the doom which awaited his return, the Roman senate proposed to accept the terms offered by the enemy; but Regulus counselled a different course. He told them that the resources of Carthage were exhausted that her people were discontented and that it only required one mighty

-

effort to rid Rome for ever of her dangerous rival. It was in vain that the senate pointed out the certainty of his own doom, as the natural effect of his patriotic exhortations — in vain that his wife and children implored him to save the life which might be preserved without dishonour: to each and all the patriot turned a deaf ear; the glory of Rome was dearer to him than his own existence -her profit cheaply purchased with his pain. He returned to Carthage, and the result, either way, justified his own foreknowledge. Regulus died a death of agony, but Rome conquered; and after ages received another proof of the wondrous virtue of the heathen.

Ere I close the page of history, permit me to draw a moral from the facts it relates. Fancy yourselves transported back to the antique time, and gazing upon a banquet given by the consul Cicero. In a gorgeous room, hung round with the trophies of barbaric greatness, and filled with all things pleasant to the eye and the intellect, sits the silver-tongued orator-the glory of the world, and of Rome. Around him are gathered the mightiest of an age fertile in godlike beings-men whose nobility is not derived from the 'scutcheon and the grave - the true emperors of the world. They have met there to celebrate the latest triumph of the "Mistress of Nations," and to do homage to the genius of him who is at present her ruler, and through all time her devoted worshipper. As the memory of former deeds is recalled in the song of the poet, and the tale of the warrior, their hearts beat high with the impulses which marshal men onward in the to glory; but when the libation is made to the gods, and the cup goes round to the eternal empire of Rome, fancy some pale-browed student prophesying that the day was not far distant, when her power would only exist in the

D

way

crumbling parchment and the mouldering stone— when the naked savage, ignorant of, and despising the arts of civilized life, should trample upon the growth and the monuments of a thousand years — and all that virtue had wrested from the grasp of time, should return once more beneath the sway of the great conqueror of all. Methinks I hear the mocking scorn with which the prediction would be greeted, and yet we know that the event has been fulfilled. And why was this—that a nation should play the spendthrift so wildly, and squander, without remorse, the treasures garnered up by the dead misers who had gone before them? Had the spear lost its point or the falchion its keenness? Or had nature sent them into the world, shorn of the proper strength which alone could enable them to preserve what their fathers had won? Oh no, it was none of these, themselves were the sole traitors to their own greatness. As an arrow sped upwards, turns again to the earth when the force that propelled it is expended, even so does the onward march of nations cease, when the influence of virtue is no longer recognised. The sun that beamed upon the nativity of Rome, shone as brightly upon its decline and destruction. The earth that held in her enduring embraces the builders of its renown, murmured not at the burden of its monuments of grandeur and glory. The outward and visible world was in all things the same; but nature has nought to do with the progress, or the fate of empires. These, the results of human experience, are but mere abstractions the progeny of man's own creation, and, as such, are subject to the same laws and mutations which regulate his own transitory being.

Enough of History-it has some strange disclosures. It is a drama played in all ages and all climes; the incidents and characters at times dissimilar, but in which

the catastrophe is ever the same. First barbarism, simplicity, and advancement; then refinement, corruption, and decay-decay at once hopeless and eternal. When we turn to the descendants of the monarchs of old. the inheritors of the lords of science and war, we are irresistibly reminded that nations like men have no second birth. With all the apparent elements of greatness profusely scattered around them, they remain in hopeless and confirmed degradation. With all the vices of civilization, they have none of its redeeming virtues. Theirs is the existence of the snail, whose path is tracked by its slime -the decrepitude of morals, that last sad evidence of irretrievable ruin. Has the world of Greece and Rome passed away? Have we entered upon a new order of things? Let the philosopher and the student of history answer the question.

It is a mournful reflection, that the practice of virtue grows out of the commission of the deeds of evil. It is war, remorseless war, which gives birth to the noblest acts. of the hero and the patriot. The former owing his glory to the conquest of other lands, the latter to the defence of his own. True it is, that there are not wanting men of fine intellect, of pure and virtuous intentions, who deem that the day will come when war will be unknown, when man contented with his natural share of blessings, will not sigh for those of his neighbour, but exerting every faculty of his soul in accelerating the onward march of improvement, convert the whole earth into one smiling paradise, whose tree of knowledge shall also be the tree of life, and the fruit thereof be perfect happiness. It is a pleasing but a baseless illusion. Mankind will never dispense with the necessity of war, whilst a foot of ground remains to be conquered or defended, or whilst glory and triumph

find, as through all past time, their worshippers on the earth. The belligerent feeling so natural to man, may be refined by the usages of civil life, but can never be wholly eradicated; and whilst man continues to prefer his own interests to those of his fellows, the sword will continue to be the only true sceptre of power.

Truly indeed has Shakspeare exclaimed, that the "web of life is a mingled yarn, good and ill together." Those who contend against the injustice of dominion, forget that it is to conquest alone that civilization is indebted for its progress and its triumphs, and that in referring back to first principles, for the support of their assertions, their arguments only tend to prove the utter incompetency of the natural law, to provide for the onward progress of man. Noone in his senses will attempt to deny the necessity that exists for preserving inviolate the rights of property, and yet this principle is at variance with the laws of nature, who if she had intended that one man should be richer than his neighbour, would have manifested her preference by giving him a greater power of enjoyment, instead of framing his senses in the same mould as those of his humblest vassal. She would also have created him with the power to defend his preeminent advantages, and rendered him in all things superior to the rest of his tribe ; but the moral law, which, in other words, means the result of human experience, has been framed to supply the deficiency of natural knowledge. Men have agreed to respect certain things, as conducive to their general happiness, which owe their existence alone to the wants of an artificial state of society, and have framed their own laws for the government of their own creations. Passion and impulse, motive and aim, these education cannot change, but all things else in the inward world are subject to the authority of the human will.