we had no such
luck. There were we broiling through a hot, hot August, broiling away at
this intolerable stew of Iskis and Fuskis, and all to no end or use.
Granted that too often it is, or it may be so. But here we are safe. Who
can fancy or feel so much as the shadow of a demur, when peregrinating
Rome, that we might be losing our toil?

Now, then, in the highest spirits, let us open our studies. And first
let us map out a chart of the _personnel_ for pretty nearly a century.
Twelve Caesars--the twelve first--should clearly of themselves make more
than a century. For I am sure all of you, except our two new friends,
know so much of arithmetic as that multiplication and division are a
great menace upon addition and subtraction. It is, therefore, a thing
most desirable to set up compound modes--short devices for abridging
these. Now 10 is the earliest number written with two digits: and the
higher the multiplier, so much harder, apparently, the process. Yet here
at least a great simplification offers. To multiply by 10, all you have
to do is to put a cipher after the multiplicand. Twenty-seven soldiers
are to have 10 guineas each, how much is required to pay all
twenty-seven? Why, 27 into 10 is 27 with a cipher at the end--27:0,
_i.e._, 270. _Ergo_, twelve Caesars, supposing each to reign ten years,
would make, no, _should_ make, with anything like great lives--12:0,
_i.e._, 120 years. And when you consider that one of the twelve, viz.,
Augustus, singly, for _his_ share, contributed fifty and odd years, if
the other eleven had given ten each that would be 11:0; this would make
a total of about 170.

VIII.--_Beginning of Modern Era._--From the period of Justinian
commences a new era--an era of unusual transition. This is the broad
principle of change. Old things are decaying, new things are forming and
gathering. The lines of decay and of resurrection are moving visibly and
palpably to every eye in counteracting agency for one result--life and a
new truth for humanity. All the great armies of generous barbarians,
showing, by contrast with Rome and Greece, the opulence of teeming
nature as against the powers of form in utter superannuation, were now,
therefore, no longer moving, roaming, seeking--they had taken up their
ground; they were in a general process of castrametation, marking out
their alignments and deploying into open order upon ground now
permanently taken up for their settlement. The early trumpets, the
mor