mp of wheels, whose
very whirling would be heard into other planets, did not the very
velocity of their motion seem to sleep on their soft axle, is the
business of this great nation, judicial, fixed, penal, deliberative,
statistical, commercial, all carried on without confusion, never
distracting one man by its might, nor molesting one man by its noise.

Now, in the semi-fabulous times of Egypt and Assyria, things were not so
managed. Ours are the ages of intellectual powers, of working by
equivalents and substitutions; but theirs were done by efforts of brute
power, possible only in the lowest condition of animal man, when all
wills converged absolutely in one, and when human life, cheap as dog's,
had left man in no higher a state of requirement, and had given up human
power to be applied at will--without art or skill.

Then the armies of a Semiramis even were in this canine state. It was
her curse to have subjects that had no elevation, swarming by myriads
like flies; mere animal life, the mere animal armies which she needed;
what she wanted was exactly what they would yield. To such cattle all
cares beyond that of mere provender were thrown away. Surgical care and
the ambulance, such as the elevation of man's condition, and the
solemnity of his rights, seen by the awful eye of Christianity, will
always require, were simply ridiculous. As well raise hospitals for
decayed butterflies. Provender was all: not _panem et circenses_--bread
and theatrical shows--but simply bread, and that wretched of its kind.
Drink was an ideal luxury. Was there not the Euphrates, was there not
the Tigris, the Aranes? The Roman armies carried _posca_ by way of such
luxury, a drink composed of vinegar and water. But as to Semiramis--what
need of the vinegar? And why carry the water? Could it not be found in
the Euphrates, etc.? Let the dogs lap at the Euphrates, and stay for
their next draught till they come to the Tigris or the Aranes. Or, if
they drank a river or so dry, and a million or two should die, what of
that? Let them go on to the Tigris, and thence to the Aranes, the Oxus,
or Indus. Clothes were dispensable from the climate, food only of the
lowest quality, and finally the whole were summoned only for one
campaign, and usually this was merely a sort of partisan camisade upon a
colossal scale, in which the superfluous population of one vast nation
threw themselves upon another. Mere momentum turned the scale; one
nuisance of super