know less
of the Roman princes through centuries after the Christian era, than of
the Roman Consuls through a space of three centuries preceding the
Christian era. In fact, except for a few gossiping and merely _personal_
anecdotes communicated by the Augustan History and a few other
authorities, we really know little of the most illustrious amongst the
Roman emperors of the West, beyond the fact (all but invariable) that
they perished by assassination. But still this darkness is not of the
same nature, nor owing to the same causes, as the Grecian darkness prior
to the Olympiads.

[21] Except, indeed, by the barbarous contrivance of cutting away some
letters from a name, and then filling up their place with other letters
which, by previous agreement, have been rendered significant of
arithmetic numbers. This is the idea on which the _Memoria Technica_ of
Dr. Grey proceeds. More appropriately it might have been named _Memoria
Barbarica_, for the dreadful violence done to the most beautiful,
rhythmical, and melodious names would, at any rate, have remained as a
repulsive expression of barbarism to all musical ears, had the practical
benefits of this machinery been all that they profess to be. Meantime
these benefits are really none at all. They offer us a mere mockery,
defeating with one hand what they accomplish with the other.

[22] It is all but an impossible problem for a nation in the situation
of Greece to send down a record to a posterity distant by five
centuries, to overlap the gulf of years between the point of
starting--the absolute now of commencement and the remote generation at
which you take aim. Trust to tradition, not to the counsel of one man.
But tradition is buoyant.

[23] _Crusade._--There seems a contradiction in the very terms of
Pagan--that is, non-Christian, and Crusade--that is, warfare
symbolically Christian. But, by a license not greater than is often
practised in corresponding circumstances, the word Crusade may be used
to express any martial expedition amongst a large body of confederate
nations having or representing an imaginative (not imaginary) interest
or purpose with no direct profession of separate or mercenary object for
each nation apart.

[24] The truths of Scripture are of too vast a compass, too much like
the Author of those truths--illimitable and incapable of verbal
circumscription, and, besides, are too much diffused through many
collateral truths, too deeply echoed and re