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beginnings of Rome. Who founded the Roman State? There is one fact
about which the most recent authorities agree with the most ancient,
that Rome was founded much as Athens was founded, by desperate men from
every city, district, region, in Italy. The outlaw, the refugee from
justice or from private vengeance, the landless man and the homeless
man--these gathered in the "Broad Plain," or migrated together to the
Seven Hills, and by the very extent of the walk which they traced
marked the plan which the Rome of the Caesars filled in. This process
may have extended over a century--over two centuries; Rome drawing to
itself ever new bands of adventurers, desperate in valour and in
fortune as the first. Who are the founders of England, of Imperial
Britain? They are those "co-seekers," _conqu[oe]stores_, I have spoken
of, who came with Cerdic and with Cynric, the chosen men, that is to
say, the most adventurous, most daring, most reckless--the fittest men
of the whole Teutonic kindred; and not for two centuries merely, but
for six centuries, this "land of the Angles," stretching from the Forth
and Clyde to the Channel, from Eadwine's Burgh to Andredeswald, draws
to itself, and is gradually ever peopled closer and closer with,
Vikings and Danes, Norsemen and Ostmen, followers of Guthrum, and
followers of Hrolf, followers of Ivar and followers of William I. They
come in "hundreds," they come in thousands. Into England, as into some
vast crucible, the valour of the earth pours itself for six hundred
years, till, molten and fused together, it arises at last one and
undivided, the English Nation. Such was the foundation, such the
building of the Empire, and these are the title-deeds which even in its
first beginnings this land can show.

And of the inner race character as representative of the whole Teutonic
kindred, the testimony is not less sure. What a heaven of light falls
upon the Hellas of the Isles, that period of its history which does not
begin, but ends with the Iliad and with the Odyssey--works that sum up
an old civilization! Already is born that beauty which, whether in
religion, or in art, or in life, Hellas made its own for ever. And it
is not difficult to trace back the descent of the ideal of Virgil and
of Cicero to the shepherds and outlaws of the Seven Hills. The
infinite curiosity of Persia, the worshipper of flame, is anticipated
on its earliest monuments, and the mystery of Egypt is coeval wit