became entirely Syrian; that stationed at Alexandria, Grecian, Jewish,
and, in a separate sense, Alexandrine. Caesar, it is notorious, raised
one entire legion of Gauls (distinguished by the cognizance upon the
helmet of the _lark_, whence commonly called the legion of the
_Alauda_). But he recruited all his legions in Gaul. In Spain the armies
of Assanius and Petreius, who surrendered to Caesar under a convention,
consisted chiefly of Spaniards (not _Hispanienses_, or Romans born in
Spain, but _Hispani_, Spaniards by blood); at Pharsalia a large part of
Caesar's army were Gauls, and of Pompey's it is well known that many even
amongst the legions contained no Europeans at all, but (as Caesar
seasonably reminded his army) consisted of vagabonds from every part of
the East. From all this we argue that _S.P.Q.R._ did not depend latterly
upon native recruiting. And, in fact, they did not need to do so; their
system and discipline would have made good soldiers out of mop-handles,
if (like Lucian's magical mop-handles) they could only have learned to
march and to fill buckets with water at the word of command.

We see, too, the secret power and also the secret political wisdom of
Christianity in another instance. Those public largesses of grain,
which, in old Rome, commenced upon principles of ambition and of
factious encouragement to partisans, in the new Rome of Constantinople
were propagated for ages under the novel motive of Christian charity to
paupers. This practice has been condemned by the whole chorus of
historians who fancy that from this cause the domestic agriculture
languished, and that a bounty was given upon pauperism. But these are
reveries of literary men. That particular section of rural industry
which languished in Italy, did so by a reaction from _rent_ in the
severe modern sense. The grain imported from Sardinia, from Africa the
province, and from Egypt, was grown upon soils less costly, because with
equal cost more productive. The effect upon Italy from bringing back
any considerable portion of this provincial corn-growth[23] to her
domestic districts would have been suddenly to develop rent upon a large
series of evils, and to load the provincial grain as well as the
home-grown--the cheap provincial as well as the dear home-grown--with
the whole difference of these new costs. Neither is the policy of the
case at all analogous to our own at the moment. In three circumstances
it differs essentially:

F