elected to the French Academy in 1878.

AN EMPIRE IN ROBUST YOUTH[5]

The political condition of the world was most melancholy. All power
was concentrated at Rome and in the legions. The most shameful and
degrading scenes were daily enacted. The Roman aristocracy, which had
conquered the world, and which alone of all the people had any voice
in public business under the Caesars, had abandoned itself to a
saturnalia of the most outrageous wickedness the human race ever
witnessed. Caesar and Augustus, in establishing the imperial power, saw
perfectly the necessities of the age. The world was so low in its
political relations that no other form of government was possible. Now
that Rome had conquered numberless provinces, the ancient
constitution, which was based upon the existence of a privileged
patrician class, a kind of obstinate and malevolent Tories, could not
continue.

[Footnote 5: From the "History of the Origins of Christianity," the
same being a series of which the first book was "The Life of Jesus."
This passage is from the second volume which is entitled "The
Apostles." From an anonymous translation, published in 1866 by
Carleton, of New York.]

But Augustus had signally neglected every suggestion of true policy by
leaving the future to chance. Destitute of any canon of hereditary
succession, of any settled rules concerning adoption, and of any law
regulating election, Caesarism was like an enormous load on the deck of
a vessel without ballast. The most terrible shocks were inevitable.
Three times in a century, under Caligula, Nero, and Domitian, the
greatest power that was ever united in one person fell into the hands
of most extravagant and execrable men. Horrors were enacted which have
hardly been surpassed by the monsters of the Mongol dynasties. In that
fatal list of monarchs one is reduced to apologizing for a Tiberius,
who only attained thorough detestableness toward the close of his
life; and for a Claudius, who was only eccentric, blundering, and
badly advised.

Rome became a school of vice and cruelty. It should be added that the
vice came, in a great degree, from the East, from those parasites of
low rank and those infamous men whom Egypt and Syria sent to Rome, and
who, profiting by the oppression of the true Romans, succeeded in
attaining great influence over the wretches who governed. The most
disgusting ignominies of the empire, such as the apotheosis of the
emperors and their dei