I would add my favourite Plautus; who, though he took his plots
from Greece, found, I suspect, the originals of his enchanting female
characters at Rome.

Still many evils remained: and, in the decline of the great empire, all
that was pernicious in its domestic institutions appeared more strongly.
Under the influence of governments at once dependent and tyrannical,
which purchased, by cringing to their enemies, the power of trampling on
their subjects, the Romans sunk into the lowest state of effeminacy
and debasement. Falsehood, cowardice, sloth, conscious and unrepining
degradation, formed the national character. Such a character is totally
incompatible with the stronger passions. Love, in particular, which, in
the modern sense of the word, implies protection and devotion on the one
side, confidence on the other, respect and fidelity on both, could not
exist among the sluggish and heartless slaves who cringed around the
thrones of Honorius and Augustulus. At this period the great renovation
commenced. The warriors of the north, destitute as they were of
knowledge and humanity, brought with them, from their forests and
marshes, those qualities without which humanity is a weakness and
knowledge a curse,--energy--independence--the dread of shame--the
contempt of danger. It would be most interesting to examine the manner
in which the admixture of the savage conquerors and the effeminate
slaves, after many generations of darkness and agitation, produced the
modern European character;--to trace back, from the first conflict to
the final amalgamation, the operation of that mysterious alchemy which,
from hostile and worthless elements, has extracted the pure gold of
human nature--to analyse the mass, and to determine the proportion in
which the ingredients are mingled. But I will confine myself to the
subject to which I have more particularly referred. The nature of the
passion of love had undergone a complete change. It still retained,
indeed, the fanciful and voluptuous character which it had possessed
among the southern nations of antiquity. But it was tinged with the
superstitious veneration with which the northern warriors had been
accustomed to regard women. Devotion and war had imparted to it their
most solemn and animating feelings. It was sanctified by the blessings
of the Church, and decorated with the wreaths of the tournament. Venus,
as in the ancient fable, was again rising above the dark and tempestuous
waves w