querors, and drove them from Europe.

The Lombard wars of Charlemagne are the last to which I allude. These
were undertaken in defence of the Church, to rescue his ally the Pope.
The Lombards belonged to the great Germanic family, but they were
unfriendly to the Pope and to the Church. They stood out against the
Empire, which was then the chief hope of Europe and of civilization.
They would have reduced the Pope to insignificance and seized his
territories, without uniting Italy. So Charlemagne, like his father
Pepin, lent his powerful aid to the Roman bishop, and the Lombards were
easily subdued. This conquest, although the easiest which he ever made,
most flattered his pride. Lombardy was not only joined to his Empire,
but he received unparalleled honors from the Pope, being crowned by him
Emperor of the West.

It was a proud day when, in the ancient metropolis of the world, and in
the fulness of his fame, Pope Leo III. placed the crown of Augustus upon
Charlemagne's brow, and gave to him, amid the festivities of Christmas,
his apostolic benediction. His dominions now extended from Catalonia to
the Bohemian forests, embracing Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy,
and the Spanish main,--the largest empire which any one man has
possessed since the fall of the Roman Empire. What more natural than for
Charlemagne to feel that he had restored the Western Empire? What more
natural than that he should have taken the title, still claimed by the
Austrian emperor, in one sense his legitimate successor,--Kaiser, or
Caesar? In the possession of such enormous power, he naturally dreamed
of establishing a new universal military monarchy like that of the
Romans,--as Charles V. dreamed, and Napoleon after him. But this is a
dream that Providence has rebuked among all successive conquerors. There
may have been need of the universal monarchy of the Caesars, that
Christianity might spread in peace, and be protected by a reign of law
and order. This at least is one of the platitudes of historians. Froude
himself harps on it in his life of Caesar. Historians are fond of
exalting the glories of imperialism, and everybody is dazzled by the
splendor and power of ancient Roman emperors. They do not, I think,
sufficiently consider the blasting influence of imperialism on the life
of nations,--how it dries up the sources of renovation, how it
necessarily withers literature and philosophy, how nothing can thrive
under it but pomp and materia