tality of those men
and women. The world's holders have never risen suddenly in hordes; they
have always grown by degrees out of little nations, that could live
through more than their neighbours. Calling up the vision of the first
Rome, one must see, too, such human faces and figures of men as are
hardly to be found among us nowadays,--the big features, the great,
square, devouring jaws, the steadily bright eyes, the strongly built
brows, coarse, shagged hair, big bones, iron muscles and starting
sinews. There are savage countries that still breed such men. They may
have their turn next, when we are worn out. Browning has made John the
Smith a memorable type.

Rome was a clean city in those days. One of the Tarquins had built the
great arched drain which still stands unshaken and in use, and smaller
ones led to it, draining the Forum and all the low part of the town. The
people were clean, far beyond our ordinary idea of them, as is plain
enough from the contemptuous way in which the Latin authors use their
strong words for uncleanliness. A dirty man was an object of pity, and
men sometimes went about in soiled clothes to excite the public
sympathy, as beggars do today in all countries. Dirt meant abject
poverty, and in a grasping, getting race, poverty was the exception,
even while simplicity was the rule. For all was simple with them, their
dress, their homes, their lives, their motives, and if one could see the
Rome of Tarquin the Proud, this simplicity would be of all
characteristics the most striking, compared with what we know of later
Rome, and with what we see about us in our own times. Simplicity is not
strength, but the condition in which strength is least hampered in its
full action.

It was easy to live simply in such a place and in such a climate, under
a wise King. The check in the first straight run of Rome's history
brought the Romans suddenly face to face with the first great
complication of their career, which was the struggle between the rich
and the poor; and again the half truth rises up to explain the fact.
Men whose first instinct was to take and hold took from one another in
peace when they could not take from their enemies in war, since they
must needs be always taking from some one. So the few strong took all
from the many weak, till the weak banded themselves together to resist
the strong, and the struggle for life took a new direction.

The grim figure of Lucius Junius Brutus rises as the