nstitutions are the Amreeta cup of nations--the
greatest of all blessings or the greatest of all curses, according to
the race on which it is conferred!

The history of the Gauls, in Thierry's opinion, divides itself naturally
into four great periods: his brief _resume_ of the state of the nation,
during each of those periods, is so animated that we cannot refrain from
quoting his own words:--

"The first period contains the adventures of the Gaulish nations in
the nomad state. No race of the West has accomplished a more
agitated and brilliant career. Its wanderings embrace Europe, Asia,
and Africa: its name is inscribed with terror in the annals of
almost every people. It burned Rome: it conquered Macedonia from
the veteran phalanxes of Alexander, forced Thermopylae, and pillaged
Delphi: afterwards it planted its tents on the ruins of ancient
Troy, in the public places of Miletus, on the banks of the
Sangarius, and on those of the Nile: it besieged Carthage,
threatened Memphis, reckoned among its tributaries the most
powerful monarchs of the East: on two occasions it founded in Upper
Italy a mighty dominion, and it raised up in the bosom of Phrygia
that other empire of the Galatians which so long ruled Asia Minor.

"In the second period--that of the sedentary state--we observe the
same race every where developing itself, or permanently settled,
with social, religious, and political institutions, suited to its
particular character--original institutions, and civilization full
of life and movement, of which Transalpine Gaul offers a model the
purest and the most complete. One would say, to follow the animated
scenes of that picture, that the theocracy of India, the feudality
of the Middle Ages, and the Athenian democracy, had resorted to the
same soil, there to combat and rule over one and other in turn.
Soon that civilization mixes and alters: foreign elements introduce
themselves, imported by commerce, by the relations of vicinity, by
the reaction of the conquered population. Hence various and other
strange combinations: in Italy it is the Roman influence which
makes itself felt in the manners of the Cisalpines: in the south of
Transalpine Gaul it is at first the influence of the Greeks of
Massalia, afterwards that of the Italian colonies: and in Galatia
there springs u