ds have been lost, but even those
that remain are the envy and despair of modern competitors. Besides,
every age must be judged by comparison with its contemporaries. Yet they
have fallen; and antiquarian travellers search in vain for the ruins of
the proudest and greatest cities of the past. The nation and
people--the most gallant and accomplished of all antiquity--who engraved
their names on the imperishable fields of Plataea and Marathon, who
conquered at Salamis, or died at Thermopylae--that carried eloquence,
heroism, and art to a pitch never since attained--the age which boasted
of Pericles and Praxitelles, of Plato and Aristides--perished from
excess of its material civilization, deprived, as it was, of the vital
element of true religion. Without this no nation can live, nor exhibit
in its actions true grandeur, or nobility of character. There is among
such a cruelty, a perfidy, and a beastly lust, which sooner or later
bring on their decay and ruin.

Look at ancient Rome, the once proud mistress of the world. In her
palmiest days, amidst her thousands of marble palaces and triumphal
arches, amidst her innumerable temples and altars, there was _not one to
Mercy_. Nor was there, amidst all this barbaric display, a single
_hospital_ for the poor of any age or condition. The Roman eagle was
carried at the head of victorious legions to the "_Hither Inde_," and
far beyond the depths of "_Hercynian forests_." Conquered kings marched
at the head of subjugated nations to swell her triumphs; the wealth and
strength of the then known world lay at her feet.

Here was exhibited on a scale--the grandest the world ever saw or will
see--the triumphs of "_material civilization_." Yet all this crumbled
and fell before the rude hatchets of the long-haired "_barbarian
hordes_," coming they knew not from whence, and going they knew not
whither, only able to give the single answer, that they were "_the
scourge of God_." Where, then, was the power to save? It was not in
their material civilization, nor in their impotent and terrified
legions. What all these could not do was accomplished by an unarmed
man--Pope Leo the Great, speaking in the name of that mighty God,
unknown alike to Attila and to Roman wisdom. That God still reigns, and
Him it is the State would exclude from the Public Schools! thereby
denying alike the lessons of history and its Christian duty. These
United States, or no existing nation (relatively to the age), has n