read out a vast system of internal navigation,
which brought foreign trade in a manner to every man's door. The legions
combated alternately on the plains of Germany, in the Caledonian woods,
on the banks of the Euphrates, and at the foot of Mount Atlas. But much
as this singular and apparently providential circumstance aided the
growth, and for a season increased the strength of the empire, it
secretly but certainly undermined its resources, and in the end proved
its ruin. The free trade in grain which it necessarily brought with it,
when the same dominion stretched over all Spain and Africa, and
long-continued peace had brought their crops to compete with the Italian
in the supply of the Roman, or the Grecian in that of the
Constantinopolitan markets, destroyed the fabric the legions had reared.
Italy could not compete with Lybia, Greece with Poland. Rome was
supplied by the former, Constantinople by the latter. If the
Mediterranean wafted the legions out in the rise of the empire, _it
wafted foreign grain in_ in its later stages, and the last undid all
that the former had done. The race of _agricultural freemen_ in Italy,
the bone and muscle of the legions which had conquered the world, became
extinct; the rabble of towns were unfit for the labours, and averse to
the dangers of war; mercenaries became the only resource.

The fact in modern times, which illustrates and confirms the same view
of the chief cause of the ruin of the Roman empire, is, that a similar
effect has taken place, and is at this moment in full operation in
Romelia, and all the environs of Constantinople. Every traveller in the
East knows that desolation as complete as that of the Campagna of Rome
pervades the whole environs of Constantinople; that the moment you
emerge from the gates of that noble city, you find yourself in a
wilderness, and that the grass comes up to our horse's girths all the
way to Adrianople. "Romelia," says Slade, "if cultivated, would become
the granary of the East;" _whereas Constantinople depends on Odessa for
daily bread_. The burial-grounds, choked with weeds and underwood,
constantly occurring in every traveller's route, far remote from
habitations, are eloquent testimonials of continued depopulation. The
living, too, are far apart; a town about every fifty miles; _a village
every ten miles_, is deemed close; and horsemen meeting on the highway
regard each other as objects of curiosity.[45] This is the Agro Romano
over