thousand dollars of our money. All the masterpieces of antiquity were
collected in this centre of luxury and pride,--all those arts which made
Greece immortal, and which we can only copy. What vast structures,
ornamented with pillars and marble statues, were crowded together near
the Forum and Capitoline Hill! The museums of Italy contain to-day
twenty thousand specimens of ancient sculpture, which no modern artist
could improve. More than a million of dollars were paid for a single
picture for the imperial bed-chamber,--for painting was carried to as
great perfection as sculpture.

Such were the arts of the Pagan city, such the material civilization in
all the cities; and these cities were guarded by soldiers who were
trained to the utmost perfection of military discipline, and presided
over by governors as elegant, as polished, and as intelligent as the
courtiers of Louis XIV. The genius for war was only equalled by genius
for government. How well administered were all the provinces! The Romans
spread their laws, their language, and their institutions everywhere
without serious opposition. They were great civilizers, as the English
have been. "Law" became as great an idea as "glory;" and so perfect was
the mechanism of government that the happiness of the people was
scarcely affected by the character of the emperors. Jurisprudence, the
indigenous science of the Romans, is still studied and adopted for its
political wisdom.

Such was the civilization of the Roman world in the time of Marcus
Aurelius,--that external grandeur, that outward prosperity, to which
Gibbon points with such admiration and pride, and to which he ascribed
the highest happiness which the world has ever enjoyed. Far different,
probably, would have been the verdict of the good and contemplative
emperor who then ruled the civilized world, when he saw the luxury, the