execution! What shall we say of the boasted justice, when judgments were
rendered on technical points, and generally in favor of those who had
the longest purses; so that it was not only expensive to go to law, but
so expensive that it was ruinous? What could be hoped of laws, however
good, when they were made the channels of extortion, when the
occupation of the Bench itself was the great instrument by which
powerful men protected their monopolies? We speak of the glories of art;
but art was prostituted to please the lower tastes and inflame the
passions. The most costly pictures were hung up in the baths, and were
disgracefully indecent. Even literature was directed to the flattery of
tyrants and rich men. There was no manly protest from literary men
against the increasing vices of society,--not even from the
philosophers. Philosophy continually declined, like literature and art.
Nothing strikes us more forcibly than the absence of genius in the
second century. There was no reward for genius except when it flattered
and pandered to what was demoralizing. Who dared to utter manly protests
in the Senate? Who discussed the principles of government? Who would
venture to utter anything displeasing to the imperial masters of the
world? In this age of boundless prosperity, where were the great poets,
where the historians, where the writers on political economy, where the
moralists? For one hundred years there were scarcely ten eminent men in
any department of literature whose writings have come down to us. There
was the most marked decay in all branches of knowledge, except in that
knowledge which could be utilized for making money. The imperial régime
cast a dismal shadow over all the efforts of independent genius, on all
lofty aspirations, on all individual freedom. Architects, painters, and
sculptors there were in abundance, and they were employed and well paid;
but where were poets, scholars, sages?--where were politicians even? The
great and honored men were the tools of emperors,--the prefects of their
guards, the generals of their armies, the architects of their palaces,