The seeds of the American Revolution were already sown, and the spirit
of 1776 was foreshadowed in 1689 ... 277, 278




THE BEGINNINGS OF NEW ENGLAND.




CHAPTER I.

THE ROMAN IDEA AND THE ENGLISH IDEA.


It used to be the fashion of historians, looking superficially at the
facts presented in chronicles and tables of dates, without analyzing and
comparing vast groups of facts distributed through centuries, or even
suspecting the need for such analysis and comparison, to assign the date
476 A.D. as the moment at which the Roman Empire came to an end. It was
in that year that the soldier of fortune, Odovakar, commander of the
Herulian mercenaries in Italy, sent the handsome boy Romulus, son of
Orestes, better known as "little Augustus," from his imperial throne
to the splendid villa of Lucullus near Naples, and gave him a yearly
pension of $35,000 [6,000 solidi] to console him for the loss of a
world. As 324 years elapsed before another emperor was crowned at Rome,
and as the political headship of Europe after that happy restoration
remained upon the German soil to which the events of the eighth century