'We are never better understood than when we speak of a "Roman
virtue," a "Roman outline." There is somewhat indefinite,
somewhat yet unfulfilled in the thought of Greece, of Spain,
of modern Italy; but ROME! it stands by itself, a clear Word.
The power of will, the dignity of a fixed purpose is what
it utters. Every Roman was an emperor. It is well that the
infallible church should have been founded on this rock, that
the presumptuous Peter should hold the keys, as the conquering
Jove did before his thunderbolts, to be seen of all the world.
The Apollo tends flocks with Admetus; Christ teaches by the
lonely lake, or plucks wheat as he wanders through the fields
some Sabbath morning. They never come to this stronghold; they
could not have breathed freely where all became stone as
soon as spoken, where divine youth found no horizon for its
all-promising glance, but every thought put on, before it
dared issue to the day in action, its _toga virilis_.

'Suckled by this wolf, man gains a different complexion from
that which is fed by the Greek honey. He takes a noble bronze
in camps and battle-fields; the wrinkles of council well
beseem his brow, and the eye cuts its way like the sword. The
Eagle should never have been used as a symbol by any other
nation: it belonged to Rome.

'The history of Rome abides in mind, of course, more than the
literature. It was degeneracy for a Roman to use the pen; his
life was in the day. The "vaunting" of Rome, like that of the
North American Indians, is her proper literature. A man rises;
he tells who he is, and what he has done; he speaks of his
country and her brave men; he knows that a conquering god is