of the elements, require centuries, and the process makes what we
call--history.

It was written in the book of fate that Gaul should become a great
nation; but not until fused and interpenetrated with two other
nationalities. She must first be humanized and civilized by the Roman,
and then energized and made free from the Roman by the Teuton.

The instrument chosen for the former was Julius Caesar, and for the
latter--five centuries later--Clovis, the Frankish leader.

It is safe to affirm that no man has ever so changed the course of
human events as did Julius Caesar. Napoleon, who strove to imitate him
1800 years later, was a charlatan in comparison; a mere scene-shifter
on a great theatrical stage. Few traces of his work remain upon
humanity to-day.

Caesar opened up a pathway for the old civilizations of the world to
flow into Western Europe, and the sodden mass of barbarism was infused
with a life-compelling current. This was not accomplished by placing
before the inferior race a higher ideal of life for imitation, but by a
mingling of the blood of the nations--a transfusion into Gallic veins
of the germs of a higher living and thinking--thus making them heirs to
the great civilizations of antiquity.

Was any human event ever fraught with such consequences to the human
race as the conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar?

The Gallic wars had for centuries drained the treasure and taxed the
resources of Rome. Caesar conceived the audacious idea of stopping