things, first in Italy, then in the world at large, the Peace of Rome
indispensable to civilization, and destined to be the germ and precursor
of the Peace of Humanity.

In two respects, however, the geographical circumstances of Rome appear
specially to have prepared her for the exercise of universal empire. In
the first place, her position was such as to bring her into contact from
the outset with a great variety of races. The cradle of her dominion was
a sort of ethnological microcosm. Latins, Etruscans, Greeks, Campanians,
with all the mountain races and the Gauls, make up a school of the most
diversified experience, which could not fail to open the minds of the
future masters of the world. How different was this education from that
of a people which is either isolated, like the Egyptians, or comes into
contact perhaps in the way of continual border hostility with a single
race! What the exact relations of Rome with Etruria were in the earliest
times we do not know, but evidently they were close; while between the
Roman and the Etruscan character the difference appears to have been as
wide as possible. The Roman was pre-eminently practical and business-
like, sober-minded, moral, unmystical, unsacerdotal, much concerned with
present duties and interests, very little concerned about a future state
of existence, peculiarly averse from human sacrifices and from all wild
and dark superstitions. The Etruscan, as he has portrayed himself to us
in his tombs, seems to have been, in his later development at least, a
mixture of Sybaritism with a gloomy and almost Mexican religion, which
brooded over the terrors of the next world, and sought in the constant
practice of human sacrifice a relief from its superstitious fear. If the
Roman could tolerate the Etruscans, be merciful to them, and manage them
well, he was qualified to deal in a statesmanlike way with the
peculiarities of almost any race, except those whose fierce nationality
repelled all management whatever. In borrowing from the Etruscans some