which, it was the foundation? By what agency was Rome chosen as the
foundress of an empire which we regard almost as a necessary step in
human development, and which formed the material, and to no small extent
the political matrix of modern Europe, though the spiritual life of our
civilization is derived from another source? We are not aware that this
question has ever been distinctly answered, or even distinctly
propounded. The writer once put it to a very eminent Roman antiquarian,
and the answer was a quotation from Virgil--

"Hoc nemus, hunc, inquit, frondoso vertice clivum
Quis deus incertum est, habitat Deus; Arcades ipsum
Credunt se vidisae Jovem cum saepe nigrantem
AEgida concuteret dextra nimbosque cieret."

This perhaps was the best answer that Roman patriotism, ancient or
modern, could give; and it certainly was given in the best form. The
political passages of Virgil, like some in Lucan and Juvenal, had a
grandeur entirely Roman with which neither Homer nor any other Greek has
anything to do. But historical criticism, without doing injustice to the
poetical aspect of the mystery, is bound to seek a rational solution.
Perhaps in seeking the solution we may in some measure supply, or at
least suggest the mode of supplying, a deficiency which we venture to
think is generally found in the first chapters of histories. A national
history, as it seems to us, ought to commence with a survey of the
country or locality, its geographical position, climate, productions,
and other physical circumstances as they bear on the character of the
people. We ought to be presented, in short, with a complete description
of the scene of the historic drama, as well as with an account of the
race to which the actors belong. In the early stages of his development,
at all events, man is mainly the creature of physical circumstances; and