turn, yielded to the Grecian heroes when she became enervated with the
luxuries of the conquered kingdoms. Thus Greece again succumbed to Rome
when she had degenerated into a land where every vice was rampant. The
passions which inflamed Cyrus, and Alexander, and Pompey were alike
imperious, and their policy was alike unscrupulous. They simply were
bent on conquest, and on establishing powerful empires, which conquests
doubtless resulted in the improvement of the condition of mankind. There
is also something hard and forbidding in the policy of successful
statesmen. We are shocked at their injustice, cruelty, and
rapaciousness; but they are often used by Providence to raise nations to
preeminence, when their ascendency is, on the whole, a benefit to the
world. There is nothing amiable or benign in the characters of such men
as Oxenstiern, Richelieu, or Bismarck, but who can doubt the wisdom of
their administration? It is seldom that any nation is allowed to have a
great ascendency over other nations unless the general influence of the
dominant State is favorable to civilization; and when this influence is
perverted the ascendency passes away. This is remarkably seen in the
history of the Persian, the Greek, and the Roman Empires, and still more
forcibly in the empire of the popes in the Middle Ages, and of the vast
influence of France and England during the last hundred years. This is
both a mystery and a fact. It is mysterious that bad men should be
allowed to succeed so often, but it is one of the sternest facts of
life, only to be explained on the principle that they are instruments in
the hands of the Great Moral Governor whose designs we are not able to
fathom, yet the wisdom of which is subsequently, though imperfectly,
made known. It was wicked in the sons of Jacob to sell Joseph to the
Ishmaelites; their craft and lies were successful: they deceived their
father and accomplished their purposes; yet his bondage was the means of
their preservation from the evils of famine. The rise and fall of
empires are to be explained on the same principles as the rise and fall