an unsound limb. He can tell us how to preserve our health when we have
it; he can warn us of the conditions under which particular disorders will
have us at disadvantage. And so with nations: amidst the endless variety
of circumstances there are constant phenomena which give notice of
approaching danger; there are courses of action which have uniformly
produced the same results; and the wise politicians are those who have
learnt from experience the real tendencies of things, unmisled by
superficial differences, who can shun the rocks where others have been
wrecked, or from foresight of what is coming can be cool when the peril is
upon them.

For these reasons, the fall of the Roman Republic is exceptionally
instructive to us. A constitutional government the most enduring and the
most powerful that ever existed was put on its trial, and found wanting.
We see it in its growth; we see the causes which undermined its strength.
We see attempts to check the growing mischief fail, and we see why they
failed. And we see, finally, when nothing seemed so likely as complete
dissolution, the whole system changed by a violent operation, and the
dying patient's life protracted for further centuries of power and
usefulness.

Again, irrespective of the direct teaching which we may gather from them,
particular epochs in history have the charm for us which dramas have--
periods when the great actors on the stage of life stand before us with
the distinctness with which they appear in the creations of a poet. There
have not been many such periods; for to see the past, it is not enough for
us to be able to look at it through the eyes of contemporaries; these
contemporaries themselves must have been parties to the scenes which they
describe. They must have had full opportunities of knowledge. They must
have had eyes which could see things in their true proportions. They must