And the moral of their
whole history is the same each Roman generation, so far as we know,
differs a little-and in the best times often but a VERY little--from
its predecessors. And therefore the history is so continuous as it
goes, though its two ends are so unlike. The history of many nations
is like the stage of the English drama: one scene is succeeded on a
sudden by a scene quite different,--a cottage by a palace, and a
windmill by a fortress. But the history of Rome changes as a good
diorama changes; while you look, you hardly see it alter; each
moment is hardly different from the last moment; yet at the close
the metamorphosis is complete, and scarcely anything is as it began.
Just so in the history of the great prevailing city: you begin with
a town and you end with an empire, and this by unmarked stages?--So
shrouded, so shielded, in the coarse fibre of other qualities--was
the delicate principle of progress, that it never failed, and it was
never broken.
One standing instance, no doubt, shows that the union of
progressiveness and legality does not secure supremacy in war. The
Jewish nation has its type of progress in the prophets, side by side
with its type of permanence in the law and Levites, more distinct
than any other ancient people.
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