ANCIENT

Bulgaria is one of the countries where ancient art – the art of the Greeks and Romans, has left many works and exercised a powerful impact on the local inhabitants; – the ancient Thracians. Important centres of ancient and more particularly of Hellenic culture were the settlements of the Greeks from Miletus on the Black Sea coast: Apollonia (today Sozopol), Mesembria (today Nessebur), etc. Let us mention but a few finds: a burial stele, found in Sozopol (Bourgas Museum), an archaic statue of a young man from Shapli Dere, a burial stele of Calicritus, a statue of Pan, a statue of Eros by Praxiteles, a head of Heracles, a head of Apollo, a bronze statuette of Athena, a bronze statuette of Apollo (all in Sofia Archaeological Museum); a bronze head from Vidin (Vidin Museum), head of Emperor Gordian (238-244) (Archaeological Museum, Sofia), a sarcophagus from the village of Archar (Archaeological Museum, Sofia), relief of the eastern deity Mythra (Archaeological Museum, Plovdiv), relief depicting circus shows (Archaeological Museum, Sofia).

Of great interest are the remains of ancient Roman fortresses and towns, scattered over almost all the country: Oescus on the Danube – an ancient town near Pleven, Nicopolis ad Istrum – ruins of an ancient Roman town near Veliko Turnovo, the Church of St George in Sofia, Trimontium in Plovdiv, Hissar — the ancient town of Augusta, where the fortress walls of the ancient town have remained to this day, the tomb in Silistra – with well preserved Roman mosaics, villas in the district of Sofia, near the town of Ivailovgrad, etc.

HISTORICAL RESERVATIONS

of the architecture of the Bulgarian National Revival period: Koprivshtitsa, Zheravna, Arbanassi, Kotel, Bozhentsi, Etura, the old parts of Plovdiv, Veliko Turnovo, Elena tour bulgaria, Karlovo, Tryavna, etc.

SOME TOURING ROUTES

SOFIA SAMOKOV BOROVETS (72 km)

After you have got acquainted with the capital of the country, this route will enable you to see one of the best-known mountain resorts in Bulgaria – Borovets. On your way to the resort you will pass through areas of great scenic beauty, past the Pancharevo and Passarel Lakes, past the Isker Dam and through the old town of Samokov, well-known in the past as an ore-mining centre but also featuring a Metropolitan Church and the Turkish Bairakli mosque. A side road from Samokov will bring you to the resort of Malyovitsa.

SOFIA RILA MONASTERY MELNIK (181 km)

The route makes it possible for you to see the Rila Monastery, the towns of Stanke Dimitrov, Sandanski, Blagoevgrad and the picturesque little town of Melnik with the famous earth pyramids near it. The road is asphalted.

Millions of cubic metres of water

But Bulgaria’s water economy does not rely solely on nature’s efforts. Big dams have been built in the years of people’s rule. Filled with millions of cubic metres of water, they serve both as sources of electrical power and for irrigation and water supply, for fisheries, for the practice of aquatic sports, etc. On Bulgaria’s map artificial water basins have made their appearance, such as the Isker Dam, those of Stouden Kladenets, Batak, Alexander Stamboliiski, Georgi Dimitrov, Kalin, etc. – some 20 in number so far, with still more under construction.

Of course, Bulgaria is fortunate that her territory borders to the north on the Danube and to the east on the Black Sea. These are 470 and 378 km of water courses – the first one linking the country with the greater part of Europe, and the second – with all maritime states in the world.

But perhaps we have had enough of geography. Let us now give you a brief outline of Bulgaria’s history.

FROM THE THRACIAN HORSEMEN DOWN TO OUR CWN TIMES

Many tribes and people have travelled across the territory of Bulgaria through the ages and each of them has left behind something of its material culture. An exhibition of Bulgarian history a few years ago in Paris provoked great interest there and elsewhere.

We have reliable data that the Bulgarian lands were inhabited by man as early as the Musterian Age, i.e. some 100,000 years ago. Evidence of this are the stone implements found in the Bacho Kiro Cave near the Dryanovo Monastery; they are the earliest cultural remains in the Balkan Peninsula.

The first cultured tribes came to Bulgaria’s lands in the second millennium B.C. They were the Thracians who, at first scattered, in the 5th century B.C. set up a mighty state under the guidance of the Odryssae tribe. In the field of arts and crafts the Thracians borrowed from the culture of the Greeks (Greek colonies along the Bulgarian Black Sea coast were set up as early as the 7th century B.C.) daily ephesus tours, but this did not stop them creating an original and very rich Thracian culture of their own.

Roman influence in the Balkan Peninsula started to spread after the 2nd century B.C. The foundations of more than 20 Roman towns which have been excavated in present-day Bulgaria reveal advanced constructional skills. This is particularly true of those centres on the right-hand bank of the Danube, which best reveal the domination of Rome during the lst-6th centuries A.D.

The first Bulgarian state, however, was established by two ethnical groups: Slavs and Proto-Bulgarians. The Slav tribes, or the so-called eastern group, came here in the 5th and 6th centuries. One century later, seven of them united and, in the area between the Danube and the Balkan Range, laid the foundations of an alliance, while preserving at the same time their patriarchal and communal relations. It was these Slavs that the Proto- Bulgarians of Asparouh came upon on their way from Southern Bessarabia, and it was together with them that they laid the foundations of the First Bulgarian State. This act took place in the year 681, when a peace treaty with the Byzantine Emperor Constantine IV Pogonatus recognized its existence.

First Bulgarian State

The First Bulgarian State (^681-1018) developed, briefly, as follows: at the time of Khan Kroum (803-814) the country was consolidated and expanded its boundaries; his successor Omourtag (814-831) concluded a 30-year peace treaty with Byzantium and devoted himself to construction. In 865, under Prince Boris I, Bulgarians and Slavs adopted the Christian religion – an act of tremendous significance for the further development of the state. Cyril and Methodius evolved the Bulgarian alphabet, which became the basis of all Slavonic letters. Under Simeon (893-927) – the son of Boris I – Bulgarian culture enjoyed its ‘golden age’. After that came a period of decline and Bulgaria fell under Byzantine rule (1018-1185). In the same period the well-known social movement of Bogomilism made its appearance and later passed on to Italy and to France.

The Second Bulgarian State comprises the period of 1185 to 1396. The Bulgarians liberated themselves from Byzantine rule in 1185 as a result of a people’s uprising, led by the brothers Assen and Peter. Under Kaloyan (1197-1207) and Ivan Assen II (1218-1241) Bulgaria was the strongest state in South-eastern Europe and her frontiers were washed by three seas — the Black Sea, the Aegean and the Adriatic. After that, cruel internecine struggles flared up and 14 kings reigned in rapid succession. This undermined the foundations of the state and facilitated the victory of the Ottoman Turks, who invaded the Peninsula at the end of the 13th and the beginning of the 14th century. In 1396 all Bulgaria fell under Turkish domination.

The death-rate of cities

It is a thing for society, for the rich, for the poor, for the thoughtful, for the energetic, for the clergy, for the municipalities, for the reformers, for the working men and the working women, for the people — for us all to take up and to work on till we get it. And it may be said: it is idle to appeal to the public about the death-rate of cities, about sewers, and museums, and cemeteries, and sanitary homes and parks for the people, and play-grounds for the children, and baths and wash-houses, and good schools. No! it is everything to have a true and sound notion of what we want or ought to have; to have a right ideal of a human, healthful, and happy city. We can all do something, even the humblest of us, to get a decent, habitable roof over our heads; to see that our children have water and milk to drink that is not poisoning them; we can all take decent precautions not to spread disease by neglect, folly, and ignorance.

And we can all together make a real impression on those who have the wealth and the direction of society upon them, if we make them feel that you are no longer satisfied with rotting old tenements for homes, contaminated water to drink, and dismal, joyless miles of streets to live in, where the pure air of heaven is turned into a pall of smoke. We can tell those who have the wealth and the power that the lives, and the health, and the comfort of the great masses are the very first of all their duties; that the contests of Radicals and Tories are of infinitely small importance compared with the lives of the people private guide turkey. If it be not true that Sanitas — Sanitas, omnia Saniias—if health and comfort be not the greatest of all things—they are the most urgent of all things, the foundation of all things.

It is quite true that the death-rate of London is remarkably low, but it ought to be lower. The very fact that London has so nobly distinguished itself amongst all the capitals of Europe is proof that it can do much to save life. It has a vast deal more to do.

Sir Spencer Wells

One of our greatest authorities, Sir Spencer Wells, speaking in the face of Europe as representing the sanitary reformers of this country, gave it as his deliberate judgment that the death- rate of our great cities might be, and ought to be, reduced to at least 12 per thousand per annum —that is, a reduction of nearly 10 per thousand, not far off half the deaths. There have been some weeks of recent years, when London approached within measurable distance of this great ideal. There are now some districts in the west inhabited by the rich where the death-rate is at times below even this limit. There is no sanitary authority which denies the possibility of reaching a death-rate of 12 per thousand. It would mean some 30,000 lives saved each year in London alone.

And at what price is the great result attainable? The cost of an African war, perhaps, ten years of engineering labour, absolutely wholesome water to drink, and plenty of it to wash in and to wash with, a rational and healthy drainage to carry off poison from our homes — sewer- gas and other abominations of civilisation in the stage of blunder would become as much things of the past as the leprosy.

The qualified rule of the Turk

The habit of five centuries and the hope of ultimate triumph lead all of them to submit, with continual out-breaks and outcries, to the qualified rule of the Turk. But place any one of this motley throng of nationalities in the place of the Sultan, and a general confusion would arise. The Greek would not accept the Bulgarian as his master, nor the Bulgarian the Greek; the Albanians would submit to neither; the Armenians would seize the first moment of striking in for themselves; and the Italian and Levantine Catholics would certainly assert their claims. No one of all those rival nationalities, creeds, and populations could for a moment maintain their ascendency. No one of them has the smallest title either from tradition, numbers, or proved capacity, to pretend to the sceptre of the Bosphorus—and not one of them could hold it for a day against Russia, if she chose to take it.

Assume that Russia has succeeded Turkey in possession of Constantinople, the Bosphorus, and the Hellespont. What is’the result? She would immediately make her southern capital impregnable, as Colonel Greene says, ‘with a line of defence such as no other capital in the world possesses.’ She would make it stronger than Cron- stadt or Sebastopol, and place there one of the most powerful arsenals in the world. With a great navy in sole command of the Euxine, the Bosphorus, the Marmora, and the Hellespont, with a vast expanse of inland waters within which she could be neither invested nor approached — for nothing would be easier than to make the Hellespont absolutely impassable — Russia would possess a marine base such as nothing else in Europe presents, such as nothing in European history records, except in the days of the Basilian dynasty and the Ottoman Caliphs of the sixteenth century.

Marine arsenal in the Archipelago

With such an unequalled naval base she would certainly require and easily secure a further marine arsenal in the Archipelago. It is of no consequence whether this was found on the Greek or on the Asiatic side. There are a score of suitable points. An island or a port situated somewhere in the ALgeaxi Sea between Besika Bay and the Cyclades would be a necessary adjunct and an easy acquisition guided turkey tours. With Russia having the sole command of the seas that wash South-Eastern Europe, dominating the whole south-eastern seaboard from a chain of arsenals stretching from Sebastopol to the Greek Archipelago, the entire condition of the Mediterranean would be transformed — let us say at once — the entire condition of Europe would be transformed.

Has the British public fully realised the enormous change in the political conditions of the whole Levant and of Europe involved in the installation of Russia on the Bosphorus? We are accustomed to treat the settlement of the Ottoman in Stamboul as a matter which is now of very minor importance. Why so? Because the Turk is powerless for anything but precarious defence, under the preponderant menace of Russia on the north, whilst he is hemmed in by ambitious and restless neighbours in his last ditch in the Balkan peninsula. He cannot fortify the Bosphorus without Russian interference; he cannot maintain his government in Crete without a roar of indignation from Greece. He is constantly harried by Bulgarians, Servians, Albanians, Montenegrins, and Epi- rots. He lives for ever on the defensive, he menaces no one; and no one is afraid of him in Europe—because he has nothing in Europe but a shrunken province, and practically no fleet.

Immortal men of genius trod in life

The nearness of every one of these historic scenes, the infinitely petty stage which these immortal men of genius trod in life, the brief moment of human history into which they were crowded, takes away the breath. Here in a town of very moderate size and population, within the span of one human life, there lived and worked Miltiades, Themistocles, Pericles, Alcibiades, yeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Pheidias, Thucydides, Socrates, Plato, some of the most brilliant generals, statesmen, politicians known to universal history, the greatest tragic genius, the greatest comic genius, the supreme art genius recorded in the annals of mankind, the great master of philosophic history, two out of the three great chiefs of ancient philosophy.

All of these were born and bred within walking distance of this unique spot, and all of them within little more than a hundred years. There is nothing like this in the whole history of mankind. Even in Florence, Giotto, Dante, Leonardo, Michael Angelo, and Galileo, were separated by nearly four centuries; and in Judaea, from Samuel to Ezekiel, we may possibly count some six centuries walking toursphesus
. It is this sudden blazing up of supreme genius on this mere speck of rock for one short period — and then utter silence—which makes the undying charm of this magic spot of earth.

As we stand on Pentelicus

What a light this throws on ancient history ! As we stand on Pentelicus, with the Acropolis, Marathon, Sala- mis, Piraeus, and Eleusis at our feet, we behold bays, plains, and hills, the dwellers wherein were ever strangers and enemies of Athens. No Megarian, no Argive, no Corinthian, no Boeotian, ever could become a citizen or share in the political and religious privileges of Athene.

Homer, Sappho, Pindar, Theocritus, Pythagoras, Aristotle, Archimedes, and Hipparchus were mere foreigners at Athens, aliens and sojourners amongst the lawful citizens.

– Let him cross that narrow streak of blue sea, and the Corinthian at Athens, or the Athenian at Corinth, was what the Parisian is at Berlin, or the Prussian in Paris. What would. England be, if a Kent man were an alien in Essex, if, from the hill at Sydenham, the Londoner looked on a people with whom he could neither trade, nor worship, nor intermarry, nor hold civil or military relations? What, if from the dome of St. Paul’s the Londoner looked down on the city wherein were born and passed their whole lives Alfred, Edward, Cromwell, Shakespeare, Mil- ton, Bacon, Newton, and Scott, Byron, Shelley, and Wordsworth; if from Primrose Hill, he could look down on the fields of Azincourt and Blenheim, of Trafalgar and Waterloo. Now at Athens, the Athenian looked day by day on the home of his national heroes, on the scenes of his national glory, and the works of his greatest artists, and also on the frowning strongholds of his deadly enemies.

In America and in parts of England

The result is, that a Modern City is an amorphous amoeba-like aggregate of buildings, wholly without defined limits, form, permanence, organisation, or beauty — often infinitely dreary, monstrous, grimy, noisy, and bewildering. In America and in parts of England, a big town springs up in twenty or thirty years out of a moor, or out of a village on a mill-stream. If you leave your native town — say to go to India, and return after five-and-twenty years, you will not find your way about it; and a gasometer or a railway-siding will have occupied the site of the family mansion. A modern city is the embodiment of indefinite change, the unlimited pursuit of new investments and quick returns, and of everybody doing what he finds to pay best. The idea of Patriotism, Art, Culture, Social Organisation, Religion — as identified with the city, springing out of it, stimulated by it — is an idea beyond the conception of modern men.

There are certainly cities in Europe where some remnant of the old civic patriotism and municipal life survives, as it does in Paris, Rome, Venice, Genoa, Florence, Hamburg, and Bern. In the British islands, perhaps Edinburgh may be said to have retained a sense of civic life, art, and history; it is an organic and historic city — not too large, and of singular and striking natural features. York, Lincoln, Nottingham, Leicester, Oxford, are historic cities with the sacred fire still burning feebly in their ancient sanctuary. London, if we limit London to one- fortieth of its area and one-tenth of its inhabitants, has still the consciousness of the culture, glory, and life of a great city. But for the rest of its area and population, it is lost and buried under the monotonous pile of streets, over an area as large as a county — without history, culture, or consciousness of any organic life as an effective city adventure balkan tours.

The monstrous, oppressive, paralysing bulk of modern London is becoming one of the great diseases of English civilisation. It is a national calamity that one-sixth of the entire population of England are, as Londoners, cut off at once both from country life and from city life; for those who dwell in the vast suburbs of London are cut off from city life in any true sense. A country covered with houses is not a City. Four or five millions of people herded together do not make a body of fellow-citizens.

Hardly possible

A mass of streets so endless that it is hardly possible on foot to get out of them into the open in a long day’s tramp — streets so monotonous that, but for the names on the street corner, they can hardly be distinguished one from the other — with suburbs so unorganized and mechanical that there is nothing to recall the dignity and power of a great city — with a population so movable and so unsociable that they are unknown to each other by sight or name, have no interest in each other’s lives, cannot be induced to act in common, have no common sympathies, enjoyments, or pride, who are perpetually hurrying, each his own way to catch his own train, omnibus, or tram-car, eager to do a good day’s business on the cheapest terms, and then get to some distant home to a meal or to rest. That is not life, nor is it society. These huge barracks are not cities. Nor can an organic body of citizens be made out of four millions of human creatures individually grinding out a monotonous existence.

The bulk, ugliness, flabbiness of modern London render city life, in the true and noble sense, impossible or very rudimentary. It would be unjust to pronounce Liverpool, Manchester, and Glasgow too big to make true cities — though they have hardly yet found how to deal with their huge extent. But Paris, with four times the area and the population of these, still has contrived to remain an organic and mighty city. But Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow (and the same is more or less true of Birmingham, Newcastle, Leeds, and Bristol), have enlarged their boundaries so rapidly and so entirely under the dominant passion of turning over capital and increasing the output — that beauty, dignity, culture, and social life have been left to take care of themselves, and the life of the labouring masses (for the well-to-do protect themselves by living outside and reducing their city life to ‘ works ’ and an office) is monotonous to all and to many almost bereft of physical comfort and moral elevation.

A civil cause portended ruin

To all but the rich and the privileged, a civil cause portended ruin, a criminal accusation was a risk of torture and death.

The public finances were in even more dreadful confusion than public justice. The revenue was farmed to companies and to persons who drew from it enormous gains, in some cases, it is said, cent, per cent. The deficit grew during the reign of Louis xv. at the rate of four or five millions sterling each year; and by the end of the reign of Louis xvi. the deficit had grown to eight or ten millions a year. But as to the exact deficit for each year, or as to the total debt of the nation, no man could speak.

Louis xv. in one year personally consumed eight millions sterling, and one of his mistresses alone received during her reign a sum of more than two millions. Just before the Revolution the total taxation of all kinds amounted to some sixty millions sterling. Of this not more than half was spent in the public service. The rest was the plunder of the privileged, in various degrees, from king to the mistress’s lackey. This enormous taxation was paid mainly by the non-privileged, who were less than twenty-six millions. The nobles, the clergy, were exempt from property- tax, though they held between them more than half of the entire land of France. The State could only raise loans at a rate of twenty per cent customized tours istanbul.

An army of less than 140,000

With an army of less than 140,000 men, there were officers, in active service or on half-pay, all of them exclusively drawn from the privileged class. Twelve thou-sand prelates and dignified clergy had a revenue of more than two millions sterling. Four millions more was divided amongst some 60,000 minor priests. Altogether the privileged orders, having hereditary rank or ecclesiastical office, numbered more than 200,000 persons. Besides these, some families were entitled to hereditary office of a judicial sort, who formed the nobility of the robe.’ The trades and merchants were organised in privileged gilds, and every industry was bound by a network of corporate and local restrictions.

Membership of a gild was a matter of purchase. Not only was each gild a privileged corporation, but each province was fiscally a separate state, with its local dues, local customs’ tariff, and special frontiers. In the south of France alone there were some 4000 miles of internal customs’ frontier. An infinite series of dues were imposed in confusion over districts selected by hazard or tradition. An article would sell in one province for ten times the price it would have in another province. The dues chargeable on the navigation of a single river amounted, we are told, to thirty per cent, of the value of the goods carried.

But these abuses were trifling or at least endurable when set beside the abuses which crushed the cultivation of the soil. About a fifth of the soil of France was in mortmain, the inalienable property of the Church. Nearly half the soil was held in big estates, and was tilled on the mttayer system. About one-third of it was the property of the peasant. But though the property of the peasant, it was bound, as he was bound, by an endless list of restrictions. In the Middle Ages each fief had been a kingdom of itself; each lord a petty king; the government, the taxation, the regulation of each fief, was practically the national government, the public taxation, and the social institutions.

Whole range of historical literature

Perhaps in the whole range of historical literature no book is more urgently needed than a real history of the development of industry and social existence in Europe in the present century. The movement itself is European rather than national, and social and economic rather than political. In the meantime we have no other resource except to follow up this complex evolution of modern society, both locally and sectionally. Of the various extant histories, the most important is Harriet Martineau’s History of England from the Peace of 1815; perhaps the most generally interesting is Charles Knight’s Popular History of England, the later portions of which are less superficial and elementary than the earlier. The modern English histories of Spencer Walpole, Justin M’Carthy, and W. N. Molesworth are fair, honest, and pleasant to read.

In these few notes on great books of history, it does not lie in my plan to say much about national or special histories. From my own point of view the life of Humanity in its fulness is the central aim of sound knowledge; and that which substitutes the national for the human interest, that which withdraws the attention from organic civilisation to special incidents, has been long too closely followed. There is always a tendency to concentrate the interest on national history; and it needs no further stimulus private sofia tours.

Intelligent reader

Nor are the details of our national history ever likely to pall on the intelligent reader. But histories on such a scale, that each octavo volume records but a year or two, and takes nearly as long to compose: on such a canvas, that every person who crosses the stage and each incident that occurs within the focus of the instrument, is recorded, not in the degree of its importance, but in the degree of the bulk that the accessible materials may fill — whatever may be their value, are beyond the purport of this chapter.

The only aim of the present piece is to suggest to a busy man a few books in which he may catch some conception of the central lines of human evolution. A true philosophy of human progress (if we could find it) would be a practical manual of life and conduct: and of such a philosophy, history in the larger sense must be the bible and basis. Mark, learn, and inwardly digest it, not as historical romance to pass a few idle hours, but as the revelation of the slow and interrupted, but unceasing development of the organism of which we are cells and germs. What we need to know are the leading lines of this mighty biography, the moral and social links that bind us to the series of our ancestors in the Past.

The great truth which marks the science of our time is the sense of unity in the course of civilisation, and of organic evolution in its gradual growth. To gain a conception of this course we must set ourselves in a manly way to study, not the picture books of history, but the classical works as they came from the master hands of the great historians. Wherever it is possible we must go to the original sources, being sure that no story is ever so faithful as that told by those who themselves saw the great deed and heard the voices of the great men.

Whole range of historical literature

Perhaps in the whole range of historical literature no book is more urgently needed than a real history of the development of industry and social existence in Europe in the present century. The movement itself is European rather than national, and social and economic rather than political. In the meantime we have no other resource except to follow up this complex evolution of modern society, both locally and sectionally. Of the various extant histories, the most important is Harriet Martineau’s History of England from the Peace of 1815; perhaps the most generally interesting is Charles Knight’s Popular History of England, the later portions of which are less superficial and elementary than the earlier. The modern English histories of Spencer Walpole, Justin M’Carthy, and W. N. Molesworth are fair, honest, and pleasant to read.

In these few notes on great books of history, it does not lie in my plan to say much about national or special histories. From my own point of view the life of Humanity in its fulness is the central aim of sound knowledge; and that which substitutes the national for the human interest, that which withdraws the attention from organic civilisation to special incidents, has been long too closely followed. There is always a tendency to concentrate the interest on national history; and it needs no further stimulus private sofia tours.

Intelligent reader

Nor are the details of our national history ever likely to pall on the intelligent reader. But histories on such a scale, that each octavo volume records but a year or two, and takes nearly as long to compose: on such a canvas, that every person who crosses the stage and each incident that occurs within the focus of the instrument, is recorded, not in the degree of its importance, but in the degree of the bulk that the accessible materials may fill — whatever may be their value, are beyond the purport of this chapter.

The only aim of the present piece is to suggest to a busy man a few books in which he may catch some conception of the central lines of human evolution. A true philosophy of human progress (if we could find it) would be a practical manual of life and conduct: and of such a philosophy, history in the larger sense must be the bible and basis. Mark, learn, and inwardly digest it, not as historical romance to pass a few idle hours, but as the revelation of the slow and interrupted, but unceasing development of the organism of which we are cells and germs. What we need to know are the leading lines of this mighty biography, the moral and social links that bind us to the series of our ancestors in the Past.

The great truth which marks the science of our time is the sense of unity in the course of civilisation, and of organic evolution in its gradual growth. To gain a conception of this course we must set ourselves in a manly way to study, not the picture books of history, but the classical works as they came from the master hands of the great historians. Wherever it is possible we must go to the original sources, being sure that no story is ever so faithful as that told by those who themselves saw the great deed and heard the voices of the great men.

Inevitably tended towards union

For nearly a century the great empire had inevitably tended towards union in a single centre. One dictator after another had possessed and misused the sovereign power. At last it passed to the worthiest, and the rule over the whole ancient world came to its greatest name, the noble Julius Caesar. In him were found more than the Roman genius for government and law, with a gentleness and grace few Romans ever had; an intellect truly Greek in its love of science, of art, in reach and subtlety of thought; and, above all this, in spite of vices and passions which he shared with his age, a breadth of view and heart, a spirit of human fellowship and social progress, peculiar to one who was the friend of men of different races, countries, and ideas. Julius was consummate general, orator, poet, historian, ruler, lawgiver, reformer, and philosopher; in the highest sense the statesman, magnanimous, provident, laborious, large-hearted, affable, resolute, and brave.

With him the Roman empire enters on a new and better phase. He first saw and showed how this vast aggregate of men must be ruled no longer as the subjects of one conquering city, but as a real and single state governed in the interest of all, with equal rights and common laws; and Rome be no longer the mistress, but the leader only of the nations. In this spirit he broke with the old Roman temper of narrow nationality and pride; raised to power and trust new men of all ranks and of all nations; opened the old Roman privileges of citizenship to the new subjects; laboured to complete and extend the Roman law; reorganised the administration of the distant provinces; and sought to extinguish the trace of party fury and hatred.

Roman aristocracy

When the selfish rage of the old Roman aristocracy had struck him down before his work was half complete, yet his work did not perish with him. The Roman empire at last rose to the level which he had planned for it. For some two centuries it did succeed in maintaining an era of progress, peace, and civilisation — a government, indeed, at times frightfully corrupt, at times convulsed to its foundations guided tours turkey, yet in the main in accordance with the necessities of the times, and rising in its highest types to wise, tranquil, and prudent rule, embracing all, open to all, just to all, and beloved by all.

Then it was, during those two centuries, broken as they were by temporary convulsions, that the nations of Europe rose into civilised life. Then the Spaniard, the Gaul, the Briton, the German, the people that dwelt along the whole course of the Rhine and the Danube, first learnt the arts and ideas of life; law, government, society, education, industry, appeared amongst them; and over the tracts of land trodden for so many centuries by rival tribes and devastating hordes, security first appeared, turmoil gave place to repose, and there rose the notion, not forgotten for ten centuries, of the solemn Peace of Rome.

Let us recount what it was that the Roman had given to the world. In the first place, his law — that Roman law, the most perfect political creation of the human mind, which for one thousand years grew with one even and expanding life — the law which is the basis of all the law of Europe, including even our own. Then the political system of towns. The actual municipal constitution of the old cities of Western Europe, from Gibraltar to the Baltic, from the Channel to Sicily, is but a development of the Roman city, which lasted through the Middle Ages, and began modern industrial life. Next, all the institutions of administration and police which modern Europe has developed had their origin there. To them in the Middle Ages men turned when the age of confusion was ending. To them again men turned when the Middle Ages themselves were passing away.