The Caesars | Page 3

fastidious, and sometimes fantastic ceremonies, originally

devised as the very extremities of anti-barbarism, were often
themselves but too nearly allied in spirit to the barbaresque in taste. In
reality, some parts of the Byzantine court ritual were arranged in the
same spirit as that of China or the Birman empire; or fashioned by
anticipation, as one might think, on the practice of that Oriental Cham,
who daily proclaims by sound of trumpet to the kings in the four
corners of the earth--that they, having dutifully awaited the close of his
dinner, may now with his royal license go to their own.
From such vestiges of derivative grandeur, propagated to ages so
remote from itself, and sustained by manners so different from the
spirit of her own,--we may faintly measure the strength of the original
impulse given to the feelings of men by the sacred majesty of the
Roman throne. How potent must that splendor have been, whose mere
reflection shot rays upon a distant crown, under another heaven, and
across the wilderness of fourteen centuries! Splendor, thus transmitted,
thus sustained, and thus imperishable, argues a transcendent in the basis
of radical power. Broad and deep must those foundations have been
laid, which could support an "arch of empire" rising to that giddy
altitude--an altitude which sufficed to bring it within the ken of
posterity to the sixtieth generation.
Power is measured by resistance. Upon such a scale, if it were applied
with skill, the relations of greatness in Rome to the greatest of all that
has gone before her, and has yet come after her, would first be
adequately revealed. The youngest reader will know that the grandest
forms in which the collective might of the human race has manifested
itself, are the four monarchies. Four times have the distributive forces
of nations gathered themselves, under the strong compression of the
sword, into mighty aggregates--denominated Universal Empires, or
Monarchies. These are noticed in the Holy Scriptures; and it is upon
their warrant that men have supposed no fifth monarchy or universal
empire possible in an earthly sense; but that, whenever such an empire
arises, it will have Christ for its head; in other words, that no fifth
monarchia can take place until Christianity shall have swallowed up all
other forms of religion, and shall have gathered the whole family of
man into one fold under one all-conquering Shepherd. Hence [Footnote:

This we mention, because a great error has been sometimes committed
in exposing their error, that consisted, not in supposing that for a fifth
time men were to be gathered under one sceptre, and that sceptre
wielded by Jesus Christ, but in supposing that this great era had then
arrived, or that with no deeper moral revolution men could be fitted for
that yoke.] the fanatics of 1650, who proclaimed Jesus for their king,
and who did sincerely anticipate his near advent in great power, and
under some personal manifestation, were usually styled
_Fifth-Monarchists_.
However, waiving the question (interesting enough in itself)--Whether
upon earthly principles a fifth universal empire could by possibility
arise in the present condition of knowledge for man individually, and of
organization for man in general--this question waived, and confining
ourselves to the comparison of those four monarchies which actually
have existed,--of the Assyrian or earliest, we may remark, that it found
men in no state of cohesion. This cause, which came in aid of its first
foundation, would probably continue; and would diminish the intensity
of the power in the same proportion as it promoted its extension. This
monarchy would be absolute only by the personal presence of the
monarch; elsewhere, from mere defect of organization, it would and
must betray the total imperfections of an elementary state, and of a first
experiment. More by the weakness inherent in such a constitution, than
by its own strength, did the Persian spear prevail against the Assyrian.
Two centuries revolved, seven or eight generations, when Alexander
found himself in the same position as Cyrus for building a third
monarchy, and aided by the selfsame vices of luxurious effeminacy in
his enemy, confronted with the self-same virtues of enterprise and
hardihood in his compatriot soldiers. The native Persians, in the earliest
and very limited import of that name, were a poor and hardy race of
mountaineers. So were the men of Macedon; and neither one tribe nor
the other found any adequate resistance in the luxurious occupants of
Babylonia. We may add, with respect to these two earliest monarchies,
that the Assyrian was undefined with regard to space, and the Persian
fugitive with regard to time. But for the third--the Grecian or
Macedonian--we know that the arts of civility, and of civil organization,
had made great progress before the Roman strength was measured

against it. In Macedon, in Achaia, in Syria, in