and generally in favor of those who had the longest purses; so that it was not only expensive to go to law, but so expensive that it was ruinous?  What could be hoped of laws, however good, when they were made the channels of extortion, when the occupation of the Bench itself was the great instrument by which powerful men protected their monopolies?  We speak of the glories of art; but art was prostituted to please the lower tastes and inflame the passions.  The most costly pictures were hung up in the baths, and were disgracefully indecent.  Even literature was directed to the flattery of tyrants and rich men.  There was no manly protest from literary men against the increasing vices of society,—­not even from the philosophers.  Philosophy continually declined, like literature and art.  Nothing strikes us more forcibly than the absence of genius in the second century.  There was no reward for genius except when it flattered and pandered to what was demoralizing.  Who dared to utter manly protests in the Senate?  Who discussed the principles of government?  Who would venture to utter anything displeasing to the imperial masters of the world?  In this age of boundless prosperity, where were the great poets, where the historians, where the writers on political economy, where the moralists?  For one hundred years there were scarcely ten eminent men in any department of literature whose writings have come down to us.  There was the most marked decay in all branches of knowledge, except in that knowledge which could be utilized for making money.  The imperial regime cast a dismal shadow over all the efforts of independent genius, on all lofty aspirations, on all individual freedom.  Architects, painters, and sculptors there were in abundance, and they were employed and well paid; but where were poets, scholars, sages?—­where were politicians even?  The great and honored men were the tools of emperors,—­the prefects of their guards, the generals of their armies, the architects of their palaces, the purveyors of their banquets.  If the emperor happened to be a good administrator of this complicated despotism, he was sustained, like Tiberius, whatever his character.  If he was weak or frivolous, he was removed by assassination.  It was a government of absolute physical forces, and it is most marvellous that such a man as Marcus Aurelius could have been its representative.  And what could he have done with his philosophical inquiries had he not also been a great general and a practical administrator,—­a man of business as well as a man of thought?

But I cannot enumerate the evils which coexisted with all the boasted prosperity of the Empire, and which were preparing the way for ruin,—­evils so disgraceful and universal that Christianity made no impression at all on society at large, and did not modify a law or remove a single object of scandal.  Do you call that state of society prosperous and happy when half of the population was in base bondage to