wild beasts.  There was no higher thought.  The Greeks, though fond of flowers, and employing them for a multitude of adornments and festive occasions entirely unequalled now, yet did not advance to their botanical study or classification.  The Roman, if enamored of the fine arts, could see no Art in Nature.  There was no experiment, no discovery, and but little observation.  The whole science of Natural History, which has assumed such magnitude and influence in our times, was then almost entirely neglected.

And yet what an opportunity there was for the naturalist, had a single enthusiast arisen?  All lands, all climes, and all their natural productions were subservient to the will of the Emperor.  The orb of the earth was searched for the roe of eels or the fins of mullets to gratify Caesar.  And the whole world might have been explored, and specimens deposited in one gigantic museum in the Eternal City, at the nod of a single individual.  But the observer, the lover of Nature, was wanting; and the whole world was ransacked merely to consign its living tenants to the vivaria, and thence to the fatal arena of the amphitheatre.  Yet even here the naturalist might have pursued his studies on individuals, and even whole species, both living and dead, without quitting Rome.  The animal kingdom lay tributary at his feet, but served only to satiate his appetite or his passions, and not to enrich his mind.

So, again, Rome’s armies traversed the globe, and her legions were often explorers of hitherto unknown regions.  But no men of science, no corps of savans was attached to her cohorts, to march in the footsteps of conquest and gather the fruits of victory to enrich the schools.  Provinces were devastated, great cities plundered, nations made captive, and all the masterpieces of Art borne off to adorn Rome.  But Nature was never rifled of her secrets; nor was discovery carried beyond the most material things.  The military spirit stifled natural science.

There were then, to be sure, no tendencies of thought to anything but war, pleasure, literature, or art.  There was comparatively no knowledge of the physical sciences, whose culture Mr. Buckle has shown to have exerted so powerful an influence on civilization.  The convex lens—­as since developed into the microscope, the giver of a new world to man—­was known to Archimedes only as an instrument to burn the enemy’s fleet.

* * * * *

Modern pisciculture in some measure imitates, although, it does not rival the ancient.  Many methods have been devised in France and England of breeding and nurturing the salmon, the trout, and other valuable fish, which are annually becoming more scarce in all civilized countries.  But all this is on a far different principle from that pursued at Rome.  We follow pisciculture from necessity or economy, because fish of certain kinds are yearly dying out, and to produce a cheap food; but the Romans followed