ESSAYS. BY THOMAS DE QUINCEY, AUTHOR OF • CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER, ETC. ETC. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. BOSTON: TICKNOR, REED, AND FIELDS. M DCCC LIII. Dec. 24, 1914 From the Estate of 19486, 10.10 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by TICKNOR, REED, AND FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. PHILOSOPHY OF ROMAN HISTORY. It would be thought strange indeed, if there should exist a large, a memorable section of history, traversed by many a scholar with various objects, reviewed by many a reader in a spirit of anxious scrutiny, and yet to this hour misunderstood; erroneously appreciated; its tendencies mistaken, and its whole meaning, import, value, not so much inadequately — as falsely, ignorantly, perversely-deciphered. Primá facie, one would pronounce this impossible. Nevertheless it is a truth; and it is a solemn truth; and what gives to it this solemnity, is the mysterious meaning, the obscure hint of a still profounder meaning in the background, which begins to dawn upon the eye when first piercing the darkness now resting on the subject. Perhaps no one arc or segment, detached from the total cycle of human records, promises so much beforehand so much instruction, so much gratification to curiosity, so much splendor, so much depth of interest, as the great period - the systole and diastole, flux and reflux of the Western Roman Empire. Its parentage was magnificent and Titanic. It was a birth out of the death-struggles of the colos |