198 C03MJS. 



the grand unity of nature is adduced as pjoductive of encouT' 

 ao-ement and consolation to man. 



The conclusion of the Historia Naturalis of Pliny — the 

 ureatest Roman memorial transmitted to the literature of the 

 Middle Ages — is composed in a true spirit of cosmical descrip- 

 tion. It contains, in the condition in Vvhich we have possessed 

 it since 1831,* a hrief consideration of the comparative natu- 

 ral history of countries in different zones, a eulogium of South- 

 ern Europe between the Mediterranean and the chain of the 

 Alps, and a description in praise of the Hesperian sky, '• where 

 the temperate and gentle mildness of the climate had," accord- 

 ing to a dogma of the older Pythagoreans, " early hastened 

 the liberation of mankind from barbarism." 



The influence of the Roman dommion as a constant element 

 of union and fusion required the more urgently and forcibly to 

 be brought forward in a history of the contemplation of the 

 universe, since we are able to recognize the traces of this in 

 fluence in its remotest consequences even at a period when 

 the bond of political union had become less compact, and waa 

 even partially destroyed by the inroads of barbarians. Clan- 

 dian, who stands forth in the dechne of literature during the 

 latter and more disturbed age of Theodosius the Great and 

 his sons, distinguished for the endowment of a revived poetic 

 productiveness, still sings, in too highly laudatory strains, of 

 the dominion of the Pv.omans.t 



HcEC est, in gremium v'lctos qua: sola recepit, 

 Hionannmque genus communi nomine fovit, 

 Matris, non domince, ritu ; civesque vocavit 

 Q,uos domuit, nexuque pio longinqua revinxit. 

 Hnjns pacijicis debemus moribus omnes 

 Q,nod veluti patriis regionibtis utitur hospes. . . . 



Kxternal means of constraint, 'artificially-arranged civil m- 

 Btitutions, and long-continued servitude, might certainly tend 

 to unite nations by destroying the individual existence of each 

 one ; but the feeling of the unity and common condition of 

 the whole human race, and of the equal rights of all men, has 

 a nobler origin, and is based on the internal promptings of the 



ulam consideratio contemplatloque uaturie. Erigimur, elatiores fieri 

 videmur, huraana despicimus, cogitantesqvie supera atque coelestia h;i'o 

 nostra, ut exigua et minima, coutemnimus." (Cic, Acad., ii., 41.) 



* Plin., xxxvii., 13 (ed. Sillig.. t. v., 1836, p. 320). All earlier edi- 

 tions closed with the words " Hispaniam quacunque ambitur m-ri." 

 The conclusion of the work was discovered in 1831, in a Bamberf; '^ »• 

 dex, by HeiT Ludwig v. Jan, professor at Schweinfurt. 



t Claudian, in Secundum Consulatnm Stillichonis, v. 150-155. 



