THE COURSE OF HISTORY 259 



than this. Art, architecture, music, sculpture; 

 the fruit of the loom; whatever wealth can pur- 

 chase and the human mind design in outward 

 magnificence and brilliancy; ease and opulence; 

 culture and luxury; empire and victory all are 

 combined in one narrow canvas. It is material 

 evolution at its height ; and yet it marks a decline, 

 a supreme failure at its height of triumph. In 

 place of a simple and pure religion, with its one 

 true God, there is here a decadent polytheism. 

 In place of freedom, contentment and true happi- 

 ness that wait on toil and virtue, there is here a 

 cringing spirit and a world-dominating ambition. 

 Wealth, vice and corruption have replaced the 

 pure joys of the domestic hearth. We still con- 

 tinue in our mistaken theories falsely to gauge 

 man by his surroundings. Yet even in early Rome 

 there was more hardy virtue, more genuine liberty, 

 more true manhood and pure womanly virtue, 

 than in the full noon-day of the Empire's glory, 

 when St. Paul could see in it nothing but cruelty, 

 lust and greed; a gilded sepulcher. 



And now, as we would expect, comes "De- 

 struction." A gloomy pall overspreads the sky. 

 Faintly through the darkness, as of a world 

 crumbling to ruin, can be seen the distant hill with 

 its solitary, isolated boulder. Red flames are 

 bursting forth in a mighty conflagration from the 

 palaces to our right. The pall of cloud is a pall 

 of smoke from the city doomed to destruction. 



