2 
THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 
metals; but mines and river beds yielded them in tlie spare 
measure most favorable to stability of value in the medium of 
exchange, and, consequently, to the regularity of commercial 
transactions. The ornaments of the barbaric pride of the 
East, the pearl, the ruby, the sapphire, and the diamond— 
though not unknown to the luxury of a people whose con¬ 
quests and whose wealth commanded whatever the habitable 
world could contribute to augment the material splendor of 
their social life—were scarcely native to the territory of the 
empire; but the comparative rarity of these gems in Europe, 
at somewhat earlier periods, was, perhaps, the very circum¬ 
stance that led the cunning artists of classic antiquity to 
enrich softer stones with engravings, which invest the common 
onyx and carnelian w T ith a worth surpassing, in cultivated 
eyes, the lustre of the most brilliant oriental jewels. 
Of these manifold blessings the temperature of the air, the 
distribution of the rains, the relative disposition of land and 
water, the plenty of the sea, the composition of the soil, and 
the raw material of some of the arts, were wholly gratuitous 
gifts. Yet the spontaneous nature of Europe, of Western 
Asia, of Libya, neither fed nor clothed the civilized inhabitants 
of those provinces. Every loaf was eaten in the sweat of the 
brow. All must be earned by toil. But toil was nowhere 
else rewarded by so generous wages; for nowhere would a 
given amount of intelligent labor produce so abundant, and, at 
the same time, so varied returns of the good things of material 
existence. The luxuriant harvests of cereals that waved on 
every field from the shores of the Rhine to the banks of the 
Rile, the vines that festooned the hillsides of Syria, of Italy, 
and of Greece, the olives of Spain, the fruits of the gardens of 
the Hesperides, the domestic quadrupeds and fowls known in 
ancient rural husbandry—all these were original products of 
foreign climes, naturalized in new homes, and gradually enno¬ 
bled by the art of man, while centuries of persevering labor 
were expelling the wild vegetation, and fitting the earth for 
the production of more generous growths. 
Only for the sense of landscape beauty did unaided nature 
