Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/262

law and the Christian religion. But, since it is clearly impossible to treat of national progress in Europe without allowing great weight to these powerful influences, it would be highly inconvenient to pass from the city commonwealth to those national groups whose internal and external developments have owed so much to days of world-empire and world-literature. We shall, accordingly, examine the literary characteristics of the latter before we approach the national groups.