population, heedless of all serious cares, and willingly leaving to any despot the trouble of enlarging the boundaries of the empire, or of defending them against barbarians, so long as to them were thence supplied largesses without price, and the festival of a triumph—Panem et Circenses.
And hence while Ramses may have loved to be painted as holding in his hand, like puppet-strings, the tresses of conquered sovereigns, to be beheaded by the score with one stroke of his scimiter, or crushed by one blow of his mace; and while the kings of Nineveh had themselves sculptured with grisly heads counted beside them after the battle-field, the Roman emperor preferred to be seen on his triumphal-car, bearing the golden spoils of the Temple, while the ample wings of Victory crowning him shut out from effeminate eyes the horrors of his sack and of its carnage.
And thus the style of building, resulting from the various experiences of growth in civilization, becomes historical, apt, suggestive, and so beautiful. The Northern slopes his roof to a lofty point, and then crowns it with a spire, that it may shake off lustily the superincumbent snow, or give easy flow to the waters, and sharp resistance to the winds of an inclement climate. The Egyptian strengthened the base of his edifice, and scientifically leaned its walls inwards, for double security against earthquake or inundation. For the danger lay at the foundations and lower courses of his structure. And surely an experience of two thousand years has shown that the Greeks at home, and in their colonies, knew well
