resemblance more perfect than during that evil time when she
alone rode, amidst darkness and tempest, on the deluge beneath
which all the great works of ancient power and wisdom lay
entombed, bearing within her that feeble germ from which a Second
and more glorious civilisation was to spring.

Even the spiritual supremacy arrogated by the Pope was, in the
dark ages, productive of far more good than evil. Its effect was
to unite the nations of Western Europe in one great commonwealth.
What the Olympian chariot course and the Pythian oracle were to
all the Greek cities, from Trebizond to Marseilles, Rome and her
Bishop were to all Christians of the Latin communion, from
Calabria to the Hebrides. Thus grew up sentiments of enlarged
benevolence. Races separated from each other by seas and
mountains acknowledged a fraternal tie and a common code of
public law. Even in war, the cruelty of the conqueror was not
seldom mitigated by the recollection that he and his vanquished
enemies were all members of one great federation.

Into this federation our Saxon ancestors were now admitted. A
regular communication was opened between our shores and that part
of Europe in which the traces of ancient power and policy were
yet discernible. Many noble monuments which have since been
destroyed or defaced still retained their pristine magnificence;
and travellers, to whom Livy and Sallust were unintelligible,
might gain from the Roman aqueducts and temples some faint notion
of Roman history. The dome of Agrippa, still glittering with
bronze, the mausoleum of Adrian, not yet deprived of its columns
and statues, the Flavian amphitheatre, not yet degraded into a
quarry, told to the rude English pilgrims some part of the story