Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/418

 400 THE DECLINE AND FALL CIIAP. ' curiae,' or civil corporations, were again filled with — UJ — useful and respectable members : the youth were no longer apprehensive of marriage ; and married persons were no longer apprehensive of posterity : the public and private festivals were celebrated with customai-y pomp ; and the frequent and secure intercourse of the provinces displayed the image of national prosperity ^. A mind like that of Julian, must have felt the general happiness of which he was the author; but he viewed, with peculiar satisfaction and complacency, the city of Paris ; the seat of his winter residence, and the object even of his partial affection^. That splendid capital, which now embraces an ample territory on either side of the Seine, was originally confined to the small island in the midst of the river, from whence the inhabitants derived a supply of pure and salubrious water. The river bathed the foot of the walls ; and the town was accessible only by two wooden bridges. A forest over- spread the northern side of the Seine; but on the south, the ground, which now bears the name of the university, was insensibly covered with houses, and adorned with a palace and amphitheatre, baths, an aqueduct, and a field of Mars for the exercise of the Roman troops. The severity of the climate was tempered by the neigli- bourhood of the ocean ; and with some precautions, which experience had taught, the vine and fig-tree were successfully cultivated. But, in remarkable win- ters, the Seine was deeply frozen ; and the huge pieces of ice that floated down the stream, might be compared, by an Asiatic, to the blocks of white marble which were extracted from the quarries of Phrygia. The licen- tiousness and corruption of Antioch recalled to the memory of Julian the severe and simple manners of his y Libanius, Oral. Parental, in Imp. Julian, c. 38. in Fabiicius Bibliothec. Giaec. torn. vii. p. 263, 264. illustrated by Henry Valesius, (ad Ammian. xx. 4.) his brother Hadrian Valesius, or de Valois, and JM. d'Anville (in their respective Notilias of ancient Gaul,) the abbe de Longuerue, Description de la France, torn. i. p. 12, 13; and M. Bonamy, in the Mem. de I'Academie des Inscriptions, torn. XV. p. 656 — 691.
 * See Julian, in Misopogon. p. 340, 341. The primitive state oC Paris is