Page:The Children's Plutarch, Romans.djvu/16

 others were, and that each did everything for the common weal. But this was for the common weal in war, while the new dream of a perfect state is for the common weal in work, where there are neither rich nor poor in an equality of the peaceful ownership of the land and the tools and the fruits of labor by all, for all.

Another thing which I could wish the children to observe is how the wisest and best of the ancients were in the bonds of fear to signs and portents which men laugh at now. This was because their education was, at the best, philosophical, and dealt with conduct through the discussion of moral principles under gods who had none, while the modern education is scientific, and has enlarged the world to boundlessness through vaster knowledge and sympathy with every form of life. The Roman world, though it was the whole civilized world, was a small world, and it sank at last under the fears and dangers that always encompassed it in the unknown beyond it.

But while it lasted for well a thousand years, what a glorious world it was, and what quenchless memories it has left! It makes one a boy again to think of Romulus and Remus and their wolf foster-mother and the undying city they founded; of the patriots, who drove out the race of kings; of Cincinnatus, who left his plough to serve his country and went back to it when his country was