Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/90

78 and perhaps not equalled. Yet they lack the ideal aspiration after religion that appears in the literature and art, and even language of some other people, quite inferior to the Greeks in elegance and refinement. Science, also, is most largely indebted to these beauty-loving Greeks, for truth is one form of loveliness.

If we take the Romans, from Romulus their first king, to Augustulus, the last of the Caesars, the same traits of national character appear, only the complexion and dress thereof changed by circumstances. There is always the same hardness and materialism the same skill in organizing men, the same turn for affairs and genius for legislation. Rome borrowed her theology and liturgical forms; her art, science, literature, philosophy, and eloquence; even her art of war was an imitation. But law sprung up indigenous in her soil; her laws are the best gift she ofiers to the human race,—the "monument more lasting than brass," which she has left behind her.

We may take another nation, which has by no means completed its history, the Saxon race, from Hengist and Ilorsa to Sir Robert Peel; there also is a permanent peculiarity in the tribe. They are yet the same bold, handy, practical people as when their bark first touched the savage shores of Britain; not over religious; less pious than moral; not so much upright before God, as downright before men; servants of the understanding more than children of reason ; not following the guidance of an intuition, and the light of an idea, but rather trusting to experiment, facts, precedents, and usages; not philosophical, but commercial ; warlike through strength and courage, not from love of war or its glory; material, obstinate, and grasping, with the same admiration of horses, dogs, oxen, and strong drink; the same willingness to tread down any obstacle, material, human, or divine, which stands in their way; the same impatient lust of wealth and power; the same disposition to colonize and reannex other lands; the same love of liberty and love of law; the same readiness in forming political confederations. In each of these four instances, the Hebrews, the Ionians, the Romans, and the Anglo-Saxon race, have had a nationality so strong, that while they have mingled with