HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

HS

division of the Mediterranean, and to each of the squadrons he attached a bodyof seven thousand mariners. Besides these two ports, which may be consideredas the principal seats of the Roman navy, a very considerable force was sta-tioned at Frejus, on the coast of Province, and the Euxine was guarded byforty ships, and three thousand soldiers. To all these we add the fleet whichpreserved the communication between Gaul and Britain, and a great number ofvessels constantly maintained on the Rhine and Danube, to harass the country,or to intercept the passage of the barbarians. If we review this general stateof the imperial forces, of the cavalry as well as infantry, of the legions, theauxiliaries, the guards, and the navy, the most liberal computation will notallow us to fix the entire establishment by sea and by land at more than fourhundred and fifty thousand men, a military power which, however formidableit may seem, was equalled by a monarch of the last century*, whose kingdomwas confined within a single province of the Roman empire.”

The policy invariably adopted by the Romans in the course of those con-quests which spread over nearly the whole face of the world then known, andthe nature of the conquests themselves, in great measure rendered any esta-blishment superior to what has been already described, extravagant and nuga-tory. Few of the powers whose territories they over-ran subsequent to thedestruction of Carthage, possessed (as already remarked) any maritime forcewhatever; but when any trivial exception to that species of inability arose,the conquered were sure to be deprived of every possible means of revivinginto their former consequence, inferior as it might be to that of Rome itself-The insular situation of Britain, and the hardy temper of its inhabitants, appearedto hold forth much power of resistance by sea. The people were furnished withevery possible means of constructing a navy, but had neglected the gifts of pro-vidence, so that no such method of defence was-even attempted.

The conquest of Britain progressively continued under the ignominiousauspices of Tiberius, Claudius, and Nero, and at length finally accomplishedunder that of Vespasian, appears as the apex of that power to which the con-querors of the world, as they arrogantly stiled themselves, were permitted byprovidence to extend their iron rule. For notwithstanding the temporaryreduction of Caledonia, now called Scotland, about ninety years subsequent tathe Christian sera, and that of Mesopotamia, twelve or fourteen years later,might be said to have somewhat encreased the actual territory subject to the

* Louis the Fourteenth..

dominion.