THE DECLINE AND FALL

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chap. tude. Rome had been already stripped of her.~* IX trophies, her gods, and her Caesars; nor was theGothic dominion more inglorious and oppres-sive than the tyranny of the Greeks. In theeighth century of the Christian era, a religiousquarrel, the worship of images, provoked theRomans to assert their independence: their bi-shop became the temporal, as well as the spiri-tual, father of a free people; and of the westernempire which was restored by Charlemagne , thetitle and image still decorate the singular con-stitution of modern Germany . The name ofRome must yet command our involuntary re-spect: the climate (whatsoever may be its influ-ence) was no longer the same:* the purity ofblood had been contaminated through a thou-sand channels; but the venerable aspect of herruins, and the memory of past greatness, re-kindled a spark of the national character. Thedarkness of the middle ages exhibits somescenes not unworthy of our notice. Nor shallI dismiss the present work till I have reviewedthe state and revolutions of the Roman city,which acquiesced under the absolute dominionof the popes, about the same time that Constan-tinople was enslaved by the Turkish arms.

* The Abb6 Dubos, who, with less genius than his successor Mon-tesquieu , has asserted and magnified I lie influence of climate, objectsto himself the degeneracy of the Komans and Batavians. To thefirst of these examples he replies, 1. That the change is less real thanapparent, and that the modern Romans prudently conceal in them-selves the virtues of their ancestors. 2. That the air, the soil, and theclimate of Rome have suffered a great and visible alteration (Reflec-tions sur la Poesie et sur la Peinture, part ii, sec. 1C).