Our Sympathy Is Cold To The Relation

When Julian Ascended The Throne, He Declared His Impatience To Embrace And Reward The Syrian Sophist, Who Had Preserved, In A Degenerate Age, The Grecian Purity Of Taste, Of Manners And Of Religion. The Emperor's Prepossession Was Increased And Justified By The Discreet Pride Of His Favourite.

The Nations, And The Sects, Of The Roman World, Admitted With Equal Credulity, And Similar Abhorrence, The Reality Of That Infernal Art [witchcraft], Which Was Able To Control The Eternal Order Of The Planets, And The Voluntary Operations Of The Human Mind. . . . They Believed, With The Wildest Inconsistency, That This Preternatural Dominion Of The Air, Of Earth, And Of Hell, Was Exercised, From The Vilest Motives Of Malice Or Gain, By Some Wrinkled Hags And Itinerant Sorcerers, Who Passed Their Obscure Lives In Penury And Contempt.

This Variety Of Objects Will Suspend, For Some Time, The Course Of The Narrative; But The Interruption Will Be Censured Only By Those Readers Who Are Insensible To The Importance Of Laws And Manners, While They Peruse, With Eager Curiosity, The Transient Intrigues Of A Court, Or The Accidental Event Of A Battle.

If All The Barbarian Conquerors Had Been Annihilated In The Same Hour, Their Total Destruction Would Not Have Restored The Empire Of The West: And If Rome Still Survived, She Survived The Loss Of Freedom, Of Virtue, And Of Honour.

As Long As The Same Passions And Interests Subsist Among Mankind, The Questions Of War And Peace, Of Justice And Policy, Which Were Debated In The Councils Of Antiquity, Will Frequently Present Themselves As The Subject Of Modern Deliberation.