Sublime

We must not picture to ourselves the city of these ancient ages as an agglomeration of men living mingled together within the enclosure of the same walls. In the earliest times the city was hardly the place of habitation; it was the sanctuary where the gods of the community were; it was the fortress which defended them, and which their presence san

Neither do we find, at any epoch in the life of the ancients, anything that resembled that multitude of villages so general in France during the twelfth century.

The municipal organization once discovered, it was not necessary for each new city to pass over the same long and difficult route. It might often happen that they followed the inverse order. When a chief, quitting a city already organized, went to found another, he took with him commonly only a small number of his fellow-citizens. He associated wit

If we understand by legislator a man who creates a code by the power of his genius, and who imposes it upon other men, this legislator never existed among the ancients. Nor did ancient law originate with the votes of the people. The idea that a certain number of votes might make a law did not appear in the cities till very late, and only after two

For this reason, in the primitive city all political institutions had been religious institutions, the festivals had been ceremonies of the worship, the laws had been sacred formulas, and the kings and magistrates had been priests. For this reason, too, individual liberty had been unknown, and man had not been able to withdraw even his conscience f

The age of historical criticism had begun.

The same revolution, under forms slightly varied, took place at Athens, at Sparta, at Rome, in all the cities, in fine, whose history is known to us. Everywhere it was the work of the aristocracy; everywhere it resulted in suppressing political royalty and continuing religious royalty.