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Men voyaged by thousands to the West: some to barter glass beads, and such like jewels, for the furs of the Indian hunter; some to conquer virgin empires; and one stern band to pray. But none of these motives had much weight with the colonists of Merry Mount.

The same severe proscription he extended to every sort of furniture, or decorations of art, which sheltered even in the bosom of camps those habits of effeminate luxury so apt in all great empires to steal by imperceptible steps from the voluptuous palace to the soldier's tent following in the equipage of great leading officers, or of subalterns highly connected.

Disintegration had been going on too rapidly, and it was absolutely necessary that there should be a new birth, if civilization were not to vanish. A twenty years' truce between the Turkish and Holy Roman empires was nearly simultaneous with the twelve years' truce between Spain and the United Provinces.

Those same words repeated by the same number of voices an hour before in the public square, instead of resounding in the prison, would have made him King of Naples. The most important events proceed sometimes from such mere trifles, that it seems as if God and the devil must throw dice for the life or death of men, for the rise or fall of empires.

Byzantine empires, Spanish Armadas, triple-crowned papacies, Russian despotisms, this is the way of them, and will be to the end of the world. One brave blow at the big bullying phantom, and it vanishes in sulphur-stench; while the children of Israel, as of old, see the Egyptians dead on the sea-shore, they scarce know how, save that God has done it, and sing the song of Moses and of the Lamb.

The state with its posts of honour, patriotism and national pride; the stateliness of ceremonies, the delusion of caste and nobility what is it but folly? War, the most foolish thing of all, is the origin of all heroism. What prompted the Deciuses, what Curtius, to sacrifice themselves? Vainglory. It is this folly which produces states; through her, empires, religion, law-courts, exist.

Even Salmatoris had some difficulty to avoid being disgraced for having written a terrifying note, which had exposed the Emperor's weakness, and shown that his life was dearer to him at the head of Empires than when only at the head of armies. My narrative of this event I have from an officer present, whose veracity I can guarantee.

At least, the theoretic discussions which developed around the democratic formulae, owing largely to the initiative of Kuehlmann himself, were not without their danger. That the diplomacy of the Central Empires could not reap many laurels in that way must have been clear beforehand to that diplomacy itself.

The king, fired with the achievements of the republic at sea, and admiring their great schemes for founding empires at the antipodes by means of commercial corporations, was very desirous of appropriating to his own benefit the experience, the audacity, the perseverance, the skill and the capital of their merchants and mariners.

Changes in trade routes have overwhelmed empires and raised up new nations, have nourished civilizations and brought others to decay. From the days when merchants first followed the caravan routes, nothing has so modified the history of nations as the course of the roads by which commerce moved.