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"Peace on
earth!"--that was the first Christmas greeting; and the first Christian
argument upon the hill of Mars,--"God hath made of one blood all nations
of men."
FOOTNOTE:
[51] By permission of the author.


THE PERMANENCY OF EMPIRE[52]
WENDELL PHILLIPS

I appeal to History! Tell me, thou reverend chronicler of the grave, can
all the wealth of a universal commerce, can all the achievements of this
world's wisdom, secure to empire the permanency of its possessions?
Alas! Troy thought so once; yet the land of Priam lives only in song!
Thebes thought so once; yet her hundred gates have crumbled, and her
very tombs are but as the dust they were vainly intended to commemorate.
So thought Palmyra--where is she? So thought the countries of
Demosthenes and the Spartan; yet Leonidas is trampled by the timid
slave, and Athens insulted by the servile, mindless, and enervate
Ottoman. In his hurried march, Time has but looked at their imagined
immortality; and all its vanities, from the palace to the tomb, have,
with their ruins, erased the very impression of his footsteps.


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