Excerpt from A History of the Romans Under the Empire, Vol. 6 Maturity and rapid decline. The manners and morals, the ideas and sentiments of mankind, at the highest stage of heathen development, their laws and institutions, their spiritual aspirations, the fall of Paganism, and the rise of Christianity, -these are the subjects upon which we are next to enter. I judge that two more volumes will suffice to embrace the whole sphere of the imperial civilization but the labour required will be out of all proportion to the space to be filled, and with such an amount of leisure as I can hope to com mand, a considerable period must be expected to elapse before they can make their appearance. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.