Can match the praise of Italy....
Here blooms perpetual spring, and summer here
In months that are not summer’s; twice teem the flocks:
Twice does the tree yield service of her fruit.
. . . . . . .
Mark too her cities, so many and so proud,
Of mighty toil the achievement, town on town
Up rugged precipices heaved and reared,
And rivers gliding under ancient walls.”[14]
2. The peaceful state of Rome and Italy made it possible for Augustus to undertake, in person to a great extent, the more important work of organising the rest of the Empire. He found it in a state of chaos almost as great as that of the Turkish Empire in our own time. He left it a strongly compacted union of provinces and dependent kingdoms grouped around the Mediterranean, which for a long time to come served two valuable purposes. First, it protected Mediterranean civilisation against barbarian attack, the most valuable thing done for us (as I said in my first chapter) by Roman organisation. Secondly, it gave free opportunity for the growth of that enlightened system of law which has been the other chief gift of Rome to modern civilisation. And also, though without any purpose on the part of the government—nay, in spite of its strenuous opposition—it made possible the rapid growth of Christianity, during the next half-century, which seized on the great towns and the main lines of communication to spread itself among the masses of the people.