Jovian Press

but Abraham was greater than all, great by reason of his power whose strength is impotence, great by reason of his wisdom whose secret is foolishness, great by reason of his hope whose form is madness, great by reason of the love which is hatred of oneself.

The Roman mind did not understand that a poor man could belong to the aristocracy, or that a rich man was not part of it.”

by year, since Pizarro had murdered the Inca Atahualpa for his gold, a stream of bullion had flowed from America to Europe, and from Europe to the East: there it had vanished as completely as though once more buried in the bowels of the mine. These hoards, the savings of millions of human beings for centuries, the English seized and took to London, as the Romans had taken the spoil of Greece and Pontus to Italy. What the value of the treasure was, no man can estimate, but it must have been many millions of pounds—a vast sum in proportion to the stock of the precious metals then owned by Europeans. Some faint idea of the booty of the conqueror may be drawn from Macaulay’s description of the first visit of an English soldier to an Oriental treasure chamber:—