EARLY AND IMPERIAL ROME.

THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME.

IT is now a generally accepted view that all nations. in their early development passed through an invariable sequence of phases: of these the most prominent were the hunting, the pastoral, and agricultural. In the hunting phase, man was unacquainted with every art but the imperfect one of fabricating, in a rude manner, arms and implements for the chase, dependent on chance alone, and the seasons, for the means of satisfying his wants. Living in a wild and uncultivated state, when his means of sustenance were few and precarious, man became a hunter from necessity, and nomadic in his habits. The man of the pastoral phase lived by the sustenance afforded by the animals, which he learned to preserve, domesticate, and multiply; he was a shepherd, a herdsman. In the further progress of his development, when no longer content

with the fruit and plants which chance threw in his way, man learnt to form a stock of them-to collect them around him, to sow, to plant them, to favour their reproduction by the labour of culture he became stationary, and devoted himself to agriculture. The agricultural phase may be considered as the most important step in the development of culture, as it is, indeed, the basis of all civilization.

The sequence of these phases-the hunting, the pastoral, and the agricultural-was invariable in all ages; and thus nations and cities took in early times a similar and almost identical course in their origin and development. The earliest men of the hunting phase lived a wandering and nomad life. The earliest pastoral inhabitants planted their first habitations on the summit of a hill, and threw up a rampart of earth with a fosse at the base of the hill, to secure themselves from the attacks of surrounding tribes, while their flocks and herds wandered in the pastures in the valleys and plains below. The mound, the trench, the palisade, formed their earliest means of protection, their earliest fortification.

We have several instances of such earth-ramparts surrounding hills in England, belonging to ancient British times, and affording evidence of the custom of that primitive period. One of the most interesting is the hill on which Carisbrooke Castle is built. It is surrounded by earthen ramparts of British origin, while the massive Norman keep stands upon a lofty artificial mound (the original British fastness), overlooking the rest of the hill. Another instance, in the