her wealth by slow stages of increase.  She was far from being the rich little globe in Caesar’s days that she is at present.  The earth in our days is incalculably richer, as a whole, than in the time of Charlemagne:  at that time she was richer, by many a million of acres, than in the era of Augustus.  In that Augustan era we descry a clear belt of cultivation, averaging about six hundred miles in depth, running in a ring-fence about the Mediterranean.  This belt, and no more, was in decent cultivation.  Beyond that belt, there was only a wild Indian cultivation.  At present what a difference!  We have that very belt, but much richer, all things considered aequatis aequandis, than in the Roman era.  The reader must not look to single cases, as that of Egypt or other parts of Africa, but take the whole collectively.  On that scheme of valuation, we have the old Roman belt, the Mediterranean riband not much tarnished, and we have all the rest of Europe to boot—­or, speaking in scholar’s language, as a lucro ponamus.  We say nothing of remoter gains.  Such being the case, our mother, the earth, being (as a whole) so incomparably poorer, could not in the Pagan era support the expense of maintaining great empires in cold latitudes.  Her purse would not reach that cost.  Wherever she undertook in those early ages to rear man in great abundance, it must be where nature would consent to work in partnership with herself; where warmth was to be had for nothing; where clothes were not so entirely indispensable but that a ragged fellow might still keep himself warm; where slight shelter might serve; and where the soil, if not absolutely richer in reversionary wealth, was more easily cultured.  Nature must come forward liberally, and take a number of shares in every new joint-stock concern before it could move.  Man, therefore, went to bed early in those ages, simply because his worthy mother earth could not afford him candles.  She, good old lady, (or good young lady, for geologists know not[2] whether she is in that stage of her progress which corresponds to gray hairs, or to infancy, or to “a certain age,")—­she, good lady, would certainly have shuddered to hear any of her nations asking for candles.  “Candles!” She would have said, “Who ever heard of such a thing? and with so much excellent daylight running to waste, as I have provided gratis!  What will the wretches want next?”

The daylight, furnished gratis, was certainly “neat,” and “undeniable” in its quality, and quite sufficient for all purposes that were honest.  Seneca, even in his own luxurious period, called those men “lucifugae,” and by other ugly names, who lived chiefly by candle-light.  None but rich and luxurious men, nay, even amongst these, none but idlers did live much by candle-light.  An immense majority of men in Rome never lighted a candle, unless sometimes in the early dawn.  And this custom of Rome was the custom also of all nations that lived round the great pond of the Mediterranean.  In Athens, Egypt, Palestine, Asia Minor, everywhere, the ancients went to bed, like good boys, from seven to nine o’clock.[3] The Turks and other people, who have succeeded to the stations and the habits of the ancients, do so at this day.