PRÉFACE.

the most elementary [rules] of drawing. I will say nothing
of dwellings built of stone and mortar where
the wealthiest houses were built of
wood, nor of the masterpieces of poetry and
Greek and Roman eloquence studied by a
youth whose ancestors knew only
compositions analogous to the Irish epic
of King ConchobarConchobar mac Nessa, a legendary king of Ulster in Irish mythology; the author uses this to contrast "barbaric" northern traditions with "civilized" Greco-Roman ones. and the hero CûchulainnThe central hero of the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology, renowned for his superhuman strength and terrifying "warp-spasm" in battle.. All
this is but the accessory of a civilization.

It is to Rome that we owe the fundamental prin-
ciple of our own: No one has the right to take
justice into their own hands; whoever believes they have a
complaint against another must seek justice from the ma-
gistrate. Rome delivered GaulThe Roman term for the region encompassing modern-day France, Belgium, and parts of the Rhineland. from the scourge of
private war. At the same time, it broke upon
our soil the yoke imposed on the vast majority of
inhabitants by an oppressive feudalism whose ex-
cesses surpassed the most odious abuses of that Old
RegimeThe 'Ancien Régime,' the social and political system of the Kingdom of France prior to the Revolution of 1789. that the French Revolution over-
threw. The Gallic plebsThe common people of Gaul, who occupied a social rank below the druids (priests) and knights (warriors)., at the time of the Roman
conquest, lived in a state of subordination bor-
dering on slavery; they were deprived of all initia-
tive; they had no entry to the assemblies where...