No new continent then rose up beyond the western seas.
No forgotten literature suddenly flashed out its long-lost splendours.
No vast discoveries of science transformed the universe and the interpretation of it.

The inventive freshness and intellectual confidence that are born of such things were denied to the Empire.

Its temperament was neither artistic, nor literary, nor scientific.

It was merely practical.
Yet if practical, it was not therefore uncreative.

In its own sphere of everyday life, it was an epoch of growth in many directions.