Dr. Johnson has defined Romance in its primary sense, to be "a military tale of the middle ages; a tale of wild adventures in love and chivalry." But although this definition expresses correctly the ordinary idea of the word, it is not sufficiently comprehensive to answer our present purpose. A composition may be a legitimate romance, yet neither refer to love nor chivalry—to war nor to the middle ages. The "wild adventures" are almost the only absolutely essential ingredient in Johnson's definition. We would be rather inclined to describe a Romance as "a fictitious narrative in prose or verse; the interest of which turns upon marvelous and uncommon incidents," being thus opposed to the kindred term Novel, which Johnson has described as "a smooth tale, generally of love;" but which we would rather define as "a fictitious narrative, differing from the romance, because the events are accommodated to the ordinary train of human events, and the modern state of society." Assuming these definitions, it is evident, from the nature of the distinction adopted, that there may exist compositions which it is difficult to assign precisely or exclusively to the one class or other; and which, in fact, partake of the nature of both. But the distinction will be found broad enough to answer all general and useful purposes.

The word Romance, in its original meaning, was far from corresponding with the definition now assigned. On the contrary, it signified merely one or other of the popular dialects of Europe, founded, as almost all these dialects were, upon the Roman tongue, that is, upon the Latin. The name of romance was indiscriminately given to the Italian, to the Spanish, even, in one remarkable instance at least,1 to the English language. But it was especially applied to the compound language of France; in which the Gothic dialect of the Franks, the Celtic of the ancient Gauls, and the classical Latin, formed the ingredients. Thus Robert De Brunne:

"All is calde geste Ingles, That en this language spoken is— Franks speech is called Romance. So says clerks and men of France."

At a period so early as 1150, it plainly appears that the Romance language was distinguished from the Latin, and that translations were made from the one into the other; for an ancient romance on the subject of Alexander, quoted by Fauchet, says it was written by a learned clerk,

"Qui de Latins la trest, et en Roman la mit."

The most noted romances of the middle ages were usually composed in the romance or French language, which was, in a peculiar degree, the speech of love and chivalry; and those which are written in English always affect to refer to some French original, which usually, at least, if not in all instances, must be supposed to have a real existence. Hence, the frequent recurrence of the phrase,

"As in romance we read;" Or, "Right as the romant us tells;" and equivalent phrases, well known to all who have at any time perused such compositions. Thus, very naturally,

1 This curious passage was detected by the industry of Ritson in Giraldus Cambrensis, "Ab aqua illa optima, qua Scottiae vocate est Firthi; Britannis, Werni; Romane vero Scoete-Watire." Here the various names assigned to the Frith of Forth are given in the Gaelic or Earse, the British or Welsh; and the phrase Roman is applied to the ordinary language of England. But it would be difficult to show another instance of the English language being termed Roman or Romance. Romance, according to the proportion in which their truth is debased by fiction, or their fiction mingled with truth.

A moment's glance at the origin of society will satisfy the reader why this can hardly be otherwise. The father of an isolated family, destined one day to rise into a tribe, and in further progress of time to expand into a nation, may, indeed, narrate to his descendants the circumstances which detached him from the society of his brethren, and drove him to form a solitary settlement in the wilderness, with no other deviation from truth, on the part of the narrator, than arises from the infidelity of memory, or the exaggerations of vanity. But when the tale of the patriarch is related by his children, and again by his descendants of the third and fourth generation, the facts it contains are apt to assume a very different aspect. The vanity of the tribe augments the simple annals from one cause; the love of the marvellous, so natural to the human mind, contributes its means of sophistication from another; while, sometimes, the king and the priest find their interest in casting a holy and sacred gloom and mystery over the early period in which their power arose. And thus altered and sophisticated from so many different motives, the real adventures of the founder of the tribe bear as little proportion to the legend recited among his children, as the famous hut of Loretto bears to the highly ornamented church with which superstition has surrounded and enchased it. Thus the definition which we have given of Romance as a fictitious narrative turning upon the marvellous or the supernatural, might, in a large sense, be said to embrace

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Audet in historia,

or, in fine, the mythological and fabulous history of all early nations.

It is also important to remark, that poetry, or rather verse, rhythm at least of some sort or other, is originally selected as the best vehicle for these traditional histories. Its principal recommendation is probably the greater facility with which metrical narratives are retained in the memory, a point of the last consequence, until the art of writing is generally introduced; since the construction of the verse itself forms an artificial association with the sense, the one of which seldom fails to recall the other to recollection. But the medium of verse, at first adopted merely to aid the memory, becomes soon valuable on account of its other qualities. The march or measure of the stanza is gratifying to the ear, and, like a natural strain of melody, can be restrained or accelerated, so as to correspond with the tone of feeling which the words convey; while the recurrence of the necessary measure, rhythm or rhyme, is perpetually gratifying the hearer by a sense of difficulty overcome. Verse being thus adopted as the vehicle of traditional history, there needs but the existence of a single man of genius, in order to carry the composition a step higher in the scale of literature than that of which we are treating. In proportion to the skill which he attains in his art, the fancy and ingenuity of the artist himself are excited; the simple narrative transmitted to him by ruder rhymers is increased in length; is decorated with the graces of language, amplified in detail, and rendered interesting by description; until the brief and barren original bears as little resemblance to the finished piece, as the Iliad of Homer to the evanescent traditions, out of which the blind bard wove his tale of Troy Divine. Hence, the opinion expressed by the ingenious Percy, and assented to by Ritson himself. When about to present to his readers an excellent analysis of the old romance of Lybius Discornius, and making several remarks on the artificial management of the story, the Bishop observes, that "if an epic poem may be defined a fable related by a poet to excite admiration and inspire virtue, by representing the Romance action of some one hero favoured by Heaven, who executes a great design in spite of all the obstacles that oppose him, I know not why we should withhold the name of epic poem from the piece which I am about to analyse."

Yet although this levelling proposition has been laid down by Percy, and assented to by Ritson (writers who have few opinions in common,) and although, upon so general a view of the subject, the Iliad, or even the Odyssey of Homer, might be degraded into the class of romances, as Le Beau Deconin is elevated into that of epic poems, there lies in ordinary speech, and in common sense, as wide a distinction between these two classes of composition, as there is betwixt the rude mystery or morality of the middle ages, and the regular drama by which these were succeeded. Where the art and the ornaments of the poet chiefly attract our attention; where each part of the narrative bears a due proportion to the others, and the whole draws gradually towards a final and satisfactory conclusion; where the characters are sketched with force, and sustained with precision; where the narrative is enlivened and adorned with so much, and no more, of poetical ornament and description, as may adorn, without impeding its progress; where this art and taste are displayed, supported, at the same time, by a sufficient tone of genius, and art of composition, the work produced must be termed an epic poem, and the author may claim his seat upon the high and honoured throne occupied by Homer, Virgil, and Milton. On the other hand, when a story languishes in tedious and minute details, and relies for the interest which it proposes to excite, rather upon the wild excursions of an unbridled fancy, than upon the skill of the poet; when the supernatural and the extraordinary are relied upon exclusively as the supports of the interest, the author, though his production may be distinguished by occasional flashes of genius, and though it may be interesting to the historian, as containing some minute fragments of real events, and still more so to the antiquary, from the light which it throws upon ancient manners, is still no more than a humble romancer, and his work must rank amongst those rude ornaments of a dark age, which are at present the subject of our consideration. Betwixt the extremes of the two classes of composition, there must, no doubt, exist many works, which partake in some degree of the character of both; and after having assigned most of them, each to their proper class, according as they are distinguished by regularity of composition and poetical talent, or, on the contrary, by extravagance of imagination, and irregularity of detail, there may still remain some, in which these properties are so equally balanced, that it may be difficult to say to which class they belong. But although this may be the case in a very few instances, our taste and habits readily acknowledge as complete and absolute a difference betwixt the epopeia and romance, as can exist betwixt two distinct species of the same generic class.

We have said of romance, that it first appears in the form of metrical history, professes to be a narrative of real facts, and is, indeed, nearly allied to such history as an early state of society affords; which is always exaggerated by the prejudices and partialities of the tribe to which it belongs, as well as deeply marked by their idolatry and superstition. These it becomes the trade of the romancers still more to exaggerate, until the thread of truth can scarce be discerned in the web of fable which involves it; and we are compelled to renounce all hope of deriving serious or authentic information from the materials upon which the compounders of fiction have been so long at work, from one generation to another, that they have at length obliterated the very shadow of reality or even probability.

The view we have given of the origin of romance will be Romance found to agree with the facts which the researches of so many active investigators of this curious subject have been able to ascertain. It is found, for example, and we will produce instances in viewing the progress of romance in particular countries, that the earliest productions of this sort, known to exist, are short narrations or ballads, which were probably sung on solemn or festive occasions, recording the deeds and praises of some famed champion of the tribe and country, or perhaps the history of some remarkable victory or signal defeat, calculated to interest the audience by the associations which the song awakens. These poems, of which very few can now be supposed to exist, are not without flashes of genius, but brief, rude, and often obscure, from real antiquity or affected sublimity of diction. The song on the battle of Brunanburgh, preserved in the Saxon Chronicle, is a genuine and curious example of this aboriginal style of poetry.

Even at this early period, there may be observed a distinction betwixt what may be called the Temporal and Spiritual romances; the first destined to the celebration of worldly glory; the second to recording the deaths of martyrs and the miracles of saints; both which themes unquestionably met with an almost equally favourable reception from their hearers. But although most nations possess, in their early species of literature, specimens of both kinds of romance, the proportion of each, as was naturally to have been expected, differs according as the genius of the people amongst whom they occur leaned towards devotion or military enterprise. Thus, of the Saxon specimens of poetry, which manuscripts still afford us, a very large proportion is devotional, amongst which are several examples of the spiritual romance, but very few, indeed, of those respecting warfare or chivalry. On the other hand, the Norman language, though rich in examples of both kinds of romances, is particularly abundant in that which relates to battle and warlike adventure. The Christian Saxons had become comparatively pacific, while the Normans were certainly accounted the most martial people in Europe.

However different the spiritual romance may be from the temporal in scope and tendency, the nature of the two compositions did not otherwise greatly differ. The structure of verse and style of composition was the same; and the induction, even when the most serious subject was undertaken, exactly resembled that with which minstrels introduced their idle tales, and often contained allusions to them. Warton quotes a poem on the Passions, which begins,

I hereth one lutele tale, that Ich eu wille telle, As wi wyndeth his invrite in the godepselie, Nex hit nought of Carlemynne ne of the Dapere, Ac of Criste's throungye, &c.

The temporal romances, on the other hand, often commenced by such invocations of the Deity, as would only have been in place when a much more solemn subject was to be agitated. The exordium of the Romance of Perumbras may serve as an example of a custom almost universal;

God in glorie of mightis moost That all things made in espence, By virtue of Word and Holy Gooste, Giving to men great excellence, &c.

The distresses and dangers which the knight endured for the sake of obtaining earthly fame and his mistress's favour, the saint or martyr was exposed to for the purpose of securing his rank in heaven, and the favour of some beloved and peculiar patron saint. If the earthly champion is in peril from monsters, dragons, and enchantments, the spiritual hero is represented as liable to the constant assaults of the whole invisible world, headed by the ancient dragon himself. If the knight is succoured at need by some favouring fairy or protecting genius, the saint is under the protection not only of the whole heavenly host, but of some one divine patron or patroness who is his especial auxiliary. Lastly, the conclusion of the romance, which usually assigns to the champion a fair realm, an abundant succession, and a train of happy years, consigns to the martyr his fame and altar upon earth, and in heaven his seat among saints and angels, and his share in a blessed eternity. It remains but to say, that the style and language of these two classes do not greatly differ, and that the composers of both employ the same structure of rhythm and of language, and draw their ideas and their incidents from similar sources; so that, having noticed the existence of the spiritual romance, it is unnecessary for the present to prosecute this subject farther.

Another early and natural division of these works of fiction seems to have arranged them into Serious and Comical, masses. The former were by far the most numerous, and examples of the latter are in most countries comparatively rare. Such a class, however, existed, as proper romances, even if we hold the comic romance distinct from the Contes and Fabliaux of the French, and from such jocular English narratives as the Wife Lapt in Morals Skin, The Friar and the Boy, and similar humorous tales; of which the reader will find many examples in Ritson's Ancient English Poetry, and in other collections. The scene of these gestes being laid in low, or at least in ordinary life, they approach in their nature more nearly to the class of novels, and may perhaps be considered as the earliest specimens of that kind of composition. But the proper comic romance was that in which the high terms and knightly adventures of chivalry were burlesqued, by ascribing them to clowns or others of a low and mean degree. Such compositions formed, as it were, a parody on the serious romance, to which they bore the same proportion as the antimasque, studiously filled with grotesque, absurd, and extravagant characters, "entering," as the stage direction usually informs us, "to a confused music," bore to the masque itself, where all was dignified, noble, stately, and harmonious.

An excellent example of the comic romance is the Tournament of Tottesham, printed in Piersy's Reliques, in which a number of clowns are introduced practising one of these warlike games, which were the exclusive prerogative of the warlike and noble. They are represented making vows to the swan, the peacock, and the ladies; riding a tilt on their clumsy cart horses, and encountering each other with ploughshares and flails; whilst their defensive armour consisted of great wooden bowls and troughs, by way of helmets and cuirasses. The learned editor seems to have thought this singular composition was like Don Quixote, with which he compares it, a premeditated effort of satire, written to expose the grave and fantastic manners of the serious romance. This is considering the matter too deeply, and ascribing to the author a more critical purpose than he was probably capable of conceiving. It is more natural to suppose that his only ambition was to raise a laugh, by ascribing to the vulgar the manners and exercises of the noble and valiant; as in the well-known farce of High Life Below Stairs, the ridicule is not directed against the manners described, but against the menials who affect those that are only befitting their superiors. The Hunting of the Hare, published in the collection formed by the late industrious and accurate Mr. Weber, is a comic romance of the same order. A yeoman informs the inhabitants of a country hamlet that he has found a hare sitting, and invites them to come to course her. They attend, accordingly, with all the curs and mastiffs of their village, and the unsportsman-like manner in which the inexperienced huntsmen and their irregular pack conduct themselves, forms the interest of the piece. It can hardly be supposed the satire is directed against the sport of hunt-

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1 The religious romances of Barlaam and Johannes were composed by John of Damascus in the eighth century. ing itself; since the whole ridicule arises out of the want of the necessary knowledge of its rules, incident to the igno- rance and inexperience of the clowns who undertook to prac- tise an art peculiar to gentlemen. The ancient poetry of Scotland furnishes several examples of this ludicrous style of romantic composition; as the Tournament at the Drum, and the Justing of Watson and Barbour, by Sir David Lindsay. It is probable that these mock encounters were sometimes acted in earnest; at least King James I. is accus- ed of witnessing such practical jests; "sometimes present- ing David Droman and Archie Armstrong, the king's fool, on the back of other fools, to tilt at one another till they fell together by the ears."—(Sir Anthony Weldon's Court of King James.)

In hastily noticing the various divisions of the romance, we have in some degree delayed our promised account of its rise and progress; an inquiry which we mean chiefly to confine to the romance of the middle ages. It is indeed true that this species of composition is common to al- most all nations, and that even if we deem the Iliad and Odyssey compositions too dignified by the strain of poetry in which they are composed to bear the name of metrical ro- mances; yet we have the pastoral romance of Daphnis and Chloe, and the historical romance of Théagenes and Charil- clea, which are sufficiently accurate specimens of that style of composition. The Milesian fables and the romances of Antonius Diogenes, described by Photius, could they be recovered, would also be found to belong to the same class.

It is impossible to avoid noticing that the Sybarites, whose luxurious habits seem to have been intellectual, as well as sensual, were peculiarly addicted to the perusal of the Mili- sian fables; from which we may conclude that they were not of that severe kind which inspired high thoughts and martial virtues. But there would be little advantage deriv- ed from extending our researches into the ages of classical antiquity respecting a class of compositions which, though they existed then, as in almost every stage of society, were neither so numerous nor of such high repute as to consti- tute any considerable portion of that literature.

Want of space also may entitle us to dismiss the consider- ation of the Oriental romances, unless in so far as in the course of the middle ages they came to furnish materials for enlarging and varying the character of the romances of knights-errantry. That they existed early, and were highly esteemed both among the Persians and Arabians, has never been disputed; and the most interesting light has been late- ly thrown on the subject by the publication of Antar, one of the most ancient, as well as most rational, if we may use the phrase, of the Oriental fictions. The Persian romance of the Sha-Namah is well known to Europeans by name, by copious extracts; and the love-tale of Mejnoun and Lei- lah is also familiar to our ears, if not to our recollections.

Many of the fictions in the extraordinary collection of the Arabian Tales approach strictly to the character of ro- mances of chivalry; although in general they must be al- lowed to exceed the more tame northern fictions in daunt- less vivacity of invention, and in their more strong tendency to the marvellous. Several specimens of the comic romance are also to be found mingled with those which are serious; and we have the best and most positive authority that the recital of these seductive fictions is at this moment an amuse- ment as fascinating and general among the people of the East, as the perusal of printed romances and novels among the European public. But a minute investigation into this particular species of romance would lead us from our present field, already sufficiently extensive for the limits to which our plan confines it.

The European Romance, wherever it arises, and in what- soever country it begins to be cultivated, had its origin in some part of the real or fabulous history of that country; and of this we will produce, in the sequel, abundant proofs.

But the simple tale of tradition has not passed through many mouths, ere some one, to indulge his own propensity for the wonderful, or to secure by novelty the attention of his audience, augments the meagre chronicle with his own apocryphal inventions. Skirmishes are magnified into great battles; the champion of a remote age is exaggerated into a sort of demi-god; and the enemies whom he encounter- ed and subdued are multiplied in number, and magnified in strength, in order to add dignity to his successes against them. Chaunted to rhythmical numbers, the songs which celebrate the early valour of the fathers of the tribe become its war-cry in battle, and men march to conflict hymning the praises and the deeds of some real or supposed precur- sor who had marshalled their fathers in the path of victory.

No reader can have forgotten that when the decisive battle of Hastings commenced, a Norman minstrel, Taillefer, ad- vanced on horseback before the invading host, and gave the signal for onset, by singing the Song of Roland, that re- nowned nephew of Charlemagne, of whom romance speaks so much, and history so little; and whose fall, with the chi- valry of Charles the great in the pass of Roncesvalles, has given rise to such clouds of romantic fiction, that its very name has been for ever associated with it. The remark- able passage has been often quoted from the Brut of Wace, an Anglo-Norman metrical chronicle.

Taillefer, qui moult bien chantant Sur un cheval qui test about, Devant le Duc aloint chantant De Karlemagne et de Rollans, Et d'Olivier et des vassals, Qui meurent en Retzercals.

Which may be thus rendered:

Taillefer, who sung both well and loud, Came mounted on a courser proud; Before the Duke the minstrel sprung, And loud of Charles and Roland sung, Of Oliver and champions mo, Who died at fatal Ronceroux.

This champion possessed the sleight-of-hand of the juggler, as well as the art of the minstrel. He tossed up his sword in the air, and caught it again as he galloped to the charge, and showed other feats of dexterity. Taillefer slew two Saxon warriors of distinction, and was himself killed by a third. Ritson, with less than his usual severe accuracy, supposed that Taillefer sung some part of a long metrical romance upon Roland and his history; but the words chan- son, cantilena, and song, by which the composition is usual- ly described, seems rather to apply to a brief ballad or na- tional song; which is also more consonant with our ideas of the time and place where it was chanted.

But neither with these romantic and metrical chronicles did the mind long remain satisfied; more details were de- manded, and were liberally added by the invention of those who undertook to cater for the public taste in such matters. The same names of kings and champions, which had first caught the national ear, were still retained, in order to se- cure attention, and the same assertions of authenticity, and of reference to real history, were stoutly made both in the commencement and in the course of the narrative. Each nation, as will presently be seen, came at length to adopt to it- self a cycle of heroes like those of the Iliad; a sort of com- mon property to all minstrels who chose to make use of them, under the condition always, that the general character as- cribed to each individual hero was preserved with some de- gree of consistency. Thus, in the romances of The Round Table, Gawain is usually represented as courteous; Kay as rude and boastful; Morhild as treacherous; and Sir Launcelot as a true though a sinful lover, and in all other respects a model of chivalry. Amid the Paladins of Char- lemagne, whose cycle may be considered as peculiarly the property of French in opposition to Anglo-Norman ro- Romance, Gan, or Ganelon of Mayence, is always represented as a faithless traitor engaged in intrigues for the destruction of Christianity; Roland as brave, unsuspicious, devotedly loyal, and somewhat simple in his disposition; Renaud, or Rinaldo, is painted with all the properties of a borderer, valiant, alert, ingenious, rapacious and unscrupulous. The same conventional distinctions may be traced in the history of the Nibelung, a composition of Scandinavian origin, which has supplied matter for so many Teutonic adventurers. Meister Hildebrand, Etzel, Theodoric, and the champion Hogan, as well as Chrimhelda and the females introduced, have the same individuality of character, which is ascribed, in Homer's immortal writings, to the wise Ulysses, the brave but relentless Achilles, his more gentle friend Patroclus, Sarpedon, the favourite of the gods, and Hector, the protector of mankind. It was not permitted to the invention of a Greek poet to make Ajax a dwarf, or Teucer a giant, Thersites a hero, or Diomedes a coward; and it seems to have been under similar restrictions respecting consistency that the ancient romancers exercised their ingenuity upon the materials supplied them by their predecessors. But, in other respects, the whole store of romantic history and tradition was free to all as a joint stock in trade, on which each had a right to draw as suited his particular purposes. He was at liberty not only to select a hero out of known and established names which had been the theme of others, but to imagine a new personage of his own pure fancy, and combine him with the heroes of Arthur's Table or Charlemagne's Court, in the way which best suited his fancy. He was permitted to excite new wars against those bulwarks of Christendom, invade them with fresh and innumerable hosts of Saracens, reduce them to the last extremity, drive them from their thrones, and lead them into captivity, and again to relieve their persons, and restore their sovereignty, by events and agents totally unknown in their former story.

In the characters thus assigned to the individual personages of romantic fiction, it is possible there might be some slight foundation in remote tradition, as there were also probably some real grounds for the existence of such persons, and perhaps for a very few of the leading circumstances attributed to them. But these realities only exist as the few grains of wheat in the bushel of chaff, incapable of being winnowed out, or cleared from the mass of fiction with which each new romancer had in his turn overwhelmed them. So that romance, though certainly deriving its first original from the pure fount of history, is supplied, during the course of a very few generations, with so many tributes from the imagination, that at length the very name comes to be used to distinguish works of pure fiction.

When so popular a department of poetry has attained this decided character, it becomes time to inquire who were the composers of these numerous, lengthened, and once admired narratives which are called metrical romances, and from whence they drew their authority. Both these subjects of discussion have been the source of great controversy among antiquaries; a class of men who, be it said with their forgiveness, are apt to be both positive and polemical upon the very points which are least susceptible of proof, and which are least valuable if the truth could be ascertained; and which, therefore, we would gladly have seen handled with more diffidence, and better temper, in proportion to their uncertainty.

The late venerable Dr. Percy, Bishop of Dromore, led the way unwarily to this dire controversy, by ascribing the composition of our ancient heroic songs and metrical legends, in rather too liberal language, to the minstrels, that class of men by whom they were generally recited. This excellent person, to whose memory the lovers of our ancient lyre must always remain so deeply indebted, did not, on publishing his work nearly fifty years ago, see the rigid necessity of observing the utmost and most accurate precision either in his transcripts or his definitions. The study which he wished to introduce was a new one; it was his object to place it before the public in an engaging and interesting form; and, in consideration of his having obtained this important point, we ought to make every allowance not only for slight inaccuracies, but for some hasty conclusions, and even exaggerations, with which he was induced to garnish his labour of love. He defined the minstrels, to whose labours he chiefly ascribed the metrical compositions on which he desired to fix the attention of the public, as "an order of men in the middle ages, who subsisted by the arts of poetry and music, and sung to the harp verses composed by themselves or others." In a very learned and elegant essay upon the text thus announced, the reverend Prelate in a great measure supported the definition which he had laid down; although it may be thought that, in the first editions at least, he has been anxious to view the profession of the minstrels on their fairest and most brilliant side; and to assign to them a higher station in society than a general review of all the passages connected with them will permit us to give to a class of persons who either lived a vagrant life, dependent on the precarious taste of the public for a hard-earned maintenance, or, at best, were retained as a part of the menial retinue of some haughty baron, and in a great measure identified with his musical hand.

The late acute, industrious, and ingenious Mr. Joseph Ritson, whose severe accuracy was connected with an unhappy eagerness and irritability of temper, took advantage of the exaggerations occasionally to be found in the Bishop's Account of Ancient Minstrelsy, and assailed him with terms which may be termed any thing but courteous. Without finding an excuse either in the novelty of the studies in which Percy had led the way, or in the vivacity of imagination which he did not himself share, he proceeded to arraign each trivial inaccuracy as a gross fraud, and every deduction which he considered to be erroneous as a wilful untruth, fit to be stigmatised with the broadest appellation by which falsehood can be distinguished. Yet there is so little room for this extreme loss of temper, that, upon a recent perusal of both these ingenious essays, we were surprised to find that the reverend editor of the Reliques, and the accurate antiquary, have differed so very little as, in essential facts, they appear to have done. Quotations are, indeed, made by both with no sparing hand, and hot arguments; and, on one side at least, hard words are unsparingly employed; while, as is said to happen in theological polemics, the contest grows warmer in proportion as the ground concerning which it is carried on is narrower and more insignificant. Their systems, in reality, do not essentially differ.

Ritson is chiefly offended at the sweeping conclusion in which Percy states the minstrels as subsisting by the arts of poetry and music, and reciting to the harp verses composed by themselves and others. He shows very successfully that this definition is considerably too extensive, and that the term minstrel comprehended, of old, not merely those who recited to the harp or other instrument romances and ballads, but others who were distinguished by their skill in instrumental music only; and, moreover, that jugglers, sleight-of-hand performers, dancers, tumblers, and such like subordinate artists, who were introduced to help away the tedious hours in an ancient feudal castle, were also comprehended under the general term of minstrel. But although he distinctly proves that Percy's definition applied only to one class of the persons termed minstrels, those, namely, who sung or recited verses, and in many cases of their own composition; the bishop's position remains unassailable, in so far as relates to one general class, and these the most dis-

1 Essay on Ancient Minstrels in England prefixed to the first volume of Bishop Percy's Reliques. Romance distinguished during the middle ages. All minstrels did not use the harp, and recite or compose romantic poetry; but it cannot be denied that such was the occupation of the most eminent of the order. This Ritson has rather admitted than denied; and the number of quotations which his industry has brought together, rendered such an admission inevitable.

Indeed, the slightest acquaintance with ancient romances of the metrical class, shows us that they were composed for the express purpose of being recited, or, more properly, chanted to some simple tune or cadence for the amusement of a large audience. Our ancestors, as they were circumscribed in knowledge, were also more limited in conversational powers than their enlightened descendants; and it seems probable, that in their public festivals, there was great advantage found in the presence of a minstrel who should recite some popular composition on their favourite subjects of love and war, to prevent those pauses of discourse which sometimes fall heavily on a company, even of the present accomplished age, and to supply an agreeable train of ideas to those guests who had few of their own. It is, therefore, almost constantly insinuated, that the romance was to be chanted or recited to a large and festive society; and in some part or other of the piece, generally at the opening, there is a request of attention on the part of the performer; and hence, the perpetual "Lythe and listen lordings free," which in those, or equivalent words, forms the introduction to so many romances. As, for example, in the old poem of Guy and Colbrand, the minstrel speaks of his own occupation:

When meat and drinke is great plentye, Then lords and ladyes still will be, And sit and solace lythe; Then it is time for mee to speake, Of kern knights and kempes greate, Such carping for to kythe.

Chaucer, also, in his rhyme of Sir Thopas, assigns to the minstrels of his hero's household the same duty of reciting romances of spiritual or secular heroes, for the good knight's pastime while arming himself for battle:

"Do cum," he sayd, "my minstreles, And jestours for to tellen tales Anes in min arming, Of romances that ben reales, Of popes and of cardinales, And eke of love-longing."

Not to multiply quotations, we will only add one of some importance, which must have escaped Ritson's researches; for his editorial integrity was such, as rendered him incapable of suppressing evidence on either side of the question. In the old romance or legend of True Thomas and the Queen of Elfland, Thomas the Rhymer, himself a minstrel, is gifted by the Queen of Faery with the faculties of music and song. The answer of Thomas is not only conclusive as to the minstrel's custom of recitation, but shows that it was esteemed the highest branch of his profession, and superior as such to mere instrumental music:

"To harp and carp Thomas wheresover ye goe, Thomas take the these with the" "Harping," he said, "kem I non, For tong is obehe of Mynstrale."

We, therefore, arrive at the legitimate conclusion, that although, under the general term minstrels, were comprehended many who probably entertained the public only with instrumental performances, with ribald tales, with jugglery, or farcical representations, yet one class amongst them, and that a numerous one, made poetical recitation their chief, if not their exclusive occupation. The memory of these men was, in the general case, the depository of the pieces which they recited; and hence, although a number of their romances still survive, very many more have doubtless fallen into oblivion.

That the minstrels were also the authors of many of these poems, and that they altered and enlarged others, is a matter which can scarcely be doubted, when it is proved that they were the ordinary reciters of them. It was as natural for a minstrel to become a poet or composer of romances, as for a player to be a dramatic author, or a musician a composer of music. Whatever individual among a class, whose trade it was to recite poetry, felt the least degree of poetical enthusiasm in a profession so peculiarly calculated to inspire it, must, from that very impulse, have become an original author, or translator at least; thus giving novelty to his recitations, and acquiring additional profit and fame. Bishop Percy, therefore, states the case fairly in the following passage: "It can hardly be expected that we should be able to produce regular and unbroken annals of the minstrel art and its professors, or have sufficient information, whether every minstrel or bard composed himself, or only repeated, the songs he chanted. Some probably did the one and some the other; and it would have been wonderful indeed, if men, whose peculiar profession it was, and who devoted their time and talents to entertain their hearers with poetical compositions, were peculiarly deprived of all poetical genius themselves, and had been under a physical incapacity of composing those common popular rhymes, which were the usual subjects of their recitation." While, however, we acquiesce in the proposition, that the minstrels composed many, perhaps the greater part of the metrical romances which they sung, it is evident they were frequently assisted in the task by others who, though not belonging to this profession, were prompted by leisure and inclination to enter upon the literary or poetical department as amateurs. These very often belonged to the clerical profession, amongst whom relaxation of discipline, abundance of spare time, and impatience of the routine of ceremonious duties, often led individuals into worse occupations than the listening to or composing metrical romances. It was in vain that both the poems and the minstrels who recited them were, by statute, debarred from entering the more rigid monasteries. Both found their way frequently to the refectory, and were made more welcome than brethren of their own profession; as we may learn from a memorable Gest, in which two poor travelling priests, who had been received into a monastery with acclamation, under the mistaken idea of their being minstrels, are turned out in disgrace, when it is discovered that they were indeed capable of furnishing spiritual instruction, but understood none of the entertaining arts with which the hospitality of their convent might have been repaid by itinerant bards.

Nay, besides a truant disposition to a forbidden task, many of the grave authors may have alleged, in their own defence, that the connexion between history and romance was not in their day entirely dissolved. Some eminent men exercised themselves in both kinds of composition; as, for example, Maitre Wace, canon of Caen, in Normandy, who, besides the metrical chronicle of Le Brut, containing

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1 Jamieson's Popular Ballads, vol. ii. p. 27. 2 Essay on the Ancient Minstrels, p. 80. Another authority of ancient date, the Chronicle of Bertrand Guesclin, distinctly attributes the most renowned romances to the composition of the minstrels by whom they were sung. As the passage will be afterwards more fully quoted, we must here only say, that after enumerating Arthur, Launcelot, Godfrey, Roland, and other champions, he sums up his account of them as being the heroes. Romance, the earliest history of England, and other historical legends, wrote, in 1155, the Roman de Chevalier de Lyon, probably the same translated under the title of Yvain and Gauvain. Lambert li Cors, and Benoît de Saint-Maur, seem both to have been of the clerical order; and, perhaps, Chretien de Troyes, a most voluminous author of romance, was of the same profession. Indeed, the extreme length of many romances being much greater than any minstrel could undertake to sing at one or even many sittings, may induce us to refer them to men of a more sedentary occupation than those wandering poets. The religious romances were, in all probability, the works of such clergymen as might wish to reconcile an agreeable occupation with their religious profession. All which circumstances must be received as exceptions from the general proposition, that the romances in metre were the composition of the minstrels by whom they were recited or sung, though they must still leave Percy's proposition to a certain extent unimpeached.

To explain the history of Romance, it is necessary to digress a little further concerning the condition of the minstrels by whom these compositions were often made, and, generally speaking, preserved and recited. And here, it must be confessed, that the venerable Prelate has, perhaps, suffered his love of antiquity, and his desire to ennoble the productions of the middle ages, a little to overcolour the importance and respectability of the minstrel tribe; although his opponent Ritson has, on the other hand, seized on all circumstances and inferences which could be adduced to prove the degradation of the minstrel character, without attending to the particulars by which these depreciating circumstances were qualified. In fact, neither of these excellent antiquaries has cast a general or philosophical glance on the necessary condition of a set of men who were by profession the instruments of the pleasure of others during a period of society such as was presented in the middle ages.

In a very early period of civilisation, ere the division of tribes had been generally adopted, and while each tribe may be yet considered as one great family, and the nation as an union of such independent tribes, the poetical art, so nearly allied to that of oratory or persuasion, is found to ascertain its professors a very high rank. Poets are then the historians and often the priests of the tribe. Their command of language, then in its infancy, excites not merely pleasure, but enthusiasm and admiration. When separated into a distinct class, as was the case with the Celtic bards, and, perhaps, with the skalds of Scandinavia, they rank high in the scale of society, and we not only find kings and nobles listening to them with admiration, but emulous of their art, and desirous to be enrolled among their numbers. Several of the most renowned northern kings and champions valued themselves as much upon their powers of poetry as on their martial exploits; and of the Welsh princes, the Irish kings, and the Highland chiefs of Scotland, very many practised the arts of poetry and music. Llwarach Hen was a prince of the Cymraeg, Brian Boromhe, a harper and a musician, and without resorting to the questionable authenticity of Ossian, several instances of the same kind might be produced in the Highlands.

But, in process of time, when the classes of society come to assume their usual gradation with respect to each other, the rank of professional poets is uniformly found to sink gradually in the scale, along with that of all others whose trade it is to contribute mere amusement. The professional poet, like the player or the musician, becomes the companion and soother only of idle and convivial hours; his presence would be unbecoming on occasions of gravity and importance; and his art is accounted at best an amusing but useless luxury. Although the intellectual pleasure derived from poetry or from the exhibition of the drama be of a different and much higher class than that derived from the accordance of sounds, or from the exhibition of feats of dexterity, still it will be found that the opinions and often the laws of society, while individuals of these classes are cherished and held in the highest estimation, have degraded the professions themselves among its idle, dissolute, and useless appendages. Although it may be accounted ungrateful in mankind thus to reward the instruments of their highest enjoyments, yet some justification is usually to be drawn from the manners of the classes who were thus lowered in public opinion. It must be remembered, that, as professors of this joyous science, as it was called, the minstrels stood in direct opposition to the more severe part of the Catholics, and to the monks in particular, whose vows bound them to practise virtues of the ascetic order, and to look upon every thing as profane which was connected with mere worldly pleasure. The manners of the minstrels themselves gave too much room for clerical censure. They were the usual assistants at scenes, not merely of conviviality, but of license; and as the companions and encouragers of revelling and excess, they became contemptible in the eyes, not only of the aged and the serious, but of the libertine himself, when his debauch palled on his recollection. The minstrels, no doubt, like their brethren of the stage, sought an apology in the corrupted taste and manners of their audience, with which they were obliged to comply, under the true but melancholy condition that

—they who live to please must please to live.

But this very necessity, rendered more degrading by their increasing numbers and decreasing reputation, only accelerated the total downfall of their order, and the general discredit and neglect into which they had fallen. The statute of the 39th of Queen Elizabeth, passed at the close of the sixteenth century, ranks those dishonoured sons of song among rogues and vagabonds, and appoints them to be punished as such; and the occupation, though a vestige of it was long retained in the habits of travelling ballad-singers and musicians, sunk into total neglect and contempt. Of this we shall have to speak hereafter; our business being at present with those romances, which, while still in the zenith of their reputation, were the means by which the minstrels, at least the better and higher class amongst them, recommended themselves to the favour of their noble patrons, and of the audiences whom they addressed.

It may be presumed, that, although the class of minstrels, like all who merely depend upon gratifying the public, carried in their very occupation the evils which first infected, and finally altogether depraved their reputation; yet, in the earlier ages, their duties were more honourably estimated, and some attempts were made to introduce into their motley body the character of a regular establishment, subjected to discipline and subordination. Several individuals, both of France and England, bore the title of king of minstrels, and were invested probably with some authority over the others. The sergeant of minstrels is also mentioned; and Edward IV. seems to have attempted to form a guild or exclusive corporation of minstrels. John of Gaunt, at an earlier period, established (between jest and earnest, perhaps) a court baron of minstrels, to be held at Tilbury. There is no reason, however, to suppose that the influence of their establishments went far in restraining the licence of a body of artists so unruly as well as numerous.

It is not, indeed, surprising that individuals, whose talents in the arts of music or of the stage rise to the highest order, should, in a special degree, attain the regard and affection of the powerful, acquire wealth, and rise to consideration; for, in such professions, very high prizes are assigned only to pre-eminent excellence; while ordinary or inferior practitioners of the same art may be said to draw in the lottery something worse than a mere blank. Garrick, in Romance, his chariot, and whose company was courted for his wit and talent, was, after all, by profession, the same with the unfortunate stroller, whom the British laws condemn as a vagabond, and to whose dead body other countries refuse even the last rites of Christianity. In the same manner it is easy to suppose that, when in compliance with the taste of their age, monarchs entertained their domestic minstrels, those persons might be admitted to the most flattering intimacy with their royal masters; sleep within the royal chamber, amass considerable fortunes, found hospitals, and receive rewards singularly over-proportioned to the perquisites of the graver professions; and even practise in company with their royal masters the pleasing arts of poetry and music, which all are so desirous of attaining; whilst, at the same time, those who ranked lower in the same profession were struggling with difficulty to gain a precarious subsistence, and incurring all the disgrace usually attached to a vagabond life and a dubious character. In the fine arts, particularly, excellence is demanded, and mere mediocrity is held contemptible; and, while the favour with which the former is loaded, sometimes seems disproportioned to the utility of the art itself, nothing can exceed the scorn poured out on those who expose themselves by undertaking arts which they are unable to practise with success. Self-conceit, however, love of an idle life, and a variety of combined motives, never fail to recruit the lower orders of such idle professions with individuals by whose performances, and often by their private characters, the art which they have rashly adopted can only be discredited without any corresponding advantage to themselves. It is not, therefore, surprising that, while such distinguished examples of the contrary appeared amongst individuals, the whole body of minstrels, with the romances which they composed and sung, should be reproached by graver historians in such severe terms as often occur in the monkish chronicles of the day.

Respecting the style of their composition, Du Cange informs us, that the minstrels sometimes devoted their strains to flatter the great, and sing the praises of those princes by whom they were protected; while he owns, at the same time, that they often recommended to their hearers the path of virtue and nobleness, and pointed out the pursuits by which the heroes of romance had rendered themselves renowned in song. He quotes from the romance of Bertrand Guesclin, the injunction on those who would rise to fame in arms to copy the valiant acts of the Paladins of Romance, Charles, and the Knights of the Round Table, narrated in romances; and it cannot be denied, that those high tales, in which the virtues of generosity, bravery, devotion to his mistress, and zeal for the Catholic religion, were carried to the greatest height of romantic perfection in the character of the hero, united with the scenes passing around them, were of the highest importance in affecting the character of the age. The fabulous knights of romance were so completely identified with those of real history, that graver historians quote the actions of the former in illustration of, and as a corollary to the real events which they narrate. The virtues recommended in romance were, however, only of that overstrained and extravagant cast which consisted with the spirit of chivalry. Great bodily strength, and perfection in all martial exercises, was the universal accomplishment inalienable from the character of the hero, and which each romancer had it in his power to confer. It was also easily in the composer's power to devise dangers, and to free his hero from them by the exertion of valour equally extravagant. But it was more difficult to frame a story which should illustrate the manners as well as the feats of chivalry; or to devise the means of evincing that devotion to duty, and that disinterested desire to sacrifice all to faith and honour—that noble spirit of achievement which laboured for others more than itself—which form, perhaps, the fairest side of the system under which the noble youths of the middle ages were trained up. The sentiments of chivalry, as we have explained in our article on that subject, were founded on the most pure and honourable principles, but unfortunately carried into hyperbole and extravagance; until the religion of its professors approached to fanaticism, their valour to frenzy, their ideas of honour to absurdity, their spirit of enterprise to extravagance, and their respect for the female sex to a sort of idolatry. All those extravagant feelings, which really existed in the society of the middle ages, were magnified and exaggerated by the writers and reciters of romance; and these given as resemblances of actual manners, became, in their turn, the glass by which the youth of the age dressed themselves; while the spirit of chivalry and of romance thus gradually threw light upon and enhanced each other.

The romances, therefore, exhibited the same system of manners which existed in the nobles of the age. The character of a true son of chivalry was raised to such a pitch

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1 Berdic (Regis Joculator), the jongleur or minstrel of William the Conqueror, had, as appears from the Domesday record, three villas and five carucates of land in Gloucestershire without rent. Henry I. had a minstrel called Galfrid, who received an annuity from the abbey of Hyde.

2 A minstrel of Edward I., during that prince's expedition to the Holy Land, slept within his tent, and came to his assistance when an attempt was made to assassinate him.

3 The Priory and Hospital of Saint Bartholomew, in London, was founded in the reign of Henry I. by Royer or Raher, a minstrel of that prince.

In 1141, the monks of Malmesbury, near Coventry, paid a donation of four shillings to the minstrels of Lord Clinton for songs, harping, and other entertainments, while, to a doctor who preached before the community in the same year, they assigned only sixpence.

The noted ancestors of Blondel, the royal minstrel, Richard Cour de Lion, will occur to every reader.

Ministri dii praestantia, scimus, musici, populares, sed etiam antiqui vulgi Ministrarii vel Ministrarii, appellantes.—Perro ejusmodi securorum erat Principes, non sine duntaxat ludicra oblectare, sed et eorum auris varia musica adeoque ipsorum Principium habebat, non sine assentatione, cum cantilenis et musiciis instrumentis, dumuleae.—Interdum etiam virorum insignium et heroum gesta, aut explicata et jucunda narratione commemorabant, aut suavi vocis inflectione, adhucque decantabant, quo sic dominorum, cæterorumque qui his intererant ludicris, nobilitum animos ad virtutem capessendam et summorum virorum imitationem accenderent; quod fuit eum apud Gallos Bardorum ministerium, ut auctor est Tacitus. Neque enim alios à Ministris, veterum Gallorum Bardos finesse pluribus probat Henricus Valesius ad 15. Ammian. —Chronicon Bertrandi Guesclini:

Qui veut avoir renom des bons et des vaillans, Il doit aller souvent à la pluie et au champ, Et estre en la bataille, ainsi que fu Rollans, Les quatre fils Haimon et Charlon li plus grands, Li Dus Lions de Bourges, et Guion de Comans, Percival li Gaiois, Lancelet et Tristana, Alexandra, Artus, Godefroy li sachans, De quoy els menestriers font les nobles Romans.

Barbour, the Scottish historian, censures a Highland chief, when, in commending the prowess of Bruce in battle, he likened him to the Celtic hero, Fin Mac Coul, and says, he might in more mannerly fashion have compared him to Gaudifer, a champion celebrated in the romance of Alexander. Romance, of ideal and impossible perfection, that those who emulated such renown were usually contented to stop far short of the mark. The most adventurous and unshaken valour, a mind capable of the highest flights of romantic generosity, a heart which was devoted to the will of some fair idol, on whom his deeds were to reflect glory, and whose love was to reward all his toils; these were attributes which all aspired to exhibit who sought to rank high in the annals of chivalry; and such were the virtues which the minstrels celebrated. But, like the temper of a tamed lion, the fierce and dissolute spirit of the age often shewed itself through the fair varnish of this artificial system of manners. The valour of the hero was often stained by acts of cruelty, or freaks of rash desperation; his courtesy and munificence became solemn foppery and wild profusion; his love to his lady often demanded and received a requital inconsistent with the honour of the object; and those who affected to found their attachment on the purest and most delicate metaphysical principles, carried on their actual intercourse with a license altogether inconsistent with their sublime pretensions. Such were the real manners of the middle ages, and we find them so depicted in these ancient legends.

So high was the national excitement in consequence of the romantic atmosphere in which they seemed to breathe, that the knights and squires of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries imitated the wildest and most extravagant enterprises of the heroes of romance; and, like them, took on themselves the most extraordinary adventures to show their own gallantry, and do most honour to the ladies of their hearts. The females of rank, erected into a species of goddesses in public, and often degraded as much below their proper dignity in more private intercourse, equalled in their extravagances the youth of the other sex. A singular picture is given by Knyghton of the damsels-errant who attended upon the solemn festivals of chivalry, in quest, it may reasonably be supposed, of such adventures as are very likely to be met with by such females as think proper to seek them. "These tournaments are attended by many ladies of the first rank and greatest beauty, but not always of the most untainted reputation. These ladies are dressed in party-coloured tunics, one-half of one colour and the other half of another; their lirippipes, or tippets, are very short; their caps remarkably little, and wrapt about their heads with cords; their girdles and pouches are ornamented with gold and silver; and they wear short shorts, called daggers, before them, a little below their navels; they are mounted on the finest horses, with the richest furniture. Thus equipped, they ride from place to place in quest of tournaments, by which they dissipate their fortunes, and sometimes ruin their reputation."—Knyghton, quoted in Henry's History, vol. viii. p. 402.)

The minstrels, or those who aided them in the composition of the romances, which it was their profession to recite, roused to rivalry by the unceasing demand for their compositions, endeavoured emulously to render them more attractive by subjects of new and varied interest, or by marvellous incidents which their predecessors were strangers to. Much labour has been bestowed, somewhat unprofitably, in endeavouring to ascertain the sources from which they drew the embellishments of their tales, when the hearers began to be tired of the unvaried recital of battle and tournament which had satisfied the simplicity of a former age. Percy has contended for the northern Sagas as the unquestionable origin of the romance of the middle ages. Warton conceived that the Oriental fables, borrowed by those minstrels who visited Spain, or who in great numbers attended the crusades, gave the principal distinctive colouring to those remarkable compositions; and a later system, patronised by later authors, has derived them, in a great measure, from the fragments of classical superstition, which continued to be preserved after the fall of the Roman empire. All those systems seem to be inaccurate, in so far as they have been adopted, exclusively of each other, and of the general proposition, that fables of a nature similar to the romances of chivalry, modified according to manners and state of society, must necessarily be invented in every part of the world, for the same reason that grass grows upon the surface of the soil in every climate and in every country. "In reality," says Mr. Southey, who has treated this subject with his usual ability, "mythological and romantic tales are current among all savages of whom we have any full account; for man has his intellectual as well as his bodily appetites, and these things are the food of his imagination and faith. They are found wherever there is language and discourse of reason; in other words, wherever there is man. And in similar stages of civilization, or states of society, the fictions of different people will bear a corresponding resemblance, notwithstanding the difference of time and scene."

To this it may be added, that the usual appearances and productions of nature offer to the fancy, in every part of the world, the same means of diversifying fictitious narrative by the introduction of prodigies. If in any romance we encounter the description of an elephant, we may reasonably conclude that a phenomenon, unknown in Europe, must have been borrowed from the east; but whosoever has seen a serpent and a bird, may easily aggravate the terrors of the former by conferring on a fictitious monster the wings of the latter; and whoever has seen or heard of a wolf, or lion, and an eagle, may, by a similar exertion of invention, imagine a griffin or hippogriff. It is imputing great poverty to the human imagination, to suppose that the speciosissima miraculosa, which are found to exist in different parts of the world, must necessarily be derived from some common source; and perhaps we should not err more grossly in supposing that the various kinds of boats, skiffs, and rafts, upon which men have dared the ocean on so many various shores, have been all originally derived from the vessel of the Argonauts.

On the other hand, there are various romantic incidents and inventions of a nature so peculiar, that we may boldly, and at once, refer them to some particular and special origin. The tale of Flora and Blanchefleur, for example, could only be invented in the east, where the scene is laid, and the manners of which are observed with some accuracy. That of Orfeo and Eurydice, on the contrary, is the classical history of Orpheus and Eurydice, with the Gothic machinery of the elves or fairies, substituted for the internal regions. But notwithstanding these and many other instances in which the subjects or leading incidents of romance can be distinctly traced to British or Armorican traditions, to the tales and history of classic antiquity, to the wild fables and rich imagery of Arabia, or to those darker and sterner themes which were first treated of by the Skalds of the north, it would be assuming greatly too much upon such grounds to ascribe the derivation of romantic fiction, exclusively to any one of these sources. In fact, the foundation of these fables lies deep in human nature, and the superstructures have been imitated from various authorities by those who, living by the pleasure which their lays of chivalry afforded to their audience, were especially anxious to recommend them by novelty of every kind; and were undoubtedly highly gratified when the report of travellers, or pilgrims, or perhaps their own intercourse with minstrels of other nations, enabled them to vary their usual narrations with circumstances yet unheard in bower and hall. Romance, therefore, was like a compound metal, derived from various mines, and in the different specimens of which, one metal or other was alternately predominant; and viewed in this light, the ingenious theories of those learned antiquaries, who have

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1 Preface to Southey's edition of the Morte D'Arthur. Lond. 1817, 2 vols. 4to. Romance endeavoured to seek the origin of this style of fiction in one of these sources alone, to the exclusion of all others, seem as vain as that of travellers affecting to trace the proper head of the Nile to various different springs, all of which are owned to be necessary to form the full majesty of his current.

As the fashion of all things passes away, the metrical romances began gradually to decline in public estimation, probably on account of the depreciated character of the minstrels by whom they were recited. Tradition, says Ritson, is an alchemy, which converts gold into lead; and there is little doubt, that, in passing from mouth to mouth, and from age to age, the most approved metrical romances became gradually corrupted by the defect of memory of some reciters and the interpolations of others; since few comparatively can be supposed to have had recourse to the manuscripts in which some have been preserved. Neither were the reciters in the latter, as in the former times, supplied with new productions of interest and merit. The composition of the metrical romance was gradually abandoned to persons of an inferior class. The art of stringing together in loose verse a number of unconnected adventures, was too easy not to be practised by many who only succeeded to such a degree as was discreditable to the art, by shewing that mere mediocrity was sufficient to exercise it. And the licentious character, as well as the great number of those who, under the various names of gleemen, minstrels, and the like, traversed the country, and subsisted by this idle trade, brought themselves and their occupation into still greater contempt and disregard. With them, the long recitations formerly made at the tables of the great, were gradually banished into more vulgar society.

But though the form of those narratives underwent a change of fashion, the appetite for the fictions themselves continued as ardent as ever; and the prose romances which succeeded, and finally superseded those composed in verse, had a large and permanent share of popularity. This was, no doubt, in a great degree owing to the important invention of printing, which has so much contributed to alter the destinies of the world. The metrical romances, though in some instances sent to the press, were not very fit to be published in this form. The dull amplifications which passed well enough in the course of a half-heard recitation, became intolerable when subjected to the eye; and the public taste gradually growing more fastidious as the language became more copious, and the system of manners more complicated, graces of style and variety of sentiment were demanded instead of a naked and unadorned tale of wonders. The authors of the prose romances endeavoured, to the best of their skill, to satisfy this newly awakened and more refined taste. They used, indeed, the same sources of romantic history which had been resorted to by their metrical predecessors; and Arthur, Charlemagne, and all their chivalry, were as much celebrated in prose as over they had been in poetic narrative. But the new candidates for public favour pretended to have recourse to sources of authentic information, to which their metrical predecessors had no access. They refer almost always to Latin, and sometimes to Greek originals, which certainly had no existence; and there is little doubt that the venerable names of the alleged authors are invented, as well as the supposed originals from which they are said to have translated their narratives. The following account of the discovery of La tres elegante deliciosa meliflue et tres plaisante Hystoire du tres noble Roy Perceforest (printed at Paris in 1528 by Galliot du Pré) may serve to show that modern authors were not the first who invented the popular mode of introducing their works to the world as the contents of a newly discovered manuscript. In the abridgment to which we are limited, we can give but a faint picture of the minuteness with which the author announces his pretended discovery, and which forms an admirable example of the lie with a circumstance.

In the year 1286, Count William of Hainault had, it is averred, crossed the seas in order to be present at the nuptials of Edward, and in the course of a tour through Britain, was hospitably entertained at an abbey situated on the banks of the Humber, and termed, it seems, Burtimer, because founded by a certain Burtimericus, a monarch of whom our annals are silent, but who had gained, in that place, a victory over the heathens of Germany. Here a cabinet, which was inclosed in a private recess, had been lately discovered within the massive walls of an ancient tower, and was found to contain a Grecian manuscript, along with a royal crown. The abbot had sent the latter to king Edward, and the Count of Hainault with difficulty obtained possession of the manuscript. He had it rendered from Greek into Latin by a monk of the abbey of Saint Landen, and from that language it is said to have been translated into French by the author, who gives it to the world in honour of the blessed Virgin, and for the edification of nobleness and chivalry.

By such details, the authors of the prose romances endeavoured to obtain for their works a credit for authenticity which had been denied to the rhythmical legends. But in this particular they did great injustice to their contemned predecessors, whose reputations they murdered in order to rob them with impunity. Whatever fragments or shadowings of true history may yet remain hidden under the mass of accumulated fable, which had been heaped on them during successive ages, must undoubtedly be sought in the metrical romances; and according to the view of the subject which we have already given, the more the works approach in point of antiquity to the period where the story is laid, the more are we likely to find those historical traditions in something approaching to an authentic state. But those who wrote under the imaginary names of Rusticien de Puise, Robert de Borros, and the like, usually seized upon the subject of some old minstrel; and, recomposing the whole narrative after their own fashion, with additional characters and adventures, totally obliterated in that operation any shades which remained of the first, and probably authentic tradition, which was the original source of the elaborate fiction. Amplification was especially employed by the prose romancers, who, having once got hold of a subject, seem never to have parted with it until their power of invention was completely exhausted. The metrical romances, in some instances, indeed, ran to great length, but were much exceeded in that particular by the folios which were written on the same or similar topics by their prose successors. Probably the latter judiciously reflected that a book which addresses itself only to the eyes, may be laid aside when it becomes tiresome to the reader; whereas it may not always have been so easy to stop the minstrel in the full career of his metrical declamation.

Who, then, the reader may be disposed to inquire, can have been the real authors of those prolix works, who, shrouding themselves under borrowed names, derived no renown from their labours, if successful, and who, certainly, in the infant state of the press, were not rewarded with any emolument? This question cannot, perhaps, be very satisfactorily answered; but we may reasonably suspect that the long hours of leisure which the cloister permitted to its votaries, were often passed away in this manner; and the conjecture is rendered more probable, when it is observed that matters are introduced into those works which have an especial connection with sacred history, and with the traditions of the Church. Thus, in the curious romance of Huon de Bordeaux, a sort of second part is added to that delightful history, in which the hero visits the terrestrial paradise, encounters the first murderer Cain, in the performance of his penance, with more matter to the same purpose, not likely to occur to the imagination of a layman; besides, that the laity of the period were in general too busy and too igno- The mystical portion of the romance of the Round Table seems derived from the same source. It may also be mentioned, that the audacious, and sometimes blasphemous assertions, which claimed for these fictions the credit due even to the inspired writings themselves, were likely to originate amongst Roman Catholic churchmen, who were but too familiar with such forgeries for the purpose of authenticating the legends of their superstition. One almost incredible instance of this impious species of imposture occurs in the history of the Saint Graal, which curious mixture of mysticism and chivalry is ascribed by the unfeeling and unblushing writer to the second person of the Trinity.

Churchmen, however, were by no means the only authors of these legends, although the Sires Clares, as they were sometimes termed, who were accounted the chronicles of the times in which they lived, were usually in orders; and although it appears that it was upon them that the commands of the sovereigns whom they served often imposed the task of producing new romances under the usual disguise of ancient chronicles translated from the learned languages, or otherwise collected from the ruins of antiquity. As education became improved, and knowledge began to be more generally diffused, individuals among the laity, and those of no mean rank, began to feel the necessity, as it may be called, of putting into a permanent form the "thick-coming fancies" which gleam along the imagination of men of genius. Sir Thomas Malory, who compiled the Morte D'Arthur from French originals, was a person of honour and worship; and Lord Berners, the excellent translator of Froissart, and author of a romance called The Chevalier de la Cygne, is an illustrious example that a nobleman of high estimation did not think his time misemployed on this species of composition. Some literary fame must therefore have attended these efforts; and perhaps less eminent authors might, in the latter ages, receive some pecuniary advantages. The translator of Perceforest, formerly mentioned, who appears to have been an Englishman or Fleming, in his address to the warlike and invincible nobility of France, holds the language of a professional author, who expected some advantage besides that of pleasing those whom he addressed; and who expresses proportional gratitude for the favourable reception of his former feeble attempts to please them. It is possible, therefore, that the publishers, these lions of literature, had begun already to admit the authors into some share of their earnings. Other printers, like the venerable Caxton, compiled themselves, or translated from other languages, the romances which they sent to the press; thus uniting in their own persons the three separate departments of author, printer, and publisher.

The prose romance did not, in the general conduct of the story, where digressions are heaped on digressions, without the least respect to the principal narrative, greatly differ from that of their metrical predecessors, being to the full as tedious and inartificial; nay, more so, in proportion as the new romances were longer than the old. In the transference from verse to prose, and the amplification which the scenes underwent in the process, many strong, forcible, and energetic touches of their original author have been weakened, or altogether lost; and the reader misses with regret some of the redeeming bursts of rude poetry which, in the metrical romance, make amends for many hundred lines of bald and rude versification. But, on the other hand, the prose romances were written for a more advanced stage of society, and by authors whose language was much more copious, and who certainly belonged to a more educated class than the ancient minstrels. Men were no longer satisfied with hearing of hard battles and direful wounds; they demanded at the hand of those who professed to entertain them, some insight into nature, or at least into manners; some description of external scenery, and a greater regard to probability both in respect of the characters which are introduced, and the events which are narrated. These new demands the prose romances endeavoured to supply to the best of their power. There was some attention shewn to relieve their story, by the introduction of new characters, and to illustrate these personages by characteristic dialogue. The lovers conversed with each other in the terms of metaphysical gallantry, which were used in real life; and from being a mere rhapsody of warlike feats, the romance began to assume the nobler and more artificial form of a picture of manners. It is in the prose folios of Lancelot du Lac, Perceforest, and others, that antiquaries find recorded the most exact accounts of fights, tournaments, feasts, and other magnificent displays of chivalric splendour; and as they descend into more minute description than the historians of the time thought worthy of their pains, they are a mine from which the painful student may extract much valuable information. This, however, is not the full extent of their merit. These ancient books, amid many pages of dull repetition and uninteresting dialogue, and notwithstanding the languor of an inartificial, protracted, and confused story, exhibit from time to time passages of deep interest, and situations of much novelty, as well as specimens of spirited and masculine writing. The general reader, who dreads the labour of winnowing out these valuable passages from the sterile chaff through which they are scattered, will receive an excellent idea of the beauties and defects of the romance from Tressan's Corps d'Extraits de Romans de Chevalerie, from Mr. Ellis's Specimens of Early English Romances, and Mr. Dunlop's History of Fiction.

These works continued to furnish the amusement of the most polished courts in Europe, so long as the manners and habits of chivalry continued to animate them. Even the sagacious Catherine of Medicis considered the romance of Perceforest as the work best qualified to form the manners and amuse the leisure of a young prince; since she impressed on Charles IX. the necessity of studying it with attention. But by degrees the progress of new opinions in religion, the promulgation of a stricter code of morality, together with the important and animating discussions which began to be carried on by means of the press, diverted the public attention from these antiquated legends. The Protestants of England, and the Huguenots of France, were rigorous in their censure of books of chivalry, in proportion as they had been patronized formerly under the Catholic system; perhaps because they helped to arrest men's thoughts from more serious subjects of occupation. The learned Ascham thus inveighs against the romance of Morte D'Arthur, and at the same time acquaints us with its having passed out of fashion: "In our forefathers' time, when papistry, as standing poole, covered and overflowed all Englande, fewe booke were read in our tongue, saying certaine bookes of chivalrie, as they said for pastime and pleasure; which, as some say, were made in monasteries by idle monks, or wanton canons. As, for example, La Morte D'Arthur, the whole pleasure of which booke standeth in two speciall poyntes, in open manslaughter, and bold hawdrye: in which booke they are counted the noblest knighthes that do kill most men without any quarrell, and commit foulest adulteries by suttle shifts; as Sir Launcelote, with the wife of King Arthur his master; Sir Tristram, with the wife of King Marke his uncle; Sir Lamerocke, with the wife of King Lot, that was his own aunt. This is good stuffe for wise men to laugh at, or honest men to take pleasure at: yet I know, when God's Bible was banished the court, and La Morte D'Arthur received into the prince's chamber."

The brave and religious La Noue is not more favourable to the perusal of romances than the learned Ascham; at- tributing to the public taste for these compositions the decay of morality amongst the French nobility. "The ancient fables whose relics do yet remain, namely, Lancelot of the Lake, Pierreforest, Tristram, Giron the Courteous, and such others, do bear witness of this old vanity; here-with were men fed for the space of 500 yeeres, until our language growing more polished, and our minds more ticklish, they were driven to invent some novelties wherewith to delight us. Thus came ye bookes of Amadis into light among us in this last age. But to say ye truth, Spaine bred the, and France new clothed the in gay garments. In ye daies of Henrie the Second did they bear the chiefeft sway, and I think if any man would then have reproved the, he should have been spit at because they were of themselves playfellowes and maintaineres to a great sort of persons; whereof some, after they had learned to amize in speech, their teeth watered, so desirous were they even to taste of some small morsels of the delicacies therein most livelike and naturally represented." The gallant Marechal proceeds at considerable length to refute the arguments of those who contended that these books were intended as a spur to the practice of arms and honourable exercises amongst youth, and labours hard to shew that they teach dishonest practices both in love and in arms. It is impossible to suppress a smile when we find such an author as La Noue denouncing the introduction of spells, witchcrafts, and enchantments into these volumes, not because such themes are absurd and nonsensical, but because the representing such beneficent enchanters as Alquife and Urganda is, in fact, a vindication of those who traffic with the powers of darkness; and that those who love to read about sorceries and enchantments become, by degrees, familiarized with those devilish mysteries, and may at length be induced to have recourse to them in good earnest.

The romances of chivalry did not, however, sink into disrepute under the stern rebuke of religious puritans or severe moralists, but became gradually neglected, as the customs of chivalry itself fell into disregard; when, of course, the books which breathed its spirit, and were written under its influence, ceased to produce any impression on the public mind, and, superseded by better models of composition, and overwhelmed with the ridicule of Cervantes, sunk by degrees into utter contempt and oblivion.

Other works of amusement, of the same general class, succeeded the proper romance of chivalry. Of these we shall take some notice hereafter, since we must here close our general view of the history of romance, and proceed briefly to give some account of those peculiar to the various European nations.

II. We can here but briefly touch upon a subject of great interest and curiosity, namely, the peculiar character and tone which the romance of chivalry received from the manners and early history of the nations amongst whom it is found to exist; and the corresponding question, in what degree each appears to have borrowed from other countries the themes of their own minstrels, or to have made use of materials common to the whole.

Scandinavia, as was to be expected, may be safely considered as the richest country in Europe, in ancient tales corresponding with the character of romance; sometimes composed entirely in poetry or rhythm, sometimes in prose, and much more frequently in a mixture of prose, narrative, and lyrical effusions. Their well-known Skalds or bards held a high rank in their courts and councils. The character of a good poet was scarcely second to that of a gallant leader, and many of the most celebrated champions ambitiously endeavoured to unite both in their own persons. Their earlier sagas or tales approach to the credit of real history, and were unquestionably meant as such, though, as usual at an early period, debased by the intermixture of Romance.

These specious miracles which the love of the wonderful early introduces into the annals of an infant country. There are, however, very many of the sagas, indeed by far the greater number of those now known to exist, which must be considered as falling rather under the class of fictitious than of real narratives; and which, therefore, belong to our present subject of inquiry. The Oneynger Saga, the Helmskiringla, the Saga of Olaf Trigvason, the Eybyggja Saga, and several others, may be considered as historical; whilst the numerous narratives referring to the history of the Nibelungen and Volsangen are as imaginary as the romances which treat of King Arthur and of Charlemagne. These singular compositions, short, abrupt, and concise in expression, full of bold and even extravagant metaphor, exhibiting many passages of forceful and rapid description, hold a character of their own; and whilst they remind us of the indomitable courage and patient endurance of the hardy Scandinavians, at once the honour and the terror of Europe, rise far above the tedious and creeping style which characterised the minstrel efforts of their successors, whether in France or England. In the pine forests also, and the frozen mountains of the north, there were nursed, amid the relics of expiring paganism, many traditions of a character more wild and terrible than the fables of classical superstition; and these the gloomy imagination of the skalds failed not to transfer to their romantic tales. The late spirit of inquiry which has been so widely spread through Germany, has already begun to throw much light on this neglected storehouse of romantic lore, which is worthy of much more attention than has yet been bestowed upon it in Britain. It must, however, be remarked, that although the north possesses champions and romances of its own, unknown to southern song, yet, in a later age, the inhabitants of these countries borrowed from the French minstrels some of their most popular subjects; and hence we find sagas on the subject of Sir Tristram, Sir Percival, Sir Ywain, and others, the well-known themes of French and English romance. These, however, must necessarily be considered later in date, as well as far inferior in interest, to the sagas of genuine northern birth. Mr. Ritson has indeed quoted their existence as depreciating the pretensions of the northern nations to the possession of poems of high antiquity of their own native growth. Had he been acquainted with the Norman-Kiempe-Datur, a large folio, printed at Stockholm in 1737, he would have been satisfied, that out of the numerous collection of legends respecting the achievements of Gothic champions, far the greater part are of genuine Norse origin; and although having many features in common with the romances of southern chivalry, are, in other marked particulars, distinctly divided from that class of fictitious composition.

The country of Germany, lying contiguous to France's Germanro- and constantly engaged in friendly and hostile intercourse mance, with that great seat of romantic fiction, became, of course, an early partaker in the stores which it afforded. The Minstingers of the Holy Empire were a race no less cherished than the Troubadours of Provence, or the Minstrels of Normandy; and no less active in availing themselves of their indigenous traditions, or importing those of other countries, in order to add to their stock of romantic fiction. Gotfrit of Strasburg composed many thousand lines upon the popular subject of Sir Tristram; and others have been equally copious, both as translators and as original authors, upon various subjects connected with French romance; but Germany possessed materials, partly borrowed from Scandinavia, partly peculiar to her own traditional history, as well as to that of the Roman empire, which they applied to the construction of a cycle of heroes as famous

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1 The Politiche and Militarie Discourses of the Lord De La Newe, pp. 87, 88. 4to. Lond. 1587. As in all other cases of the kind, a real conqueror, the fame of whose exploits survived in tradition, was adopted as the central object, around whom were to be assembled a set of champions, and with whose history was to be interwoven the various feats of courage which they performed, and the adventures which they underwent. Theodoric King of the Goths, called in these romantic legends Diderick of Bern (i.e. Verona,) was selected for this purpose by the German Minnesingers. Among the principal personages introduced are Ezzel, King of the Huns, who is nothing but the celebrated Attila; and Gunter, King of Burgundy, who is identified with a Guntacher of history who really held that kingdom. The good knight Wolfram von Eschenbach seems to have been the first who assembled the scattered traditions and minstrel tales concerning these sovereigns into one large volume of German verse, entitled Heldensbuch, or the Book of Heroes. In this the author has availed himself of the unlimited licence of a romancer; and has connected with the history of Diderick and his chivalry a number of detached legends which had certainly a separate and independent existence. Such is the tale of Sigurd the Horny, which has the appearance of having originally been a Norse saga. An analysis of this singular piece was published by Mr. Weber, in a work entitled Illustrations of Northern Antiquities from the earlier Teutonic and Scandinavian Romances; and the subject has been fully illustrated by the publications of the learned Von der Hagen in Germany, and those of the Hon. William Herbert.

It is here only necessary to say, that Theodoric, like Charlemagne and Arthur, is considered in the romance as a monarch more celebrated for the valorous achievements of the brotherhood of chivalry whom he has drawn around him, than for his own, though neither deficient in strength nor courage. His principal followers have each their discriminatory and peculiar attributes. Meister Hildebrand, the Nestor of the band, is, like the Mangis of Charlemagne's heroes, a magician as well as a champion. Hogan, or Hagan, begot between a mortal and a sea-goblin, is the fierce Achilles of the confederation. It is the uniform custom of the romancers to conclude by a general and overwhelming catastrophe, which destroys the whole ring of chivalry whose feats they had commemorated. The ruin which Roncesvalles brought to the Paladins of Charlemagne, and the fatal battle of Camlan to the Knights of the Round Table, fell upon the warriors of Diderick through the revengeful treachery of Crimhilda, the wife of Ezzel; who, in revenge for the death of her first husband, and in her inordinate desire to possess the treasures of the Nifflunga or Burgundians, brought destruction on all those celebrated champions. Mr. Weber observes that these German fictions differ from the romances of French chivalry, in the greater ferocity and less refinement of sentiment ascribed to the heroes; and also in their employing to a great extent the machinery of the Duergar, or dwarfs, a subterranean people to whom the Heldensbuch ascribes much strength and subtlety, as well as profound skill in the magic art, and who seem, to a certain extent, the predecessors of the European fairy.

Italy, so long the seat of classical learning, and where that learning was first revived, seems never to have strongly embraced the taste for the Gothic romance. They received, indeed, the forms and institutions of chivalry, but the Italians seem to have been in a considerable degree strangers to its spirit, and not to have become deeply enamoured of its literature. There is an old romance of chivalry proper to Italy, called Guerig the Wretched, but we doubt if even this be of indigenous growth. Indeed, when they did adopt from the French the fashionable tales of Charlemagne and his Paladins, these did not attract the attention of the classical Italians, until Boiardo, Berni, Pulci, and, above all, the divine Ariosto, condescended to use them as the basis of their well-known romantic poems; and thus the fictitious narratives originally composed in metre, and afterwards rewritten in prose, were anew decorated with the honours of verse. The romantic poets of Italy did not even disdain to imitate the rambling, diffuse, and episodical style proper to the old romance; and Ariosto, in particular, although he torments the reader's attention, by digressing from one adventure to another, delights us, upon frequent perusals, by the extreme ingenuity with which he gathers up the broken ends of his narrative, and finally weaves them all handsomely together in the same piece. But the merits and faults of romantic poetry form themselves the fruitful subject of a long essay. We here only notice the origin of those celebrated works, as a species of composition arising out of the old romance, though surpassing it in regularity, as well as in all the beauties of style and diction.

With Spain the idea of romance was particularly connected; and the associations which are formed upon per-Portuguese using the immortal work of Cervantes, induce us for a long time to believe that the country of Don Quixote must be the very cradle of romantic fiction. Yet, if we speak of priority of date, Spain was amongst the last nations in Europe with whom romance became popular. It was not indeed possible that, among a people speaking so noble and poetical a language, engaged in constant wars, which called forth at once their courage and their genius, there should not exist many historical and romantic ballads descriptive of their encounters with the Moors. But their native poets seem to have been too much engaged with the events of their own age, and of that which had just preceded it, to permit of their seeking subjects in the regions of pure fiction; and we have not heard of a Spanish metrical romance, unless the poems describing the adventures of the Cid should be supposed to have any affinity to that class of composition. The Peninsula, however, though late in adopting the prevailing taste for romantic fiction, gave origin to one particular class, which was at least as popular as any which had preceded it. Amadis de Gaul, the production, it would seem, of Vasco de Lobeira, a Portuguese knight, who lived in the fourteenth century, gave a new turn to the tales of chivalry, and threw into the shade the French prose romances, which, until the appearance of this distinguished work, had been the most popular in Europe.

The author of Amadis, in order, perhaps, to facilitate the other changes which he introduced, and to avoid rushing against preconceived ideas of events or character, laid aside the worn-out features of Arthur and Charlemagne, and imagined to himself a new dynasty both of sovereigns and of heroes, to whom he ascribed a style of manners much more refined, and sentiments much more artificial, than had occurred to the authors of Perceval or Perceforest. Lobeira had also taste enough to perceive, that some unity of design would be a great improvement on the old romance, where one adventure is strung to another with little connection from the beginning to the end of the volume; which thus concluded, not because the plot was winded up, but because the author's invention, or the printer's patience, was exhausted. In the work of the Portuguese author, on the contrary, he proposes a certain end, to advance or retard which all the incidents of the work have direct reference. This is the marriage of Amadis with Oriana, against which a thousand difficulties are raised by rivals, giants, sorcerers, and all the race of evil powers unfavourable to chivalry; whilst these obstacles are removed by the valour of the hero, and constancy of the heroine, succoured on their part by those friendly sages, and blameless sorceresses, whose intervention gave so much alarm to the tender-conscience De la Noue. Lobeira also displayed considerable attention to the pleasure which arises from the contrast of character; Romance, and to relieve that of Amadis, who is the very essence of chivalrous constancy, he has introduced Don Galahar, his brother, a gay libertine in love, whose adventures form a contrast with those of his more serious relative. Above all, the *Amadis* displays an attention to the style and conversation of the piece, which, although its effects are now exaggerated and ridiculous, was doubtless at the time considered as the pitch of elegance; and here were, for the first time, introduced those hyperbolical compliments, and that inflated and complicated structure of language, the sense of which walks as in a masquerade.

The *Amadis* at first consisted only of four books, and in that limited shape may be considered as a very well conducted story; but additions were speedily made which extended the number to twenty-four; containing the history of Amadis subsequent to his obtaining possession of Oriana, and down to his death, as also of his numerous descendants. The theme was not yet exhausted; for, as the ancient romancers, when they commenced a new work, chose for their hero some newly invented Paladin of Charlemagne, or knight of King Arthur, so did their successors adopt a new descendant of the family of Amadis, whose genealogy was thus multiplied to a prodigious degree. For an account of *Esplandian*, *Florimond of Greece*, *Palmerin of England*, and the other romances of this class, the reader must be referred to the valuable labours of Mr. Southey, who has abridged both *Amadis* and *Palmerin*, with the most accurate attention to the style and manners of the original. The books of *Amadis* became so very popular, as to supersede the elder romances almost entirely, even at the court of France, where, according to La Noue, already quoted, they were introduced about the reign of Henry II. It was against the extravagance of these fictions in character and in style, that the satire of Cervantes was chiefly directed; and almost all the library of Don Quixote belongs to this class of romances, which, no doubt, his adventures contributed much to put out of fashion.

In every point of view, France must be considered as the country in which chivalry and romance flourished in the highest perfection; and the originals of almost all the early romances, whether in prose or in verse, whether relating to the history of Arthur or of Charlemagne, are to be found in the French language; and other countries possess only translations from thence. This will not be so surprising when it is recollected, that these earlier romances were written, not only for the use of the French, but of the English themselves, among whom French was the prevailing language during the reigns of the Anglo-Norman monarchs. Indeed, it has been ingeniously supposed, and not without much apparent probability, that the fame of Arthur was taken by the French minstrels for the foundation of their stories in honour of the English kings, who reigned over the supposed dominions of that British hero; while, on the other hand, the minstrels who repaired to the coast of France, celebrated the prowess of Charlemagne and his twelve peers as a subject more gratifying to those who sat upon his throne.

It is perhaps, some objection to this ingenious theory, that, as we have already seen, the battle of Hastings was opened by a minstrel, who sang the war-song of Roland, the nephew of Charlemagne; so that the Norman duke brought with him to England the tales that are supposed, at a much later date, to have been revived to soothe the national pride of the French minstrels.

How the French minstrels came originally by the traditional relics concerning Arthur and Merlin, on which they wrought so long and so largely, must, we fear, always remain uncertain. From the Saxons we may conclude they had them not; for the Saxons were the very enemies against whom Arthur employed his good sword Excalibur, that is to say, if there was such a man, or such a weapon. We know, indeed, that the British, like all the branches of the Celtic race, were much attached to poetry and music, which the Romanses, numerous relics of ancient poetry in Wales, Ireland, and the Highlands of Scotland, sufficiently evince. Arthur, a name famous amongst them, with some traditions concerning the sage Merlin, may have floated either in Armorica, or among the half-British of the borders of Scotland, and of Cumberland; and thus preserved, may have reached the ear of the Norman minstrels, either in their newly conquered dominions, or through their neighbours of Brittany. A theme of this sort once discovered, and found acceptable to the popular ear, gave rise, of course, to a thousand imitations; and gradually drew around it a cloud of fiction which, embellished by such poetry as the minstrels could produce, arranged itself by degrees into a system of fabulous history, as the congregated vapours touched by the setting sun, assume the form of battlements and towers.

We know that the history of Sir Tristrem, first versified by Thomas the Rhymer of Erceldoune, was derived from Welsh traditions, though told by a Saxon poet. In fact, it may be easily supposed, that the romancers of that early period were more eager to acquire popular subjects than delicately scrupulous of borrowing from their neighbours; and when the foundation-stone was once laid, each subsequent minstrel brought his contribution to the building. The idea of an association of knights assembled around one mighty sovereign, was so flattering to all the ruling princes of Europe, that almost all of them endeavoured to put themselves at the head of some similar institution, and the various orders of chivalry are to be traced to this origin. The historical foundation of this huge superstructure is almost imperceptible. Mr. Turner has shewn that the evidence rather inclines to prove the actual existence of King Arthur; and the names of Gawain, his nephew, and of Genuera, his faithful spouse, of Mordred, and Merlin, were preserved by Welsh tradition. To the same source may be referred the loves of Tristrem and Ysoldé, which, although a separate story, has become, in the later romances, amalgamated with that of Arthur. But there can be little doubt that all beyond the bare names of the heroes owes its existence to the imagination of the romancers.

It might be thought that the romances referring to the feats of Charlemagne ought to contain more historical truth than those concerning Arthur; since the former relate to a well-known monarch and conqueror, the latter to a personage of a very doubtful and shadowy existence. But the romances concerning both are equally fabulous. Charles had, indeed, an officer named Roland, who was slain with other nobles in the field of Roncesvalles, fighting, not against the Saracens or Spaniards, but against the Gascons. This is the only point upon which the real history of Charlemagne coincides with that invented for him by romancers. Roland was prefect of Bretagne, and his memory was long preserved in the war-song which bore his name. A fabulous chronicler, calling himself Turpin, compiled, in or about the eleventh century, a romantic history of Charlemagne; but it may be doubted whether, in some instances, he has not availed himself of the fictions already devised by the early romancers, while to those who succeeded them his annals afforded matter for new figments. The personal character of Charlemagne has suffered considerably in the hands of the romantic authors, although they exaggerated his power and his victories. He is represented as fond of flattery, irritable in his temper, ungrateful for the services rendered him by his most worthy paladins, and a perpetual dupe to the treacherous artifices of Count Gaim, or Ganelon, of Mayence; a renegade, to whom the romancers impute the defeat at Roncesvalles, and all the other misfortunes of the reign of Charles. This unfavourable view of the prince, although it may bear some features of royalty, neither resembles the real character of the conqueror of the Saxons and Lombards, nor can be easily reconciled with the Romance idea, that he was introduced to flatter the personal vanity of the princes of the Valois race, by a portrait of their great predecessor.

The circumstance that Roland was a lieutenant of Brittany, and the certainty that Marie borrowed from that country the incidents out of which she composed her lays, seems to justify the theory, that the French minstrels obtained from that country much of their most valuable materials; and that, after all that has been said and supposed, the history of Arthur probably reached them through the same channel.

The Latin writers of the middle ages afforded the French romancers the themes of those metrical legends which they have composed on subjects of classical fame.

The honour of the prose romances of chivalry, exclusive always of the books of Amadis, belongs entirely to the French, and the curious volumes which are now the object of so much research amongst collectors, are almost universally printed at Paris.

England, so often conquered, yet fated to receive an accession of strength from each new subjugation, cannot boast much of ancient literature of any kind; and, in the department of which we treat, was totally inferior to France. The Saxons had, no doubt, romances (taking the word in its general acceptation); and Mr. Turner, to whose researches we are so much indebted, has given us the abridgment of one entitled Cædmon, in which the hero, whose adventures are told much after the manner of the ancient Norse Sagas, encounters, defeats, and finally slays an evil being called Grendel, who, except in his being subject to death, seems a creature of a supernatural description. But the literature of the Saxons was destroyed by the success of William the Conqueror, and the Norman knights and barons, among whom England was in a great measure divided, sought amusement, not in the lays of the vanquished, but in those composed in their own language. In this point of view, England, as a country, may lay claim to many of the French romances, which were written, indeed, in that language, but for the benefit of the court and nobles of England, by whom French was still spoken. When the two languages began to assimilate together, and to form the mixed dialect termed the Anglo-Norman, we have good authority for saying that it was easily applied to the purpose of romantic fiction, and recited in the presence of the nobility.

Robert de Brunne, who composed his History of England about this time, has this remarkable passage, which we give, along with the commentary of the editor of Sir Tristrem, as it is peculiarly illustrative of the subject we are inquiring into.

This passage requires some commentary, as the sense has been generally mistaken. Robert de Brunne does not mean, as has been supposed, that the minstrels who repeated Thomas's romance of Sir Tristrem, disguised the meaning by putting it into quainte Inglish; but, on the contrary, that Kendal and Thomas of Erceidoune did themselves use such quainte Inglish, that those who repeated the story were unable to understand it, or to make it intelligible to their hearers. Above all, he complains that, by writing an intricate and complicated stanza, as 'ryme coerce, strangere, or entrelace,' it was difficult for the discours to recollect the poem; and of Sir Tristrem, in particular, he avers, that he never heard a perfect recital, because of some one 'copple' or stanza, a part was always omitted. Hence he argues at length, that he himself, writing not for the minstrel or harper, nor to acquire personal fame, but solely to instruct the ignorant in the history of their country, does well in choosing a simple structure of verse, which they can retain correctly on their memory, and a style which is popular and easily understood. Besides which, he hints at the ridicule he might draw on his poem, should he introduce the uncoth names of his personages into a courtly or refined strain of verse. They were

Great names, but hard in verse to stand.

While he arrogates praise to himself for his choice, he excuses Thomas of Erceidoune and Kendale for using a more ambitious and ornate kind of poetry. They wrote, he says, for pride (fame) and for nobles, not such as these my ignorant hearers."

If the editor of Sir Tristrem be correct in his commentary, there existed in the time of Robert de Brunne, minstrels or poets who composed English poetry to be recited in the presence of the great, and who, for that purpose, used a singularly difficult stanza, which was very apt to be mutilated in recitation. Sir Tristrem, even as it now exists, shows likewise that considerable art was resorted to in constructing the stanza, and has, from beginning to end, a concise, quaint, abstract turn of expression, more like the Saxon poetry, than the simple, bald, and diffuse details of the French minstrel. Besides Sir Tristrem, there remain, we Romance, conceive, at least two other examples of "gestes written in quainte Inglish" composed, namely, according to fixed and complicated rules of verse, and with much attention to the language, though the effect produced is far from pleasing. They are both of Scottish origin, which may be explained, by recollecting, that in the Saxon provinces of Scotland, as well as at the court, Norman was never generally used; and therefore it is probable that the English language was more cultivated in that country at an early period, than in England itself, where, among the higher orders, it was for a long time superseded by that of the French conquerors. These romances, entitled Sir Gawain, and Sir Golgotha, and Sir Galeran of Galloway, have all the appearance of being original compositions, and display considerable poetical effort. But the uncouth use of words dragged in for the sake of alliteration, and used in secondary and oblique meanings, renders them extremely harsh in construction, as well as obscure in meaning.

In England it would seem that the difficulties pointed out by De Brunne, early threw out of fashion this ornate kind of composition; and the English minstrels had no readier resource than translating from the French, who supplied their language at the same time with the phrases of chivalry which did not exist in English. These compositions presented many facilities to the minstrel. He could, if possessed of the slightest invention, add to them at pleasure, and they might as easily be abridged when memory failed, or occasion required. Accordingly, translations from the French fill up the list of English romance. They are generally written in short lines rhyming together; though often, by way of variety, the third and sixth lines are made to rhyme together, and the poem is thus divided into stanzas of three couplets each. In almost all of these legends, reference is made to "the romance," that is, some composition in the French language, as to the original authority. Nay, which is very singular, tales where the subjects appear to be of English growth, seem to have yet existed in French ere they were translated into the language of the country to which the heroes belonged. This seems to have been the case with Hornschield, with Guy of Warwick, with Bevis of Hampton, all of which appear to belong originally to England; yet are their earliest histories found in the French language, or at least the vernacular versions refer to such for their authority. Even the romance of Richard, England's own Cesar de Lion, has perpetual references to the French original from which it was translated. It must naturally be supposed that these translations were inferior to the originals; and whether it was owing to this cause, or that the composition of these rhymes was attended with too much facility, and so fell into the hands of very inferior composers, it is certain, and is proved by the highest authority, that of Chaucer himself, that even in his time these rhyming romances had fallen into great contempt. The Rime of Sir Thopas, which that poet introduces as a parody, undoubtedly, of the rhythmical romances of the age, is interrupted by mine host Harry Bally, with the strongest and most energetic expressions of total and absolute contempt. But though the minstrels were censured by De Brunne, for lack of skill and memory, and the poems which they recited were branded as "drafty rhymings," by the far more formidable censure of Chaucer, their acceptation with the public in general must have been favourable, since, besides many unpublished volumes, the two publications of Ritson and Weber bear evidence of their popularity. Some original compositions doubtless occur among so many translations, but they are not numerous, and few have been preserved. The poem of Sir Eger and Sir Grema, which seems of Scottish origin, has no French original; nor has any been discovered either of the Squire of Low Degree, Sir Eglamour, Sir Pleiadamour, or some others. But the French derivation of the two last names renders it probable that such may exist.

The minstrels and their compositions seem to have fallen into utter contempt about the time of Henry VIII. There is a piteous picture of their condition in the person of Richard Sheale, which it is impossible to read without compassion, if we consider that he was the preserver at least, if not the author of the celebrated heroic ballad of Chevy Chase, at which Sir Philip Sidney's heart was wont to beat as at the sound of a trumpet. This luckless minstrel had been robbed on Dunsmore Heath, and, shame to tell, he was unable to persuade the public that a son of the Muses had ever been possessed of the sixty pounds which he averred he had lost on the occasion. The account he gives of the effect upon his spirits is melancholy, and yet ridiculous enough.

After my robbery my memory was so decayde, That I colds neither song, nor talke, my wyte wer so dismayde, My audience was gone, all my mystery tane, Ther ys sum heare have seen me as myrre as a hawke; But nowe I am so trublyde with plaine in my mynde, That I cannot play the myttry knave, according to my kynd. Yet to tak thought, I perswe, ys not the next wyse To bring me out of dat, my creditors to paye: I may well say that I hade but well hope, For to lose about threescore pounde at a clape. The losse of my mony did not greeve me so sore, But the talke of the pyple dyde greeve me moch mor. Sum sayde I was not robde, I was but a lyng knave, It was not possyble for a mynstrell so much mony to have. To say the truthe, that ys ryght well knownese, That I mynde so much of my owne, But I had frendes in London wherof I can declare, That at all tymes wold lend me ec.lids, worth of ware, And sum agayne such frendship I founde. That ther wold lend me in meny nyn or tenne pounds. The occasion why I cam in dete I shall make relacon, My wyff in dede ys a syk woman be her occupation, And lynen cloths most chefy she was her greatest trayd, And at fars and merkyty she solde sale-ware that she made; As shertts, smockys, partyllys, bede clothes, and other things, As syik thredd, and eggyngs, skirfts, bandes, and strings.

From The Chant of Richard Sheale, British Bibliographer, No. xiii. p. 101.

Elsewhere, Sheale hints that he had trusted to his harp, and to the well known poverty attached to those who used that instrument, to bear him safe through Dunsmore Heath. At length the order of English minstrels was formally put down by the act 39th of Queen Elizabeth, classing them with sturdy beggars and vagabonds; in which disgraceful fellowship they only existed in the capacity of fiddlers, who accompanied their instrument with their voice. Such a character is introduced in the play of Monsieur Thomas, as the "poor fiddler who says his songs." The metrical romances which they recited also fell into disrepute, though some of the more popular, sadly abridged and adulterated, continued to be published in chap. books, as they are called. About fifty or sixty years since, a person acquired the nickname of Rosewell and Lillian, from singing that romance about the streets of Edinburgh, which is probably the very last instance of the proper minstrel craft.

If the metrical romances of England can boast of few original compositions, they can show yet fewer examples of the prose romance. Sir Thomas Malory, indeed, compiled, from various French authorities, his celebrated Morte d'Arthur, indisputably the best prose romance the language can boast. There is also Arthur of Little Britain; and the Lord Berners compiled the romance of the Knight of the Soman. The books of Amadis were likewise translated into English; but it may be doubted whether the country in general ever took that deep interest in the perusal of these records of love and honour with which they were greeted in France. Their number was fewer; and the attention paid to them in a country where great political questions began to be agitated, was much less than when the feudal system still continued in its full vigour.

III. We should now say something on those various kinds Romance of romantic fictions which succeeded to the romance of chivalry. But we can only notice briefly works which have long slumbered in oblivion, and which certainly are not worthy to have their slumber disturbed.

Even in the time of Cervantes, the pastoral romance, founded upon the Diana of George of Monte Mayor, was prevailing to such an extent as made it worthy of his satire. It was, indeed, a system still more remote from common sense and reality than that of chivalry itself. For the maxims of chivalry, high-strained and absurd as they are, did actually influence living beings, and even the fate of kingdoms. If Amadis de Gaul was a fiction, the Chevalier Bayard was a real person. But the existence of an Arcadia, a pastoral region, in which a certain fantastic sort of personages, desperately in love, and thinking of nothing else but their mistresses, played upon pipes, and wrote sonnets from morning to night, yet were supposed all the while to be tending their flocks, was too monstrously absurd to be long credited or tolerated.

A numerous, and once most popular class of fictions, was that entitled the heroic romance of the seventeenth century. If the ancient romance of chivalry has a right to be called the parent of those select and beautiful fictions which the genius of the Italian poets has enriched with such peculiar charms, another of its direct descendants, the heroic romance of the seventeenth century, is, with few exceptions, the most dull and tedious species of composition that ever obtained temporary popularity. The old romance of Heliodorus, entitled Theagenes and Chariclea, supplied perhaps the earliest model of this style of composition; but it was from the romances of chivalry that it derives its most peculiar characteristics. A man of a fantastic imagination, Honoré d'Urfé, led the way in this style of composition. Being willing to record certain love intrigues of a complicated nature which had taken place in his own family, and among his friends, he imagined to himself a species of Arcadia on the banks of the Lignon, who live for love, and for love alone. There are two principal stories, said to represent the family history of D'Urfé and his brothers, with about thirty episodes, in which the gallantries and intrigues of Henry IV.'s court are presented under borrowed names. Considered by itself, this is but an example of the pastoral romance; but it was so popular that three celebrated French authors, Gomberville, Calprenede, and Madame Scuderi, seized the pen, and composed in emulation many interminable folios of heroic romance. In these insipid performances, a conventional character, and a set of family manners and features, are ascribed to the heroes and heroines, although selected from distant ages, and various quarters of the world. The heroines are, without exception, models of beauty and perfection; and, so well persuaded of it themselves, that to approach them with the most humble declaration of love, was a crime sufficient to deserve the penalty of banishment from their presence; and it is well if the doom were softened to the audacious lover, by permission, or command to live, without which, absence and death were to be accounted synonymous. On the other hand, the heroes, whatever kingdoms they have to govern, or other earthly duties to perform, live through these folios for love alone; and the most extraordinary revolutions which can agitate the world, are ascribed to the charms of a Mandana, or a Statira, acting upon the crazy understanding of their lovers. Nothing can be so uninteresting as the frigid extravagance with which these lovers express their passion; or, in their own phrase, nothing can be more freezing than their flames, more creeping than their flights of love. Yet the line of metaphysical gallantry which they exhibited, had its date, and a long one, both in France and England. In the latter country they continued to be read by our grandmothers during the Augustan age of English; and while Addison was amusing the world with his wit, and Pope by his poetry, the ladies were reading Clelia, Cleopatra, and the Grand Cyrus. The fashion did not decay till about the reign of George I.; and even more lately, Mrs. Lennox, patronized by Dr. Johnson, wrote a very good imitation of Cervantes, entitled The Female Quixote, which had those works for its basis. They are now totally forgotten.

MODERN ROMANCE AND NOVEL.

We alluded in the commencement of this essay, to the division of fictitious narratives in prose, into two classes; the romance, in which the interest of the narrative turns chiefly on marvellous and uncommon incidents; and the novel, in which the events are accommodated to the ordinary train of human events, and the modern state of society.

The rise of this last department of fictitious composition in England, takes place about the commencement of the eighteenth century; and its coincidence with the decline of the drama is remarkable. The novel aspired, in fact, to perform for a reading and refined age, what the drama had done for a ruder and more excitable period; to embody the spirit of the times in pictures at once amusing and accurate, and in the form best calculated to awaken attention and interest in those to whom they are addressed. In the earlier periods of a national literature, while the poetical and imaginative spirit of the time takes the direction of the long prose romance, the task of painting manners, and satirizing follies, and displaying the comic oddities of character, is most efficiently performed by the drama. Its strength, terseness, and brevity, with the aid of action and scenery, present the manners living as they rise, with abundance of force at least, and probably, for a time, with sufficient fidelity. But as society becomes more decorous, and peculiarities of manners less marked, the pictures exhibited by the stage are apt to become less true; for dramatic effect appears a substitute to demand something more stimulating than reality affords; and hence the drama, with a pardonable leaning to the principle of stage effect, often continues to reproduce the manners, vices, and humours of a preceding age, long after they have ceased to exist, merely because they are found better adapted to that broad and strongly-coloured delineation in which it chiefly deals. Thus, though the age of Vanburghs, Congreves, and Wycherleys, was probably not a very moral age, and the tone even of its polite conversation, would probably appear somewhat questionable to modern ears, there seems to be no reason to believe that the universal profligacy of manners, and boundless licence of conversation which are exhibited in the comedies of these writers, really characterised the period at which they wrote. Their Wildairs, Sir John Brutes, Lady Touchwoods, and Mrs. Frails, are conventional reproductions of those wild gallants and demi-reeps which figure in the licentious dramas of Dryden and Shadwell. They represented the manners and the morals of an age gone by; and the audiences who tolerated these indecencies for the sake of the wit by which they were occasionally redeemed, would have been revolted by their exaggeration and incorrectness, if they had looked upon them as exhibitions of society as it existed. The drama, then, had ceased to be the mirror in which the age could contemplate itself; and exhibited the license of a masque, or the extravagance of a caricature, much more than the sobriety of actual life, or the fidelity of a portrait. Besides, there are many lesser traits of character, many sentiments and feelings, which are not at all dramatic, and which had therefore been overlooked by writers for the stage, yet in themselves highly interesting and curious, and capable, when judiciously employed, of exercising a strong influence on the feelings. These become more prominent, and stand out in brighter relief, as the restraints of civilization gradu- Romance, ally throw into the background the wilder passions and more stormy impulses of our nature, until they acquire an importance which not only justifies, but renders their introduction into any fictitious narrative which represents the peculiarities of the time, necessary; and for this purpose, the calm and even march of the novel, and the detailed development both of sentiment and incident which it allows, is found to be admirably adapted. It is in the works of our novelists, therefore, rather than our dramatists, and in those passages in our essayists of Queen Anne's time, in which they treat of past fashions, manners, whims, and humours, that we must look for the changes which society has undergone, and from which we must try to realize to ourselves the features which it exhibited at any particular period.

The novel, then, affords a wider field for accurate and complete delineation of passions and feelings than the drama, and certainly one more in harmony with the dispositions of a modern public. In powerful effects no doubt it cannot compete with the stage. The whole range of novel or romance contains nothing, for instance, which in its tremendous impression, can be compared with the explosion of passion in the third act of Othello; but, on the other hand, it has greatly the advantage in the impression of verisimilitude which it leaves behind, produced by the accumulation of many particulars and minute traits of character; in pleasing interchanges of action and repose; in the delineation of emotions, which the drama, speaking only to the eye and the ear, cannot lay before us; in the descriptions of external scenery, which, in the hand of a writer of genius, are far more effective, when presented in words to the imagination, than when counterfeited to the eye upon the stage, even by all the united resources of the scene-painter and the mechanist; and which, from the strong connection that exists between the state of our feelings and external influences, are found in the hands of a judicious novelist to afford powerful materials for deepening the pervading tone of sentiment which he aims to produce; just as in painting relief and effect are obtained by the tone and character of the background against which the figures are opposed. Another advantage obtained by the substitution of narrative fiction for the drama, was, that a much wider licence was obtained in the conduct of the plot. A good plot is no doubt essential to the novel as the drama; but the kind of plot which may be used with effect in each, and the manner in which the incidents are to be conducted, differ materially. A play in which every scene does not grow out of the preceding, and lead directly into the next, with a visible progress of plot, is in that respect faulty. On the contrary, in the novel and romance, as in real life, much is admissible which is episodical, which does not directly help forward nor produce the catastrophe, but merely tends to bring out some point of character in the personages represented, or to increase the air of verisimilitude in the main story, by the appearance of minute and literal correctness in the details. In the novel or romance, too, it has been generally remarked that the catastrophe may be made to turn upon accident, but that this is inadmissible in the drama. Thus the catastrophe in the *Bride of Lammermoor*, where Ravenswood is swallowed up by a quicksand, is singularly grand in romance, but would be inadmissible in a drama. And on the same principle, Schiller has, in his *Fresco*, thought himself compelled to deviate from the actual truth of history, and to ascribe the Count's death, not to an accidental stumble from a plank, but to the hand of the republican Verrina. In a novel, the real catastrophe would have been far more impressive in its moral effect than the imaginary one; but Schiller held, and we think rightly, that in the drama nothing must be accidental, but every thing result.

Although, as compared with the romance, the term novel may be said to indicate a class of fictions dealing more with calm feelings, and with manners and humours, than with strong passions, and deriving its interest more from the probability than the marvellous nature of its incidents, this definition is not to be taken too literally; for there are many works which we might call novels, in as much as the scene is laid in modern times, and the general course of the incidents is that of every-day life, but in which the even tenor of the story is occasionally broken by scenes of powerful passion, or incidents of a mysterious and terrible character, elevating the composition for the time into the sphere of the romantic; so that perhaps the word tale, as a middle term between the others, would most appropriately describe them. It has been doubted whether, although such a union of the common-place with the extraordinary, be not unfrequently met with in the course of real life, a more cautious separation of these elements would not, on the whole, be most favourable to the effect of a narrative as a work of art; and whether the attempt to blend them, does not produce in fiction, something of that illegitimate effect which is the result of the melo-drama on the stage. It is certain, however, that the tendency for some time past, and particularly since the school of fiction introduced by Sir Walter Scott, has been towards a mixture of the novel and romance in the same composition, so that broad comedy is often found alternating with the pathetic, the gaiety of a ball-room with midnight murders upon lonely heaths, and the disclosure of some piece of fashionable scandal standing side by side with the discovery of some secret and fearful crime. In the hands of our great masters of fiction, we admit the fine effect which these occasionally produce. Judiciously arranged, these opposites are the light and shadow of the composition; but even in our greatest modern novelist, we could point out not a few instances in which this sort of contrast is carried too far; while in many of his imitators, it is so regularly and mechanically introduced, that, as in the case of Mr. Puff's stage arrangements, we can always predict that the discharge of cannon will be followed by soft music.

When the declining popularity of the pastoral and heroic romance of the seventeenth century, suggested the necessity of opening a new vein in fiction, it is probable that the stilted, unnatural, and exaggerated character of those effete compositions led the public taste, by a natural recoil of feeling, into the opposite extreme, viz., the selection of topics and characters from common, and even from vulgar life, and a literal adherence to nature, even at the risk of the sacrifice of art. For we pass over the tiresome and licentious love stories of Mrs. Aphra Behn, with the just remark of Sir Richard Steele, that the lady appears to have "understood the practical part of love better than the speculative," as well as those of her imitator, Mrs. Heywood, in Mrs. Heywood, the struggle between the high sentimental character of the heroic romance, and the growing taste for a style of portraiture more true to the life, is very obvious, and come at once to the writer by whom the inspiration of reality was carried to its greatest perfection.

Defoe, (1661—1731) without high imagination, with no power of raising the passions, with little pathos and no eloquence, had yet that peculiar genius which enabled him to excel within the peculiar department which he chose for himself; that of counterfeiting homely truth by fiction, and forging, as it were, the handwriting of nature herself, with a dexterity which defied detection. Whether Defoe was led to the selection of his peculiar themes, by a real sympathy with roguary, (and his conduct in regard to the well-known imposture of Mrs. Veal's Ghost would justify us in believing him to be like Gil Bias, "tant sol pen fripon;"') or by the influence of the Spanish romances of roguary, such as Lazarro de Tormes, Marcos de Obregon, Romance, and Guzman d'Alfarache, with some of which it is highly probable that he was acquainted through translations; or whether his strong vulgar likelinesses of scaring personages, half privateer, half mariner, and his fondness for the delineation of equivocal characters of all kinds, arose from his familiarity with the one class, through his residence at Limehouse, and his acquaintance with Dampier,—and with the other, from his long and frequent imprisonments;—it is certain that though he had no intention of favouring immorality, he yet enters upon the delineation of personages, and scenes of roguery, low profligacy and vice, with a degree of curiosity and complacency, and dwells upon them with a fondness and minuteness of detail, altogether uncommon, and not a little unaccountable in a person who in his opinions savoured of the puritan. This strange labour of love, and study of the morbid anatomy of society, has resulted in a series of night pieces from the haunts of crime, which, though sombre and gloomy in a high degree, and little suited to a cultivated taste, nay, indeed, frequently producing on the mind the painful effect of a real chapter from the Newgate Calendar, yet display the most wonderful invention and keeping in all their parts, and a coherence and dexterity of adaptation to each other, which render the ordinary tests by which we endeavour to discriminate a fictitious from a real narrative, inadequate or altogether inapplicable to these singular compositions of Defoe. Whatever might be the motive of his humility of choice, Defoe, like many of his favourite heroes, was perfectly contented to take up his abode in the back settlements of fiction, and was most at home in that Alsatia of Romance, the particulars of which, by common consent, his more ambitious predecessors had sedulously avoided, as discreditable or dangerous. The transition from their refined Oronedes and Statiras, to the society of the Captain Jack and Moll Flanders of Defoe, is, to use a phrase of Sterne, like turning from Alexander the Great to Alexander the coppersmith. In his novels, we rarely meet with anything more exalted or respectable, than masters of trading vessels, dealers in small wares, supercargoes, or, it may be, pickpockets, pirates, candidates for the plantations, or emeriti who have already obtained that distinction. In the foreground, we have the cabin, the night cellar, the haunts of fraud, or the round-house; in the distance, Newgate, or Execution Dock.

There can be but one opinion, however, as to the wonderful air of veracity, resembling that of a deposition upon oath, which Defoe has imparted to his fictitious creations, and which his genius effects, mainly by accumulation of details, non ei sed sepe cadendo; often even by the introduction of a multitude of irrelevant particulars and repetitions, just as in the conversation of uneducated persons in real life. Accordingly the result, as a simulacrum of reality, is one of magical deception. Lord Chatham, it is well known, took his Memoir of a Cavalier for a real history; Dr. Mead believed his Journal of the Plague to be the work of a medical man, and his impudent but most plausible history of the apparition of Mrs. Veal, being received by many sober-minded persons as an actual apocalypse from the spiritual world, was the means, as is well known, of disposing of an unsaleable edition of Drelincourt upon death.

But notwithstanding this peculiar power of stamping the impression of reality upon the coinage of his imagination, which, to say the truth, was seldom of the finest metals, it may be safely affirmed, that but for his Robinson Crusoe, Defoe would scarcely now be remembered as a writer of fiction. The charm of that work, the first part of which appeared in 1719, is, that it emancipates us from those low haunts and questionable society with which his other novels make us acquainted. We escape from the fumes of tobacco and strong waters, to breathe a purer air on that lone island placed far amidst the melancholy main, where he has imprisoned his shipwrecked mariner; and while Defoe's unrivalled power of inventing a series of probable minutiae, both in the way of reflexion and incident, enables him to conduct with consummate skill, what we may call the self-education of Crusoe in his solitude,—the process by which he adapts himself to his situation, and the gradual triumphs which, by his ingenuity and patience, he obtains over the difficulties and privations by which he is surrounded, till he changes desolation into comfort,—the imagination of the writer is visibly raised beyond its usual grovelling level by the romance of the situation which he describes. His genius imbibes the spirit of the place; it imparts to the cave of the sailor, something of the seclusion and purity of a hermitage; till the simple train of reflections which he puts into the mouth of his uneducated mariner, upon the sublimity and awfulness of solitude, impress the mind more than the most eloquent declamation. It is a fine proof how completely Defoe has succeeded in interesting us for the solitary being to whom he has given a poetical life, and attuned the mind of his readers to that sentiment of silence and unbroken repose which is breathed over the scene of his imprisonment,—where all the air a solemn stillness holds,—that after a time the least incident which threatens to disturb the security of the cave, or the solitude of the island, assumes importance in our eyes, and the groan of an old goat expiring in a cave, or the print of a man's foot in the sand, awaken a feeling of suspense and anxiety which many a writer has in vain laboured to excite by a prodigal expenditure of the machinery of terror.

That Robinson Crusoe may be considered in a great measure as a fortunate accident, and that its main charm arises from the more poetical and refined character which the nature of the story and its locality almost necessarily impressed upon it, is indeed evident from the visible inferiority of the second part, where the seclusion of the scene is broken in upon, and Defoe peoples the island with his usual retinue of planters and ship's captains; a production which scarcely rises above the level of his Captain Singleton.

The application of the same principle of producing effect by minuteness of detail rather than by grasp, or the selection of a few marking traits, is visible in our next great novelist, Richardson (1689–1761,) but the principle is applied in a different and higher way. Defoe was satisfied with weaving chains of probable incidents, which might be fitted to any character, or at least any character of a given class, such as a mariner or a merchant, a planter or a pickpocket. He did not care, at all events he did not labour, to individualize character. Crusoe, his most finished portrait, is still only the average representative of all shipwrecked mariners; his reflections and his struggles, embody the hopes, fears, and efforts, of all men left to maintain a solitary warfare with difficulties. So his Captain Jack, born a gentleman and bred a pickpocket, has nothing to separate him from other ensigns perdus of the same class. But Richardson aspired to the creation rather of probable character than probable incident; and to this he applied the same system of accumulating minute traits of words, thoughts, and actions, and reiterating small touches, and minute lights and shadings, which Defoe had done to the creation of masses of coherent and plausible events. In the latter department, indeed, he is probably neither remarkable for success nor failure. Occasionally, and particularly in his Sir Charles Grandison, he outrages both patience and probability in no inconsiderable degree; and so little progress does the narrative make, that as Johnson remarked to Erskine, "Were you to read Richardson for the story, your impatience would be so fretted, you would go hang yourself." But even in the most successful portion of his plots, there is no chance of our mistaking fiction for fact; the artist does not disappear behind his creations as in the case of Defoe. The very form, too, in which his novels are cast, that of a series of correspondence, however favourable to the display of traits of character, and minute dissection of sentiment, is Romance, almost in itself fatal to the vraisemblance of incident. The affairs of private life, we cannot help recollecting, are seldom managed to any great extent through the post-office, while in many cases it remains a mystery how such matters came to be committed to paper at all, and least of all under the circumstances in which they are supposed to be recorded by these persevering, and, in the existing state of the revenue laws, formidable correspondents.

There is in the mind of Richardson a very remarkable union of feminine tastes with masculine vigour. Early accustomed peculiarly to court the society of females; the depository of their gossip, the confidant of their love secrets, the complete letter-writer of a little knot of young ladies when only thirteen years of age, the deference which he thus acquired for their tastes, and the insight he obtained into their habits of thinking, though probably springing, as Johnson believed, very much from his own vanity and love of praise, appear to have been of the utmost use to him in his novels, in which so much of the interest rests upon the female characters, and in the minute dissection and study of emotions and sentiments in which women are either the chief actors or sufferers. The traces of this influence appear constantly, and sometimes in excess, in the minute accuracy with which he dwells, in description, upon those little particulars of looks, and voice, and gesture, and turns of speech, which men in their correspondence generally overlook, but which women note with such care, and interpret with such sagacity; in the complacency with which he dwells on the details of robes and wedding-dresses, which are conceived in the spirit of a waiting-woman, and executed with the learning of a man-miller, and which, as in the minute description given by Lovelace of Clarissa's dress at the time of her elopement, are occasionally introduced in the worst place.

The more favourable results of these tastes are exhibited in the wonderful familiarity he evinces with the feelings and sympathies of women; for though in his notions of perfection, either in manners or morals, we of another age often see cause to depart from Richardson's standard, we may trust implicitly to his accuracy when he is delineating the movements of passion in the female breast, the revolutions of feeling, or the struggle between feeling and delicacy. In his female portraits, even more than in his corresponding delineations of male character, we acknowledge the justice of the remark which Sir Walter Scott applies to his portraits generally, that "in his survey of the heart he left neither head, bay, nor inlet behind him, until he had traced its soundings, and laid it down in his chart, with all its minute sinuosities, its depths, and its shallows." This accuracy, indeed, constitutes at once his strength and his weakness; for not content with having surveyed the coast and taken its bearings, he still, from the very pride of discovery, insists on following the windings of the shore, and pointing out its landmarks, when those on board would have gladly seen him make his passage by the shortest course. It was the misfortune of Richardson that, like nervous men in company, or like painters who go on re-touching till the picture becomes loaded, he never knew when to have done, either with a character or a conversation. He was unskilful, as D'Israeli remarks, in the art of writing, and "could never lay his pen down while his inkhorn supplied it." Even as regards the description of sentiment or the creation of characteristic dialogue, the field in which Richardson was most at home, it is certain that he carried his system, probably as much from this inability to leave off as from choice, to extremes, particularly in his last novel, Sir Charles Grandison; and unless the reader selects that work on the system of the old lady mentioned by Sir Walter Scott, who chose it because she could sleep for half an hour at any time during its perusal, and still find the personages just where she left them, conversing in the cedar parlour, he will probably think there is more justice than D'Israeli seems willing to admit in the cold remark of D'Alembert, "La nature est bonne à imiter, mais non pas jusqu'à l'ennui."

It is not often that with this feminine character of intellect, a masculine vigour in painting scenes of a passionate and terrible cast is found united; and yet Richardson has proved his mastery over the higher passions, not less than his minute study of sentiment and manners, in the conclusion of Clarissa Harlowe. To apply to him the epithet of the Shakspeare of prose fiction, which has been done by D'Israeli, is extravagant. A solitary creation of this kind, highly pathetic and morally impressive as it is, is but a narrow basis on which to rest the claims of the novelist to such a title. But the conception of the noble character of Clarissa Harlowe, set off by such a foil as is afforded by that of Lovelace, perhaps the most finished picture of the self-possessed and insinuating libertine ever drawn (and certainly as great an improvement on that of the Lothario from which it was drawn, as Rowe's hero had been on the vulgar rake of Massinger), and the closing scenes of that novel, are at all events sufficient to place Richardson among the great writers of fiction; among the few who have formed a striking and original conception, which they have wrought out with a corresponding felicity and power.

A strong contrast to the subtlety, the fine perception, Fielding, and the power over the passions evinced by Richardson, is presented by his rival Fielding (1707–1754), who, with no command of the pathetic, and no taste for that minute analysis of sentiment and wire-drawing of description in which our English Marivaux indulges, has yet maintained a more general and permanent popularity, by a combination of qualities well suited for the purpose. His grasp of observation led him to select with unerring sagacity the leading traits of ordinary character, and to epitomize nature with skill, instead of transcribing her at full length. His field of delineation admits of such variety and contrast, that in fact it excludes none but the highest and most poetical elements, in which Fielding had neither power of observation or conception. His flow of animal spirits and healthy vivacity of manner, contrast strangely with the Dutch finialing of Richardson's pencilling, but are as well suited to the active, out-of-door scenes which Fielding loved to draw, in his pictures of imbroglios at ale-houses, and the stirring life of the road, as the painstaking inventions of Richardson were to his still-life interiors, and the drowsy monotony of the occupations of the inhabitants. To these he added, at least in his great work Tom Jones, the charm of a plot of unrivalled skill, in which the complex threads of interest are all brought to bear upon the catastrophe in a manner equally unexpected and simple, a grave humour, and power of quiet satire unmixed with caricature, in which he is equally superior to Richardson and Smollett. And with his other requisites he combined a knowledge of English life, both in its better features and its deformities, by which we mean, of the essential qualities of men, as modified at that time by the accidents of situation, education, and pursuits,—the result, perhaps, of a long, and not always reputable experience,—to which Richardson, surrounded by a circle of female gossips, and weaving out his materials in his quiet back-shop, purely from the stores of his imagination, can make but slender pretension.

Amelia, much as it was admired by Johnson, is greatly inferior to Tom Jones. If the tone of the latter be far from high, that of Amelia is creeping and vulgar in no ordinary degree. Booth has Jones' vices with an additional shade of meanness. Half the plot turns on the embarrassments of debt and contrivances to make both ends meet; and one or other of the characters is generally in a spunging-house. Such, too, is the infirmity of human nature, that we really find it difficult to preserve a sufficiently romantic respect Romance, for the heroine, pretty and amiable as she is, when the saucepan is seldom out of her hand.

"Ne tantum veneris quantum studias culinæ."

The finish is put to the whole by the accident which mars even the personal attractions of the heroine; for though the public were willing to regard Clarissa, after the outrage to her honour, with undiminished sympathy, it is certain they have not been equally indulgent to Amelia, after the misfortune of the broken nose.

We have already, however, in our biographical notice of Fielding, quoted so amply from Sir Walter Scott's critique upon his genius and works, that instead of pursuing an exhausted theme, we refer our readers to that article.

The name of Fielding always suggests that of his rival Smollett (1721-1774), though, as writers of fiction, they rather admit of being contrasted than compared. They have, in fact, very few, if any, points in common; agreeing only perhaps in a preference for the delineation of the comic, or the common, over the impassioned and poetical. They chose different departments in novel-writing, and they cultivated them by different means. As Fielding was the faithful and graphic painter of all the common features of character, so the extraordinary and the eccentric were the peculiar appanage of Smollett. He either did not feel sufficiently the charm of the natural in character, and its power of endless re-combination in the hands of a great artist, or he doubted his own powers, at least in comparison with Fielding, of extracting novelty from such simple materials. But the sphere of humorous exaggeration appeared to be open to him, without the awe of a predecessor or the dread of a rival; on that, therefore, he concentrated his powers of mind, neglecting in a great measure the other requisites of fiction; and undoubtedly with a success which leaves him, within the province which he was the first to occupy, and with the occupation of which he was content, still the undisputed sovereign. No one has ever yet equalled him in the observation, or where that does not serve his purpose, the creation, of oddities and exceptional characters which never did or could exist, but still with just enough of humanity about them to give us an interest in their eccentric movements; or in the invention of combinations of burlesque incidents, not always of the best odour, which his fertile fancy showers forth spontaneously as from a cornucopia; mistakes, rencontres, equivoques, whimsicalities of speech or action, all generally the best calculated to bring in high-raised and ludicrous relief the comic aberrations of the character represented, and to develop its latent madness; and never failing, at all events, to produce that result which Smollett seemed far more studious to attain than that of "purging the passions by pity or terror;" namely, the excitement of a broad-grin mirth, and "laughter holding both his sides." That the characters, where they have any decided features at all, are generally caricatures; for instance, that such commodores and lieutenants as Trunnon and Hatchway never floated even under the primitive flag of Boubow; that the absurdities of Pallet are painted an inch thick; that by no human possibility could such an accumulation of comic disasters have befallen the characters of the tale, may, and indeed must be granted, even by Smollett's warmest admirers. But if, following Smollett's own example, we throw nature mainly out of the question, and look to what seems to have been his real aim, the objection of want of verisimilitude, while it may retain its truth, seems to lose half its force, and, we may add, wholly its power of conviction. It is in vain to point out the extravagance of the scene where Jolter, in an agony of terror, on hearing the direction given to put on the dead lights in the storm off Calais, goes through the steps of a mathematical proposition with infinite fervour, instead of a prayer; or to criticise the manoeuvres of Trunnon, tacking his way to church on his wedding-day in consequence of a head wind; when the reader cannot see the force of the objection through tears of laughter. In that consummation which he chiefly aimed at, and in which he rarely fails, Smollett has gained his end—solemniter risu tabulae; the sense of the improbability of the conceptions is lost in the irrepressible merriment which they occasion.

Humour, then, was the quality in which Smollett felt himself strongest; character, incident, the excitement of the feelings, were obviously with him minor considerations. There is no difficulty in discriminating his style of humour from that of Fielding. Fielding's is calmer, quieter, perhaps of a higher kind than Smollett's, but it certainly has not its breadth, force, and felicity. Smollett could hardly have created in its main features so gentle a humourist as Parson Adams, so he probably could have scarcely imagined a stroke of humour so delicate and appropriate to the character, as when the Parson offers to walk ten miles to fetch his sermon against Vanity, in order to convince his auditor of his total freedom from that vice. But neither, on the other hand, could Fielding have imagined the inimitable feast after the manner of the ancients, the apparition of Pipes to the Commodore, the terror of Pallet on learning the supposed conditions of his emancipation from the Bastile, or the ludicrous concatenation of mishances which beset the luckless inmates of the inn in Flanders "doing or suffering." Some scenes of this sort, in which Fielding enters into competition with Smollett, such as those at the inn at Upton, are among the least successful in his novels. The effort to raise the waters, the malice preposse in the preparation of the comic machinery, is too obvious; and after all, though he creates abundance of confusion, he raises but few smiles.

In another quality, though he has but rarely availed himself of his powers in this respect, Smollet far surpassed Fielding; we mean in his power of exciting the emotions of terror, or the sublime. From scenes of this kind, Fielding, knowing the prosaic turn of his own mind, and the limits of his invention, kept at a respectful distance; Smollett, who felt within himself the spirit of a poet, has occasionally ventured upon them, and with complete success. The robber scene in the old woman's hut in Count Fathom, though often imitated since, still remains one of the most impressive and agitating night-pieces of its kind; and the sublimity of the situation on ship-board, where Random sits chained to the poop during an engagement, covered with the blood and brains of the wounded, and screaming in delirium, has been often pointed out.

The morality of Smollett and Fielding is nearly on a par; with this difference, that the slight dash of generosity which is infused into the blackguardism of Tom Jones, while it renders him more natural, makes him at the same time more dangerous than the selfish and often ruffianly heroes of Smollett, whom we despise or dislike, even while laughing at the cruel frolics in which they indulge. The heroes of the latter are mere animals, good-natured or savage, as the fit strikes them; the heroines, with the exception perhaps of Aurelia Darrel in Sir Lancelot Greaves, the weakest of Smollett's works, have been justly described as objects rather of appetite than affection. In regard, indeed, to anything like purity of morals or gentlemanly feeling, the inferiority both of Smollett and Fielding to Richardson is obvious. Richardson sometimes mistook his means, but his aim was certainly always moral. On the contrary, both the theory and the practice of Fielding were latitudinarian; and Smollett, though in real life a man of pure morals, had a boundless toleration in fiction for certain vices; for most, indeed, which did not imply want of spirit, courage, or punctual generosity.

In the unity of conception and coherence of incident which the plot of the novel, though more pliable than that Romance of the drama demands, Fielding, in his two principal works (for Joseph Andrews was merely a parody on Richardson's Pamela) has a great advantage over Smollett, whose plots indeed in general scarcely deserve the name, being simply a series of strange accidents, odd rencontres, tricks, and frolics, making little or no progress towards the only catastrophe which Smollett seems to have in view, namely, the marriage of his hero. In his Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, and Cowat Fathom, Smollett adopted the easy artificial plan of Gil Blas, in which we are carried through a succession of scenes where the personages are constantly changing, and those who take part in the close of the story, are quite different from those by whom we are surrounded at its commencement. Fielding, on the contrary, both in his Tom Jones and Amelia, is singularly attentive to regularity of plan, and to the dexterous evolution and winding-up of his plot, which he regarded as of vital importance. From the very commencement we perceive that he keeps his conclusion clearly in view, "and sees as from a tower the end of all." From this attention to symmetry, and tendency of all the incidents towards the catastrophe, his best work has been not inaptly termed a prose epic; it is at all events a happy accommodation of the principles of the epic, so far as they could be rendered applicable, to the manner of the novel. One exception ought perhaps to be made from this remark on the imperfection of Smollett's plots, in favour of that of Humphrey Clinker, in which the plot, though not of much art, is naturally evolved, and a quiet little family romance is gracefully combined with the usual gallery of oddities which Smollett never fails to lay before us. In all respects, this is the most pleasing of his performances. While Lemahaloo may rank with the very best of his extravagances, there is more of character and less of caricature in the testy yet kind-hearted Matthew Bramble, "frosty but kindly," than in any personage he has painted; and though the humour, as usual, is dashed with filth, without a song, of which indeed Smollett seems always to have thought it wanted pungency, the tale is entirely free from that indecency which deforms both Roderick Random and Peregrine Pickle. We rather think, too, that Smollett had the merit of originating in this novel that species of the humorous which arises from bad spelling, and which Sheridan afterwards applied to mistakes of words in his Mrs Malaprop; a humble kind of humour no doubt in itself; yet capable, as Smollett has proved, of powerfully aiding the ludicrous effect.

Equal genius, though far more deformed by affectation, is visible in Sterne (1713-1768), the first two volumes of whose Tristram Shandy appeared in 1759. If a regular progress of incidents towards a catastrophe were an essential requisite in a novel, it would be difficult to bring the works of Sterne within the protection of that definition. Story he has none to tell; at all events, he tells it not. But, "what is a plot good for," says Bayes, "except to bring in good things," and Sterne adopted the theory of the dramatist in its full license. At the conclusion of the eighth volume Tristram is not emancipated from the nursery, and had Sterne lived to fulfil his threat of carrying on his work, by the aid of a vegetable diet, through as many more, the Triarapedia, we fear, would still have made no material progress. Sterne's singular work owes its interest, as every one knows, not to the narrative, which is broken and interrupted by cross currents of the most wayward and whimsical description, far exceeding all the fair license of digression, but to his power of seizing on and bringing forward into distinct consciousness, as Coleridge says, some of those points on which every man is a humourist, and to the masterly manner in which he has brought out the characteristics of two beings of the most opposite natures, the elder Shandy and Toby, and surrounded them with a group of followers sketched with equal life and individuality: in the Corporal, the obstetric Doctor Slop; Yorick, the lively and careless parson; the widow Wadman and Susannah.

The clue which Sterne chiefly follows through the mazes of character is humour,—humour of a very high and peculiar kind, perfectly original, at least in English. For that species of riotous humour arising from comic peculiarities of person and combinations of ludicrous mischances Sterne has little taste; though the admirably-painted scene, where Obadiah on the cart-horse, careering round the corner like a comet, oversets Dr Slop in a whirlpool of mud,—and the cross hills bailed by the Doctor and Susannah against each other in applying the cataplasm, show that if he had considered this the highest walk of humour, he might have revelled in it as easily as Smollett himself. But like Fielding, he preferred the humour which arises from bringing out by light and happy touches, and as if unconsciously, the secrets of character; only with this difference in his favour, that with Sterne the humour is steeped in sensibility. Flowing, as it does, as much from the heart as the head, it speaks also to the affections; calm smiles ripple over the countenance as we read, but tears are in the next degree. Thus, in Sterne, humour and feeling heighten and set off each other; the pathetic rises in gentle relief out of the background of the comic, and sinks gracefully and imperceptibly back into it again. It is this, for instance, which gives so irresistible a charm to the story of Le Fevre, and the Corporal's account in the kitchen of the death of Tristram's elder brother, enforced by the eloquent stroke of dropping the hat, as if a lump of clay had been kneaded into the crown of it. There is nothing sneering, nothing unkindly, nothing that revolts the better feelings in his playful irony. Circum praecordia ludit. That of Swift and Voltaire is blighting like an east wind; the sympathies of the heart close themselves up against it; but beneath the genial and balmy humour of Cervantes and Sterne they relax and blow like flowers expanding beneath the west wind in spring.

The two great defects of Sterne, as noticed by Sir Walter Scott, are his affectation and his indefensible indecency. His affectation is the more to be regretted, because his manner in his happiest moods is the very perfection of a lively, spirited, spoken style—idiomatic, imaginative, plaint, and varied. "Writing, when properly managed," he himself observes, "is but a different name for conversation." Unfortunately he did not always conform his practice to his precept. He is sometimes fade in his sentimentality, and aiming after a sort of false sublime in his imagery. Some portions of the story of Maria are examples of the first; the well-known personification of the recording angel in the close of Le Fevre is an instance of the second. Still more unworthy of Sterne are those quackeries of the black page and the white one, the sudden transitions and affected openings of the chapters, with other harlequinades of authorship, which are carried to excess in Tristram Shandy.

The indecency of Sterne is more obtrusive and indefensible than that of either Fielding or Smollett; whose highly-coloured scenes seem to be the result of an unchecked imagination, running on heedless whether its course lie through purity or filth. Sterne, on the other hand, goes coldly and deliberately in search of impurity; seeks for it in books, refines upon it, mixes it up with his reflections, and is continually insinuating some equivoque or double entendre into scenes where we can ill bear with such adulteration.

Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne are the four Goldsmith, great novelists of this period (the reign of George II.) which was pre-eminently the age of novel-writing in England. For though we should indeed be sorry to undervalue the merits of Goldsmith, or the charm of his Vicar of Romance. Wakefield, we cannot quite rank the powers displayed in that delightful little tale, which appeared in 1763, so highly as the varied invention displayed by the writers we have named, upon the broader canvas which they selected. To use his own words, it has many faults, and a hundred things might plausibly be said to prove them beauties. Fortunately they lie more in the minor parts than in the essentials of the tale. In fact, the improbability of the plot is only equalled by the wonderful truth, nature, and keeping of the principal character, for the "lives labor" which, in this instance, Goldsmith willingly bestowed upon his style, and on the creation and apposition of traits of character he scrupled to waste upon the selection of his incidents. The real interest lies in the development of the character of the amiable Vicar, so rich in heavenly, so poor in earthly wisdom—possessing little for himself, yet ready to make that little less, whenever misery appeals to his compassion;—with enough of literary vanity about him to show that he shares the weaknesses of our nature,—ready to be imposed upon by cosmogonies and fictitious bills of exchange, and yet commanding, by the simple and serene dignity of goodness, the respect, even of the profligate, and making "those who came to mock remain to pray." Doubtless, the probability and look of life which a character drawn with such quiet strokes of the pencil, and with such sobriety of colouring, possesses, is in some measure owing to the fact, that not a few of the incidents of which Goldsmith has availed himself are drawn from circumstances in his personal history, such as the mistake of setting out to teach the French English, without recollecting that it was a necessary preliminary for the tutor to acquire a little French himself; but the skill which can make such trifles in real life subservient to the purposes of real fiction is scarcely less worthy of praise than would have been their original invention. Perhaps there is no better proof of the broad and general truth of delineation which a novel possesses than our being in the habit of resorting to it in conversation for cases in point and comic illustrations of our opinions. In this respect the Vicar of Wakefield forms a storehouse of allusion. How naturally does any ridiculous investment in Mexican mines or Spanish stock recall to our recollection Moses' bargain for the gross of green spectacles? Who is there that has not been reminded of the aristocratic Miss Skeggs turning out to be no better than she should be, notwithstanding her intimacy with the Duchess and her taste for Shakspeare and the musical glasses, by some case of the kind within our own experience where, reversing the denouement of the Double Arrangement, the Knight Templar of the company has sunk into the waiter? And, for our own part, we must admit that we have never been able to treat with due gravity any allusion to the learned speculations of Manetho, Berosus, or Sanchoniathon, from their indissoluble connection in our minds with the more finished cosmogony of Jenkinson.

In one respect Goldsmith rises conspicuously superior to his brethren; he has no passages, which, dying, he need have wished to blot, and his characters and his incidents are all calculated to call forth only the better feelings of our nature. Virginibus puerisque might have been his appropriate and uncontested motto.

The great novelists to whom we have alluded, and particularly Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne, had of course many imitators. But the minuteness of Richardson was found to be intolerable in any hands but his own, and his manner, in this country at least, though not in France and Germany, was soon abandoned. Amongst the numerous imitations of Fielding's manner, most of which are now forgotten, the Henry of Cumberland (1752–1811), is probably the most respectable. Cumberland possessed that degree of talent which enabled him, both in dramatic composition, and in the novel, to produce performances which are read with pleasure, though they seldom rouse our interest, and never impress us with the idea of a creative genius.

The imitations of Smollett's manner were not numerous, Charles and, with one exception, totally without merit. We allude Johnstone, to The Adventures of a Guinea, by Charles Johnstone, which appeared in 1761, in which a series of scenes and personages in different walks of life are brought before us through the somewhat inartificial mode of making a coin, which shifts through the hands of successive proprietors, the historian of their follies and their vices; a contrivance very inferior indeed to the ingenious machinery by which Asmodeus unveils to Don Ciofias the secrets of Spanish life. In The Adventures of a Guinea, the author seems to have had before him both Le Sage and Smollett as models; but in the result he exhibits little of the gay good-humoured touch of the Frenchman, and nothing of the cordial merriment of the Scot.

Sterne is perhaps the only one of our great novelists who Mackenzie, has found an imitator of genius, in Mackenzie (1745–1831); for although in his Man of the World, and Julia de Roubigné Mackenzie has deviated from the manner of Sterne, and formed a composite manner, in which the characteristics of several writers are blended with his own, yet there can be little doubt that the spirit of Sterne, in his pathetic passages, in a great measure inspired The Man of Feeling, and prompted that "illustration of the richer and finer sensibilities of the human breast," which Sir Walter Scott points out as the "key-note" on which he formed his tales of fictitious woe. In some obvious respects, no doubt, Mackenzie improved upon his model; as in rejecting the licentiousness of Sterne's wit, retrenching his episodical digressions, his numerous impertinences, and intrusive buffoonery, and keeping the strain of feeling which he wishes to create more unbroken; but as writers of genius, there surely can be no comparison between them. Mackenzie has none of those charming touches which hover with such a fine ambiguity between the pathetic and the humorous,—like Toby's opening the window and liberating the fly which had been buzzing about him all day,—and which operate like spells upon the heart.

The Rasselas of Dr Johnson (1709–1783), though it Dr Johnson wears the form of a tale, has but slender pretensions to be son included amongst the class of novels, for it has neither progressive incident nor character. It is a series of dialogues and moral reflections, very solemnly and beautifully written, tinged with that tone of mournfulness and despondency so likely to be the prevailing feeling of his mind in the composition of a work intended to defray the expenses of a mother's funeral. Rasselas is, in fact, the Vanity of Human Wishes in prose; and its incidents, if such they may be called, have even less pretensions to connected interest than those of Candide, to which it may be regarded as a moral and philosophical antithesis.

Judging, indeed, from Rasselas, and from the other writings of Johnson, it may be safely assumed that his success as a novelist would not have been much greater than as a dramatic poet. He has nowhere shown the least power of creation, by stepping out of himself, and putting on by the force of imagination the nature of others. Through the disguise of all the successive characters which he is obliged to assume in the Rambler, the sturdy, controversial, and somewhat pompous moralist stands confessed; and whether he writes as a fine lady, a fop, a blood, or an elderly gentleman, still, like Puck, "we know the man by the Athenian garments he hath on." Independently of this, his views of life would certainly have been untrue, inasmuch as they were one-sided. Far from being disposed "to make the happiness he could not find," the tendency of his mind,—in consequence, perhaps, of a con- institutional melancholy,—was rather to unmake and neutralize the elements of comfort by which human life in the average is surrounded. Had he devoted himself in earnest to fictitious composition, he would have lent his eloquence and power of forcible statement to shape the world of romance according to the gloomy fashion which the reality presented to his eye; and in an inky coat, indeed, or a drab-coloured suit at best, very unlike the peach-blossom of his friend Goldsmith, he would in all probability have arrayed it.

About 1769 we witness the revival, though in a new shape, of the old taste for romance. The delineation of life as it actually existed was found to afford too little scope to minds who aspired after the imaginative and poetical, and who could not see why natural delineation of character and manners might not be combined with striking events, and with the picture of the higher passions; why, as Walpole expresses it, in his preface to the *Castle of Otranto* "the fancy might not be left to expatiate through the boundless realms of invention, and thence to create more interesting situations, while the mortal agents in the drama still conducted themselves according to the rules of probability." In the first shape, however, in which romance reappeared after this temporary slumber, the delineation of character occupied, it must be owned, but a very subordinate place. A little more attention was given to verisimilitude of manners, and much was done to abbreviate the tedious style of the old prose romance, and to throw life and movement into the narrative by dialogue, and by the omission of unimportant incidents not bearing on the catastrophe; but the main efforts of our first modern romance writers were directed chiefly to the excitement of that feeling of love of the marvellous which exists more or less in every human breast. They chose for their favourite themes the varieties of the supernatural.

"Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas, Nocturnos lemures, portentaque?"

We admit that the author of the *Castle of Otranto* did not trust exclusively to such materials of interest. But granting that the general outlines of "his feudal tyrant, his distressed damsels, his resigned yet dignified churchman," are sufficiently correct, we are at a loss to perceive in any of his characters that individuality which gives to such pictures their chief value. To us they seem light, sketchy, and somewhat vague, although we think it quite possible that the effect produced by greater truth and distinctness of feature in the mortal agents of the piece might not have harmonized with the extravagant demands upon the imagination which the author makes by his supernatural machinery. We agree with Sir Walter Scott in thinking Walpole acted with judgment in leaving his machinery without those attempts at explanation introduced by Mrs Radcliffe, always inadequate, and even throwing an air of ridicule over the mysteries of the piece upon a second perusal. But we cannot concur with him in his toleration of the extent to which Walpole has carried the marvels and improbabilities of his romance. The apparition of Alfonso in the moonlight, dilated to a gigantic form, is impressive, and in certain moods of the mind even the skeleton ghost in the hermit's cowl may have its terrors. But Clara Reeve was certainly right in the protest which she enters in her preface against the introduction of such machinery as that of a sword so large as to require a hundred men to lift it; a helmet that, by its own weight, forces a passage through a court-yard into an arched vault, and crushes a boy to death; or a picture walking out of its frame. The effect of such violent instruments of terror is suicidal; they destroy the very feeling they were intended to create, and give to the romance the air of a nursery tale. Indeed, were it not for the singular charm of the style, which, like all Walpole's compositions, is of Romance, the purest and most idiomatic English, and terse and condensed in a very high degree, we feel persuaded that the *Castle of Otranto*, although the first specimen of the modern romance, would at the present day find few admirers.

In some respects, then, we think the *Old English Baron Clara* of Clara Reeve was an improvement on the *Castle of Reeve, Otranto*. For there the marvellous was brought within some limit of proportion; "the extravagant and erring spirit tied to his confine;" and consequently, so far as regarded the creation of an impression of superstitious terror, or giving an air of probability and keeping to her narrative, we must admit that her ghost of Lord Lovel, who is always exhibited under the obscurity of a dim religious light, did, in our youthful days, produce upon us a certain species of awe. In other respects we rather fear the apprehension which is expressed in her preface,—namely, that in avoiding the defects of Walpole the spirit of his wild composition might evaporate,—was not altogether without foundation. The style of the narrative in her hands became heavy, often dry and vulgar, like the ancient chronicle she professes to follow; her dialogue is peculiarly flat and cumbrous, and the plot deformed, and rendered tedious by trifling incidents which now appear to us needlessly homely; and yet the strong interest with which, as we can state from experience, this romance is perused at an early age, is a proof that in the cardinal point of exciting curiosity and a feeling of mysterious interest, the ruder narrative of Clara Reeve effects, in a great measure, what all the liveliness of style, the deeper antiquarian reading, and more creative fancy of Walpole failed to attain.

But this species of romance-writing was probably carried Mrs Radcliffe to its perfection by Mrs Radcliffe (1764-1823), who, in her cliffs, own walk of fiction, has never been excelled, though opinions may differ as to the comparative rank which she holds among writers of fiction, and also as to the soundness of that principle of composition which led her systematically to unravel her own spells, and to attempt an explanation by natural means of effects which we had at first been encouraged to refer to the agency of supernatural causes. Indeed, we might rather say that, in regard to this last point, there is no room for doubt, and that this system of explanations is exposed to every possible objection—as totally inadequate in general to account for the effects ascribed to it,—as running counter to the whole tone of sentiment created up to the period of explanation,—as disappointing the pride of the reader, who feels offended at the thought that he has expended so much anxiety and terror on a mere "painted devil," and a succession of mockeries; and is consequently annoyed at this commonplace anti-climax after his nerves have been tuned for grand wonders, instead of the discovery of paltry images of wax-work. Indeed, it is one of the strongest proofs of the redeeming genius which Mrs Radcliffe has thrown into her tales, constructed as they are upon so unsatisfactory a plan, that they bear a second perusal at all; or that, having discovered in one or two cases the inadequate and puerile nature of what appeared at first so appalling and formidable, we still feel eager for the solution of the remaining mysteries, and can hardly persuade ourselves but that something strange and fearful does lurk, after all, within her deserted chambers and beneath her faded tapestry.

Yet it is wonderful what a magical power she exercises within the field to which she restricts herself. No one ever seems to have understood better the art of preparation, the attunement of the mind to the key of the supernatural, by a long train of half-heard sounds, and glimpses of sights, which the fancy, amidst night and silence, works up for itself into images of things which it fears to contemplate,— And perhaps the strongest proof of her judgment is to be found in the economy and reserve with which she employs the talisman of terror. In her hands slight circumstances and half-hints are made to produce all the effect of fearful witcheries or scenes of bloodshed and horror. The clang of a distant door, a footfall or a track of blood upon a staircase, a strain of music floating over a forest, a figure pacing a platform in silence, some wandering voice following us, "with airy tongue that syllables men's names," through the passages of a decaying chateau, the heaving of the tapestry of a bed in some deserted chamber, nay, at last a very rat behind the arras, become invested with a mysterious dignity, and work upon the imagination like spells.

Mrs Radcliffe may claim the merit of being the first to introduce landscape-painting into her romances as a component part of the interest of the piece. The frequency of her pictures of external scenery, and their want of distinctness and local truth, have indeed been blamed by many who would willingly, on Puff's principle, have abridged her descriptions of the rising sun, and dispensed with a great deal about gilding the eastern hemisphere. But it is certain that these descriptions, though occasionally tedious, and sometimes too obviously brought forward upon a principle of melo-dramatic contrast, have a powerful effect in heightening the impression communicated by the incidents or the sentiments. Set off against the calm beauty of a summer evening, or the magnificent gloom of a thunder-storm, her pastoral or banditti groups stand out with double effect; while to the charge of vagueness of description it may be answered, that Mrs Radcliffe is by no means vague where distinctness of imagery is, or ought to be, her object; as any one may satisfy himself who recalls to his recollection her description of the lonely house by the Mediterranean, with the scudding clouds, the screaming sea-birds, and the stormy sea, the scene selected for the murder of Ellena; or another picture, in the best manner of Salvator, of the first glimpse of the castle of Udolpho rising over a mountain pass, with the slant sunbeam lighting up its ancient weather-beaten towers. Indeed, the whole description of that Apennine fastness, both without and within, is in the best style, not of literal indeed, but of imaginative painting—

"Fate sits on those dark battlements and frowns;" the very intricacy of its internal architecture, and its endless passages,—a mighty maze, and we fear without a plan,—only serve to deepen the impression of imprisonment and bewilderment and gloom.

To be fully enjoyed, the romances of Mrs Radcliffe must be perused in youth. In after age they appear too uniformly visionary, and the straight-laced stiffness of her heroines, who never manifest the least warmth except in poetry, "female punctuation not permitting them to do more," as Mrs Malaprop observes, suggests the recollection of the pruderies of the pastoral and heroic romance. But when these tales are read in youth, and only remembered in manhood in their better portions, they leave upon the memory a pleasing impression of a varied pageant of gloomy castles and caves, moon-illumined streets and palaces, "dance and Provencal song and sun-burnt mirth," aerial music floating over haunted forests, or the chant of monk or nun borne to the ear over the waters of some Italian lake, amidst the stillness and the shallows of evening.

We have devoted a larger space to Mrs Radcliffe than some may think justly due to the rank in fiction which she occupies, but we have done so,—first, because we think justice has seldom been done to the real genius which she threw into the style of fiction she chose to adopt, whatever Romance may be its precise order of precedence in the calendar of fiction; and secondly, because, although that style became more universally popular and more generally imitated than any which had preceded it, she herself, with two exceptions only, which we shall notice, remains the solitary writer of genius by which it has been adorned. The truth is, that the sarcasms which have been directed against the puerile horrors of Mrs Radcliffe ought justly to have been confined to the extravagances of her successors, who imitated her manner without either her imagination or her judgment, and conceived that the surest means of producing effect consisted in pressing the springs of the terrible as far as they would go.

The two exceptions from the general dulness and commonplace of the imitators of Mrs Radcliffe are the Monk of M. G. Lewis, which appeared in 1796, and The Montorio of Maturin, published in 1807, and among the last romances written on that now antiquated plan. Much injustice, we believe, was done to Lewis at the time. A single unfortunate remark of an irreligious tendency, and some descriptions of undue warmth, pardonable in a youth of twenty, and retrenched in the second edition, gave a blow to the popularity of this romance from which it never recovered. And yet the traces of considerable genius are visible both in its plan and in the execution of several of its powerful scenes. The mere hint of the story—that is to say, the general idea of the gradual corruption of a proud, and enthusiastic, and self-relying nature,—was taken, as Lewis acknowledged, from that of the Santon Barska in the Guardian; the incident of the escape of the baroness from the banditti was an expansion, executed with much skill, of the scene in the hut in Count Fathom; for the story of the bleeding nun he was indebted to a German legend; while he has borrowed several hints for his wandering Jew from the incomprehensible Armenian of Schiller. But to these hackneyed materials he has given a force and look of novelty that are surprising: the escape; the conjuration scene, where the Jew, withdrawing the black riband, unveils the burning cross on his forehead; the procession of St Clare by torch-light, where the abbess is torn to pieces,—once read, are not easily forgotten. Lewis also avoided Mrs Radcliffe's error; his ghosts are real and his devil genuine; though, as is not uncommon, we believe, in practice, he takes the form of a woman, instead of appearing, as Defoe has it, "in all his formalities and frightfulness."

The Montorio of Maturin was also a boyish production, Maturin, which the writer affected at a more advanced period of life to despise. Yet it appears to us to exhibit more genius, mingled, no doubt, with a deep vein of extravagance and false taste, than his more elaborate attempts to picture real manners and passions in his Woman. There was originality even in the conception, hideous as it was, of the hero employing against the brother, who had deceived him, the agency of that brother's own sons, whom he persuades to partridge by working on their visionary fears, and by the doctrines of fatalism; and then, when the deed is done, discovering that the victims whom he had reasoned and persecuted into crime were his own children. And though Maturin's machinery in no respect differs from that of his brethren, though he labours to explain away in the close all that had appeared supernatural in the beginning, and of course with total want of success, yet the impression left on the mind by the perusal of the work, in the three thickest volumes we believe that modern romance has to boast of, though gloomy and unsatisfactory, is certainly that of an inventive genius in the author. Such was the effect it produced on Sir Walter Scott, who was the first to direct attention to it by a criticism in the Quarterly Review for 1810: "We have strolled," says he in a lively introduction, "through a variety of castles, each of which was re..." Romance, gularly called Il Castello; met with many captains of con- dottieri; heard various ejaculations of Santa Maria and Dia- bolo; read, by a decaying lamp, and in a tapestried cham- ber, dozens of legends as stupid as the main history; ex- amined such suites of deserted apartments as might set up a reasonable barrack, and saw as many glimmering lights as would make a respectable illumination. Amidst these flat imitations of the Castle of Udolpho, we lighted unexpectedly upon the work which is the subject of the present article, and in defiance of the very bad taste in which it is composed, we found ourselves unusually involved in the perusal, and at times impressed with no common degree of respect for the powers of the author."

Of the Zelucco of Dr Moore, which appeared about 1785, we have already spoken in our biographical article. (See Moore, Dr John.)

The influence of such works as Goethe's Sorrows of Werther, written seemingly with a view of reversing Pope's maxim, and proving that whatever is wrong, becomes very obvious in our literature of fiction towards the close of the eighteenth century. For in truth such speculations, embodied in an imaginative form, were found highly con- genial to that spirit of restlessness and discontent with poli- tical institutions which was everywhere abroad, perplexing nations with fear of change, and leading men of genius to dress up moral paradoxes in the shape of narrative, and to employ their eloquence in attacking those principles of society which tend to make men happy, or which keep them so. This tendency appears sufficiently obvious in the novels of Bage, a sceptic in religion, and a latitudinarian in morals, whose crude theories, we think, might have been allowed to repose in that oblivion to which they had been consigned, without being revived in such a work as the Novelist's Library. Their introduction at all into a work intended to embody only the classical works of fiction, seems unac- countable; nor is the singularity diminished by the fact, that his best work, Hermesproung, or Man as he is not, is omitted, while three of inferior merit are re-published.

But the social and political theories of the time found an abler exponent in Godwin, whose first work, Caleb Wil- liams, appeared in 1794, in which, throwing aside the stimulus of the marvellous, he has trusted the effect of his tale entirely to a picture of the workings of the mind on two beings of very opposite natures, who are driven, by a species of fatal instinct, into the relative positions of perse- cutor and victim. The doctrines of the Political Justice furnished avowedly the primary source of the inspiration of Caleb Williams, intended, to use the words of the pre- face, "to furnish a general review of the modes of domestic and unrecorded despotism, by which man becomes the de- stroyer of man;" that is to say, to show that, under the mal- administration of English law, liable to be perverted by in- fluence and wealth, the chances are all in favour of the escape of the real criminal and the conviction of the inno- cent,—a proposition notoriously untrue, and which is not even advocated with much art or plausibility in the series of persecutions to which Williams is exposed. Fortunately, however, for the real merit and permanent popularity of this singular work, the political design soon merges in a higher and more legitimate interest. The genius of the author kindles as he proceeds, and out of a hard and republican background brings forth the bright and chivalrous vision of the aristocratic Falkland, a being of a loving, noble nature, the victim of false honour and morbid refinement of feel- ing. Few scenes in romance exceed in breathless and en- trancing interest the description of the progress of suspicion in the mind of Williams, till he extorts from his master the fatal secret on which hangs the whole of his future fate; the escape from prison in the grey dawn of a drizzling morning; and the last interview between Williams and his dying persecutor, sitting, corpse-like, to hear his secret dis- closed to the world, and to suffer the agony of knowing that life and reputation are about to leave him together.

In none of his other works did Godwin evince the same grandeur of conception, and in none of his subsequent per- formances, except Bethlehem Gabor, did he exhibit that power of presenting demoniacal characters, such as Tyrrell and Gines, in a light which renders them, unnatural as they are, actual objects of terror, like a serpent in the path. The tone of his next novel, St Leon, is altogether more subdued than that of Caleb Williams. It has a mournful eloquence in harmony with the picture of desolation which it presents. Here, too, the author has imperfectly succeeded in working out the design which he announces he had in view,— namely, that of proving that the happiness of mankind would not have been augmented by the gifts of immortal youth and inexhaustible riches; for, in order to illustrate his position, Godwin is under the necessity of laying the scene in a remote age, and making the persecutions of St Leon arise from feelings of superstitious credulity, which we cannot help recollecting that the progress of intelligence has since exploded. The senior wrangler, who asked what Paradise Lost proved, would certainly therefore have been dissatisfied with Godwin's demonstration; but as the vehicle of a series of most touching and impressive scenes, his plot is far from deficient in interest, nor, granting its premises, in probability. None of his other tales have been popular.

No writer has come so near the manner of Godwin as Brown. Charles Brockden Brown, an American novelist, an imita- tor of the English author, but in a free and noble spirit of imitation. He certainly had not Godwin's power of men- tal analysis, and not much of that pathetic tenderness which, contrasted with the general sternness of his tone, shows like a rainbow against a troubled sky. He was al- together more prosaic; dealing, indeed, rather with the material than the moral sublime; producing his strong effects by scenes of sickness, danger, death, or the explora- tions of insanity; and often making his characters mere phantasmata, which interest us only as the means by which a series of agitating incidents are brought into connection. But he had a good deal of the same eloquence, and the same dark and mysterious power of imagination; a certain intensity of portraiture, whether of mental emotion or things external; great skill in working up a chain of sin- gular events that keep curiosity and suspense upon the stretch, or impress us with a sense of danger and anxiety, and of which he loves to furnish an explanation from those phenomena in our nature which are little understood, such as somnambulism, trances, spontaneous combustion, or ven- triloquism. In these respects Wieland, Ormond, Edgar Huntly, and Arthur Mervyn have all nearly the same char- acter, nor do they differ materially in point of merit. Brown has singular power in the delineation of solitude of all kinds, whether the silence of lonely forests, broken only by the howl of panthers, or of deserted mansions dropping to decay. There is one picture of this kind in Arthur Mer- vyn, of an empty house, evacuated during the yellow fever in Philadelphia, silent and dark in the day-time, with the sun- shine streaming in through the closed doors and shutters, and faintly discovering that everything remained undisturbed since its desertion, which produces a strong feeling of awe, and oppresses the spirits with unaccountable sadness.

No other novelist of any ability can be said to have Mrs Shel- adopted the manner of Godwin with success, except his ac- complished daughter, the authoress of Frankenstein, a pro- duction of much originality in its conception, though the ex- ecution of the work is unequal, and the whole portion which relates to the self-education of the monster, who is the crea- tion of the new Prometheus, almost ludicrously improbable.

Several female novelists, towards the close of the eigh- teenth century, deserve notice, whose tales, though now little read, have the merit either of pathetic or humorous Romance delineation. In the first of these classes are Mrs Inchbald and Charlotte Smith; in the latter Madame D'Arblay, or, to use the name by which she was best known, Miss Burney.

The fame of Mrs Inchbald rests upon her Simple Story. The title perhaps is but of doubtful application to a novel which is really complicated with strong and varied passions, which turns on the fate and fortunes of persons placed in very peculiar relations to each other; and, like Shakspeare's Winter's Tale, unites two distinct stories relating to different personages, between the action of which "time has slid o'er sixteen years." It is a proof of considerable merit in the novel, that so hazardous an experiment as that of transferring our sympathies to actors in a great measure new to the scene, has not been unsuccessful; that the interest is notwithstanding, kept up, partly by the real pathos of some of the scenes, and partly by the natural traits of passion in others. Her second novel, entitled Nature and Art, has been generally and justly reckoned much inferior to the Simple Story.

Charlotte Smith (1749-1806), though her novels are extremely defective in plot, betraying marks of haste, and tinged with a melancholy easily to be accounted for from the depressing circumstances under which they were generally composed, cannot be confounded with the ordinary day-labourers for the circulating library, "who turn a Persian tale for half-a-crown." Sir Walter Scott, in one of those kindly notices by which he delighted to cheer the heart of struggling genius, or to do justice to the memory of talents which time was consigning somewhat too rapidly to oblivion, has given her credit for great powers of satire mixed with pathos, and characters sketched with "firmness of pencil and liveliness of colouring." The satire indeed seems to have been pretty indiscriminate, since it extends to her own husband, whose pecuniary improvidence and sanguine temperament are glanced at in the character of the projector who hoped to make a fortune by manuring his estate with old wigs. But apart from satire, the Old Manor House, the only one of her novels with which we are acquainted, is really entitled to the character of an interesting and well-written tale. We have a lively recollection of the Manor House itself, its neighbourhood, its seaside scenes, the strange domineering lady of the manor, Mrs Rayland, whom Sir Walter Scott describes as a sort of Queen Elizabeth in private life, and the natural interest which she has succeeded in giving to the love story which is going on within the ancient walls.

The popularity once enjoyed by the novels of Miss Burney appears now to have been somewhat overrated; at least we are at a loss to discover anything in her first work, Evelina, except the extreme youth of the writer, then only eighteen, to account for that burst of approbation with which it appears to have been received in 1778 by such men as Burke, Reynolds, and Johnson. She wrote no doubt with sprightliness, with some humour of a broad and superficial kind, and undoubtedly possessed considerable talent in drawing heroes and personages of low manners or odd habits from vulgar middle life; in imagining scenes of awkward mistakes in society, and exaggerating the teasing distresses thence arising to her heroines and other personages of more refined manners or higher pretensions. Indeed, to mimicry she appears, from her father's account, to have had a strong leaning from her childhood; but when she rises from mere manners and habits to paint feelings, we see little but indecision on the one hand, or exaggeration on the other. Within the field where she excels too she is much of a mannerist; the same characters under other names, the same incidents under a thin disguise, reappear in Evelina, Cecilia, and Camilla. Even the graces of style which she had shown in her earlier works in a great measure forsook her in her last novel, the Wanderer; a tissue of improbable distresses and silly refinements of Romance, sensibility, conveyed in language which is neither good English nor good sense.

The Canterbury Tales deserve notice on account of Miss H., the interesting and highly original story of "Krustizer," or Lee, the "German's Tale," by Harriet Lee, on which Lord Byron founded his Werner. The tales contributed to the work by her sister Sophia, such as the "Two Emils" and the "Clergyman's Tale," though less striking, are written with genuine feeling and tenderness.

It may be observed, however, in those female novelists Miss Austin to whom we have last adverted that, though the marvellous is thrown aside, and the characters are taken from common life, the sentiments and tone of feeling are yet decidedly strained beyond the natural pitch. The characters display a degree of romantic affection and a prodigal expenditure of sensibility for which the cares and distractions of real life, we fear, afford but little leisure. It remained for Miss Austin (1775-1817) to show what a charm might be imparted to truthful pictures of life, as we really see it around us in the quiet monotony of domestic arrangements, with its interchanges of poetry and prose, business and strong feeling, and dialogues at balls and parties alternating with the secret griefs of the heart; just such a picture, in short, as Armadeus would present, could he remove the roof of many an English home, and place us beside the hearths of the Knightleys, Bennets, Woodhouses, and Bertrams by whom they are inhabited. No species of novel-writing exposes itself to a severer trial, since it not only resigns all Bayes' pretensions "to elevate the imagination and bring you off in some extraordinary way," but by professing to give us pictures of our ordinary acquaintances, in their common garb, places its productions within that range of criticism where all are equally judges, and where Crispin is entitled to dictate to Apelles. And yet with such fine perception and perfect truth of keeping has Miss Austin performed her task, that we never miss in her novels the excitement of uncommon events, and rarely feel her simple annals of English life to be tedious or unworthy of the dignity of fiction.

All the novels of Miss Austin closely resemble each other; but Northanger Abbey, and Sense and Sensibility, are of a more puerile cast than the others, and betray a more unformed taste. Pride and Prejudice, particularly in the characters of the Bennets, was an improvement on the two former, but Emma, Mansfield Park, and Persuasion are justly regarded as her most finished works. Some scenes in Persuasion, the last work of this gifted authoress, have always appeared to us models of unobtrusive tenderness.

Some one has described the novels of Miss Edgeworth Miss Edgeworth as a sort of essence of common-sense; and the definition worth is not inappropriate, for she is the most anti-sentimental of novelists. The sway of the stronger passions she has almost excluded from her Tales. Love is indeed the only one which has found entrance, and to qualify him for admission, his wings have been sorely clipped and trimmed, and reason constantly placed as a gentleman usher over him. Miss Edgeworth has even less toleration for splendid faults or bursts of enthusiasm than Miss Austin. Her chief aim is to rebuke folly by ridicule and comic humour; to unteach bad habits of mind, to substitute in their stead prudence, firmness, temper, perseverance, and habits of absolute truth, a process which she generally represents as effected by a gradual series of efforts and consequent ameliorations, which are within the power of all minds of ordinary resolution. Her favourite characters are either persons of well-balanced minds with sound heads and a smattering of physical science, who act rightly and honourably, but always think twice before they act, and weigh in the scales of utility what are generally considered as Romance matters of feeling, like the Percys; or they are personages who, spoiled by indolence and bad education, succeed by a course of self-discipline, in curing their intellectual or moral maladies, and becoming useful and honourable members of society, like the hero of Emma, Lord Glenthorn. Miss Edgeworth brings to her task the results of much observation of character, particularly that of her countrymen; a quick perception of the humorous, a dramatic liveliness of dialogue, a high sense of all that is honourable and decorous, with a scorn of meanness and evasion, and that tone of good society which her pictures, often drawn from fashionable life, demand. If her novels are at times too obviously monitory and didactic, and the satire peeps out rather alarmingly behind the schoolmistress, this defect, we fear, is in a great measure inseparable from the very qualities which constitute the strength of her mind, and from the conception she had formed for herself of the ideal of novel-writing.

At the period when Sir Walter Scott (1814) produced the first of that long file of romances which have since obtained a more than European reputation, the public taste, in regard to novel-writing, seemed to have sunk to a low ebb. Miss Edgeworth indeed was popular; for the wit and good sense of her dialogue, and her happy pictures of Irish character, found favour in the sight even of the readers of circulating-libraries; but the merits of Miss Austin's more unobtrusive pictures of life were comparatively unknown. At best she was confounded with the writers of "Winters in London," or "Winters in Paris," and shared a dubious favour with the romantic effusions of Francis Lathom and the other labourers of the Minerva press, so called, we presume, upon the lucus a non lucendo principle, from the goddess of wisdom having so little to do with its productions. Translations, too, from Augustus La Fontaine's homely but rather vulgar pictures of little German Krach-winkel towns, or the broad and indecent extravagances of Pigault Le Brun, tended still further to degrade and vulgarize the public taste. Everything in fiction, in short, looked unpromising and exhausted. The appearance of a great writer, who should strike out a new path through this much-trodden waste, seemed at that moment in the highest degree improbable. And yet this was at once effected by the author of Waverley, in such a manner as to raise the romance from the lowest level to the very highest position in literature.

The resemblance of Scott's mind to that of Shakspeare has been often remarked, and with some justice; for though even the most enthusiastic admirers of the romance-writer, will hardly venture to claim for him an equality of powers with Shakspeare, there were strong kindred features in the character of their minds. In both we are struck with the same general and almost universal sympathies, leading to impartial and kindly views of all men and all opinions, the most remote from their own; a cheerful, healthful tone of feeling, which brightens existence about us, instead of dwelling on its evils; an avoidance of all moral casuistry, or treading on the borders of the forbidden, either in the creation of characters or of incidents; the feeling of the humorous as strongly developed as the sensibilities of the imagination; great self-possession, and a noiseless exertion of power, working out its end, not by sudden bursts, or high-wrought passages, but by a silent and steady progression, like the dawn brightening into the fulness of day.

If Scott possessed any excellency in a greater measure than Shakspeare, it lies in the wonderful art with which he has contrived to impress the reader with the reality of the scenes which he describes at their several historical periods. He has been able to mark most distinctly the age to which each separate story belongs, by a modification in the style and language of the dialogue, by a careful avoidance of anachronisms, by representing his characters as knowing nothing more nor less than was appropriate to personages in their respective spheres, and by the most minute and careful attention to manners and costume. His extensive miscellaneous reading and great antiquarian research no doubt contributed much to his success in this important point; but we must also allow to him the possession of an innate faculty of producing vraisemblance, almost amounting to an instinct, no matter what period of history he selects for his tale; whatever that may be, he carries us back to the precise age which he has determined to illustrate; and the shadows which he summons from the vast realm of his imagination speak, think, and act, move and have their being, precisely as we have been accustomed, though more faintly, to create for ourselves ideal images of their prototypes. Does he take us to the time of the Crusades?—how chivalrous in its tone, yet how mingled with ignorance and ferocity, is the conversation of the mailed barons; how tinctured with barbaric thought and feeling is the utterance of the serfs and thralls! Does he bid us tarry at the era of the Reformation?—how marked are the natural differences of the priest and preacher, how vivid are the pictures of the savage moss-troopers, of the turbulent and ambitious nobles, of the euphuistic courtier who has taught himself to speak in the stilted language of the Arcadia! Does he introduce us to the period of the civil wars?—Cavalier and Puritan start to life again as they moved before the fight at Naseby! Shakspeare, on the contrary, very rarely, and never strongly, indicates period by language. His characters for the most part might belong to any age; sometimes they are even made to talk absurdly and incongruously. The bleeding soldier in Macbeth, who relates to King Duncan the issue of the battle with the Norwegians, speaks in a style totally out of keeping with his character. There is no antiquity about Cymbeline; even Hamlet does not mark its era. Shakspeare certainly did possess in a very high degree the faculty of depicting national differences of temperament, and even national differences of scenery. The cold, stern, Norse-like tone of Hamlet is in marked opposition to the warm colouring of Romeo and Juliet. But he did not reproduce the past with anything like the vividness of Scott. Many subsequent writers have attempted in this particular to rival the great Scottish novelist, but never with complete success. The most famous of them, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, has in two at least of his works, The Last Days of Pompeii, and The Last of the Barons, striven hard to give them an impress of entire vraisemblance corresponding to the peculiarities of the time; but it is no disparagement to the acknowledged powers of that eminent writer to assert that, in this respect, he is decidedly inferior to Scott. With the one it is an effort conspicuous in every page; the characters being too antique, and too elaborate in their antiquity. They are too carefully primitive in their talk, like masquers who strive to the uttermost to keep up a show of what they are not, without hoping to impose upon their audience. We at once can detect the modern under the ancient garb, by the very pains which he takes to stalk solemnly on the catwhiskers. With the other there is no effort whatever. He waves his wand more potent than that of Prospero, and the shadows of the olden time appear before us, and we absolutely believe in their re-animation.

Setting aside this notable peculiarity, we may remark that the works of Scott produce their effect rather by the combination of many qualities than the predominance of any. His strength lies in the possession and harmonious adjustment of most of the qualities requisite to the novelist, none engrossing the whole mind, none excluding another, but all working together in kindly unison; learning arrayed in the most picturesque combinations; observation of life embodied, not in abstractions, but in living forms; humour Romance, springing out of tenderness, like smiles struggling through tears; the spirit of ancient knighthood leavening the worldly wisdom of modern times; and the imagination of the poet adorning, without impairing the common sympathies and good-humoured sagacity of the man.

The department in which this combination of qualities has been most successfully displayed by Scott was that of the historical romance—a class of fictions which he may truly be said to have created. For although fictions bearing the title of historical romances were by no means uncommon in English literature before the time of Scott, such as the *Recess* of Miss Lee or the *Scottish Chiefs* of Miss Porter, it is apparent that they stand in a totally different class; not being, in fact, historical except in the names of the characters. Obvious as the idea now appears, Scott was in truth the first to show how much invention might gain by a union with reality; what additional probability, interest, and importance might be given to the fortunes of imaginary heroes, by interweaving their destinies with those of historical personages; nay, how much of romance in its finest forms lies in the characters and events of history itself, invisible to the prosaic or merely philosophic observer, but obvious at once to the eye of imagination. He has carried the picturesque of history to its perfection; for without imparting to his portraits the deep and subtle traits by which Shakspeare so wonderfully individualizes the beings of his dramas, he never fails at least to present consistent and striking pictures of his historical personages in their habit as they lived, and to dispose the light and shadow about them with the most felicitous adjustment—dress, look, gestures, manner, and the outward accompaniments of scenery being all made important accessories to heighten the effect of well-known peculiarities, or to hide the want of those over which Time has dropped a veil which even Imagination can hardly raise.

In description indeed, generally, Sir Walter Scott was unrivalled. Whatever he sees with the eye of the mind shapes itself into words which enable us to see it too. His pictures combine in a singular way breadth and minuteness; for while he painted the details with sharpness and firmness, no one understood better the art of arrangement in masses, so that he never fails to give the spirit as well as the form of the spot, making us feel the solemnity and gloom of castles and druidical forests, the calm produced by the still beauty of a Highland lake from which the morning mist is disappearing, or the healthy elevation of spirits with which we travel up some mountain height, whence we see far into the country beyond, and "feel the breath of heaven fresh blowing."

We offer no remarks upon his characters except this, that making every allowance for repetitions, no writer of fiction since Shakspeare has enriched the portrait gallery of invention with more originals, of which we have a distinct conception; and that though his female characters have less variety and less truth than his male personages, we know no writer except Shakspeare to whom the same remark may not justly be applied.

The plots of Scott, speaking generally, are neither remarkable for excellence nor the reverse. Examples may, in fact, be found in the long list of his romances both of skilful and defective plots. *Ivanhoe*, *Kenilworth*, and the *Bride of Lammermoor*, for instance, are proofs how artfully he could at times arrange his plan; the two latter having all the compactness and steady progression of the drama. Others again, such as *The Monastery*, *St Ronan's Well*, and *Rob Roy*, are in a high degree loose and inconsequential.

Fertile and inventive as was the genius of Scott, it cannot, we think, be denied that, during the latter half of his career as a writer of fiction, he appeared to less advantage. No wonder, indeed, when, in addition to the limits by Romance, which all invention is bounded, we consider under what depressing circumstances many of his later works were composed, that in these even the elasticity of genius itself should be somewhat outworn and deadened; that the conventional, both in character and incident, should occasionally supply the place of invention, and that mere imagery, and not always very appropriate illustration, should be substituted for the natural turns which at first enlivened the dialogue. "If there be a mental drudgery," to use his own words in his notice of Charlotte Smith, "which lowers the spirits and lacerates the nerves like the toil of the slave, it is that which is exacted by literary composition when the heart is not in unison with the work on which the head is employed." When he breaks up new ground, as in *Nigel*, *Quentin Durward*, and *The Crusaders*, his genius indeed suffers little diminution; but in *Redgauntlet*, *Anne of Geierstein*, and *The Betrothed*, the practised skill of the mechanist, re-composing old materials in new shapes, is far more visible than the freshness and spontaneity of an original inspiration. With the publication of *Kenilworth*, indeed, the sun of his fame may be said to have "touched the highest point of all its greatness;" but like that luminary during a polar summer, it seemed for a time rather to revolve than to descend, and its rays continued to look bright and beautiful long after it was journeying towards the west.

No writer ever exercised so great an influence over the public mind, or led to so much conscious or unconscious imitation. His influence on Italy, France, and Germany, we shall afterwards have occasion to notice. On the literature of Great Britain we believe it to have exerted on the whole a most beneficial effect; not, indeed, that any professed imitation of his manner has yet appeared which possesses great claims to genius, but that he has carried a higher spirit into novel-writing; taught us how the simple feelings of peasants, and the homely pathos of humble life, and the relentings of feeling amongst the outcasts of society, might be made to blend with scenes of high imagination; that his writings are calculated to strengthen the ties of our common humanity; that they never tend to foster a bad, or to throw ridicule upon a good or generous feeling; while, speaking of them in a merely literary point of view, they taught lessons of simplicity, good taste, moderation, and skill in seizing the best points both of character and description, which have not been without their effect even on those by whom the mere manner of Scott or his choice of subjects have been studiously avoided.

The professed imitators of Scott have been numerous, but not successful. As usual, they have magnified his defects, urging his conventional personages, such as dwarfs, fools, gypsies, and bores, into caricature; multiplying instead of retrenching those similes which, even in the original, were so obtrusively frequent as to remind us of Bayes' rule for writing dialogue, "ever make a simile when you are surprised;" and overlaying the plot with minute descriptions of dress and scenery, which the reader, after a little experience, is wise enough to avoid.

The best imitation of Sir Walter Scott's manner with James and which we are acquainted is the anonymous romance of Cooper, *Forman*, of which he speaks with respect in his criticism on Mrs Radcliffe. The romances of Mr James, too, though not indicating much depth, are pleasing, always written with good feeling, and with a plot which excites a sort of quiet interest, if it does not keep the mind in the chain of curiosity or suspense. The novels of Cooper, who is probably better known than any other of the imitators of Scott, seem to be considerably overrated. On shipboard, or on an Indian heath, he is striking and picturesque; but among civilized society, and, above all, in his attempts Romance, to catch the ease of fashion, we must regard him as singularly unsuccessful.

A strange contrast to the spirit of Scott's novels was exhibited in the sceptical and dreary tone of Anastasius. Without force of character-painting, with much languor in parts, and too prolonged a detail of heartlessness and villainy, the work fascinates by its strength, and towards the close, when the character of the hero deepens, by its irresistible pathos. Commencing with the levity of a Greek Gil Blas, it modulates into a key of sadness and desolation of spirit which reminds us of the close of St Leon. Fiction has few pictures which will bear comparison with that of Anastasius sitting on the steps of the lazaretto of Trieste, with his dying boy in his arms.

Many other authors, of considerable literary reputation about this time entered the field of fiction; indeed, very few entirely abstained from wandering in that direction.

Thomas Moore produced one novel, The Epicurean, in which some of the excellences and many of the defects traceable in his poetical style are apparent. We believe, indeed, that the original intention of the author was to have framed a metrical romance, but that he was induced to alter his plan and adopt the vehicle of prose, on account of its more extensive popularity.

The Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life, by Professor Wilson, is a work which still retains in a great measure its earlier popularity. It is a book sui generis; not perhaps accurate in its delineations, but marvellously attractive as an idealization of peasant life by one who was a true poet, and who invested every subject which he touched with the light of his varied genius. Scarcely less popular and attractive is his other romance, the Trials of Margaret Lindsay, a most pathetic story, the perusal of which cannot fail to excite feelings of the deepest emotion. It is somewhat remarkable that this great writer, who possessed in an eminent degree the faculty of humour and the power of expressing it (as witness his inimitable Noctes Ambrosianae) should nevertheless have shrunk, with an almost superstitious dread, from exhibiting it in his more elaborate writings. Nothing can be more certain than that the union or alternation of humour and sentiment, the mixture of the comic and tragic elements, has a charm unattainable by the exertion of one faculty only; and we consider this self-imposed abnegation of half his power to be the reason why Wilson's popularity as a novelist is inferior to that which he has attained as a miscellaneous writer.

Of a very different stamp was John Galt, who, possessing little pathetic power, revelled in descriptions of the ludicrous and absurd, chiefly as displayed in commercial life and among the middle classes. Galt drew accurately from nature in so far as character was concerned; and it is not too much to say that he has no rival, even at the present day, in framing portraits which, while absolutely true, are irresistibly comic and captivating. In this respect he is infinitely superior to Mr Dickens, whose characters are for the most part caricatures. Galt was no caricaturist. He drew accurately from the life; his secret being, that he thoroughly understood, appreciated, and enjoyed the foibles of that class of persons which he selected for illustration, and very wisely abstained from exaggerating, where, in truth, exaggeration would have spoiled rather than augmented the effect. His range is no doubt very limited; for it extends chiefly, if not altogether, to citizen life in the west of Scotland, and therefore the fidelity of his portraits can hardly be appreciated by those who are unacquainted with the class which he describes. But it may fairly be questioned whether even Sir Walter Scott has exhibited more truthful delineations of Scottish character than Galt has done in his Sir Andrew Wylie, Leddy Grippy, and Dr Pringle.

Another writer of nearly the same date rivalled Galt in his peculiar walk. We allude to Mrs Johnston, authoress of Clan Albin, and of a tale called the West Country Exclusives, which is not nearly so well known as its intrinsic merit deserves.

Several novels of great merit appeared when the reputation and popularity of Scott was at its zenith, and, though they did not absolutely suffer abdication, were yet, in some measure, less regarded than they probably would have been had the great planet not been in the ascendant. The fact is, that Scott had acquired nearly a monopoly in fiction; for his fertility was so great that the reading public had scarcely digested one work of his before another was laid before them, and the established favourite gained simply from his popularity an immense advantage over any new competitor. That was the natural and well-earned result of his incessant labour and versatility.

The novels of Miss Ferrier, which are three in number, Miss Marriage, Inheritance, and Destiny, are decidedly of a high class, and have much interest, from the art of the writer in depicting shades of character. With a keen appreciation of the ludicrous Miss Ferrier combined the utmost delicacy of sentiment; so that her pictures are never overcharged, though abounding in native humour. One great charm of her novels is their thoroughly religious tendency, and the wholesome lessons which they convey, not obtrusively paraded nor pharisaically set forward, but tempering and pervading the whole with a benignant Christian spirit. Her main object was to illustrate, through fiction, the uses of adversity, and to prove how worthless are the riches, honours, and ambition of this world in comparison with a mind tranquillized by the influences of religion, and in the enjoyment of that inward peace which passeth all understanding. Of her success there can be no doubt; for in the whole library of fiction there are no works which can be more safely recommended for the perusal of the young, as calculated at once to improve, delight, and amuse, than the novels of Miss Ferrier.

The novel of Cyril Thornton, by Captain Hamilton, brother of the distinguished philosopher and metaphysician, and Lockhart (Sir Walter Scott's son-in-law and biographer), Valerius, Reginald Dalton, and Adam Blair. The first of these, Valerius, which is a story of imperial Rome, is one of the best attempts which have been made by modern romancers to depict society in times which are purely classical. A fine and elegant scholar, without being in any degree a pedant, possessed of a vivid imagination, and master of a polished style, Mr Lockhart was peculiarly fitted to undertake the task, or rather the experiment, of reviving classical associations through the medium of fiction. Our deliberate opinion is, that complete success in such an attempt is impossible. Historical periods which are little known to the great mass of readers, and in which individual characters loom largely, though undefined, in their outline, like objects seen through a mist, may be selected by the romancer for illustration with the happiest results. Thus Scott, when he introduces us to Richard Coeur de Lion in Palestine, chief of the Christian army encamped around the walls of Acre, is like an enchanter who dispels a cloud which our own imagination, for lack of perspicuity, has never penetrated; and presents to us a spectacle of which we had never formed any conception. But there is no such cloud between us and imperial Rome. Her history, constitution, games, customs, magnates, manners, are known to all who are imbued with the slightest touch of the classical spirit; or, if not known absolutely, in the strictest acceptation of the word, they have been imagined by us; so that each of us possesses a floating Roman microcosm of his own. The fashionable novels of Mrs Gore, of which *Cecil* is certainly the best, at one time attracted much public attention, and though singularly deficient in plot, exhibited much vivacity in the dialogue, with considerable shrewdness of observation.

To this class also belong the novels of Theodore Hook, Theodore a man of talent and versatility rather than genius, but possessed of a ready and sparkling wit, effervescent and exhilarating as champagne. Unfortunately, from imprudence and the pressure of untoward circumstances, he was compelled to undertake a larger amount of literary task-work than is compatible with the production of works deliberately planned and artistically executed. Hence his writings are very unequal—some being nearly worthless, while others are of excellent quality. *Gilbert Gurney* is, in our opinion, the best novel that he produced.

After a time, that portion of the reading public which is the mainstay of circulating-libraries became wearied with novelist's the fashionable frivolities and tiresome iteration of scenes pertaining to the *beau monde*. The demand for such literary syllabubs declined, and the value of copyrights dwindled. Then arose a new school of novelists, who sought to win the public ear, disgusted with drawing-room prattle, by converse of another kind. They selected their heroes, not from the frequenters of the saloon or boudoir, but from the denizens of the haunts of vice and profligacy. They had recourse to the caves of a modern Adullam, and, with the *Newgate Calendar* as their guide, tried to cast a halo of romance around the persons of executed thieves and murderers. Ruffians whose lives had been justly forfeited to the outraged laws of their country were depicted as men of daring, honour, and noble enterprise; and their miscellaneous amours with women of the most abandoned class were detailed, not satirically, as Gay did in his *Beggar's Opera*, but seriously and minutely, in a manner which was at once a scandal to literature and an outrage upon public decency. Fortunately, however, the public taste, though not always discriminating or fastidious, revolted from so nauseous a dose; and after a very brief period, the Newgate novelists were hooted into silence, but not before they had done serious mischief by the repetition of their immoralities in a dramatic form, through low theatres and the like, thereby materially contributing to the population of the jails. Writers of this kind have been fain to take shelter under what they call the authority of the great masters of fiction. They say that, because Scott has made interesting and romantic such lawless characters as Robin Hood or Rob Roy, they are entitled to do the same by their recent despisers of the laws. The answer is very plain: Robin Hood and Rob Roy were outlaws and freebooters in times and countries when law was not established or recognised. Their period is mythical to us, and has long since passed away; but the thief, and housebreaker, and resetter, if not the highwayman (for railroads have interfered with that branch of the predatory business), still exist among us; and it can hardly be expected that we should take an interest in the chivalry of crime, which, any night, might be exhibited to ourselves through the medium of the dark lantern, with its concomitant the crowbar.

It would be tedious to note all the forms of the modern novel, for their number is literally legion. We have military, nautical, artistic, musical, commercial, religious, political, and sporting novels in abundance; in fact, there is no phase of society which has not been thus illustrated. Among living English novelists, the following hold the highest place—Sir E. B. Lytton, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Makepeace Thackeray, Samuel Warren, Charles Lever, and the Right Hon. Benjamin Disraeli. These stand in the foremost rank; and it is a remarkable proof of the consideration which is now accorded to literary men that two of them are Cabinet ministers, not less distinguished by... their ability as statesmen than by the genius exhibited in their works.

No country has produced more novelists than Italy; but the Italian novel bears little analogy to what we understand by the term. Their novels were, in fact, originally prose versions of the same short tales, sometimes heroic, but more frequently turning on themes of gallantry or comic adventure, which formed the favourite subjects of the Trouveres. They were Fabliaux translated into Italian; and this character they retained for five centuries, from Boccaccio to Gozzi (1813–1786). The incidents are generally briefly given; there is little development of character or sentiment; or, where these are found, they exhibit rather separate scenes of life than anything having the interest of a compact whole. But if the incidents and characters have little development, the Italian novelists have indemnified themselves for this confinement by indulging in the utmost license of a pompous, circuitous, and unmeaning style. The facile beauty of the Italian language, "Che spandi di parlar si largo fiume," has been the bane of their novelists. Boccaccio, the first and by far the greatest of the Italian novelists, indeed manages to impart to it a sort of garrulous grace; but in the hands of his imitators the contrast between the poverty of the idea and the rich garb of words with which it is invested assumes a ludicrous effect.

Never, perhaps, among so many novelists, was there so little of novelty. Instead of imitating nature, their avowed principle was to imitate Boccaccio, who, imparting to everything a soft and rose-coloured glow, was himself not remarkable for the closeness of his adherence to it. And hence, regarding the novel merely as a theme upon which they were to display all the brilliant variations of which the music of Italian speech was susceptible, they were contented to repeat in a great measure the same themes, to borrow, with a sort of easy impudence, their incidents from Boccaccio or from each other; and more anxious for the purity of their Tuscan than of their tales, of which by far the greater number turn on scenes of licentiousness or low humour, they seemed to think all other merits in the novel subordinate to that of being "written in very choice Italian."

Beyond the limits of Italy, Bandello (1554) and Cintio (whose Hecatomnithi appeared in 1565) are almost the only novelists whose names are known to foreigners, if we except the Belphégor of the versatile Machiavelli; and the chief interest connected with these novelists consists in the hints or materials furnished by them to Shakspeare, Massinger, Beaumont, and Fletcher, and our dramatic writers of the time of Elizabeth and James, to whom, indeed, these works, particularly those of Bandello, afforded a perfect storehouse for plots. Among the nine volumes of Bandello's works contained in the Novelliero, some interesting and a few pathetic tales may be pointed out; but Cintio's can have no interest in themselves except for those who love to sup full of horrors; for he was one of those wholesale dealers in the terrible who thought that poetical effect was to be produced by a vigorous operation on the nerves rather than the feelings, and therefore piqued himself, like the schoolmaster in Gil Blas, on massacring all the personages of his tragedies, even to the prompter.

Towards the close of the last century, a taste for novels in a style somewhat resembling our own appears to have gained ground, and several tales of a melancholy kind made their appearance. With these we do not profess to be acquainted; nor has any one which appeared prior to the Promessi Sposi of Manzoni attained the least reputation beyond Italy, with the exception of the Ultime Lettere di Jacopo Ortis, an early production of Ugo Foscolo (1802), and the result partly of a melancholy event occurring in his own family, and partly of the study of Goethe's Werther, by which the enthusiastic mind of Foscolo appears to have been very powerfully affected. Like Werther, it is a story of love and suicide, full of fervour, violence, and, to speak the truth, of absurdity; yet delivered with a species of eloquence, and a certain appearance of conviction, which, so far at least as regarded the expression of mental discomfort, and the misery arising from a total want of all fixed opinion, was perhaps sufficiently real. To the Italians, who knew little or nothing of Goethe, this stormy effervescence of an impassioned temperament, and all this eloquent "questioning of fate," possessed even an air of originality; and being the first successful attempt to introduce the sentimental romance of the school of Rousseau and Goethe into Italy, it naturally awakened a degree of enthusiasm which now appears somewhat disproportionate to its real merit.

The Promessi Sposi of Manzoni certainly approaches much more nearly to the idea of a good romance than anything which Italy has yet produced; but, after all, it is essentially an imitation. If we had had no Scott we should have had no Manzoni. The idea of illustrating a subject connected with the Italian history of the commencement of the seventeenth century; the introduction of historical characters, such as that of Cardinal Borromeo, who is the Deus ex machina of the piece; the antiquarian lore displayed in the way in which the bread-riot in Milan (a close parallel to the insurrection of the Liegeois in Quentin Durward), is wrought up; the account of the plague in the Milanese, in which Manzoni has tried to imitate at once Boccaccio and Scott,—all concur to satisfy us that Manzoni, though an able lyric poet, has no great share of original invention, and that though he can make a good use of materials furnished by others, he is one of those literary commercialists who require to borrow the main portion of the capital with which they are to trade. We are far, however, from denying the real merits of this performance of Manzoni, in which the characters of Cardinal Borromeo, and the peasant hero and heroine, Renzo and Lucia, are naturally and pleasingly drawn, and in which some of the scenes, such as the opening scene at Don Abbondio's house, the riot in Milan, the interview between the unknown and the Cardinal, and some of the incidents and descriptions connected with the plague, are of vivid interest.

Since the appearance of the romance of Manzoni, who has lately abandoned both fiction and poetry for religion, many attempts have been made by Rosini, D'Azeglio, Guerazzi, Tommaso, Belmonte, and others, to transfer the historical romance to an Italian soil, and to give a romantic interest to the delineation of the Italian feudal history of the middle ages, or of periods somewhat later. The first, and we believe the best, of these appears to be the Monaca de Monza of Rosini, who has founded his story on an episode in the Promessi Sposi. Were we to form a judgment from a few of these attempts which we have read, as to the merits of those of which we remain ignorant, we should be inclined to say, generally, that nothing is more remarkable than the total want of interest which Italian subjects possess in Italian hands; a result which appears the more singular since at one time it was only necessary in our English romances to transfer the scene to Italy, to enlist at once our warmest sympathies in favour of the story. Now-a-days, we think, when the subject is almost entirely in the hands of native novel-writers, the very idea of embarking on an Italian story of the middle ages seems to act upon the fancy as the most powerful refrigerative. Strangely enough, too, it is to be observed that the Italian novelists of modern times never appear to greater advantage than in the description of the most furious battles, carried on with all the determination and bloody-mindedness of an Esplandian or a Bobadil, as in Ettore Fieramosca, by Massimo D'Azeglio, a son-in-law of Manzoni, or L'Assedio di Firenze, by Gualandi; an expenditure of In Spain, which, though not the birth-place, had certainly become by adoption pre-eminently the country of the chivalrous romance, and where, perhaps, its extravagances had been less redeemed by talent than anywhere else, it is well known that a revolution in taste was effected by the inimitable satire of Cervantes (1547–1616), which Montesquieu, with amusing extravagance, describes as the single admirable book in the Spanish language which shows the absurdity of all the rest. So effectually, indeed, did that work (published in 1605) attain its end, or rather one of its ends, that after its appearance no romance of chivalry appeared in Spain, and the old ones so entirely ceased to be printed that it is with difficulty that copies of them are now to be obtained. The "ultimus Romanorum," the last adherent of the good old romance, was Don Juan de Silva y Toledo, who published his *Don Policinle de Bocca* in 1602, three years before the appearance of the *Don Quixote*.

But had that book been solely devoted to the object of exploding the old romances of chivalry, it would probably have shortly been forgotten with the extravagances it exposed. The charm which has given a perennial life and continued popularity to *Don Quixote* is the deeper idea which it contains of illustrating in comic colours the contest between imagination and reality; the danger, both to its possessor and to others, of all misdirected enthusiasm, whether it take the direction of reviving an extinct age of chivalry, or any other course plainly running counter to the current of society all around it, by means of which a constant collision is produced, in which, whatever becomes of the world, the visionary himself is sure to be the sufferer.

For the fuller development of this idea he has placed beside the knight, who represents the imagination without the common-sense, a squire who is the type of the vulgar common-sense without the imagination. Between these children of his brain he parcels out the treasures of his mind, bequeathing to the knight his own high spirit and courage, his learning, his generosity, and his love of truth; and to the squire the solid riches of his good sense and his peculiar humour; that humour which, as it exists in Cervantes, is among the rarest of human qualities—the very poetry of the comic, founded on tender sympathy with all forms of existence, though displaying itself in sporting reflection; and issuing not in superficial laughter, but in still smiles, the source of which lies far deeper.

The characters and fortunes of these contrasted companions he has linked together in such a way as to impress on the mind the feeling how indispensable each is to each as the complement of the other,—the learning, high-mindedness, and strong imagination of the knight as the creative and moving power in human life; the practical good sense, and even selfishness, of the squire as the controlling force; from the judicious union of which opposites arises the harmony, and from their separation the discords of society. He paints also, with great knowledge of human life, the effect which these reciprocal influences, constantly exerted on each other through vicinity and a common pursuit, have in modifying even the original character itself, and gradually making the enthusiast more rational, and the commonplace man of the world more imaginative. The sound philosophy, the impartial and kindly spirit, with which Cervantes has wrought out this conception, in which justice is done at once to the higher and the more common elements of our nature; the flood of humour with which he surrounded it,—which has tempted many a one since the days of Philip IV. to imitate the pantomime of the student on the banks of the Manzanares,—are as obvious to the least refined of readers as they are models of art worthy of the admiration and profound study of every writer of fiction. Like human life itself, the story unites and harmonizes the opposite extremes of the pathetic and the ludicrous, the vulgar and the elevated,—for from the midst of the comic groundwork, the striking scenes in the Sierra Morena, the episode of Cardenio and Dorothea, the story of the captive, the sweet pastoral of Marcella, the marriage of Camacho, and many other passages, rise up, rich in pathos, grandeur, or imagination; so that, in fact, there is no work in which, while the aim at first might appear to be to destroy the romance of life, passages of more purely romantic beauty are to be found. The truth is, that Cervantes, though anxious to explode a vicious taste in literature, was far enough from wishing to direct his satire against the creations of high imagination or against the spirit of chivalry. The admiration he expressed for Amadis and Palmerin shows that he was not insensible to the beauties by which even this branch of literature was occasionally redeemed. His own adventurous career of glory and misfortune had no doubt deeply impressed upon his mind the contrast between the dreams of imagination and the realities of life; he saw the poetical capabilities which such a contrast afforded,—and he has painted them with an unshrinking and some may think a merciless hand. But even beneath the veil of ridicule with which he has invested his crazed and battered hero, we perceive his own inextinguishable love of the exalted principles by which he is actuated; and the abiding impression which remains with us after the comic effect of the romance has passed away is, that truth and nobleness of character will continue to command our love and veneration, though displayed in actions with which the world cannot sympathize, and placing their possessors in situations which excite our ridicule, even while his motives attract our admiration.

Cervantes seems to have intended his moral novels *Novelas Exemplares* to be to Spain what the short tales *Exempla* of Boccaccio and his followers had been to Italy, only with the advantage of a purer morality. They are unequal; some being mere satirical trifles, such as the *Licentiado Vidriera*; others, like the *Jealous Extremaduran* (which English readers will recognize in the common farce of the Padlock), the *Gipuy*, and the *English Spanish Lady*, highly interesting in themselves, and characteristic of Spanish manners, laying open to us, as Sismondi says, the hearts and houses of its inhabitants. One novel, the *Tia fingida* (Pretended Aunt), though undoubtedly written by Cervantes, was not included in the original collection, probably from the disagreeable nature of the subject.

The remaining work of fiction by Cervantes, the *Periles* and *Sigismunda*, is only remarkable as the last work which he wrote, and as being quite as absurd and extravagant as any of those romances of chivalry against which his powerful satire had been directed. No work has occasioned a greater division of opinion. While some of the Spanish critics speak of it in terms of extravagant praise, it is described by Viardot, a French critic, as "a tissue of episodes interlaced with each other, like those of one of Calderon's intrigues, consisting of extravagant adventures, silly rencontres, astounding prodigies, preposterous characters, and extravagant sentiments." It retains little or nothing indeed of Cervantes but the charm of his style. Yet, like Corneille placing his *Nicomede* before the *Cid*, or Milton his *Paradise Regained* before his *Paradise Lost*, Cervantes seems to have given the preference to this child of his old age over the masterpiece of his manhood.

The fashion of short novels in the Italian taste which had been introduced by Cervantes was followed by Lope de Vega, Canizares, Zayas, Montalvan, and by a host of imitators, whose very names the Spanish critic Lampillas declares that he is unable to enumerate. The loss of the catalogue is little to be regretted; for even among the names which are known, it would be difficult to point out one, even including the great Lope, which rises above mediocrity.

Nature indeed seems to have given Cervantes his revenge for the triumph of his rival in the drama by the failure of Lope as a novelist, for in this department the talent and rich invention which he displayed on the stage appeared in a great measure to desert him. The best of his novels is the *Fortunas de Diana* (Fortunes of Diana), first printed in the Filomena in 1621; next to which we should place his *El Zeloso hasta Morir* (Jealousy till Death); but, truth to say, neither are remarkable. Indeed, if we except Cervantes, the same remark which we have ventured to make on Lope is generally applicable to the Spanish novelists. Nearly in proportion to the success of the nation in the creation of an original drama is its signal deficiency in original contributions to the literature of romance. It is not often indeed, as Tieck remarks in his Preface to Bulow's *Novellenbuch*, that the dramatic and novelistic power are found combined in a national literature to the same extent as in England.

In fact, the only species of prose fiction, with the exception of *Don Quixote*, in which the Spaniards have displayed anything like original invention, is in the novels written in what is called the *Gusto Picareseco*, or the romances of roguery, of which the first example of any merit, and, with one exception, the best of the whole series, was furnished by the *Lazarillo de Tormes* of the celebrated Don Diego de Mendoza, and is said to have been written by him while a student at Salamanca, and first printed in 1554. It is rather singular, no doubt, to find a man of rank devoting himself to those pictures of want and miserable knavery, or a nation affecting so much external pomp and ceremony relishing these exposures of the real filth, meanness, or starvation which often lurked under the cloak of the whiskered knight of Calatrava. But the Spanish character is distinguished by a very peculiar vein of dry humour intermingled with a tinge of orientalism in their notions of birth and pride of ancestry and personal dignity; and hence the Spanish novelists seem to have been perfectly alive to the ridiculous features of their countrymen, while sharing very probably in the same exaggerated pretensions themselves. Accordingly, along with the adventures of rogues, and beggars, and gypsies, who, during the reigns of the Austrian Philips, appear to have literally swarmed in Madrid, are interspersed ample illustrations of this union of poverty and pride, and the stratagems with which many a pompous cavalier, walking the streets, as Lazarillo says, like the Duke of Arcos, is occupied at home in order to procure a crust of dry bread, and having eaten it, to appear with due decorum in public, by the art of fitting on a ruffle so as to suggest the idea of a shirt, and adjusting a cloak in such a manner as to make it be believed there are clothes under it.*1 Mendoza's novel contains a sketch of one of these shirtless and famished hidalgos eagerly devouring some crusts which Lazarillo had begged in the morning, on pretence of trying whether the bread was sufficiently wholesome, which gives an image of starvation in which the painful is strangely blended with a sort of sombre gaiety.

Equal, if not superior, to Mendoza's romance is the *Guzmán d'Alfarache* of Matteo Aleman (1599), which, though dealing in the same gloomy pictures of want and misery, has more variety in its pictures, and a more severe and caustic character in its sarcasm. It has been erroneously supposed to have furnished many particulars to Gil Blas; in fact it would be difficult to point out one, except the incident of the parasite who obtains a supper at the expense of the eighth wonder of the world. In the same taste is the *Gran Tacano* of Quevedo.

The merit of having supplied Le Sage with much of his Espinel materials may be more plausibly claimed by Vicente Espinel, the author of the *Vida del Escudero Marcos de Obregon*, printed in 1618. Indeed, while the superior grace, spirit, and gay philosophy of Le Sage are apparent, it is impossible not to make a considerable deduction from his mere invention after reading the work of Espinel. The prologue, the adventure of the parasite, the dispersion of the company at Cacabelos, by the muleteer, the adventure of the robber's cave, the surprise by the corsairs, the contributions levied by those pious hermits, Don Raphael and Ambrose de Lamela, the service with the Duke of Lerma, and many of the other incidents, have nearly an exact parallel in the rudier and drier work of Espinel. Even some of the witty points, which we might be disposed at first sight to believe were Le Sage's, turn out to be the property of the Spanish chaplain,—such as Don Matthias de Silva's reply, when asked to fight a duel early in the morning, that he never rose before one even for a party of pleasure, and could not be expected to rise at six to have his throat cut.

This much, however, must be said for Le Sage, that he shows no desire to conceal the source of his obligations, for one of his characters is termed Marcos Obregon, and the Sangrado of his novel is undisguisedly the Sagredo of Espinel. Le Sage, however, knew that after every deduction was made on the score of invention, the merit of his novel would remain much the same. He threw lightheartedness and sunshine into the mean and gloomy pictures of the Spaniards, taking care to efface the recollections of folly and knavery in his adventurers by a cheerful and respectable termination of their career; and though the graduation of the fool into the knave, and the knave into the honest man, upon a mere principle of utility, be not perhaps in itself a very lofty moral, it is at all events far more agreeable than that of the Spanish novelists, where the rogue continues such to the last, and his only advancement is to a higher degree in the curriculum of knavery. A romance of a more pleasing and political cast than these tales of knavery was the historical romance, the *Civil Wars of Granada*, by Gines Perez de la Hita, printed in 1604, turning on the dissensions of the Zegris and Abencerrages during the reign of Boabdil, and giving occasion, as might be expected, to many fine descriptions of tournaments, feasts of canes, Moorish palaces and gardens, and the contrast between the Christian and the Moorish chivalry. From this romance Florian has mainly borrowed the idea and materials of his *Gonzales of Cordova*.

One other work of fiction deserving notice, though part-taking more of the nature of the satire than the novel, is the *Fray Gerundio* (Friar Gerund) of the Jesuit De l'Isle,—a severe, but rather tedious satire upon the absurdities and bad taste of the popular preachers of the time. In romantic literature the Spaniards at the present day seem to be entirely deficient. Translations of the popular French and English novels abound, but native talent or invention appears to be at an end.

In France the pastoral romances of D'Urfé and his imitators, and the heroic romances of Gomberville, Scudery, Manesse and others, are the chief productions of the French romancers.

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1 Das Novellenbuch, oder hundert Novellen nach alten Italienischen, Spanischen, Französischen, Lateinischen, Englischen, und Deutschen, bearbeitet von Eduard von Bulow, Leipzig, 1834. An excellent anthology, from the shorter literature of romance in the above languages; and not a mere translation, but in many cases a dexterous rifacimento, true to the spirit, while avoiding the dulness or indecency of the original.

2 Dunlop's History of Fiction, vol. iii., p. 119. Romance, and Calprende, whose object was "peindre Caton galant et Brutus dameret," were succeeded by an inundation of Fairy tales, contes des fées and voyages imaginaires, appearing about the close of the seventeenth and the commencement of the eighteenth century. This species of nursery literature, which, like the character of the fair Arricida in Clélie, was "furieusement extraordinaire et terriblement merveilleux," seemed peculiarly well suited to the frivolous tastes which then pervaded French society; and its temporary attraction was perhaps based in some degree upon the very want of reason and common-sense which rendered its permanent popularity impossible. When the sage Ogloiu in Voltaire asked the sultaness, "Comment préférez vous des contes que sont sans raison et que ne signifient rien," the answer of the sultaness was, "C'est precisement pour cela que nous les aimons."

The chief writers in this school of fiction, with whose compositions most of us have in our early days been rendered familiar through the little gilded volumes of Mr Newberry or his successors, were Perrault, the Countess D'Aulnoy, Madame Murat, and Mademoiselle de la Force, of whom Perrault is decidedly the best, his tales being distinguished by a simplicity and naïveté of style indispensable in this style of writing, and in which the productions of the ladies are deficient. No great share of original invention is displayed by any of them. The chief storehouse from which they drew was the Notti Piacevoli of the Italian novelist Straparola, and the very remarkable Neapolitan collection by Giambattista Basile, entitled the Pentamerons, of which the first edition appeared in 1637.

A slightly different direction was given to this taste for marvels by the translation into French of the Arabian Nights by Galland, and of the Persian Tales by Petit de la Croix and Le Sage, which led to a host of oriental imitations. And the childishness and absurdity of the whole of this department of literature was exposed with great wit and liveliness by Count Antony Hamilton in his Fleur d'Epine, and in his unfinished tale of the Four Pecorinos.

But this same period was distinguished by the productions of some writers of a higher order: Marivaux (1688-1763), Prevot (1697-1763), and Le Sage (1668-1746). Marivaux had a good deal of Richardson's power of delicate portrait-painting, by an accumulation of miniature touches; nor is he deficient in the power of managing the interesting situations with which his Mariamne especially abounds. And certainly, if we except Mademoiselle La Fayette's pleasing romance of the Princess of Cleves, he may claim the merit of having been the first in France to reduce the novel from mere extravagance, both of incident and character, to the standard of natural feeling, and to present us with real beings instead of fantastic creations of the imagination. His chief faults are his intolerable minuteness in trifles, and the affectation of the style, which is worthy of the society of the Hotel de Rambouillet. His best novel, too, the Mariamne, terminates abruptly and inartificially, with a conclusion like that of Zadig, "where nothing is concluded."

Prevot had a much higher and more romantic imagination than Marivaux. He threw into the novel something of the gloom and grandeur of tragedy; and hence he has been termed by some of his countrymen the Crebillon of romance. A visionary disposition and an ardent temperament had hurried him through a restless and passionate life, in which good and evil, suffering and enjoyment, had been scarcely blended; so that to the task of composition he brought the results of a mournful experience in aid of the resources of the imagination. To use the expression of Voltaire, "Il n'était pas seulement un auteur mais un homme, ayant connu et senti ses passions." Prevot is not a great inventor of character; for to all his heroes, Cleveland, Patrice, even the Chevalier des Grieux, he appears to have lent much of his own feelings and his own peculiarities of mind. Though an extremely voluminous novelist, none of his works appear now to be read or recollected except this painful but powerful story of Manon l'Escaut, a tale of crime and profligacy, strangely blended with generous feeling, which has been translated into English by Charlotte Smith. Manon l'Escaut, though little more than an episode, thrown off apparently with an easy negligence, bears the impress of genius, which it would be difficult to recognise in an authentic form in any of the larger productions of Prevot. Opening in the most unpromising manner, with what appears to be the common-place history of a vicious and discreditable connection between Des Grievoux and Manon, in which weakness of principle on the one side is made the dupe of profligacy and vanity, united with personal charms, on the other, the stream of feeling, at first polluted and turbid, works itself purer as it runs; and the scenes rise into elevation just as the character of Manon herself, the "fair mischief" of the romance, around whom Prevot has thrown no common fascination, changes from the selfish mistress into the faithful companion, following the fortunes of her husband, whom her charms had ruined, into disgrace and banishment, and dying by his side among the wilds of America.

Love also forms the subject of the novels of Madame de Tencin (died 1749), the Siege of Calais and the Count de Tencin, Comminges, which are admired for their tenderness and delicacy,—qualities we should hardly have anticipated from a lady who stood in so confidential a relation to the Cardinal Dubois, and who left her illegitimate child, D'Alembert, to the tender mercies of the public.

The greatest of the French novelists, however, is Le Sage. Sage. Even in his first romance, the Diable Boiteux, the plan of which has been suggested by the Diablo Cojuelo of Luis Valez de la Guevara, and which appeared in 1707, the wit, the graceful lightness, and the good-humoured sagacity of observation, which distinguished the character of Le Sage, were evident. The conception, in particular, of his esprit follet, a "diable bon-homme," with so much more gaiety than malice, that at times we are tempted to think him rather amiable than otherwise, was a great improvement on Guevara's; and the effect of the work was heightened by the skill with which he contrived to interweave with the story, if such it can be called, a multitude of contemporary allusions. Such indeed was its popularity and immediate sale, that two young men are said to have fought a duel in a bookseller's shop about their right to the only remaining copy; a well-attested anecdote, so much in the spirit of those satirical traits in which Asmodeus indulges that, as Sir Walter Scott remarks, it deserved to be recorded by the demon himself.

The reputation as a novelist which these most amusing revelations of Asmodeus had founded, was brought to its height by the production of the first three volumes of Gil Blas, bringing the history down to the retirement to Lirias,—a work, with the exception of Don Quixote, perhaps the most universally popular in fictitious writing, pleasing equally whether read in youth, in manhood, or in age, and containing, as has been justly said, more "useful knowledge" than twenty scientific and moral treatises. Le Sage's celebrated novel represents the level of life as it appears in a large capital, without either its brightest lights or its darkest shadows. He exhibits the average state of feeling among such communities,—loving virtue and good conduct within due bounds, but at the same time with that natural toleration for selfishness, servility, vanity, or occasional deviations from the path of strict integrity, which in such society is certain to be engendered and countenanced. As he saw nothing like an elevated morality in the world with which he was best acquainted,—the Parisian public,—so he has not attempted to introduce any such exalted tone of Romance feeling into his romance. His hero is an adventurer, to whom a hundred parallels might probably have been pointed out any evening among the audiences at the Foire, with fair abilities, with a kindly heart, and naturally good inclinations, but little moral firmness; by no means so enamoured of the straight road of right as not to turn aside occasionally when the deviation suits his purposes; duped at first by his own vanity, and then availing himself of his dear-bought experience to take his revenge on others in the same coin, but still with a gradually increasing preference for good conduct and virtue, and a secret determination, when a favourable opportunity offers, and his fortune is made, of becoming in due course an honest man.

To this conception of an agreeable rogue, refined partly by good feeling, and partly by calculation, into a better being, Le Sage has imported a wonderful air of particular combined with general truth; for though Gil Blas is the representative of so wide a class, that almost all must acknowledge at times some common, and perhaps not very flattering features of resemblance between ourselves and him, he preserves throughout his whole career the most distinct individuality of character. Nor are the other subsidiary agents of the novel deficient in distinctness and clearness of portraiture. Sangrado, Scipio, the sleek Ambrose de Lamela, the eloquent but apologetic archbishop, are made to stand before us. The historical personages have the same look of truth. Lerma and Olivarez, in particular, are admirably painted; so much so, that some Spanish critics, like De l'Isla and Llorente, have zealously maintained that Le Sage merely translated from some unknown Spanish manuscript which he had plundered. These critics reason, in fact, in such an ingenious way as to make the accuracy or inaccuracy of Le Sage's Spanish pictures equally available for their argument. If he be perfectly correct in his portraits of manners and his allusions to Spanish customs, that part of the work, they maintain, could not have been written by any but a Spaniard. If he falls into mistakes, it is equally clear that these apparent slips were introduced by him on purpose to hide the source of his depredations, and to confuse, like Cacus, the traces of his retreat. It is needless to say that the statement, at least as made in this unqualified form, is totally incorrect. Le Sage had no doubt thoroughly imbued himself with the spirit of the Spanish humour, as it appeared in Cervantes and the writers of the Picaresco school; and, as already said, he borrowed liberally incidents from various Spanish romances; but he lent to the whole a point, gaiety, and philosophy, which presented the old materials with all the appearance of novelty, and the charm of an original invention. "All is easy and good-humoured, gay, light, and lively; even the cavern of the robbers is illuminated with a ray of that wit with which Le Sage enlightens his whole narrative. It is a work which renders the reader pleased with himself and with mankind; where faults are placed before him in the light of follies rather than vices; and where misfortunes are so interwoven with the ludicrous that we laugh in the very act of sympathizing with them. All is rendered diverting, both the crimes and the retribution which follows them."

Though Le Sage rightly considered his characters as his chief object, he was well aware of the pleasing relief which might be given to his story by the judicious combination of the repose of landscape-painting with the bustle of incident; and though he does not succeed in bringing before us with the vividness of Cervantes the sombre and parched plains or rugged mountain scenery of Spain, his work contains some country pictures, in a style of placid beauty, which are models of stillness, comfort, and serenity. To whom, for instance, does not that modest demesne at Larias, watered by the Gundalaviar, with its mansion-house of four little pavilions, its garden bordered with orange trees, and ornamented with its basin of white marble, and the quaint, respectable, old Moorish furniture of the apartments, not to mention the olla podridas of Master Joachim, and the revenue of 500 ducats a year, rise up before the mind's eye as the very ideal of that happy rural retreat which, to each of us, is to be the Euthanasia of a life of carefulness and toil; making us long for the time when we may be able to say with its fortunate possessor,

"Inveat fortunam; spea et fortuna valet Sat me lausistas, ludite nunc alios."

It is unnecessary to dwell long on the romances of the Crebillon younger Crebillon (1707-1777), as to which the only circumstance which is remarkable is, that so much frivolity of manner and real poverty of invention could have obtained a temporary popularity even by the license in which they indulged; yet that they were very popular for a time, we know; for Sterne represents his fille de chambre inquiring at a circulating library for the Egarements du Coeur et de l'Esprit in 1768. French writers, however, appear to recognise in his pictures some resemblance to the society of the time; for D'Alembert says of him, "he draws with a delicate and just pencil the refinement, the shades and the graces, of our vices."

Much higher talent, though, like Crebillon's, stained by Diderot, a shameful association with licentious and profligate pictures, appears in the romances of Diderot (1713-1784). His talent as a narrator, in particular, was scarcely inferior to Voltaire's. He had the picturesque particularity of Richardson, with a more condensed expression. It is not, however, in his larger and more notorious romances, such as the Religieuse, that this talent is displayed. In these the tendency is as conspicuous as the indecency and impiety. It is in such short tales as L'Histoire de Mademoiselle de la Chaux, or Les Deux Amis de la Bourbonne, short popular simple histories, contrasting strongly with that air of false simplicity, in reality tricked out with sentimental fard and tinsel, which Marmontel (1719-1798) has given to his Marmontel amusing but not very moral tales.

The romances of Voltaire (1694-1778), such as Zadig, Voltaire's the Princess of Babylon, Babouk, and Candide, have but romances slender pretensions to the title. They are chiefly satirical fictions or illustrations in the form of a tale of irreligious or antisocial opinions. Their wit, their biting irony, their familiarity with the baser parts of human nature, their power of rendering trifles pleasing by the art of narration, are undeniable; but we must not look in them for probable incident, for Voltaire generally chooses, as if on purpose, some extravagant oriental groundwork as his canvas, and borrows from Ariosto, from Gulliver, from the Arabian Nights, or any source which suits his purpose; nor for the delineation of natural characters, for both the incidents and personages are merely made the instruments for working out the preconceived theorem. They produce their effect, such as it is, not by their fidelity to nature, but by the ingenious malice with which its features are distorted.

From the time of Marivaux downwards, the tendency of the French novel had been to narrow the province of incident, and to extend proportionally that of sentiment. With Rousseau (1712-1778) this tendency reaches its height. Rousseau. The description of feelings, and particularly of such as, though often experienced, are seldom expressed in words, was his peculiar field. Invention, either of character or incident, he has none. To paint one strong passion, to invest vice with an air of insane but reasoning morality,— "To make madness beautiful, and cast O'er erring deeds and thoughts a heavenly hue Of words like sunbeams, dazzling as they pass;— this is the main aim of his Julie, and the only one in which

Sir Walter Scott's Lives of the Novelists—Le Sage. Rousseau has been at all successful. Even in this respect, too, the declamatory tone, the continued delirium of feeling, the total want of repose, which characterize the work, combined with the pedantry of its dissertations, become painful and oppressive. "Ce sont des amans," said Rousseau himself, speaking of his characters, "et non pas des academiciens." Never was an apology more misplaced. The real fault of Julie and St Preux is, that they have both too much of the academician in their composition, and too little of the lover, so far as the expression of natural passion in simple words is concerned. We have never been able, in reading the romance, to persuade ourselves that its real eloquence was not as dubious as its morality. It is not easy, indeed, in perusing Rousseau's apostrophies to purity and virtue, to avoid thinking of the strange commentary which his practice furnished to his theory. It was said of Sterne with severity, but perhaps with some justice, that he could bestow upon a dead ass the pity which he denied to a living mother. And the man of nature and of truth, who expends his trembling sensibilities on paper, suffers a fellow-servant to be punished for the theft he had himself committed, and provides for his natural children in the foundling hospital.

The total corruption of an exhausted society, tottering to its fall, with the external varnish of gaiety and wit by which it tried to gild its decay, are aptly represented in the licentious romances of Louvet and La Clos; its still more vulgar profligacy in the coarse and incoherent, but occasionally striking and original novels of Restif de la Bretonne (1731-1806). The works of the two former writers are unfortunately but too well known; the numerous and hasty productions of the eccentric printer, who was accustomed often to set up his strange compositions in type, without a manuscript, as the ideas occurred to him, are now almost completely forgotten. Yet Schiller and several eminent German critics have spoken with high approbation of the vigour and talent which they evince in some parts, however defective or revolting in others. "I have scarcely imagined anything," says Restif, in his Drame de la Vie; "I have simply related; my life has been so full of events, that I have made four-and-twenty volumes out of it." Any one, indeed, who writes, as Laharpe says of Restif, in his Correspondence Russe, under the persuasion that all that he had seen and thought, or learnt, deserved to be printed, and who acted faithfully on that principle, could hardly fail to produce compositions with very nearly the merits and demerits of the novels of Restif; that is to say, with the coarseness of feeling which was natural to the man, with the disjointed air which a set of unconnected incidents from life must present, and yet with that degree of freshness and truthfulness of painting which sketches from life almost invariably possess, however humble or disagreeable may be the department from which they are drawn. His best novel is usually considered to be the Paysan Perverti, which appeared in 1776.

Two writers may be pointed out, however, about this period, who were the representatives, if not of a better taste, at least of better feelings.

Bernardin de St Pierre (1737-1814) may be regarded as the connecting-link between the eighteenth and the nineteenth century: a graft of Fenelon upon Rousseau. His pathos no doubt often merges in a weakly sentimentalism; but the calm idyllic beauty of the Paul and Virginia and the Indian Cottage (1789-1792) was not without its use in restoring to French literature a feeling for nature and its simple enjoyments, and the acknowledgment of a Providence, a belief which both philosophy and fiction had for some time past been labouring to obliterate.

The defects of St Pierre, with very little of his redeeming excellences, appear in the Atala, Rene, and Natchez of Chateaubriand. He is, no doubt, in some departments an original thinker, and a man of a poetical imagination, though a degree of vagueness and mysticism mingles even with the best of his works; but as a novelist, his sickly sentiment and exaggeration of feeling are fatal to his success.

When the limbo of the Revolution, after its billowy heaving began to settle again into something like a calm, under the despotism of the Consulate, the novel took the direction of broad and extravagant humour, derived from the gaieties and vulgarities of middle life, and, as might naturally be expected, liberally sprinkled with indecency, in the voluminous novels of Pigault Le Brun,—to whom it would be unfair to deny considerable powers of broad mirth, and a fertility in imaginary burlesque situations which remind us of Smollett. But the questionable character of the novel-writing of this period is not universal. In the tales of Madame Cottin, the authoress of Elizabeth and Mathilde, a pure morality and feminine tenderness reappear; and though those of Madame de Staël, with all their eloquence, occasionally inculcate more doubtful lessons, her genuine admiration for pure and elevated feeling prevents her from willingly lending her talents to the palliation of vice. The novels of Madame de Staël, however, are far more German in their character than French.

The works of the literary veteran Nodier certainly owe Nodier their attractions more to the charms of a beautiful style than to their substance. Throughout his whole course he has been but an imitator, putting on successively the manner of other writers. The Werther of Goethe appears to have first given the tone to his novels, and the passionate energy and wild complaints of the German suicide were reproduced in his tale of Therese Aubert. To the influence of Goethe succeeded that of Byron, and the spirit of the Corsair and Lara were infused into the bandit Jean Shogar. From Byron he passed to Scott, whom he has imitated in his Trilby, ou le lutin d'Argail,—a production, the effect of which, though meant to be serious and pathetic, is unintentionally of the most comic kind, for the "tricky spirit" of Argyle in the hands of Nodier becomes one of the most absurd of supernatural conceptions. In his Smarra, again, a Thessalian story in the manner of the sorceries and drolleries in the Golden Ass of Apuleius, he seems to have been influenced by the German night-pieces of the school of Hoffmann; and he certainly succeeds almost as well as his German master in producing a strange emphatic effect by a cloud of misty, murky phantoms, which pass before us as if in a feverish and uneasy dream.

With the restoration of the Bourbons, some degree of external decency at least distinguished the productions of the French press, though still the license which its novelists permitted to themselves in their comic works, and the extravagant and terrible cast of their more tragic stories, indicated at once a looseness of morality and a coarseness of taste which might, in some measure, have prepared the world for that strange and revolting spectacle which the literature of fiction has presented in France since the Revolution of 1830. The manner of Pigault Le Brun was imitated and improved upon by Paul de Kock; for, adopting his principle of drawing chiefly from middle life, and his love for the representation of comic mischances, he has thrown into the best of his novels scenes of simple humour, of tenderness, and even of powerful passion, to which the novelist of the Revolution had made no pretensions. To sneer at him as a Parisian cockney, or as the romance-writer of the Grisettes, is easy; but we are much mistaken if his tales, homely and even coarse as they may be, will not be read when the atrocities of Sue and Masson, and the delicate depravities of Balzac, are forgotten.

In the higher sphere of romance we have, during the same period, the earlier productions of Victor Hugo, Hans Hugo of Iceland and Bug Jargal. Hans of Iceland, wild and extravagant as it is, is evidently not the work of an ordinary writer. A stern, savage, northern spirit is breathed into Romance, the romance. Spiagudry, Orugix, even the monster from whom the tale derives its name, strange and ghastly creations as they are, exercise a certain fascination over the mind; and the youthful poet has turned to great account the dreary wilds, gloomy lakes, stormy seas, and ruined fortresses of Scandinavia. Bug Jargal was decidedly inferior to Hans of Iceland. The essential improbability in the character of a Negro passionately in love with a white woman, and yet tempering the wildest passion with the deepest respect, is obvious; nor is that improbability disguised by the art with which Hugo has framed his story.

There was more of genius, we think, in his Dernier Jour d'un Condamné, in which Hugo, like Sterne, has taken a single captive, shut him up in his dungeon, and then "looked through the twilight of the grated door to take his picture." In this little work he has shown how a profound interest might be given to a mere register of sensations, and a dramatic movement imparted to a monologue, in which the scene shifts only from the Bicêtre to the Conciergerie, the Hotel de Ville, and the Place de Grève. Hugo's great novel, Notre Dame de Paris, appeared in 1831. It is needless to speak of a work which has been more than once translated into English; and the characteristics of which, the mingled genius and extravagance, the poetical spirit in which it is conceived, and the want of nature in the characters which it portrays, resembling distorted and hideous masques rather than men, are now very generally and correctly appreciated.

The popularity of the romances of Scott led, about the same time, to a multitude of imitations by Jacob and others, of which the Cinq Mars of Alfred de Vigny appears to be generally considered the most successful.

We have no idea of entering on that mass of revolting performances, equally offensive to good morals and good taste, with which the French press has teemed since 1830; and which we are but too happy to consider, with the French themselves, as a literature of transition. This school of blood and voluptuousness, funeral horrors and drunken orgies, the transitions in which remind one of the stage arrangement in the Rehearsal,—"the coffin opens, and a banquet is discovered,"—we feel assured can be of no long duration; and already we believe that the French public begin to feel that they have had enough of the endless Balzac, and Janin, and Sue, and Soulie, and Masson, and the other labourers in this Montfaucon of fiction. As for Madame Dudevant or George Sand,—the Chevalier d'Eon of French literature,—a being whose sex it would be impossible to ascertain from her works, with the warm passions and headlong eloquence of the woman, and the audacious speculation of the man,—while the principles which she labours to inculcate are of the most odious nature, and the cynical hardihood with which she paints scenes from which any woman would turn aside, is perhaps the very worst proof which French literature at present presents of a degraded standard of delicacy and right feeling among the female sex,—we cannot deny that she appears to us to possess far greater talent, even genius, though misdirected, than any of the other ephemeral novelists to which we have alluded. In particular, she has an imagination singularly alive to natural beauty; her pictures of scenery are frequently captivating; and one evening landscape of Venice, in her Lettres Venetiques, has the combined charm of deep sensibility and truth. By far the most pleasing of her novels, because it in a great measure keeps in the background her peculiar opinions, is Andre. And yet even the general purity and right feeling of the tale is marred and interrupted by some passages which English readers at least would wish to blot.

The field of the novel or romance is not that which has been cultivated in Germany with the most success. The labourers indeed have been many; the produce most abundant; but the quality of the harvest is at best equivocal. Down to the time of Goethe and Tieck, the German literature of fiction was almost entirely imitative, deriving both novels and their form and spirit from other nations. Since their time, if romances it presents a greater air of originality, it has generally assumed a character so fantastic, so unreal, so unlike all that we have been accustomed to associate with the idea of a novel, that it is extremely difficult to comprehend what is really the conception of the word entertained in Germany.

As we have no very high idea of the German prose fictions, the space which we propose to devote to them will be extremely limited; for we shall confine ourselves to a mere indication of the successive phases which the German romance has presented. In doing so, it seems unnecessary to go back beyond the latter portion of the eighteenth century, or to revive the names of works and authors which even the Germans themselves have forgotten. The earlier part of the eighteenth century had been occupied with numerous imitations of the Robinson Crusoe of Defoe, or of the family pictures of Richardson, the merits of which are not of a nature to demand notice in the present sketch.

In the Greek romances of Wieland (1763–1812), such Wieland, as the Agathon, the Aristippos, Peregrinus Proteus, and Agathodemon, the same didactic tendency is observable which distinguishes those of Voltaire, but without their cynical and mocking tone, and with a much greater power, if not of actually inventing character, at least of working up the scanty materials furnished by history into a consistent and plausible portrait of the historical personages of antiquity; as in his Socrates, and still more perhaps in his Aristippus. The main fault of his novels, besides this didactic tone, which pervades them all, is the frequent repetitions which they contain of the same views and personages. Agathon in one manner, and the Alderites in the other, contain the germ of almost all Wieland's other writings. The sceptical Hippias, for instance, only puts off the Athenian stole in Agathon, to assume the mantle of the Calendar; the Dance of that novel revives again in Theocles and Devidass; the youth of Athagon, in Delphi, is the prototype of that of Peregrinus in Parium; and many such instances must occur to any one familiar with Wieland. He is a mannerist, in short, as to his matter, and the mannerism extends even to his style, which, though flowing and facile, has not a little of the solemn loquacity of Boccaccio. This diffuseness is less felt in his shorter tales, where his philosophy is not so obtrusively displayed; and for this reason we prefer his Don Syferio de Rosaleo,—the history of a Quixotic believer in fairyism, gradually converted to common-sense by the extravagant demands which are made upon his belief, assisted by the charms of a mortal beauty,—and his little romance of the Salamander and the Statue, to his more elaborate and aspiring compositions.

The influence of the novels of Richardson and of Fielding re-appears about this time in a liberal effusion of family novels, some portraying the serious and sentimental, others the comic aspect of domestic life. Among the sentimental novelists, Augustus La Fontaine (1758–1831) may be considered as the most successful, and undoubtedly the most popular. He painted life as he had seen it in the little German towns, villages, and chateaux of respectable proprietors about him, or as he had witnessed it during his campaigns as army chaplain, without ornament or alteration, without any pretension to imagination; and though there is at times something vulgar and tawdry in his sentimentalist, there is also a great deal of quiet simple nature in such scenes of common life and domestic happiness as he has exhibited in his family of Haller; and a tone of frankness and Romance, good humour which carries the reader pleasingly along through incidents and characters that in themselves are common-place enough.

The comedy of family life found numerous representatives, of whom Wetzel, Müller, Schulz, and Hippel, attracted some notice in their day and generation. Even yet the Siegfried von Lindenbergs of Müller, which appeared about 1779, and of which many editions have appeared, may be admitted to be a natural and amusing performance.

A union of the sentimental with the comic in these domestic pictures was attempted at a somewhat later date in the very singular novels of Richter (1763–1825), a man of high powers, which he knew not how to use, and which were alloyed in no common degree by false taste and an incurable affectation of singularity. His earliest novel, the Grönlandische Processe, appeared in 1784. The tricks and clap-traps to which Sterne occasionally descends we find habitual with Richter. The very titles of some of his works, such as Selections from the Papers of the Devil, or Recreations under the Cranium of a Giantess, and the absurd devices by which he generally introduces his narration, as in the Hesperus, where a series of letters is represented as mysteriously conveyed to the author in letter-bags tied round the neck of a shock-dog, betray a mind anxious to astonish by fantastic conceits, and insensible to the beauty of simplicity. The constant recurrence of these instances of literary quackery, the want of connection which his chaotic narrations exhibit, combined with the visionary cast of his views, justifying his own remark, that the empire of the Germans was peculiarly that of the air, has been fatal, and we think justly, to all attempts to naturalize Richter in this country. His pathos we think in the worst style of false and often meaningless effusions of sentimentality; but as a quiet humourist, blending good feeling with his satire, he is sometimes not unsuccessful.

A strong contrast to these pictures of ordinary life, whether serious or comic, was presented by the mass of romances connected with the feudal periods in Germany, which appeared from about 1780 to 1800, and formed the counterpart of the Ritter-stücken or chivalrous dramas with which the stage had been inundated since the example had been set by Goethe's Götz of Berlichingen and Babo's Otho of Wittelsbach. Cramer, Spiess, Schlenkert, and Veit Weber, (Leonhard Wächter), were the favourite writers of this turbulent school of fiction, which in all probability took its rise from the popularity of the romances of Mrs Radcliffe. Their materials were the blood-stained period of Faustrecht and Vehm-Gerichte, feudal tyrants, suffering damsels, devoted knights, with abundance of single combats and splintering of lances, raising of trap-doors, escapes by sliding panels, imprisonments in bottomless dungeons, murders, witchcraft, and apparitions; in short, all that apparatus of the terrible, which, even in such hands, has a certain fascination for the boy, but awakens only a feeling of the ridiculous in the man.

Another department of German fictions, likewise dealing with the marvellous, but fortunately cultivated by writers of a very different order of talent, was the Märchen, or legendary tale. Three different modes may be pointed out in which this class of subjects has been treated.

The first is exemplified in the Volksmärchen, or popular tales of Musaeus, in which the groundwork of marvellous tradition which the writer has selected is treated, not in the spirit of belief, but of a laughing scepticism, and where the writer relies for effect, not so much upon the interest of his materials, as upon the wit, the satirical allusions, and the quaint description or broad drollery which he is able to infuse into the original legend. Whatever in such traditions bordered upon awe or terror, Musaeus rejected; he viewed even these creations of the fancy in a prosaic light, and selected only such features as could be wrought into his ingenious mosaic of fanciful marvel, picturesque description, and sly and somewhat irreligious pleasantry, in the style of Voltaire. What he attempted, however, he accomplished with success. Some of his tales, such as Stumm Liebe (Dumb Love), and Melechcala, might be cited as models of the art of combining the childish interest of a nursery tale with that show of irony or philosophy which affords even to grave personages an apology for the perusal of popular tales.

In this semi-derisive style of treating the traditional legends of his country, Musaeus remains the solitary writer of talent. This natural tendency of the German mind towards earnestness and belief, even in the case of the marvellous, led to a very decided preference of the serious manner in the treatment of such themes. And undoubtedly at the head of this second mode of treating the legend stand Ludwick Tieck (born 1773). Questionable as we think his claims are to the highest distinction, either as a poet or a novelist, in the proper sense of the term, his success in the management of traditional marvels in a poetical spirit is undeniable. He seems without an effort to throw himself back into the spirit of primitive and superstitious periods, when the agency of an invisible world formed an article of belief, and exercised the strongest influence over the conduct of life; a time of supposed prodigies, and omens, and secret charms, whose agency pervaded and controlled the course of nature. In reading the best of these legends of Tieck, such as The Fair Eckhart, The Love Charm, or Peter of Abano, we feel that he has the power of carrying us back in advanced age into the very realm of Fairyland, and subjecting us anew to the influences of childhood. "These legends have a freshness about them like that of the earliest morning, a sweetness as of wild flowers, and a calm beauty, caught as it were from a radiant sunset or a rising morn. The reader of the Runenberg is brought face to face with the presiding spirits of the animal and vegetable kingdoms; now he feels as if he were embosomed in luxurious vegetation, bathed in fertilizing dew, and fanned by balmy zephyrs, and now as if he were transported to cavern depths or darkest mines, where mountain spirits exercise an unholy influence. All the other legends, The Fair Eckhart, The Fairies, and The Trusty Eckhart, have the same beauty and significance; but it is impossible by mere description to give any idea of their peculiar nature. They must be studied and felt to be at all understood."

We are here speaking of Tieck merely as the writer who has treated the traditional tale in the most poetical spirit. Within the domain of the novel, taking the term even in a very extensive sense, our estimate of his powers will be very different.

The mode of treating the legendary lore of Germany, of which the tales of Tieck had furnished the first example, as the most agreeable to the national character, soon found numerous, or, it might rather be said, numberless imitators. For the last thirty years the example of Tieck has been implicitly followed, and all the legendary novelists of Germany have been melancholy and gentlemanlike, after the pattern of the Phantasus. Of these, the writers best known to English readers, through translation, are the Baron de la Motte Fouqué, the author of Undine, the Magic Ring, and Sinntraum; Chamisso, the author of Peter Schlemihl; and Apel, the author of the Freyschütz. It may be doubted whether better specimens of the German tale might not be selected from writers with which the English public is not familiar,—some of Henrich Steffens' short legendary stories in particular,—such as the Sleeping Bride (Die Schlafende).

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1 Germany, by Bisset Hawkins, p. 126. Romance, Braut), and the Nightly Petrothal in the Church of Rörwig (Die Nächtliche trauung im Kirche Rörwig), which have not yet found a translator, appear not undeserving of the attention of the lovers of the marvellous. In the wild productions of Achim von Arnim, such as the Countess Dolores and Isabella of Egypt, traits of talent sparkle in the midst of absurdity. And from the works of Clemens Brentano, and of Zshokke, the author of Abelino, several interesting legends might be selected. In particular, we are surprised that the simple and beautiful legendary tale by the former, "The History of the Brave Kasperl and the Fair Amner," is yet untranslated.

Hoffmann. The third form in which the Märchen was employed, but at the same time perverted from its proper purpose, and subjected to a more Mezentian union than it had submitted to even under the satirical despotism of Musaeus, was in the fantastic or grotesquely terrible manner introduced by Hoffmann, and since his death so injudiciously and unsuccessfully imitated both in Germany and in France. Hoffmann's manner cannot be considered as entirely original, since an approach to it may be pointed out in the Diable Amoureux of Cazotte. It is singular, however, that his productions, such as the Sandman, the Magnetizer, the Devil's Elixir, and others of that class, deriving their whole interest and effect from their connection with the peculiar nature and idiosyncrasy of the writer's mind, and so incapable of being imitated with the least success by any one not possessing the same anomalous mental conformation and physical irritability with the Prussian judge, should have exercised a very decided though temporary influence over the literature, not merely of Germany, but of Europe; and it proves that, notwithstanding the extravagances, there does reside in them some charm—something which appeals successfully, not, indeed, to the mind in its calmest mood, but to the imagination when in a state of temporary excitement. Only in such a mind as Hoffmann's, moulded into its existing shape by an ill-omened union of influences, mental and bodily, habitually haunted with gorgons and presentiments, seeing traces, as it were, of the devil's hoof in the commonest paths of life, and starting and trembling at the chimeras with which his imagination peopled solitudes—could the phantoms bred in his eccentric brain, and nurtured amidst the fumes of a Berlin tavern, have ever assumed that appearance of reality and belief which could render their introduction into a work of fiction at all practicable. Only by a mind accustomed, from a painful experience, to brood over and dissect the origin and connection of these strange phenomena, half mental half physical, which makes "life a dream," but with a nightmare accompaniment, could the possible connection of this phantasmasoria with real existence, in morbid minds, be rendered so far intelligible as to redeem them from the charge of the merest puerility. Hoffmann's tales, though they constantly suggest the idea that they have had their source in the inspiration of opium, seem really to be the only compositions in this style of grotesque horror which can be said to possess the redeeming quality of genius. They remind us of the images of our dreams, calling up before us, as in sleep, long perspectives of gloomy vastness, broken here and there by the light of the strangest ignes fatui, along which are seen, fitting in antic movements, bands of the most fantastic creatures, such as those which, in the pictures of Teniers, disturb the solitude of St Anthony, or which give a strange blending of the humorous and the horrible to the distempered sketches of Callot. Yet, as a proof that the talent of Hoffmann was by no means confined merely to the fantastic and the supernatural, we may notice his truthful and vigorous picture of the German burgher life of the middle ages, in his Master Martin and his Apprentices, and his Mademoiselle de Seudery, a tale of vivid and fascinating interest, founded on a historical groundwork, moving in the simplest and most direct manner towards its object, and exciting the feeling of curiosity and suspense even to the last.

Some notoriety of an evil kind was obtained by a class Heinsc of novels in which the attempt was made to invest sensuality with the graces of art, or to merge art in sensuality. Such were the Ardinghello of Heinsc (1749-1803), in which painting was made the apology for the introduction of voluptuous pictures, and his Hildegard von Hohenthal, in which music was made to minister to a similar purpose,—no unfit sequel to a literary life which commenced with a translation of Petrosius. In truth, in the whole range of the German novels, the tendency to an undue license of this kind is observable. In those of Goethe, though veiled by an appearance of decency, it is sufficiently perceptible; nor does Tieck appear free from the common taint. Many passages in Wilhelm Meister are highly objectionable; and such a novel as the Wahlverwandtschaften we regard as untranslatable into English.

Of Goethe's novels we have already expressed our opinion in our biographical article on Goethe himself. If the merits of a novel consisted, not in exhibiting an epitome of human life, more or less poetically conceived, according to the prosaic or imaginative turn of the writer's mind, but in speculating ingeniously on painting, agriculture, landscape, gardening, the rules of good composition, or the state of the theatre, connecting these speculations by a thread of mystical narrative, and introducing us to a set of beings without the least trace of reality about them, who all appear to be playing some theatrical part in a dreamy representation of life, which seems to have no intelligible object,—Goethe may be a great novelist. With an English public, demanding some firm basis of reality, instead of that unsubstantial cloud-land which envelopes us in the Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre and Wanderjahre, and accustomed to insist on a plain meaning as a preliminary to poetical embellishment, he never can be a favourite. A novel which does not explain its purpose without a commentary seems to violate the essential laws of such compositions; but a novel, in regard to the object of which no two commentators agree is an anomaly in literature. Most of the German critics, indeed, though professing a great admiration of these singular performances of Goethe, are careful to confine their observations in regard to the meaning or object of the novels to the merest generalities. They describe Wilhelm Meister, to use the congenial language of an English admirer, as a picture of "warm, hearty, sunny, human endeavour, a free recognition of life in its depth, variety, and majesty, but as yet no divinity recognised there." The latter portion of the sentence is intelligible, and is unfortunately true, but the rest reminds us of Mr Dangle's remark, that the interpreter appears the harder to be understood of the two.

These observations apply, with slight modification, to the Tieck novels of Tieck, when he abandons the province of the traditional tale, and attempts subjects connected with real life; the characters, the incidents, the whole cast of the tale, appear so extravagant, that, but for the grave and laudatory criticism with which these effusions seem invariably to be received by his countrymen, it would be difficult to believe the author serious. His first romance, William Lovel, was a gloomy and revolting extravagance, and his later caprices, such as Das Alte Buch (The Old Book), the Vogelscheuche (Scarecrow), Eugensina and Laune (Self-will and Humour), Wunderlichkeiten (Marvels), are utterly unworthy of a man of genius. Even the merits of his Dichterbuben (A Poet's Life), have been greatly exaggerated. Any tale in which Marlowe and Shakespeare figure as actors has a certain interest for a Briton; but beyond some eloquent disputations on the drama, and the formation of a poet's mind, in which Shakespeare and his companions are made to utter modern German theories, the most opposite to English notions of the sixteenth century, we cannot perceive Romance wherein the peculiar merit of this much-lauded performance lies. Tieck has said absurdly and presumptuously of Sir Walter Scott, that "it is surprising how little he wants to be a poet, but how much that little outweighs all that he is." Let any one who has read Tieck's *Aufbruch in den Cevennen*, in which he has come in competition with the Scotch novelist on an historical subject, judge whether he has himself made a nearer approximation to that character.

The talent displayed by Schiller in his *Verbrecher aus Ehre*, and his fine fragment of the *Armenian, or the Ghost Seer*, excites regret that he did not give us less of philosophy, and more of fiction. The latter is an unfinished tale of mystery, of deep interest, the idea of which, it is supposed, was suggested by the juggleries of Cagliostro, and in which Schiller, though he never witnessed the scenery which he describes, has caught the spirit of silence and secrecy which seems to pervade Venice, with the same success as, in his *William Tell*, he has transported us into the mountain recesses of the Oberland. And Lord Byron has recorded the strong impression made upon him by the recollection of the incomprehensible Armenian, one of those conceptions which he was accustomed by anticipation to associate with the image of the city of the sea.

Several female novelists, too, have respectably supported the pretensions of their sex; such as Fanny Tarnow, the Baroness de la Motte Fouque, Johanna Schopenhauer, Henrietta Hanke, and Caroline Pichler, the able authoress of *Agathocles*. Many of their productions exhibit talent, grace, and facility of style; but we should be at a loss to name any for which the praise of genius could justly be claimed.

The class of romances called *Kriminal Geschichten*, turning on stories of secret guilt discovered by circumstantial evidence, has been a numerous one in Germany. At the head of this class of novelists stands Kruse, who certainly possesses in a high degree a power which at the present day appears to be rather a rare one, that of constructing an ingenious and complicated plot, keeping the curiosity constantly on the stretch, and defying conjecture as to the result, till the author himself chooses to furnish the solution. The *Ring, Oath and Conscience, Diadota's Birth*, the *Dance of Death*, and the *Red Dragon*, are masterpieces in this style of invention, which, though of a sufficiently prosaic character, yet possesses at least this cardinal merit, that it is rarely tedious.

Historical romances have always been numerous in Germany; and after the appearance of those of Sir Walter Scott they became still more so. Some of the chivalrous pictures of Tromlitz, Van de Velde, and Blumenhagen, in this style, are spirited, but in general the historical romance of Germany does not rise above mediocrity. "Sunt bona, sunt quaedam mediocris, sunt mala plena." Let us except the very remarkable tale of *Michael Kohlhaas*, by the unfortunate dramatist Kleist (1776-1811). In all of Kleist's tales there is too much of a spectral and fatalistic character; he delighted to contemplate and to delineate life as necessitated by a mysterious and iron destiny. *Kohlhaas* is not entirely free from a tinge of the supernatural, which harmonizes ill with the deep, humble, human interest of the tale itself; and nowhere does the idea of a grim and unrelenting fate appear in more saddening colours. There is truth, therefore, in Goethe's remark as to this romance, that "it brings promiscuously into view a dissonant principle in nature, with which poetry ought not to meddle, with which it cannot reconcile itself, let the handling of the matter be never so exquisite." And yet this vigorous and truthful picture from the Lutheran times must be to English readers an object of interest, from the contrast it exhibits to the usual style of the German novel; for it is told with a directness, a simplicity, a dramatic liveliness, and an absence of unnecessary reflection, which are qualities of rare occurrence beyond the Rhine.

Of late years the German, following the example of the English novelists, have somewhat enlarged their sphere; and have addressed themselves seriously to the portraiture of contemporaneous society, in its true living features, as contrasted with such vaguely sentimental, and decidedly erotic productions as the *Werther* and *Wahlverwandtschaften* of Goethe. Several novels of this class have reached us, all of which exhibit more truthfulness and fidelity to nature than we find in the older writers; but, as a counterbalance, there is decidedly less imagination, and the characters, when original, and not borrowed from English authors, are commonplace and dull. The best of these novels is the *Sollen und Haben* (Debit and Credit) of Freytag, which is Freytag-spirited, and conveys a faithful picture of life in Silesia, both in the noble and the mercantile circles. But it is impossible to read many pages of that novel without perceiving the extraordinary influence which the perusal of the works of Dickens has exercised over the mind of the author. It-sig the Jew, and the old beer-drinking porter, are properties of Mr Dickens' which Freytag has unceremoniously appropriated. He has hit off the minute, quaint, and sometimes grotesque descriptive manner of the English novelist to the life; and in his more tragic situations the resemblance is so close as almost to have the effect of a parody. We may also notice a very pleasing tale of historical as well as domestic interest, entitled *Frederick the Great and his Merchant*, a good translation of which has recently been made by Lady Maxwell Wallace. The name of the author is not given; but if this is the first attempt of an aspiring novelist, we feel confident that it is only the precursor of greater works, and that Germany may yet (for she has not done so hitherto), produce a novelist worthy of a European reputation.

We must not exclude from this sketch a notice of Hans Christian Andersen, the Danish novelist, whose beautiful tales have been translated into German, English, Dutch, French, and Russian. Without any pretensions to art, he has attained that which no study can give, a perfectly natural expression. Without resorting to the mechanism of verse, he touches intuitively and in succession the chords of human sympathy; and more almost than any other living author possesses the magical secret of endearing himself through his works, to the reader, without exhibiting any trace of egotism or personal intrusion. Nor are high proofs of talent in the fictional department wanting in another region of Scandinavia. The Swedish novels of Frederica Bremer are well known in England through the medium of Bremer's translations by Mary Howitt; and though curiosity regarding the customs of a land comparatively unknown to us might account for some portion of the interest which they excited, their intrinsic merit alone fully warranted the introduction. Her novels are of the domestic kind, simple, and true to nature, without much pretension in the way of plot, but always graphic in description, distinct in delineation of character, and in sentiment irreproachable and refined. Less known perhaps to English readers, but yet deserving of notice, are the novels of Madame Carlen, also Madame Carlen, a Swede, whose writings display a strong imaginative tendency; some lines verging on that dubious and undefined manner which we are contented to designate as the "melodramatic."

(G.M.R.) (W.E.A.) ROMAN HISTORY.

SECT. I.—SITE OF ROME.

The site of Rome occupies a cluster of low eminences threaded by the winding stream of the Tiber. The Campagna, the modern name for the tract of land which encompasses it, stretching from the sea to the Apennines, is not a wholly level surface, but is generally varied with gentle undulations. At one or two points only, such as in the neighbourhood of Alba and of Rome, this tameness of character is broken by more abrupt and prominent irregularities. The Alban hills soar in several peaks to an extreme altitude of 3000 feet, and inclose two deep basins filled with water; but the hills of Rome hardly attain 150 feet, and the Tiber, running among them, serves to drain the moisture descending from their flanks. The presence of marine deposits in the gravel which composes a portion of their soil shows that these hills have been raised in primitive times from the bed of an ocean; while the configuration of the hills themselves bears token of the volcanic agency by which this revolution was effected. On the left bank of the river they form a large segment of a circle, rising for the most part almost imperceptibly from the Campagna beyond, but falling more suddenly into the interior crater; while at either extremity, to the North and South, they descend abruptly into the bed of the Tiber. On the right they extend more irregularly along the river bank, rising at one point to a somewhat greater elevation; while the ridge of the Monte Mario, less closely connected with them, in the rear, reaches to a height of nearly 500 feet.

In the hollow formed by the circumvallation of the left bank stands a single hillock with a level summit and steep sides, well defined, and of figure nearly rectangular, measuring about 500 yards by 400. Removed about a quarter of a mile from the bank of the river, and almost screened from it by the advancing horns of the circumjacent ridge, screened still more effectually in early antiquity by the thick jungle which choked the valleys all around it, this hill—the Palatine, as it came in after ages to be called—could hardly be detected by the eyes of a stranger from beyond the limits of the inclosure. Such a site might naturally tempt the wandering brigands of Central Italy to fix on it their permanent settlements. Though traces may be discovered in the later manners of the Italians of their original descent from a race of nomades, yet we find them distinguished at the first dawn of history by the general adoption of settled habitations. The idea of the city, and of municipal institutions, was as strongly developed in Italy as in Greece; and in this respect the earliest known inhabitants of either peninsula were equally distinguished from the Gaul, the Briton, and the German. The strongholds of these people were the summits of bold eminences, such as rose sometimes in clusters, sometimes with insulated projections, from the plains or the scarped ridge of a mountain spur; and the cultivators of the little territory around them resided generally within the shelter of their walls. But the domain of the first fortress on the Palatine was limited by the conflicting claims of the occupants of similar retreats on almost every height around it. The Tarpeian hill, looking northward up the stream of the Tiber, was the site, according to an early legend, of a town denominated Saturnia; the Janiculum, across the river, bore a city of its own name; the Quirinal, which stood next in order to the Tarpeian, was settled by a tribe of Sabines, the people of the district reaching north-eastward to the Apennines; the Latins, who held, with a confederacy of thirty states, the great plain of the Campagna to the south-east, had a place of political meeting on the Aventine; the whole of the right bank of the Tiber belonged to the still more powerful nation of the Etruscans. The earliest legends of Rome indicate the seizure of the Palatine by an offset from a Latin tribe, and its conversion into a stronghold for the unsettled brigandage of the neighbourhood. But this confined and secluded eminence afforded a retreat indeed, but no sustenance, to its primeval occupants; and from the first the Romans were compelled by the sternest necessity to fight with every neighbour for their daily living. If constant warfare was thus, on the one hand, from the first the law of their existence, not less were they compelled in self-defence to seek alliances and cultivate peaceful relations on the other; and they soon learned to relax the rigid exclusiveness of manners and family ties which characterized the politics of the Italian races. While the martial temper of the Roman people was formed in the school of perpetual aggression or defence, they had the good fortune to be driven by circumstances to fraternize liberally with their allies and dependents, and the habit of admitting fresh infusions of foreign blood continued to be maintained by a necessity ever increasing as the sphere of their foreign relations widened. It was the remark of their own statesmen, as well as of later students of their history, that the illustrious career of Roman conquest was maintained by the seasonableness with which, however reluctantly, the franchise of the city, with all its privileges and burdens, was conceded at every crisis to strangers.

SECT. II.—DERIVATION OF THE ROMAN PEOPLE FROM ETRUSCANS, SABINES, AND LATINS.

Extending our view beyond the cluster of hills over which the name of Rome was eventually to be extended, of the Rome we may observe, with the map of Italy before us, how man people critically the future mistress of the world was placed with Etruscans, reference to the powers around her. Three considerable cities, and nations, the names of which have been already mentioned, Latins, met just at this point. The Tiber, descending almost due south from the Apennines to the Mediterranean, and making with that sea an acute angle on the right, an obtuse one on the left, separated the country of the Etruscans from that of the Sabines and of the Latins. Again the Anio, running west from the central ridge of the peninsula, and striking perpendicularly upon the Tiber three miles above the spot just designated, formed the line of demarcation between the Sabines and the Latins themselves. Rome, therefore, was placed almost at the point of junction of the three rival nationalities.

The institution of the fortified city as the nucleus of the political combination, such as we find it to have existed throughout Central Italy in these early times, may be taken as a sign that the country is in possession of a foreign race, which has subdued the original inhabitants and holds their lands by the right of conquest. Wherever a tribe has settled upon soil hitherto unoccupied, we find that it has spread itself along the sides of the rivers and over fertile plains, clearing the forest road by road, and planting its scattered habitations securely on every spot to which chance or convenience has conducted it. Thus the inhabitants, first known to us, of Gaul and Germany, may seem to have been the aborigines of the land. They found perhaps on their arrival no prior possessors of the soil on which they planted themselves, and they had no need to defend their Political acquisitions by the establishment of fortified posts and armed garrisons in the centre of every plot of ground they occupied. But in Italy, on the contrary, both tradition and early ethnological traces confirm our natural inference from the mode of its ancient inhabitation, and assure us that neither Etruscans, Sabines, nor Latins were aboriginal possessors of the peninsula, but were themselves intruders upon the heritage of feebler and probably more peaceful races. The early connection of these aborigines with the Greeks appears from the identity of many of their words, such especially as refer to agricultural usages and ideas. The formation of the Latin tongue is also closely allied to the Greek. This apparent identity of race we signalize by giving to the Italians the name of Pelasgians. But it is in these fragments of their language only that we can trace the character of this primitive people. The Sabines and Latins have conquered and degraded them; these new-comers have long maintained themselves in their fortified and inaccessible citadels, like the Norman barons in their castles, in the midst of their conquered serfs; and the institution of the city, remains to attest the fact of conquest, long after the elements of resistance which first suggested it have been trampled into the dust. Throughout the territory of the Etruscans the conquest has been even more complete. Here the conquered people have not left even a feeble trace of their existence in the language of their conquerors.

Resembling one another in this main feature of their politics, the Etruscans, the Sabines, and the Latins are distinguished in other important particulars. Whatever may have been the course of migration which led the Etruscans to their final seats in Central Italy, their early connection with the East seems proved from the character of their institutions. Their religion was a mystery and a craft, like the Egyptian and other eastern systems, jealously guarded and professionally communicated; though its priests were no longer on the freer soil of Italy a special caste like the Druids, the Magi, and the Brahmins, but were at the same time the warriors, the proprietors, and the statesmen of the commonwealth. Such was the Etruscan Lucumo, king, priest, soldier, and landlord, and such he maintained himself in spite of the advance of commercial ideas among the people, some of whose cities on the Tyrrhenian coast had become emporia of the traffic of the Mediterranean. But in the eighth century B.C. the power of the Etruscans had already sustained a blow; they had lost their hold of the countries they once possessed north of the Apennines; the connection with their advanced posts in Latium and Campania seems to have been dislocated; they were confined to a confederacy of twelve cities in Etruria proper, strictly allied, and still by far the strongest and most important section of the Italian communities.

The Etruscan religion was a refined theosophy. It proclaimed the existence of a Supreme Being, a Providence or Fate, who was rather the soul of the world than a person exterior to it. The lesser gods, like those of Egypt and India, were emanations from this being. The world itself was subject to periodical mutations; men and things had their appointed courses; there was a future state of rewards and punishments. The Etruscans conceived, like other heathens, that the will of the divinity and the course of future events might be ascertained by the observation of omens. Their soothsayers drew auguries from the flight of birds, but they had a special gift of interpreting the signs of victims' entrails and of meteoric phenomena.

The religious ideas of the Sabines and Latins, on the other hand, were less refined, and affected less mystery. The indigenous cult of Italy had regarded the daily and common wants of men; the husbandman worshipped the genii of the winds and skies, the shepherd those who protected his flocks from the wild beast or the murrain, the warrior those by whom his arrows were wasted to the mark or the crafty stratagem suggested. It was also domestic, and concerned the preservation of property, the guardianship of family rights and affections, the prolonged existence of the spirits of the dead. The Sabines maintained these ideas in the greatest purity and simplicity; the Latins seem, from their position on the coast, to have had an earlier connection with the Greeks, some of whose colonies were planted on their soil; and they partook more than their ruder neighbours of the Greek devotion to moral abstractions, such as wisdom, power, and beauty. But they both agreed in the infinite multiplication of their objects of worship. Every city had its guardian divinity; every wood and stream its Genius, its Nymph, or Faun; every family offered a special service to the patron of the house, the deified spirit of its earliest ancestor. The maintenance of this family worship was a solemn obligation descending to the heir of the estate, and in default of natural heirs the practice of adoption was enjoined for its preservation. The cult of the Lares and Penates, the domestic fetishes of the house, seems to have been common, with some variety of usage, to Etruscans, Sabines, and Latins.

The religion of the Sabines and Latins was simple and impulsive; that of the Etruscans philosophical and reflective. The one bowed with submission to the gods, the other inquired into their nature and explored their will. But whatever difference we may trace between them, we find them amalgamated together in the cult of the Roman people, who were placed, as we have seen, at the point where these ideas might first come in contact and coalesce. We shall find the threefold origin of the state marked no less strongly in its political institutions. From Etruria came the division into tribes, curies, and centuries; the array of battle, the ornaments of the magistracy, the laticlave, the praetexta, the apex, the curule chairs, the lictors, the triumphs, and public games, the whole apparatus of the calendar, the sacred character of property, the terminal science, and, in short, the political religion of the state. From Latium the names of praetor and dictator, the institution of the ficials; the habits of husbandry and respect for the plough; and, finally, the Latin language itself. From Sabellia were derived the names of military weapons, and of the spear or quiris, which gave one of its designations to the Roman people. The Roman title of Imperator seems to be a popular application of the Sabine word embrator. The patriate and patronship belonged more or less to all the nations which surrounded Rome, and so did the habit of dwelling in cities, and the institution of municipal governments. Such was the case also with the division into gentes, clans, or septs, and the remarkable extent of authority accorded to the father and the husband. This mixed formation of Roman society is mythically represented to us by the legends which describe the first and third of the kings as Latins, the second and fourth as Sabines, the fifth and two following as Etruscans. But there is probably some historic truth in the claims of the chief families to descent from one or the other people respectively. It is interesting to trace the Julii, the Tullii, the Servilli, the Geganii, the Quinctii, the Curiatii, the Cloelli, to Alba; the Furi and Hostili to Medullia; the Coruncani to Cameria; the Porcii and Manilli to Tusculum,—all in Latium. The Appii, Postumii, Valerii, Marci, Fabii, Claudii, and Calpurnii were Sabines. The Cilnii and Lacinii came from Arretium; the Caccine from Volaterra; the Vetii from Clusium; the Pomponii, Papii, and Coponii from other places in Etruria. (Dureau, Hist. des Romains, i. 89.)

Sect. III.—Legends of the First Four Kings and the Political Institutions Ascribed to Them.

The early history of Rome, as written for us by Livy Political and Dionysius, has no claim to be considered as a record of actual facts, and such truths as it really may contain cannot be sifted with any certainty from the mass of fiction with which it is embedded by the science of the historian or the political philosopher. We can only regard it as an attempt to account, under the guise of history, for existing institutions and political phenomena at Rome, at a period when the consciousness of the people was aroused to seek the origin of their own life and being. The primitive legends of the flight of Saturn to Latium, the advent of Hercules, the arrival of Evander, the settlement of Æneas at Alba, are attempts to explain the apparent presence of an Hellenic element in the language and usages of Italy. The story of the birth of Romulus and Remus from Mars and Rhea illustrates the warlike spirit and victorious career of the Roman nation; the suckling of the twins by the wolf, the slaughter of the wicked uncle, the collection of a horde of outlaws, the opening of an asylum for fugitives and robbers, the quarrel of the brothers, the rape of the Sabine women,—all combine to represent the fierce and aggressive spirit of the race of conquerors whose hand was to be against every man, and every man's hand against them. The contest of the Romans and Sabines for the Tarpeian citadel, and the final pacification and alliance between them, soon followed by the accession of the Sabine Numa, the founder of law and religion, indicate a consciousness of the early introduction of a Sabine element into the Roman polity. The wars of Tullus with Alba shadow forth the ancient conquest of territory eastward of the city, and the first extension of the Roman domain beyond the walls of Rome. The establishment of a Sabine colony on the Quirinal, a Latin on the Aventine, an Etruscan on the Caelian, all finally comprehended in a single inclosure, testify the rapid growth of the city by the fusion of the three rival nations at their point of junction. The legends of the death of Remus and the slaughter of Horatia seem to aim at explaining the origin of actual religious ceremonies, and if we knew more of the domestic antiquities of Rome, we might trace perhaps the ideas which gave birth to many other stories, such, for instance, as the treachery of Tarpeia. The murder of Romulus by the Senate typifies a protest of the commons against the violence of the aristocracy, while the accompanying legend of the victim's exaltation into the heavens justifies the hero-worship of the state and of the Gentes. On the other hand, the reign of Numa is evidently painted by the faction of the nobles. Numa is the founder of the rites and institutions of Rome; and these are the charter of the Roman aristocracy. The death of Tullus Hostilius, the third king, is another instance of this class of legends; he is struck with lightning for abusing the legitimate worship of the gods, of which the nobles are the guardians and expounders. Ancus, however, his successor, is the king after the people's heart; his reign is contrasted with that of Tullus, as that of Numa with his predecessors, as an epoch of peace instead of war; but Ancus, unlike Numa, is celebrated for the favour he extended to the lower unprivileged classes, for his courting the breeze of popular applause, and publishing the mysteries of the aristocratic religion; nevertheless he is the founder of the prison under the Tarpeian hill, long known to the citizens as the terror of the oppressed and degraded as well as of the wrong-doer, a chief instrument in maintaining the hateful ascendancy of the oligarchs. (Michellet, Hist. de Rom. i.)

The classes opposed to one another throughout political history are the nobles and the commons. The aristocracy and the people are known in the Roman records by the special name of patricians and plebeians. The first founders of the commonwealth, whether by settlement on vacant soil, or by conquest of a more primitive population, formed the original body of citizens, with equal rights of dealing of marriage, of suffrage, among themselves. Such were the patricians of Rome. The subjects of this dominant race, whether by original conquest, or by later acquisition, including such as ranged themselves, of their own free will, under the powerful protection of the Roman city, became known by the general name of plebeians (the plebs), and were admitted to no share in the government, to no equal rights, social, political, or religious, with the citizens. They remained, according to the significant expression of a Roman patrician, "without auspices, without families, without ancestors." They were distinguished, however, from the slaves of the Roman household, having their personal freedom, property, and liberty to exercise handicraft trades for their own benefit. They were subject also to the military conscription. But such immunities as they enjoyed were secured to them, not by law, but by the protection of the patricians, to whom they stood individually in the relation of clients to patrons. Thus every plebeian was originally the client of a patrician; but as the plebeians gradually acquired legitimate civic rights of their own, the status of the client was transferred to the ever-growing class of subjects who were not citizens at all.

The political institutions ascribed to Romulus must be regarded as affecting the patricians only. This Roman people was formed, we are told, into three tribes,—the Ramnes, the Tities, and subsequently, but with inferior rights, the Luceres. It is conjectured that the first of these represents the original Latin people of the Palatine, the second the Sabines of the Quirinal, the third an Etruscan element in the population, which, according to tradition, was settled on the Caelian hill. Each tribe was subdivided into ten curiae, and these bodies met in general assemblies, or comitia, called after their name curiata, in which resided the sovereign power of the state deputed by it to a king. The Senate was a body chosen from the curies as a council of state, consisting first of 100 members, soon afterwards doubled by the incorporation of the Sabines; but the Luceres were not originally admitted to a share in this dignity. Each tribe was bound to furnish 1000 men on foot, and 100 to serve on horseback; and this body formed the legion. The horsemen, originally designated Celeres, became in course of time a distinct order in the state, under the well-known title of Equites or Knights.

As Romulus, the founder of Rome, whose name is connected with the Greek word ἐπίστημα, strength, was the author of the military institutions which upheld the fabric of the state, so Numa the Sabine, a name which must remind us of the Greek νύμβης and νύμβης, law, was regarded as the framer of its religious rites, the foundation of law and order. He appointed as the guardians of the national religion four pontiffs, the first of whom was specially designated the Pontifex Maximus; he assigned two Flamines to the special service of the tutelary gods of Rome, Gradivus and Quirinus, and a third to that of Jupiter. He instituted the College of Augurs and of the Salii, who bore on their heads the sacred shields of Mars; and established the priesthood of the sacred Virgin, who tended the never-dying flame on the altar of Vesta, brought from the shrine of the goddess at Alba, the mother city of Rome. Numa is also said to have built the temple of Janus, the double God, whose faces looked both before and after, and to have closed its portals in sign of peace. He appointed also a long series of ceremonial observances connected with the seasons of the Roman year, and first completed the calendar by the addition to it of the two months of January and February. The year of Numa consisted of twelve lunar months and one day over, making 355 days in all. In all these institutions he sought and enjoyed the counsel of the Camena, or goddess Egeria, a deity of the Sabines, and the grotto The first four reigns represent the struggles of Rome later kings with the Sabines and the Latins, and she is described as victorious throughout a succession of wars. The next period bears a different character. Rome is now under the sway of an Etruscan dynasty, and to this epoch are ascribed certain works, still partly existing, which attest more surely than record or tradition the fact of an Etruscan domination on the spot. The chiefs under whom the low grounds of the city were drained by the vast Cloaca, and the national temple erected on the scarped brow of the Tarpeian rock, under whom the Seven Hills, crowned with separate fortifications, were united within one continuous inclosure, were assuredly Etruscans; and they must have exercised their authority with the strong hand of conquerors and despots. The legends, however, say nothing of an Etruscan conquest of Rome. Tarquinius Priscus, or the Elder, is represented as the son of a Grecian refugee who removed from Tarquinii in Etruria to Rome, by the advice of his wife, the prophetess Tanagula. Appointed tutor to the sons of Ancus, he succeeds, on the king's death, in supplanting them on the throne. Rome receives from him her first architectural embellishments—he establishes the circus for national games—constructs the Cloaca, and commences the Capitol. The expense of these great works is supposed to be defrayed, not by the forced labour of a nation of serfs, but by plunder seized from the Latins and Sabines. Tarquin celebrates the first Roman triumph after the Etruscan fashion, in a robe of gold and purple, and his chariot is drawn by four white horses. Many of the ensigns both of war and of civil office are assigned to this epoch. And now we meet with the admission of one hundred plebeians into the Senate, and the formation of three new centuries of knights. The opposition of the patricians to this democratic innovation is signalized in the legend of Attus Navius, the augur, who resists the policy of the sovereign, and confirms his resistance with the sanction of a miracle. A statue of Attus, standing for many centuries in the Forum, attested the stroke of the augur's razor, which cut the stone at Tarquin's bidding.

These attempts at relaxing the stern exclusiveness of the Roman polity were continued, it is said, and effected more triumphantly by the next king. Servius Tullius, described in one account as originally a slave, is said to have married a daughter of Tarquin, and to have gained the throne by the contrivance of Tanagula. Another, and probably the Etruscan legend, represented him as a soldier of fortune from Etruria, who attached himself to Caecus Vibenus, the founder of an Etruscan city on the Caelian hill. His original name, Mastarna, was changed to that of Servius, by which alone he became known in the native history of Rome. Servius connected the Viminal, the Quirinal, and the Esquiline, the three Sabine hills, with the Palatine, the Tarpeian, now called Capitoline, the Aventine, and the Caelian, thus completing the fated number of seven. The agger, or mound, with which he defended this city to the north, may be traced to this day; and some vestiges have been discovered of the massive stone walls which encompassed it in other quarters. He divided the city thus completed into four regions, the Palatine, Suburban, Colline, and Esquiline.

The chief external event of this reign, according to our records, was the formation of an alliance with the thirty cities of Latium, confirmed by the erection of a common temple to Diana on the Aventine. The lands which Servius won from the Veians and Etruscans he divided among the plebeians, thereby incurring the hostility of the patri-

cians towards a foreign dynasty, and especially to the slave-born sovereign himself, the patron of the upstart commonalty. For the policy of Servius was directed to raising the subjects of the state to a political equality with their rulers, and carrying out the liberal views already indicated by his predecessor. His plan, however, was not, we are told, to raise the plebeian families to patrician rank, and introduce them into the special assembly of the curies, but to create a new general assembly, under the name of the centuries, which should comprehend both classes alike. The Servian constitution, such as later ages loved to picture it, though confessing that it never really came into practical operation, was the enrolment of the whole body of the citizens, patrician and plebeian, in one great military array, according to their census or means, and the arms which they could bring into the field. Thus enrolled and accoutred, they were to assemble in the Field of Mars, outside the city, and decide on all the gravest affairs of state, of peace and war, of laws and ceremonies, with the full powers hitherto enjoyed by the curies alone. But though this division into classes existed only on paper in the histories of a later age, the division of the people into its tribes, from twenty to thirty in number, was an actual fact, whether rightly ascribed to Servius or not. The tribes of Romulus were only three, and were confined to the patricians; those of Servius embraced the great body of the plebeians. The former referred only to birth; the latter defined the habitation of the members belonging to them. Of the Servian tribes, four only were in the city, the rest were assigned to country localities in the domain of the state. The names of most of these tribes, which continued to exist with various additions to a very late period, have been mostly preserved to us; but though they formed the basis of another assembly of the people which played a great part in the subsequent history of Rome, so little interest or importance attaches to them that even their number at this and at later periods is involved in the greatest uncertainty. The legend of Servius brings him to the wonted end of a democratic reformer. Assailed by his own children, the favour of the multitude is unable either to defend or to avenge him. The people can do no more than consecrate his memory in undying tradition, and mark the day of his assassination by a religious ceremony repeated every month. The street in which the abominable Tullia drove her car over her father's body continued ever after to bear the name of "The Accursed."

The reign of the second Tarquin, or the Proud, is an attempt to usurp the power both of the nobles and the commons, and establish a pure despotism on the ruins of the democratic monarchy. Wars are waged with the Latins and Etruscans, but the lower classes are deprived of their arms, and employed in the servile occupation of erecting monuments of regal magnificence, while the tyrant recruits his armies from his own retainers and the forces of foreign allies. The completion of the fortress-temple on the Capitoline confirms his authority over the city of Rome, and a connection by marriage with the dictator of the Tusculans secures him powerful assistance in the field. He reigns with bloodshed and violence, oppressing the poor by his exactions, and crushing the rich by slaughter and proscriptions. The outrage of his son Sextus on the chaste Lucretia at last precipitates a revolt; and L. Junius Brutus, supported by the injured husband and father, proclaims the fall of the foreign dynasty, and the establishment of a republic. The name of Brutus was given in the Latin language to an idiot; and hence arose a legend that the hero of the Regilage, or flight of the kings, had simulated madness to deceive the Tarquins, in whose house he had been bred. Another conjecture has been hazarded by modern critics, that the term means a slave, especially a revolte or fugitive slave, and indicates in this story the insurrection of the commons, oppressed and degraded slaves of the monarchy, against the tyranny of their foreign masters.

But the legend of the Tarquins does not terminate with their fall from power. Banished from the city, they take refuge with their allies at Tarquinii and Veii, and intrigue for the recovery of their throne. While the citizens were organizing their commonwealth, appointing Brutus and Collatinus their first consuls (praetors they were originally called), with powers hardly less than regal, but limited to a single year, the emissaries of Tarquin engage the sons of Brutus in a plot to restore him, the execution of whom, when discovered, by their own father's decree, was recorded as a striking instance of the sternness of the ancient patriotism. A second attempt with an army of Veians and Tarquinians was not more successful, though Brutus himself fell in the combat which gave victory to the Romans. Tarquin made a third effort, with the aid of Porsenna, chief of the whole Etruscan confederacy, and this powerful ally penetrated to the Tiber, and would have followed the flying Romans into the city, but for the courage with which Coelus defended the bridge till it could be broken down behind him. This ancient peril of Rome was illustrated by the popular traditions of Mucius and Cloelia; but though it continued to be confidently believed that the invader was compelled to retreat discomfited, later inquirers professed to have discovered documents proving that the city had in fact capitulated to him, that the Romans had been subjected to Etruscan authority, and forbidden, like the Israelites under the sway of the Philistines, the use of iron even in their domestic implements.

To continue the popular story, however: we next read of Tarquin bearking himself to his allies at Tusculum, of a great Latin confederation for his restoration, and of the battle at the Lake Regillus, in the which the exiles were finally defeated by the assistance of Castor and Pollux, who fought on the side of the Romans, conspicuous on white horses. The Latins make peace with Rome, abandoning Tarquin to his fate; and the old king dies eventually, fourteen years after his expulsion, at the court of the Grecian tyrant of Cumae.

SECT. V.—REMARKS ON THE FOREGOING ACCOUNTS.

The kingly power is said to have been overthrown in the year 244 of the city; the reigns of seven kings having filled up this long interval, the average of the six first, four of which are cut short by violent deaths, being thirty-six years to each. In addition to the startling improbability of such a series of protracted lives, there are other chronological difficulties in the narrative which the ancients themselves tried in vain to remove. In modern times these inconsistencies gave the most powerful, if not the first, incitement to the spirit of historical scepticism which has resulted in an almost entire renunciation of the early Roman records as genuine historical documents.

We shall consider presently, from an examination of the sources of genuine information which were really open to the Romans themselves, what amount of credence may reasonably be given to the reputed facts of their story. In this place it will be sufficient to point out that the so-called history of the kings presents an outline common to the early annals of most states of antiquity, the growth of a commonwealth by war and conquest till its ruler, at the head of a veteran army, and in possession of a central stronghold, sets himself above the laws, and plays the despot with selfish violence, till stricken down by the people whose patience he has outraged. To this kingly period succeeds generally, as at Rome, an epoch of popular government, in which the regal name is detested as the symbol of violence and tyranny, and the supreme power, which the rudeness of the times requires to be lodged in strong hands, is guarded against abuse by distribution among two or more possessors, with limitation to a single year's tenure; when in cases of emergency this power is still more concentrated in a single hand, the limitation of tenure is reduced just in proportion to six months. From this time, secure of their freedom as against their rulers, the citizens plunge into a series of struggles among themselves, class against class. The second period of Roman history corresponds with the ordinary course of political affairs, and is marked by a long and fluctuating contest between the aristocratic and democratic elements of a republic. The verisimilitude of the general outline commands our attention and respect; but we must still hold ourselves fully on our guard against giving credence to the details, confused, contradictory, romantic, and repeated with little variation over and over again, with which it is set forth and enlivened.

SECT. VI.—BEGINNINGS OF THE REPUBLIC.

The first circumstance which strikes us in the received account of the beginnings of the republic is, that the victory of the regained by the people over their tyrants turns to the advantage of the aristocracy only. We hear no more of the popular constitution of Servius. The patricians are masters of the Senate and of the curies; while by their wealth and the number of their clients, they retain the chief influence in the centuries, and as expounders of the state religion, hold in their hands the most potent instrument of political warfare. The struggle, however, which soon ensues between the patricians and plebeians is no longer represented as arraying two races or castes against one another: Rome has entered upon a second phase of political existence; the rich proprietors are struggling to maintain their ascendancy over the poorer classes. The patrician generally represents the man of family and civic honours, residing in the city, but owner of domains in the territory of the state; the plebeians, the small farmers and petty tradesmen, and those who made their living by their own thrift and industry. The patrician had also secured to his own exclusive use the public lands, the ownership of which the state reserved to itself. At this time, indeed, if we may follow the traces of the accredited history, these conquered domains had shrunk to very small dimensions, for the limits of the Roman state, as well as its external relations and influence, appear after the Refuge in very circumscribed proportions.

But the struggle between these classes is dated back to the very first year of the commonwealth. One of the two consuls is represented as a plebeian. Valerius Poplicola, the first champion of the popular order, is supposed to have acquired his name by the zeal with which he maintained its claims. In the same spirit of mythical history, Poplicola is said to have opened to the plebeians the competition for the consulship, and proclaimed the penalty of death against any aspirant to the tyranny. Poplicola requires the consuls to lower their fasces, the rods and axes borne before them by the lictors, in the assembly of the people. Within the city, indeed, the axe is to be removed altogether, to show that the regal power of life and death over the citizens is withdrawn at home, and only exercised in the camp abroad. But these restrictions on the outward show of power have no effect in controlling the substantial preponderance of the patricians, who for many years together held exclusive occupation of the consulship, who, whenever their prerogatives are threatened by popular impatience, create a dictator with absolute authority for its repression, and who forbid any amalgamation of the two orders by intermarriage.

It is in the nature of things that men should long bear with social inequalities and political disabilities, and the history of the republic corresponds with ordinary experience when it relates that the first struggle of the two orders was caused, not by a sense of abstract inferiority on the part of the plebeians, but by the pressure of poverty, and a tyrannical law of creditor and debtor. The decline of the power of the republic would imply a very general impoverishment of the citizens, and the wealthiest would be likely to turn the hardness of the times to their own advantage. The poor would need ready money to supply themselves with arms, as well as to till their land and pay their taxes; the rich would lend to them at exorbitant rates of interest, and on their failing to repay, would indemnify themselves by seizing the debtor's person and reducing him, or his children in lieu of him, to slavery. We are assured, indeed, that the Roman law allowed the creditor to kill his insolvent debtor, or if there were several creditors, to cut his body in as many pieces. Harassed by cruel exactions and still more cruel punishments, the plebeians at last refused to enlist in the annual campaign against the Latins. They had discovered the weak point in the patrician armour. It was necessary to suspend the severity of the law for the moment, with a promise to alter it at the conclusion of the war. But the popular consul Servilius, who made this concession, was denied the triumph he had earned by the hands of the plebeians, and the patricians relapsed again into their old tyranny.

Not once or twice only are the plebeians and their generous champions among the nobles thus cajoled and disappointed. At last the plebeians, choosing themselves generals, one of them a Brutus, and renouncing the authority of the consuls, march forth under arms to the hill on the junction of the Tiber and Anio, two miles from Rome. Here they resolve to settle and form a new city. The patricians deliberate, and under the hot counsels of their haughtiest advisers, are almost prepared to accept this defiance, and allow Rome to be split asunder. But this peril was averted by the prudence of more moderate leaders; and the sedition was appeased, according to the legend, by the skilful eloquence of Menenius Agrippa, who related his apologue of the belly and the members. The seceders required a substantial guarantee for their future security; and this, we may believe, was the origin of an institution destined to become one of the chief elements in the Roman polity, the Tribunate of the Plebs. The citizens were authorized to nominate two tribunes annually, who should have a veto on the decrees of the Senate, and protect the personal liberty of the commons. Their own persons were to be inviolable; and that they might be always at hand to defend their constituents, they must never leave the city for a day; their houses were to be open day and night to receive every application for assistance. It is remarkable that the election was given in the first instance to the centuries, among which the patricians continued, through their clients, to enjoy a large measure of authority. The number of the tribunes was afterwards increased to ten, and as any one of them could interfere to prevent the action of all the others, it became the easier for the Senate to divide and paralyse its opponents. But the election had previously been transferred to the assembly of the tribes, which were more independent than the centuries of patrician influence.

We may remark in the institution of the tribunate the fatal vice of the Roman polity, which sought to create a permanent balance of powers by arraying the different orders of the commonwealth in precisely equal force against each other, instead of combining them together, with joint interests and privileges. If, instead of playing off the tribunes against the consuls, it had secured an equal share in the consulships and the Senate to both patricians and plebeians, it might have effected a harmonious cooperation between parties which were henceforth ranged in constant strife and jealousy one against the other. As it was, the struggle between the two parties continues, according to our accounts, to rage more violently than ever. The first victory is on the side of the plebeians. C. Mar. Coriolanus, a brave patrician, who has acquired the surname of a.u.c. 263, Coriolanus, from the capture of the Volscian town Corioli, b.c. 489, falls a victim to the jealousy of the people. His haughty bearing had given offence to the multitude; they find means of urging unjust or invidious charges against him; they require him to defend himself before the assembly of the tribes, in which the power of the plebs predominates, and drive him into exile. He returns at the head of the Volscian armies which he has so lately defeated, routs the Roman legions, and prepares to lay siege to his native city. Heralds, magistrates, priests, are sent out successively to sue for peace; but he remains inexorable, requiring humiliating terms of concession to his new allies. At last his wife and mother present themselves, with the Roman matrons, in his camp; to them he yields, and withdraws his troops from the attack, assuring them, at the same time, that in sparing the city he has forfeited his own life. The legend closes appropriately, in one account, with the statement that his foreign friends turn in anger upon him and slay him; another story represents him, less poetically, as surviving still in exile to an old age.

It is needless to point out the marks of poetical invention in this famous narrative. As a tradition of the power and the deadly jealousy of the commons, it was to be paralleled by a rival story from the opposite quarter. Spurius Cassius, Spurius a patrician, and three times consul, resolved to become the Cassius, benefactor of the plebeians. He proposed an agrarian law, a.u.c. 263, that is, a division of the public domains among the poorer citizens, or at least a common right with the patricians, who now usurped the occupation of it, a constant source of dispute from this time forth, as will be hereafter explained, between the two classes. The authority of the propter was sufficient to carry this law; but the patricians contrived to thwart its operation, while they watched an opportunity of avenging themselves upon him. He was accused, as soon as his consulship expired, of granting too favourable terms to the national enemies, and of seeking to make himself tyrant of his native city. He was tried, found guilty, and condemned to the traitor's death by scourging and beheading.

The wars of Coriolanus and Spurius Cassius against the Volscians and Hernicans, two Sabine tribes who lay to the eastward of the Latins, indicate an extension of the area of military operations. Partly through their league with the Latins, partly also from the increase of strength gained to the republic by concession to the plebeians, the Romans are advancing again in the career of conquest. The campaigns of the following years are directed against the Volscians, the Aequians, and the Veientes; but the progress of victory is still checked from time to time by the refusal of the plebeians to serve until an agrarian law is not only carried but executed. The contest of the classes is not now for a relief from debts, or for an equalization of political rights, but for admission to a common right of property in the public land. If we could accept an hypothesis of Niebuhr, the transplantation of the Fabii, at the numerous and old patrician house, to Cremera, where Cremera, they were all slain by the Veientes, might be added a.u.c. 277, to the incidents of the agrarian feud; for that historian supposes them to have migrated from mortification at failing, notwithstanding their high character, and their seven successive consulships, to bring about the passing of a modified law of property. But our authorities at least know nothing of any such tradition; and the whole affair is far too uncertain, as a matter of history, to bear the weight of any conjecture of the kind. But soon after the reported date of this event follows another attempt at effecting an agrarian settlement by a tribune named Genucius, accompanied by an impeachment of the consuls for frustrating the operation of the law. Against this attack another method of defence is adopted. Genucius is suddenly found dead in his bed; and from this account we infer the popular belief that he was murdered privily by the opposite party. After some further manoeuvres, a compromise is at last effected, by the settlement of a plebeian colony on the conquered lands of Antium.

**SECT. VII.—HISTORY AND LEGISLATION OF THE DECEMVIRES.**

We have remarked already that there is much of a poetical, much of what may be called a conventional, character in the history of the kings; and the same features continue strikingly to pervade the records of the early period of the republic. To some extent, indeed, these latter accounts present superior marks of authenticity, in the regular recurrence of family names, wholly wanting in the former, and in the frequent mention of such domestic occurrences as pestilences and portents. These incidents seem to show that the families and the priests pretended at least to possess some private registers of the events most interesting to them; the first indeed may be mere fabrications of a later date, but the others are not apparently of a character to be deliberately forged. It may be added that there certainly existed, at a much later epoch, some monuments of early history, though we cannot vouch for their genuineness; such as the brazen plates on which were engraved the treaties made by Rome with Perseus, and also with the Hernicans. Polybius knew of a third, which recorded a treaty between Rome and Carthage, in the first year of the republic. However we may suspect, from considerations hereafter to be offered, the genuineness of these documents, it is right to mark the first signs on the part of our authorities of a reference to historic testimony.

Such meagre incidental notices say little, however, for the authenticity of our details of foreign wars or domestic revolutions, and the minute accounts we have received on these subjects should only serve to put us more on our guard. Some remarks of Sir G. C. Lewis may put in a clear light the grounds of our suspicion:

"It is a peculiarity of the constitutional history of Rome, as it is related to us, that after an agitation of some years for one demand of the popular party, another demand succeeds, without any apparent redress of the former grievance, or any distinct explanation of the reason why one claim is abandoned and another takes its place. The first grievance of the plebeians is the law of debt, which produces the first secession; but Livy and Cicero both describe this movement as leading only to the establishment of the tribunate, and not to a remission of debts, or to an alteration of the law of insolvency. Yet from this time the complaints about the law of debt cease, and the agrarian movement takes place. Both historians represent the patricians as making a successful stand against a division of public land among the plebeians, until the sending of a colony to Antium in 467 B.C.; nevertheless, from this year the agrarian question falls into the background, and another subject steps into the most prominent place. Livy and Dionysius, indeed, differ as to the course of the agrarian agitation; for whereas the former conceives the tribunes as proposing a series of laws, all of which are successfully resisted by the patricians, the latter states that the Senate in the year of Cassius passed a general measure for the division of the public lands, but that the successive consuls would never carry it into effect; that a solemn compact made between the Senate and the plebs was broken; and that the efforts of the tribunes were directed exclusively towards procuring the execution of the unexecuted decree. In the practical result, however, that the division of the public lands was averted by the patricians, they concur." (On the Credibility of Early Roman History, ii. 165.)

Such, then, being the close of this series of agrarian discussions, the old questions suddenly fall into abeyance, and are superseded by a third. The tribune Terentillius Arsa demands a code of written laws. We are told that during the monarchy the kings were the supreme dispensers of justice, and acted therein at their own caprice or discretion; that the consuls succeeded to this along with the other kingly prerogatives; and that accordingly up to this time there was not only no written code of law and procedure, but that no gradual accumulation of precedents had settled into a definite system of acknowledged usage. The Romans had to begin their law-making from the beginning, and with this view the demand of the plebeians soon shaped itself into a proposition for sending commissioners to Athens to bring home the laws of that state, and make them the basis of the new code of the republic. The demand, indeed, of Terentillius was resisted and evaded, and it was not till the year 300 that such commissioners, three in number, were actually despatched to Greece. In the meantime, we may notice one exception to the remark just made in the agrarian law of the tribune Icilius (A.U. 298) for assigning lands on the Aventine to the plebeians. This interval contains also some other events of interest: the surprise of the Capitol by Herdonius the Sabine, with a troop of slaves and Roman exiles, implying the continuance of mutual violence between parties of the state, and the repeated banishment of their leaders; again, the campaigns of the republic against the Aquinans and Volscians, in the course of which the brave and frugal Cincinnatus Cincinnatus was taken from the plough and made dictator, according to a romantic legend, to lead the forces of the state against the foreign enemy.

On the return of the commissioners in the year 303, so runs the story, it was resolved to appoint a board of ten, viri, called decemvirs, to arrange the Roman laws. The patriots insisted that all these officers should be chosen from their own order, and having gained this point, required both the consuls and tribunes to abdicate their functions, and leave them free scope for concerting and enacting their measures. The decemvirs accordingly were not legislators only, but the rulers of the state; and they were too well satisfied with the prerogatives they wielded under their extraordinary commission to acquiesce in the prospect of resigning them. They procured the prolongation of their office for a second and again for a third year; and it was not till the year 305 that, in pursuance of a course of arbitrary violence and license, Appius Claudius, the most tyrannical and selfish of the number, provoked the people Claudius to rise in indignation and abrogate it by an abrupt revolution. The story of the lust and cruelty of Appius, the ginia, peril, under a colourable procedure of law, of the fair Virginia's honour, which her father could only preserve to her by stabbing her to the heart in his despair, is one of the most striking of the poetical legends of Rome, the more deserving of attention as it is accompanied by none of the supernatural incidents which usually throw suspicion on its stories of valour, patriotism, and self-devotion. Nevertheless the incident is related with a circumstantial minuteness which alone seems to warrant us in rejecting it as a true narrative; and indeed the discrepancies and improbabilities which surround the whole account of the decemvirate render its history extremely questionable both in substance and in details.

The fragments remaining to us of what the later Romans themselves regarded as the genuine laws of the Twelve Tables are exceedingly slender. Dr Arnold thus describes their purport (Hist. of Rome, i. 291):—“1. That there should be an appeal to the people from the sentence of every magistrate; 2. That all capital trials should be conducted before the comitia of the centuries; 3. That privi- legia, or acts of pains and penalties against an individual should be unlawful; 4. That the last decision of the people should supersede all former decisions on the same subject; 5. That the debtor whose person and property were pledged to his creditors nexus, and he who remained the free master of both, solutus, should be equal in the sight of the law; that is, that the nexus should not be considered as infamis... A sixth enactment is expressly ascribed to the last two tables, which Cicero describes as full of unequal laws (these were a later addition to the first ten, and were considered more harsh and unjust to the people), namely, that between the burghers and the commons there should be no legal marriages; if a burgher married the daughter of a plebeian, his children should follow the mother's condition, and were not subject to their father, nor could inherit from him if he died intestate.” Upon which the same author further remarks, “With no further knowledge than of these mere fragments, we can judge but little of the tenor of the whole law; but yet, if we had the entire text of the twelve tables before us, we should probably find in them no direct mention of the great constitutional changes which the decemvirs are with reason supposed to have effected. Their code of laws was the expression of their legislative rather than of their constituent power; it contained the rules hereafter to be observed by the Roman people, but would not notice those organic changes by which the very composition, so to speak, of the people itself, was so greatly altered.”

These are the remarks of a writer who is deeply imbued with a persuasion of the fundamental authenticity of the history of this and of much earlier times; but to others the pretended legislation of the decemvirs seems hardly less apocryphal than the narrative by which it is accompanied. The fall of these tyrants was followed, we are assured, by a strong popular re-action; so much so, that the new consuls, bearing, it may be observed, the mythical names of Valerius and Horatius, are enabled to restore the tribunate, increased in number to ten; to rehabilitate the comitia of the tribes, degraded by the laws of the decemvirs; to secure for the decrees of this assembly (plebiscita) a force binding on all the orders of the state; and yet the prohibition of intermarriage, the most galling mark of class inferiority, is not only suffered to remain, but is even published by them as the last legacy of the tyrants, and remains as a brand upon the face of the plebeian order for many years to come. “The decemvirial legislation,” says a bold but candid inquirer of more recent date, “was, as we have seen, a measure which originated with the plebeians; but it was turned to their oppression, and was overthrown by their resistance. It was intended to remove the inequalities between the two orders, but it seems to have added to them. The decemviral government having sprung out of the demands of the plebs, is put down by a plebeian secession; an extreme measure, and only one degree short of insurrection or civil war. When the plebs return, they appear to be able to dictate their own terms; the consuls chosen are devoted to their interest, and introduce important legislative measures of a popular character. The only real equalization of rights effected at this time is that which follows the decemviral legislation; the twelve tables themselves did nothing for effacing the privileges of the patricians and the disabilities of the plebeians... The description of the outbreak of plebeian power, of the fears of the patricians lest they should be made the subjects of vindictive impeachment, ... renders it quite unintelligible why the laws of the two tables prohibiting marriages between patricians and plebeians should have been passed after the fall of the decemvirs, or if it had been enacted by the decemvirs, why it should not at this moment have been repealed.” (Lewis, On the Credibility of Roman History, ii. 253.)

Nor, it may be added, looking again at the reputed legislation of the decemvirs, can we conceive why it should have been necessary to resort to Greece and Athens for principles of law which issued in a series of enactments of so local and national a colour. The matters upon which the decemvirs are supposed to decide are precisely those which have been ever in debate between the two orders of the Roman people, and their methods of solution are the same which have been already ventilated and discussed, according to our authorities, in its assemblies. We shall have occasion to notice hereafter how gratuitously the first writers of Roman history sought to establish a connection between primitive Rome and the more cultivated world of Greece; and there seems much reason to believe that this pretended commission to the land of Solon was a pure invention either of Grecian vanity or of Italian admiration. An attempt indeed is made by some modern critics to establish a distinction between the military and political history, such as we have received them, of early Rome. “While the sceptical conclusions of Sir G. C. Lewis,” says Dr Liddell, “may be conceded in full for almost all the wars and foreign transactions of early times, we must yet claim attention for the civil history of Rome in the first ages of the republic. There is about it a consistency of progress, and a clearness of intelligence, that would make its fabrication more wonderful than its transmission in a half-traditionary form. When tradition rests solely on memory, it is fleeting and uncertain; but when it is connected with customs, laws, and institutions, such as those of which Rome was justly proud, and to which the ruling party clung with desperate tenacity, its evidence must doubtless be carefully sifted and duly estimated, but ought not altogether to be set aside.” (Liddell’s History of Rome, Preface.) The same distinction had been previously drawn by Niebuhr and Arnold, and made the ground for an inferential re-construction of Roman history, after the rejection of a large proportion of its details. We have indicated in the preceding paragraph the nature of Sir G. C. Lewis’s argument to show that the pretended records of constitutional progress of the republic bear the same marks of confusion and invention as those of her external career. The people who elaborated the wonderful system of Roman jurisprudence had no doubt a peculiar instinct for investigating the causes and origin of their political institutions; and they naturally demanded from their annalists a solution of the phenomena of political usage not less urgently than an account of their families and their conquests. In the entire absence, as we shall presently see, of all authentic history or genuine tradition upon both these subjects, they were perhaps as prone to throw themselves upon pure invention for the one as for the other.

SECT. VIII.—THE GAULS AT ROME.

We shall content ourselves accordingly with passing as lightly over the political as the military history of the years at Rome next ensuing. On the one hand we may observe, the patricians are represented as strengthening themselves by the establishment of the office of censors, two magistrates appointed at intervals of five years to hold a census of pro- perty and population, to revise the roll of the knights and senators, and determine the civil status of every member of the commonwealth. These arbiters of rank and privilege were to be patricians only. On the other hand, we read that the tribune Canuleius obtained a law for removing the disabilities which attached to marriage between the Political two classes. At this period commenced the practice, which continued for a series of years, of appointing military tribunes, six in number, in the place of the two consuls. According to some accounts, this was a contrivance for evading the necessity of opening the consulship to plebeians; other authorities alleged that it was demanded by the multiplication of wars in which the commonwealth was now constantly engaged. In the year 315 (B.C. 439) Cincinnatus was created dictator a second time to quell a fresh sedition of the commons; and his master of the horse, or second in command, Servilius Ahala, performed the notable exploit of cutting down the demagogue Sp. Mælius, Spurius Mælius, accused of aspiring to the tyranny. Thirty years later, the plebeians are said to have forced themselves into the quaestorship, the first of the curule magistracies, the lowest step in the career of honours, through which the candidate for the consul's chair was ordinarily required to pass. Humble as this privilege was, it is said to have been regarded by them as a great prize, inasmuch as it opened the way to the long-coveted eminence—the command of armies, and the glories of a triumph. Meanwhile the wars of Rome were waged, for the most part, as before, with the Volscians, the Æquians, and the Veientes, with a general success only occasionally checked by defeat, but brought no apparent extension of her frontiers. The final conquest of Veii in the year 358, after a ten years' siege, by the great Camillus, attended by many circumstances which bespeak a legendary origin, was speedily followed by the first authentic event in Roman history, the capture and burning of the city by the Gauls.

While the victorious Romans were pressing upon the declining power of the Etruscans in the south, the advance of the Gauls of the great Cisalpine plain had harassed them in the opposite quarter. Two centuries had elapsed since the barrier of the Alps had been burst by a great Celtic immigration, and the valley of the Po, once the seat of numerous Etruscan colonies, had been overrun and occupied by the northern barbarians. The Senones, the vanguard of the Gaulish invasion, had penetrated to the banks of the Æsis and the coast of the Adriatic, and had threatened for more than a century to take advantage of the increasing weakness of Etruria, and descend upon the smiling valleys of lower Italy. At last 30,000 warriors of this tribe, having threaded the passes of the Apennines, appeared before the walls of Clusium, and demanded an assignment of lands. The Clusians implored the intervention of Rome,—such it seems was the authority of the warlike republic at 150 miles from its frontiers,—and the Senate dispatched, not a military force, but three distinguished envoys, to require the intruders to desist from their attack. But when the Gauls refused to hearken to these demands, the envoys, not content with delivering their message in the character of ambassadors, violated the law of nations by actively joining the Clusians in the defence of their territory. The barbarians indignantly broke up their league, and poured the full tide of invasion down the valley of the Tiber. The Feciales or heralds, as interpreters of international law, urged that the treacherous envoys should be surrendered in expiation of the national sin; but the influence of the illustrious Fabian house, to which the culprits belonged, prevailed to protect them, and engaged the people to repel the assailants by force. The armed militia of the city sallied forth to the encounter; but on the banks of the Allia, eleven miles from the gates of Rome, was routed with bloody and disastrous defeat. So completely was the strength of the republic broken by this single overthrow that it was impossible even to defend the walls. The flower of the citizens threw themselves into the Capitol, but the mass of the population, remaining below, was exposed to the fury of the barbarians; and while the priests and vestals carried off the sacred images to the friendly city of Caere in Etruria, a hundred aged senators, who refused to leave the city in whose service they had grown gray, were murdered in the Forum or in their houses. Rome was given up to pillage and conflagration.

This terrible catastrophe followed quickly upon the exile of Camillus, whom the people in their ingratitude had accused of various misdemeanours, and who, in quitting the city, had imprecated a curse upon it. Camillus had retired to Ardea, and now watched his opportunity to relieve the state on which the gods had so signalized avenged him. The fugitives from the Allia and those from the city had rallied at Veii; and, reassured by some successful skirmishes, they invited Camillus to put himself at their head, and assume the office of dictator. To confirm this appointment the consent of the Senate and curiae was required; so punctually did even the legends of Rome respect the claims of constitutional usage. A young plebeian, Pontius Cominius, undertook to communicate with them, and scaled Cominius, the rock of the Capitoline unperceived by the enemy. The Gauls, hitherto unable to find an access to the summit, tracked his footsteps, and surprised the garrison by night. The defenders were sleeping securely; even the dogs were lulled in slumber; but the geese, sacred to Juno, alarmed at the noise, awoke the guards just in time; and Manlius Manlius distinguished himself above the rest by the vigour with which he repelled the assailants, and hurled them from the Capitol ramparts. The Romans, however, in their impregnable fortress were suffering from scarcity. Camillus delayed to appear; they were compelled to treat with the Gauls, who on their part were anxious to withdraw for the defence of their own country against an attack of the Veneti. It was agreed that the invaders should withdraw with 1000 lbs. of gold as the ransom of Rome. When this sum was som of the being weighed out, the barbarians were detected in using false weights; but when the Romans remonstrated, Brennus the Gaulish chief cast his sword into the scale against them, exclaiming, "Woe to the vanquished!" But this insolence met its due reward. Camillus, having at last collected and trained his forces, attacked the foe on his route homeward, routed him with great slaughter, and recovered the ransom of the city. The people, he declared, had had no right to pay it without the consent of the dictator. The sum thus restored was placed in the vaults of the Capitol, to be there preserved as a sacred deposit, and never expended except in repelling a future invasion of the Gauls. Such an occasion never again presented itself, but the treasure, it was said, was centuries later rifled by the man who conquered their country, and made invasion for ever impossible.

From first to last poetical justice is satisfied on all sides. The story of the capture of the city is the most perfect in all its parts of the poetical rhapsodies in Roman story. Yet that the legend has a groundwork of actual truth, there can be no reasonable doubt. That Rome was once sacked by a sudden irruption of Gauls from beyond the Apennines, must be regarded as proved by an authentic tradition. The manner in which the city was rebuilt, so hastily and inconsiderately, that the lines of the new streets often crossed the sewers of more ancient construction, was a visible proof of this event to a later generation. To modern criticism it is attested by the evident loss of almost every monument of history and antiquity beyond this date. No such catastrophe occurred again, and accordingly we see at this period to get hold at last of the extreme link of the chain of genuine tradition; and though we shall find reason still, for at least another century, to question much of the details of the history, we may believe that the main foundation of events, of names, and of dates, is preserved continuously from henceforth through accredited records, whether public or private. Camillus, the second founder, as he was gratefully entitled, of the city, was in fact the original founder of historic Rome. Yet still," says Arnold, "no period of Roman history since the first institution of the tribunes of the commons is really more obscure than the thirty years immediately following the retreat of the Gauls. And the reason of this is, that when there are no contemporary historians, the mere existence of public documents affords no security for the preservation of a real knowledge of men and actions. The documents may exist, but they give no evidence; they are neglected or corrupted at pleasure by poets and panegyrists; and a fictitious story gains firm possession of the public mind, because there is no one to take the pains of promulgating the truth. And thus it has happened that the panegyrists of Camillus and of the other great patrician families, finding ready belief in many instances from national vanity, have so disguised the real course of events that at no other period of Roman history is it more difficult to restore it."

To attempt any such restoration, even did it appear feasible, would not be within the scope of this sketch of history. It will be sufficient to make a passing reference to a few striking incidents recorded, all of which have probably a foundation in truth, though disguised no doubt, and encumbered by many fictitious adjuncts. On the retreat of the Gauls, the Roman people entertained, it is said, the thought of abandoning their ruined homes, and migrating in a body to Veii. Camillus in vain conjured them not to desert the soil of their ancestors, but a passing omen, the voice of a centurion exclaiming "Plant the standard here, here we had best remain," determined them to stay. We can easily believe that the losses of this Gallic war were the occasion of an addition of four new tribes to the city, comprising the free inhabitants of the lands taken from the Veientines. The state was invigorated by this increase in its numbers, and enabled to prosecute a fresh series of campaigns with the Volscians and Equians, as well as with the Gauls, who, notwithstanding their alleged retreat homewards, and the disastrous defeat which is said to have attended it, appear to have settled themselves in fixed habitations at Tibur on the Anio, and other stations on the Sabine frontier. To this period, and to this continued struggle with the northern barbarians, are referred some of the most romantic incidents of Roman story,—the winning of the golden collar by Manlius, and the aid vouchsafed by a heaven-sent crow to Valerius. Such were the pretended facts by which the family panegyrists explained the names of the Torquati and the Corvini, houses largely celebrated in the later history of the republic.

As, however, the external history is now little else than a repetition of such border contests as have been related more than once before, so the internal history presents us with a new edition of the old quarrels between the debtors and their patrician creditors, of the struggles for political equality between the rival classes, and for the establishment of an agrarian law. With respect to the first, the story still runs in its old channel. The people repine at the sufferings of their brave but impoverished veterans, and demand redress for the present and security for the future. On the one side murmurs and sedition, on the other the creation of a dictator. The gallant Manlius throws himself into the popular cause; he is accused of treason; the people are induced to repudiate his championship; and he is cast as a traitor from the Tarpeian rock. The house on the Capitoline, presented to him for his brave defence of the temple against the Gauls, is razed to the ground, and the Manlian gens forbidden from henceforth to use the praenomen of Marcus. The next domestic occurrence is the carrying of an agrarian law by the tribunes Licinius and Sextius in 377, by which it is provided that no citizen shall hold more than 500 jugera (about 320 acres) of the public Agrarian land, nor feed on the public pastures beyond a certain number of cattle. Finally, in the same year, the plebs achieves the great charter of its liberties, in the decree that one of the consuls shall be always a plebeian. Such an enactment supposes, of course, the revival of the consulship on its old footing; nevertheless the Fasti continue for several years to insert the names, not of consuls, but of military tribunes; and it is not till 388 that a plebeian consul is at last appointed in the person of Sextius himself. Our account of the way in which this change was effected is characteristic of the strain of domestic romance which forms the basis of so large a portion of our early history.

Q. Fabius Ambustus, a patrician of high rank, had married his two daughters, the one to Sulpicius a patrician, the other to the plebeian tribune Licinius. Visiting one day at her sister's house, the wife of Licinius was surprised at the formal ceremony with which a lictor knocked at the door of Sulpicius, who was then consular tribune. The consort of the privileged noble laughed at the ignorance of the plebeian's wife, who complained with tears to her husband and her father, and engaged them to combine in effecting a reform which should place her on a level with her haughty sister. Modern critics gravely assure us that this story must be a fiction, inasmuch as the plebeian's wife was daughter of a man who had been consular tribune not long before; and Licinius himself, though a plebeian, was as competent to hold the office and enjoy the services of the lictors as any patrician. If we felt that we were here upon historical ground, we should not regard this as any presumption against the truth of the story. The young wife may have been as inexperienced as a child. But the legend was never intended to challenge criticism.

We may conjecture that the interminable repetitions of similar phases of the great constitutional conflict,—the same complaints, the same concessions, the same evasions, the same reprisals,—have arisen from an attempt to reconcile the claims of various illustrious houses, some to having proposed popular measures, others to having baffled them; thus spreading over various epochs, and dividing among many individuals, the incidents of a political warfare really limited in duration, and confined to a few prominent actors. M. Michelet has pointed out a curious coincidence which may be thought to have some significance, in the repetition of the same names, as connected with these struggles. Thus a Brutus, a Valerius, and a Horatius, are more than once at hand whenever a popular movement requires a patron. A Spurius Cassius, a Spurius Mælius, and a Spurius Metilius, are all alike noble sufferers in the cause of plebeian independence. If the well-known later meaning of the word Spurius belong to it properly and originally, the name may have been applied by patrician annalists to those false aristocrats who betrayed the interests of their own faction; if, on the other hand, we assume its derivation from super, implying true greatness and nobility, we may ascribe its recurrence to the invention of the plebeians themselves in their zeal for the glorification of such unexpected champions. A son of Camillus, the first who held the office of praetor, created by the dictator as a compromise between the two classes, is also known by the praenomen of Spurius. The same is given also to Servilius Ahala, one of the most noted champions of the aristocracy; from whence we should the more readily infer that in all these cases it was alike applied in token of admiration by

Arnold, History of Rome, ii. 2. the partizans of the person so designated. It is remarkable that this phenomenon, so common throughout the period of these domestic struggles, occurs but rarely either before or after it. But whatever may be our scepticism regarding the early conflict of two classes, we may reasonably accept the date at which we have now arrived as the epoch of their actual union. The Temple of Concord, dedicated on this occasion by the aged Camillus beneath the slope of the Capitoline, constituted a visible record of the fact, of which some remains are still existing. During the next thirty years indeed the contest still continued fitfully; the patricians yielding step by step with reluctance, the plebeians pressing their advantage. It terminated, however, with the appointment of a plebeian dictator, Publius Philo, in 415, who carried enactments,—1. For enforcing the obligation of the plebiscita on the whole nation; and 2. For allowing both consuls to be plebeians as well as the praetors, and requiring the appointment of one of the censors from each class.

A period of warfare with the Etruscans and some of the Latin tribes still accompanies this protracted struggle; but the Romans are strengthened by the conciliation of the commons, and the alleged addition of two new tribes seems to show an increase of numbers, probably from the submission and incorporation of foreigners. The Latin states, which had long since violated their ancient treaty with Rome, now seek to renew it; but Rome chooses rather to subdue her faithless allies than accept their alliance on terms of equality. The "great Latin war," as the historians have entitled it, is rendered illustrious by its legends of the military execution of T. Manlius by his father, and of the self-devotion of Decius Mus. The result of the war is the complete and final reduction of Latium. "Three years," says Dr Arnold, "were sufficient to finish for ever the most important war in which Rome was at any time engaged."

SECT. X.—THE SAMNITE WARS, AND CONQUEST OF CENTRAL ITALY.

Roman history now enters upon a wider field. A branch of the great Sabellian nation, the inhabitants of the mountain tracts of central Italy, having extended their conquests far into the south, have made themselves masters of the Etruscan colonies in Campania. The Samnites are established in Capua, Nola, Cumae, and other cities, and have here assumed the name of Campanians, from the country to which they have succeeded. Their influence extends throughout the Greek cities of the coast, Neapolis and Palaeopolis, Stabiae and Herculaneum; with the old name of Samnites they have lost their ancient language and national associations; and this offshoot from the parent race now finds itself arrayed in war against other branches of the same original stock, the Samnites of the mountains. The Campanians, as the weaker and less warlike of these nations may now be called, solicited the assistance of Rome against the attack of their hardier kinsmen, and offered to surrender their city to the republic as the price of her powerful protection.

We have now reached the dawn of genuine history, and the narrative of events recorded by the historians assumes a new complexion. We lose sight from henceforth of the train of marvellous and romantic stories which imparted a seductive charm to our earlier records; but in return we obtain a glimpse at least of political combinations and strategic manoeuvres which throws an air of truthfulness over the narrative that follows. Family pride indeed may have coloured some of the details and suppressed others; but we have got beyond the era of mere fabrication. The Roman history is at least simply told from Roman sources and its very meagreness and obscurity may be accepted as a token of its substantial genuineness. Yet this was the period when the Romans first came in actual contact with the Greeks, the most curious and diligent of historical inquirers, who might have taught them to understand and describe events with greater spirit and precision. A Greek writer assures us that at this era the Romans sent an embassy, along with the Etruscans, to the great Alexander of Macedon. Another Alexander, King of Epirus, had landed about the same time on the coast of Lucania, and defeated a Samnite army in the neighbourhood of Paestum. The Romans hastened to form an alliance with this new comer, in the year 423 (B.C. 331). But from this alliance with one Grecian power they were soon led into hostilities against others. They engaged in war with the Greek cities of Neapolis and Palaeopolis, inadequately protected by their dependence on the Campanians; but their means, perhaps, for reducing places defended and fortified by the rules of art were slender, and the war was protracted through more than one campaign. The Roman armies had now for the first time advanced so far from the capital that it was inconvenient to return home with the approach of winter. For the first time the consul in command was A.U. 428, directed to hold his ground, and retain his place at the B.C. 326, head of the legions, with the title of proconsul.

An interval of fourteen years had elapsed since the surrender of Capua and the first brief collision with the Samnites; but the second war, commencing in the year 428, was distinguished by a duration of more than twenty years, and by the terrible disaster of the Caudine Forks, where a Roman army was entangled in a defile, and compelled to dine Forks, lay down its arms and pass under the yoke, by the gallant A.U. 433, Pontius Telesinus. The disgrace was harder to bear than B.C. 321, the disaster. The city clothed itself in mourning; the consuls, who had submitted in person to this ignominy, dared not re-assume their places. Twice was a dictator nominated, but each time the auspices forbade his creation. At last Valerius Corvus, the interrex, or provisional chief magistrate, caused two of the most distinguished citizens, Papirius Cursor and Publius Philo, to be elected consuls; and Posthumius, one of the beaten generals, declaring that the republic ought not to be bound by the terms which in his distress had been extorted from him, insisted that he should himself be given up to the enemy, together with his colleagues the quaestors and tribunes, and every other officer of the legions who had signed the disgraceful capitulation. Pontius, indignant or generous, or possibly coolly calculating the consequences of accepting the proffered satisfaction for a deliberate breach of public faith, refused to receive these prisoners, and demanded the literal fulfillment of the terms they had exchanged with him. War recommenced. The Samnites gained some successes, but the Romans gradually got the upper hand; the consuls penetrated into Apulia, took Lucania, and recovered the arms, the ensigns, and the hostages captured at Caudium. Possibly the Romans fabricated the story of a complete defeat of their enemies, and the retrieval of their own dishonour by making the Samnites pass under the yoke in their turn. Pontius the brave Pontius, however, was carried captive to Rome. Samnite. Nevertheless we hear soon afterwards of an irruption of the Samnites into the Roman territories in Campania, the defection of Capua, and the great defeat of the dictator Fabius Maximus at Lautulae. These losses were balanced again by a second victory in 440, once more in the neighbourhood of Caudium, in which the Samnites were totally

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1 Strabo, v., p. 232; Arnoldi, ii. 172. Rome was now destined to encounter, for the first time, the highest form of civilization and the most scientific military tactics of the ancient world. The luxurious and warlike cities of the Lucanian coast, though Greek by origin, had long lost the valor and discipline of their nation, and could only oppose to the rude warriors of Latium the arts of policy and statecraft. But now a genuine Greek soldiery was about to appear upon the stage, with the strength of the Macedonian phalanx and the resources of Grecian economy.

The Romans had constructed some vessels at Thurii. With these they were cruising in the Gulf of Tarentum, now normally at peace with the republic, when the Tarentines, jealous of this attempt to form a navy, sailed forth from their harbour, declaring that the Romans were bound by treaty not to navigate their ships beyond the Lacian promontory, and destroyed or chased home the Roman vessels. They even followed up this insult by an attack on the Roman garrison at Thurii. When Posthumius arrives as an ambassador to lay his complaint before them, they assail him with mockery and insult. He swears that the filth they fling upon his toga shall be washed away in their blood. A Roman army speedily appears before Tarentum; and the nobles, who had taken no part, perhaps, in the brutal violence of their populace, would have yielded at once; but the people, in their vanity, scorned submission to the foreigner, and invoked the aid of Pyrrhus, King of Epirus. This chief, the most noted warrior of his age, was the cousin, though several years junior, of Alexander the Great. He had succeeded his father in regular course in the throne of Epirus; but his career had been from the first that of an adventurer rather than of a sovereign. Ambitious, restless, and captivated with a vague aspiration for glory, in imitation of his illustrious relative, he was easily persuaded by the Tarentines, who promised him an extensive alliance and a force of 350,000 combatants, to undertake the deliverance of the Greeks in Italy from the threatened yoke of obscure barbarians. Landing with a veteran force of 25,000 men, and attended by 20 elephants, Pyrrhus gained a victory at Heraclea over the first consular army battle of the Romans, but with such loss on his own side as caused Heracles him to remark already, that such another victory would be his ruin. He recovered, indeed, some towns on the coast, as the fruits of this hard-won triumph; but the promised allies failed to make their appearance; he found the Tarentines nerveless and inefficient; he was glad to disguise his mortification by offering terms of peace to the Romans, on condition of their leaving the Greek cities in freedom, and restoring their lands to the Samnites and Apuliens. Cineas, the envoy whom he sent with these terms to Rome, returned unsuccessful, but filled with admiration of the numbers, the bravery, and undaunted spirit of his master's enemies. This report inspired the King of Epirus with increased anxiety; but, brave and daring as he was, he determined to make a bold dash, and, turning the flank of a second army opposed to him, he got within a few leagues of Rome itself. A third force was recalled from the borders of Etruria to cover the capital, and he was compelled to retreat, lest he should find himself surrounded. The Romans now sent in their turn an embassy to treat for the ransom of their prisoners. The courage and presence of mind displayed by Fabricius, according to the well-known story, made a deep impression on the mind of Pyrrhus; and when the republic generously advertised him of a plot for his assassination, he was so touched by this trait of honourable feeling that he sent back the prisoners without terms. Meanwhile the condition of the Greeks in Sicily, assailed by the fleets of Carthage, became even more pressing than that of their compatriots in Italy, and Pyrrhus... The Romans had now conquered Italy, and made the first great step towards the conquest of the world. We must pause for a moment to review the way in which they organized these new dominions, and make them a ground of vantage for the further extension of their power.

The most striking difference in the development of ancient and modern politics results from the generally republican character of the one, and monarchic constitution of the other. The extension of the Athenian and of the Roman empire was formed either by conquest or colonization, while that of the great states of modern Europe has resulted far more commonly from dynastic marriages and successions. Had ancient Italy been parcelled out among a number of sovereign families, it would probably have fallen, state by state, under the sway of one fortunate dynasty; wars might have played a part in the transformation, but dynastic alliances would have been still more effectual; Mars might have brought many nations under the yoke, but the influence of Venus would have proved still more powerful. The populations of the peninsula were sufficiently homogeneous to have constituted an aggregate people, of equal laws and similar institutions, from the Rubicon to the Straits of Messana. It might still be a question whether the configuration of the country—its great length and slender breadth of surface, its mountain divisions and diversities of soil and climate—would have permitted in ancient times a national union on such a footing, the impracticability of which in our days is recognised as a political maxim; but however this may be, the republican character of the Italian institutions of itself precluded the operation of those peaceful influences which, as we have said, might have been more effective to such an end than war, and it only remained to be seen whether the rivalries and animosities of so many equal neighbours would terminate in their mutual exhaustion and ruin, or in the avowed predominance of one.

The latter alternative, as we have seen, found place. The predominance of Rome was acknowledged. We have now to see by what methods she maintained and perpetuated it. It was no part of her policy, for it did not come within the scope of Italian ideas, to mould her conquests into one nation. On the contrary, her object was to wrest from the vanquished their independence, to stifle their nationality, to make them docile subjects; for this end, to create differences and foster jealousies among them, to separate the one from another in feeling and usage, and prevent their combining together for any common purpose, least of all for the purpose of extorting common terms from their conquerors.

In the early times the patricians had been the citizens, the plebeians the subjects of the state. This distinction had, in process of time, and through many struggles, become nearly obliterated. The Romans and Italians were now to go through a like career in relation to one another. But the Romans had now become more or less conscious of the principle under which their early revolutions had evolved themselves, and they seem to have contemplated steadily from the first the gradual progress of the Italians to the goal of civic equality. They decreed that the sovereign people should be always the people of the Forum, and that its civil rights should only be exercised within the sacred limits of the city; but they provided at the same time for the admission of their subjects, one by one, within these limits, as a long probation of service and dependence should seem gradually to qualify them for political assimilation. Such admission might wound the pride and touch the immediate interests of a race of conquerors and plunderers; but the spirit of ambition and cupidity required fresh recruits to maintain it, and as the empire was extended, greater numbers were necessary to preserve it. Between the years A.D. 370-490 (384 and 264 B.C.) twelve new tribes were created, and the Ager Romanus, or national domain, extended from the Cimilian wood in Etruria, on the one side, to the middle of Campania, on the other. Upon this territory the censors enumerated 292,334 men capable of bearing arms, or a total population of 1,200,000 souls, to form the great central garrison of Italy. Two centuries before, according to one account, the military force of Rome was computed at only 104,214 men. While we may decline to place any reliance at least on these latter numbers, the fact of their being thus recorded evinces the belief of the Romans themselves in the early practice of political incorporation.

If we may speak of an original Roman people as contrasted with the aggregate now created, we may believe that at this time its numbers did not exceed one-half of the whole body. But the original twenty-one tribes gave it so many suffrages in the assembly, while the new recruits were enrolled in twelve additional tribes only, and exercised no more than twelve votes. Such were the tribes of the Etruscans, the Latins, the Ausonians, the Aquinans, and the Volscians. A little later than the era at which we have arrived, in the year of the city 513, two more tribes were appropriated to the Sabines. But beside their inferiority in number, these new and extraneous members of the national body had little opportunity, from their distance from the Forum, of influencing the course of affairs in the city. Nor, though thus stationed in the immediate neighbourhood of the capital, did these foreign tribes occupy the whole surrounding territory. The Ager Romanus was intersected, almost within sight from the gates, by parcels of land which still remained in the hands of strangers, and bore the designation of Ager peregrinus. Several cities of Latium, such as Tibur and Praeneste, still bore the title of Latin instead of Roman, retained their own municipal institutions, and were attached to the republic not by the possession of the Roman franchise, but by the condition of a specific eligibility to it. Any of their citizens who had served certain magistracies in them, became qualified thereby for the enjoyment of citizenship at Rome, and the constant accession of individuals from this source helped to replenish the void made by perennial warfare, no less than the occasional introduction into the state of corporate communities.

The franchise, or rights of the city, thus obtained,—the object for the most part of the dearest vows of the subjects Political of Rome,—comprehended, 1. Absolute authority over the wife and children, slaves and chattels; 2. A guarantee of personal liberty, exemption from stripes, security from capital punishment, except by the vote of the people or under military authority in the camp; 3. The suffrage; 4. Access to honours and employments; 5. The possession of Quiritary property, held under Roman law; 6. Immunity from all the taxes and tributes imposed at discretion on the subjects of the state. Such was the complete franchise of Rome; the jus civitatis optimo jure. To the Italians beyond the pale of the thirty-five tribes some portion of these privileges might be accorded in various measure and degree. To some the Senate gave the right of dealing (commerciun), to others that of marriage (conubium). The cities of the conquered nations were arranged in different classes, according to the favour in which they were held by the conquerors,—1. The municipia optima jure, or of the first class, the inhabitants of which, whenever they visited Rome, were allowed to exercise there the complete rights of Roman citizenship; 2. The municipia without franchise, which enjoyed indeed the title and burdens of citizenship, such as the service in the legions, but were deprived from the suffrage, and from the civil offices of the republic; 3. The cities which had renounced their ancient usages to embrace the laws and institutions of Rome, but yet were not entitled to the name of Roman. But below the municipia was yet another class of prefectures, towns subjected to the government of a Roman officer or prefect, under the forms of Roman jurisprudence. These prefectures were generally so classed by way of precaution or punishment. Such was the state to which Capua was reduced after a revolt in which she imprudently engaged against the Romans. Such were the various grades of subjection granted according to the terms of capitulation in each case. There was still a lower rank in the descending scale, that of the dedittiti, or people who had been reduced by the fortune of war to unconditional submission; these were required to deliver up their arms together with hostages, to raze their walls or to receive a garrison within them, to pay a tribute, and to furnish besides a contingent to the armies of the republic.

The allies, as they were designated, of the republic were a class of states differing in some particulars from all these. They were the dependents of Rome, but flattered themselves that they were not her subjects. The Senate indulged them in a delusion which soothed their pride, and made them more serviceable as auxiliaries than they would have been as indignant bond-servants. Tarentum was allowed to retain the name of a free state, though here the Romans went so far as to level the walls of the city and establish a garrison in its citadel. Neapolis was free, but required to furnish vessels for the Roman marine, and contribute to the pay of its mariners. The Camertines and Heraclotes were declared “equals” of Rome (aequos faderes), on terms of mutual defence. Tibur, Prenestum, and most of the Etruscan cities, ranked in the same class; but the Romans took care to foster in all these cities a party of their own friends and creatures, to mould the external conduct of this free state, and, if occasion required, to find them a pretence for interfering with its domestic affairs. Such was the policy of the republic in its relations towards its conquered enemies. It is characterized by a studied absence of general measures, and of uniformity of treatment. It is deliberately framed to maintain and intensify the actual diversities of nations and circumstances. With this view, every possible hindrance, often amounting to specific prohibition, is laid in the way of common action among them, of commerce, and even of intermarriage. Gradually, however, as the power of Rome extended, her jealousy relaxed, and these distinctions, long maintained, became more and more effaced. They subsided at last into three classes and conditions of rights: the jus civitatis, which conferred a share in the sovereignty; the jus Latii, which gave access or eligibility to the franchise; the jus Italicum, of which the burdens were greater and the prerogatives inferior. This graduated scale of privilege continued to exist under the same name down to a late period in Roman history, and was extended to the later possessions of the republic, long after the obliteration of all political distinctions between the Romans, the Latins, and the inhabitants of the peninsula generally.

Sect. XIII.—Colonies and Military Roads.

Neither the interest the more favoured of the Italians Colonies might be expected to take in the Roman franchise, to and military roads, which they were admitted, nor the gratitude of the rest they roads, for the remnant they were allowed to retain of their own nationality, could be regarded as sufficient security for their permanent submission. Throughout the length and breadth of the peninsula Rome established her armed garrisons under the form of colonies. In the spot selected for such a military station, a large portion of the national territory was confiscated by the conquerors, and some thousands of the citizens selected by lot, or on their own demand, to receive it in full possession, engaging in return to defend the interests of the republic, which were thus identified with their own. The administration of the colony thus formed, and thus strictly attached to the parent state, was organized on the model of the city. The colonists, as Roman citizens, met in their public assemblies, and chose their decemvirs and their decurions to represent the consuls and senators. Their residence was in every case, perhaps, not a new stronghold constructed for the purpose, but the fortified city of some conquered people, dispossessed even of their habitations to make way for them. Such cities were chosen, of course, for their natural strength or their commanding situation. Thus 6000 colonists were established at Beneventum to cover Campania; 14,000 at Venusia to check the Greeks of the south-eastern coast, to defend Apulia, and control the Lucanians and the Samnites. In Etruria, Sutrium and Nepete watched the valley of the Tiber; Ardea, Satricum, and Antium held the long-disturbed districts of the great plain of Latium; Velitrae, Norba, and Setia kept the keys of the Sabine mountains; Anxur closed the gates of Campania; Fregellae, Sora, Interamna, and Minturnae occupied the line of the Liris, the route of the Samnites when they threatened an assault on Rome. Such were the entrenched camps surrounding the city. Beyond these lay a second line of fortresses, such as Atina, Aquinum, and Casinum, in the heart of the Sabellian mountains; Vesuvia, Suessa-Aurunca, Sinussa, Teanum, Cales, among the defiles through which the waters issue from them. To these may be added Alba Fucentia, northward in the country of the Marsians; Cesula and Carseoli, among the Equans; and Narnia, which covered the route from Umbria. More than once an enemy, such as Pyrrhus and afterwards Hannibal, succeeded by a bold effort in penetrating this double line; but it was with the loss of his communications, and such imminent danger to his rear, that his advance was paralysed, and a rapid retreat rendered inevitable. Throughout the rest of Italy the colonies were less closely planted. Samnium was occupied by two only, Beneventum and Æsernia; Picenum by three, Adria, Firmum, and Castrum; Umbria by four, Narnia, Spoletum, Ariminum, and Sena. In Campania we may enumerate Satricula, Cales, and Casilinum; Apulia was guarded by Luceria and... There was union because there was equality; because an aristocracy of blood was no longer recognised, nor was more honour paid to that of fortune. At this epoch the Roman constitution presented that safe combination of royalty, aristocracy, and democracy which Polybius, Machiavel, and Montesquieu have so much admired. The consuls gave it unity in command, the Senate experience in counsel, the people strength in action. By these three powers, mutually restricting themselves within just limits, all the forces of the state, formerly turned one against another, had found at last, after a struggle of more than two centuries, that happy equilibrium which made them all concur, with irresistible power, in working towards one common end, the greatness of the republic.

SECT. XIV.—SOURCES OF THE HISTORY OF ROME IN THE FIFTH CENTURY.

This glowing panegyric on the character of the Roman people in the best age of the free state may be fairly deduced from the histories of the time which have come down to us. Doubtless in those histories much allowance must be made for a spirit of exaggeration and patriotic colouring in painting the actions and principles of the heroes of the republic. Nevertheless there seems sufficient reason for admitting the general truthfulness of the accounts we have received of this period, and accepting as commonly authentic what professes to be the history of Rome, at least from the time of the wars with Samnium and with Pyrrhus. It will be well to pause, then, at this point, and indicate briefly what may have been the sources of Roman history at this period.

The first writers of early Roman history in a connected form were Greeks,—such as Diocles of Peparethus, Timaeus, and Hieronymus. Aristotle had already obtained a glimpse of the rising republic, and had signalized the taking of Rome by the Gauls; but it was not till the Romans entered into relations with Alexander of Molossus, and with Pyrrhus, that their existence became a matter of interest to the people beyond the Adriatic. The first Greek writers on the subject of this Italian city would naturally resort to the colonists of Magna Graecia for such information of their neighbour as they could furnish, and this would be derived, in the first instance, from the floating traditions which, during the preceding century, had reached Neapolis or Tarentum, conveyed by word of mouth, rather than ascertained from the scanty writings and historical monuments which might exist in Rome itself. Hence, no doubt, these original historians gave a prominent place to the stories which connected Rome with Greece,—to the legends of Evander and Aeneas, of recourse to the Delphic oracle, or to the records of Athenian legislation, which thus obtained a credit not their due with succeeding inquirers. It is probable that the writings of these foreigners first excited the emulation of the Roman annalists, such as Fabius Pictor and Cincius Alimentus, who began in the sixth century to construct a vernacular History of Rome. We have no reason to suppose that historical composition was an art of native growth at Rome, any more than among other western nations, all of which, including the civilized Etruscans themselves, seem to have been wholly strangers to it. But the Romans, when they applied themselves to the art, had access to other sources than the Greeks who preceded them, and could combine the traditions and fabrications of the Greeks with the meagre chronicles and other fragmentary records existing among them. Thus we know that from a very early antiquity the priests had kept a register of the events in which they were themselves chiefly interested, such as omens and natural phenomena, to which they attached a religious significance; that there were also certain Fasti, or lists of magistrates, dating from a primitive epoch; and we may surmise that here and there a political incident was noted in one or other of these journals. It is certain, moreover, that the Romans, with their intense family feelings, left some private memorials of their own ancestors, and refreshed their recollection of them from time to time by domestic ceremonies and funeral lamentations. The highly romantic character of so much of the early history may lead us also to conjecture that some popular traditions were preserved in the form of poetry, though of this we have no positive testimony whatever; and the inference is by no means strong enough to bear, in default thereof, the elaborate superstructure built upon it by Niebuhr and his followers. The notion, indeed, so suddenly enunciated and so hastily adopted by the students of Roman history, that our early accounts are mainly founded on a defunct series of ballads and epics, may be regarded as already exploded. Thus much, however, is certain, that as far as the memory of long past events was entrusted to a mere oral tradition, its preservation was in the utmost degree precarious; while the monuments, however scanty, of written history were subjected to the sweeping devastation of the Gallic conflagration. The Romans indeed pretended that the Capitol at least had escaped the capture of the city; but no reliance can be placed on their account of the retreat and discomfiture of the Gauls; and there is good reason to suppose that their city, fortress and all, fell into the hands of the destroyers. Very few, therefore, of their records can be supposed to have escaped; it may be doubted whether the two or three documents of a previous period, which Polybius or Pliny believed they had actually seen in their own time, were genuine monuments of the age to which they were presumed to belong. That from that period a systematic fabrication commenced of records pretending to an anterior date may easily be believed; and it is from such fabrications, grounded more or less upon current traditions, that the first annalists of Rome, both Greek and Roman, drew, it may be presumed, a great part of their materials. We see, then, that, down to the period of the Gallic war, there is no firm ground for the historian of Rome. The events recorded he must suspect of being pure inventions; in the pretended progress of the constitution he will trace only a confused attempt to account for political arrangements existing at a later period. But in the sources of history posterior to the great conflagration a great change becomes apparent. Whatever the value of contemporary records may have been, however much they may have been embellished and falsified by family or national pride, we may be sure at least that they once actually existed, and continued no doubt to exist for centuries. The first annalists had materials for history, were they but endowed with discretion to sift and read them rightly. It is not to be expected, indeed, that in a rude uncritical age these materials were carefully handled; and still, at least to the time of Pyrrhus, and perhaps for one generation later, many evident falsifications of history are apparent. But from the commencement of the sixth century we may be sure that the memory of events was sufficiently recent to secure the first writers of Roman history from material error regarding them. We may proceed, therefore, from this point, without misgiving, to follow the lines they have traced for us.

While Rome was completing the reduction of Italy, the republic of Carthage, on the opposite coast of Africa, was the first rivalling her conquests in the islands of the western Mediterranean. The Greek colonies in Sicily had fallen under her dominion, as well as the barbarous tribes of Sardinia. On the extinction of the Grecian power in this quarter, the two rivals were about to come into serious collision. The Carthaginians were preparing to seize the Æolian Islands, barren rocks indeed, but almost within sight of Naples and the Campanian coast. Still, however, a single stronghold withstood them in Sicily, from whence the Romans might hope to make good a footing in that important island, and check their advance beyond it. Messana was occupied by a band of buccaneering adventurers, who had recently overthrown the government, and expelled or subjugated the inhabitants, but now, pressed hard by the Carthaginian power, presumed to solicit assistance from the legitimate government of Rome. To render such assistance was contrary to the principles of international law, even as then understood; the Romans, moreover, had just before visited a similar act of lawlessness with the severest punishment. Now, however, self-interest prevailed, and it was determined to use the opportunity for establishing a Roman force in Sicily.

Such was the origin of the first Punic war, which commenced in the year 490 (B.C. 264), and lasted without intermission for twenty-two years. The great object of the Romans was to gain possession of Sicily, a rich and fertile country, and of special importance to them, from the abundance of corn which it was fitted to produce; for Rome had already become dependent in some degree on foreign importation for the supply of a population withdrawn from the pursuits of agriculture, and engaged perpetually in the barren exercise of arms. The Strait of Messana is only 3 miles in width, and though watched by the naval forces of the great maritime republic, the Romans had little difficulty in throwing re-enforcements across it; nevertheless, they soon found it essential to their views to contend with the Carthaginians for the dominion of the seas. At first they were obliged to build their ships of war from the model of an enemy's vessel, cast accidentally on their coasts; but this ignorance of naval architecture was the least of their disadvantages in commencing the struggle; for they had no experience of naval tactics, nor even of navigation. Nevertheless they exerted themselves with their usual energy, constructed a numerous fleet, manned it by a conscription of the lowest class of citizens, such as was not admitted to serve in the legions, and fought their ships with crews of mere landsmen, aiming rather at grappling and boarding the enemy, than at manoeuvring against him, and sinking him with the stroke of the beak. They succeeded almost from the first, though not without many reverses, sometimes from storms, sometimes from the greater skill of the Carthaginians, in keeping the sea at least on terms of equality. In the year 498 (B.C. 256) they had so far gained the ascendancy as to be able to land a large army, under the consul Regulus, on the coast of Africa, with which they ravaged the country, and approached to the walls of the African capital. But the Carthaginians, putting forth all their power, here inflicted on them a decisive defeat, making B.C. 256.

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1 "The theory of Niebuhr respecting the derivation of the early Roman history from ballads or epic lays, is also examined and refuted by Schweigler, vol. i., pp. 68-63. His principal arguments are—1. That the conditions of an early national epic poetry were wanting among the Romans; 2. That the early history bears no mark of proceeding from plebeian poets, whose songs were animated by an anti-patriarchal spirit; 3. That these poems, if they had ever existed, would not have entirely disappeared; 4. That the early Roman history has not the character of a mythical invention, but is composed in great part of astrological legends, of stories laboriously invented in order to explain existing names, institutions, customs, rites, and monuments. Schweigler lays it down that, as far as the early Roman history does not consist of astrological legends, it is the deliberate fabrication of historians, or formed of legal and constitutional traditions." (Sir G. C. Lewis On the Credibility of Early Roman History, i. 229.) Such is the conclusion established also by the powerful reasoning of this English writer, and it is now, we believe, generally accepted by the learned in Germany. Regulus prisoner, and suffering a small remnant only to make good its return to Italy. Regulus, we are told, was afterwards sent to Rome on parole, to negotiate peace. He dissuaded his countrymen from yielding to dishonourable terms, and returned to his captors, to be put to death, according to the popular story, with tortures, but, as the later Romans themselves allowed, to live some years in custody, and eventually to die a natural death. War was again renewed, and continued with alternate successes; the reduction of Panormus by the Romans (A.U.C. 500, B.C. 254), the defeat of their fleet at Drepanum (505, 249), the loss of another armament by tempest at Camarina, and the final victory at sea off the islands Ægates (513, 241). It was terminated at last by the exhaustion of the Carthaginians, who were reduced to the necessity of purchasing peace by the cession of all their claims on Sicily and the Æolian islands.

The Carthaginians now turned their attention to Spain, where they raised in a few years a new empire, which more than balanced the loss of Sicily, as well as that of Sardinia, which revolted from them, and fell, as did also Corsica, not long afterwards, under the power of the Romans. These great rivals remained at peace with one another for more than thirty years; but while the Carthaginians were acquiring the gold mines of Spain, and recruiting their armies with its hardy infantry, the Romans were making great advances in internal resources, and pushing their conquests at the same time in other quarters. In 525 they crossed the Adriatic, and made successful incursions into Illyria. The following year was distinguished by an embassy from Rome to Greece, where the Corinthians allowed the envoys of the formidable "strangers" to take part in the Isthmian games. About this period, however, we read of a threatened invasion of Gauls. The city was struck with panic. The priests required that two men of that nation should be buried alive, as a sacrifice, in the Forum. A state of "tumult" was declared, and the whole body of the citizens raised and armed for the defence of their country. The consul Emilius went forth at the head of the legions, and confronted the assailants in the valley of the Po, where he gained a great victory over them, and received the honours of a triumph. In another battle the Roman leader Marcellus slew, in a personal combat, the king of the Gauls, Viridomarus, and bore his arms, the "spolia opima," to the Capitol. This eminent reward of prowess had been won but twice before by Romulus and Tullus Hostilius; nor was it ever gained by a Roman captain again. The conquest of the Cisalpine and of the Istrian peninsula followed upon this repulse of the Transalpine barbarians. Meanwhile the Carthaginians were advancing to the entire dominion of Spain. Their politic chief, Hamilcar Barcas, was succeeded in his command there by his son Hannibal, whom he had sworn in childhood to eternal enmity against Rome; and this enmity the young captain was now about to gratify, having persuaded his government to let him lead all the forces of the province against Italy, cross the Pyrenees, traverse the friendly regions of southern Gaul, and descend from the Alps among the newly-conquered subjects of Rome, whom he expected to unite in a mighty league against their enemies and his own.

SECT. XVI.—THE SECOND PUNIC WAR.

The second Punic war commenced in 536 (B.C. 218) with the destruction of Saguntum by the Carthaginians, in defiance of the Roman remonstrances. Spain was now sufficiently reduced to form the basis of Hannibal's proposed operations. Assembling an army of 82,000 foot and 12,000 horse, he commenced his march. This large force, however, was very considerably reduced by the fatigues of the march, and by the garrisons it was necessary to leave behind to secure communications through so long a route. Hannibal crossed the Rhone with little more than 50,000 men. His easiest and directest route into Italy lay by coast line, turning the lowest spur of the Maritime Alps; but this road was watched by the Roman general Scipio, and the Ligurians, into whose territory it would have led him, were less likely to receive him as a deliverer than the Gaulish tribes, such as the Boii and Insubres, who lay among the valleys of the Graian Alps, further to the north. Hannibal determined to hazard two steps, both equally bold. He allowed Scipio's army to land on his flank, at the mouth of the Rhone, and occupy the tracts which he was about to leave behind him; then taking the line of the Isère, he Hannibal ventured to climb the almost inaccessible pass of the Little crosses the St Bernard, in the middle of October, with his large force Alps of men, horses, and elephants. He had not even assured himself of the co-operation of the rude mountaineers, who harassed and attacked him on his march, and caused him both losses and delay. Indeed that perilous enterprise, which we must suppose he undertook after due calculation, as the only means of accomplishing his purpose, and launching a Carthaginian army into the bosom of a discontented population, cost him more than half the force with which he had crossed the Rhone; and when, after pausing at the summit of the pass, and encouraging his followers by showing to them the land of promise, he descended into the valley of the Po, he could muster no more than 20,000 foot and 6000 cavalry. Nor did the Gauls in these parts manifest at first any ardour in his behalf. It was not till he had gained some notable successes at the passage of Ticinus and the Ticinus Trebia that they began to throw themselves vehemently and trebly into his cause. But now his numbers rapidly swelled, and, while the Romans, disconcerted by their first disasters, were recruiting their broken legions, he crossed the Apennines with a force of 50,000 men. Again the passage of the marshes of the Upper Arno cost him a large portion of his troops, and he suffered himself the loss of an eye by fever. These troubles, however, were repaid by the great victory of the Lake Trasymenius, where the consul Flaminius, rashly Battle of meeting him, was overthrown with immense loss, and slain. Thrasyne From Thrasymenus to Rome was no more than 100 miles; nus nor was there any army to cover the city, for the other consul had posted himself with his legions at Ariminum, to guard the approach from the east. Hannibal had boldly out-flanked two armies, and beaten a third; but with all his boldness, he hesitated to strike at the enemy's centre, while leaving such forces in his rear. His intrigues with the Umbrians, the Etrurians, and other people of central Italy, had been unsuccessful. The country was generally animated with a national spirit of jealousy towards the foreigner. He turned aside to the left, and re-crossed the Apennines into Picenum; thence he directed his course towards the Grecian colonies in the south-east of the peninsula. Meanwhile the gravity of their danger had excited the patriotism of the Romans to the highest pitch. Vast exertions were made; another army was raised; and Fabius Maximus, the chief of the nobles, led it, as dictator, in quest of the enemy, who had descended along the coast of the Adriatic into Apulia. Here, too, where Hannibal had had better hopes, the population showed itself indifferent, if not hostile, to its deliverers. The Carthaginian was anxious to stake his fortunes on a battle; but Fabius knew the value of delay, and refused to allow his raw recruits to engage with the despair of sturdy veterans and an able general. Thus matters stood for some time. The condition of the invader becoming daily more precarious, when Terentius Varro, now consul, and enjoying command every alternate day, yielded to his own and his men's impatience, and engaged the enemy in the pitched battle of Cannæ. This Battle of Cannæ was noted as the most disastrous defeat the Romans ever sustained. Emilius, the other consul, and 45,000 of their soldiers were slain, and Hannibal sent to Carthage a bushel of golden rings taken from the persons of the knights who had fallen. It was only the extreme debility of the victor, even after this victory, that gave Rome a breathing-time, and the devotion of the citizens would not suffer them to despair of the commonwealth in the hour of her greatest humiliation. Hannibal was admitted into Capua; but this was almost only the fruit of his triumph; and the allurements of this luxurious retreat were more fatal to the discipline of his army, and to his own reputation, than even a defeat.

Hannibal now urged his government to send him reinforcements; but a rival faction predominated in the Carthaginian Senate, and caused the resources of the country to be diverted to Spain; indeed, he possessed no port on the coast of Italy at which an army could have made good its landing. The Roman forces grew, in the language of the poet, from defeat, as the branches of the ilex under the pruning-knife. Numerous fleets and armies were speedily arrayed, and Hannibal found himself surrounded in Capua by 220,000 men in arms. During the following years he was occupied painfully, and with little success, in the siege of the strong places around him, while Fabius gained the title of Cunctator ("The Delayer"), from the cautious tactics with which he shunned encountering him in the field. At last Hannibal was obliged to make his escape from the toils which were closing around him by a rapid retreat into Apulia, leaving Capua to the vengeance of the Romans, who treated it as a revolted dependency. When it surrendered, after a long blockade, seventy of its senators were scourged to death, three hundred nobles thrown into chains, and the whole population sold as slaves. Such was a sample of the policy of the republic towards a people whom, on the principles of national law then recognised, it might justly regard as rebels.

Disastrous, however, as Hannibal's affairs in Italy now were, he was able to get some respite by the diversions his intrigues effected in other quarters. The Romans were obliged to send Marcellus with a powerful fleet to chastise the defection of Syracuse, which was only taken after a long siege, rendered memorable by the ingenuity employed in its defence by the mathematician Archimedes. Marcellus himself fell soon afterwards into an ambuscade in Apulia. Scipio, who had conducted several campaigns in Spain, allowed Hasdrubal, the brother of Hannibal, to escape him, and cross the Alps with a large re-enforcement. Hannibal collected all his resources to effect a junction with this powerful auxiliary. Rome put forth her full strength to encounter the double danger. Livius confronted Hasdrubal in Umbria, while Claudius Nero encamped before Hannibal. But Nero, with happy temerity, broke up from his quarters with a picked division of his troops, and joining Livius, surprised Hasdrubal on the River Metaurus. The united forces of the Romans obtained a complete victory; and Hannibal was first made aware of this terrible disaster by receiving the head of his brother thrown exultingly into his camp.

The Romans, notwithstanding the occupation of so large a part of their own territories by a hostile force, had continued to maintain an army in Spain, and persisted in the task of wresting that important province from Carthage. In the course of this war two Scipios perished; but a third, the most distinguished of this illustrious house, known afterwards as the elder Africanus, completed the conquest, and, flushed with victory, urged the Senate to transfer the contest to Africa itself. This bold manoeuvre was opposed by the cautious Fabius, but the enthusiasm of Scipio prevailed; and when a Roman army was landed in the neighbourhood of Carthage, the enemy were compelled to recall Hannibal for the defence of their own homes. Hannibal effected his retreat, quitting Italy after an occupation of fifteen years; but it was only to encounter a general of equal skill, and an army not less trained to conquer than his own, and to suffer the decisive overthrow at Zama, which laid his country prostrate at the feet of the Romans. Battle of Carthage sued for peace, but was required to surrender all Zama, her remaining possessions except the district immediately adjacent, together with her ships, her elephants, and her treasure. She still retained her brave commander Hannibal, and allowed him to take the lead in her councils, in which he was still animated by the same hatred of the Romans and zeal for the advancement of his country's interests. The Romans watched his proceedings with jealousy, and he was soon obliged to flee to the distant court of Syria, lest they should insist on his being delivered up to them. The second Punic war, thus brought to a triumphant close, was the most important struggle in which Rome was ever engaged,—one of the most important perhaps in the history of the human race; the event of which, instead of crushing the rising fortunes of the republic, established her in the secure enjoyment of the greatest power in the civilized world, and was the harbinger of the rapid succession of triumphs which made her, in the course of another century and a half, mistress of the fairest regions of Europe, Africa, and Asia.

SECT. XVII.—POLITICAL CONDITION OF THE WORLD AT THIS PERIOD.

The fall of Carthage secured to Rome a complete preponderance throughout the western regions of Europe and Africa. Placing her ally Masinissa on the throne of Numidia, she kept her prostrate rival in a constant state of terror and annoyance at home, while she prosecuted at leisure the plans of further aggrandisement she had long contemplated. In Spain the legions which had formerly assisted the rude natives against the Carthaginians were now prepared to turn upon them, with every advantage of skill and resources; and though the complete reduction of the Iberian peninsula was the work of more than two centuries, and cost the efforts of many armies and a long succession of generals, the issue was never doubtful, and the progress of the invaders, which triumphed very early over the best and richest parts of the country, was only retarded in the mountains, or on distant and inhospitable shores. Nearer home, in the Cisalpine, the Romans exercised a forbearance or evinced a caution not easy to explain. They suffered the Gaulish tribes to retain their independence almost unassailed. But the Gauls themselves seem from this time to have lost the aggressive spirit which had so long distinguished them. They devoted themselves to the habits of settled life, turned to good account the teeming fertility of their soil, and prepared for Rome, when at leisure to make the acquisition, the fairest and wealthiest of all her provinces. Gaul beyond the Alps, and Germany beyond the Rhine, remained at this time almost equally unknown to the conquerors of Carthage, and were equally disregarded by her greedy ambition. In the south, the north, and the west, there was little to engage the interest of her predatory chiefs; but when they looked eastward, they saw before them vast countries filled with the accumulated wealth of ages of civilization,—presenting indeed an imposing front of arms and organization, but, as perhaps they had already learned, devoid of the vital spirit of nationality, and ready to crumble into dust at the first rude shock of a lusty and resolute assailant.

At the death of Alexander the Great the Macedonian empire had been split into several parts; a century after his death it had fallen to pieces. Babylon had become the seat of a Parthian monarchy, which held the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates; while the realms to the eastward had renounced all connection with the west, from which they were now permanently separated. Antiochus main- tained a powerful empire in Asia Minor and Syria, extending from Pelusium to Smyrna; but the northern districts of the peninsula had been seized by various lesser potentates. The Gauls, under the name of Galatia, occupied one province. There was a kingdom of Bithynia, another of Pontus, another of Pergamus. The states of Lycia maintained an independent confederation. In the interior of the country, the Isaurians and Lycaonians, to whom may be added some tribes of the Cilicians, to whatever sovereign they were nominally subject, were merely lawless freebooters. The most flourishing of all existing polities at this time was the kingdom of Egypt, under the dynasty of the Ptolemies, who, secure in their distant and scarcely accessible territory, had leisure to accumulate wealth and to foster the arts and sciences. The second century B.C. in Egypt may be regarded as the crowning period of intellect and cultivation in the ancient world. Besides their possessions on the continent of Africa, the Ptolemies possessed the island of Cyprus, and the acquisition of this marine dependency, as well as the interests of their commerce, on which the prosperity of their kingdom mainly depended, made them jealous of the Carthaginians, and disposed them to an alliance with Rome. The republic had first entered into relations with Egypt under Ptolemy Philadelphus, in the year 481 (B.C. 273); and such was now the intimacy between the two powers, that the Roman Senate was chosen as the fittest guardian for Ptolemy Epiphanes, at this time the youthful heir to the throne of his ancestors.

The European provinces of the empire of Alexander were at this time divided among three principal powers. The throne of Macedonia itself was occupied by a Philippos descended from the old royal stock; but southern Greece had succeeded in reasserting its independence, and the greater number of its communities, drained as they were by conquest and colonization, and enervated by luxury and corruption, still maintained a shadow of their former greatness by combination, under the title of the Achaean League. To the west lay the semi-Hellenic district of Ætolia, with its fierce predatory tribes, combined under the sway of a military chieftain, ever threatening the feeble civilization of Greece proper. Indeed, both within and without the Achaean frontiers the greatest anarchy prevailed; the control of a powerful protector had been ill exchanged for the name of liberty, which was only the license of the craftiest and strongest; day by day the monuments of ancient art, all that remained for Greece to boast of, were scattered or demolished; and it is only to Roman aggression and cupidity, soon to be let loose upon them, that we owe the preservation of such remnants of them as have survived to our times. Among these western states Macedonia might still claim the pre-eminence. Surrounded by the sea or by almost impassable mountains, inhabited still by a brave and patriotic people, this kingdom would have been truly powerful, but for the weakness entailed upon it by the number of its distant and disjointed possessions. It held sway beyond its natural frontiers over Thessaly and Euboea, Opus, Elatea, and part of Phocis; and occupied the citadel of Corinth and the town of Orchomenus in Arcadia. It maintained garrisons in three of the Cyclades,—Andros, Paros, and Cythnus,—as well as in Tiasus and some cities on the coast of Thrace and Asia. A considerable part of Caria also belonged to it. Each of these possessions entailed upon it jealousies and enmities of its own; and its power was exhausted in the attempt to make head at the same moment against all the states of the Achaean League, against the kings of Pergamus and the chiefs of Thrace, against the maritime republic of Rhodes, and against the wild mountaineers of Ætolia. For a time the balance of forces was fairly main-

tained; but when the Ætolians invited the arm of Rome to their assistance, this equality was speedily displaced. Philip was the last to perceive the inevitable issue. When the Senate sent to declare hostilities against him, he would only reply to Paulus Æmius, the Roman envoy, in terms of raillery and scorn.

SECT. XVIII.—WARS WITH PHILIP AND ANTIACHUS.

Already, during the occupation of southern Italy by Hannibal, the Romans had been taught to regard the King Philip and of Macedon as an enemy, who watched every opportunity to crush them, and whose blow they must not hesitate to anticipate. The overthrow of Carthage had hardly been accomplished when the Senate insisted on declaring war against this distant intriguer, and urged the reluctant commons of the city to pour forth their blood and treasure again without a moment's respite. At this period, indeed, and for many years afterwards, Rome acted like the spendthrift who squanders his capital in the enjoyment of the hour. The blood of Rome and Italy was lavished without stint, and the Senate, in its selfishness and short-sightedness was content to receive in its stead a constant influx of foreigners and barbarians, captured in war or purchased in the slave-market, and condemned to cultivate its fields in chains. The fatal result of this policy will be soon exhibited; at this era it was not foreseen, or was recklessly disregarded. The cries of the Achaeans for protection against Philip were eagerly listened to, and an army was sent to rescue the feeble remains of Grecian liberty, as it styled itself, from the menace of a second Macedonian conquest. The teeming population of the Hellenic peninsula, which had formerly been maintained by the commerce of the world, had found vent, during the last century of decay and impoverishment, in a constant stream of emigration to Asia and Africa. As colonists, as traders, as mercenary soldiers, the Greeks were scattered through both continents; but Greece herself had begun to experience a rapidly-increasing depopulation, and her military force and military spirit had sunk to a very low ebb. Sparta, indeed, made an attempt to revive the warlike institutions of Lycurgus, and Philopoemen, the general of the League, displayed many of the highest qualities of his noble race; but the nation was quite unable to defend itself against the enemy, who had planted himself in so many important positions within its territory. The aid, however, of two Roman legions, backed by the alliance of Ætolia, sufficed to drive Philip within his proper frontiers; and though one Roman army was ignominiously defeated, Flamininus with a second routed the Macedonian phalanx at Cynoscephalæ, Battle of and established the superiority of the Roman tactics. The Cynocephalæ consul proclaimed the restoration of Grecian independence, phalanx presided in person at the Isthmian games, and declared that the Romans themselves were descended from Æneas. The Greeks in return dedicated their offerings to "Titus and Hercules," to "Titus and Apollo."

Though the Romans were thus moderate in their conduct towards Greece, they took care to establish such a balance of power between the Ætolians, the Achaeans, and Nabas the tyrant of Sparta, as would secure a perpetual recurrence of strife among them, and require their own intervention in due season. But their policy was furthered by a movement from without. Hannibal, whom they had demanded from Carthage, had taken refuge with Antiochus, King of Syria, and was urging his patron to send him with an army into Italy. Antiochus, shrinking from such a hazard, ventured to confront the Romans in Greece, incited thereto by the Ætolians; but both he and his new allies were easily routed. In 562 (B.C. 192) the Romans

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1 Michelet, Hist. de Rome, ii. 183. Titus was the praenomen of Quintus Flamininus. gained a complete victory over him at Thermopylae; he was driven back from Europe, and compelled to take what measures he could for closing the continent of Asia against the triumphant advance of the legions. The Romans, however, secured the alliance of Macedon, Rhodes, and Pergamus, and obtained the necessary means of transport. In 564 they set foot for the first time in Asia, and after a short campaign engaged the enemy at Magnesia, defeating him, according to their own account, with unparalleled disproportion of loss, and reducing him at one blow to terms the most humiliating. Antiochus consented to relinquish almost all his possessions in Asia Minor, together with his elephants and 15,000 talents in money. Here, as in Greece, the republic, unprepared to occupy the vast regions it had so suddenly conquered, abstained from all territorial annexation, and contented itself with dividing the country between its faithful allies. In the heart of Asia Minor Rome encountered again her ancient enemies the Gauls. Upon these people she made war separately, and reduced them to dependence upon Eumenes, King of Pergamus and Phrygia.

SECT. XIX.—STATE OF IDEAS AND MANNERS IN THE SIXTH CENTURY OF THE CITY.

The desultory and occasional relations which Rome had hitherto entertained with Greece became now constant, and rapidly increased in closeness and mutual influence. This influence is conspicuously apparent in the shape which the old mythology of Italy began now to assume, in the disappearance of many ancient national divinities, and the introduction of Greek deities in their place. The Sabine names of Consus, Lunes, Juturna, Feronia, and others, are lost altogether, or merged in those of foreign divinities, whose attributes are supposed to resemble their Apollo, first honoured with a temple at Rome, A.U.C. 324, advances in estimation among the citizens, and obtains the distinction of public games in 542. Asclepius is evoked from Epidaurus by a decree of the Senate in 463. Cybele, or as the Romans call her, Bona Dea, is invited to Rome in 547. The introduction of the Bacchanalia, or mysteries of the Grecian Bacchus, caused so much disturbance or jealousy that the Senate in 568 issued a decree for their suppression in Rome and Italy. But the sceptical philosophy of Greece followed quickly in the train of her religious ceremonies. The poet Ennius introduced the rational explanations of ancient belief recommended to his countrymen by the Greek Enemus; and from rationalism the step was easy to doubt, and finally to disbelief. The magistrates of Rome maintained the ceremonial of processions, sacrifices, and auguries, as an engine of state policy, but the higher classes almost wholly renounced their fathers' faith in them, and had little scruple in openly deriding them. From the time, indeed, that the plebeians had been admitted to the priesthoods and auguries, the nobility of Rome had slackened in their zeal for the maintenance of the old traditions. The Potitii abandoned to their slaves the cult of their patron Hercules. Marcellus threw into the sea the sacred fowls which refused to present a favourable omen. The common sceptical disposition of the day is represented by the expression of Ennius: "If there are gods, at least they do not trouble themselves with the care of human affairs."

At this period the Roman nobles began to make use of the Greek language, and got themselves instructed in it by slaves or clients of Greek extraction. They employed Greek writers to compose their history for them. Diocles of Peparthus, as has been said, was the first who composed a narrative of the foundation of the city. The freedmen, to whom the task was now naturally assigned of celebrating the exploits of their patrons' families, were doubtless prompt in embellishing them. Hence we may ascribe to this period the rage for discovering a Grecian extraction, or a Trojan, which was considered equally honourable, for the Roman gentes. Æneas and Hercules, with their sons and comrades, were made to serve as founders for many patrician houses. As soon as the Romans set foot in Phrygia, they recognised their pretended connection with the restored city of Ilium. The Scipios and other magnates paid court to Grecian poets and historians, and received the incense of flattery in return. Ennius, the first of the Roman poets, a native of Calabria, who pretended himself to a Grecian origin, and was equally versed in the Greek and the Latin tongues, introduced the works of Homer to the Italians by imitation and translation, and was long held by his grateful countrymen as a worthy rival of the father of epic verse. Instruction in the Greek language and literature became, under the name of Grammar, the most essential part of a liberal education, and every Roman mansion had its Grecian pedagogue to train the children of the family in this necessary lore. The Greek women, fascinating and accomplished, completed the subjugation of the Roman conquerors. The rough and homely matrons of Sabellia could no longer retain the hearts of their spouses, ensnared by the wiles of these foreign slaves and mistresses. The injured women were not slow in avenging themselves. The first divorce at Rome had taken place in the year 520. About half a century later, in 586, occurred the scandal of the Bacchanalian mysteries, at which many hundreds of Roman matrons were found to have devoted themselves to orgies of the most fearful licentiousness.

If we take a further glance at the manners and customs of the Romans at this period, we may observe how the life of the city becomes distinguished from that of the country, and that of the Campanian baths or watering-places, from both or other. The first was the life of the Forum and the temples; the stated performance of civil and religious acts; the holding of levees of freedmen in the mornings; giving of legal opinions to friends and clients; public business in the Forum or Senate-house towards noon; preparation for public speaking with hired rhetoricians; retirement for sleep at mid-day; the exercises of the Campus Martius, swimming, wrestling, and fencing, in the afternoon; the supper, diversified with singing and buffoonery; and so to bed at sundown. In the country there was the superintendence of the farms and household; hunting, fishing, and other field-sports; the employment of leisure hours in reading, writing, or dictating, generally on a couch or even in bed; sleeping much in the day, but watching with the dawn of morning. At the baths there was a complete holiday from all duties, public or domestic; throwing off the toga, going barefoot, and lightly clad in a Greek dressing-gown; lounging through the day, gossiping with idle acquaintances, indulging in long and frequent ablutions, invoking the aid of foreign artists in song and music to while away the hours of vacant idleness. While, indeed, the Roman was equally proud of the austere discipline of the city and the fields, he was ashamed of his recreations at the sea-side, and regarded it as an indulgence, almost akin to vice to relax even for a moment from the stern routine of self-imposed duty. But the siren sloth was gradually gaining his ear, and every further step he took into the realms of Grecian luxury and voluptuousness estranged him more and more from the love of business which he had embraced as a passion, and become inured to as a second nature. The domestic morality of the Romans was thus already undermined in many of its dearest relations, when a guilty ambition began first to prompt them to seek, in the conduct of public affairs, a personal and selfish aggrandisement.

At this period, indeed, the high civil position, maintained by a narrow oligarchy of noble families closely connected with one another by marriage, which shared among themselves all the great offices of the commonwealth, might naturally foster such irregular aspirations, and point to the establishment of a monarchy, limited by the jealousies of its aristocratic assessors, in the place of a republic which was democratic in name only. To Scipio Africanus, in the exuberance of their joy at his triumphs, the people had offered, of their own accord, a consulship for life. This would have made him at once a constitutional sovereign, a doge, or a king. We are told that he declined the proffered honour: moderation both in pleasure and in ambition was his characteristic quality. But at a later period, when any such prudent and temperate resolution had become impossible, Cicero takes a melancholy pleasure in representing another Scipio, the immediate descendant of the elder Africanus, as praising in a limited monarchy the best ideal of government. Had the nobles been left to work out their own career, this is the consummation to which it might soon have been brought; but their career was rudely intercepted by the torrent of national corruption which now broke down every moral barrier; the pride and luxury engendered by their Greek and Asiatic triumphs produced a sudden reaction in the popular mind against them. When Cato the elder, a rude but vigorous scion of the Latian homesteads, took on himself to rebuke their abandonment of national usage and tradition, he found the people well disposed to support and urge him onwards. The poet Naevius, the first of the Roman satirists, had met with popular sympathy in his gibes against the haughty Scipios and Metellis; he had been banished through their influence to Africa; but the spirit of criticism and raillery survived. Cato served the state in war and peace, and was carried through the career of honours to the consulship, and eventually to the censorship, from which last office he derived the title by which he is distinguished in history. In every place, and on all occasions, he rebuked the pride of the nobles and abated their insolence. He caused their chiefs to be cited before the popular assembly, but they had yet authority enough to repel the charges against them by such language as that of Emilius Scaurus: "Varus accuses Emilius of corruption; Emilius denies it: Romans, which do you believe?" Scipio Africanus disdained, on a similar occasion, to reply at all; and only exclaimed, as he surmounted the Capitol,—"This is the anniversary of my victory over Hannibal; Romans, thank the gods, and pray that you may always have such a champion!" Nevertheless Scipio was compelled at last to withdraw from affairs, and ended his life at a private residence in Campania, directing these words to be inscribed upon his sepulchre:—"Thankless country, thou shalt not possess even my bones!" Further prosecutions were directed against his family, some of whom seem to have been guilty of accepting bribes from Antiochus; and Cato had the satisfaction of thoroughly humiliating the chiefs of the Roman oligarchy.

**SECT. XX.—PROGRESS OF CONQUEST IN THE EAST AND WEST.**

Hannibal, driven from the court of Antiochus to that of Prusias, King of Bithynia, and again demanded by the Romans, had poisoned himself about the year 572 (B.C. 182), and thus relieved from equal anxiety both his friends and enemies. The authority of the republic was becoming consolidated throughout Greece and Asia Minor, when Perseus, the son and successor of Philippos, undertook to form a general confederacy of the eastern powers against them. Before, however, this alliance had been effected, he precipitated himself rashly into arms, hoping to cement it by victory; and though he obtained at the outset a brilliant success, he was mortified to find himself still imperfectly supported. Alone, or with no other aid than the neutrality of the states invited by Rome to attack him, he still maintained the contest, defeating the enemy in several engagements, till they sent against him their veteran general Paulus Emilius, with an overwhelming force of 100,000 men. Once more the Macedonian phalanx seemed on the point of recovering the charm of invincibility; but after a fierce struggle, the fortune of the legion prevailed: Perseus was vanquished on the field of Pydna, in one of the most decisive battles of Roman history, and soon afterwards taken. The kingdom which he had hazarded and lost was annexed to the dominions of the republic, and Perseus himself led at the car of his conqueror to the Capitol, thrown into a dungeon, and suffered to languish miserably till his death, two years later. The last of the kings of Macedonia was long remembered as one of the most formidable enemies Rome had ever encountered, along with Hannibal and Pyrrhus.

The overthrow of Perseus was followed by an attack on the precarious independence still allowed to Antiochus. The King of Syria, after the check he had received in the west, had turned his arms southward. He had almost effected the conquest of Egypt, the ally of Rome, when Popilius Laenas, the envoy of the Senate, required him to desist from his enterprise. He demanded some time to deliberate, but Popilius drew a circle around him in the sand with his stick, and peremptorily forbade him to pass it till he had given his response. Antiochus, baffled by this firmness, acquiesced in the demand, and retired home crest-fallen. The Senate divided between two rival brothers of the house of Ptolemy the throne which it had saved to their family.

The kings of the earth bowed in succession before the assembly of kings. Masinissa acknowledged that to them he owed the crown of Numidia. Prusias saluted them as his gods and saviours, and confessed that he was no better than a client or freedman of his mighty masters. Phrygia, Greece, and Rhodes were each subjected in different measures to the anger of the republic, which they had failed to defend against the late attack of the Macedonians. The Greeks, irritated and alarmed, at last took up arms in their own defence; but the march of Rome was irresistible; and in 608 (B.C. 146) her barbarity was signalized by the sack and conflagration of Corinth under Mamurius. Of all her Corinthian acts, this was one of the most memorable. By the B.C. 608, Greeks it was never forgotten; the Romans themselves, at least in later times, were ashamed of it. The same year saw another melancholy catastrophe, the final destruction of Carthage, which had ventured to rise a third time against her triumphant rival, and was taken and razed to the ground by Scipio Emilianus. At the sight of this fearful ruin the accomplished Roman could not but think, it was said, with a sorrowful foreboding, of the time when his own city might be destined to a like fate, and repeated the lines of Homer predicting the overthrow of Troy divine.

It was from a reminiscence of the terror they had so long felt in the rivalry of Carthage that the Romans persisted for ages in characterizing her, in history and in poetry, as the type of faithlessness and impiety. But they deigned to give the title of a second Carthage to a city of much less fame and importance, though rendered memorable in their annals by the obstinacy of its defence and the grandeur of its fall. The perseverance of many Roman generals, among them of Cato, and finally of Sempronius Gracchus, had effected the pacification, as it was called, of the Iberian peninsula. But such pacifications were never complete or lasting. The Celtiberians in the north had continued to harass the Roman outposts, and the praetors commanding in the province had made their hostile attitude an excuse for repeated massacre and pillage. Sulpicius Galba had disgraced the Roman name by treating with the Lusitanians, and treacherously slaughtering them to the number of 30,000. The consul Lucullus acted with equal baseness. towards the Celtiberians. Driven to fury by such provocations, the mountaineers became more implacable than ever.

Viriathus, the gallant chief of the Lusitanians, maintained the war for five years with unexpected success; and uniting in confederacy with the Celtiberians, forced the Romans at last, after many defeats, to conclude peace with him on equal terms. When hostilities again broke out, Cepio found means to assassinate this formidable enemy, and the Lusitanians were at length reduced to submission. The last place that now held out was Numantia, a city of the Celtiberians in the upper valley of the Douro. Several consuls and praetors had failed in their attempts to reduce this fortress, and Fabius Servilianus had suffered a disgraceful defeat before it. Mancinus brought the defenders to terms; but the Senate was dissatisfied with his concessions, disavowed the treaty, and at the same time, from a feeling of superstition, not of honour, delivered its author to the enemy. It was reserved for Scipio Æmilianus, the conqueror of Carthage, to reduce Numantia at last by blockade. In the extremity of famine, the survivors of many victories fell at last on one another's swords.

While interfering pertinaciously in the affairs of all the kings of Asia, the Romans had hitherto abstained systematically from annexing any portion of their territories. They conducted their astute policy by means of commissioners rather than of legionaries. They left the ancient thrones erect, but they occupied them with creatures of their own. The princes of Egypt, as well as those of Cyprus and the Cyrenaica, which had been constituted sovereign states, held their crowns under the patronage or direct appointment of the Senate. The republic had retained a son of Antiochus Epiphanes as a hostage, and interfered with powerful authority in the nomination of his successors. He designated the heir of Eumenes, King of Phrygia; and at last, in the year 621 (B.C. 133), allowed Attalus III., the last of his race, to bequeath his kingdom to Rome. Aquilius was sent with an army to enforce the ratification of this testament; and thus the republic became possessed of the magnificent territory which she entitled the province of Asia, and which she continued always to regard as the most choice and valuable of her acquisitions.

SECT. XXI.—SPIRIT OF THE ROMAN GOVERNMENT AT HOME AND ABROAD.

The power of Rome was now paramount in the four great peninsulas which project into the Mediterranean, together with its principal islands, while her influence and authority were recognised at almost every point along its far-reaching coast-line. Italy, the centre and nucleus of this power, was either "Roman soil," or placed under the ultimate control of the praetors and magistrates of Rome. Spain, Greece, and Asia Minor, were reduced substantially to the form of provinces; so were also the islands of the Tyrrhenic, the Ionian, and the Ægean seas. Another province was constituted on the opposite coast of Africa, comprising the dominion of Carthage; while the kingdoms of Numidia on the west, and of Cyrene and Egypt on the east, were, as we have seen, in a state of pupillage and dependence. At the eastern end of the Mediterranean the Jews had entered into alliance with the republic; the independence of Syria was imperfect and precarious; Rhodes was indulged with freedom, which she was fain to purchase with impious flattery, in erecting a statue to the divinity of Rome; while a few petty states of Asia Minor existed only on sufferance. The rugged districts of Illyria offered little temptation to Roman cupidity; but the subjection of Macedonia was fully assured. Massilia and Narbo cultivated the alliance of the Senate, and were about to invite its assistance against the surrounding barbarians, and lay the first foundations of a province beyond the Alps.

The Romans regarded themselves as a race of conquerors, and at every point beyond the limits of their colonies they encamped rather than settled. A standing force of one or more legions, with numerous auxiliary battalions, was maintained in each of the provinces, and every year, or at a later period triennially, an officer with the style of proconsul or praetor, having served the highest magistracies at home, was sent forth to command it. This functionary wielded the whole authority of the state, civil as well as military, within his own province, and was required to govern with a single eye to the security and enrichment of the republic. During his term of office his acts were unquestioned; if he had not strictly the right to declare war against a potentate on the frontier, his instructions were generally such as to cover any excess of zeal which tended to the advancement of his country's interests. On his return home, his quaestor was required to submit to the Senate an account of his proceedings, and these might be disavowed by the hostile vote of an opposite faction. While every act of the magistrates in the city was regulated more or less strictly by rule and precedent, if not by written enactment, the proconsul was at liberty to administer justice to the provincials according to the edict or programme published by himself on assuming the government. The organization of the conquered territories in Etruria and Samnium, already described, was extended to Iberia, Greece, and Asia. Some communities were allowed to enjoy a qualified independence, some were invested with Latin or Italian privileges; the lands of others were confiscated, wholly or in part, to the domain of the republic; tolls and customs were exacted, partly for imperial, partly for local expenditure; but a contribution, varying in amount, levied upon the produce of the land, formed a constant source of revenue to the state. Such was the wealth which accrued to the conquerors on the reduction of Macedonia, that from thenceforth the land-tax was wholly remitted to the favoured soil of Italy.

With the rights of conquest understood as they were at Rome, we may imagine the tyranny to which the conquered people were subjected. The spoliation of the provinces by the chiefs and their subordinates was not only winked at; to a great extent it was positively encouraged and defended, on the plea that to impoverish the fallen enemy was to cut the sinews of future rebellion. Neither the property nor the honour, nor even the lives of the provincials, were safe from the cupidity and cruelty of the proconsul, and of the cohort of officials whom he carried in his train. It was fortunate, indeed, that the rapacity of these oppressors was so often directed to seizing the choicest works of ancient art, and transporting them to Rome, which proved the safest receptacle for those precious relics of a perishing civilization. The rude conquerors of Greece and Asia imbibed a taste for these monuments of a genius with which they had so little in common, and succeeded in persuading the still ruder populace at home that no trophies of victory were so glorious as the works of Grecian statuaries and painters. The provincials, who had been born amongst these cherished treasures, groaned at the loss of them, for which many a bitter sarcasm at their ignorant spoilers afforded slender consolation; nevertheless they learned to profit by their security from the worse miseries of foreign warfare, and extracted wealth from their fertile soil more rapidly than their masters could consume it. Achaia, indeed, or central Greece, was stricken with a palsy from which no domestic tranquillity could restore her, and continued to dwindle in population and resources; the ancient arts of Carthage perished with the decay of the Punic element in her population, which seems to have been quickly exhausted; but the progress of improvement was felt sensibly in Asia; and the youthful vigour of Spain, now first turned to the pursuits of industry and letters, struck deep into the soil, and produced in the course of ages an abundant harvest of economical and intellectual improvement. On the whole, the effects and imbecile among the nations were extinguished by the blow which struck down their liberties; but the young and lusty rallied from the shock; and the empire of Rome became, throughout large portions of the globe, the creator of a new life of progress and development.

**SECT. XXII.—ASSEMBLIES, ORDERS, AND MAGISTRACIES OF THE ROMAN PEOPLE.**

The warlike instincts of the Roman people, dispersed over a great part of Italy, or planted in colonies beyond it, were now in full play. The wealth of the East and West, which served to inflame its curiosity, had not yet enervated its vital forces. Its armies maintained the old traditions of discipline and obedience, as well as their ancient valour; its officers, ambitious and greedy for themselves, were still devoted to the glory of their country, and inspired with zeal for the extension of her dominion. Though the march of Roman conquest advanced for another century with almost unabated vigour, which was not exhausted in a second or a third, all these conditions of a flourishing and lasting empire began from this period to decline, and the social decay which commenced at the heart spread slowly through the limbs of the whole body. We have noticed some of the moral causes of this decline; we will now pause once more, to exhibit the seeds of destruction already germinating in the political constitution of the republic.

Notwithstanding the high reputation for disinterested virtue which the ancient Romans have obtained with posterity, we know that no people was ever more intensely devoted to making of money. They amassed riches not only by plunder in war, but at home by usury and thrift, abroad by commerce and speculation. To the possessors of this much-coveted wealth they were ever prone to pay the most slavish deference. Hence, whatever may have been the real character of their political organization, as long as a ruling caste held predominance in the republic, the equalization of the rival orders was followed by the establishment of an aristocracy almost purely of money. The old constitution, such as it is represented to us, of the patrician curies, or the heads of the gentes or houses, of those who alone were proprietors, alone were judges, alone priests and augurs, of those, in short, who formed among themselves the ancient commonwealth of the Quirites, had passed away. The comitia of the curies still nominally existed, and was indeed convened for the performance of some religious ceremonies, but it had no political weight. The real elements of power resided in the comitia of the centuries and tribes; and in both of these, though differently constituted, the influence of property prevailed over numbers. To secure this predominance in assemblies which embraced the whole body of the Roman people, some ingenious contrivance was required. The citizens were divided, as we have seen, into 35 tribes, each tribe was subdivided into senior and junior, and each of these subdivisions discriminated again into five classes, according to property solely. To the 350 centuries thus obtained were added 18, appropriated to the knights, next to the senators the wealthiest order in the state. In the assembly the vote of each century was equiponderant; and thus the votes of the four first classes, which, as well as the equestrian, were all filled by men of property, immensely overbalanced those of the fifth, in which alone the mass of the poor citizens was enrolled. The rise of the comitia of the tribes in political importance did little to redress this inequality; for though the distinction into classes did not prevail here, the censors had the power of eliminating the poorest citizens from every other tribe, and confining them to the four appropriated to the city, which had each only an equal vote with the others, and were appointed to give their votes last. Hence every question was virtually settled, in either comitia, by the suffrages of the first and wealthiest voters. The poorer and more numerous were seldom called upon to exercise their rights at all; and Cicero, indeed, assures us, that in the assembly of the centuries the first, or "prerogative," was always found to carry the decision.

The functions of these two assemblies, thus essentially aristocratic, were twofold, elective and legislative. The centuries elected the consuls and praetors, and other principal or curule magistrates; the appointment to inferior offices was exercised by the tribes. The power of making laws was claimed equally by both; and in this co-ordinate prerogative, exercised by two assemblies, each comprising the whole body of the citizens, but under a different form and arrangement, consisted one of the most remarkable anomalies of the Roman polity. If a consul, praetor, or dictator had an enactment to propose, he convened the centuries to deliberate upon it; if the measure were patronized by a tribune, it was submitted to the popular assembly of the tribes. In either case the law thus passed was binding upon the whole people; but no such law could be initiated by either the centuries or the tribes; every legislative measure must be first promulgated in the Senate, and receive the sanction of that paramount council of state. If a few instances occur of the tribune's proposing to the people a bill for conferring special honour, which the Senate had refused, they must be regarded as acts of irregular encroachment. It would seem, then, that the legislative power of the popular assemblies was that of sanction or rejection rather than of enactment.

The eighteen equestrian centuries comprised the wealthiest classes of the state. Such individuals among them as had attained to magistracies and offices, the exercise of which was generally unrewarded by salaries, and required on the contrary an outlay for the amusement of the populace, which none but the rich could undertake, acquired the title of nobilis, together with an inchoate right of admission to the Senate. This illustrious order was opened to the public men who had served certain offices and charges, and was limited to the number of 600. A high standard of property was required of all its members; and this was determined at the quinquennial valuation of the censors, who had the power of revising the roll, striking off the poor and unworthy, and selecting the most distinguished personages to fill their vacancies. The nobles, having once attained the distinction of admission, or merely of eligibility, to the Senate, strained every nerve to maintain this position for themselves and their families, and to keep out from it their inferiors of the equestrian order, who were striving with equal energy to attain it. Hence arose the political conflict of the Senate and the knights, which colours throughout the subsequent history of the free state. The Senate, as the party of the richest and noblest, assumes sometimes the name, as it succeeds to the political character, of the patricians; while the knights, with the names of liberty and equality in their mouths, connect themselves naturally for the most part with the inferior and poorer classes, and occupy the place of the plebeians. But if these old names still occur sometimes in the history of constitutional struggles, it must be remembered how far they have diverged from their original signification.

The struggle for admission to the Senate affected most directly the interests of the competitors. The Senate was the fountain of Roman legislation. The Senate regulated the administration of the provinces, organized the finances of the commonwealth, determined questions of peace and war, and received the ambassadors of foreign potentates. The Senate was the executive of the Roman republic; and to the Senate, rather than to the people, every magistrate at home and abroad was answerable. If its power was confined by the right of intercession or veto upon its acts appropriated to the tribunes, it had the means of countering this opposition by sowing dissensions among them, or, in the last resort, by creating a dictator, with unlimited powers, for the protection of the state. The commons frequently complained, and probably with justice, that the pretence of danger from abroad was often advanced when a dictator was really required to overrule opposition from within. But when the Senate found that the tribunes were manageable without having recourse to this unpalatable expedient, it ceased to invoke the arbitrary powers of a dictator. On more than one occasion it attained the same end less obtrusively by investing the consuls with irresponsible authority to protect the commonwealth. Such a decree, known by the formula, "Viderent consultes ne aliquod detrimenti res publica caperet," was entitled a senatus consultum ultimum.

Against this, however, the people had one weapon in store. No citizen could be capitally sentenced, that is, to the loss either of life or civil status, without an appeal to the people, or permission to withdraw himself from it by voluntary exile. If the consuls, under whatever authority, violated this constitutional provision, they were themselves liable to sentence at the hands of the comitia of the tribes. The conflicting pretensions of the Senate and the people on this head were never definitively settled, and came more than once into violent collision.

Besides their authority, their influence, and their honourable distinctions, the senators enjoyed a monopoly of the most lucrative government appointments. The missions of pro-consuls and pro-praetors, with their inferior officers, were gilded, not by fixed salaries, but by gifts of states and potestates, and by opportunities, hardly to be resisted, of touching bribes and of peculation. When the rich field of Greece and Asia was opened to their cupidity, the nobles abandoned usury at home and commerce abroad to more vulgar capitalists, and devoted themselves to the provincial administration. They allowed the knights a large share in the occupation of the most fertile domain land, and confined the poorer classes to the common pastures. When the murmurs of these proletaries threatened danger to their privileges, they invented the fatal scheme of satisfying them by a cheap or gratuitous distribution of corn. The corn-growing provinces of Sicily and Africa were muleted in an annual tribute of grain; and while the hunger of the populace was thus appeased, its passion for amusement was at the same time gratified by shows in the theatre and the circus, provided by the chief magistrates. The exhibition of these shows was found to be a sure source of popularity, and candidates for office vied with one another in thus invoking the favour of the tribes by an ever-increasing profusion. The cost of proceeding through the regular course of honours, of buying the suffrages of the people by shows and largesses, and eventually by direct bribes, for the quaestorship, aedileship, praetorship, and consulship, advanced almost year by year, and by the time that the aspirant had reached the highest object of his ambition, he had impoverished himself, and so obliged himself to his friends and his party, that it was only by the unscrupulous exercise of his advantages in a province that he could hope for indemnification. Hence the province paid eventually for the voluptuous enjoyments of the Roman people.

But the jealous knights, debarred from these guilty gratifications, kept watch over the conduct of the provincial governors, and invoked against them the safeguard of the laws. Murder, bribery, peculation, and corrupt administration of justice were public crimes, the cognisance of which was reserved to the assembly of the tribes, and this assembly was not indisposed to judge severely the crimes of the nobles and monopolists. The Senate contrived, with admirable dexterity, to escape from this hostile judicature by the appointment, in the year 605 (B.C. 149), of the quæstiones perpetuae, or permanent tribunals, composed solely of members of their own order, for the trial of this class of offences. They turned the flank of the knights, and laughed in the face of the people. The knights gradually recovered from their confusion, faced about, and now directed all their efforts to obtain at least a share in the administration of justice, and so use it as to bring the Senate to terms on the ulterior question of the provincial governments.

SECT. XXIII.—AGRARIAN AGITATION OF THE GRACCHI.

While Rome was subduing her provinces, the provinces Agrarian were re-acting upon Rome. We have already caught a glimpse of this foreign invasion which was filling Italy with the base mixture of the blood of every conquered nation, Gracchi, and sending myriads of slaves from every quarter of the world to till the fields from which the free native population was carried off by the unceasing drain of war. The legionary, if he survived the long series of distant campaigns from which, while his manly strength endured, he was not permitted to extricate himself, settled for the most part in the countries which had become more familiar to him than his own; while the slave, if attached to the service of a Roman citizen, might hope, after some years of bondage, for personal enfranchisement, and the acquisition of a qualified franchise, and a family settlement in Italy. In the second or third generation the libertini of Rome became generally citizens, with the full right of suffrage, property, and marriage. Thus the Roman people, still so entitled, still preserving its political continuity in its rites and traditions, and even in its names (for the freedman entered into the gens of his former master, and assumed its name), became from year to year more alien in blood from the genuine stock of Romulus and Quirinus, from the Latins, the Sabines, and the Etruscans of primitive antiquity. Priests and magistrates, to whose vigilant guardianship the purity of the national religion and polity was entrusted, shut their eyes to the revolution thus accomplishing itself; but every now and then an expression or a gesture showed that they were not really blind to its progress, and that in their hearts they despised that scum of nations which had settled on the surface of Roman society.

One day, when Scipio Æmilianus was interrupted in the Forum by the clamours of this mongrel populace, he exclaimed, "Silence, false sons of Italy: think ye to scare me with your brandished hands, ye whom I led myself in bonds to Rome!" In this memorable sentence we read the character of the times, and trace the interpretation of much of the history which is to follow.

But though these foreign freedmen succeeded to the votes of the genuine citizens they did not take their place on the soil from which their predecessors had been transplanted. The legionaries had been recruited from the fields, from the small farms of Latium and Sabellia, from the well-tilled allotments of seven jugers (about four acres) to which the plebeian citizen was restricted. But as these modest proprietors were decimated by war, their vacant homesteads were bought up by the capitalists of the city, the knights and senators, and annexed to those wide tracts of public domain which they were permitted to hold rent-free from the state. These possessions, thus greedily appropriated, these latifundia, as they were called, were cultivated for the most part by troops of slaves, imported by purchase or as the spoil of war from beyond the sea, chained to their work in the factories, or guarded by armed retainers in the fields by day, and huddled in prison dormitories during the night. Throughout large districts of Italy, particularly in the south, the free cultivators, or coloum, of an earlier period, had almost disappeared, though in other parts they continued still to linger, and wage an unequal struggle for existence with the great landlords and their armies of servile labourers. Thousands of these small proprietors, thus hardly pressed, migrated into the cities, and particularly into Rome, and there mingling with the herd of foreign-born freedmen, maintained themselves by petty merchandise and handicrafts, by the sportula, or dole of victuals at the patron's gate, or by the distributions, wholly or in part gratuitous, of bread, oil, and wine, made regularly by the state, and enhanced occasionally by magistrates or candidates for the magistracy.

Such was the state of things in Rome and Italy, full of anxiety for the present and fatal warning for the future to the few statesmen who marked the signs of the times, when the young Tiberius Gracchus, a plebeian of the Sempronian gens, well born, and connected through his mother Cornelia with the blood of the Scipios, remarked with dismay, as he traversed the plains of Etruria, the decline of cultivation and the depopulation of the fields and farms. He observed that the slave labour, ruder and more reluctant than the free labour it had supplanted, was less available for the operations of husbandry, which require care and skill, and that large tracts of land once arable had been converted into pasture, and gave employment to a few herdsmen only. Tiberius resolved to restore a Roman population to the territories of Rome. The cause of the evil he deplored seemed to be the extensive occupation of public land by the nobles by an evasion of the limitations of the Licinian law. He persuaded the people to elect him tribune in 621, and exerted himself in that capacity to carry a new agrarian law, more strict and general than those of ancient times, by which the domain of the state should be divided in full ownership among the whole body of citizens, instead of being held in fee by a small and favoured aristocracy. He demanded that the state should assert its ownership of the estates now let at a nominal rent to the nobles, in order to this new distribution. Of this measure, so much debated at the time and since, it may be enough to remark that, in strict law, it was quite constitutional, in equity it was harsh and unjustifiable, while in policy it was totally nugatory. Whatever were the true merits of the question in debate, they were soon lost sight of in the passions of two classes it set in array against each other. The names of patrician and plebeian were now obliterated; the real combatants were the rich and the poor. Many, however, of the rich and noble were found to place themselves, from patriotism or faction, at the head of the commonality; while the aristocracy of landlords found means to enlist on their side more than one of the tribunes, their natural opponents. It was by this manoeuvre that Tiberius was ultimately baffled. Though he succeeded in getting his measure passed, under the pressure of the popular enthusiasm, he was not allowed to put it himself in operation; on attempting to exercise the powers he had reserved himself for allotting the lands he had acquired for the people, he was confronted by one of his colleagues named Octavius, accused to his own party of aspiring to the tyranny, and in the course of the tumults which ensued overpowered and slain. Three hundred of his followers fell with him in the affray. This, it was said, was the first blood shed at Rome in a popular tumult.

The leaders, however, of the popular movement, though stunned for the moment, were not discomfited. They formed an alliance with the Italians, who were excluded from the franchise of Rome, and engaged to aid them in suing for the boon of citizenship. Caius, the younger brother of Tiberius Gracchus, took the lead of this combined party. Scipio Æmilianus, twice consul, and a chief of the oligarchy, stepped boldly forward and undertook to advocate the claims of the Italians; but this redoubted champion was found soon afterwards dead in his bed, and it was natural to believe that the nobles had procured his assassination. Caius was got rid of for a time by an appointment beyond the sea. Fregellae, an Italian town, thinking its cause abandoned, rushed desperately to arms, but was worsted and sacked by the consul Optimus. Caius now, feeling that he had been cajoled, hastened back to Rome and secured his election to the tribuneship, from which ground of vantage he aimed some hard blows against the most eminent of his opponents, protected his own partizans, founded colonies, and executed great public works. He was the delight and pride of the citizens. His eloquence was not less popular than his manners and his policy. He caused the position of the rostrum, from which the orators harangued the people in the Forum, to be changed, so that the speaker should no longer turn towards the comitium, the place of the patrician curies, but towards the masses of the commons stationed in the opposite quarter. He raised the knights to a share in the judicia or tribunals; he strove to extort the franchise for the Italians. The object of this bold demagogue's reforms was the exaltation of the commons into a distinct community, rather than the fusion of the nobles and the commons in a single body,—such at least was the judgment passed upon them by public writers, who affirmed that Caius made the commonwealth "double-headed." At any rate, his efforts, though but partially successful, led to a severance in public feeling which precipitated a general commotion; and he fell himself prematurely, as soon as he had finished his year of office, in a tumult which he had himself unwarily excited. The Romans long continued to honour the memory of the Gracchi as the ablest of the early chiefs of the democracy, and erected statues to them, and altars on the spots where they had fallen. Yet the prejudices of the nobles prevailed in the long run, and in the great body of Roman literature the Gracchi are represented to us as the eponyms of factious ambition, rather than of patriotic policy. Cornelia, the mother of the ill-fated tribunes, obtained a purer fame, and continued to be remembered among the most honoured matrons of the republic. Optimus, having obtained a second triumph over the disturbers of his faction's supremacy, erected a temple to concord in arrogant imitation of Camillus, the second founder of Rome. In the course of the next fifteen years the nobles, now unchecked, effected the formal repeal of the measures of the Gracchi. The knights were expelled from the tribunals; the lands remained in the occupation of the rich lords; the Italians were left beyond the pale of the Roman franchise; finally, the aid of the censors was invoked to expunge from the list of knights and senators all those members of either class who were suspected of leaning towards a reform of the constitution.

SECT. XXIV.—WARS WITH JUGURTHA AND THE CIMBRI, AND POPULAR ASCENDANCY OF MARIUS.

Meanwhile the kingdom of Masinissa, which he had Jugurtha held as a dependent upon Rome, had been divided on king of his demise between his three sons, and again, on the death Numidia, of two of these, had coalesced into a single sovereignty. Micipsa, the survivor, proposed to divide his dominions between his two legitimate children; but a natural son named Jugurtha, more able than either, and trained under Roman generals in Spain, intrigued for the succession, assassinated one of the princes, defeated the other, and hastened in person to Rome to engage its sanction to his usurpation. The Senate repulsed him; but on his return home he boldly took up arms and defended himself by force, with the full support of his countrymen, against the best captains of the republic. Metellus, a chief of the Optimates, reduced him to great straits, but he extricated himself again with won- This war, long protracted with various success, brought forward the remarkable talents of C. Marius, a soldier who rose from the ranks to the consulship, and was sent with the acclamations of the popular party, whose child and champion he proclaimed himself, to bring the struggle to a termination. The Numidian chieftain was thus at last driven to bay, and captured by the dashing exploit of an enterprising young officer, Cornelius Sulla, and carried to Rome. There he followed the triumph of Marius in the year 650, and was cruelly put to death. Numidia was over divided into three portions: the western part was annexed to Mauretania, the realm of Bocchus, who had proved himself a faithful ally; the eastern was united to the Roman province of Africa; the remnant of the ancient kingdom was allotted to two princes of Massinissa's family, through whose feuds the republic might hope to secure its own supremacy over both.

The perils of the great Jugurthine war were long celebrated by the Romans, and furnished a theme for one of their masterpieces in historical composition. We may regret that we have no Sallust to recount for us the still more terrible struggle of Rome with the Cimbri and Teutones, in which the services of Marius were even more transcendent. The republic had first interfered in the affairs of Massilia, a Greek commercial city on the Gallic coast of the Mediterranean, in the year 600, when she wrested some territories from the barbarians at the request of that unwarlike community, and bestowed them upon it. In 629 she undertook a campaign against the tribes of the lower Alps, and founded the Roman colony of Aque Sextiae (Aix), at the same time making a further addition to the realm of her Grecian clients. Further complications with the Gaulish states speedily ensued. The Romans won a great battle over the Arverni and Allobroges in 623; and in a short time the south-western corner of Gaul, beyond the Alps, was become a Roman acquisition, and received the special designation of "the Province." Roads were now constructed across the Alps, and the dominions of the republic advanced to Narbo, beyond the Alps, and Tolosa, on the Garonne. While, however, the Transalpine province was thus growing and flourishing, it was well nigh overwhelmed by a terrible disaster. Tribes sprung from the remotest parts of Germany, known to Roman writers by the name of Cimbri and Teutones, poured with an armed immigration towards the northern portions of the Roman empire. On the eastern side of the Alps they were repulsed, by treachery rather than by arms, by Papirius Carbo; but they swept round the skirts of the mountain barrier, and appeared again on the Rhone and the Isère, spreading fire and devastation in the Roman province, and threatening now to scale the western Alps, and thence descend into Italy. Five consular armies were sent against them, and suffered five defeats, each more terrible than the last. Rome was in consternation, but breathing-time was afforded by a diversion of the main body of the barbarians into Spain. Marius was hastily recalled from Africa, before the final completion of the Jugurthine war, and the peril of the crisis compelled the nobles to allow of his election again and again to the consulship, till he had succeeded in arresting and finally crushing this formidable onslaught. Marius gained the great victory of Aque Sextiae in 650, in which he destroyed the Teutonic division of the enemy; he then hastened into Italy, whither another swarm had already penetrated, and overwhelmed the Cimbrian invaders with a second and not less complete success at Vercellas, in the following year. By the time he found leisure to return to Rome, he had enjoyed in succession the unprecedented number of five consulships.

The disasters of foreign war had been aggravated by a servile insurrection in Italy itself, and the necessities of the state had compelled the nobles to relax their hold on the privileges they so jealously maintained. A tribune named Domitius had wrested the appointment of chief pontiff from the priests' college, a body highly aristocratic, and had given it to the people. This afforded them important protection against an unfair exercise of the political instrument which called itself the national religion. Another tribune, Servilius Glancia, restored once more the judicia to the knights. Marius, though himself no party politician, and with motives merely personal, was put forward by the popular faction as their champion, and raised to a sixth consulship in 694. His election had been carried by intimidation and the threats of his licentious soldiery, whom he had enlisted for the first time, under the pressure of public calamity, from the Proletarii, the rabble of the Roman people. His measures were as violent as his manners were unpolished. He ventured so far to stretch the prerogative of his office as to confer the franchise on a thousand of his soldiers levied in an Italian municipium; and when remonstrated with on the illegality of the act, cooly replied, "amid the din of arms I could not hear the voice of the laws." Backed by the tribune Saturninus, he continued to reward his rude warriors with the boon of citizenship, and quartered many thousands of them on the lands belonging to the colonists in the province, which he had rescued, as he boasted, from the hands of the barbarians. The nobles resented these irregular proceedings, and tried to interrupt the assemblies convened to sanction them, by alleging the frivolous omens, such as rain or thunder, which were allowed to dissolve the comitia. "Be still," cried Saturninus, "or it shall presently hail." Tumult ensued in the city; the tribunes gained the upper hand, and drove Metellus, the chief of the nobles, into banishment. Saturninus continued to maintain his influence over the people, and the Italians, it is said, offered him kindly authority. But the nobles were still the stronger party when they acted together with vigour, and under the leadership of Memmius, Marius at this time shrinking from the furious violence of his late adherent, drove the tribune out of the Forum into the Capitol. There Saturninus defended himself with arms; but the notion that he aimed at the tyranny was circulated among the people, and, whether it were true or false, it sufficed to turn their feelings against him. The water-pipes that supplied his fortress were cut, and he was forced to descend from it. Overthrow Marius indeed guaranteed him his life; but the people of Saturninus were not to be controlled: they forced themselves into the hall in which he had taken refuge, and slew him, with the remnant of his followers.

This was perhaps the last moment at which the establishment of a limited and constitutional monarchy, the dream of Scipio and the regret of Cicero, might have been possible at Rome. Had the popular faction possessed among them a man of enlightened integrity as well as of ability, in whose favour they could have agreed to exercise the power which had exalted Marius to six successive consulships, and had given authority in periods of public emergency to the tribunes of the last few years,—had the nobles been directed by men of sense and patriotism, to yield to the just claims of their own commons and of the Italians,—the usurpation, fifty years later, of Caesar and Octavius might have been anticipated under happier auspices. The mass of the citizens was still sound at heart, and not incapable of the self-control required for the due exercise of high political rights. While it placed all private ambition under the check of a sovereign authority, it might still have kept a check on the sovereign himself by its own firmness and moderation. Public virtue, indeed, could not have been maintained without recognising on a wider scale the proper claims of humanity, without renouncing the hateful privileges then generally accorded by the conqueror over his subjects, and the master over his slaves. But neither the philosophy nor the religion of the day set forth any principles of action adequate to command such an apparent sacrifice; and it must be confessed that the elements of a secure and tranquil government by a limited kingly power were hardly to be found at this time throughout the heathen world. We shall presently see that neither the aristocracy nor the democracy of Rome was capable of maintaining the equilibrium of the commonwealth, and that the unmitigated despotism under which she ultimately fell was the only possible solution of the antagonism so long prevailing in the elements of her polity.

SECT. XXV.—THE SOCIAL WAR.

For some time past the Italians, as we have observed, had been putting forth claims to the Roman franchise. If we would analyse, in a small compass, the motives from which this pretension was generally urged, we must reject, in the first instance, the notion, so natural to our modern ideas, of equity and inherent rights. "Rome for the Roman"—the enjoyment, that is, by the conquerors of all the fruits of conquest—was the fundamental principle of Roman policy, the moral basis of which was unquestioned by any subjects or dependants of the republic. If, under any circumstances, she relaxed from this primary idea of her government, even the states she favoured would only regard it as a concession extorted by some necessity of the moment, which it would have been preposterous to claim as a right. The road to Roman honours and magistracies might have charms for a few distinguished personages in an Italian burgh, but to the population generally the Roman franchise offered, for a long period, few attractions. The severe discipline to which the Roman commons were subjected, the constant military service demanded of them, the harsh prohibition which long prevailed of the exercise of trade and arts, the jealousy with which the avenues to office were guarded, must have rendered the exchange of country (for the Italian who acquired the Roman franchise lost his own) a very slender gratification to the multitude. There was, indeed, some immunity in matter of taxation to be set against these drawbacks; but the advantages to be derived from a share in the provincial administration were confined to a small class, and could hardly be accessible to a "new man" from Italy. The pressing motive which inspired the cry now raised for this questionable privilege was suggested by the agrarian struggles of the Gracchi. The public domain within the peninsula being now occupied chiefly, as we have seen, by noble landlords, was sublet by them to the natives. The Italians, deprived of the legal possession of their own soil by the conquest, became virtually re-possessed of it by the mere abuse of proprietary right, which allowed a few great families to enjoy the usufruct of the national territory. But from the strict division of this territory among the citizens, as demanded by the leaders of the movement, it would result that the Italian sub-tenant would be ejected from his farm to make way for a plebeian proprietor. The measures threatened by the Gracchi were really more formidable to the Italian than to the Roman aristocrat himself. They touched the pride and the privilege of the latter; but they menaced the means of existence of the former. It was open to the Italian either to join with the nobles in resisting the claim of the people, or to urge his own admission to the franchise, and so come in for share with the people in a new distribution of property. This latter course was that which he adopted; and probably it was the most sagacious. The leaders of the plebeian agitation found themselves at the same time leaders of an Italian agitation also; the two movements proceeded together, and during the external troubles of the republic were suspended together. When security was restored from without, the cry of the Italians rose louder than ever; and it was plain that the next great struggle of the governing classes at Rome would be against the intrusion of their own subjects within the pale of Roman property and privilege. But the knights availed themselves of this foreign aid in their contest with the Senate; and thus the noble party, the Optimates as they were called, found themselves arrayed against the widest and most formidable coalition they had yet encountered, in defence of their prerogative.

The strength of the Optimates, sapped and battered as it was, still lay in the remnant they had preserved of their old control of the state religion, by which they could at times make an effective appeal to popular interests and prejudices; but more in their own military organization, and the well-trained bands of clients and retainers, trained to the use of their suffrage as well as of their arms. They effected the disgrace of Marius and the recall of Metellus; and in 659 (B.C. 95) required the consuls to expel from the city all the Italians who had sought a domicile within its walls. The Italian faction was now headed by a tribune named Livius Drusus, one of the most popular of the Livii demagogues, of whom it was long remembered that, when Drusus, his architect, proposed to build him a house in which he might screen himself from the observation of his neighbours, "Build it so," he had answered, "that every citizen may witness every action I perform." The labours of this man in the cause of Italian emancipation seemed approaching to success when, in the midst of the struggle, he was suddenly struck down by the poniard of an unknown assassin. The nobles, and especially the consul Philippus, incurred the odium of the deed.

Measures of proscription against individuals were now threatened and carried alternately on both sides; but all semblance of legal procedure was soon cast away, and the Italians rushed to arms. Their forces were derived chiefly from the Marsians, the Picentines, the Vestines, the Samnites, the Lucanians, and Apulians; and thus the allies of the Roman state, as they were specially denominated, became its open and avowed enemies. In the course of the campaigns which followed, the Etruscans also joined the coalition; and the object of the war, which was at first the acquisition of the Roman franchise, became no other than the extermination of the Roman republic. It was proposed to organize and maintain a great Italian confederacy, of which Corfinium, under the name of Italica, should be recognised as the capital. On the Roman side the names of Caesar, Crassus, and Pompeius, destined to re-appear in the next age in fatal combination, obtained their earliest illustration; on the Italian, Juliuscius, Pompeidius, and Motulus were the most distinguished leaders. The chief successes of the Romans were gained by Marius and his former lieutenant Sulla, who crushed and, as it was said, destroyed the Etruscans; nevertheless, the power of the republic would not have sufficed for the complete reduction of the insurgents, and the discretion which, at the first turn of fortune in her favour, dictated a substantial concession, saved her from an exhaustion of blood and treasure which no barren victory could have compensated.

The lex Julia conferred the franchise on the Umbrians and Etruscans in 664; the lex Plautia Papiria in 666 extended it to all their Italian allies. Every Italian who chose to come to Rome and claim the boon within sixty days, was received into the bosom of the commonwealth. Ten tribes were added to the thirty-five already existing. The boon after all was not very generally accepted. The citizenship Roman religion required that every legal measure should be sanctioned by certain ceremonial observances, and these could only be transacted within the sacred precincts of the city. It was admitted on all sides that the suffrage could only be exercised at Rome. Accordingly the franchise offered little attraction to distant citizens, who were required to forego their local citizenship for a privilege which they had little opportunity of exercising. After all the blood which had been spilt in the struggle, the Italians found themselves content for the most part to retain their old position. The roll of the Roman citizens, which in the census of 640 numbered 391,336, in that of 668, the next of which we have the account, had not increased beyond 463,000, and sixteen years later was only 450,000. But the precedent now set for the first time on so large a scale bore ample fruit in the course of Roman history. The full franchise was conceded in special instances to various states in Spain, Gaul, and Africa; while the Latin, which conferred, as we have seen, a certain eligibility to the Roman, was even more widely diffused. Pompeius Strabo extended it to the entire nation of the Transpadane Gauls. On the whole, the liberal concessions of this period evince in a marked manner the prudence of the Roman government at one of the most perilous moments of its career. The strong national prejudice against which they were carried was now finally overthrown, and the Roman writers uniformly agree in applauding the policy which dictated them, and ascribing to it the preservation of the state at the time, and the unabated vigour of its subsequent progress.

SECT. XXVI.—MARIUS AND SULLA—THE FIRST CIVIL WAR.

At a critical period of the late war Marius, in a splenetic mood, had quitted the camp and buried himself in a distant retreat, leaving Sulla as consul, in 666, to bring the contest to a close. The younger champion was now in the ascendant. Mithridates, King of Pontus, had defied the republic, had overrun the province of Asia, and caused the massacre of the Roman colonists and traders, amounting, as was loudly proclaimed, to not less than 80,000 souls. Sulla was appointed to carry on the war against this formidable enemy; but before he could set forth on his mission, Marius, alarmed for his own pre-eminence in public affairs, attempted to create a revolution in the city. Sulla recalled his troops, which had not yet quitted Italy, drove before him the Marian forces, and entered Rome in military array. Marius, flying for his life, concealed himself in the marshes of Minturnae. He was discovered and seized; but the Cimbrian captive who was sent to despatch him in prison, fled in terror from before him, and he was allowed to escape once more, and make his way into Africa. Reclining among the ruins of Carthage, he meditated the recovery of his power. On Sulla's departure for the East, the Marian faction again made head under Cinna, but was put down again by the Senate and the consul Octavius. Cinna fled into lower Italy, and raised some levies of turbulent banditti. At the same time Marius reappeared suddenly in Etruria, and both chiefs approached Rome simultaneously from opposite quarters. They entered the city, overcoming all resistance, and executed a sanguinary proscription of their enemies. Marius became consul for the seventh time in 668, and though now seventy years of age, prepared to lead an army into Asia to supplant his rival Sulla. At this crisis, however, the old man died suddenly. Cinna succeeded to his power, and sent Valerius Flaccus to assume the command of the Roman forces in the East. Scarcely had Flaccus crossed the Hellespont when he was assassinated in the camp by one of his own officers. Sulla was enabled, by the ascendancy of his character, to join the legions of Flaccus to his own, and, thus re-inforced, put Mithridates to the rout, and led his combined forces against the enemies of the Senate at Rome. Cinna had now been murdered in his turn. Carbo and a son of Marius were the chiefs of the popular faction, but they could make no head against the military talents and the veteran legions of Sulla. In the battle of Sacriportus, and again before the Colline gate of Rome, the Italian militia who supported them went down before the conquerors of Mithridates. The senatorial party received their avenger with exultation, not unmixed perhaps with political fear, and stood horror-stricken by his side while he did bloody and remorseless execution on the abettors of the late revolution. Sulla massacred several thousands of his victims of disarmed prisoners in the Campus Martius, and organized Sulla, a system of terror and proscription for the extirpation of the popular leaders.

It still remained to re-establish the supremacy of the Sulla nobles on a legal basis, and to this purpose the conqueror now applied the powers of the dictatorship which was now conferred upon him without limitation of time. He was even allowed to retain it, together with the consulship, in the year 674.

Rome had hitherto been peculiarly fortunate in her political revolutions. With whatever violence they might have been conducted, they had perhaps uniformly worked for her ultimate advantage. But this was because they were all the offspring of a natural progress in the life of the people. The reactionary system of Sulla was, on the contrary, the greatest disaster in her annals. The aim of this despot was to undo all the popular measures of the last half-century; to check the progress of agrarian distributions; to suspend the plantation of colonies; to thwart, if he could not abrogate, the late enactments for the enfranchisement of the Italians; to destroy the popular authority of the tribunes; to repel the knights from the judicia; to reserve the government of the provinces, with all the advantages thence accruing, for the first estate, the senatorial families only. The utter prostration of the opposite party enabled him to carry out all these plans for the moment, and the high character borne by some of his confederates, such as Catulus, contributed to render them palatable. The opening career of the young Cnecius Pompeius, the bravest of his lieutenants, whom he had seduced from the politics of his family and placed in the first rank of the senatorial partizans, augured brilliantly for the military triumphs of the faction to which he devoted him. Having effected the reforms he judged necessary for his views, filled the city and magistracy with his friends and the provincial governments with his creatures; having attained, for his uniform successes, the surname of Felix, "the Prosperous" from an admiring generation, Sulla ventured to resign his dictatorship, and retired abruptly into private life. His good fortune still befriended him: none of his enemies, no friend of his slaughtered victims, molested him in his defenceless retreat; and he died in his bed, though harassed by death, indeed by a loathsome infirmity, in the year 676, at the age of sixty.

SECT. XXVII.—RE-ACTION AGAINST SULLA'S OLIGARCHICAL CONSTITUTION.

The establishment of the Sullan oligarchy was a severe blow to the ambition of large classes at home, to the knights and other new men who were striving by their wealth, or plaints of their credit in the courts and the Forum, to thrust them selves into public office, for which they had no claim from birth or family illustration. It was an attempt to restrict to a group of two or three hundred ancient houses the honours and emoluments of the government of the world. The time, indeed, was past when such a retrograde step could be permanent; but in the meanwhile the provincials were even greater sufferers than the citizens themselves. Great as had been the cruelty and oppression of the governors, their subjects had hitherto had a remedy in the appeal to the tribunals at Rome, to the judges of peculation and extortion. This appeal, however, would have been of little service but for the jealousy of parties in the city. As long as the knights contended with the senators for the judicia, and the Marians with the nobles for the magistracies, advocates might be found, and the machinery, how- ever imperfect, of Roman justice might be employed for redress. Proconsuls charged with extortion towards their subjects might sometimes meet with punishment, as well as those whose crimes had been committed against the state itself. But when the judicia were restored wholly to the Senate, when the popular leaders were utterly silenced, the magistrates enjoyed, at least for a moment, complete impunity, and the provincials found, whatever their sufferings, that redress from a senatorial tribunal had become entirely hopeless.

It was fortunate for the subjects of Rome that the rampant supremacy of the Sullan oligarchy could not long be maintained against the numbers, the activity, and the skill of the party over which it had triumphed. The complaints of the oppressed were encouraged by the chiefs of the opposition, and all the force of forensic eloquence was employed to bring the oppressors to justice. The judges were more accessible to bribery than to eloquence; but by means of the one or the other many of the Optimates were thus smitten with judicial sentences, while the feelings of the public were roused against them, and a strong prejudice excited against the monopoly of power which they so fearfully abused. The case of Verres, the plunderer of Sicily, and of other provinces before, who was dragged at last before the bar of justice by the youthful orator Cicero, and forced to abandon his defence in despair, shook the authority of the nobles, while it vindicated in one conspicuous instance the rights of the subject provincials.

But the Marianists were not satisfied with these legitimate modes of warfare. Immediately on the decease of Sulla, Lepidus, then actually one of the consuls, took up arms ostensibly in their interest, but was put down by his colleague Catulus. A remnant of the party, turbulent and self-willed, and impatient of their loss of power, attached themselves to an Italian officer named Sertorius, who raised a revolt in Spain, and maintained a war there for several years against the best generals of the Senate. After defeating Metellus, he kept the brave Pompeius at bay till he was murdered, in 682, by Perperna, one of his own lieutenants, after which event the movement was quickly suppressed. This was another great service done to the state by one who was now acknowledged by the nobles as the foremost man in the republic. The title of Magnus ("the Great"), with which Sulla in his lofty generosity had already saluted him, was ratified by the consent of the dictator's faction, and recommended by them to the general approval of the citizens. The popular party were indeed not without hopes of gaining him to their own side. Flattered on all hands, he trimmed from side to side, and his estimation still rose higher as fortune gave him opportunities of distinction. He was still absent in Spain when Rome was terrified by the revolt of Spartacus and a handful of fugitive gladiators, soon swelled to an army by opening the ergastula, or slave-prisons. More than one legionary force was defeated by them: they were checked at last and crippled by Crassus; but by this time Pompeius had been recalled in haste to combat them, and his opportune arrival completed their discomfiture, while it earned him the whole glory of the victory (A.U.C. 683, N.C. 71). Such was the favour in which this lucky general was now held that he could lend a helping-hand to Crassus, and raise him together with himself to the consulship; an act of condescension of which his colleague ever retained an uneasy recollection. Courted by both parties, the two consuls combined in their policy, and exerted their authority on the side of the Marianists. They restored the tribuneship, and transferred the judicia to the knights; and thus the chief measures of Sulla were abrogated by the leaders he had left behind him, after only eleven years' continuance. The consuls were supported in their reforms by the talents of the rising orator Cicero, who formed in his own mind an ideal, too bright for realization, of the harmonious cooperation of all classes in the state, and strove to secure for the second order its fair share in the administration, notwithstanding the selfish resistance of an unconvincing oligarchy.

During the last few years a fresh war had been in progress with the indomitable King of Pontus. The Roman armies were led by Licinius Lucullus, an able commander, but not vigorous enough to cope with the vast resources and energy of Mithridates. While the republic was drained of men and treasure in this unprofitable warfare, it was still more painfully harassed by the pirates of Cilicia, who, since the decline of the Greek maritime powers, had covered the eastern Mediterranean with their vessels, and carried their predatory enterprises to the coasts of Italy, and even to the Pillars of Hercules. It was necessary to make an effort to suppress them, and powers such as had never before been conferred on a single commander at Rome were given to Pompeius by the Gabian bill for the purpose. He was constituted captain-general of all the forces of the republic throughout all her coasts, and fifty miles inland. Such a command was practically unlimited; such a commander was virtually the autocrat of the empire. Nevertheless the result, complete and speedy as it was, seemed fully to justify it. The naval campaign, in which Pompeius collected all the maritime resources of the republic and her dependencies, overcomes drove the pirates from sea to sea, and at last crushed them the Cilician in their own harbours, was an achievement as brilliant as it was unique. Its effect also was permanent: from henceforth the police of the seas was kept so well by Rome that piracy never made head again in the Mediterranean during the existence of her dominion. But while Pompeius was thus gaining the most honourable of his distinctions, the "piratic laurel," one of his creatures in the city, named Manlius, took advantage of his increasing popularity to obtain for him the command against Mithridates (A.U.C. 688, N.C. 66), and over the eastern half of the empire. This enormous grant, far exceeding the powers ever before conferred on a proconsul, was advocated by all the eloquence of Cicero; and Lucullus was directed to resign his command to the favourite of the people, and return as a private citizen to Rome. Lucullus was one of the chiefs of the oligarchy; and this insult to the individual was felt more acutely by his party than by himself; for by temper he was unusually indifferent to public distinctions, and betrayed at least no annoyance when on his return he withdrew himself from affairs, and gave his leisure to the enjoyment of luxury, and to private works of munificence. But the jealousy with which the Senate had begun to regard their pretended champion Pompeius was much exasperated: he repaid their suspicions with haughty scorn, while the chiefs of the opposite party fanned the flame of discord between them. Cicero rose into distinction with the general favour bestowed upon his patron. In the year 688 he was chosen praetor, having already served the lower magistracies; and now in the full career of honours, he might well hope, new man though he was, without fortune or connections of his own, for the crowning glory of the consulship.

The nobles loudly asserted that their champion Lucullus had already broken the power of Mithridates, when Pompeius was thrust forward to reap the honour of his successes. Certain it is that the King of Pontus sued for peace on the first arrival of his new antagonist; but it was not the object of Pompeius to gain a bloodless triumph, and he refused to treat with the enemy till he had reduced him to unconditional submission. Mithridates withdrew from Asia Minor, but he retired through the difficult country of Iberia and Albania to his dominions in the Tauric Chersonese, and thither Pompeius tried in vain to follow him. Some poli- During the absence of Pompeius in Asia the extreme section of the senatorial party, well pleased at the removal of a champion they suspected and feared to so distant an exile, placed themselves under the guidance of their natural chiefs, men of ancient lineage and ancestral honours, such as Catulus, Lucullus, Servilius, Lentulus, and Marcellus. But none of these were men of commanding ability, nor even of commanding energy. A large number of the principal nobility were engrossed by luxury and indolence; and the eloquence of Hortensius, their best speaker, was speedily eclipsed by that of the upstart Cicero. In this dearth of talent among them, they suffered a prominent place to be taken by Cato, the great-grandson of the censor, a man who resembled his illustrious ancestor in the antique rigour of his manners, a pedantic assessor of the old senatorial privileges, and inflexible in the maintenance of his hereditary politics. This dogged resolution and dense obstructiveness were as valuable qualities perhaps as a chief of the Optimates could at that time possess; for Cato knew how to keep his position by sheer obstinacy long after a reasonable statesman would have confessed that it was untenable, and he protracted the contest with the ever-increasing power of the popular faction through many a vicissitude of triumph and defeat, as accident favoured or depressed him. But fortune was on the whole against him; and the chance which arrayed the unequalled genius of C. Julius Caesar in the first rank of his opponents, was alone sufficient to overwhelm the resistance of abler men than Cato.

Cesar was descended from a noble family, sprung, as is pretended, even from a Trojan origin. His ancestors had enjoyed the highest honours of the state, and were naturally attached to the party of the Senate which some of them had defended in arms during the Social and Civil wars. But he was at the same time nephew to Marius, and he had married a daughter of Cinna. These connections outweighed in his mind the prejudices of his birth, and inspired him with the ambition of ruling Rome at the head of the democracy. In early youth he had been marked out by Sulla as the heir of his rival's principles, and a possible successor to his own ascendancy. Caesar had escaped the proscription of his party, had served abroad while it was dangerous to appear in Rome; and when on his return he found his friends once more drawing breath and recovering their spirits, he had thrown himself manfully into their cause, and insisted on restoring the trophies of Marius, displaced by his successful enemy. During the absence of Pompeius he pushed himself with undaunted energy into the first rank of the popular faction; he dismayed the nobles by calling to account the instruments of Sulla's vengeance, and by inciting the people to inflict a public slight upon Catulus. The Optimates were already tottering under the repeated blows he thus dealt them, when an event occurred which gave them an opportunity of strengthening their position. Suddenly the commonwealth was threatened with a ruinous disaster. Fortune gave the nobles the means of averting it by an act of extraordinary vigour, and recovering thereby the prestige which a series of weaknesses and defects had well nigh lost them. The conspiracy of Catilina and the courage of Cicero gave the Senate another lease of power for fourteen years.

Amid the contests of ostensible parties in the state there lurked a greater and nearer danger in the numbers of discontented bankrupt youths thrown loose upon society by the accidents of civil commotion. These pests of the commonwealth fell at this moment under the lead of a profigate monster, L. Sergius Catilina, who, having failed of his election to the consulship, intrigued against all constituted authority, and formed a conspiracy to seize the government by force. The existence of such a plot had been vaguely apprehended from the moment of Catilina's defeat, and it was with the presentiment that a man of vigour would be required at the helm that the nobles, notwithstanding his ignoble birth, allowed the election of Cicero, whose abilities they knew, and on whose vanity they could play, to the consulship for 691. Cicero soon made himself master of the plot, surprised certain envoys from the Allobroges with whom the traitors had been tampering; but not daring to seize the chief conspirator himself till he could make his guilt patent to the citizens, denounced him in the Senate-house, and drove him in guilty agitation from the city. Catilina threw himself prematurely on the feeble levies he had prepared in Etruria; while the consul arrested his chief adherents, some of them men of rank and distinction, strangely mixed up in so desperate an enterprise, brought them before the Senate, disclosed their guilt by incontrovertible proofs, and demanded their punishment. The temper of the people, it seems, could not be trusted; and notwithstanding the enormity of the guilt thus fastened upon them, it was dangerous to allow them the appeal which the law permitted. The nobles were well pleased at the opportunity of showing their confidence in their own power, and proving that they were not afraid to act with the vigour of the ancient oligarchy, even in the absence of Pompeius and his legions. They had armed the consul with the "ultimate decree," requiring him to provide, by whatever arbitrary measures, for the safety of the state; and this stretch of their prerogative they did not scruple to enforce with the instant execution of the criminals. Cicero was hurried along by his enthusiasm, as the saviour, for such he was loudly proclaimed, of his country. He lent himself to the rash policy of his supporters and patrons; dazzled by the splendour of his extraordinary position, intoxicated by the incense of aristocratic flattery, and the assurance that he had secured a permanent rank among the haughty oligarchy of Rome, he consented to an act of dubious justice and expediency, of which he had cause bitterly to repent not many years after. The presumed associates of Catilina, whose actual guilt is affirmed only on ex parte evidence, were strangled in prison; Catilina himself, brought to bay in the Apennines, was defeated in open battle by the forces of the government, and slain, fighting bravely in the field. Sect. XXIX.—Coalition of Pompeius, Crassus, and Caesar to Control the Government—The First Triumvirate.

Caesar, as the chief of the popular party, the representative of its constitutional traditions, had protested against the infliction of capital punishment on the conspirators. It required great courage to take this part; for the nobles had tried to incriminate Caesar himself in the plot, and he had with difficulty extricated himself from their meshes. Such, moreover, was the influence they had now acquired over the passions of the knights and men of property in the city, that he was threatened by their poniards on the steps of the Senate-house. But the reckless populace whom he swayed with a handful of trusty adherents, by unbounded profusion of money, reigned in the comitia. He was chosen praetor and chief pontiff; and in the year 698 went forth, with money borrowed from Crassus, to gain his first laurels as a governor in the further Spain. Pompeius, returning this year, found himself the object of jealousy, not unmingled with scorn, to his own party, elated as they were by their recent triumph, and believing themselves strong enough to cast off his odious patronage. On reaching the shores of Italy, such was his confidence in himself, and in the position he supposed himself to hold, that he magnanimously disbanded his army, and took his seat as a private citizen in the Senate. But this moderation served only to confirm the short-sighted vanity of the Optimates. They amused themselves by treating him with the most marked coldness, kept him waiting a year for the triumph he had so well earned, and put off from day to day the ordinary compliment of ratifying his acts or political arrangements in the East. Upon this point, indeed, he could get no satisfaction till he had formed a coalition with Caesar and Crassus, by which they entered into a mutual pledge to support each other's pretensions to the highest offices and commands, and to share, in fact, between themselves the actual government of the state. Caesar was suing for the consulship; Crassus was desirous of some lucrative command; Pompeius, who had attained the summit of his ambition, wanted only the confirmation of his acts, the reward of his legionaries, and the solemn recognition of his pre-eminent deserts. He felt as yet no jealousy of his associates; the one he regarded as a fashionable debauchee and spendthrift, the other as a selfish and indolent miser. He hoped to use them both as the props of his own supremacy, and to cast them away whenever he had recovered that authority with the nobles which he considered due to his merits, whatever attitude he might assume towards them. Such was the origin of the compact of three private citizens for the control of the republic, known by the name of the First Triumvirate, the fruits of which were soon seen in the success of Caesar's application for the consulship, and in the bold popular measures he was enabled to carry. On the expiration of his term, he quitted Rome for the province of Gaul, where he found himself suddenly engaged in wars with the Helvetians and the Suevi. The Optimates recovered in his absence the curule chairs, but their consuls fell under the patronage of Pompeius, who now reigned paramount in the city. Jealous of the renown Cicero had acquired in the affair of Catilina, Pompeius allowed the infamous demagogue Clodius to accuse him, as tribune, before the people, and obtain a sentence of banishment against him for the execution of the conspirators without due form of law. Cicero retired into Macedonia, and thence into Greece, and lowered his character, spotless as it was, by his unwomanly lamentations. Pompeius managed also to degrade the rigid Cato by sending him on a harsh and unjust mission to dethrone the King of Cyprus, and annex his dominions to the empire.

Sect. XXX.—Proceedings of the Triumvirate Till Its Dissolution by the Death of Crassus.

Caesar had entered his province in 696, and during the following years was intently occupied in subjugating the tribes of Gaul from the Rhone to the Rhine and the Atlantic. According to the usual policy of Rome and of other conquering races, he effected his purpose by directing the passions of the native tribes against one another, rather than by the strength of Roman arms and the effusion of Roman blood. The Aedui and Arverni in the centre of Gaul, the Remi in the north-east, were disposed, with selfish views of their own, to assist in the ruin of their common country, and the incursions of the Germans from beyond the Rhine furnished the invader with an excuse for proclaiming himself the protector of the Gauls. In 697 Caesar broke the confederation of the Belgic tribes in the North. The next year he worsted at sea the naval power campaigns of the Veneti in Brittany, while his lieutenants subdued Gaul Aquitania. In 699 he threw a bridge across the Rhine, and penetrated for an instant into the German forests. In the autumn of the same year he crossed with a powerful and armament into Britain, and made a second attack upon the islanders in the succeeding summer. Landing on each occasion on the coast of Kent, probably on the beach at Walmer, he made in his second campaign a rapid march into the interior, forced the passage of the Thames some miles above London, and defeated the King of the Trinobantes, the most powerful of the southern chieftains, before his stockade in Hertfordshire. But his success was not such as to encourage him to leave a garrison in the country, or effect a permanent lodgment there. He was satisfied with the promise of a slender tribute; and this, in all probability, was never paid after the return of the legions. The expedition, indeed, had been undertaken rather for the amusement of the citizens, who listened with interest to their hero's despatches, and for the gratification of the soldiers' curiosity, than with any view of annexing a new province to the empire.

During the progress of his campaigns, whatever their immediate purpose, the vigilance of Caesar was never entirely diverted from the march of events in the city. Year after year, when the season for military operations was closed, he repaired to the baths of Lucca on the frontier of his province,—for the laws did not suffer an imperator to enter Italy while retaining his command,—and there consulted with his friends, who flocked to him in numbers from trigae in Rome, the measures most conducive to the interests of his city, party and of himself. He had carried his warfare against the nobles to the furthest limits of the law, and had provoked and alarmed them beyond the possibility of forgiveness. In his distant command he was beyond the reach of their enmity: they were well pleased at his absence, and did not grudge him the term of five years which he had in the first instance required. But he knew that whenever he returned as a private citizen to Rome he should fall easily into their power, and he had no trust in the support of either of his confederates. From the moment that the compact had been made between them he had felt the necessity of binding Pompeius to himself by a stronger tie than political interest; for Pompeius could not persuade himself that a party chief as yet so little distinguished could do him more than a momentary service. With a keen discernment of character, Caesar perceived how this reserved and selfish magistracy could be worked on through his sentimental affections. Though advanced in years, and older indeed than Caesar himself, Pompeius had consented to give his hand to his rival's youthful daughter, and had devoted himself to her as the most uxorious of husbands. He had thus been easily blinded to the schemes of the Gaulish proconsul which kept the Senate in alarm. His attention, indeed, was diverted from them by the turbulence of Clodius and some popular tribunes, whose intrigues for harassing and dividing the nobles were so propitious to Caesar's views that we must suspect him of covertly instigating them. Pompeius, on his part, was well pleased to see the Senate humbled. When, however, he was himself insulted, and his life threatened, he thought that their degradation had gone far enough, and joined with Crassus to secure the election of vigorous consuls, and tribunes devoted to himself. He countenanced the turbulent agitation with which Milo, a creature of the Senate, rebutted the violence of Clodius, and finally obtained the recall of Cicero from banishment.

The people, with their usual fickleness, turned their backs upon Clodius, and received the patriot orator with acclamations. Caesar congratulated him with a warmth congenial to his generous character, and heaped favours on his brother Quintus, then serving in his army. Pompeius, indeed, looked coldly upon him. The nobles, who had got, as they thought, all the use that was to be made of him, were indifferent to his further career, and he remained for some years in a subordinate position, seeking to keep himself before the public by puerile appeals to his former services, and by hollow flattery of the men really in power. But Pompeius required his own services to be amply requited. On the occurrence of a scarcity in the city, the Senate hastened to confer upon him extraordinary powers for its relief, and Cicero was required to recommend this commission to the people.

Crassus was now impatient of the inferiority of his position. He was not a great military chief like Pompeius; he had conferred no commands, and bestowed no crowns; he was not a popular leader like Caesar, with a crowd of hungry dependants urging him on for their own advancement; he was not even to be compared as an orator to Cicero, though he had made some useful connections as a pleader and patron; but he was the richest of the Romans, and he represented one marked feature in the character of his countrymen in his sordid pursuit of wealth and love of accumulation. His career had been that of a banker and money-lender in the city; his acquisitions, however great, had been slow and gradual; now, advanced as he was in years, his ambition began to reach further: he coveted the fame of a commander and a conqueror, and lusted for the plunder of a province or a foreign kingdom. After fulfilling his term of office as consul, he demanded of the Senate the government of Syria, and avowed as he set forth from Rome his purpose of making war upon Parthia. The nobles, who were unable to refuse him the proconsulate, professed a pious horror at these unprovoked hostilities, and engaged the tribune Ateius to denounce it as a sacrilege—to meet him as he issued through the gates of the city, and devote him, with awful solemnities, to the vengeance of the offended gods. The minds of the soldiers were painfully affected by this formidable ceremony, and it was with difficulty that Crassus could overcome their terrors, and engage them by redoubled promises to follow him on his ill-omened expedition.

Then did the Senate watch and strain every nerve to baffle the movements of the triumvirs. But the coalition was too powerful for it. While Crassus was gratified with his eastern command, Pompeius claimed and obtained the provinces of Spain and Africa, which he governed by lieutenants, remaining himself in the immediate neighbourhood of Rome; and Caesar's command in Gaul was prolonged for a second period of five years. The power of the triumvirate was thus apparently confirmed; but the Senate turned with a gleam of satisfaction to the enterprise of Crassus, the disastrous issue of which was already augured from surer tokens than those of the diviners. Crassus was quite incompetent for the task he had undertaken. Having defied the Parthians upon frivolous pretences, he led his army across the Euphrates, and directed his march across the desert which divides that river from the Tigris. The Parthians retreated before him till they had enticed him to a considerable distance, and finally attacked him with overwhelming force when his men were exhausted with fatigue and heat. A Roman army of three legions was routed and almost destroyed in the terrible battle of Carrhae, and Battle of Carrhae, induced to sue for terms of capitulation, and then treacherously slain. A remnant of his army was saved and conducted back to Antioch by Cassius Longinus, the ablest of his lieutenants.

SECT. XXXI.—THE CIVIL WAR TO THE DEATH OF POMPEIUS.

The triple league thus suddenly dissolved had already been shaken by the death of Julia, the daughter of Caesar, espoused to Pompeius. The nobles saw their opportunity, and exerted themselves diligently to improve it. They renewed their overtures to Pompeius, who was becoming jealous of the advance of Caesar in power and general estimation, and allowed him the unprecedented distinction of holding the consulship for six months without a colleague—a kind of dictatorship without the name, for which the disturbances in the city seemed to afford an excuse. The Gauls, once apparently conquered, had risen again in a wide-spread revolt, and the position of the conqueror had become imminently precarious. Pompeius, who had suffered from a dangerous sickness, was elated by the extravagant acclamations of the citizens on his recovery, and the Senate easily persuaded him that he could stand alone at the head of the government, and, even if Caesar escaped the perils in which he was involved, securely spurn his alliance and defy his enmity. But all these calculations were doomed to disappointment. The abilities and fortune of Caesar triumphed over the Gauls, and he was enabled to complete his conquests, and recruit his exhausted legions from the flower of the Gaulish youth. Before the expiration of his second term of office, he had finished the task he had undertaken to accomplish, and found himself in a position to demand the consulship a second time. The Senate, alarmed at the prospect of his return, required him to relinquish his command before venturing to sue for a civil office; but he was well aware that, once divested of military support, he would lie at the mercy of unscrupulous enemies; and he retorted with the demand, which he knew would not be complied with, that Pompeius, who at the moment held the command of the armies in Spain, while continuing to reside within sight of the city, should at the same time surrender his extraordinary appointments. Both parties could appeal to the letter of the law; but on both sides the appeal to law was a mere pretence. Party animosities and private ambitions had come to such a head that Caesar could not be safe without the guarantee of a high official position; the Senate could not be safe without degrading and trampling him under its feet. A contest had become inevitable, and it was little matter from which side the first blow actually came.

Still, with a people devoted like the Romans to the observance of constitutional fictions, it was an object of some importance to preserve a mere show of legality; and this advantage, such as it was, was secured to Caesar when two of the tribunes, who had protested against the fierce demands of the Senate, fled from Rome by night, affecting alarm for their own safety, and sought refuge in the camp of the proconsul, which he had advanced to the frontier of his province. The news of their flight outstripped their own arrival; and Caesar, with his usual lightning-speed, crossed the Rubicon with a few battalions, and met them at Ariminum, proclaiming that he entered Italy in arms to vindicate the majesty of the law. Thus outraged in their persons, Pompeius and the Senate were dismayed at the boldness of this movement. Slender as were the forces of the invader, they were unprepared to meet them in arms. Their legions were scattered in Spain and in the East, and the raw levies of the city were not fit to oppose to the determined veterans of the Gallic wars. Pompeius required the knights and senators to quit the city and retire with him to the south of Italy. The negotiations with which he sought to amuse the assailant had no effect in retarding him. One fortress after another fell with their garrisons into Caesar's hands; the population of Italy rose to welcome him; and he well-nigh succeeded in surprising Pompeius in Brundisium, and intercepting his escape into Illyricum. But the Senate had possession of the sea, and for the present their enemy was unable to follow them. Caesar then retraced his steps to Rome, where the people received him with acclamations. He summoned a Senate of the remnant of the order, seized the treasures of the state, which Pompeius in his haste had neglected to secure, gave an assurance of his favour to all the nobles who would abandon the falling fortunes of the fugitives, and defied the abdicated government as traitors and rebels.

In sixty days Caesar had driven his enemies out of Italy. He had cut their position in two. The best half of the Pompeian armies were quartered in Spain; but Pompeius had more reliance on the resources of Greece and Asia, which he had so long wielded, and left his lieutenants in the west to defend themselves as best they might, while he raised the forces of his own division of the empire, Roman and barbarian, and trained them together for the future invasion of Italy. Caesar, as we have seen, had no ships for transporting himself across the Adriatic. He was aware also that it would take a long time to equip the Pompeian armaments in the East. But meanwhile the base of his own resources in Gaul was threatened by the forces of the enemy in Spain, and his first operations were directed to crushing this stronghold of the senatorial party and securing his own rear. He led his legions along the coast of Italy and Gaul; besieged and reduced Massilia, which ventured to rise against him in the interest of the oligarchy; crossed the Pyrenees, and attacked the Pompeian lieutenants in the north of Spain. Having mastered his opponents in a brilliant campaign, he returned swiftly to Rome, quelling a mutiny among his own soldiers at Placentia on the way, assumed the dictatorship with a faint show of legal forms, and proclaimed himself once more the champion of the state against every foreign and domestic enemy. Collecting his forces, to the amount of about 30,000 men, at Brundisium, he effected the passage of the straits by skill and good fortune, in the face of a superior fleet, and conducted operations against Pompeius, who had assembled a large but ill-disciplined armament on the coast of Epirus. It was the policy of Pompeius to avoid an engagement. He suffered himself to be blocked up in his camp on the land side, having still the command of the sea, and Caesar found himself baffled and reduced to straits for the support of his army. When at last he made a desperate attack on the Pompeian lines he was repulsed with some loss, and was obliged to break up from his position. Military critics have affirmed that the younger captain had been out-generalled by the elder. But this is hardly a fair account of the matter. Caesar's policy required him to fight against odds both of numbers and position. It was no disparagement to his military talents that he failed under such conditions. But his peril was now extreme. Retreat across the sea, could he have hazarded a retrograde movement, was intercepted. He boldly dashed into Thessaly, in the heart of the enemy's country, in the hope of drawing Pompeius from his impregnable stronghold in pursuit of him. The Pompeians, elated with their success, followed him with exultation, and insisted on their leader accepting the battle so urgently demanded. Pompeius hesitated, and only yielded to the importunity of the civilians against his own judgment. His political forces doubled those of his antagonist, but they were not equally serviceable. The armies met at last on the plain beneath the hill-fortress of Pharsalia; and on the 9th of Battle of August 706 the great battle was fought which utterly Pharsalia, broke the power of the Senate, scattered their leaders, and a.u. 706, drove Pompeius across the seas as a suppliant to the coast of Egypt. Caesar was intent on following the steps of his great adversary, more formidable to him than all the rest of his party; but from the want of shipping he was obliged to lead his troops by a long circuitous march through Asia Minor and Syria. Meanwhile the young Ptolemaeus, who owed his throne to the man who now sought his protection, was persuaded by his ministers to sacrifice him. Pompeius was inveigled out of ship, stabbed in the boat which conveyed him to the shore, his head cut off and sent to Caesar. Pompeius.

SECT. XXXII.—CAESAR FOUND THE EMPIRE.

After Pharsalia the nobles for the most part made their Caesar's submission, and the clemency with which Caesar treated campaigns them, so different from the measure dealt to their conquered in Egypt, enemies by a Marius or a Sulla, gained him the fervent Pontus, and applause both of his contemporaries and of posterity. A remnant indeed of the defeated faction, under the indomitable Cato, effected their escape to Africa, and raised the standard of the oligarchy at Utica; but the greater number of the senators and nobles returned to Rome, and acquiesced without a murmur in the acclamations with which the people conferred the dictatorship on their favourite for the second time. Caesar meanwhile was received with hollow demonstrations of respect by Ptolemaeus in Egypt, and he remained there for some months, fascinated, it was said, by the charms of the king's sister Cleopatra. He supported her claims against her brother, seeking perhaps an opportunity for demanding money, of which he was much in need; but the Alexandrians, on discovering how slender his forces were, rose in arms against him, and he was reduced to the direst peril, till relieved by the advance of reinforcements from Syria. Had Cato's Senate acted with energy at this crisis, it would seem that it might easily have crushed him. Possibly it was hampered by want of means for moving an army by sea. It is difficult to understand the next movement of Caesar, who it seems did not hesitate to leave such an enemy to gather force in his rear, while he led his own troops through Syria into Pontus, and occupied himself with waging war against its king, Pharnaces, the son of Mithridates. He could describe, indeed, his success, which was rapid and complete, by the three words reni, ridi, eici; and here, too, we must suppose that the motive of his delay was the need he felt for money to satisfy his rapacious mercenaries. From Asia he repaired to Rome, and assumed the dictatorship for the third time; but before the end of the year (a.u. 707) he sailed forth again to confront the remnant of the senatorial party, and landed with a large force near Adranumetum. The battle Battle of of Thapsus in 708, in which Cato's troops, with their ally Thapsus, the Numidian Juba, were routed, completed the overthrow a.u. 708, of the senatorial faction. The chiefs of the party were slain in the battle or the pursuit. Caesar's soldiers wreaked their fury upon a large number of the captives. Cato, finding it impossible to hold out in Utica, recommended his followers to make their peace with the conqueror, and Seleide of consummated his career of futile self-devotion by throwing Cato himself on his own sword.

Caesar returned once more to Rome to celebrate a series Termina- of triumphs, to reform the laws, and lay the foundations of the of an empire. The battle of Thapsus is the termination Roman re- of the republic. Though the old offices of the free state Public. were to be preserved, though the consuls, praetors, and tribunes were to be selected as of yore by the assemblies of the people, and to issue from Rome for the government of the provinces, the forms of the commonwealth were really to be subordinated to the will of a single autocrat, and the title of Imperator, "a commander," which Caesar now assumed, not to denote an occasional and temporary office, but a permanent distinction, symbolized the rule of the sword which was henceforth to become actually predominant. Nevertheless, Caesar is not to be regarded as a vulgar despot, who seizes his opportunity to suppress the liberties of his countrymen, and convert a free state into a tyranny. Caesar considered himself the sovereign, not of the ancient Roman people, but of the world, their subjects. His aim, from an early period, had been to carry out to the fullest practicable extent the principle, long admitted but imperfectly exercised, of provincial emancipation. The popular party which he led had incorporated itself with the Italians; his policy was to incorporate it with the nations beyond Italy. He had enlisted the subject Gauls in the legions, and placed them side by side with the Roman soldier. He had conferred the citizenship on the Cisalpine population. He now threw open the doors of the Senate to the chiefs of Gaul, Spain, and Africa, and filled the mansions of Rome with men of strange garb and uncouth idioms, that all the nations which owned the sway of the republic might learn to know each other, and mingle at last in one homogeneous community. He did not scruple to proclaim his passion for the Greco-Egyptian princess Cleopatra, to invite her to Rome, lodge her in a Roman palace, and allow one of his creatures to propose a dispensation to enable him to marry her. He suffered himself to be adored with the title of a divinity, and his statue to be consecrated in the temple of Mars. Such acts as these, in daring violation of the national prejudices, announced a new era in public ideas. If Caesar should succeed in effecting them, he would lay the basis of a new national edifice; he would be the last and the greatest founder of Rome. But though he was thus unscrupulous in overthrowing the ancient fabric of the constitution, he was considerate and clement in the treatment of parties; for the moment that they laid down their arms, he regarded his adversaries in the same light as the rest of the citizens. He suffered no punishments, no confiscations. He took their chiefs into his favour, and admitted them to his councils. When he celebrated his four-fold triumphs over the Gauls, the Egyptians, over Juba and Pharnaces, he allowed the greatest of his victories to be passed over in silence. He pretended to be still the father of his country, and accepted with a pride which he himself believed to be legitimate, this title, the proudest which any Roman had ever won from his countrymen. Rome had indeed yet a series of revolutions to undergo before this idea of a universal empire could be carried out, and when finally established the empire was a doubtful blessing at best; but it must be remembered that the continuance of the free state, with the incitement it gave to lawless and turbulent ambition, had become manifestly impossible; and further, that the only possible solution of the political problem, the establishment of a monarchy, had been long the half-conscious object of the great bulk of the Roman people.

The consummation, it must never be forgotten, had not been averted, but only delayed, for forty years, by the bloody occupation of the Sullan oligarchy. The fall of the terrible dynasty of the Epigoni, so to term the political heirs of the dictator, was regretted neither by the citizens nor the subjects of Rome.

As chief of the empire, Caesar effected many great works: the building of temples, the construction of ports, the establishment of colonies, the restoration of the great cities, once the redoubted rivals of Rome, henceforth her sisters, Capua, Corinth, and Carthage. He projected a complete survey of Italy and the provinces, as the basis of the imperial finance; the codification of the laws and usages of the republic, which no doubt he would have applied to every subject nation; and he executed a correction of the calendar, not the least practically useful of these reforms, which has lasted, with trifling rectifications, even to our own days, and become the common heritage of Europe.

SECT. XXXIII.—DEATH OF CAESAR.

The power of the senatorial faction had been completely broken at Pharsalia and Thapsus, but Cnæus and Sextus, the sons of Pompeius, with a few desperate adherents of his family rather than of any public cause, raised their standard again in Spain, where they found recruits among the Roman senators and the still turbulent natives. Caesar hastened from Italy to crush this revolt, which he could easily have effected had his own soldiers been disposed to fight as constantly as hitherto in his behalf; but even the tenth, his favourite legion, had been debauched by victory and plunder, and could hardly be brought to engage till he threw himself into the midst of the enemy's ranks, and battle called upon it to deliver him. The battle of Munda ended Munda, in the final overthrow of the opponents of the empire A.D. 709, Caesar was slain in the pursuit; Sextus escaped to lurk for some years longer among pirates and outlaws. Returning to Rome, Caesar assumed the consulship with his friend M. Antonius for the year ensuing; but now that all resistance had been quelled, and no further heights of glory and ambition remained to be scaled, a change seems to have come over the calm serenity of his temper, and that perfect self-command and clear perception of his aims which had so long distinguished him. The possession of unlimited power still left a void to be filled up. He became proud towards his nobles, harsh and tyrannical towards his weaker subjects, impatient in his temper, restless in his schemes. While the whole Roman world lay before him to be moulded into an empire of uniform laws and usages, he was bent on prosecuting a vast scheme of foreign warfare, chastising the Parthians, recovering the standards won from Crassus, exploring the recesses of the Mithridatic realms on the further coast of the Euxine, and uniting to the empire the yet untrodden regions between the Don and the Danube. These dreams of the imagination were destined to be rudely broken. While in the first months of the year 710 he was intent on his military preparations, and was sending forward the legions designed for his expedition, Rome was filled with rumours that the dictator, not satisfied with the glorious titles he had acquired, desired to be saluted with the odious style of king. This was the device so often repeated whenever the nobles of Rome wanted to raise the people against their champions, which had never perhaps failed of success; and it seems more probable that the charge was invented by Caesar's enemies, than that he should have actually imperilled his life and fortunes for an empty sound. Yet, none perhaps can tell what influence a sound may exercise on the imagination of a man like Caesar, who had attained the substance of all that he desired, and still craved for something more to attain. All Roman antiquity agreed in imputing this insane caprice to the wisest of the Roman heroes, and refused to believe the denial of it which it allowed him to have openly expressed. Antonius, we are told, thrice offered him the diadem, and, on hearing the murmurs of the citizens, he thrice rejected it. But the jealousy of M. Brutus was aroused. This man, son-in-law of Cato, had submitted after Pharsalia to the conqueror, who treated him with peculiar indulgence, and gave him the Cisalpine province to govern. He had acquiesced, however reluctantly, in the usurpation, and had even consented to serve it; but his character for patriotism stood high with the people; he was reputed a descendant, on the father's side, from Brutus the liberator, on the mother's from Servilius Ahala the tyrannicide; his own imagination Political had fed on the lessons of a self-devoting philosophy; and when the conspirators against Caesar's life looked for a name under which to range themselves, they found none so suitable as his for their purpose. Brutus was won over to join them, with Cassius and others, who for the most part were galled by personal slights, or inflamed by petty jealousies. Brutus indeed, such was the judgment of the Romans themselves, was the only one amongst them whose aims were really pure and patriotic. Though Caesar had renounced many of his highest qualities, his courage had not deserted him. No tyrant was ever so fearless, so confident in his fortune, and in the greatness of his own destiny. His legions had quitted Italy; he had refused the bodyguard offered him by the Senate. He traversed the streets of Rome in the midst of all the factions he had outraged with no other attendants than his troop of private friends and clients. His person was assailable at any moment; and the conspirators selected the Senate-house itself as the spot in which to attack him. On the Ides of March, the 15th of the month, they fell upon him with poniards borne beneath their robes; and he fell, pierced with thirty wounds, at the foot of the statue of Pompeius.

Cicero, who had accepted the supremacy of the popular leader even before the battle of Pharsalia, and had submitted, with the sorrow of a philosopher and a patriot, to a revolution which he had himself long felt to be inevitable, was no party to this act of personal animosity. But when the deed was done, and the assassins proclaimed themselves the deliverers of their country, he too indulged in the dream of reviving liberty, and cited many an ancient precedent to justify the crime. Cicero now united himself to the band of self-styled patriots in the Capitol, whither they had repaired for fear of the populace, and assisted them with his advice. It had been well, indeed, for the cause of the oligarchy, if the men who now assumed to be its champions had listened to his counsels. But they suffered themselves to be cajoled by Antonius; and that skilful partizan, having obtained permission to celebrate Caesar's obsequies in public, contrived to play on the feelings of the multitude, and raise a storm of grief and indignation which completely paralysed them. The people insisted on burning the body in the Forum, and erected a chapel on the spot, which was afterwards converted into a temple. The murdered Caesar was advanced to the honours of divinity, which had not been offered to Marius, or Scipio, or Camillus, before him. His soul, it was declared, was borne to heaven in the comet which appeared conspicuously about the period of his decease. Not the citizens only, but foreigners of every nation residing in Rome, and particularly the Jews, united in these demonstrations of sorrow, and showed that the death of Caesar was regarded as a general calamity to mankind.

Sect. XXXIV.—The Second Triumvirate, and Final Overthrow of the Republic.

Antonius and the liberators had combined together in proclaiming a general amnesty; but such was now the state of irritation in the city, that the actors in the recent tragedy for the most part withdrew from public sight. During the dictator's lifetime the friends of freedom had comforted themselves, in the eclipse under which it had fallen, with the remembrance of his advanced years, of the perils into which he was continually thrusting himself, and of his having no direct descendant. He had left, however, a nephew, the son of an Octavius, whom he had adopted as his son, and who now bore the name of C. Julius Cæsar Octavianus. This youth was at this time only nineteen, and at the moment of his uncle's death he was absent with a military tutor in Illyricum. Few supposed he would have the courage to proclaim himself the heir of the murdered usurper, to claim his private property, which Antonius had got into his own hands, still less to assert his legitimate title to the championship of the popular party, and to the first place in the commonwealth. But the ambition of the young Octavius (such is the name by which he is most commonly designated) was equalled by his confidence, and these again by his cunning and ability. Throwing himself boldly into the midst of the citizens, he cajoled Cicero with the warmest professions of patriotism, while he demanded the restitution of his private inheritance from Antonius. The field gradually cleared around him. Brutus and Cassius, finding themselves unpopular and even insecure in the city, retired first into Campania, and then to their provinces Macedonia and Syria. Antonius put himself at the head of some legions, prepared to fight for pay and plunder under any commander, and took up a threatening position in the Cisalpine. The Senate, inspired with energy by the eloquence of Cicero, who thundered forth the series of orations against the traitor to which he gave the name of Philippics, armed the consuls Hirtius and Pansa, and sent them to confront him; while Octavius led an army of his own, the most devoted of his uncle's battalions, ostensibly to support the government, but really to watch the event, and attach himself to the party which should prove the stronger. A third division of the Caesarian force had also assumed an attitude of observation under Lepidus in Gaul. In the spring of 711 Antonius came to an engagement with the consuls near Mutina, in which, though he was himself defeated, both Hirtius and Pansa were slain. This event proved a death-blow to the Senate. Octavius, instead of pursuing the routed Antonius, as he was expected to do, chose rather to unite himself to him, and concert a coalition with Lepidus and Antonius for the joint usurpation of the empire. This combination, known by the name of the Second Triumvirate, was effected in an island of the River Rhenus, near Bologna. Triumvirate. The contracting parties agreed between themselves to exercise consular power in common for five years, to dispose of all the offices of state, and to enforce their decrees as the law of the republic. They assigned the two Gauls to Antonius, Spain and the Narbonensis to Lepidus, Africa and the islands to Octavius. Italy was to remain neutral ground; the provinces of the East were to be left for future division, when Brutus and Cassius should have been overthrown by their united forces. This compact was followed by the proscription of their enemies in Rome, each triumvir claiming to insert the names of those most odious to himself, and each sacrificing in return friends and kinsmen of his own. Antonius demanded the head of Cicero, which Octavius ungratefully surrendered to him. Their edicts were immediately put in execution. Some hundreds of the senators and 2000 knights were destroyed by hired assassins: Cicero, though long warned of his danger, neglected to make his escape till too late, and was overtaken and slain at his country villa.

An interval of eighteen months had elapsed since the retreat of Brutus and Cassius into the East before the triumvirs were at leisure to engage in a campaign against them. During this period the republican chiefs had foreseen the struggle that was impending, and they had not been remiss in assembling troops, and collecting money and munitions. But their armies were for the most part composed of raw levies; and in the indifference manifested by the populations of Greece and Asia to the watchwords of party in the West, they had been obliged to extort treasure by force, sometimes to inflict cruel chastisement on the reluctant provincials. Brutus himself had sullied his great name by these terrible exactions. As the crisis of the struggle drew near, and Octavius, with Antonius at his side, led their formidable forces into Macedonia, his fortitude seems to have forsaken him; the peaceful philosopher was haunted with a vision of Caesar's ghost, and he was impatient for the day which should end, either by death or triumph, the pertur- The battle of Philippi had been won by the efforts of two only of the triumvirs, and the third found himself from this time wholly set at nought by his more vigorous colleagues, the masters of the united forces of the empire. But the union of these mighty potentates was of short duration. Antonius assumed the command of all the regions of the East; and while he amassed plunder for himself, or squandered it upon his followers and parasites, he fell into the toils of Cleopatra, the fascinating queen of Egypt, who sailed from Alexandria to Tarsus to captivate him. Returning with her to the banks of the Nile, he abandoned himself without remorse to voluptuous pleasures, which degraded him in the eyes of the Romans, while his late colleague, now his rival, Octavius, was governing Rome and Italy with a prudence and self-control which won the applause of the citizens. Here the wife and brother of Antonius intrigued against him, and raised the standard of faction. The brother was overcome at Perusia; and, though spared himself by the policy of the conqueror, three hundred of his most distinguished adherents were sacrificed, according to the popular story, to the shade of the murdered dictator. The wife retired to join her husband in the East, but was ill received by him, and died, perhaps of mortification, soon after. A new alliance was now formed between the rival leaders, who could not divide the empire between them, or contend for its sole possession, till they had united to put down Sextus Pompeius. The treaty of Brundisium, effected by the agency of Cocceius, Pollio, and Macenas, provided for a combined effort against this annoying adversary, and was cemented by the marriage of Antonius with Octavia, the sister of his ally.

Sextus, at the head of a piratical flotilla, occupied the seas between Italy and Africa, and held some maritime stations in Sicily. In this situation he was able to cut off the corn ships which supplied Rome, and the city was reduced from time to time to the direst necessity. The rule of Octavius at Rome was shaken at every access of scarcity and impending famine; and the suppression of this cause of annoyance was of more vital importance to him than to Antonius. Octavius therefore undertook the conduct of the war; but he prudently invited the enemy to come to terms, and they arranged a treaty at Misenum, by which he was admitted to a definite share in the empire. To him were assigned the three great islands of the Tyrrhene Sea; and the families of Pompeius and Octavius were further united by a marriage (A.D. 715, B.C. 39). Octavius was now at liberty to turn his arms against some revolted tribes in Gaul, while Antonius undertook to lead an expedition into Parthia, and avenge the disaster of Crassus. The first soon executed his purpose with his usual promptitude; the other lingered indolently in Greece. Sextus meanwhile failed to surrender some places he had previously occupied on the coast of Italy, and again intercepted the supplies of the city. Octavius had no alternative but to make war upon him. He summoned his colleagues to his aid. Lepidus promised, but delayed; Antonius sent him ships, but demanded soldiers for his Parthian expedition in return. Octavius, however, was better served by the skill and spirit of his friend Agrippa, who gained him victories at sea, and repaired the disasters which he experienced in his own person. The struggle ended in the complete overthrow of Sextus' armaments by Sextus, from which the chief himself escaped only to perish miserably a few months afterwards. At the last moment Lepidus rashly committed himself to an act of hostility against the victorious triumvir. He was instantly worsted; and though his life was contemptuously spared, his armies and his provinces passed finally into the hands of Octavius.

The contest for empire was now reduced to a struggle between two competitors, and it was not long before it came to the arbitration of the sword. While Octavius was winning golden opinions in Rome and Italy by the plausible moderation of his manners, and by the ability of his government, in which he was seconded by Agrippa and Macenas, his rival was falling more and more into contempt. Antonius undertook indeed an expedition against the Parthians; but the issue was disastrous; and the mortification of the citizens was redoubled when their worsted champion quitted his flying troops to fling himself into the pleasures of his Egyptian capital, and celebrated, with Cleopatra at his side, the mockery of a Roman triumph in a foreign dependency. He had already renounced the amity of Octavius by repudiating the sister, whom he had taken to wife. He now devoted himself wholly to Cleopatra, and passed his days and nights in sensual revelry. These eccentricities, reported, perhaps with some exaggeration, at Rome, caused the deepest feelings of disgust; and disgust was succeeded by alarm when he was said to be preparing an attack on the Empire of the West, and Cleopatra was declared to have boasted of the laws she would issue from the Capitol. By this time Octavius had recruited his legions, and amassed treasure. When he found the minds of the citizens fully enlisted in his support, he came forward as the protector of the state,—the champion of the Senate, the people, and the gods of Rome,—and led all his forces in person across the Adriatic. Antonius, on his part, had not been slack in preparations. He too advanced, with Cleopatra in his train, and brought all the resources of the Actium, wealthy realm of Egypt to support the presidial cohorts of Greece and Asia. Armies, numbering more than 100,000 men on either side, confronted each other on the coast of Actium, near the entrance of the Ambracian Gulf; but the fortune of war was first tried by the rival fleets off the promontory of Actium. The vessels of Antonius were bulkier and more numerous; but the light barks of Octavius, under the command of the experienced Agrippa, were more skilfully handled, and fought more gallantly. The issue of the combat, however, was still doubtful, when Cleopatra, through fear or treachery, gave her own squadron the signal of retreat, and carried off with her sixty galleys of Egypt. Antonius madly rushed away to follow her, leaving his ships and armies to their fate. His ships, indeed, still continued the combat under every disadvantage, and were finally overpowered, and for the most part destroyed. His legions, however, finding themselves thus miserably de- Antonius and Cleopatra reached Alexandria; but the Roman was indignant at the conduct of his mistress, to whose base desertion he ascribed his overthrow, and at first refused to see her. Blinded, however, by his passion, he yielded again to her blandishments, and she amused him with schemes, sometimes for defence against the expected enemy, at other times for flying beyond the southern sea, and reigning in remote security over some Arabian province. She hoped probably to make her own peace with Octavius by the sacrifice of her infatuated admirer. The conqueror at last appeared on the frontier. Antonius went forth gallantly to meet him, and gained some partial success. But Cleopatra meanwhile had betrayed her fleet to the invader, and the gates of Alexandria were opened to him without resistance. Antonius, in his frenzy, threatened to destroy his ensorcerer, and she took refuge in a tower, and sent him word that she had killed herself. The passion of the insensate Roman revived; he stabbed himself, and while slowly dying, caused himself to be removed beneath the windows of her place of retreat, and entreated her attendants to place him beside her body. Cleopatra caused him to be lifted into her chamber, and he expired immediately in her arms. She now exerted all her artifice to obtain terms from the conqueror. She had vanquished both Cæsar and Antonius by her charms, and she still hoped to prevail over the youthful Octavius. Admitted to an interview, he resolutely kept his eyes averted, and she despaired of moving his sensibility. She could consent to surrender her kingdom, but she spurned with indignation his cruel demand to exhibit her to the Roman citizens in his triumph. When he still insisted, though with the fairest words and promises, she had no choice but death, and as he set a guard over her to prevent her using the sword, she contrived to get an asp conveyed to her in a basket of figs, applied it to her arm, and perished.

The expected triumph of Octavius was deprived of its most coveted ornament; but Egypt was straightway annexed as a province to the empire. Cæsarion, a son of the dictator by Cleopatra, put to death, the sons of Antonius by the deserted Octavia carried to Rome to be bred as scions of the conqueror's own family. Octavius made a progress through the eastern provinces on his return, receiving the homage of dependent potentates, putting down the partizans of his adversary, and setting up his own in their place, securing the fidelity of the Roman garrisons under officers of his own choice. When he arrived at his capital in the year 725 he had consolidated the whole empire under the government of his single arm, and the republic of Rome was finally exchanged for a monarchy.

Such were the dictatorships of the early republic, the repeated consulships of Marius, the permanent dictatorship of Sulla, the vast military charges and the sole consulship of Pompeius. The "triumvirate for the arrangement of public affairs" was itself the application of an ordinary title to one of these extraordinary commissions. But this commission, constitutional or not, Octavius had scrupulously resigned at the expiration of the term to which he had restricted it; it was as consul and the elected of the popular assembly that he had conquered at Actium and subjugated Egypt. The regulation he had made of the affairs of the empire in the East, after the manner of Pompeius and Sulla, still awaited the formal sanction of the Senate; and the Senate was supposed to retain authority for granting or withholding from him the triumph he had so gloriously earned.

The "acts" were duly ratified, and the triumph was accorded. When the ceremony, together with the shows and the festivals and glowing acclamations which accompanied it, and the head of the legions which had followed his triumphal car. According to the laws of the free state, Octavius must now disband his army or resign it to the disposal of the Senate; for with the triumph his imperium was become extinct. But he evaded this necessity. He allowed the Senate, prone as it was to flatter and caress him, to give him the title of Imperator in the same sense in which it had been conferred upon Julius Cæsar, thereby proclaiming him commander-in-chief of the national forces, placing every legion under his auspices, and every officer under his orders. As imperator, he retained the right of bearing, even in the city, the sword and cloak, the ensigns of military power; but this prerogative he cautiously refrained from using. The fate of Cæsar had warned him to accept less than was offered him. Content with the substance of power, he declined all invidious shows and titles. Though the people, in their enthusiasm for him, would have acceded to any usurpation on his part, he knew that neither king nor dictator would have been safe from the daggers of the senators. It was to exalt the estimation and give a fair shadow of authority to the Senate that his next efforts were directed. Having obtained the powers of the censorship, he proceeded to revise the list of senators, to eject the unworthy, to endow the impoverished, and create a body distinguished for its family and personal influence. Cæsar had degraded the order in its own eyes by intruding into it foreigners and base-born citizens. The triumvirs had been tempted to carry this practice still further. Octavius now retraced his steps. He reduced the number from 1000, to which Antonius had swelled it, to its proper limits of 600, and required a considerable property qualification. To the Senate, thus re-modelled, he left its ancient distinctions, and the greater part of its ancient prerogatives, directing its decisions in political and legislative affairs by management rather than by strict control; but he settled the course of his administration with the help of a private council of fifteen assessors, and decided the vexed question of the judicia by appointing a court of salaried judges, one hundred in number. To the people he left the old forms of popular assembly and the election of magistrates; but here again he interfered so far as to nominate the candidates to be submitted to their choice. The names and generally the functions of these magistrates remained as of yore. But in order to secure an easy means of guiding the Senate, Octavius revived in his own behalf the title of "Princeps," which gave him the first place and the first voice in the curia. This purely civil dignity, ennobled by some illustrious occupants under the commonwealth, had been always held for life, and accordingly Octavius could venture to accept it in perpetuity, while he demanded the powers of the censorship for five years only, and offered, with much appearance of earnest- ness, to resign the imperium after ten. He allowed, however, both these powers to be renewed to him for successive terms to the end of his career.

The consulship Octavius continued to exercise for several years successively; but he ultimately renounced the title, though he retained its powers by an extraordinary prerogative. Invested with the *potestas consularis*, he occupied the highest place in the city, and was recognised as the chief of the state, the head of the legislative and executive, the organ of its foreign policy. When the consul quitted his post in the city, he carried to the frontiers of the empire the same supreme authority which he had before wielded at Rome. When he vacated the office, and assumed the government of a province, he commanded the soldiers and citizens as imperator, and resigned as proconsul over the subjects of the state. But Octavius allowed himself to claim proconsular power together with the consular. As imperator, he had divided with the Senate the direct administration of the provinces, choosing for his own all those in which large armies were maintained for aggression or defence, and leaving to chiefs appointed by the Senate a civil supremacy in the unarmed and tranquil; but his pro-consular authority was extended alike over all, and he asserted paramount powers, when occasion required it, in every quarter of the empire. The circle of the imperial prerogatives was completed by the powers of the tribuneship. This *potestas* was also declared perpetual, though renewed nominally from year to year. The authority this power gave the emperor in the Senate was a safeguard against any possible insubordination in that assembly; but its chief value lay perhaps in the continued popularity of its name. The populace of the city still regarded the tribuneship as the legitimate guardian of its rights and interests, and hailed Octavius as its proper champion, its protector against the sinister intrigues of the Senate. It gave a sanctity to his character, and rendered his person inviolable. When to this was added, at a later period of his career, the dignity of sovereign Pontifex, he acquired the control of the instrument of the state religion; and the defence of the citizens against the machinations of the nobles was supposed to be complete.

The assumption of all these offices and functions was not effected at once: Octavius ascended to the summit of his ambition cautiously, and step by step. Meanwhile he discreetly waived every designation which should imply in itself the sovereignty he affected to disguise. Antonius had abolished the dictatorship to gratify the people, and Octavius took care not to revive it. No voice was suffered to hail him with the title of king. Nevertheless he was ambitious of a distinctive appellation; but it must be personal, not official. He would not be called "Quirinus,"—such a title would be extravagant; nor "Romulus,"—the name of was of evil omen. To the epithet of "Augustus," which was next suggested, no objection could attach. It implied the nobleness of his character and functions; it had an air of sanctity, and even divinity; it bore an auspicious reference to the anticipated increase of his honours through time and eternity. The worship of Octavius as a god was rapidly spreading in the provinces; in the city, it was only permitted to pour libations to his genius—a distinction hardly palpable in the purest ages of religious usage and belief, and which court poets and flatterers could now easily obliterate.

**Sect. XXXVII.—The Policy of Augustus in Its Moral and Social Aspect.**

Octavius, or as he may now be styled, Augustus, retained the sovereign power to the end of his career, a period of more than forty years. During all that time his life and fortunes were assailed twice or thrice, but only by privy conspiracy among the nobles, never by any movement of the people. From first to last no audible murmur was raised against his ascendancy. This must be accepted as a proof how welcome were the safety and tranquillity he offered to the Romans, after a century of intestine divisions and sanguinary struggles; but it proves beyond this, that, in the deliberate judgment of the nation, a limited or veiled autocracy was the form of government which, in the advance or decline of civilization, whichever we may deem it, had become most advantageous for them. Doubtless their first impulse was to hail the victor of Actium as the restorer of peace, and the saviour of the state from foreign aggression and domestic dissensions. The remains we possess of the literature of the period breathe this spirit of intense satisfaction, as at the revival of a golden age. The mission of the Romans is now declared to be, not to conquer all nations, to trample upon all national usages, or to luxuriate in the enjoyment of the world's wealth, but to bind all peoples together in one common union; to bend the necks of rebellious potentates to the yoke of international law; to quell all unruly ambitions, and inaugurate a reign of universal contentment and moderation. Once before, and once only, the ancient world had been brought under the sway of a single sceptre, and enthusiasts might have indulged under the Macedonian Alexander in such dreams of human happiness; but the fair vision had been quickly overclouded when his premature death left his empire to be torn in pieces by rival generals. The great bulk of the Roman people had no other anxiety about the empire of Augustus but the fear lest at his decease—and his constitution was weakly and his health precarious—the solid fabric of material prosperity he had raised should crumble under the violence of mere selfish usurpers. The idea of hereditary succession in political office had hitherto met with no favour in the republic; but the circumstances of the time now strongly recommended it; and without any formal concession of the principle, the minds of the Romans became implicitly reconciled to the anticipation of a dynasty of Caesars.

But this favourable disposition on the part of the people His mode would have been of no avail to maintain and perpetuate the ration and empire had not Augustus been himself singularly endowed discretion, with the temper and talents required for advantageously using it. Heartless and cruel as he had proved himself in the pursuit of his ambitious projects, he henceforth prescribed to himself a career of clemency and considerate indulgence. He opened the field of public honours to men of all parties, and caressed with marked favour the kinsmen of his own most noted opponents. Even on those who actually conspired against him, he could not always be brought to inflict punishment. He gloried in constraining his public enemies to become his private friends. There may have been little genuine feeling in this course of policy,—the Romans themselves may not have been wholly deceived by this pretended generosity; but while they enjoyed the benefit of it, they did not criticise it too closely: Augustus succeeded in his object of securing their confidence and affection. He was not satisfied, however, with enlisting their personal feelings in behalf of his government. His ambition was not wholly selfish; he undoubtedly looked beyond his own greatness, his own security, or even the establishment of his family in greatness and security after him. He looked even beyond the establishment of his own future fame. He had a true and earnest desire to revive the fortunes of the Roman state, and launch it again, after the terrible crisis of the civil wars, on a fresh career of prosperity and glory. Unfortunately his views were warped by the common spirit of antiquity, the spirit of heathenism, which, devoid of a faith in Providence and hope for the future, always placed its ideal of excellence in some dreamy misconception of the past. Augustus sought to re-animate the life of Rome by restoring the ideas and principles of a shadowy antiquity. These ideas, indeed, in so far as they had really guided the actions of the Scipios and the Camilli, had sprung from the laws and usages of their times; it followed then, so he fondly reasoned, that by restoring the usages the ideas themselves would be revived. By a strict execution of the functions of the censorship, by sumptuary laws, by police regulations, by reviving the honour of matrimony and the priesthood, by restoring the temples of the gods and the temple services,—by these and such-like measures he hoped to create again the people who had rejected the bribes of Pyrrhus, and retorted the invasion of Hannibal by an attack on Carthage. These efforts were no doubt wholly unavailing: the Roman people had lost its belief in religion, and therewith the only potent principle of self-control; the springs of public and private life had been poisoned by selfish and criminal indulgence; and by drawing closer the bands of law, Augustus only produced some outward decency at the expense of honesty and self-respect. The corruption of the times is more painfully marked in the affected decorum of Horace than in the glaring coarseness of Catullus, in the easy indifference of Ovid than in the open infidelity of Lucretius. In his vigilant control of the public administration, the imperial reformer was more successful. The ordinary procedure of justice was conducted with a firmness and equity unknown probably in the best times of the republic. A strong check was imposed on the violence and rapacity of the officials in the provinces. The Romans and their subjects were taught to regard each other with mutual respect. On the whole, whatever its drawbacks and defects, the policy of Augustus must be pronounced eminently successful in promoting the happiness and prosperity of the Roman world. Few or none of the citizens could look beneath the fair surface then presented to them, and anticipate the decay of public feeling, the decline of high principles, the growing acquiescence in merely sensual enjoyments, which would surely ensue from the stagnation of public life, and the concentration in a single hand of all the powers of the government. The Romans had had no example, on a similar scale and under similar conditions, of the transition from freedom to subjection. The autocracy of Augustus was an experiment in politics, from which they hoped the best, of which possibly they augured the best, but of which, whatever they might hope or augur, they felt in their inmost hearts the absolute and over-ruling necessity.

SECT. XXXVIII.—INTERNAL GOVERNMENT OF THE EMPIRE.

On the restoration of universal peace, Augustus closed the temple of Janus, an act of grace which the citizens, who could record but two previous instances of it, celebrated with the loudest acclamations. His own military ardour was satisfied by the victories he had won over domestic enemies by the hands of Agrippa; he had no ambition for the fame of a conqueror; and henceforth he only led his legions to repress the brigandage of the Iberian mountaineers, or sent a grandson to demand from the Parthians the long-abandoned standards of Crassus. He allowed some minor expeditions to be undertaken against the predatory hordes which infested the frontiers of Egypt or Mauretania; and he sanctioned one wild and profitless expedition against the nomadic tribes of Arabia. The border warfare on the Rhine, of which more special notice must be taken presently, was another exception to this pacific policy; but generally the arms of Rome, under Augustus were confined to securing the peace of the empire, and sedulously withheld from aggression in every quarter. A long period of repose was required to consolidate the heterogeneous elements which composed this vast dominion. Italy, the centre of the empire, and now made to comprise the whole peninsula from the Alps to the Straits of Messina, was divided into eleven regions, and placed under the direct control of the praetor in the city. The rest of the empire was apportioned, as we have said, between the emperor and the Senate. The imperial provinces were the provinces Tarraconensis and Lusitania in Spain; the whole of Gaul beyond the Alps, divided into several commands, including senatorial, the Upper and Lower Germanics, as they were called, on the Rhine; Pannonia and Macedonia; Coele Syria, Phoenicia, Cilicia, Cyprus, and Egypt. To the latter were assigned Bœotia, Numidia, Africa, the Cyrenaica, Achæa, and Asia. Dalmatia, including Illyricum, at first given to the Senate, was soon afterwards taken by the emperor in exchange for the Narbonensis and Cyprus. Before the end of his career, Augustus annexed Palestine also to the empire, which then extended over every coast and island of the Mediterranean. In some quarters, as in Gaul and Pannonia, the sway of Rome penetrated some hundreds of miles into the interior of the continent; but the regions remote from the great inland sea, the highway of international traffic, were almost wholly barbarous. Gaul and Thrace were little better than vast forests; only a small portion of their soil was as yet subjected to cultivation. The great cities of the empire, the mart of human industry and emporia of commerce, were for the most part seated on the shore, or on the banks of navigable rivers. When the Romans boasted of having subdued the world, they really confined their view to the Mediterranean and the countries immediately bordering upon it.

The entire possession of this midland basin gave easy access to every province of the empire; and the facility thus presented for communication between them, when the police of the seas was vigilantly maintained, developed the capabilities of every country simultaneously, and bound them all together by the chain of a common interest. No empire was ever more favourably circumstanced than the Roman for the advancement of its national prosperity, and for the interchange of thought through all its members. So completely was peace the common interest of the inhabitants of all its inland shores, that the Mediterranean provinces were left almost wholly without military garrisons: every state and town could be trusted to maintain its own police, and keep watch over the behaviour of all the others. Italy, and Rome itself, were left without any regular defenders: the emperor entrusted his own personal safety to a few scattered cohorts of praetorians or bodyguards; it was not till the reign of his next successor that these battalions were even collected together in a camp at the gates of the city. Their numbers at no time exceeded 10,000 or 20,000. The legions which constituted the standing army of the empire were relegated to the frontiers, or to distant and turbulent provinces. Three of these divisions, each a little army in itself, were stationed in the Spanish peninsula. The banks of the Rhine were guarded by no less than eight: two were placed in Africa, two in Egypt, four occupied the eastern frontier, four more were posted on the Danube, and, finally, two were held in reserve in Dalmatia, within easy reach of Rome itself, if their presence should at any time be demanded there. The full complement of each of these 25 legions was 6100 foot and 726 horse; and this continued, with occasional variations, to be their strength for a period of 300 years. The cohorts of which they consisted were 10 in number, besides the squadrons or turms of horse. They were recruited generally from the mountains beyond Italy, at first from the genuine citizens of Rome in the provinces, but this restriction was not long maintained. The inhabitants of Italy itself began now to claim exemption from legionary service altogether, and were enlisted only in the praetorian bands. Numerous battalions of auxiliaries, with array and arms differing from those of the legionaries themselves, were Political levied from the most warlike of the subject populations, and attached to each legionary division. Their numbers no doubt varied considerably; but it is generally computed that they equalled those of the legionaries, and we may thus assign a force of 340,000 men for the entire armies of the empire, exclusive of the cohorts in the capital.

The sources of revenue by which the establishments of the empire were maintained were numerous and varied. The public domain, reserved in ancient times to the state after each successive contest, had been perhaps wholly divided among the citizens, or remitted to the subjects; the tribute, or land tax, originally imposed upon citizens and subjects alike, had been remitted to the soil of Italy since the conquest of Macedonia; but this contribution was still levied throughout the rest of the empire, in money or in kind, and the capitation tax pressed alike on every inhabitant of the imperial dominions. Mines and quarries, fisheries and salt-works, were generally public property farmed by the state. Tolls and custom-duties were exacted on every road and in every city, and most of the objects of personal property, both dead and live stock, including slaves, paid a duty to the government in proportion to their value. Augustus imposed a legacy duty of a twentieth; but this experiment in direct taxation caused considerable murmurs. The great corn-growing countries of Egypt and Africa made a special contribution of grain for the supply of Rome and Italy. The largesses, both of victuals and money to the people, which had been an occasional boon from the early times of the republic, were henceforth conferred regularly and systematically; and there was no more fatal error in the whole administrative policy of the empire, though it was neither invented nor could perhaps be avoided by the emperors, than the taxation of industry in the provinces to maintain idle arrogance at home.

Sect. XXXIX.—The Reign of Augustus.

When Augustus had consolidated under his sway the regions between the Rhine, the Danube, the Euphrates, and Mount Atlas, the empire reached the farthest limits that it ever permanently retained. The population it embraced at this period may be approximately calculated at a little less than 100 millions; but it may be fairly supposed that, under the general reign of peace and domestic prosperity which prevailed throughout it, the number continued to increase at least for another century. With regard to the interesting question of the population of the great city, "the head and mistress of nations," now at the zenith of her glory, if not yet of her grandeur, some calculation will be exhibited in another place. It will be sufficient here to estimate it roughly at 700,000, and to add that this continued also to increase perhaps even after the general population of the empire had become stationary, or even declined, though it may never have much, if at all, exceeded one million. One of the principal cares of the new emperor was the embellishment of Rome. With this view, he erected himself many temples and public buildings, and he stimulated the great nobles of the city to follow his example. In this and in every other object of his policy he was ably seconded by his friend Agrippa, whose valour had won some of his most important victories, whose counsels were not less useful to him in peace than in war, and who distinguished himself above all his countrymen by the loyalty with which, having secured beyond dispute the second place in the commonwealth, he abstained from aiming at the first. More than once Agrippa was entrusted with the command of all the eastern provinces; but he executed his charge with an unshaken fidelity, which it was hardly less honourable in Augustus to appreciate without fear or jealousy. On the death of the young Marcellus, sister's son to the emperor, and his presumptive successor, Agrippa received the widow Julia, the daughter of Augustus, in marriage. Caius and Lucius, the eldest children of this union, were brought up as heirs to the empire, but both of them were cut off prematurely. Agrippa himself died many years before his patron, and Julia was married a third time to Tiberius Claudius Nero, the stepson of the emperor, whose mother Livia, a clever intriguer, contrived to secure the succession for him over the heads of her husband's direct descendants. The ambition and the vices of his own family caused Augustus, particularly in his latter years, more disquietude than the government of the empire.

Besides the advantage he derived from the assistance of C. Vipsanius Agrippa, Augustus was supported, throughout the earlier part of his reign, by the tact and prudence of Maecenas. This man had administered for him the government of Italy during the period of the struggle with Antonius. He continued to be his chief adviser in the settlement of the empire; and the Romans ascribed to him the first delineation of the principles of government which they saw gradually extended and confirmed from one reign to another. A popular tradition, for which there is probably no other foundation than the temper generally attributed to the men respectively, affirmed that when Augustus deliberated about resigning his power, he allowed Agrippa and Maecenas to discuss the question in his presence, and that Agrippa counselled the restoration of the republic, Maecenas the retention of supreme authority. The private manners and habits of the minister were not less serviceable to his master's position than his political counsels. Maecenas contrived to attach to the new system many of the best and ablest public men of the day, while he secured in its favour the suffrages of the literary class. The table at which Virgil and Horace, Varius and Pollio, conversed genially together, under the patronage of Maecenas, and in the presence of Augustus himself, was the field on which all the adverse theories of politics and philosophy laid down their arms and came to an amicable understanding. Never was a state revolution so gilded with the flattery of poets and historians as the seasonable usurpation of Augustus.

Nevertheless, successful as the emperor had been in the execution of his great enterprise, and in confirming its results, his latter years were not unclouded by reverses. While the citizens were getting at last a little weary of the monotony of his long despotism, suffering some disgust at the disgraces of his family, some apprehension at the prospect of an unpopular successor, they were suddenly alarmed and dismayed at the occurrence of a great military disaster. Though Gaul had long been pacified, the Wars in frontier was subject to the incursions of restless hordes from Germany, and it was necessary to keep up a large force and legions, as we have seen, in stationary camps on the Rhine. The temptation to employ these troops in aggression, no less than in defence, proved irresistible. The scions of the Cesarean family were anxious for opportunities of military distinction. Augustus allowed his stepsons, Drusus and Tiberius, to conduct expeditions into Germany. Drusus penetrated as far as the Elbe, but died in early life from an accident. His successors in the command established the Roman outposts as far at least as the Ems or Weser, and the district between the Mayn and the Lippe was beginning to assume the form of a province, when the government of this district fell into the hands of Varus. The dissident official, who so mismanaged his affairs as to exterminate against himself a general conspiracy of the natives, and allow himself to be surprised by them. Entangled in a country with which they were imperfectly acquainted, his legions, three in number, were attacked by overwhelming numbers, and destroyed in the forest of Teutoburg. Varus was slain, the whole Roman establishment overthrown, and the remnant of its soldiers and civilians driven in confusion behind the Rhine. In the face of such a disaster Augustus, now old and timid, gave way to nervous alarms. He trembled for the tranquillity of the city, for the loyalty of the citizens, much more than for the defence of the provinces. With the assistance, however, of Tiberius, he acted with sufficient vigour in recruiting his forces and restoring confidence. The younger Caesar took the field, and made a show at least of offensive operations against the victorious Germans. He did not venture, however, to occupy again the footing lately held beyond the Rhine. Augustus, who died soon afterwards, in the year 767, left it in charge to his successor not to extend in any direction the limits of the empire.

SECT. XL.—REIGN OF TIBERIUS (A.D. 14–37).

Tiberius, now in his fifty-sixth year, had discharged the most important offices in the Senate and the field, and was regarded as an able and accomplished prince. But the state of constraint under which he had lived as the presumptive successor of the empire, under a jealous and exacting stepfather, together with some sacrifice of the affections which had been extorted from him in his youth, had soured a temper naturally reserved and proud. For a time he had withdrawn altogether from public affairs, and during his retreat at Rhodes rumour had been busy in representing him as indulging in the grossest vice and cruelties. But his mother Livia, an able intriguer, watched over his interests. On the death of Augustus, the Senate learnt that he had been appointed the head of the Casarean family, and they readily, and indeed with much eager flattery, thrust upon him all the public honours and functions which Augustus had vacated. For some time he enacted the farce of pretending to refuse them; but this affectation was speedily overcome, and he retained a deep grudge against those among the senators who had been blunt enough to take him at his word. His first act, an omen of a bloody reign, was the assassination of a surviving son of Julia and Agrippa, called Posthumus, as having been born after his father's death; a youth of acknowledged evil temper and defective understanding, whom Augustus had himself removed from public affairs and relegated to an island. The jealousy of Tiberius soon extended to his nephew Germanicus, son of his elder brother Drusus, whom Augustus had required him to adopt and place on the same line of succession with a son of his own. Germanicus was a great favourite with the people. He seems to have been a man of military genius, which he exercised with considerable success against the Germans beyond the Rhine, though a naval expedition under his orders suffered a terrible disaster from tempest. He had formed a plan for the complete reduction of the country as far as the Elbe, and the spirit of the barbarians had been so far broken, in spite of the gallantry of their hero Arminius that in another campaign he might possibly have succeeded; but Tiberius was jealous of his fame and popularity, and forbade any more blood and treasure to be lavished on conquests beyond the bounds of the empire, as he had received it from Augustus. Germanicus was recalled to Rome, and allowed the empty honour of a triumph. The emperor was glad to rid himself of his presence on the first opportunity, and soon after dispatched him into the East, to overawe the Parthians. Not content with removing him from Rome, he deputed—such at least was the common belief—an officer named Piso to watch his conduct, and connived at this man's thwarting and disobeying his legitimate commander. Germanicus ordered Piso to surrender his office in Syria, but at the same time he found himself attacked by a debility, which, after a short interval, terminated in his death. His family accused Piso of foul play either by poison or at least by magical incantations. Agrippina, the spirited consort of the deceased prince, prosecuted a charge of murder against him at Rome. Confident in the emperor's favour, Piso did not shrink from meeting it; but when he found that the emperor looked coldly upon him, and was disposed to abandon him to his fate, he anticipated the decision of the judges by a voluntary death. But the suspicions of the people were not thus averted from Tiberius. The deep sorrow they evinced at the loss of their favourite gave great umbrage to the tyrant, and induced him to treat with jealousy and harshness the widow and her children.

From the first, Tiberius had dissembled with the Senate, Retirement and he naturally distrusted them; while towards the other of Ti- classes of his subjects, and particularly in the provinces, serious to his conduct, though stern, was equitable; he took every Capreum opportunity to trample on the pride of the senators, to lower their estimation, and to make them feel his superior power. It was a great relief to them when, towards the middle of his reign, after devoting himself to the business of state with unwearied assiduity for many years, and never quitting Rome even for ordinary relaxation, he began gradually to withdraw more and more to the solitude of the isle of Capreae, an imperial domain purchased by Augustus, in which he took great delight. Though the popular notion, repeated by the historians, that he here abstained altogether from public affairs, and suffered the conduct of the administration to slip from his hands, seems to be grossly exaggerated, it was impossible but that an inordinate share of influence and power should accrue to the confidential minister whom he must leave in his place at Rome. Sejanus, the notorious favourite of Tiberius, had risen by artifice and ability to the highest office of state. He ventured to pay his addresses to a kinswoman of the emperor himself; and though he awakened thereby the emperor's jealousy, he seems not to have been unsuccessful. At all events, he effected the removal of some of his master's nearest relations, among them the luckless Agrippina, and the common rumour may not have been ill founded, that he aspired in his daring ambition to a share in the empire, and eventually to the succession. But Tiberius, it seems, had dissembled with Sejanus, as with others, and had allowed him to suppose himself more necessary to his master's policy than he really was. Once fully persuaded of the extent of his views and of his own danger in consequence, Tiberius had the energy to strike him down at a blow. Sejanus was in the city, in the riness of his power, surrounded by the senators and the soldiers; and Tiberius, now old and feeble, with scarcely a guard about his person, in his distant retreat, with only his ships to rely on for escape if the blow should fail. Great circumspection and artifice were required, but the tyrant was equal to the crisis. The fall of Sejanus, which he sent to be recited in the Senate, in which a.d. 784, he flattered and honoured his victim till he had thrown him a.d. 31, completely off his guard, and then ordered the consul to arrest him, is celebrated as a masterpiece of king-craft. Sejanus fell amidst the execrations of the senators, who up to this moment had caressed him, and the people declared, with thoughtless exultation, that the state had been saved in the safety of Tiberius.

The citizens indeed were willing to persuade themselves that the tyranny under which they had lately suffered was count of due to the vile counsels of the upstart favourite, rather than Tiberius's to the evil disposition of their emperor himself. They en-person treated Tiberius to return to Rome, and administer the Hos. government in the presence of the people, as their poten-tates had done before. That the head of the Roman com-monwealth should lead the life of a voluptuous lounger in the Grecian villas of Campania, seemed to them mon-strous and degrading. Of a noble Roman who could so forget his country, and his duty to it, any horror might easily be believed, any crime, or vice, or unnatural torpi- Political tude, might be plausibly imputed to him. If, then, the account we have received of the vile debaucheries of Tiberius at Capreae exceed any modern instance of human depravity, it is not much more than might fairly be expected from the tongue of popular rumour exasperated at this glaring dereliction of duty and renunciation of conventional principle. Considering the sources from which we seem to have derived them, some shade of doubt must certainly attach to these reputed enormities. But even if we admit them in their fullest extent, we must still acknowledge that, frightful as they are, they may be paralleled perhaps in every particular in the conduct of less notorious personages of heathen antiquity. The cruelty and impurity ascribed to Tiberius belonged to his class as much as to himself, and were exercised by many a noble Roman at home and abroad, among their subjects and their parasites. The horrors of imperial vice have become especially notorious, from the pre-eminence of the personages to whom they were imputed in the histories of the times; but they were not the excesses of imperial power uncontrolled by law, so much as of our common human infirmity unsustained by religious principle. However this may be, Tiberius deserves credit as a ruler, for wielding his authority twenty-three years almost without drawing the sword, and for leaving his dominions in peace and prosperity. His end was precipitated, at the advanced age of seventy-nine, and on a sick-bed from which he could hardly again have risen, by the hands of an attendant in the interest of his grand-nephew Caius Caligula, impatient for the succession, and not without apprehensions for his own life.

SECT. XII.—THE REIGN OF CAIUS CALIGULA (A.D. 37–41).

Caius Caesar, the son of Germanicus and Agrippina, had been bred in his father's camp, and received from the soldiers the familiar nickname of Caligula (from the boot or caliga), by which he is most commonly known at least in later history. He was adopted by Tiberius on the same footing as a younger Tiberius, the emperor's own grandson. As a few years older than his cousin, he was allowed, indeed, to regard himself as the immediate heir to the empire, though, according to the loose ideas of hereditary succession still current among the Roman statists, Tiberius was considered as having a presumptive claim to be associated with him when he should arrive at manhood. Thus Augustus had delegated a portion of his authority, first to Agrippa, and at a later period to the elder Tiberius. His successor, indeed, had never prevailed on himself to make any such surrender of his sole autocracy, nor was it possible, perhaps, for two kings to reign together again at Rome. From the first the young Caius, who assumed the empire at the age of twenty-five, felt the deepest jealousy of his unfortunate kinsman, and it was not long before he invented a pretext for destroying him. At first, indeed, no prince was ever more popular than this child of the people's favourite, succeeding as he did to a morose and odious tyrant. During the first months of the new reign both prince and people seemed to be equally intoxicated. The provinces partook of the exultation of the citizens. When the furious dissipation into which the young man plunged had prostrated him with an alarming illness, the Romans and their subjects combined in the expression of the deepest distress, and in frantic vows for his recovery. This assurance of his people's devotion seems to have removed from its object all sense of shame or apprehension. He indulged in every excess of vice and turpitude without scruple. Utterly devoid of the conscious reserve which had induced Tiberius to veil his indulgences from the prurient curiosity of his countrymen, Caius was equally free from the jealous fears which harassed his predecessor. Whether from the wanton gaiety of his disposition, or from a touch of agonal insanity, he had none of the cowardice which generally accompanied tyranny. From the second year of his reign he continued to provoke the patience of the world by a series of indignities and injuries such as the provinces might have sometimes suffered from the worst of the proconsuls, but such as had never yet fallen upon the Romans themselves. His cruelties and oppressions were indeed generally inflicted upon the nobles, who had lost the respect and could no longer command the affection of the populace, while the populace itself he soothed and caressed by the profuseness of his shows and largesses; yet his blows fell sometimes among the crowd also, and the Romans shuddered at the terrible exasperation with which he uttered a wish that the whole people had but one neck.

The frantic dissipation in which this Caesar indulged kept Despotie his mind and body in constant fever. His haggard countenance, his shattered frame, his agitated gait, his frenzy by day and sleepless perturbation at night, as described by the historians, form one of the most fearful pictures on record of the consequences of guilty indulgence. Shocking as such a picture must be in the case of a private individual, in a king of men—the tyrant of a hundred millions of fellow-creatures—it is truly awful. Caius had imbibed from the Jewish chief Agrrippa, the companion and counsellor of his early years, the oriental idea of monarchy. He scouted the restraints of Roman law and usage; he tore away the veil of republican forms by which Augustus and Tiberius had disguised the real extent of their power; he determined that all his subjects should know that he was a despot, and that his will was practically as unrestrained as that of a king of Babylon or Alexandria. He scorned to dwell in a mansion suitable to a Roman noble, such as the palatium of Augustus and Tiberius, and covered a large part of the Palatine Hill with additional buildings, which he connected with the Capitol by a bridge flung boldly across the valley of the Velabrum. Over this bridge he marched in pomp to the temple of Jupiter, seated himself by the side of the god himself, and affected to whisper in his ear, and suggest the counsels of Providence. He aped the dress and style of the deities himself; and when his sister Drusilla died, with whom, like an eastern potentate, he had lived in incestuous commerce revolting to the feelings of the Romans, he declared that she had become a divinity, and required his subjects to pay her worship. He encircled his own head with the oriental diadem armed with spikes or rays, the well-known symbol of divinity in the East. Augustus had been honoured after his death with a temple and a priesthood at Rome—a tribute of respect which the Senate had refused to Tiberius; but had Caius lived a little longer, we can hardly doubt that he would have insisted on receiving divine worship himself from the citizens, as well as from the subjects of the state.

The extravagances of this wretched tyrant were chiefly shown in the games of the circus, in which he took a vagaries, frantic pleasure, so as to threaten, it was said, to make his favourite horse a consul. The bridge of boats which he constructed across the Bay of Puteoli, for the sake of driving in triumph upon the ocean, was an extraordinary freak of reckless ostentation. The story, that instead of leading his troops, as he had promised, into Britain, he drew them up with great parade on the shore at Boulogne, and then bade them pick up shells, and return laden with "the spoils of the ocean" to Rome, may possibly be a misrepresentation. The account we have received of his expedition into Gaul, and his aimless enterprises in that quarter, is not much to be relied on. The commander of the forces on the Rhine had ventured to defy Tiberius in the old age of that timid emperor, and it was an object not unworthy of the boldness of Caius to throw himself in person into the camp of his formidable lieutenant, and inflict condign punishment upon him. We are loath to believe that a prince who could act so promptly and courageously on a suitable occasion, should have debased himself by the wretched trivialities imputed to him in connection with this expedition; nevertheless, we must remember that we are reviewing the career of one who can hardly be regarded in any other light than as a madman.

This career, disgusting as it is, was happily cut short before the end of four years by the blows of an assassin. A madman in the possession of unlimited power must be considered beyond the pale of moral sanctions; and if there was no other way to remove him, no one would judge severely the man who wielded even the dagger against him. But Caius was not doomed to the death he so amply merited by the decree of the outraged Senate, or the general rising of an indignant people. He had provoked a domestic enemy in the person of an officer of his guard, and he was stabbed by a band of private conspirators in the vaults of a passage in his palace. The blow was quite unexpected, and surprised both the Senate and the imperial family alike. There was none to claim the succession on the one hand; there was no plan for assuming the government on the other. After a moment's delay, the consuls, finding the throne vacant, proclaimed the restoration of the republic; but the citizens were wholly unprepared for such a revolution, and the soldiers of the guard, anxious only for the largess with which the accession of a new emperor must be accompanied, seized on Claudius, the uncle of the deceased, whom they found by accident lurking in a corner, carried him on their shoulders to the camp, and announced to the still trembling senators that they had chosen a chief for the republic.

SECT. XLII.—THE REIGN OF TIBERIUS CLAUDIUS (A.D. 41–54).

Resistance was perhaps impossible; none at least was attempted. The consuls took at once the oath of devotion to the new emperor, and the Senate and people followed their example. Tiberius Claudius was brother to Germanicus, and uncle to Caius. He had reached the age of fifty, during which his natural taste for retirement and study, as much perhaps as the jealousy of the heads of his family, and the weakness of mind and body currently imputed to him, had kept him almost entirely in a private station. He had applied himself to abstruse studies, and composed elaborate treatises; but he had made no acquaintance with the conduct of affairs, either military or civil. He was addicted to women, and had generally allowed himself to be swayed by them and by the freedmen who surrounded them. His accession to power was regarded as no augury of good government by any portion of his subjects; it was a relief, however, to be rid of the furious caprices of their last tyrants; and the pledges Claudius gave the Senate of deference to their counsels were accepted with grateful acknowledgments. Though betrayed occasionally into acts of harshness and cruelty towards men of distinction through his weakness rather than tyranny, Claudius continued throughout his reign to respect the character of the senatorial order. His principle of government was to follow the example of Augustus,—to restore and confirm ancient usages, to maintain the ancient laws, to enact the head of the family rather than the emperor of the state. His assiduity in business was extraordinary; presiding day by day at the tribunals, he tired out, infirm as he was, the judges and officers; and if at the close of an exhausting session he indulged with insatiate avidity in the pleasures of the table, his excesses may be partly accounted for and excused by the exhausting labours to which he had devoted himself. His manners and his measures were equally those of a pedant on the throne; his awkward figure, rendered more uncouth by the effects apparently of a paralytic seizure, gave occasion for much ribald mockery; but on the whole we must in fairness pronounce that his efforts at governing the world under such formidable disadvantages were truly meritorious, and his failure in a task to which he was constitutionally unequal a matter of commiseration rather than of ridicule.

Nor was it only in the city and on the judgment-seat that Claudius felt it incumbent on him to carry out the complete idea of the prince and emperor of the Romans. Augustus had placed himself at the head of the legions; feeble though he too was in bodily frame, he had fought against the enemies of Rome, and merited the glories of a triumph. The successor of Augustus must not shrink from following him in this field also. Caesar had imposed a tribute on the Britons; Augustus had insisted on its payment; but these obligations had been long evaded, and the threats of Caius had resulted in ridiculous failure. Claudius determined to seek his laurels in an enterprise against these distant enemies. He sent a lieutenant to secure a Conquest landing and make good a footing on the island; but he followed himself without delay, traversing the whole of Gaul A.D. 43, at the head of his army; and after crossing the Thames he succeeded in bringing a British potentate to an engagement, and obtaining a decisive victory. The foundation of a colony at Camalodunum, or Colchester, secured the conquest of the southern part of Britain; and Claudius fully deserved the triumph with which his ambition was gratified. This success, though shaken by a later disaster under the emperor that followed, seemed to be completed by the capture of the bravest of the Britons, the renowned Caractacus. It does honour to Claudius, unless it may be ascribed to the greater humanity of the times—inhuman as in too many respects we must still regard them—that, instead of being strangled in his prison like Jugurtha or Pontius under the republic, this fallen enemy was treated with the consideration due to his valour, and suffered to live in freedom at Rome.

The contempt with which the character of this unfortunate emperor has been loaded has been chiefly derived from troubles of the mishaps of his domestic life, and the fatal effects of the Claudian influence exerted over him by his worthless consorts. He had been more than once married as a private citizen; after he became emperor he united himself to Valeria Messalina, a woman whose name has become a byword for the excess of female dissoluteness. In his relations to this wanton woman, Claudius is represented as a miserable wittol, cajoled by a partner who hardly deigned to throw a veil over her flagitious infidelities. To her fatal sway was imputed many acts of cruelty and rapacity, covered by the name of the emperor. If she ruled him, she shared her influence with Pallas and Narcissus, freedmen and favourites of his court, who amassed vast fortunes by the crimes to which they extorted his consent. At last, to the relief of the Roman world, these hateful confederates fell out among themselves. Narcissus vowed to effect the ruin of Messalina. Her own conduct, now become utterly unguarded, soon furnished an opportunity, which he was bold enough to seize. Having fixed her roving passions on a comely young noble named Silius, she had the incredible audacity, so we are assured, to insist upon his publicly espousing her. Besides the monstrous impolicy of the act in the eyes even of that careless generation, it was an open avowal of treason. Silius could have no other course but to overthrow, by force or fraud, the prince whom he had so grossly outraged. Not without difficulty did Narcissus open the eyes of Claudius to the insult he had sustained; with still greater difficulty he inspired him with courage to inflict a suitable punishment. The freedman insisted, and the emperor yielded: Silius and Messalina were arrested and slain; and the execution was hardly over before the stupidest of husbands was found to have forgotten all about it. Such is an outline of the story related or confirmed by all our authorities. It is evidently derived from one source; but whether that source be the actual truth of the occurrence, or the fabrication of one whose position was such as to confer on it unmerited authority, may still be considered as doubtful; for Messalina was succeeded by another wife, Agrippina. Agrippina had also a son, Domitius. The great object of this last of the empresses was to advance the fortunes of this son by an earlier marriage, to secure for him the succession over the head of the orphan Britannicus. The wickedness of this intriguing woman is at least as well accredited as Messalina's, and it may easily be supposed that she would scruple at no falsehood to exasperate her husband against her predecessor, and to persuade him that Britannicus could not really be a son of his own begetting. However she may have represented the affair to Claudius, it is probable that in the memoirs of her times, which she is known to have written, she coloured them to suit her own purpose and deceive the citizens. The child of Messalina was to be disparaged in their eyes as well as in the emperor's, and the narrative of a palace scandal from the pen of a mistress of the palace was likely to meet with ready acceptance from the prurient curiosity of the Roman people. It is no unreasonable scepticism to withhold implicit reliance from the story of Messalina, even though told us by Tacitus.

The young Domitius was two or three years older than Britannicus, and when Claudius was persuaded to adopt him, he became, under the name of Nero Cæsar, the presumptive heir to the purple. Thus far successful in the accomplishment of her cherished object, Agrippina was now only solicitous to anticipate a reverse of fortune, and for this end she did not scruple to compass the death of the now doting emperor. She caused poison to be administered to him in a dish of mushrooms, and he died from the effects of it in her presence, almost at table, in the year of the city 807. She continued to conceal his decease till she had completed her arrangements for securing the succession to her son, who was led to the camp by Burrhus, the prefect of the praetorians, and accepted without hesitation, on the promise of an ample donative, as the heir of Claudius and the descendant of Germanicus. The Senate hastened to ratify the choice of the soldiers.

**Sect. XLIII.—The Reign of Nero (A.D. 54–68).**

The exultation with which the accession of Cælius had been received on the demise of Tiberinus, was renewed with increased favour on the auspicious transfer of imperial power from the old imbecile Claudius, to the gay young prince who now united the suffrages of all classes of citizens. With their late emperor, whether from the real defects of his character, or from the misrepresentations of it with which their minds had been abused, the Romans had become thoroughly disgusted; but the youth and beauty of Nero had made a very favourable impression on them, and this was heightened by the artful terms in which his accomplishments, his abilities, and his temper had been described to them. Seneca the philosopher, a man of known acquirements, and at the same time of popular manners, had been given him for his tutor. The young man had been bred in the school of wisdom and morality, which the sage seemed to find means to reconcile with the tastes and habits of the day. Nero was to combine the man of virtue with the man of fashion, and the world was invited to admire in his person the harmonious results of an alliance between things which the precepts of the schools and the experience of men had hitherto pronounced incompatible. But the world accepted the announcement without misgiving, on the word of the philosopher, and echoed the applause with which he greeted the work of his own hands, anticipating in the advent of this favourite of fortune the return of a golden age, the descent of an Apollo upon the earth.

Nero possessed perhaps some graces of person, and some natural abilities. He was not devoid of natural feelings, of kindness, and affection. With an impulsive temper, and a rather feminine susceptibility, he was easily led to seek the applause of those around him, and to shun their disapproval. The objects of interest which his tutor set before him were no doubt pure and virtuous, such as the tender love of his kindred, respect for his mother, regard for the common weal and for the pleasures of the people. But if Seneca led his pupil well, he exerted no moral power in controlling him. From the moment that the youth began to press upon the reins, Seneca relaxed his restraint, and gave full course to the indulgence of his passions. He hoped to retain a little influence by yielding much, and for some years after his accession the force of habit still inclined the restless pupil to lend an ear to his occasional suggestions.

The first five years of the new reign, the Quinquennium the "Quinquennium," as this term was called by way of favourable distinction, have been celebrated as a period of really good government; nevertheless, they were marked by crimes of the deepest dye, and no wise man could anticipate from the weak and wicked prince who committed such enormities any other development of his career than the frightful tyranny which actually succeeded to them.

Notwithstanding the marked applause with which Nero's accession was greeted by the Senate and the people, it was soon suggested to him that he might have cause of fear in the victim whom he had supplanted. The feelings of nature were too strong for those of custom, and still regarded Britannicus, the actual son of the late emperor, a more legitimate claimant of his throne than Nero, whom he had only adopted. The usurper was easily persuaded that it was necessary to remove the rightful heir; and by the agency of the notorious poisoner Locusta, the child of Messalina was murdered, not, it may be feared, without the sanction of Seneca himself. Nero was married to Octavia, the sister of Britannicus; but this creature, though celebrated both for her beauty and her virtue, gained no ascendant over him. He fell under the fascinations of the intriguer Poppaea, whom he took from his friend Otho, and under whose influence he engaged in the horrible design of ridding himself of his own mother. The rivalry between Agrippina and Poppaea had continued for some time. In her eagerness to retain her authority in the palace, the mother, it was said, had actually tempted her wretched son to incest; but when disappointed and defeated, she began to set up a rival court, Death of and threatened to divulge the murder of Claudius, and recommend Octavia to the citizens, he was prevailed on to sacrifice her to the anger of his mistress, and what he considered the necessity of his own position. Again, it is reported that Seneca consented to the crime; it is more probable that he was not consulted about it; but undoubtedly both he and Burrhus, who had also the character of a brave and honest man, allowed themselves to justify it when done. Under the mildest view their conduct is without excuse. Nor was it of any avail. The people were horror-struck; the Senate, awakened by some sufferings of their own to the hollowness of their prince's professions of good government, resented it with murmurs and conspiracies. Seneca and Burrhus lost all favour and all influence, and both fell victims in a short time to their master's impassable jealousy. Seneca, indeed, seems to have entered into a plot for his overthrow, the discovery of which cost the lives of many distinguished nobles, as well as of an old companion of Nero, the republican poet Lucan. The cruelties of Nero were now repeated and extended, falling upon the men most conspicuous for virtue, as well as the noblest and the wealthiest. The murders of Barea Soranus and of Praetor Thraso, two of the staunchest professors of the Stoic creed of philosophy, seemed to aim at the "extinction of virtue itself."

Amidst these dismal excesses of an unlimited despotism, the reign of Nero is remarkable for a disaster of another kind, of which, though imputed by many voices at the time to Nero himself, the hand of man may fairly be acquitted. In the year 817 Rome was swept by a terrible conflagration, which consumed a large proportion of the whole city. The populace, in their terror and distress, demanded victims, and the emperor suffered the Christians to be convicted on the charge of wilfully destroying it. Against the persons thus designated, of whom there were many now at Rome (but whether they were exclusively the believers in the gospel of Jesus Christ, or partly at least, included the Jewish sectarians, the followers of false Christs, who had often caused disturbance even in the heart of Italy, is still liable to question), a cruel persecution, and the most cruel of punishments were directed. Death by burning was an ancient punishment of the republic for the crime of sedition; and to this death the reputed burners of the city were devoted. They were tied to stakes and consumed in shirts smeared with pitch. The fierceness of the flames thus kindled, added to the horror of the execution, and the brutal levity of Nero in driving his chariot by the light of these human torches, heightened the compassion to which the fury of the people had been quickly converted; but there can be no doubt that the invention of the pitched shirt was meant to shorten and not to aggravate the sufferings of the victims.

The horror with which Nero's cruelties were regarded by the Senate was enhanced by their indignation at the levities with which he gratified his own morbid passion for applause, and courted the flattery of the populace. He was devoted to the games of the circus, and insisted on outraging decorum by driving the chariot in person. He was not less addicted to the amusement, reported equally vile by the graver citizens, of playing and singing in public. It was said that in the midst of the general dismay at the great conflagration he had witnessed the scene from the top of a tower in his palace, and performed upon his flute the drama of the sack of Troy. This piece of unfeeling impertinence, followed by the avidity with which he seized on the space laid open by the flames to construct the immense extent of his "Golden House," gave colour to the suspicion above noticed, that he had actually caused the fire, or had at least forbidden its extinction. Soon after this event he quitted Rome to seek new laurels among the games and shows of Greece, where he expected to find his peculiar talents better appreciated than by his own morose or ignorant countrymen. He travelled from theatre to theatre, and won all the applauses and all the chaplets which Athens, Corinth, and Olympia could bestow. During the course of his reign foreign affairs had proceeded on the whole prosperously. A disaster in Britain had been retrieved. Some successes had been gained, by negotiation rather than by arms, over Parthia; and Nero had got much ridicule by claiming a triumph for them. His ablest lieutenant, Corbulo, he had wantonly put to death, when the breaking out of a revolt in Palestine demanded his best generals and his bravest legions. The conduct of this war was entrusted to the veteran Vespasian; but when at last a revolt broke out against him in his own army in Spain, he found himself without men or commanders to meet it. While he was still lingering in Greece, Galba, at the head of his forces, was marching towards Rome. The troops stationed in Gaul were induced to join the movement, or to observe neutrality. Nero returned in haste to Italy; but at the first news of some temporary success relapsed into his frivolous dissipations. The arrival of each succeeding courier roused him to paroxysms of alarm or confidence; but he made no effective preparations to repel the danger, till the Senate, seeing the defencelessness of his position, summoned courage to anticipate the arrival of the avenger, by denouncing him as a public enemy, and setting a price on his head. The wretched tyrant evinced the utmost pusillanimity in this crisis of his fortunes. He fled from Death of the palace in disguise, but despaired of ultimately escaping Nero, and after much hesitation, and with much childish complaint, at last gave himself the death-blow.

Sect. XLIV.—Wars for the Succession (A.D. 68-69).

Galba, as he advanced towards Rome, declared that he Galba had turned his arms against the tyrant in the interest of the claimed Senate, and that he left to that venerable body the future settlement of the empire. He had lived to a great age in the tranquil discharge of high civil and military functions; and it is probable that he had first commenced his movement for his own safety rather than from motives of ambition. But when his enterprise was crowned with success, he could not doubt that the Senate would offer the empire to him, nor had he any scruple in accepting it. With Nero the last of the imperial race of the great Julius had perished; there remained no chief to whom the proconsul owed obedience. Galba was released from the military oath which bound him to the successor of Caesar and Augustus, the descendant of Drusus and Germanicus. He accepted the honours proffered him, and having quelled all opposition to himself, and learnt the discomfiture of some military pretenders in the provinces, he entered the city at the head of his forces, and assumed the empire not less as the nominee of the army than as the chosen of the Senate. Servius Sulpicius Galba was a man of good family; the heralds tried to connect him with a mythological ancestry; but the transfer of empire from the race of the Julii, of whom three at least had been enrolled among their tutelary deities, gave a shock to the national feeling from which it never recovered. Never again could the Romans surrender themselves to the illusion, that their emperor reigned by right of a divine descent; the attempt to establish such a descent, though made in favour of some later rulers, never again laid hold of the national sentiment, and established itself as a popular superstition. As regarded the successor to Nero, it was wholly futile. The manners which Galba brought from the camp to the palace were rude and harsh; his principles were austere; he was frugal himself, and parsimonious in relation to others. He refused the soldiers their expected donatives; and to both the soldiers and the people showed himself a strict disciplinarian. Such a commencement of a new reign—a reign founded on favour, not on right—irritated all classes, and made them apprehend a severity more galling than the capricious cruelties of the late tyrant. Warned, but not dismayed at the murmurs he heard around him, Galba selected an associate more young and vigorous than himself, named Piso; but intrigues were already in motion against him; Otho, once the confident of Nero, and as profligate as his master, was tampering with the praetorians. Galba had exercised his power but one fortnight when this conspiracy burst upon him, and unsupported by the people, undefended by his own guards, he fell by the swords of a mutinous soldiery.

The successor to Galba was proclaimed by the praetorians without even a pretence of consulting the senators, of Otho, who tacitly acquiesced in the appointment, but abstained perhaps as far as they could from actually acknowledging it. While the emperor assumed the privilege of striking the gold and silver coinage, the privilege of issuing the more vulgar copper currency was accorded to the Senate. The fact, that no copper coinage of Otho's brief reign has been discovered, may be taken to show the reluctance of this outraged body to stamp their approval of his usurpa- But however this may be, the usurper's career was speedily cut short. The legions in the north of Gaul had already declared against Galba, and put Aulus Vitellius at their head to contest the empire with him. The report of Galba's death and Otho's succession made no difference in their measures. They wanted an emperor of their own creation, from whom they might receive a largess worthy of their services; perhaps they already thirsted for the plunder of Italy and Rome. Otho, though long steeped in luxury, was by nature gallant and high-spirited. He accepted the challenge with alacrity, and went forth to the Cisalpine to encounter the enemy. But his temper was light and capricious, and on the first check received by his followers, he resolved to put an end to the contest, of which he was weary rather than afraid, by falling on his own sword. The victory of Bedriacum, thus crowned by the self-sacrifice of his rival, there was nothing to prevent or delay the succession of Vitellius to power, enforced by the swords of his impatient soldiery, and accepted with entire submission by the Senate. At the head of his Gauls and Germans, the conqueror entered the city in military array and accoutrements; and Rome, for the first time, felt herself in the power of an undisguised invader.

But the same high tide of revolution which had wafted Galba and Vitellius to Rome on the wave of military insurrection was preparing the triumph of yet another competitor for the purple. While the armies of the West were contending for the substantial rewards of nominating to the empire, the legions which occupied the opposite portion of the Roman dominions were not less eager to strike in with a claim of their own. The progress of the war in Palestine retarded their movements; but at last, suspending though not abandoning these important operations, which also promised abundant glory and plunder, their leaders agreed to set up Vespasian, chief in command among them, as the worthiest candidate for the empire. Vespasian indeed remained for a time in Egypt to secure the resources of that important province, and placed his son Titus in charge of the war against the Jews; but his friend Mucianus led a mighty force through Asia and Greece into Italy, and his lieutenant Antonius Primus engaged the Vitellians in the Cisalpine with the first division of his armaments. Vitellius was hardly seated in his palace, where he was disgracing himself by the vilest sensuality, and betraying a total incapacity for government, when his repose was shaken by the attack of these new assailants. A second battle at Bedriacum broke the strength of his forces. Antonius, anxious to secure the full merit of completing his success before Mucianus could come up with further re-enforcements, followed on the heels of the Vitellians, and the partizans of Vespasian mustered so strongly in the Senate-house and the Forum that Vitellius, sluggish and pusillanimous, hastened to proffer his submission. Sabinius, the conqueror's brother, dictated the terms of his abdication; but his soldiers, enraged at his cowardly desertion, still retained their arms, and made a tumultuous night attack on the position of their adversaries in the Capitol. The venerable citadel of the republic was not regularly defensible. Climbing over the roofs of the adjoining houses, and flinging torches before them, they involved the august temple inclosure. Sabinius was captured and slain; Domitian, a younger son of Vespasian, escaped in disguise. Vitellius was compelled to resume the purple; but Antonius had now reached the outskirts of the city, and his opponents, who went forth without a leader to encounter him, were beaten back step by step within the walls, which he entered along with them, filling the streets with slaughter. A remnant of the Vitellians withdrew into the praetorian camp, but their last stronghold was speedily stormed. Their wretched emperor lingered about the palace, uncertain whether to fly or sue for mercy, but was seized by the infuriated soldiery, and slaughtered with many indignities. Mucianus, following in the rear of Antonius, and bringing Death of Domitian with him, assumed the government in the name Vitellius of Vespasian; and Rome once more settled down in the hope of tranquillity under the new usurper.

SECT. XLV.—REIGN OF VESPASIAN (A.D. 70-79).

Titus Flavius Vespasianus, the founder of the Flavian Accession dynasty, had been saluted emperor by his soldiers in the of East in July 822, and it was from that era that the years of his government were technically numbered; but his accession to power at Rome dates from the first days of 823 (A.D. 70), when he assumed the consulship, and received all the ensigns of imperial sovereignty from the Senate, though still absent from the city. He allowed some months to intervene before making his appearance in the capital, choosing perhaps to leave to his lieutenants the irksome task of punishing the most obnoxious of the citizens, and smoothing his entrance into power. When he arrived, about the middle of the year, he accepted the submission of the Senate with complacency, and assured it of his favour and consideration. He proclaimed the advent of a new era of peace, and this announcement was received with the same satisfaction as when Augustus closed the temple of Janus. But the announcement was at least premature, while the Jews still maintained, behind the walls of Jerusalem, their indomitable defiance of the power of Rome. Driven in three campaigns from almost every other stronghold they defended the Holy City with desperate obstinacy. Religious fanaticism supplied the place of skill or discipline. Though weakened by internal dissensions, they repulsed every attack of the enemy, and submitted to the extremity of famine rather than surrender to the sacrilegious assailant. Exhausted by a long blockade, they were at last overpowered by the perseverance of Titus; their walls were stormed one after another, the inclosure of the temple scaled, and the Holy of Holies given to the flames. The resistance was still protracted for a time in the streets of Jerusalem, and even when the city was taken and razed to the ground, a dying gleam of glory was shed over the fall of Judaea by the defence of Macherus and Massada. But Titus at length completed his bloody task, Fall of Jeru in which he had exercised relentless severity. On his arrival at Rome he was associated with his father in the A.D. 70 honours of a triumph, commemorated by the arch, still existing, which bears his name, and received a share in the government of the empire.

The conquest of Judaea had cost Rome a greater effort than any of her foreign wars since the great struggle with Carthage; but such was her energy, such at this period the extent of her resources, that she had continued to conduct it in the midst of the distractions of civil strife, and during the determined mutiny of one of her finest armies. Immediately on the departure of Vitellius for Rome, with Matiny of a large portion of the Germanic legions, the German and the Gaulish auxiliaries in the north of Gaul revolted against their commanders, set up the standard of a Gaulish empire, and succeeded in breaking up the whole of the Roman force in their country. Under the Batavian chief Civilis, they continued to defy the power of the empire till the overthrow of Vitellius allowed the new government at Rome to pour its legions across the Alps. Civilis was beaten in several encounters by the Flavian general Ceri- alis. Domitian advanced in person into Gaul to support the efforts of his lieutenant; but the resistance of the mutineers was crushed before his arrival on the Rhine, and in the north, as well as in the east, the sway of Vespasian was secured and consolidated. This fortunate soldier held the reign of empire ten years, during which period the Senate was allowed to resume much of its ancient consideration, and the personal virtues of the ruler, his simplicity and moderation of character, exercised a favourable influence on the manners of the age. A re-action set in, from the reckless extravagance fostered by the example of Nero. The fortunes of the great nobles had been broken down by the exactions of that rapacious tyrant, and had suffered still more perhaps in the confusion of the civil wars; many of the chief families had become extinguished, and their place in the Senate, and in the high offices of the state, was supplied by men of meaner birth and provincial extraction. Raised by Vespasian to their new dignities, these men took Vespasian for their model, and introduced into their households the fashion of economy and self-control. Though rude and unpolished himself, the soldier-emperor paid respect to letters, and established throughout his dominions a corps of salaried professors. On the other hand, he banished the philosophers from Rome; but to this harsh measure he was perhaps amply provoked by the pertinacity with which they preached disaffection and rebellion. Vespasian had none of the finer qualities of the high-bred Roman aristocrat; there was nothing genial or magnanimous in his character; once or twice he acted with revolting cruelty. But his rule was marked on the whole by equity and mildness, and his reign deserves to be noted as one of the brightest periods in the annals of the empire.

**SECT. XLVI.—REIGNS OF TITUS AND DOMITIAN (A.D. 79–96).**

Vespasian had prudently erected a temple to his predecessor Claudius, and he received a similar honour after death from his successor Titus. The Flavian family was formally admitted among the tutelary divinities of the Roman people; but the hero-worship of the emperors was a service from which the life and spirit had now wholly evaporated. The conqueror of Judæa, who now occupied his father's place on earth, bore the character of a mild and studious philosopher. His conduct indeed in the field had been marked with the cold-blooded cruelty common to all the Roman generals, but towards the citizens, and especially the senators, he displayed the moderation and self-control which always commanded their warmest acclamations. Out of deference to the prejudices of his countrymen, he refrained from marrying the Jewish princess Drusilla, of whom he was passionately enamoured; and this condescension to national feelings gained him perhaps no less applause than the sentiment he was said to have once expressed, that "he had lost a day" in which he had performed no special act of virtue. There seems to have been some softness, and perhaps some effeminacy, in the character of Titus. He was addicted to voluptuous habits; he was prone to indulge in expensive ostentation; and had he not succeeded to a hoard of treasure amassed by his father's economy, which he did not live to exhaust, he might have resorted at last to the cruelties of a Nero to supply his prodigality. Though the Romans agreed in entitling this prince the "delight of the human race," they admitted that he was saved by an early death from the snares of a position to which he might have proved unequal. Titus died of a fever, his frame having been weakened by an immoderate use of the bath, after a short reign of only two years, in 834 (A.D. 81).

Domitian, who succeeded to his elder brother, had never been regarded with the same hope and favour by the Romans. His head had been turned by the glories which accrued to his family in his tender years. During the short interval in which he had exercised power before his father's arrival at Rome, he had given the rein to his youthful passions, and the evil nature thus early developed in him had been repressed but not eradicated by the control of Vespasian. The Romans declared that he had shown the cruelty of his disposition in early youth by his passion for killing flies. He seems to have had some taste for literature; he was himself a poet; he encouraged and rewarded poets, and instituted poetical contests and prizes. He persecuted the philosophers, indeed, like his father; nevertheless the reign of Domitian did not fail to produce many brilliant writers and enduring works of genius. But the temper of this emperor was weak and cowardly; and after a few years of professed deference to the Senate, he grew weary of the dissimulation he had practised, exacted from them the grossest adulation, watched all their movements with anxious jealousy, tormented them with his miserable fears, and decimated them, on the slightest pretext, with remorseless barbarity. He was himself tormented with the desire of emulating his father and brother in their military achievements. With this view, he did not hesitate to exchange the pleasures of the capital for the hardships of war. He made one campaign beyond the Rhine, and another beyond the Danube. He pretended to obtain successes, and to celebrate triumphs over both the Germans and the Dacians; and his equestrian statue, one of the most magnificent works of art at Rome, represented him trampling victoriously on the captive enemies of his country. Whether really satisfied or not with the applauses he demanded from the citizens, he could not bear to witness the genuine glory of a lieutenant. During the latter years of Vespasian, and through the short reign of Titus, the gallant Agricola, one of the best of the Roman captains, had conducted a series of campaigns in Britain. The Agricolain country south of the Humber or the Tyne had been already reduced; but Agricola undertook to complete the conquest of the island, which he was the first to circumnavigate. In the course of eight years he penetrated to the foot of the Grampians, and finished his career of victory with the defeat of the Caledonian Galgacus. He drew a line of forts from the Firth of Forth to the Clyde, which was strengthened at a later period, and established as the boundary of the Roman possessions. But he would not have rested here, with his work half accomplished, had not the emperor suddenly recalled him to Rome, and reminded him of the danger of making himself too conspicuous among the subjects of so pusillanimous a master. He conducted himself at Rome with becoming modesty and reserve; but the jealousy of the tyrant was not to be appeased, and his death, which speedily followed, was too surely attributed to poison.

Domitian had purchased the favour of the populace by shows and largesses, but at the expense of the nobles, reigns by whose estates he confiscated; and as his enemies multiplied and his fears increased, he was constrained to securing the support of the soldiers by raising their pay, and in soldiers, indulging their indolence and vanity. The guards had now become well aware of their position as the real masters of the city and of the empire. Their vanity and their licentiousness were almost equally odious to the citizens, over whom they domineered with impunity. The life and power of the emperor were in their hands, and he was obliged to wink at their excesses. They could only be restrained by the strong arm of a soldier like themselves. They had quailed before veteran Vespasian,—they had respected the victorious Titan; but Domitian, whose futile pretences to military prowess they despised, could only retain their swords by yielding immediately to all their caprices. Thus supported, however, the nobles, now trembling daily for their lives, could not venture to assail him. He continued to persecute them with unceasing barbarity, while himself so apprehensive for his own safety that he shut himself up in apartments mirrored on every side, and so thickly carpeted that his footfalls could not be heard beneath. At last, however, vengeance overtook him from the centre of his own palace. He was wont to inscribe on his tablets day by day the names of those he meant to put to death, continuing to treat them, till the moment arrived, with attentions which disarmed all suspicion. An accident discovered the fatal record to the Empress Domitia, who was dismayed at finding her own name set down in it, together with those of others in high office about the emperor's person. To these she imparted the secret; and they all conspired together to save themselves by assassinating their treacherous master. The tyrant of Rome fell by the hand of a Greek freedman; and with him the line of the Flavian emperors came to an end. He left no children, nor would the indignant senators, who met to nominate a new ruler before the guards could recover from their consternation, have endured another scion of a stock now rendered detestable to them. Domitian was the twelfth of the Caesars, a name or title which the Flavian emperors had continued to bear, and which was still perpetuated in their successors; but the accident, perhaps, of the Lives of the Caesars by Suetonius terminating with him has limited its special application in popular language to these twelve only.

**SECT. XLVII.—REIGNS OF NERVA AND TRAJAN (A.D. 96–117).**

The praetorians were irresolute, the populace was indifferent; and when the Senate declared that Cocceius Nerva, an aged veteran of high birth and character, should succeed to the chief place in the state, his election might be regarded as ratified by the suffrage of the Roman people. But Nerva, it was remarked, was the first of the emperors of Italian, not of Roman parentage. His family came from Narinum, in the Umbrian territory; and he might still, it seems, be stigmatized as a foreigner, though the Italians had now enjoyed Roman citizenship for nearly two centuries. In this respect the new appointment of the Senate was considered by some as a striking innovation on the ideas of antiquity. It was remembered, however, that the elder Tarquin, one of the most popular of the kings, was by birth an Etruscan; and a saying was current among the curious in such matters, that the Romans had generally prospered most by their native genius under foreign rulers. But such reflections as these, delivered to us by some of their latest writers, were no doubt the sophisms of another age; at the moment, the citizens thought little of the origin of their new emperor; they were occupied with feelings of vengeance against the slaughtered tyrant, whose images they overthrew, while the Senate decreed that his "acts" should be abolished, and the honour of the apotheosis refused to him. The man of their choice was pledged to support their authority and respect their persons. Nerva bound himself by an oath that no senator should suffer death during his reign; a pledge which was formally repeated by some succeeding sovereigns. This was the charter of the Roman constitution under the new dynasty, which depended only on the word of the emperor, but was preserved inviolate at least by Nerva and his next successor. Under this pledge of personal safety the senators again raised their heads, and enjoyed a considerable share of real authority in affairs. Nerva, indeed, was a man of no great strength of character, nor were his health and vigour of body such as to allow him to enter on any struggles with the patrons who had advanced him to the head of the commonwealth. The Senate, however, on their part, fully acquitted themselves of their share in the compact implied between them, exalting the natural mildness and moderation of his temper as the highest sense of justice and most unbounded clemency. It mattered little to them that the poor old man surrendered to the clamours of the praetorians the freedmen who had slain Domitian; and when he himself put swords into the hands of some nobles whom he knew to be conspiring against him, they extolled what was perhaps mere conscious helplessness as the most magnanimous intrepidity. It was in the interest of this class that the legislation of Nerva seems to have been principally conceived. He enacted rigid laws against the informers, and screened the senators from delation, not in cases of treason only, but of other criminal charges; while he enforced the utmost severity of the barbarous law of Rome against the slaves of their households. The reign, however, of this prince did not last long enough to try the principles on which he conducted it. He died, after holding power a little more than sixteen months, but not before he had conferred Nerva, the greatest of all boons on the Roman empire, in the choice of the best and ablest of his subjects to succeed him.

This man was M. Ulpius Trajanus, a native of Italica Trajan in Spain, distinguished for his bold and straightforward character, as well as for his military capacity. It was for these qualities, and not for his rank or riches, for he was the son of a plain officer in the armies of Vespasian, that the emperor chose him for the support of his own throne, and adopted him into his family. This was, moreover, the best way of securing the tranquil transmission of the empire on the vacancy which might soon be expected to occur. Trajan was in command of the forces at Cologne at the time of Nerva's death; but not only the Senate and people, but the praetorians and the soldiers generally, acquiesced with perfect satisfaction in the announcement of his succession. He seems, indeed, to have been personally popular with all classes; nor did he, throughout the whole course of his reign, seek to ingratiate himself with any one at the expense of the others. The accounts delivered to us of this reign, as well as of others of the same period, are unfortunately very meagre. We possess, however, abundant evidence that the Romans, not then only, but for many generations afterwards, regarded it as the brightest epoch in the imperial annals. The Senate continued to enjoy the highest respect and consideration; the people were gratified by shows,—not indeed the aimless extravaganzas of Nero, but the martial displays of the amphitheatre, barbarous and disgusting, no doubt, according to our ideas, yet dignified in Roman eyes by ancient national associations. The government of Trajan is also distinguished by the attention paid, for the first time perhaps in the political history of antiquity, to the relief of poverty by eleemosynary institutions. The provision it made for the maintenance of orphans in Italy, though we can but imperfectly understand it from the notices which remain, is a marked feature in the public economy of this interesting period. The architectural works of Trajan for the embellishment of the city were conceived on the grandest scale, and executed with no want of taste. He constructed, moreover, the naval stations of Centumcellae and Ancona. But the bent of his genius was military, and he humoured the passions of the army, as well as his own, by the wars he waged against the enemies of Rome. He avenged the humiliation inflicted on the empire by the Dacians and their king Decebalus, which the pretended triumph of Domitian had failed to disguise, and reduced the countries of modern Hungary and Transylvania to the form of a province. The remains of Roman cities, and the deep root still held there by the Latin language, prove the completeness of the conquest he effected, though his next successor thought fit to resign this tardy acquisition. The Pillar of Trajan at Rome, sculptured with the events of the Dacian war, still exists as another monument of the conqueror's prowess. The emperor carried his arms also across the Euphrates, and annexed to the empire some districts in Mesopotamia. He penetrated into the deserts of Arabia, extending the empire, nominally at least, as far as the city of Medina. It is said that his lieutenants carried the eagles beyond Syene on the Nile, and subjugated Nubia. But these... conquests, if they really deserve the name, were also surrendered on the death of the conqueror, which took place at Selinus in Cilicia, in the year 870, after a reign of nineteen years and a half.

The chief blot on the character of this able and potent prince is the persecution which he suffered to be inflicted upon the Christians, who were becoming at this period an important element in the population of the empire. By the earlier Caesars the Jews had been treated with great favour, both in their own country and in Rome. This people had taken the part of Julius Caesar in their hatred of Pompeius; they had sided with Augustus against Antonius; and thus had been suffered to return to practise their rites unmolested in the city, and to make a great harvest of proselytes among the noble and wealthy classes, particularly of the female sex. Under Tiberius, indeed, and Claudius, their turbulence had subjected them to rigid measures of repression; they had been banished for a time from Rome; but these measures were soon relaxed, and they returned in no less numbers nor less turbulently-disposed than before. In their own country the leaders of these repeated seditions had been known by the appellation of Christs, and when the true disciples of Jesus of Nazareth became first conspicuous in the city, we might expect them to be popularly confounded with the deluded followers of Judas the Galilean, or Thedas, who had made the name of Christ odious to the Roman people. We have seen how Nero gratified the Roman populace by sacrificing the Christians at Rome to their fury, and we have remarked that under this name, not the true disciples only, but the unbelieving Jews also, may possibly have been included. The fierce struggle which ensued in Palestine, ending in the overthrow of Jerusalem and a general dispersion of the native population, exasperated the feelings of the Romans against the Jews, and it is probable that, though the Christians were now of almost every nation under the Roman dominion, the fundamental connection of their religion with that of the Jews marked them as in some sense pertaining to those detested enemies of Rome. Hence every jealous measure directed against the Jews themselves, or against their rites and usages, would apply with equal force to the Christians; the believers might be required at any moment, at the discretion of the rulers and governors, to give a pledge for their loyalty to Rome by swearing in the name of the emperor, or by sacrificing to his genius. This was a simple test, which saved all discussion on the character of the Christians or the merits of their religious tenets; the praetors in the provinces might be anxious to show their zeal for their master by exacting this compliance; they were bound at least to exact it in the case of any person denounced to them as the holder of dangerous opinions, whether specified as Jewish or Christian, and hence we find such inquisition made, and cruel punishments inflicted, both under Domitian and Trajan. The latter prince checked the zeal of his officers by expressly forbidding, as in the case of Pliny in Bithynia, any inquiry for Christians to be made. If denounced, then indeed the test must be applied, but not otherwise. Thus circumscribed, the persecution seems to have quickly relaxed, and before his death, Trajan, with his natural justice and benevolence, resolved to suppress it altogether.

Trajan was undoubtedly the greatest of the Roman commanders after the days of Caesar, and under him the frontiers of the empire were advanced to the farthest limits they ever attained. The legions were never more triumphant; the bravery of the soldiers, the conduct of their officers, never more conspicuous; the military power of Rome was raised perhaps at this epoch to its highest pitch. It may be doubted, however, whether the men who bore the eagles of Trajan were really animated with the same spirit of devotion to the service, of discipline and endurance, as the conquerors of Zama or of Pydna: they won many victories, but it was over barbarian enemies; and their constancy was seldom tried by defeats. The practice, introduced indeed before, but carried out most systematically by Trajan, of defending the frontiers of the empire by long lines of fortifications, such as that which may still be traced in many places from the Rhine to the Danube, must have contributed to weaken the soldier's reliance on his own strength and courage, and taught him to depend on the shelter of ditches and ramparts. Thus protected, he would soon begin to relax in his attention to drill and exercise. It is probable, indeed, that the immediate object for which these works were raised was not so much defence as employment. The legions on the frontiers had too little occupation. On the Danube they had broken out in dangerous mutinies; on the Rhine they had set up an emperor of their own against the emperor of the Senate. The Roman soldier had been always taught to use the pick-axe as well as the sword; the raising of earthworks and fixing of palisades were part of his business as much as the leaping, running, swimming, and fencing which formed his daily exercise. Every night on march, on arriving at his halting-place, he was required to throw up a wall of turf round his camp before betaking himself to rest.

The arrangement and dimensions of the camp are fully set forth by the historian Polybius, from which we may calculate the amount of labour imposed on the legionary in the best age of the republic. But under Trajan we find that a new system of castrametation was in practice, known by the name of its expounder Hyginus, according to which an equal number of men was lodged in an encampment of not more than half the size of those of the Caesars and the Scipios. We cannot suppose that the armies of the empire carried with them less baggage or required fewer followers than those of the republic; and we can only see in this reduction of the size of the camp a relaxation of discipline, and a concession to the indolence of the legionaries. The walls of Trajan in Germany and Moldavia, and the diminished extent of the Hyginian encampments, are the first visible symptoms of decline in the military spirit of the Romans.

SECT. XLVIII.—REIGN OF HADRIAN (A.D. 117–138).

The wise and vigorous rule of Trajan seems to have Hadrian completely restored the harmonious working of the different nominated orders and classes in the empire. The sovereign authority of the Senate was recognised on all hands; and the emperor, when engaged on his distant expeditions, could leave the reins of government to the consuls without fear for his own power or for the tranquillity of the state. When he suddenly died in a corner of an obscure province, the mere assertion by his wife Plotina, that he had nominated Hadrian his heir and successor, was received without opposition or question; and, in default of sons of his own, it was considered most natural and proper that he should thus endow with the purple a man of known ability and experience, a native of his own province, and allied to his own family. T. Ælius Hadrianus, who really owed his elevation to an intrigue of the palace rather than to the actual choice of his predecessor, was a man whom even a Trajan, the best hitherto of the Roman emperors, might be proud of appointing to succeed him. Though his private conduct was not devoid of defects, and though his temper was eventually spoiled by indulgence, he seems to have possessed on the whole the highest combination of princely qualities that ever graced the Roman purple. Though a brave and skilful captain, he refrained from the Hadrian unprofitable pursuit of military laurels, and chose rather to abandon the useless and expensive conquests of Trajan than waste the resources of the empire in retaining them. The Euphrates and the Danube became again, and long continued to be, the frontiers of his ample dominions. While he retained the swords of the legionaries in their scabbards, he did not shrink from passing a large portion of his time, as an imperator should do, among them; and whether in the camp or in the field, he set a noble example of abstinence and simplicity. He marched at the head of his troops generally on foot, never in a litter, from one end of the empire to the other; his fare was as rude as that of the meanest soldier; he wore no covering to his head, but endured without a murmur the oppressive weight of his arms and corset. But the merits of Hadrian as a commander were far outweighed by those he manifested in the conduct of civil affairs. He visited every province in succession, exercising a vigilant control over the local administration, securing to his people the due execution of justice, alleviating their fiscal burdens, adorning their cities with sumptuous edifices, labouring night and day, with the assistance of the ablest counsellors, for the happiness and prosperity of his subjects. Hadrian was the first to undertake the great work of codifying the Roman law, a work which Caesar had proposed, but which none of his successors had ventured to lay their hands to. This object, indeed, was not destined to be accomplished by any single emperor; but Hadrian deserves the full credit of showing it was practicable by commencing it. In the attitude he assumed towards the religious creeds of his subjects, he proved himself an intelligent statesman. In the absence of any definite views of his own, he displayed an enlightened tolerance of those of others, and relaxed the harsh restrictions which the empire still placed, in the spirit of antiquity, on many foreign superstitions. Unfortunately his liberality deserted him, like so many other philosophers of heathendom, in the presence of Christianity alone. Against the true believers he did not scruple to exercise the rigour of old Roman prejudice. He still confounded them apparently with the Jews, from whom they could not yet be at first sight easily distinguished; and the Jews had alarmed and irritated him by a furious revolt, which, commencing under Trajan, continued to rage far into the reign of his successor, and to demand for its suppression all the energy and unscrupulous cruelty of the ruling people.

On the ruins of Jerusalem Hadrian planted the colony of Aelia Capitolina, called Aelia after himself as the founder, and Capitolina after Jupiter of the Roman Capitol, whose shrine he reared on the spot once honoured by the temple of Jehovah. The Jews were now at last finally subdued, and they never made head again against the power appointed to overthrow them.

The state-religion of the empire was honoured by several monuments of Hadrian's munificence. The temple of Rome and Venus which he erected, the remains of which are still visible between the Forum and the Colosseum, was the largest of all the buildings devoted to the worship of the gods in the city; while that of Jupiter Olympus, which he completed at Athens, the work of a series of governments and princes, was reputed the most magnificent of all earthly shrines, and alone worthy of the mighty being to whom it was dedicated. But while the emperor paid this external homage to the religious sentiment of his people, he did not scruple to outrage it by exalting to divine honours a minion of his own, the beautiful Antinous, who was drowned accidentally in the Nile. Both the compliment and the outrage, however, were regarded probably with equal indifference by the great majority of his subjects, whose notions of the supernatural world were limited for the most part to a belief in omens and incantations, while the outward forms of religion served them merely as a pretext for the cultivation of art and taste. Hadrian has left another monument to himself deserving of notice in our own island. Consistently with his uniform policy of withdrawing the presidial garrisons of the frontier from the least tenable outposts, he abandoned the forts of Agricola between the Forth and Clyde, and drew a line of military stations, connected with a fosse and rampart of earth, from the Tyne to the Solway; this became now the boundary of the province of Britannia. It is probable that he also completed the rampart of Trajan between the Rhine and Danube, which is sometimes called after him the Limes Hadriani.

With such claims to respect in his public character, it must be confessed that Hadrian showed much personal weakness. It is probable that no man, in that age of moral decline, could cultivate every intellectual faculty to the utmost without betraying some pitiable vanity and overweening self-confidence. Not in the arts of government only, but in letters, in science, in taste, he would allow of no superior. He put to silence the grammarian Favorinus, who found it prudent, as he said, to desist from arguing "with the master of thirty legions." It is asserted that he put to death the architect Apollodorus, through jealousy of his professional accomplishments. In his latter years he became more than ever impatient of contradiction, and the fretfulness of his temper, which degenerated at last into gloominess and cruelty, was aggravated by painful infirmities. Towards the end of his reign he adopted L. Verus, with no other merit than that of being the hand-somest of the Roman nobles; but this intended successor fortunately died before him, and on his death-bed he made the more auspicious choice of T. Aurelius Antoninus, a man of the highest promise, which promise he amply fulfilled. Hadrian died, worn out by bodily sufferings, in the Death of year 891 (A.D. 138), at the age of sixty-three, after a reign Hadrian, of twenty-one years, having unfortunately lived long A.D. 138, enough to cloud with indelible stains the career of the wisest of the Roman emperors.

SECT. XLIX.—REGIONS OF ANTONINUS PIUS AND M. AURELIUS (A.D. 138-180).

Before his death Hadrian had raised the mausoleum in Antinous which he wished his ashes to repose; and the remains of Pius, this immense work still existing constitute one of the most striking monuments of antiquity at Rome. But his reputation he was obliged to leave in the hands of jealous survivors, and the Senate would have vented its spite on his memory by refusing him the honours of an apotheosis, had not his successor interfered, and exerted all his influence to gain him the coveted distinction. Antoninus earned, it is said, the title of "Pius" by the affection he thus displayed towards his adoptive father. The character of this prince was truly amiable; and the strict though generous discipline of his immediate predecessors had fortunately so calmed the temper of the Roman people, and suppressed all irregular ambitions, that the heir of their power was enabled to carry on the government on the principles of magnanimous moderation which naturally belonged to him. During the three-and-twenty years of Antoninus's reign we read of no intestine dissensions; nor was even the peace of the frontiers disturbed by foreign aggressions. Hadrian is accused of being the first to sanction the fatal policy of bribing the barbarians. How far he is justly amenable to the charge we do not positively know. He certainly did not adopt any such plan generally, and exceptional occasions there may have been on which it was not

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1 Some modern writers affirm that not the rampart only, but the wall which runs mostly parallel to it a few paces to the north, was the work of this emperor. The wall has more commonly been ascribed to Severus. The Roman authorities are vacillating and inconsistent. Gildas and Bede ascribe the wall to the latest period of Roman dominion in Britain. Amidst this uncertainty, it may be sufficient to remark that the rampart, running along the southern slope of the hills, must have been constructed for shelter rather than for defence; the wall, which follows the summit of the ridge, indicates a time when defence was paramount to every other consideration. unwise to employ it. However this may be, we find that the peace of the empire was now substantially secured for more than a quarter of a century. Antoninus, indeed, saw reason to depart from Hadrian's cautious policy in Britain, where his lieutenant, Lollius Urbicus, advanced again to the boundary-line of Agricola. He departed from it also in another particular, in which we may take a greater interest, by repressing the persecutions which had so long raged against the Christians. On the whole, however, there is no period of equal length in the Roman annals of which we know so few particulars as this. This is owing partly, no doubt, to the uneventful character of the times, and partly also to the tameness of the Roman people themselves, who seem to have produced no men of prominence in public life during this reign. Even in arts and literature the spirit of Rome seems to have been quiescent; but Greece witnessed a great revival in letters, and was distinguished by a flourishing school, if not of original genius, at least of correct and elegant imitation. But the single history of the times which survives is peculiarly meagre, and we must regret the transient glimpse which is allowed us of a reign so full of social if not of political interest.

Antoninus Pius evinced his regard for his predecessor by honourably fulfilling the obligation imposed upon him of adopting M. Aurelius, the son of Annus Verus, and his own nephew. For this youth, even in his tender years, Hadrian had shown a great predilection, being struck by his noble character as well as by his excellent abilities. He used to call him, not Verus, but Verissimus; and on the death of his associate, Aelius Verus, he was only prevented by his extreme youth from nominating him at once as his successor. Aurelius was carefully educated under his uncle, whose daughter Faustina he received in due time in marriage. Acquiring after his adoption his father's name Antoninus, he became distinguished from him in common speech by the further title of "the Philosopher." He devoted himself to the study of the Greek writers on morals, and professed himself a strict disciple of the Stoic school. The memoir he has left, consisting of reflections on his own life and conduct, is considered one of the most interesting relics of antiquity. It presents us at least with a picture drawn from life of a man in high station, and full of public cares, striving ingenuously to square all his actions to the rules of the truest wisdom of the ancients. Austere and pure as the Stoic principles were, they were not, it seems, too high-flown to be practically fulfilled by a man of strong resolution, lofty feeling, and thoroughly in earnest. The noble Roman, imbued with the Grecian philosophy, formed the fairest combination of moral excellences of which heathen antiquity was capable. Aurelius succeeded Antoninus in the year 914 (A.D. 161), and following again the arrangement prescribed so long before by Hadrian, associated with himself Lucius Verus, a son of Hadrian's favourite. This man was indeed of a very different character from himself; but while Aurelius, whose health was not strong, inclined to a quiet career of business and study at home, he might expect to find in his colleague, who was a man of great vigour of body, without any tincture of letters, an able assistant in the affairs of the camp. Immediately on the death of Antoninus the Parthians threatened the empire with war, and Verus was dispatched to take the field against them. But neither did Aurelius contemplate a life of tranquil retirement. The Chatti, a German people on the Main, were assuming an attitude of defiance; and an insurrection was at the same time apprehended in Britain. The defence of the West was undertaken by the Philosopher in person.

While the vigilance of Aurelius kept the Germans and Britons in check, the lieutenants of Verus, rather than Verus himself, who indulged without stint or shame in the licentious voluptuousness of his Syrian head-quarters, inflicted a severe defeat on the arrogant Parthians. The successes of the eastern war were celebrated by the two emperors in a splendid triumph, and commemorated in the sounding titles they appended to their names. But in the midst of these rejoicings a double calamity was impending over the empire: a combination of hostile tribes along the northern bank of the Danube, known by the terrible names of the Marcomanni, the Quadi, the Alanii, and the Sarmatia, was preparing to pour over the frontier and overwhelm the Pannonian and Illyrian provinces; at the same time the seeds of a fatal pestilence had been imported by the soldiers of Verus from the East, and become disseminated among the plague and mass of the population almost throughout the Roman dominions. The alarm and distress of the people were aggravated by the inclemency of the seasons. The city was visited by one of the fearful inundations, periodically recurring, against which no adequate precautions had been taken through so many centuries, which swept away the magazines of corn by the river's side, and cut off the supplies of the turbulent multitude. The two emperors went forth together to combat the enemy on the frontier, and returned after a temporary success. Again they were summoned to the rescue, and this time Verus died on his march. The prevalence of the plague rendered recruiting slow and difficult; and Aurelius, determined to spare no effort in the defence of his country, did not scruple to enrol slaves and gladiators in his legion, a resource which had never been adopted but in the greatest extremity. At the same time he made what was to him a much less sacrifice, by selling the vast stores of jewels and furniture amassed by a succession of princes in the imperial palaces. The victory of Aurelius over the Quadi, in 927 (A.D. 174), is rendered memorable by the claim advanced by the Christians to a miraculous interposition. The affairs of the Romans were retrieved, it seems, by the occurrence of a seasonable storm; a fact which is commemorated on the column erected by the emperor in Rome. Some fathers of the church maintained, at a later period, that the rain was sent in answer to the prayers of a legion of Christian soldiers, to which the The "Thundering" name of Fulminatrix ("the thundering") was in consequence given. They added that Aurelius suspended the persecution of the believers in consequence of this manifest sign of the Divine favour towards them. It has been proved, however, that the name of Fulminatrix was of earlier origin; and modern Christian divines will not allow that there was any suspension of persecution during the reign of the philosophic emperor. The story, we must suppose, was embellished, perhaps unconsciously, by the fervid imagination of Tertullian.

But before he had broken the power of the Danubian Intrigues tribes, Aurelius was called away to confront a more pressing danger in the East. The Empress Faustina, the daughter of the good Antoninus, inherited, it seems, none of her father's virtues. The dissoluteness of her conduct is said Cassius, to have been notorious at Rome, and her husband, who loved her tenderly, was alone blinded to it. A crime of still deeper dye is imputed to her by the historians. Apprehensive of the risks the emperor ran from the infirmity of his health, as well as from the chances of distant warfare, and trembling for the succession, in case of his sudden death, of her young son Commodus, she intrigued, we are assured, with Avidius Cassius, the commander in Syria, offering him her hand in the event of her husband's demise; an offer which might be considered equivalent to an invitation to accelerate it. While Cassius was deliberating on this proposal, a false rumour of the emperor's death actually reached him. He immediately started up as a candidate for the empire, and his soldiers were not indisposed to lead him in triumph to Rome. Aurelius, on his part, prepared to meet him in the East; but when the conflict was on the eve of commencing, the usurper was assassinated by one of his The conduct of Aurelius, while the event was still uncertain, seems to have been truly noble. He declared that he only wished to have an opportunity of pardoning his inconsiderate rival; and it is much to be lamented that the history of Rome should have been deprived of so rare an instance of imperial clemency.

Aurelius set the affairs of the East in order, still retaining his generous confidence in the guilty Faustina, who accompanied him on his progress, but who died by her own hand, as some affirmed, in the course of it. He visited Egypt and Athens, and celebrated a triumph at Rome in the year 929. After six months' respite, he was dragged away again to the Danube, where he continued to conduct operations against the restless barbarians for two more years. His self-devotion was crowned with repeated successes, but he was still unable to make a decisive impression on the wide-spread combination of Germans and Sarmatians. Vexed by the cruel destiny which retained him so long in the camp, but lamenting still more deeply the manifest weakness of the empire, which his arm only could uphold, he sank at last, from fatigue and chagrin, in the year 933 (A.D. 180), the fifty-ninth of his age, and the twentieth of his reign. His career, though calamitous, had been glorious. He had attained the fame which he never coveted, of a warrior; but he has earned still greater fame, and such as he would doubtless have more dearly prized, as a patriot and a philosopher. He seems to have lived up to his professions, and those professions the highest perhaps that a heathen could make, more fully than any heathen and almost any Christian moralist. No character, at least in ancient history, deserves to be held in higher honour by the wise and good of all ages. In his virtues, in his sufferings, in his triumphs and his reverses, he ran very nearly the same course as our English Alfred; but Alfred has been appreciated more and more by the advancing goodness and wisdom of his countrymen, Aurelius, in the now rapid decline of the empire, found no Roman imitators and few admirers.

Sect. L.—Reigns of Commodus and Pertinax.

If the good and wise Aurelius betrayed some weakness of character in suffering himself to be blinded to his wife's infidelities, he erred more seriously in allowing the succession to his empire to devolve on a son so unworthy as Commodus. This youth seems to have possessed none of his father's virtues, nor had the training in wisdom which we must suppose his father to have given him produced any fruit. Though eminently handsome in person and skilful in his martial exercises, he was coarse and brutal in manners, cruel and cowardly in disposition. Admirably as the empire had been governed from the time of Nerva, and, with the exception of Domitian's reign, from the time of Vespasian, a period of more than a hundred years, it now became evident that the happiness of the Roman world depended on the general good qualities of the sovereign, and not on the stability of the principles on which the administration was founded. Vespasian had restored the dignity of the Senate, and the improvement he introduced in the manners of the nobility had contributed to strengthen its position in public opinion. Succeeding emperors, with one base exception, had condescended to lean upon the authority of this illustrious body, to consult it in the conduct of affairs, to defer to it in cases of adoption or association in their supreme power. The Senate, on the other hand, had had the good sense and modesty to accept the part assigned it without presuming further; it had responded to the emperor's appeals, but had refrained from dictation and perhaps even from suggestion. It is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable incidents in history, that two co-ordinate powers, so unequally matched in real force, should have continued to maintain for so long a period the tacit understanding which secured the peace and happiness of mankind. The machine had hitherto moved so easily that no one perhaps at Rome was aware, at the moment of Aurelius' death, how precarious were the ties which actually held it together. Aurelius himself was unable to anticipate the certain disruption which must ensue from the collision of a rude and selfish prince with a proud but impotent nobility.

The detestation which the new emperor incurred may throw some suspicion perhaps on the details transmitted to us of his cruelties and other enormities, in which he is said to have equalled the jealousy of Domitian, the caprice of Nero, and the extravagance of Caligula. But with these loathsome particulars we need not much concern ourselves. The peace which, immediately on his father's death, he made with the Marcomanni was undoubtedly premature; it is not necessary to inquire whether, as asserted, it was purchased with money. After his departure for Rome the frontiers were more than once assailed by the barbarians, but successfully defended by the captains trained under the brave Aurelius. Commodus commenced at once a career of profusion and dissipation, showing too plainly the weakness of character which an untoward accident soon exasperated into fury. The jealousy of a sister towards his wife seems to have been the cause of the first conspiracy against him, which only failed from the hasty exclamation of the assassin, "The Senate sends you this!" Commodus had time to parry the blow. His life was saved, the conspirators punished; but his suspicions had been awakened, and from this time he could never rest while he saw before him the wise and able men whom his father had introduced into the highest places of the state. All his moments were now divided between extravagant amusements on the one hand, and sanguinary precautions for his own safety on the other. His sensuality was as brutal as that of the worst of his predecessors; his prodigality in shows and entertainments as excessive: he exhibited his skill in shooting the beasts in the circus; but the Roman spirit, even in this stage of its decline, was outraged by his assuming the name and attributes of Hercules, and requiring (the first of the Roman emperors) that divine honours should be paid him while still living. He commanded that not one only, as Julius, Augustus, and others, but all the twelve months should be named after his own titles, and that the city and empire itself should be designated, not as Roman, but Commodian. All power he threw into the hands of a favourite named Perennis; but this man was eventually murdered by the praetorians. Disgusted and incensed as the senators were at the outrages of all kinds committed by this abominable tyrant, they were utterly incapable of concerting any plan for overthrowing him. They neither raised the people against him, nor won over his guards, nor invited the commanders of the legions to draw the sword in their behalf; they had not even confidence enough in one another to plot his assassination. He fell at last, after a career of twelve years, by an intrigue of the palace. The contriver of his death was his own concubine Marcia, who, discovered, it was said, her own name on the list of the victims he was about to massacre.

The Senate, it seems, was not privy to the murder, and had made no preparations to profit by it. Laetus, the prefect of the guards, and Eclectus, chamberlain of the palace, agreed to present Publius Helvius Pertinax, an officer of obscure family, but of distinguished ability, to the praetorians, and by the promise of a liberal donative their support was purchased. The Senate, to whom Pertinax next exhibited himself, accepted the nomination with joy, and declared that he was the emperor of their own choice. Probably the empire could have furnished no worthier successor to Trajan than this brave and virtuous veteran, and the nobles of Rome might be proud of the respect and deference he manifested towards them. It seemed as if, after a momentary eclipse, the principles of government consecrated by so many virtuous rulers, from Vespasian to Aurelius, were about to shine out again. But it was too late. The interregnum of Commodus had lasted too long. The interval of licentiousness in the court had corrupted the discipline of the camp. The praetorians, thoroughly debauched by the indulgence of the late tyrant, disdained the restrictions placed upon them by their new master. An attempt at reform and repression resulted in a military insurrection, in which Pertinax lost his life, after a brief reign of only three months. Though the real power of the Senate had long passed away, it had still retained up to this fatal epoch a shadow of authority, and we have seen how throughout the Flavian and Antonine period all the good emperors, all, that is, but two of the series, had lent their countenance to its pretensions. Though ruling by the sword themselves, they had kept the sword carefully under the gown, or suspended it from the palace wall. This moderation had been well rewarded. The good emperors of Rome had reigned long and prosperously. The honours they had bestowed on the Senate had been repaid them by the Senate, the people, and, so at least the Romans might believe, by the gods of Rome also. This period has often been distinguished with the title of "the happiest era of the human race." It is difficult indeed to point to any period, at least of ancient history, in which so large a portion of mankind enjoyed peace so nearly unbroken, wealth so widely diffused, laws so generally equitable, manners so polished, the appliances of art and science so numerous and so accessible. Yet we cannot commit ourselves to so bold a panegyric on an age in which morality was so lax, religion so effete, public spirit so nearly extinct. Even amidst unclouded material prosperity such deficiencies as these must have left a canker in millions of hearts, and poisoned, though unseen, the actual enjoyment of life. Indications, however, are not wanting that even the material prosperity of the Romans was undergoing through this period a slow but steady decline. Population was stationary or decreasing; production was suffering with the decay of industry and the vital forces of the state. When a nation has arrived at this turning-point in its career an external shock from war or pestilence may give it a blow from which it cannot recover. At a healthier and stronger period the onslaughts of the barbarians on the frontiers, and the ravages of the plague within, would have been cheerfully encountered and rapidly repaired. But stricken as she was at heart, Rome could now recover from neither. The barbarians ever continued to prey on her vitals through the remainder of her feeble career, and the great plague of Aurelius swept away resources which she had no longer strength to replace.

Sect. II.—Reigns of Julianus and Severus (A.D. 193-211).

From this epoch all the interest of Roman history, as the record of a political organization, must cease. We enter upon a period of a hundred years, during which the government remains an undisguised military usurpation, extorted and retained by the drawn sword. On the death of Pertinax the Senate lost all hope. The men of the gown cowered in silent despair; while the praetorians proclaimed aloud that they would offer the empire to the men of their choice, and allowed, it is said, more than one competitor to bid for their suffrages with largesses. Didius Julianus, a wealthy but incapable senator, promised most, and was accordingly accepted. He commenced his reign at Rome with the acquiescence of the civil power, but under the protection of the guards; but the legions were not content with leaving such lucrative patronage in the hands of a few favoured cohorts, and as soon as the accession of their nominee was known in the camps abroad, the army of Illyricum proclaimed their own general, Septimius Severus; that of Syria, Perennius Niger; and that of Britain, Clodius Albinus. Of these, Severus was the nearest to Rome, and he was perhaps the most active and energetic of all the competitors. He marched without delay upon the capital, and the Senate hastened to anticipate his reprisals by decreeing the death of Julianus. The puppet of the Death of praetorians was deserted by his mercenary patrons, and Julianus suffered without an attempt at defending himself. Severus had conquered Rome, and this fact he made no affectation of disguising. Supported by the army, he disarmed and broke up the praetorian cohorts; he punished also the murderers of Pertinax; but he did not pretend to rule by any other means but force, and he immediately replaced the old guards of the city with more numerous battalions of legionaries. Having thus fortified his position in the city, he prepared to encounter the rivals arming against him in the provinces. It was easy to deceive the voluntary Albinus with overtures for a division of the empire; but Niger was a man of spirit and ability, and required to be met boldly in the field. The shock of battle took place near the Gulf of Issus in Cilicia in the year A.D. 174, and of Severus ended in the defeat of the Syrian pretender. Niger was over Niger soon afterwards slain, and Severus exercised remorseless and Albinus vengeance on his adherents. From thence he turned his steps westward, first attempting to effect the death of Albinus by assassination, but when that failed, leading his victorious troops to encounter him in Gaul. Against a man so vigorous and resolute the British commander had no chance of success; but the hopes of donatives and plunder still animated his men, and they ventured to contend with the forces of the emperor near Lyons. Albinus was completely routed, and fell on his own sword. Severus again followed up his victory with a bloody vengeance. But though relieved from all his rivals, and secured against the renewal of domestic hostilities, the conqueror was not permitted to rest for a moment. The overthrow of the Syrian army had laid bare the frontier of the Euphrates, and the Parthians invaded the undefended province. Severus hastened to confront the foreign foe with unabated alacrity, and the exploits of his legions in the East, under his able guidance, might be likened to those of Trajan, the greatest commander of the empire.

The reign of Severus was in fact a series of marches Severus in from one end of the empire to the other. His sojourns in Britain, Rome were few and transient, but his conduct when there was marked with the arrogance and harshness of a mere soldier. The nobles, whom he insulted and harassed, hailed his departure with satisfaction. Old and infirm, he determined at last to visit Britain in person, and complete the subjection of the Caledonians, by whose inroads the province was repeatedly afflicted. He recovered the territory south of the Clyde and Forth, and penetrated some way into the Highlands. The Roman stations, which may still be traced as far north as the Moray Firth, are due perhaps to the energy with which he pushed his successes. But he was now suffering from gout; his constitution was broken by excessive fatigues; and while his conquests were yet uncompleted, he retired to Eboracum (York) to die. A.D. 211. His last watchword, given on his death-bed, Laboremus ("we must be doing"), marks the character of this indefatigable warrior, whose whole idea of political government was unceasing movement and action.

Sect. III.—The successors of the family of Severus (A.D. 211-235).

Severus left his inheritance in partnership between his sons Bassianus, vulgarly called "Caracalla," and Geta. The elder proved him a monster of tyranny, of the coarse type of Cæsars and Commodus; the younger hardly promised better; but he was early cut off, being stabbed by his own brother in his mother's arms, before he had fully developed his evil qualities. Of the other crimes of Caracalla, his dissoluteness and ferocity, there is no occasion to say more; they will be too easily understood from the examples already presented to us. Timid as well as ferocious, he too was assassinated by Macrinus, the prefect of his own guards, after a bloody reign of six years. The Roman world was already weary of him. The vast edifice which he had constructed for the pleasures of the people bore the title of Thermae Antoninianae, for down to Caracalla the successors of the first Antoninus had all assumed his venerated name in conjunction with that of Augustus; but this once-cherished appellation was now rendered odious to the Romans, and was henceforth dropped from the imperial appellations. Yet, notwithstanding his personal excesses, the reign of Caracalla deserves to be noticed as an epoch in Roman jurisprudence. The administration of the wise and learned Papinian extended over the latter years of Severus, and commencement of the following reign, and was distinguished by the application of just principles of law and government. That great jurist himself fell a victim to his young master's jealousy; but to him may probably be ascribed the grand and comprehensive measure by which the boon of citizenship, the cause of so many contests in earlier times, was finally extended to the whole mass of the free population throughout the empire. It is true that this concession was no longer regarded as a favour. It conferred no privilege or exemption, as in days of yore; on the contrary, it brought all the subjects of the emperor within the scope of the direct tax on successions, which had been imposed by Augustus on the citizens of Rome only. But the effect of this great measure was to obliterate henceforth all distinctions of descent and race, and complete the fusion into a single nation of a hundred millions of civilized men.

The deed of blood had been accomplished on the borders of Syria, where the emperor was engaged in leading an expedition against the Parthians. Severus had enjoined his son to pay court to the soldiers, and despise all other classes of his subjects; and the army, which was attached to him, would not have conferred his power on Macrinus had it been aware that the assassination had been committed at that chief's instigation. Macrinus, however, as the ablest of its officers, was now chosen for the command; and the distant Senate was informed, probably with no punctilious phrases, that a new ruler had succeeded to the throne of the Caesars. The Senate would have offered no resistance; but in fact it had not time to resist. The news of the election could hardly have reached Rome when Macrinus himself fell by a revolt of the province in favour of a cousin of Caracalla, a Syrian by birth, Elagabalus, priest of the Sun at Emesa, who bore himself the name of the divinity he was appointed to serve. It was time that all the nations of the empire should coalesce into one when their rulers were thus repeatedly chosen from the provinces. Trajan and Aurelius had been Spaniards, Antoninus a Gaul, Severus an African. But these men were great themselves, and the nations to which they belonged deserved to be respected by the Romans. Elagabalus was a miserable stripling, without virtue or talent; and the Syrians, as a people, were despised for their effeminacy and profligacy. The claim of affinity with Severus was the sole recommendation this unworthy creature possessed; but his grandmother Messa was a clever intriguer, and played on the affections of the soldiery, who eagerly embraced his cause. They quickly overthrew the upstart Macrinus, who perished with his son and associate Diadumenianus. Macrinus had already purchased peace from Parthia. The soldiers carried their new emperor to Rome, where he speedily immersed himself in the vilest and most disgusting debauchery. The majesty of the purple, often as it had been sullied by stains of every kind, was never perhaps so utterly prostituted and degraded as by the nameless enormities of Elagabalus. For four years the praetorians endured him; then even their patience was exhausted, and they rose and slew him ignominiously.

The empire was now offered to another scion of the Alexander stock which claimed connection with Severus. Messa, the sister of that emperor's consort, had had two daughters. Soemias, the elder, was the mother of Elagabalus; the younger, Mamaea, had borne Alexander Severus, whose character throws one bright though transient gleam over this gloomy period. Under the prudent training of his mother, this prince had unfolded both virtues and abilities; and he continued to profit on the throne by the lessons he still permitted her to instill into him. With the aid of Ulpian and other illustrious jurists, he carried on the great work of Roman legislation; the sole but sufficient token which enables us to augur that, amidst the depravity of its rulers and the violence of its soldiers, the empire was still the cherished home of private graces and tranquil enjoyments. The rescripts of Alexander himself, and the digests of his ministers, are more significant monuments of the civilization of the age than the baths, the columns, and the palaces which continued to be raised to the vanity of princes, or for the gratification of the populace. The reign of this gallant emperor was prosperous both in peace and war, but he too was required to buckle on his armour for a contest in the East. The revolution, indeed, by which the dynasty of the Parthian Arsaces was overthrown, and the Sassanids, in Parthia, a native race, succeeded to power at Seleucia, was an augury of evil days to come. The great Eastern Empire, henceforth no longer Parthian, but Persian once more, as of old, sprang up in renewed vigour, and inflicted, under succeeding rulers, many terrible blows on Rome.

The last of the Alexanders gained, however, a great victory over the foes of his illustrious namesake, and returned to celebrate a triumph in the Capitol. Scarcely had he enjoyed the reward of his bravery, when he was summoned to repel another attack of the Germans on the Rhine, and the necessary enforcement of discipline caused a mutiny among the enraged legions on that long peaceful frontier, in which he unfortunately lost his life. His reign had lasted thirteen years, and for that brief space his prudence and vigour had arrested the decline, now too clearly apparent, of the empire. It had now become abundantly manifest that it was by the soldiers alone that an emperor could be made, and that the soldiers themselves could not long endure the creatures of their own making. The long list of military princes who now follow in rapid succession presents us with one or two names only that command the slightest respect; while the events of our history become as uninteresting as the characters of the chief actors in them. A rapid glance will suffice for the period of half a

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1 By this number we intend to specify approximately the whole population of the empire. Of course it will be understood that the slaves, included properly in the total of the population, are excluded from citizenship. Of the numbers of this class it is impossible to form any calculation. The guess of Gibbon and others, that the slaves were as numerous as the freemen throughout the empire, is wholly gratuitous, and appears to us extremely wide of the mark. In the great cities, in Italy, and in some special districts, they were undoubtedly numerous, though nowhere, we conceive, did they approach at all near to this proportion. But throughout the greater part of the provinces they must have formed but a small section of the population. In this respect the condition of modern Turkey presents perhaps the nearest analogy we can discover with the Roman empire in the third century; and our statisticians have not generally thought it worth while, in enumerating the elements of population in Turkey, to take any account of the slaves at all. Possibly the slaves in Rome might be one-third, those in Italy one-fifth, those in the provinces generally one-tenth or even one-twentieth of the whole numbers. century, from the death of Alexander in 235, to the accession of Diocletian in 284.

LIII.—ATTEMPTS OF THE SENATE TO RECOVER AUTHORITY.

Such is the variety of names which now rapidly succeed one another at the head of the Roman world, that it will be well to divide the period on which we now enter into two parts, according to the leading features which distinguish it. The first comprises the attempts of the Senate to resume its sovereignty over the empire; the second signalizes the efforts of the generals, when these attempts have completely failed, to secure the permanence of military supremacy by restoring the discipline and subordination of the soldiers. The elevation of the Thracian peasant caused an unwonted shock to the susceptibilities of the Roman nobles; and if their disgust was enhanced by the report of his severities and barbarous violence, they were encouraged to make head against him by his continued absence from Italy, which, during his short career of undisputed power, he did not even deign to visit. It was not from the Senate, however, or in Italy, that the movement against Maximin arose. While he was occupied with military operations on the northern frontiers, the chief inhabitants of Africa raised an aged noble named Gordianus to the purple, in which they associated with him his son, and invoked the Senate of Rome to accept him as their leader against the emperor of the army. The Senate acquiesced; denounced Maximin as a usurper, and called on all the provinces to rise against him. The summons was not ineffectual. Maximin found himself deserted both by provinces and armies. But a fresh insurrection in Africa cut off both his rivals; and when he led his troops into Italy, and besieged Aquileia, he found himself opposed, not by the Gordians, but by Maximinus and Balbinus, whom the Senate hastily elected in their place. Maximin fell in a camp mutiny; Maximus and Balbinus were slain soon afterwards in a military insurrection; but a third Gordian, a mere stripling, had been already associated with them, out of respect for the great virtues of the grandfather, and the soldiers suffered this nominee of the Senate to retain possession of the purple. The third Gordian was amiable, but probably weak in disposition. The reins of power were held for him with a strong hand by his prefect Mistrithes; and the government was conducted, while this man lived, with credit and success. The formidable attitude of the Persians called the emperor to the Syrian frontier. Mistrithes was cut off by the intrigues of Julius Philippus; and when this man succeeded to the post of prefect, the emperor fell helplessly into his power, and was soon sacrificed to his ambition. Philip, who now seized the empire, was a native of Bostra. He is generally called "the Arab," but it is not necessary to suppose that he was of Arabian extraction. At all events, he was received without a murmur by the Senate, whose feelings were gratified, no doubt, by the celebration of the Secular games, which he instituted in 248, on the thousandth anniversary, for so it was reckoned, of the foundations. The government of this emperor was mild and prudent. Some Christian writers have claimed him for a convert. If the evidence for the fact is slender, the arguments against it may be dismissed as nugatory; but the Christians, it may be enough to remark, were disposed to speak favourably of the victim of a man who was notorious as one of their fiercest persecutors. Philip fell in a military insurrection, and was succeeded by Trajanus Decius, an excellent officer, and a man of genuine Roman descent. Thus recommended to both the soldiers and the Senate, he confirmed the predilection of the first by the bravery with which he made head against the attacks, now renewed year by year, of the Goths and Sarmatians in the north; and of the latter, by the sweeping attack he made against the long-hated sect of the Christians, of whom we have for some time lost sight in our history.

The Christians, harmless as they were both socially and politically, had been objects of popular hatred from the time when they were first confounded in the common apprehension of the turbulent and rebellious Jews. They had fallen Christians, under the suspicions of emperors and prefects, and had often been required to make proof of their loyalty by performing acts of heathen sacrifice, or swearing by the imperial name; and the firmness with which, on such occasions, they had maintained their religious principles had consigned them too often to tortures and death. More than once the anger and alarm of the civil authorities had prompted still further inquisition into the tenets of the new sect, and from single and occasional cases of violence the persecution had extended to congregations and communities. It is probable, however, that the persecution was first general under Decius; and we may believe that to the vigorous and systematic effort this emperor made for the suppression of the true faith he was prompted not only by his wish to conciliate the nobles at Rome, but by a long-growing persuasion that the evils which afflicted the empire might be traced to the alleged impiety of these reputed fanatics. The recent celebration of the secular games had given a stimulus to Roman superstition; and this now wreaked itself, without stint or scruple, on the unresisting victims, whose marked indisposition to enroll themselves in the military service of the state rendered them doubly objects of suspicion in the general panic which prevailed throughout the empire. For this panic, indeed, there were sufficient grounds, both within and without. The northern nations, then known under the names of the Quadi and Marcomanni, had been controlled by M. Aurelius, and had remained generally quiescent during the seventy years which had followed; but now the Franks, the Goths, and Great in the Alemanni were pouring in ever-increasing numbers across the Rhine and Danube; the inundation, long pent-barbarians, up, had gathered force and volume, and threatened to overflow the whole empire. The resources of the government, first shaken by the long-protracted pestilence of the An-Repeated tonine period, had never been restored. The population pestilences, and wealth of Italy and the provinces continued gradually to decline; but if these distant symptoms of decay were yet hardly visible except to statesmen, the plagues which swept the great cities of the empire in succession, between the years 250 and 265, alarmed men of every class with the prospect of its impending dissolution.

SECT. LIV.—THE EMPERORS OF THE CAMPS (A.D. 251–284).

There was no hope for Rome in the favour of its gods nor in the virtues of its people; but there was still hope in the personal bravery of its captains; and from this time we find, with only one or two interruptions, a remarkable succession of able chiefs at the head of its affairs. Decius fell in battle against the Goths. The legions, satisfied with the late appointments, left the choice of his successor to the Senate, and Gallus purchased a respite from attack by the Gallus payment of tribute to the barbarians. This disgrace was a.d. 251, soon wiped out in his blood. Valerian, a favourite officer Valerian of Decius, reigned in his stead. The Franks and Ale- and Galli-manni were checked in the West; but in the East the Goths made an irruption into Greece and Asia Minor, a.d. 253, crossing the Black Sea, and traversing the Hellespont, and were stopped rather by the effects of luxury and climate than by the sword of a descender. When these swarms were cleared away from the fertile lands they had desolated, Valerian had a harder task to perform in hurrying back the Par-sians from Syria. Defeated and taken by Sapor, he was condemned to chains and menial offices, while his son Gallienus, a dissolute youth, refused to arm for his recovery. The advance of the Persians was checked, not by the emperor and the legions of Rome, but by the brave Odenatus, and the still braver Zenobia his wife, the rulers of the tributary kingdom of Palmyra. Elated by his success, and vain of the splendour of his capital in the desert, Odenatus was not content with aspiring to independence, but claimed, it is said, to be associated with Gallienus in the government of the empire. But pretenders to the purple sprang up now in various quarters. The attacks of the barbarians called forth the legions on every frontier into the field, and whenever a victory was gained, or an imposing front assumed by the defenders of the state, there a new emperor was proclaimed, and the submission of the Senate and people demanded. To this host of competitors, most of whom fell quickly by one another's hands, the name of the "thirty tyrants" was popularly given. Their real number was little less than twenty. One of the most successful of them, Aurelius, penetrated into Italy, and Gallienus fell in a tardy attempt to assert his power and dignity against him.

But the usurper was shut up in Milan, and the death of Gallienus served only to raise up a stronger antagonist in the person of M. Aurelius Claudius, whom the Italian forces appointed their commander. Claudius was a man of high military virtue. He destroyed Aurelius, overcame the Germans, and totally routed the Goths in the great battle of Nissa, from which he derived the title of "Gothicus." But this brave chief was speedily cut off by sickness on his route to the East. Claudius breathed his last at Sirmium on the Danube, and it was at Sirmium that Aurelian, his illustrious successor, had been born. This man, the son of an Illyrian peasant, was one of the greatest, as he was almost the last, of the heroes of the Roman legions. He was intelligent as well as brave; and after defeating a fresh attack of the Goths, he recognised the policy of withdrawing the outposts of the empire from beyond the Danube, and finally renounced the conquests of Trajan in Dacia, which seem to have been re-occupied after the time of Hadrian. A still more urgent necessity compelled him to admit into his pay large bodies of these formidable enemies, which, for a time at least, added fresh vigour to the Roman arms. Aurelian led his forces against the Queen of Palmyra, Odenatus being now dead. Though gallantly resisted, he overcame his presumptuous rival, and exhibited Zenobia in his triumph at Rome. He continued to rule with vigour and discretion; but the barbaric inundation was still swelling on the frontiers, and at last a body of Alamanni burst into Italy, and advanced for a moment within the confines of Umbria. At this crisis the safety of the city itself seemed in question. Aurelian condescended to secure it by tracing the ample lines of fortification which now for the first time encompassed the capital of Augustus and Trajan. But the legions, under a chief like Aurelian, formed still a stronger rampart than brick or stone. The Alamanni were speedily repulsed. Aurelian was summoned soon afterwards into the East; but while leading an expedition against the Persians he was assassinated in his tent, at the instigation of his secretary Mnestheus. The soldiers lamented his loss, and avenged it with the blood of the assassins. They paid a higher tribute of respect to his memory by awaiting six months the election of his successor by the Senate. When that body placed the victorious but aged Tacitus at their head, they cheerfully acquiesced in the well-meant but imprudent choice. Tacitus led his troops manfully against the Scythian Alan. He was victorious in battle; but the fatigues of the campaign were too much for his enfeebled powers, and he died of exhaustion in the course of a few months.

The army now chose their own leader, and they also chose well. Aurelius Probus was accepted by the Senate, and Florianus, the brother of Tacitus, who had assumed the purple, without authority either from the one power or the other, relinquished the contest he had provoked by a voluntary death. Probus, like Aurelian, was a native of Sirmium, and he proved himself worthy of military rule,—the only rule now possible,—by his skill, his bravery, and his hardy virtues. During a short but active reign of six years he defeated the Germans on the Rhine and Danube, and constructed, or rather repaired, the rampart which connected those rivers. He overthrew the Goths; and, passing from the West to the East, led his forces against the Persians. From this enemy he extorted an honourable peace, and then, having put down some competitors for power, employed his legions in draining marshes and planting vineyards. But the discipline he enforced, and the wholesome labours he required, alike disgusted his licentious warriors; and Probus, who never quitted the camp, lost his life in a mutiny.

The head-quarters of the deceased monarch were again the spot on which his successor was to be elected. The choice of the soldiers fell once more on a rude but valiant soldier named Carus, and the Senate once more ratified it Carus, without a murmur. These warrior-princes paid no attention to Rome, and the nobles of the city had discovered that if they lost in dignity, they were gainers by their absence in ease and security. The movements of the army, wholly recruited and supplied from the frontier provinces, were regarded with little interest by the voluptuaries of the capital. These unworthy Romans were content to leave the task of defending the empire to men who claimed from them only a few empty titles in token of their submission. Carus, associating with himself his sons Carinus and Numerianus, gained some fresh victories over the Goths. Leaving Carinus in the West, he again confronted and overthrew the Persians. He advanced as far as Ctesiphon on the Tigris, where his career was suddenly arrested by a stroke of lightning, according to the popular account, but more probably by some secret conspiracy. The sons of Carus were unable to retain the diadem of their father; Numerianus was slain by his prefect Aper, though his death was speedily avenged by Diocletian. The soldiers in the East immediately proclaimed this man their emperor, regardless of the claims of Carinus, which were supported by the armies in the West. The contending powers met on the plains of Moesia. Diocletian was worsted in battle; but in the moment of his success Carinus was slain by an officer whose wife he had dishonoured; and thus suddenly deprived of a leader, the victorious legions united with the vanquished in acknowledging the surviving candidate.

Sect. LV.—The Empire Re-constituted by Diocletian (A.D. 284–305).

The accession of Diocletian to power marks the last great epoch in the history of the Roman empire. Hitherto, however intrinsically weak, the Senate had found opportunities for putting forth its claims to authority; if it was but rarely allowed to exercise its cherished prerogative of election to the throne, it was still regarded as the legitimate centre of administration, the fountain of law and social order. There was at least no constituted authority to oppose it. The chosen of the legions had been for some time past the commander of an army rather than the sovereign of the state. He had seldom quitted the camp, rarely or never presented himself in the capital; content with the provision for his own pride and power extorted from the provinces in which he quartered himself, he had allowed the ordinary march of government to proceed in its usual routine; the social fabric continued to be upheld in Italy and throughout the provinces by the force impressed upon them by the Antonines. But this was the torpor of decrepitude, not the tranquillity of contentment. The provinces lay at the mercy of the armies of the frontier; and the empire might split asunder at any moment into as many kingdoms as there were armies, unless the chiefs of the legions felt themselves controlled by the strength or genius of one more eminent than the rest. We have noticed many local revolts, and no doubt many more of the kind were constantly occurring. Gaul, Britain, Africa, or Egypt were more than once the prey of soldiers who aspired to become independent sovereigns; the chief of the strongest camp and largest army, who called himself the emperor, found prompter aid in the daggers of assassins than in the swords of his own legionaries: his opponents were generally struck down by their own unruly followers; and it was by fortune rather than by any controlling principle of cohesion that the frame of the empire was still held together. The danger of disruption was becoming from year to year more imminent, when Diocletian arose to re-establish the organic connection of the parts, and breathe a new life into the heart of the empire.

A jealous edict of Gallicus had forbidden the senators to take service in the army or to quit the limits of Italy. The degradation of that once illustrious order, which was thus made incapable of furnishing a candidate for the empire, was completed by the indolent acquiescence of its members in this disqualifying ordinance. The nobles of Rome relinquished all interest in affairs which they could no longer aspire to conduct. The emperors, on their part, ceased to regard them as a substantive power in the empire; and in constructing the new imperial constitution Diocletian wholly overlooked their existence. Nevertheless it would seem that he was still haunted by the undying tradition of the majesty of Rome itself, and it seemed more fitting to abstain from visiting the city than to take up his residence there without paying due respect to the Senate, which was still enthroned on its seven hills. While he disregarded the possibility of opposition at Rome, he contrived a new check upon the rivalry of his distant lieutenants, by associating three other chiefs with himself, welded together by strict alliances into one imperial family, each of whom should take up his residence in a different quarter of the empire, and combine with all the rest in maintaining their common interest. His first step was to choose a single colleague in the person of a brave soldier of obscure origin, an Illyrian peasant like himself, by name Maximian, whom he invested with the title of Augustus, in the year 286. The associated rulers assumed at the same time the epithets of Jovius and Herculeus; auspicious names, which made them perhaps popular in the camp. Maximian was deputed to control the legions in Gaul, and to make head against the revolt of Carausius in Britain, while Diocletian opposed the enemies or pretenders who were now rising up in various quarters in the East. His dangers multiplied, and again the powers of the empire were subdivided to meet them. In the year 292 Diocletian created two Caesars: the one, Galerius, to act subordinately to himself in the East; the other, Constantius Chlorus, to divide the government of the western provinces with Maximian. The Caesars were bound more closely to the Augusti by receiving their daughters in marriage; but, though they acknowledged each a superior in his own half of the empire, and admitted a certain supremacy of Diocletian over all, yet each enjoyed monarchical sway in his own territories, and each established a court and capital as well as an army and a camp. Diocletian retained the richest and most tranquil portion of the empire, and reigned in Nicomedia (now Asia Minor), Syria, and Egypt; while he entrusted to the Caesar Galerius, established in Sirmium, the more exposed provinces on the Danube. Maximian occupied Italy, the islands, and Africa, stationing himself however not in Rome, but at Milan. Constantius was required to defend the Rhenish frontier; and the martial provinces of Gaul, Spain, and Britain were given him to furnish the forces necessary for the maintenance of that important trust. The capital of the western Caesar was fixed at Trèves. Inspired with a common interest, and controlled by the superior genius of Diocletian himself, all the emperors acted with vigour in their respective provinces. Diocletian recovered Alexandria, and quelled the revolt of Egypt. Maximian routed the unruly hordes of Mauritania, and overthrew a pretender to the purple in that quarter. Constantius discomfited an invading host of Alemanni, and wrested Britain from the hands of Allectus. Galerius brought the legions of Illyricum to the defence of Syria against the Persians, and though once defeated in the plains of Carrhae, he succeeded eventually in reducing the enemy to submission. Thus victorious in every quarter of the empire, Diocletian celebrated the commencement of the twentieth year of his reign with a triumph at Rome, and again taking leave of the city of the Caesars, returned to his customary residence at Nicomedia. The illness with which he was attacked on his journey suggested, or more probably fixed, his resolution to divest of Diocletian himself of the purple; and on the 1st of May, A.D. 305, being then fifty-nine years old, he performed the solemn act of abdication on the spot where he had first assumed the empire at the bidding of his soldiers. Strange to say, he did not renounce the object of his ambition alone. On the same day a similar scene was enacted by his colleague Maximian at Milan; but the abdication of Maximian was not a spontaneous sacrifice, but imposed upon him by the influence or authority of his elder and greater colleague. Diocletian had established the principle of patrimonial succession by which the supreme power was to descend. On the abdication of the two Augusti, the Caesars Constantius and Galerius stepped into their places respectively, while each of them called up another Caesar to supply the posts thus vacated by themselves. Flavius Severus succeeded to Constantius, Maximinus Daza to Galerius. Having seen the completion of all these arrangements, and congratulated himself on the success of his great political experiments, Diocletian crowned his career of wisdom and moderation by confining himself strictly during the remainder of his life to the tranquil enjoyment of a private station. Retiring to the residence he had built for himself at Salona, he found occupation and amusement in the cultivation of his garden; and the story went, that when his more restless colleague solicited him to resume the honours from which he had disengaged them both, he invited him to see the vegetables he had grown, and learn a lesson of simplicity and contentment.

The wisdom and moderation of Diocletian's character have been justly praised, and it is with pain that we notice how he forfeited both the one and the other in his sanguinary persecutions and obstinate persecution of the Christians. The disciples of the true faith were still increasing in numbers; they were continuing more and more to absorb into their body the intelligence, the activity, and the moral force of the empire. Diocletian cannot have been blind to the impossibility of reviving the spirit of heathenism, or raising up in the strongholds either of superstition or philosophy any moral or intellectual force to combat them. Nor can we suppose that he was actuated by the alarms so prevalent as we have seen fifty or a hundred years earlier, when many of the best, and some no doubt of the wisest of the heathens, really believed that the calamities of the empire were caused by the anger of their gods at the impiety tolerated in its bosom. The era of Diocletian, under the sway of a cold and able ruler, was a period of comparative revival and hopefulness. The worst seemed to be past. A better day had dawned. New objects were in view, new principles of government were coming into operation. The Senate of Rome, the stronghold of old and vain tradition, had ceased to exercise any influence in the government. Diocletian had no need to sacrifice to its prepossessions, or to buy its favour by the concession of a principle. The fury which animated three at least of the emperors (for Constantius alone held aloof from the persecution which now raged through three-quarters of the empire) must be traced to a different source. The object of Diocletian's policy was to establish a uniform system of administration, radiating from each centre of government. During the last century the government of the empire had become completely decentralized. Each province had provided for itself; each army had drawn its supplies from its own neighbourhood. The authority of the Senate had hardly extended beyond Italy; the power even of the emperor had generally been limited to the territory in the midst of which his army was quartered. Even Decius and Probus, vigorous as they proved themselves in their own camp, might fear to provoke a resistance which they had not leisure to quell, if they tried to enforce their edicts in Gaul or Africa. But when, by the multiplication of sovereigns, the executive authority was extended once more throughout the empire, it became necessary to show that the imperial power was no longer a mere shadow. The laws were to be enforced, uniformity to be restored, every province and every subject to be made to acknowledge the paramount supremacy of the monarch's will. Christianity, however innocent in act, had become in its forms and in its ideas a state within the state. Whatever the government might think of its opinions, it could not fail to see a rival in its organization. Counts and prefects were jealous of metropolitans and bishops; and the claims of the church to admit to, or exclude from, a share in privileges of membership, which had now become connected with the enjoyment of benefices and endowments, might seem to trench upon political prerogatives. Having subdued every external enemy and competitor, Diocletian turned his attention to the domestic foe, for as such he regarded it, which had set up a co-ordinate sovereignty within the limits of his own jurisdiction; he proclaimed internecinal war against the Christian society, the extent of which he perhaps miscalculated, the moral power of which he totally misapprehended; and he committed himself to a struggle in which success was impossible, though he did not live himself to know how completely he was defeated.

SECT. LVI.—WARS OF DIOCLETIAN'S SURVIVORS.

Notwithstanding the ability which Diocletian had displayed in the government of the empire, the distribution he made of power on his abdication marks caprice and weakness, and was speedily followed, as might have been expected, by fresh disturbances. Instead of inviting both the Caesars to associate with them princes of their own choice, he had allowed his son-in-law and favourite, Galerius, to nominate both the new candidates, and to pass over the claims of Constantine, the son of Constantius, altogether. The Caesar of the Gaulish provinces was far distant in Britain, and was ill: Galerius expected his death, or ventured to overlook him in his absence; and hoped, by calling creatures of his own to the succession, to secure supreme authority over the whole empire for himself. But the moderation of Constantius, which had made him an object of dislike and jealousy to his unscrupulous colleagues, endeared him to his own subjects as well as to the Christian faction throughout the empire. Great multitudes of the new faith had taken refuge under his sway, and had enjoyed his protection. The legions admired him for his victories over the Alemanni and the Caledonians; and when, at the moment of his death, they proclaimed his son Constantine emperor in their encampment at York, the nomination was received with enthusiasm by the population of the western provinces. Galerius did not venture to oppose this demonstration of feeling. He suffered his new rival to exercise authority in the place of his father, but claimed the right, as the eldest and first of the associated princes, to assign him only the fourth rank among the rulers of the empire, with the subordinate title of Caesar. Constantine was satisfied for the present, and continued for six years (A.D. 306-312) to confine himself to the administration of the Gaulish prefecture. During this period he carried out his father's policy in every particular. He chastised the barbarians in the north of Britain, and put the Roman possessions in that island in a complete state of defence. He flew to the succour of the garrisons on the Rhine, which, on the death of Constantius, were immediately assailed by fresh incursions of the German tribes; and followed up the great victory of Novio by the most terrible massacres of his captives. At the same time he displayed the utmost moderation and clemency towards his subjects, tolerating and protecting the Christians, and remitting the fiscal burdens of all classes of the community. Though personally indifferent perhaps to all forms of religion, he could not fail to mark how great were the numbers, how active the intelligence, of the Christian society, and to feel the miserable impolicy of alienating them by persecution. His vigorous imagination was at the same time kindled by the claim these sectarians advanced to divine interferences and miraculous powers; it is probable also that the deference which their bishops were willing to pay to him as the temporal ruler, while the pagan hierarchy regarded him with undisguised dislike, affected him favourably from the first towards the outward forms of Christianity. While watching his opportunity for raising himself to the highest place in the empire, Constantine was already perhaps meditating terms of alliance with the greatest spiritual influence of the period.

Meanwhile, the Senate also, the centre of heathenism, exhibited for a moment fresh signs of vitality. Afflicting indignation at the claims of its late ruler Maximian being entirely postponed to those of Galerius, it had taken on itself to confer on his son Maxentius the title of Augustus. Maximian himself, defying the remonstrances of the aged Diocletian, issued from his retirement, and re-assumed power, under pretence of lending the weight of his name and experience to the cause of his son. He gave his daughter Fausta in marriage to Constantine, and cemented an alliance between the prefect of Gaul and the claimant of Italy. But no sooner did Maxentius taste of power than he drove his own father out of his dominions; and Constantine suffered his father-in-law to find an asylum in Gaul only on condition of resigning a second time all share in the imperial government.

When, on the report of Constantine's death, the restless verteran again assumed the purple, he was attacked, defeated, and Maximian put to death without remorse by the Gaulish emperor.

The death of Maximian was followed in 311 by that of Death of Galerius, whose painful sickness was ascribed with grim satisfaction by the Christians to a divine visitation. Four Augusti of equal rank now once more shared the empire; but it was immediately apparent that, without the avowed ascendancy of one, in genius if not in power, the rude edifice of the Caesardom must inevitably fall in pieces. The genius, indeed, of Constantine soon proved to be pre-eminent; but his ascendancy was admitted by none of his colleagues, and it remained to be seen whether he had the means of establishing it by force. Maxentius in Italy and Africa, and Maximian in Asia and Egypt, ruled in voluptuous indolence, making themselves more and more detested by the provinces which had fallen under their sway. Severus was already dead, and Galerius had survived to replace him in Illyricum by a Dacian peasant named Licinius, recommended to him by his military abilities and his popularity among the soldiers. This man had now at least discretion enough to ally himself himself with Constantine; he contrived also to leave his new confederate to conduct hostilities against Maxentius alone, while he watched himself from a distance the issue of the contest. Scarcely, indeed, was Galerius dead before the two Augusti of the West rushed into deadly conflict with one another. Constantine crossed the Alps, and gained three successive victo- Constantine had little sympathy for the name of Rome, or for the Senate which represented it; nevertheless, upon entering the old capital of the Caesars in triumph, he affected to restore the consideration of that illustrious but decrepit body, while he took measures for preventing Rome from ever again giving laws to the empire, by disbanding the praetorian guards and destroying their fortified camp. With this military institution the imperial power departed finally from Rome, and the seat of empire was henceforth to be established wherever the emperor should choose to take up his own permanent residence. Master of the West, Constantine was not satisfied till he had brought the East also under his sceptre. His rival Licinius equalled him in ambition, but neither in ability nor fortune. During the contest in Italy the prefect of Illyricum had been prosecuting his own views of conquest no less successfully in Asia. He had overthrown Maximin, and seized all the eastern provinces of the empire, confirming his victory by the massacre of all the children of Galerius and Severus, as well as of Maximin himself. So far did he carry his precautions as to insist on the execution of the widow and daughter of Diocletian. Thus triumphant in opposite quarters of the empire, the two competitors were equally prepared for a struggle with one another. In the first contest between them, Constantine wrested Illyricum from Licinius. After an interval of eight years, war was renewed. Licinius was overthrown in the great battle of Adrianople, in the year 323; but his spirit was still unbroken, and while Constantine was occupied in the siege of Byzantium, he collected a numerous force of raw levies to try his fortune in another field. The battle of Chrysopolis brought the contest to a final decision. Licinius was deprived of his imperial honours, and permitted to retire to Thessalonica, there to pass the remainder of his days in a private station. But Constantine had not magnanimity enough to observe the conditions he had imposed on himself. The deposed emperor was soon afterwards accused of intriguing with foreign powers for his restoration, and the victor did not scruple to secure his own supremacy by putting his last rival to death. The family compact devised by the astute Diocletian resulted, in the second generation, in the re-establishment of an undivided monarchy.

SECT. LVII.—UNION OF THE EMPIRE UNDER CONSTANTINE.

Conscious of his own energy and abilities, and sensible of the inherent weakness of the scheme for dividing the imperial powers devised by his predecessor, Constantine determined to retain in his own hand the sceptre of the united empire, while he contrived a more elaborate scheme for lightening the burden it imposed upon him. The original policy of Augustus, according to which the emperor was regarded as the delegate of the state, and his functions were only those of the various popular magistracies combined together in one person, had become utterly obliterated for at least a century. The specious constitutionalism of the early Caesars had vanished, but no organized system of despotism had been substituted in its place. The chiefs of the state had been content, as we have seen, to rule with the sword, and to announce their caprices from the camp. In return, their title had received no sanction in the feelings of their subjects. They had been accepted by the Senate and the people as emperors de facto, but no idea of right had clung to their names and titles, no honour had been paid to their families, no respect shown to their memories. The notion of monarchical government had been in a state of transition; the old foundations had perished; it remained for Constantine to replace them with the ideas of hereditary succession, of divine right, and of organized administration, upon which they have subsisted throughout Europe to the present day.

It was only in the oriental courts that the imperial reformer could find the exemplar of government by which to shape his own system. He surrounded his own person with the pomp and ceremony of Asiatic sovereignty, affecting the reserve of a superior being, and allowing access to him only through a crowd of eunuchs, chamberlains, and ministers. The old Roman idea of the essential equality of the emperor and his chief nobles was entirely swept away. A complete separation was made between the civil and military authorities; and again the vital principle of the ancient republic, according to which every citizen was a soldier, and the chief civil magistracies wielded the power of the sword, was finally abolished. All the great offices of state were accordingly re-modelled, with new titles suited to the new arrangements. They were classed in the three ranks of Illustres, Spectabiles, and Clarissimae, and distributed among the three departments of the court, the army, and the civil service. The officers of the court and of state were chiefly the lords of the bed-chamber and the palace, with special ministers of finance, of justice, of the interior, of the crown revenues, and of the household guards. The army was controlled by a commander-in-chief, assisted by generals of infantry and generals of cavalry; and below these were officers of inferior rank, known as dukes (duces) and counts (comites), Dukes and Counts.

The civil department was divided into four great prefectures: those of the east, including Thrace and the Asiatic Prefectures provinces; of Italy, comprising Italy, Rhaetia, Noricum, and dio- and Africa; of Illyricum, embracing Illyricum, Pannonia, ceses. Macedonia, and Greece; and of Gaul, which comprehended the provinces of western Europe. Under the four prefects were thirteen high functionaries, who presided over the thirteen dioceses into which the prefectures were sub-divided, and who were known by the titles of comites or vicarii. Asia, Africa, and Achaia were governed by proconsuls, and the whole number of provinces, each under a separate but dependent governor, a proconsul, a corrector, a consularis, or a praesidens, amounted to 117. The department of the imperial court was occupied by seven high functionaries, of a character entirely new in the history of the Roman monarchy. The chief of these was the praepositus sacri cubiculi, or lord chamberlain; next to him the magister officiorum, who may be compared to a modern minister of home affairs; the quaestor, or lord chancellor and keeper of the seals; the comes sacra-rum largitionum, or chancellor of the public exchequer; the comes rerum privatrarum divinae domus, or lord of the privy purse; and finally, two comites domesticorum, or captains of the imperial body-guard. While the machinery of government was thus re-constructed, the finances by which it was to be kept in motion were placed upon a new footing. We may suppose that for many years the collection of the revenues had fallen into the utmost confusion. It had become necessary to review the entire basis of the land-tax, the most permanent and certain source of the Indictions, imperial revenues; and the Indictions, or fifteen years' settlements, which became important eras for the chronology of succeeding ages, are dated from the acquisition of Italy by Constantine, in the year 312. The Christian church, which the emperor determined to convert into a great instrument of government, was already modelled to his hand in the hierarchical form in which he desired to cast the state. Its metropolitans, its primates, archbishops and bishops, with the inferior classes of clergy, formed a spiritual subordination of powers similar to that which he introduced into the civil administration, and quite unlike anything which had existed in the sacerdotal arrangements of Greek and Roman antiquity. The Romans had never recognised a distinction between clergy and laity; they had never admitted the powers of priestly absolution or excommunication; the idea of a spiritual authority independent of the civil was totally alien from their views of polity. But undoubtedly the spread of Christian ideas, and the gradual decay of those which were most essentially opposed to them, had rendered these principles more and more familiar to subjects and rulers; and Constantine was struck with the vast influence they evidently exercised over the minds of their votaries, and was prepared to subject his own fervid imagination to their control. When he found that the Christian priesthood had discovered a way of reconciling their own spiritual claims with a technical supremacy in the ruler of the state, he was satisfied with the terms of the alliance they offered to him, and quickly determined to exchange the toleration he had already extended to their religion for special favour and formal establishment. The revenues bequeathed in past times by private piety to the uses of Christian worship, which had been confiscated under the persecutors of the faith, were sedulously restored, the Christian temples repaired and reopened, many public halls or basilicas especially appropriated to Christian use, and fresh endowments secured to them; the bishops and ministers of the Christian religion were invited to court, and placed in situations of trust and favour about the emperor's person. On the other hand, the institutions of pagan worship were placed under many jealous restrictions; the old distinction between public and private, licensed and unlicensed cults, was harshly enforced, and many shrines shut up, many special services abolished. The civil laws against immorality and indecency were applied to many licentious usages connected with the heathen ceremonies; and, disconcerted as the ancient worship was by the emperor and the court, it may be supposed that the magistrates were often tempted to stretch the powers accorded them by legislative enactments to the control and even the persecution of the falling faith.

Personally, indeed, Constantine still halted between two opinions. Up to the age of forty at least (A.D. 314), he continued to make public profession of paganism, although he had already struck severe blows against its interests as well as its pride of exclusiveness. His devotion was divided between the gods of Olympus on the one hand, and Christ and the saints of Christendom on the other. As late as the year 321 he insisted on consulting the Haruspices. The consolidation of his power confirmed his wavering confidence in the Being whose favour he was assured he had gained, even by the limited honour he had paid to him. After the defeat of Licinius he surrendered his conscience to his favourite bishop, Eusebius of Cesarea, allowed his children to be educated as Christians, and assumed without scruple the headship of the Church and the presidency in its councils, which its rulers freely tendered to him. It was not, however, till he felt the approaches of a mortal disease, in the sixty-third year of his life, that he finally enrolled himself among the converts to Christianity, by submitting to the rite of baptism, which he was taught to regard as the pledge of a blessed death rather than the token of a new life.

The policy indeed of the emperor, raised to a precarious elevation, and maintaining himself by force or craft against innumerable jealousies and animosities, was constantly demanding the perpetration of some crime which struck his awakened conscience with horror and alarm, though he had not courage and religious confidence to repudiate it. His execution of his son Crispus is still the deepest stain upon Death of a character which, notwithstanding its many great qualities, Crispus must ever be subject to the charge of dissimulation and cruelty. There seems reason for questioning the justice of the charge commonly made against him, of having caused the assassination of his wife Fausta; and generally we must remember that the hostility of the pagan writers is quite as marked in their account of this prince as the favour of the Christians. It is to the encomiums of the latter, no doubt, that he owes the appellation of "the Great," which has been appended in after-ages to his name; nevertheless so distinguished a title is not undeserved by one who, not to mention his claims to the respect of Christian posterity, effected the consolidation of a vast unwieldy empire by his personal valour and ability, and maintained it in honour and prosperity against all enemies, foreign and domestic, for more than thirty years. In the history of the Christian church he assumes a prominent place, from the zeal with which he devoted himself to adjusting the dogmatic differences which prevailed in it during his reign; and especially from the council of Nicaea, at which he presided in the year Council of 325, in which the orthodox creed was triumphantly established. But with this, and with the controversies which followed, the history of Rome has nothing to do. We have felt, during our account of the last hundred years or more, how far we have drifted away from the ideas which animated the records of Rome during the earlier periods of her existence. We can with difficulty recognise any bond of continuity between the Rome of the lower empire and that of Augustus and the Scipios. From the time that all the subjects of the empire became comprehended in a common citizenship we have lost all interest in the name of Romans. Since the edict of Gallienus, which interdicted military service to the senators, we have ceased to regard the nobles of the capital as an element in the polity of the state. The armies of the empire have long been composed almost wholly of subsidized barbarians, and been led almost without exception by provincials, half-barbarian themselves. Roman literature, which revived from the false taste of the silver age of Nero and Domitian, and produced a school at least of correct imitators under the Antonines and Severi, perished utterly in the age which followed, or was transferred to the camp of the Christians, and became the inheritance of Gauls, Africans, and Asiatics. The contempt and decrepitude into which Rome had fallen is finally marked by the incident, which may on some accounts be considered the most memorable in the memorable reign of Constantine,—the foundation of the new Rome on the Bosphorus, to which he gave the name of Constantinople, and which he made the seat of his government and the capital of the Roman empire. It was in the year 330 that this revolution was effected. Though Rome, as we have seen, had long ceased to be the residence even of the western emperors, her influence, and in some sense her authority, as a metropolis, might still be recognised as long as no rival was formally installed in the place of honour she had so long held unquestioned. The removal of the seat of empire to the East carried away many of the ancient families still surviving in the palaces of the republic; it converted the descendants, if any still remained, of the Claudii and Cornelii into Greeks and Asiatics. It left to Conelusion ancient Rome her name, her buildings, a more obstinate attachment to old forms and traditions, to the old pagan cult, and to the observation of heathen auguries; but it broke for ever the continuity of her political history, which must henceforth be transferred to another centre, and assume another title. (See CONSTANTINOPOLITAN HISTORY.)

(C. M.)