of his other works have been translated into English by George Bancroft, and an English edition of his most important works was published in London (7 vols., 1845-1854).

"Heeren," writes Lloyd Sanders, "was one of the first, and by no means one of the least, of great German historians of the present century. Perceiving that history ought to be something more than description of battles and treaties, of the sorrows and joys of kings, or at best hasty generalizations on the facts accumulated in the course of a few months' reading, he encouraged long and systematic study. He showed many subsequent historians the way in which to walk."

THE INFLUENCE OF HOMER ON THE GREEKS.

It was Homer who formed the character of the Greek nation. No poet has ever, as a poet, exercised a similar influence over his countrymen. Prophets, lawgivers, and sages have formed the character of other nations; is was reserved to a poet to form that of the Greeks. This is a trait in their character, which could not be wholly erased even in the period of their degeneracy. When lawgivers and sages appeared in Greece, the work of the poet had already been accomplished; and they paid homage to his superior genius. He held up before his nation the mirror, in which they were to behold the world of gods and heroes, no less than of feeble mortals, and to behold them reflected with purity and truth. His poems are founded on the first feelings of human nature; on the love of children, spouse, and country; on that passion which overweighs all others, the love of glory. His songs were poured forth from a breast which sympathized with all the feelings of man; and therefore they enter, and will continue to enter, every breast which cherishes the same sympathies. If it is granted to his immortal spirit, from another heaven than any of which he dreamed on earth, to look down on his race, to see the nations from the fields of Asia, to the forests of Her

cynia, performing pilgrimages to the fountain which his magic wand caused to flow; if it is permitted to him to overlook the whole harvest of grand, of elevated, of glorious productions, which have been called into being by means of his song; wherever his immortal spirit may reside, nothing more can be required to complete his happiness.

Wherever writing is known, where it is used for the purpose of preserving poems, and thus a poetic literature is formed, the muse loses her youthful freshness. Works of the greatest merit may still be produced; but poetry exerts its full influence only so long as it is considered inseparable from song and recitation. The Homeric poems were therefore so far from having produced a less considerable effect, because they for a long time were not written down, that the source of their strength lay in this very circumstance. They entered. the memory and soul of the nation. If we were better acquainted with the forms of social life which were prevalent in the cities of Ionia, and with which poetry necessarily stood in the closest union, we should be able to judge more definitely of its effects. The nature of things seems to show, that there, as in the mother country, they must have been sung at festivals and assemblies, whether public or private. The custom was so deeply fixed in the nation, that it continued long after these poems were committed to writing, and were thus accessible to a reader, and in fact, that it was declamation which continued to give them their full effect. We need but to call to mind the remark which Ion, the rhapsodist, makes to Socrates: "I see the hearers now weep and now rise in passion, and appear as if deprived of sensation." If the rhapsodists, in an age when all that was divine in their art had passed away, and when they sang only for money, could produce such effects, how great must have been their influence in the period of their greatest glory.

Little confidence as we may place in the life of Homer attributed to Herodotus, and several other writings, it is still remarkable, that all unite in describing the fortunes of the poet during his lifetime, as by no means splendid. But his songs continue to live, and, probably in the very first century after the poet, were carried by

Lycurgus into the Peloponnesus; and from the same school other epic poets also started up, whose works have been swallowed by the stream of time. A happy accident has preserved for us the general contents of a few of them; but though these accounts are meagre, we may still infer from them, that even among the ancients, they are chiefly of interest to the professed student of literature, and that they never gained any claim to be called national poems. But the works of these, and so many others, of whom we know only the names, show how generally epic poetry was extended among the nation. After the epic language had once been perfected by Homer, it remained peculiar to this kind of poetry; and when we read the works of much later poets, of Quintus, or of Nonnus, we might believe ourselves employed on authors many centuries older than they, had we not other evidence beside their language to fix the period in which they lived. That the dialect of Homer remained the principal one for this class of poetry, had an important influence on Grecian literature. Amidst all the changes and improvements in language, it prevented the ancient from becoming antiquated, and secured it a place among the later modes of expression. This was a gain for the language and for the nation. With the dialect of Homer, his spirit continued in some measure to live among the epic poets. Language cannot of itself make a poet; but yet how much depends on language. If in those later poets we occasionally hear echoes of Homer, is it not sometimes his spirit which addresses us?

But his influence on the spirit of his countrymen was much more important than his influence on their language. He had delineated the world of heroes in colors which can never fade. He had made it present to posterity and thus the artist and the tragic poet found a sphere opened for the employment of their powers of representation. And the scenes from which they drew their subjects, could not have remained foreign to their countrymen. We do but touch on this subject, in order to say something on the point which lies particularly within the circle of our inquiries; the influence which Homer and the epic poets exercised on the political character of their countrymen.

When we compare the scanty fragments that are still extant, respecting the circulation and preservation of the poems of Homer, it is remarkable that in Hellas itself, the lawgivers and rulers were the most active in making them known and in saving them from perishing. Lycurgus, we are told, was the first who introduced them into the Peloponnesus by means of the rhapsodists; Solon esteemed the subject so important, that in his code of laws, he formed distinct regulations, in conformity to which it seems probable that the several rhapsodies were recited, not as before without method, but in their natural order, by several rhapsodists, who relieved each other at intervals. All this prepared for the undertaking of Pisistratus; who, according to the accounts of the ancients, not only arranged the poems of Homer, but gained a claim to the eternal gratitude of posterity, by committing them to writing.

This care in those illustrious men did not result from a mere admiration of poetry. That it was connected with their political views, if it needs such confirmation, appears from the circumstance that Solon introduces it into his laws. Were we to form judgment on this subject from the narrow views of our own times, it would seem strange, that they who founded or confirmed the government of a number, even a democracy, should have labored to extend the productions of a bard who was opposed to their principles, and declares his political creed without disguise; "no good comes of the government of the many; let one be ruler, and one be king; " and in whose works, as we have already remarked, republicanism finds no support. But their views were not so limited. Their object was not to confirm, by means of the poet, their own institutions and their own laws. They desired to animate their nation with a love for excellence and sublimity. Poetry and song, indissolubly united, seemed to them the fittest means of gaining that end. These had the greatest influence on the intellectual culture of the people. And if that culture lay within the sphere of the Grecian lawgivers (and it always did, though in different degrees), of what importance in their eyes must that poet have been, whose poems, above all others, were recited by the class of rhapsodists, that lent a glory to the national

festivals and assemblies? Solon, himself one of the first of moral poets, could not but perceive how much experience and knowledge of the world are contained in those books, with which youth is begun, and to which age returns. No fear was entertained, lest the narrations respecting the gods should be injurious to morals; although that fear afterward induced Plato to banish them from his republic; the philosopher who but for Homer never could have become Plato. For, as we have already remarked, the gods were not held up as models for imitation. But whilst the people was enriching itself with that infinite treasure of practical wisdom, it continued at the same time to live in a world of heroes, and to preserve a taste for objects of beauty. It is impossible to estimate the consequences which resulted from this, the gain of the nation as a nation, by the encouragement of its warlike spirit, by the preservation of its love of liberty and independence. In one respect, those lawgivers were unquestionably in the right; a nation, of which the culture rested on the Iliad and Odyssey, could not easily be reduced to a nation of slaves.-Ideas on the Politics, Intercourse and Trade, etc. Translation of GEORGE BANCROFT.