simplicity. As the poets had done for their heroes, so the great native historians, amongst whom Sallust was the first, rescued from oblivion the exploits and mighty men of Rome. We are justified in asserting that the Romans owed all their knowledge of history to Livy; the charms of whose impassioned eloquence, investing the mighty deeds and victories of their forefathers with the majestic ornaments of republican and civic virtues, were heightened by the wish to discover, in the times of antiquity, that heroic age of which the traces were still visible amongst themselves. In ardour and elevation of character, they were as much superior to the great men of Athens, who exhibit a humiliating contrast in their undeniable failings and weaknesses, as the conquest of whole nations and countries exceeds the angry contests of petty republics. The Persian war was regarded by the Romans as merely a bold romance 3. The middle ages, and the dawn of modern Italy, to whom the Greek historians were unknown, were absorbed in exclusive admiration of the History of Rome; as if fate had decreed a recompense to these ancient heroes for the neglect of their immediate descendants at the period when a foreign system of education was adopted by the state. The veneration with which the ancient Italians, in the dawn of the middle ages, mention the mighty names of Rome, though it betrays a deficiency of learning, is at least simple and unadulterated: they probably

3 Who does not remember the ridicule of Juvenal on this subject?

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felt a nearer alliance to those illustrious spirits, when, without reasoning, or having respect to differences of times and customs, they contemplated them in the relation and almost the form of their contemporaries and fellow-countrymen, just as they saw an unchanged succession of the Cæsars in the modern Roman empire. Dante beheld in Virgil a Lombard of his own days, as the artists of later times clothed the Roman figures of their pictures in modern costume. The people honoured the tomb and memory of Virgil as those of some mighty and beneficent magician. Petrarch himself intentionally cherished the pleasing fallacy of an integrality of national character which time may interrupt, but cannot destroy. He sees, in Stephen Colonna, an ancient Patrician; and, in Rienzi, a tribune of the people. It was not till the following century that the separation was effected between the ancient and the modern; and through the stupendous and universal developement of that age, individuals rapidly attained views of early Roman times as luminous and acute as we can venture to anticipate; however, much has been since discovered to afford us a minuter insight. But from the time of Sigonius, the History of Ancient Rome is little indebted to philologists; it escaped from their hands and became the property, in a few happy instances, of great statesmen, but generally of ordinary historians.

It cannot be concealed, that during these two centuries, this history has considerably lost, rather than gained, in accuracy and extent of information. Those Italian philologists, animated in their whole tempera

ment with the spirit of Ancient Rome, inspired and perceptibly influenced by the classic soil, have traced the shattered edifice from beneath its ruins; and clearing away the rubbish from the pile, restored it in the conceptions of their genius. The want of this mental grasp disfigures the works of those who have written about Roman History as politicians, and has, consequently, injured history itself. Machiavelli's "Discorsi," replete as they are with wisdom and acuteness of judgment, strikingly verify this observation. Whatever be his subjects, he treats them with consummate talent; but he frequently dwells on matters which never had any existence in fact. I mention him especially, because, though he lived in the midst of a philological and learned age, he continued a stranger to its spirit. Montesquieu, with pretensions to minute historical knowledge, and therefore the more dangerous, as the founder of erroneous opinions, abounds with false views, and, in many parts of his narrative, is altogether unworthy of trust. I do not throw out this opinion with the view of depreciating his exalted fame, whose highest quality is, that it must continue still to attract the admiration of the most accurate scholar, however satisfied of the truth of my observation. It will be generally admitted, that we cannot rightly understand the ancients, if we picture to our minds those circumstances of daily life, which are common to us with them, in a form different from that which the same circumstances habitually presented to their eyes. It is evident that we shall perpetually mistake, if we form our ideas of Roman houses, ships, husbandry, trade,

or clothing, or the interior arrangements of domestic life, from the objects which the same words now represent. The Middle Ages fell into similar mistakes, though in fewer instances, because they still preserved a close affinity to ancient times. But the fallacious reasonings, founded on the equivocal use of words, extend much farther than the objects I have mentioned. The Roman ideas which lie at the basis of the national institutions and polity, ideas which, presupposed in the majority of historical narratives, have been very rarely developed, are not less different from ours than the Roman dwelling houses, clothing, and food. And as the Easterns find nothing more difficult than to conceive the idea of a republican constitution, and the Hindoos cannot regard the East India Company as an association of proprietors, but as a princely power, so the most acute of moderns will succeed little better in the history of ancient times, unless they divest themselves of ordinary conceptions and deductions by critical and philological study. We are so little habituated to the relations which existed between the Roman provinces and their governors, that the statesman, who probably alone is capable of consulting history upon such subjects, or of ascertaining the sense of those fragments which remain a mystery to the mere compiler, will himself entertain either false or indistinct and inconclusive ideas, if he neglects or is incompetent to the task of philological research. So different are the rights of proprietary in land and those relating to domains in Ancient Rome, in the peculiarities which they present when compared with our customary

usages and institutions, that the confusion of modern and ancient ideas of property, which Montesquieu falls into as frequently as his predecessor Machiavelli, has introduced notoriously false ideas respecting the most important points of Roman legislation; ideas in consequence of which the voice of justice must pronounce condemnation upon deeds and enterprises, really blameless, or else a feeling of enthusiastic attachment to what is great and sublime must advocate the most pernicious projects and undertakings.

When Greece had fallen under the Roman yoke, her writers by whom the opinions of literary and general society throughout the indolent and defenceless East were regulated, occupied themselves with the question, whether the greatness of Rome had been the gift of fortune, or attained by the independent energy of virtue. It was an idle question, not proposed in the same sense in which it may have been entertained by Mithridates, at a later period, i. e. whether all opposition was not unavailing? whether an unalterable destiny had not marked out Rome as mistress of the world? or whether, equally to be dreaded, the unattainable excellence of her national character, and military institutions did not constantly secure to her the victory? Such questions indeed, could only have been propounded by men who were eager to acquit themselves of reproach for the despicable manner in which they had sunk into degradation. They wished it to be understood, that a want of energy, and virtue, and intelligence, were merely subordinate to the mandates of an irresistible fate, and in this servile spirit they found, like Xanthias in the