with the Jews. The Greek peoples his flowery nature with beautiful, potent, and beneficent beings, which, themselves dependent on a dark, inevitable power, are but idealized forms of human nature. The awful and indistinct idea of an eternal and inscrutable Being is satisfied only by their mythological belief in Fate: and thus man, like a fettered Prometheus, could scorn the power of his divinities, frail and finite as it was, when compared with the blind omnipotence of Destiny.

In this consideration of their character, we have seen the Greeks, like the boy, when ripening into youth, giving by the intellect a direction to the flight of fancy, and thus leading it to a harmonious activity. Harmony is the characteristic of Greek art: moderation, that of their political life. And when Alexander, with his victorious Macedonians, transgressed the boundaries of this moderation; when, after the subjugation of Grecian liberty, the Greeks, as a conquering people, violently endeavoured to enforce a higher culture and civilization on barbarous nations, then it was, that Grecian glory and splendour slowly but irrecoverably sunk in night; and then also, for the first time, the enthusiasm for art and science was kindled in the cold hearts of the Romans.

The Romans form, then, the next degree of transition from boyhood to youth, in the history of mankind; and, if in the Greeks, we find the boyish inclination prevailing, the Roman character partakes more of the adult. In history, the Romans, standing on

the confines of antiquity, form, as it were, the connecting link between the Pagan and Christian world; and the glory of their political and intellectual culture attains its height at that period of general ferment, when the regeneration of mankind develops itself. Let us take a glance at the character of this remarkable people. We have seen the Greeks making use of their political and religious institutions for the sole purpose of rendering existence bright and blissful; we find the Romans, on the contrary, employing the same engines solely for the gratification of their insatiable love of rule, which, from the origin of the commonwealth until its gradual decline, seems to have been the prevailing feature in the Roman character. The Greek studies, acquires, sings, travels, and conquers, in order to secure to himself the enjoyment of a serene existence: wherever he be, and under all circumstances, he endeavours to enhance the bliss of life. The Roman does all this,-nay, perhaps, surpasses the Greek in gigantic exertions, unequalled, indeed, by any nation upon earth,-but his only object is to rule. Empire, in itself, is for him the highest possible delight; and, more youth than boy, he strives for distinction, in order to be beheld and admired, content that the vanquished should hate, so they do but fear him: oderint dum metuant. Vanity and ambition are his springs of action. The Greek conquers the Persian, that he may liberate his country. He celebrates the triumph in pictures and in plays,-he salutes the victor with

shouts of joy at his national feasts, and this is the hero's only recompense. The Roman is not content with this:-he humiliates his foe. Captured kings, fettered to his triumphant car, must mourn their fallen greatness, and misfortune be insulted in order to flatter the national vanity.

In history, the Romans appear to us a people devoid of fancy, unpoetical, but in the possession of an overpowering intellect, which, as must be avowed, they employed in forming a constitution calculated, more than any other, to secure the empire of the world. Their laws are models of prescriptive edicts for the preservation of property and personal freedom to the citizen, and are framed with a consistency far beyond any thing which modern legislators have attempted. We must not omit to notice the strict adherence to form, observable in the Roman character generally, and which undoubtedly preserved to the people the fruits of former victories long after the spirit of morality and public virtue, which led to their achievement, had died away. In like manner, their religious formalities continued to be most scrupulously observed, when the belief in the gods had given way to the most miserable scepticism in the minds of all. Now this adherence to external forms is peculiar to a ripening youth, who clings with a kind of obstinacy to the customs of his earlier years. He would deem it highly reprehensible to omit any of those forms which his parents and tutors have long prescribed for his observance, even though they may

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seem somewhat unsuited to his advancing age; and this influence is often found to operate in the most salutary manner; for, when the passions would hurry the youthful mind to dissipation, a fear of outraging decency, and of violating formal rules, imposes a wholesome restraint, favourable to morality, though it is not that pure source of religion and virtue, from which the elements of a high and manly mind must emanate. This it is, which we observe in the history of the Roman commonwealth. We cannot account for its existence through so many centuries after the genuine proud and noble spirit had passed away, but by the reverence for ancient manners and institutions which continued to influence the people.

I have called the Romans an unpoetical people, and I feel it my duty to justify this assertion.

Niebuhr has shown that the earliest dawn of Roman history is mythological; and further, that in the first decade of Livy, fragments of epic songs are to be found. Thus it would appear, that the primitive history of this nation has a poetical colouring, but it is by no means certain that these fragments are of Roman origin; probably they belong to the Etruscans, who were a people of high cultivation and poetical tendency. The Romans, before their acquaintance with the Greeks, had made but slight progress in literature generally, and still less in poetry; for a religious formula, occasionally appearing in verse, can hardly entitle a people to be called poetical. Religion and politics were the two great

levers, which raised the Romans to the summit of power and earthly splendour; and though it be true that the Augustan age was, in some degree, tinged with a poetical colouring, yet this, as we shall see, could have no influence on the popular character. Poets, indeed, shone forth, like stars, to cheer the gloomy night; yet, I think, we do them no injustice, when styling them planets, that shone with borrowed lustre, or, in other words, mere imitators of the Grecian bards. Roman poetry was never any thing more than court poetry. The vain Augustus and his favourite Mæcenas longed for verses à la Grecque, and they were supplied by Virgil and Horace; but this poetry never became an object of popular applause. The period of Roscius was of short duration; and a rhapsodist after the Grecian style must soon have yielded to the gladiator, had both at once been candidates for popular applause; nay, Herodotus himself, had he read his annals to a Roman audience, would scarcely have found a willing attention. Nero gained no praise by playing on the lyre; and it was more to the Roman taste, when Commodus performed the savage part of a gladiator. With the Romans, the histrionic art seems to have had no moral or religious tendency; and all their public entertainments, of which the expense is unequalled, even in the annals of eastern magnificence, bore a sanguinary character. Historians the Romans certainly could and did possess, because they possessed a history in their monuments, institutions, and traditions. In their art,