Profoundly thoughtful and contemplative, but longing for the field of active enterprise, is the youthful mind. It is a bud, not disclosed suddenly in the storm of passions, but by the play of the zephyr and the swell of softer feelings, gradually unfolding itself to light.

The Greeks draw every thing within the sphere of their national views. The philosophical and religious conceptions of the Egyptians, perhaps also of the Hindoos and Persians, are, at least in part, received into their religious structure, but moulded after the Greek form. To the Greek, nothing is unimportant: he seizes and turns every thing to his purposes. In him appears the restless activity of the boy, which is satisfied only when creating; but his creations, like those of the youth, assume a form of beauty. His intuitions of the universe are all joyous and sensual. He peoples Olympus with divinities, bearing the trace of his artistic skill; but frequently wanting in moral worth. The highest exemplification of Greek morality is patriotism; the direction of which is practical, for the service of the state, in as far as it secures the enjoyment of perfect liberty to the citizen. The Greek would quit his country, could he not extirpate the tyrants who oppress its freedom; and hence the number of colonies sprung from ancient Greece.

But, though sensuality thus prevails with the Greek, it is in no degree rude. Rude enjoyment is his aversion: while moderation, decency, and the

minutest observance of forms, restrain and soften all his passions. His valour is not the coarse and wild enthusiasm of the barbarian, braving death from love of plunder; nor the romantic chivalry of the middle ages, sacrificing life for honour and religion; nor the valour of modern times, obedient to the laws of duty and honour, and devoting all that is most dear, at the summons of the sovereign. No: the Greek dies an heroic death for the freedom of his country; because, to him, an enslaved country is as none. And to this enthusiastic idea of freedom and country, the disposition of the boy, approaching the age of youth, will be found to correspond; that is, in a richly endowed mind. Then is the truly republican period of our existence; and the perusal of the classics, then, kindles our enthusiasm more than at any subsequent time; though their beauties, in another sense, may move us more in our maturer years. This period of life is not favourable to religious views and sentiments; and the Greek fetters his internal feeling by the exterior senses. His intuitions of the Deity are transferred into the field of art, and there acquire form. With him, the conception of the divine arises, not from the calm of childhood's meditative mind, as with the Hindoos; nor by a reflection on the practical influence of the Deity, as with the Egyptians; much less from the idea of an immediate connexion between God and the children of men, which acknowledges the divine superiority of Providence, fears its punishments, and believes in its parental care, as

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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