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,

however, what was not of Greek origin must be termed rude, gigantic, and colossal.

It might be contended, that a new period in the history of mankind begins with the subversion of the western Roman empire, when German barbarians, breaking forth from their forests, altered the existing state of things; but I think the period should rather be dated from the Augustan age, and for the following reasons:-that the Roman people, during the reign of Augustus, had reached the highest point of power and intellectual culture to which they ever attained; and that their subsequent history evinces only a gradual decline of Roman glory, which decline keeps pace with the diffusion of the Christian doctrine. we further consider, that with the extinction of the Roman commonwealth, Pagan wisdom and Pagan art become less all-prevailing, it must surely appear, that a new period in the history of mankind commences with the Christian era. This opinion will, perhaps, be supported by some general observations, which are not unsuited to the present occasion.

If

Nothing in nature proceeds with abrupt rapidity; whatever is durable unfolds itself gradually: and it is an acknowledged law of nature, in the moral as in the physical world, that the period of decline shall be proportionate in length to that of the development. We hardly perceive the rise of the youthful oak, which for a thousand years defies the storm; and the man, who enjoys a lengthened youth, may look forward to a proportionate age. So, also, is it in the

history of the world; the transitions from one stage to another are imperceptible; and, as this history is an ever-moving stream, no distinct point can be defined as the boundary where these transitions take place. The different degrees in the age of mankind are so united, that the entire history resembles rather a sloping declivity, than a step-by-step gradation; and in the life of the individual man we also find, that the transitions from one period of life to the other are not so distinctly marked, that we can say," Here boyhood ends, and youth begins." States and nations which expanded slowly enjoyed a proportionately long duration. It was from small beginnings that Rome gradually, but irresistibly, rose to its gigantic magnitude; and when this very magnitude became an incumbrance, when the Roman spirit had left the colossal form, and there were none to strengthen and cement its loosening joints, still it proceeded slowly in its unavoidable decay. The empire of Alexander, on the contrary, fell with its founder, and the power of Dschingischan and Napoleon burst in its unnatural swelling. The mental culture of nations must be regarded in the same view. Greek cultivation was prepared through centuries, before it reached its bloom, in the time of Pericles: and should this latter period seem comparatively short, we must reflect, that it lasted long enough to give the Greeks an eternal place in history; and that, from this short period, they shed a light which has pervaded the subsequent annals of all cultivated nations.

The Romans were slow learners in the school of wisdom and science, but what they have produced has withstood the destroying tooth of time; as, for instance, their laws, which were collected into a code long after the sun of Roman grandeur had set, and are, to this day, the source from which European legislators draw their wisdom.

The same gradual progression is observable in the first advancement of Christianity, which may be said to have stolen secretly among the Pagan nations, for centuries, before it could subvert the old and longestablished gods and idols. But its influence, though slowly gained, was lasting; while, on the contrary, the doctrine of Mahomet instantaneously, as it were, collected millions round the crescent. Within a period of one hundred years, Islamism had spread through all the east and a portion of the west; but the doctrine has already survived itself, because, wanting the germ of perfectability, it is incapable of reformation.

These remarks were necessary, in order to prepare you for a consideration of the state of mankind at the period when Christianity was propagated. That Providence, whose beneficent influence we perceive at every step, furnishes a remedy for all evils; and when mankind stood on the verge of moral destruction, he sent to them a deliverer from their necessities.

The foundations of Paganism had been shaken to their centre, and neither philosophy nor religion, as