Westward empire

AUTHOR OF "PROVERBS FOR THE PEOPLE," "REPUBLICAN CHRISTIANITY,"
"ORATORS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION," "LIVING ORATORS IN AMERICA," ETC., ETC.

"Westward the course of empire takes its way,
The four first acts already past;
A fifth shall close the drama with the day,
Time's noblest offspring is the last."

By a natural movement, in not one of its great elements has civilization gone eastward an inch since authentic history began. To demonstrate this simple and comprehensive fact is the motive of the following work, and all the great leading events of time are the means employed. Berkeley has suggested a grand outline in his significant stanza, but neither he nor any other author has hitherto attempted to define the acts, and portray the connected scenes, which constitute the one great drama of human progress.

Artistic beauty, martial force, scientific invention, and universal amelioration, have thus far illustrated the great progressional law of successive predominance, and these, we believe, will ultimately be consummated in the supreme sway of perfect civilization. We are led to this view by taking a catholic survey of every nation that has risen above the historical horizon; in which course we observe that all are alike the subjects of Providence, each in its time and place being furnished with a part to act, and a destiny to fulfill. Considered in this light, it may be reverently said that human history is a sacred drama, of which God is the poet, each transitional age an act, humanity the hero, and the discriminating annalist a prophetical interpreter.

But this work is not so much the defense of a theory as it is the display of facts, and the deduction of a general principle consequent thereupon. The travels of men, and the trade-currents of God, move spontaneously and perpetually toward the West. The opposite direction is always "down East," while all healthful expansion and improvement is "out West." The great eastern turnpike, canal, or railway, was never built, nor has a great eastern ship yet been launched on the deep. If the unnatural name has of late been given to a colossal craft, the misnomer is indicated by the fact, that her first trip is appointed to be a western one, and to terminate in our most eastern harbor, where the most stupendous development of western commerce just begins. All great enterprises by land and by sea have ever commenced in the East, and augmented both their efficiency and worth through a continuous unfolding toward the setting sun. The latest race is evermore the best, the last half of each great age is most prolific in progressive elements, and the west end of every great town throughout Europe and America is the growing end.

An introduction ought to stimulate rational curiosity, while it justifies the labors of the author, by furnishing his reader with a succinct programme of the conditions of the subject. We consider the age of Pericles to have terminated four centuries before, and that of Augustus five centuries after, the birth of Christ. The age of Leo X. began in the fifth century, with the fall of the Western Empire, and ended in the sixteenth, soon after the final downfall of the East. The seventeenth century was the great era of colonial empire, and then began the age of Washington. It is not man but God who has thrown these clear lines of demarcation over the entire mass of humanity, as innumerable dates, names, and events, alluded to in the following work will show. Copious references to authorities are purposely omitted, as we wish to render the pages as compact as possible with unbroken thought, but the facts themselves can easily be verified by the enlightened reader, or confuted if they are incorrect.

The service we herein attempt is to portray the relations of the present to the past and future, by tracing all the mightiest elements of our civilization to their respective sources, and by indicating the antecedents of those national heroes whose names shine upon the forehead of our age, and whose accumulated productions constitute the grandest inheritance of the remotest posterity. The mighty princes of literature of all climes, "who still rule our spirits from their urns," are summoned into stately procession, followed by the great masters of art, science, philosophy, and religion, each one bearing his own distinct physiognomy, and taking precedence in historical order. It is in this natural course that we would mold numerous and diversified materials into one homogeneous whole. The work is an abbreviated nomenclature of celebrated personages and events, a bold sketch of the great historical ages, not divided according to arbitrary chronological dates, or a formal geographical plan, but embracing all authentic periods in their indissoluble continuity of development, illustrated by the multifarious monuments which it has successively produced and passed. The philosophy of history resides not in isolated events and detached facts, but flows without interruption down the lapse of ages, the accompaniment of human destiny, and the life of ennobling actions; at once penetrating all incidents, and perpetuating all progress.

In the present undertaking, the author proposes in general terms to remind the reader of the various masterpieces which the past has bequeathed, rather than minutely to describe their authors, or criticise their merits. It is not our object to pronounce a judgment upon the characters and achievements of the great actors on the stage we survey, but simply to point out the manifest unity and advancement of the great drama as it proceeds. All minute details are omitted, in order to present as distinctly as possible the main outlines. As we contemplate the vast patrimony of knowledge, whence it came, and whither it leads, we watch the twilight on eastern hills as it brightens into midday, and then goes flooding over the broad expanse of the West. The consecutive series of historical events, though they transpire wide apart, and extend through a long lapse of ages, are never absolutely separated, but in the presence of the great Father are intimately joined in a sublime association, and mutually co-operate for the highest good of the greatest number. Different currents may seem to flow from the most diverse sources, and in opposite directions, but they are all tributaries to one centralizing channel, wherein flows forward forever the accumulating aggregate of human fortunes, under the divine control. A papal decree was once obtained condemning Galileo's doctrine touching the revolution of the earth; but that did not arrest pre-ordained planetary motion, nor prevent all sublunary beings from turning with it. Fortunately the tide of improvement has already rolled onward so far, and with such increased might, that Oxford is just as impotent to stay the ameliorating progress of mankind as was the Vatican, and both must advance with a diviner momentum, or be outstripped by a younger competitor in the heavenly course.

Without an intelligent faith in the divine purpose to incite and control perpetual progress toward the perfection of mankind, history is an insoluble enigma, a huge pile of detached fragments, and the great drama of humanity must forever remain devoid of all proper results. But even Aristotle expressed a worthier view, in saying that every end is great; it is so, because it forms the beginning of something greater. In nature, nothing actually perishes. Death is birth, and the dissolution of every organization is but the development and visible advancement of a fresher type of being. Naturally every substance is conservative of all the vitality it can possibly sustain, and when any given form apparently perishes, it is but to reveal a still higher life that lay concealed behind it, awaiting the moment of its appointed succession to power. Thus decay and renewal constitute a perpetual struggle, identical life rising through multifarious death toward the supreme in freedom and power. In proportion to the graduated scale of existence, lesser or greater, lower or higher, this law applies with more palpable justness, and is best exemplified in the unpausing progress which humanity makes in its predetermined career.

In tracing the evolution of those laws which rule in the various realms of simultaneous growth, we see that, while all are connected, and always act upon each other, some one of them, for the time being, must be preponderant, in order to impart an impulse to the rest, though, in its appointed time, another may be called to succeed, and receive superior expansion. It is that which develops the most advanced nation of a given era, and constitutes the moving centre of progressive civilization. It is the connecting bond and quickening impulse of those heroes who can marshal motives as well as armies, and make the grandeur of their own nationality the introduction and nutriment of a grander nation to come. The vanguard of the human race, invested with and impelled by this indomitable energy, moves in the appointed orbit, losing neither momentum nor effulgence as it advances, but rather increasing both. If we inquire as to the area and agency of the chief progression in the domain of human history, it will be found that Japhet has been the constant leader, Europe the intermediate track, and America the manifest goal. From all the premises furnished by experience, and the fullest assurance of faith, we must infer that this continent, ruled by the Republic upon its centre, is destined to garner the selected seed from antecedent harvests, that it may sow world-wide the germs of ultimate and universal worth.

Every great epoch has its master impulse, which acts as the precursor of a yet greater one to succeed it. A multitude of hearts may throb with ardent impatience, and myriads of hands may be ready to act, but not one profitable pulsation is there, nor an effective achievement, save as the actuating soul of the age shall animate and direct. All great revolutions in the intellectual world are marked by successive steps of generalization and transitions into wider realms through more expanded truths. We advance from the obscure to the obvious, from single facts to homogeneous combinations, and from particular doctrines to an all-comprehensive system. Nothing that does not relate to the perpetual progress of the great drama of divine Providence, and illustrate it, is admitted within our plan. With the whole field of human history before us, we are first to mark the most prominent features, and then trace whatever is subordinate and auxiliary. Four mighty landmarks rise most prominently to the view, around which are concentrated all the beneficent inventions and renowned names, universally admired by the civilized world. But, though supreme, these are not separate from inferior agents. True, the chief glory of an age, or people, seems to be the work of a few leading minds, while all others are transient actors on the stage. But each epoch, and all connected therewith, is a unit, indissolubly joined to its successors, in the formation of which it has contributed all the primary elements. Every subsequent act is the legitimate evolution of its predecessor, and from prelude to sequel, there is but one symmetrical development of an infinite plan. There may be deep and dark eddies in the stream, and even long reaches, wherein the current seems to assume a retrograde course, nevertheless its progress is not for a moment arrested, nor does it ever cease from innumerable tributaries evermore to augment its force. The spring-head we may not discern, but the main channel can be clearly traced through every clime, without meeting with whirlpools completely stationary, or depths too stagnant for some lofty use.

Veritable history is but an exponent of Providence, a vivid commentary on the one great purpose of the divine mind in the work of redemption, and should be written, as it is realized, with this intent. This is the Ariadne clew which alone can guide us through the otherwise inextricable labyrinth. We need, if possible, to reproduce, in subdued outline, the comprehensive political and ecclesiastical drama which the Revelator witnessed, as in a moving panorama, reaching from the beginning of sublunary scenes to their end. Such would be the portraiture of great men, great revolutions, and great results, illuminated by the one glorious purpose of the great God. This is signalized not only in always providing and fitting instruments for each emergency that may arise, but in subordinating all agents, and the causes which exercise their worth, to the perfection of humanity, by means of salutary discipline. When the ancient muses inspired Herodotus to write, and the genius of the nation prompted him to recite before assembled Greece, it was the first epical announcement of that divine poetry which forever celebrates the destinies of our race. An immensity of facts has since been added, and innumerable scenes have further evolved the purposes of the Supreme to such an extent, that the utmost comprehensiveness of dramatic delineation is requisite to give an adequate idea of the ever enlarging orbits of development, through which humanity has already passed, together with the legitimate unfoldings which a yet sublimer future will present. This highest ideal is beyond the reach of epical representation, and is of all unities the grandest since it considers the whole human race as one, like an individual soul, having the Infinite as the beginning and end of its finite existence.

We are probably in near neighborhood to inventions and improvements soon to eclipse all foregone wonders. The greatest proficient in letters, art, or science, is merely a flugelman in the army of knowledge, and if called to proclaim the miracle of to-day, doubtless he will be further summoned to announce the reward of nocturnal marchings, by the news of a greater miracle, to-morrow. Every year finds us a new stadium in advance; but it is only at great culminating eras that civilization seems to become aware of the actual speed of its reformatory motion. Victory always remains with the new spirit, and freedom, like truth, never can become old; they are in God, and thereby the final battle and widest conquest must eventually be secured. Not one great campaign was ever lost to humanity, nor ever will be. Every historical nation bears in its bosom the germs of more prolific and ennobling fruits, which their successors will employ to subdue and adorn hardier and richer fields. The scenery changes with each act performed, but the plot goes steadily forward. Providence is making the tour of the world, and every new phase of civilization is an additional proof of a divinely identical plan. As the age to come shall lapse continuously upon the tombs of empires and generations of mankind, we believe that this era will not descend undistinguished among the centuries past. The present march of the human mind, and the exalted ends it has in view, are so remarkable, that the period of our existence will ever be distinguished in the esteem of those who will come after us. From the past and the present a glorious future must succeed. We may most reasonably hope that the age now transpiring, the age we have seen born, and which will see us buried, will transmit to our children and their remotest posterity, increasing virtues, and perpetually lessened wrongs.

Such, in fine, is the profound and joyous conviction of the author, and to elucidate which has been consecrated a considerable portion of what leisure he has been able to command during the past seven years. Herein will not be found one local allusion, or envenomed word, designed to wound any sect or section. But, with one absorbing purpose, he has pressed steadily forward, laying all available resources under contribution, to show how each advancing epoch recasts the history of the past, and foretokens the future, in contemplating it from its own point of view. Let us fondly hope that, on the side of the globe opposite to the first Ararat, shall a second be reached by the Ark of conservative civilization, whereon human reason and divine righteousness will repose in the sublimest earthly union, and thence send down a perfected race to propagate their virtues, and redeem mankind.

New York, July 4th, 1856.

"Could we create so close, tender, and cordial a connection between the citizens of a state, as to induce all to consider themselves as relatives—as fathers, brothers, and sisters, then this whole state would constitute but a single family, be subjected to the most perfect regulations, and become the happiest republic that ever existed upon earth."—Plato.

"Although this great edifice of universal history, where the conclusion at least is still wanting, is in this respect incomplete, and appears but a mighty fragment of which even particular parts are less known to us than others; yet is this edifice sufficiently advanced, and many of its great wings and members are sufficiently unfolded to our view, to enable us, by a lucid arrangement of the different periods of history, to gain a clear insight into the general plan of the whole."—Frederic Von Schlegel.

"God shall enlarge Japhet, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem."—Genesis ix. 27.

Civilization is earth's central stream, and all literatures, arts, sciences, philosophies, and religions are but tributaries to swell its tide and increase its current. To indicate the successive sources, describe the multiform elements, and demonstrate the progressive aggregation and enrichment of this unity in diversity, is the object of the present work.

Much patient and critical research will be requisite at each remove, but the chief difficulty lies at the threshold of the undertaking. When and with what does authentic history, illustrated through human progress, begin? Geography, ethnology, and philology must be our chief oracles in reply.

Western Asia was doubtless the cradle of the earliest civilized communities, and the source of all authentic improvement. Mount Kylas gave the term koilon, heaven, to the Greeks, and is probably the highest eminence on earth. Moorcroft viewed it from a tableland more than seventeen thousand feet high, and describes its sides and craggy summits of still more tremendous altitude, apparently covered thickly with snow. At its base emerges the Indus, that mighty artery of western India, on the bank of which stands Attac, a name which the great civilizing race afterward applied to the fairest realm of their culture. Standing at this fountain-head, we find increased facilities for striking out the great historico-geographical outline which marks the progress of the patriarch bands of India, Egypt, and Europe. The intimate connection between the[Pg 22] Nilitic valley, Greece, and the lands of the Indus, is rendered yet more evident by the geographical development of the colonization of eastern Europe, in which the ingenious people of Abu-Sin, Abyssinians, founded the mercantile and prosperous community of Corinthus. Cor-Indus, that is, mouth of the Indus, carried westward, became the classical Corinth. The distance from the Indian shore was not so great but that the sail which spread for Ceylon could waft to the Red Sea, where the fleets of Tyre, of Solomon and of Hiram were to be found. The ancient Institutes of Menu expressly refer to merchants who traffic beyond sea; and, moreover, that the Hindoos were westward navigators from the earliest ages, the vestiges of their religion in the Archipelago abundantly attest. From the same lofty regions descended the Parasoos, that is, warriors of the Axe, to penetrate and give name to Persia, while Colchis and Armenia became as distinctly the product and proof of Indian colonization. Down this central route came the Pilgrim Fathers of the first great civilizing nations, making the whole mass of authentic geography a venerable journal of emigration on the most gigantic scale.

Let us now briefly consider the progressive changes which have passed upon this great geographical chart of historical development, and observe their effects. Successive tribes of living beings have perished thereon, and been replaced with better and nobler races, until at last man came to be lord of earth, and to reap from it all the enjoyments increasing culture could bestow. From the beginning, progress has been maintained in and through convulsions, each succeeding tempest alternating with a sublimer calm. Relying on human traditions alone, we can acquaint ourselves with no primary people, no first seat of civilization, no original philosophy, or natural wisdom. Guided by a higher authority, it is necessary to penetrate the intervening mists of symbolical fables, and collect numerous scientific facts, in order to attain secure ground, whereon the first germ of humanity was planted, and whence it has perpetually developed itself under the control of unfaltering law. At the farthest horizon of the most venerable antiquity, several light points appear, the harbingers of civilization, radiating toward each other, and indicating a common point of union in the darkness behind. They resemble the superior lights among the stars of the firmament,[Pg 23] whose brightness we perceive amid the eternal suns of the universe, but whose relative distances from our own planet it is impossible to ascertain. The dwelling of a divine spark in the human bosom has, even from the obscurest height of Caucasus, been recognized in the beautiful tradition of Prometheus; but the question of the first springing up of mankind can not be fully elucidated by mere antiquarian research. In the last result, that is a matter to be left to the disclosures of revelation and the exercise of faith.

The Mosaic narrative of creation is the primitive document of our race, and this commemorates the repeated convulsions and prodigious corruption of the world, previous to the Noachian flood. Of the earliest period, it says: "The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." Gen. i. 2. Of post-diluvian history, every thing was embraced in that last recorded fact of Noah's life, a prophecy delivered in the infancy of mankind, and which every succeeding development has only tended to illustrate and confirm. Gen. ix. 18, 19—"The sons of Noah that went forth from the ark, were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. These are the three sons of Noah, and of them was the whole (inhabited) earth overspread." On these three races distinct destinies were pronounced, they receiving a moral and physical nature accordant to their several allotments. The office of extension was given to Japhet, that of religion to Shem, and servitude to Ham.

Ethnology, the science of nations, in its most recent and profound deductions, differs somewhat in detail, but the great conclusion is the same. The threefold branches radiate from a common stock, and in their growth from east to west, they mark the high road of universal progress, and adorn the stage on which the entire drama of ancient history has been performed. The prediction of Noah is the record of human destiny, and has been subjected to the severest test. Material vestiges of creation, and the earliest monuments of mind, alike place the origin of man in the central East. The people of the Brahmins come down from the Hindo-Khu into the plains of the Indus and the Ganges; Assyria and Bactriana receive their inhabitants from the high lands of Armenia and Persia. Those nations advance rapidly, and, in the remotest antiquity, attained a degree of culture of which the temples and monuments of[Pg 24] Egypt and India, together with the palaces of Nineveh, are glorious witnesses. As the basis of preliminary improvement, they rapidly developed to a degree, then movement was stayed, and thenceforth their stationary remains mark the oriental boundary of the historic race. Ethnology testifies that Ham peopled Egypt, and that the primary emigration thither from Asia may have been ante-Noachian. The native name of Egypt is Chami, the black; and this fact is symbolically represented by the name of its predestined ancestor, Cham, Shem's eldest brother, Japhet being the youngest of the three. When the comprehensive fortunes of the triple founders of our race were foretold, Shem was called the elder brother of Japhet, but not of Ham. Gen. x. 32—"By these were the nations divided after the flood." Thus the great middle country in western Asia is the central point of the general view. On the south, the race of Ham includes degenerate Egypt, and all the sombre African tribes beyond. In the north Caucasian regions, the race of Japhet spread widely; and in central Asia the race of Shem. These general positions have been proved by the ethnologists, Pritchard and Bunsen, and are confirmed by the most reliable archæologists, as well as by the leading physiologists of the world, Morton, Cuvier, and Blumenbach.

But we will pass to the third and most copious means of demonstration, philology. It is believed that a furious religious war, long anterior to the historic Shem, drove a large multitude of oriental inhabitants westward, and that these became the primary stratum of European humanity, afterward superseded by the Japhetic race, wherever the germs of true history took root. The names given by the Pelasgi to the chief mountains of Greece, as well as the name itself of that mysterious people, point to an emigration from India, whence a twofold stream of emigration seems to have flowed. We have alluded above to the one which, under the auspices of the semi-historic Shem, passed through Persia and northern Arabia into Egypt, and adjoined the unhistoric Ham. At a later period, whatever of excellence that transition realm developed passed into southern Greece. The other current, the grandest and most prolific of all, passed through Persia, along the Caspian sea, over mount Caucasus, and thence through Thrace direct to northern Greece. The productive tribes, at their first appearance on the[Pg 25] horizon, enter upon the prospective stage with the elements of language, and with this fundamental power eliminated for their use, they were formed into the social compact of progressive humanity.

The earliest inventors of the glorious art of writing deserve the most grateful regard. The search after them, and their several stages of discovery, tends to strengthen the view held by many, that the common chronology of history embraces too limited a period; and that hoary India, at an era anterior to human record, originated the first pictorial system and communicated it to the Chinese, whose records attribute their mode of writing to a foreign source. But the yellow races of the far East are destined to remain still in the dawn: the sun of civilization has never risen sufficiently high above them to give vital growth to any product they have either invented or received. But the old emigrants of Egypt soon reduced their pictorial language to rough hieroglyphic outlines, and then to signs yet more approximating sounds, which laid the foundation for European alphabets.

Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia, have left us no specimens of their writing, aside from the dubious carvings upon the lofty rocks of Asia. But this "handwriting upon the wall," so long ago interpreted by the prophet Daniel, is now laid open to general comprehension, through Layard and Rawlinson, as a most important link in the philological chain. It was indeed strange that when the Egyptians had broken down the thin partition which separated them from phonetic language, their last monuments should exhibit no nearer approach to it than the first. The cuneiform inscriptions of Assyria render the order of progression perfect, connecting the later achievements in literary research with the previous triumphs of Young and Champollion. We discover syllables at length; and if on the banks of the Nile, we found a full grown adult, but impotent and out of the way, we meet, on the banks of the Euphrates, with a vigorous child, yet imperfect certainly, but actually advancing, and in the right path. Leaving the cumbrous and astute paraphernalia of pictorial and symbolic characters, the speaking signs passed from the arrow-points of Assyria into the flexile and immortal worth of the Phœnician alphabet. As soon as this invention had been planted in a neighboring state, the alphabetic system was appropriated by the great leader of the Hebrews, when they returned[Pg 26] to the land of their fathers, and became neighbors to the Phœnicians. Certain modifications supervened, adapted to their political and religious institutions; but the original names of the signs which constitute the Hebrew alphabet, strikingly prove their derivation from a hieroglyphic system, and indicate clearly a pictorial origin. Moreover, the first allusion to writing in the books of Moses is to the tablets of stone, "after the manner of a signet," by which we may understand engraved writing, like that of the Assyrian cylinders, or scales.

If the Shemitic tongues exhibit undeniable proof of their being derived from the western part of central Asia, the Indo-European languages present no less evidence of the gradual extension of these races from the eastern part. The Shemitic tribes never extended into Europe, except by temporary excursions. With the exception of Armenia, they have not lost ground in Asia, and have, from the beginning, penetrated into Africa, where no traces of Japhetic origin are discernible. Of Shem, the Arabic, Aramaic, and Hebrew are the three great monuments. Japhet nationalized the Sanscrit, Persian, and Greek, with all their descendants, the languages of beauty, power and progress everywhere.

In early Greece, a purely Egyptian element was planted by Cecrops, a native of Säis, in the Delta, but whether he was a native Copt does not appear. He migrated B.C. about 1550, and married a daughter of the Pelasgi, so it is not likely he introduced any of his own language. The same may be said of the colonist Danaus and his family, though he, as brother of the king Sesostris, was doubtless of unmingled Egyptian race. A much stronger element must be accounted for in the Phœnician immigration of Cadmus, and the constant intercourse kept up by that people with continental Greece. Crete should be regarded as the stepping-stone on the auspicious high way, the first amalgam wherein Egyptian, Pelasgic, and Phœnician civilization mingled, and, when properly blended, was transferred to the main land. Then came the purely Japhetic element, and gave tone and character to all. That great genius of Hellas, whose name has perished like that of the inventor of the plow, but who lives enshrined in the most intellectual of all monuments, worked upon this eastern element as he did upon every other capability submitted to his inventive and intellectualizing[Pg 27] power. He rendered the limited alphabet of Shem universal, eliminating the signs for harsh, guttural sounds, and by preserving those which were rejected, in the series of the numerals. The twenty-two letters of Shem became the twenty-four of Japhet, and thus, by their combined energies, a philosophical alphabet was produced, at once the aggregate of all Asiatic idioms, and the guaranty of all European culture. It was the receiver and transmitter of the most noble treasures ever garnered in the realms of intellect and emotion, a pure medium for the investigating faculty of the senses, as well as the mightiest weapon for the plastic and vitalizing power of imagination, the Greeks ever possessed, and which imperishable heritage they have left as the richest gift to coming generations.

During thrice ten centuries of the early world, the various oriental nations followed in their development an isolated course; and two vast peoples, the Chinese and Indians, have remained to this day in a totally sequestered state. They are in the same condition of immobility now, as at the beginning of the historical nations, that is to say, only six, or at most seven centuries before the Christian era. Still, India, with its philosophy and myths, its literature and laws, is worthy of special study, as it presents a page of the primitive annals of the world. But before the brilliant rays of the East streamed toward us from Hellenic sources, every thing seemed obscure—as to an explorer of the majestic tombs of Egypt, the farther he advances within, the more is he deserted by light. The first reliable guide we meet, is the art of writing; and this, so far from being an invention of recent times, reaches back to the most venerable antiquity. The only key to an understanding of the literature of Media and Persia, and in some respects of Greece, is furnished by the languages of India, and especially by that preserved in the hymns of the Veda, some of which ascend to the remote era of B.C. 2448. A claim to antiquity so great would appear incredible, were it not sustained beyond a doubt by the Assyrian remains recently exhumed. Like the region of its origin, Sanscrit literature is perfectly anomalous, and bears a striking resemblance to the extinct relics of that vast area over which it passed, to become the parent of all those dialects which in Europe are called classical.

Escaping from the mummified civilization of Egypt and the inflexible East, we strike more boldly into the high road of all improvement, and observe how rapidly power of every kind passes from Shem to the irresistible Japhet. The continuous stream of humanity moves clearly and with increased speed through a new and broader channel. As Shem was employed to introduce all religions on earth, so is he made to perform the most prominent part in the theological culture of mankind. But conscious speculation, elegant letters, and beautifying art all belong to the younger Japhet, whose heroes are Hellenes, and whose magnificent progeny are the myriad multitudes of the entire Indo-Germanic stock.

Thus, by the light of linguistic research, we descend from the exalted cradle of the human race to the prepared field of their first grand development. As we approximate the sphere wherein all faculties are free, and each element of excellence soars rapidly to its culminating height, a historical unity becomes manifest in language, wisdom, arts, sciences, and the most comprehensive civilization. These innumerable facts are no patch-work of incoherent fragments, no chance rivulets flowing in isolated beds, but tributaries to one uninterrupted current, correlative proofs of one and the same grand development. Language, the last struggle of the agonized age of Ham, the first triumph of the reason of Shem, was the magnificent medium perfected by Japhet, and through which, under the auspices of the Periclean age, universal man might see all his glories simultaneously revealed. Five hundred years before the Christian era, all nationalities east of Athens had perished; then and there, in consummate literature, we behold God's vanguard on earth. To the Hellenes, the beautiful of every type was revealed.

In fullness, exactness, flexibility and grace, the Greek language surpasses all other linguistic forms, and remains the first great masterpiece of the classic world. As we watch the growth of a tender exotic plant, gradually removed to a higher latitude, and at each stage of its matured beauty experience fresh joy, so the philologist watches the tender shoot of the first European tongue as it unfolds under the mild skies of Ionia, passes to the isles of the Ægean, and finally strikes its strong roots in fruitful Attica. In infancy, it was redolent with the fragrance of festive song; in maturity it scattered abroad priceless worth in every style of literature,[Pg 29] art, science and philosophy; till at last, touched by the hand of despotism, its living beauty faded, but even in death, like Medora, is still invested with the lingering charms of youth.

Literature, as we design to use the term, embraces all those mental exertions which relate to man and his welfare; but which, in their most refined form, display intellect as embodied in written thought. The first great original was produced by the Greeks. It is true they received their alphabet and many imperfect elements from the Asiatic nations, but the perfected whole of a national literature was doubtless their own. The Shemite could even excel in the primitive strains of poetry, but the restrictive power of local attachments rendered him incapable of producing any more regular form. That vivid combination of lyric beauty and epic might, the drama, which constitutes a complete representation of national destinies, was entirely unknown to him. The "Song of Solomon," which best represents the mental character of that race, shows that however near the Hebrew mind in its zenith, might approach the higher forms of art, it could not go beyond the ode. Though the elements of all literature, art and science existed in the east, Sesostris of the old empire was obliged to borrow from Japhetic inventors, as Solomon and Hiram did.

The geographical position of Athens is worthy of notice. In the march of civilization from east to west, she stood nearly midway, and extended her open palm to receive and impart the physical and intellectual wealth of nations. Her people united the hardihood of the mountaineer with the elasticity of maritime tribes, and never had a country of such diversified physical qualities, elicited such varied excellences of mind. We look in vain for like effects among the colossal monarchies from which the colonists had been sifted, and are led in wonder to contrast the smallness of the country with the wealth of its products. Ranging from Olympus on the north, to Pænarus, her southern headland, Greece extended but two hundred and fifty miles; while two thirds of that distance would conduct the traveler from the temple of Minerva, on the eastern promontory of Sunium, to Leucadia her western extreme. But if the superfices of that area were insignificant, whereon the dragon teeth were sown, prolific of all inland fruitfulness, its coasts were rich in harbors, from one of which the Argonauts embarked[Pg 30] on their romantic voyage, followed in succeeding ages by numerous larger expeditions in successful search after golden gains. The small but glorious land of Hellas lay within the line of beauty, by which, from the first, the uncouth barbarian was separated from the graceful Greek. Coincident with the happy period of the political history of that land, all her mental glories occupy no greater space than the three centuries which intervened between Solon and Alexander, having Pericles for the culminating point.

It is necessary that the fullness of invention should precede the refinement of art, legend before history, and poetry before criticism. A long period of traditionary wealth existed between the Trojan war and the arts of peace, upon which the plastic spirit of Greece breathed an energizing originality and independence, creating the variety, beauty, and immortality of unrivaled works. The Hellenic race, children of the beautiful, became veritably a nation, in expressing the first great idea of earth, beauty. This entered into all the elements which composed their interior life, as well as outward expressions, and stamped upon all departments a distinct physiognomy. Uncounted millions had roamed the wilds of Africa and Asia, of whom history takes no account, because they matured no idea; but the true dawn of improvement began at length to appear, and representative individuals stood forth as the aggregate of anterior worth and progenitors of prospective glories. A great age was easily read in a few resplendent proper names.

Pericles was the exactest symbol of his age, his character its product, and his career its historian. His advent marked the close of a heroic period in the sudden meridian of fascinating civilization. For forty years he was the ruling genius of that glorious city which it was the ambition of his life to adorn for exhibition, and crown for command. Each individuality fashioned by Homer, expressed some distinct quality of heroic power, and thereby represents a separate class. Grace characterizes Nereus, dignity Agamemnon, impetuosity Hector, massiveness the unswerving prowess of the greater, and velocity the lesser Ajax; perseverance Ulysses, and intrepidity Diomede; but in Achilles alone, all these emanations of energy and elegance, mingle and are combined in one splendid whole. And so the susceptible intellect of Pericles precipitated the world of beauty held in suspense at the period of his[Pg 31] birth, and laid every element under contribution to nourish his predilections, supply his resources, and consummate the multifarious splendors which forever glorify the culmination of his power. Democratic freedom had inspired lyric melody, epic grandeur, and dramatic force: that music of painting, and sculpture of poetry. Tragedy was exclusively created by the Athenian mind, and joined all the other great masterpieces of human excellence as they gathered in the order of perfection round the Parthenon. With the epos and drama came the harbingers of philosophical history, and historical philosophy. At the feet of Minerva, on the magnificent terrace of the Acropolis, as in the Portico, Lyceum, or Garden, the Japhetic thinker sat in masterly scrutiny over the greatest mystery, the mycrocosm man, and his eternal destiny. Dignified achievements had given rise to historic literature, ethical disquisition required elaborate rhetoric, political debate in the midst of inflamed parties necessitated persuasive speech, and Pericles arose the master of every art. Like the golden lamp, which the exquisite skill of Callimachus hung in the national temple, and which was fed once a year, the great Athenian saw kindled in his age a pharos of literary splendor which will be the genial guide and model of all masters so long as time shall last. Then did thought begin to throb and glow with ardent aspirations. Indian, Egyptian, and Persian works only attest man's power over the dullness of materialism; but Greece demonstrated his sovereignty over the might of intellect. The East was grand, impressive, awful; this fair metropolis of the West as infinitely better than all that, she was beautiful. In Athens was exhibited more than power, or genius coarse and unfettered by the instincts of elegant taste; her ornaments were pure, her magnificence serene. For grace, symmetry, and loveliness, we must look for the best models amongst that wonderful people who still remain in the great past, a centre of literary glory above all competition; from whose poets we derive our best ideas of the beautiful and sublime; from whose artists we copy the eternal rules of taste; and from whose orators we catch the high passions which most thrill the human breast. Such, in general terms, was the age when Pericles ruled in the first of cities, not by the degrading arms of mercenaries, but through the magical influence of genius and talent.

From this comprehensive survey, let us descend to a more specific notice of the superior luminaries in that great constellation, as each shines in his appropriate sphere. And first of all, let us contemplate the blind old minstrel we dreamed of in our childhood, who sang on his way six and twenty centuries ago, and his songs are echoing to the nations with unrivaled enchantment still.

Homer was the encyclopædia of civilization in his time. He fertilized antiquity to such an overflowing extent, that all the parent geniuses were recognized as his children, and the richest harvests ever garnered, were accredited to the seed he had sown. The epic of his creation, mirrored traditionary history in transparent song. The minute was depicted, the grand illuminated, and all the glorious world of heroic character and romantic scenery moved past the spectator in serene dignity and poetic splendor. The highest utterance was requisite to embody the intensest conceptions, and the Ionic dialect was exactly fitted to both. Language is the individual existence of a national spirit, the external reason, as reason is the internal speech; and the purest of idioms sprang perfected from the lips of Homer, as Minerva came completely armed from the brow of Jove. The hexameter therein assumed the freest and most forcible movement possible within the limits of law, and thenceforth epic composition ever remained Ionic in language, measure, and melody. Looking back upon the succeeding age, and its grateful enthusiasm, we need not wonder that a tyrant lived in the affection, and died under the benediction of Greece, for collecting the works of Homer in a volume, and his ashes in an urn.

The epic and cyclic poets were followed by lyrical writers, and the dramatists of Athens, who flourished cotemporaneously with all that is most admirable in the kindred productions of music, painting, sculpture, architecture, philosophy, and the civil forms of democratic life. Orpheus, Linus, Musæus, and others, the earliest poets of Greece, but of whom little is known, indicate the existence of a mass of poetic material extremely antique, which began to be reduced to writing as soon as the Dorians emerged from barbarism and the ignoble pursuits of war. When they awoke to national consciousness, they found themselves surrounded by an enchanted land, teeming everywhere with the fascination of heroic deeds done by heroic men, and the Cadmean Hesiod arose to garner the[Pg 33] rich harvest in his immortal songs. Subjected to the outer world, and attracted by all that was novel, beautiful, or sublime, the people listened to tales of deified heroes, whose devotion and wanderings filled a preceding age with renown, and their own bosoms with delight. It was thus that popular legends assumed by degrees an epic dignity, or by more flexile art were perfected into the beauty of festive airs. But into whatever mold the golden current was cast, the narrative remained clear, impassioned, varied, minute, as the taste of the age and eagerness of listening multitudes required. Thus Homer and Hesiod were as truly legislators and founders of national polity, as Moses and Zoroaster had been in their respective spheres.

The earliest patrons of literature, were the Peisistratidæ who endeavored to supply the general want of books, by inscribing the select passages on columns along the public streets. All that was most valuable and attainable, such as fragmentary laws, proverbial sentences of wise men, fables of Æsop, verses of Simonides, together with the lyric poets and tragedians of primitive times, Theognis and Solon, were collected in the library which they were the first to found. By the same conservative foresight, Homer was arranged in continuous form, and superseding the foregoing literary world, became the foundation and source of a better one already begun.

Archilochus, memorable as the inventor of Iambic verse; Terpander, celebrated for his exquisite talents as a musician; and Stersichorus, of whom a few beautiful fragments remain, bring us to the consideration of that more renowned trio, Sappho, Pindar and Anacreon. The latter was a voluptuary, whose luxurious pictures might please the sensual, but contained nothing beautiful or sublime.

Pindar was cotemporary with Æschylus, and senior to Bacchylides, Simonides of Ceos, Alcman, and Alcæus, all of whom he excelled in lyrical excellence. Corinna, his famous teacher, beat him five times in musical composition, the fair rival perhaps triumphing by personal charms, rather than through poetical superiority. But in the highest order of his art, Pindar was almost always declared supreme. He had a particular regard for Pan, and took up his abode contiguous to the temple of that deity, where he composed[Pg 34] the hymns which were sung by the Theban virgins in honor of that mystic emblem of universal nature. This Theban eagle, whose pride of place is still undisturbed in the Grecian heavens, dedicated his chief odes to the glory of the Olympic games, when the selectest aspirants of a mighty nation joined in the competition for prizes awarded there.

Sappho, it would seem, was endowed with a soul overflowing with acute sensitiveness, that glorious but dangerous gift. Her life, as indicated by the relics of her composition, was a current of perpetual fluctuation, like a troubled billow, now tossed to the stars, and anon buried in the darkest abyss. "To such beings," is the remark of Frederick Schlegel, "the urn of destiny assigns the loftiest or most degrading fate; close as is their inward union, they are, nevertheless, entirely divided, and even in their overflow of harmony, shattered and broken into countless fragments." Few relics of her harp remain, and these are borne down to us on the stream of time, imbued with the lofty tenderness of cureless melancholy. She was of that old Greek temper that wreathed the skeleton with flowers, and to her might be applied the legend which testifies that the nightingales of sweetest song were those whose nests were built nearest to the tomb of Orpheus. The early lyrics of Greece were productions full of wonders. They glowed with the hues of that orient of their origin, and where all forms appear in purple glory; each flower beams like a morning ray fastened to earth, and eagle thoughts soar to the sun on golden wings. Each style of national poetry grew gracefully and erect, like the palm-tree, with its rich yet symmetrical crown; and while in broad day it was fairest to the eye, even in gloom it bore nocturnal charms, as glow-worms illuminated the leaves, and birds of sweetest note perched on the boughs to sing.

Passing from the fervor of youth to the reflection of maturity, the epic muse retreated before the lyric. Plants of a richer foliage and more pungent perfume sprang up in the garden of poetry. Language more compressed and intense was required, and the Æolic and Doric became the appropriate organ of the latter, as the Ionic had been of the former style. In the Attic era, the partial excellence of earlier times became fully developed under the focal effulgence of universal rays; and, as the altar of Vesta united all[Pg 35] the citizens of the same town, the crowned champions in every department of letters gathered under "the eye of Greece," and paid tribute to the age of Pericles. Then each leading writer, called to conserve all antecedent worth, lived on the capital amassed by unskillful predecessors, and with innate facility wrought it into the continuous chain of human improvement. Not in the colossal and impracticable shapes which float in the mists of the hoary North, was this majestic style of literature produced; nor in the florid barbarism of the effete East and South, but with that profound feeling and piercing expression, elegant and forcible as an arrow from the bow of Ulysses, was it inspired with that lofty spirit of endeavor which leaps evermore towards the azure tent of the stars. If the car of the hero sometimes kindled its axle to a flame, as it neared the goal, his eye was yet undazzled, his hand faltered not on the curb, but the greater the momentum, the firmer was his grasp. So with the Greek poet, every thing was solid and refined, harmoniously fitted in the several parts, and superbly burnished as a whole. Though from the day of their becoming nationalized, the Greeks possessed vast stores of unwrought material, yet was nothing needlessly employed. They enhanced the value of their products by condensing their worth. What Corinna said to Pindar, who, in his youth, showed some inclination to extravagance, "That one must sow with the hand, not with a full sack," illustrates the national taste, and exemplifies a principle which pervades their entire literature. While always earnest, they never violate decorum, but in the greatest extremes of joy or grief, their heroes, like Polyxena, even in death, fall with dignity. It was most natural for the Greeks to symbolize imagination under the image of Pegasus, who bore reins as well as wings. The severity of their taste was yet further indicated by the legend that when borne by this power, Perseus with indecorous temerity flew too near Olympus, he was precipitated by the angry gods, though himself one of their sons.

The drama was the youngest and most perfect of Attic creations, and that great cycle of the arts which had an epic origin, naturally returned into itself by means of this. Tragedy was the purest elimination, and its progress may be easily traced. First, a whole populace assembled in some market-place the miscellaneous chorus, or dance; then the recreation was limited to men capable of bearing[Pg 36] arms; and, finally, the people were separated into spectators and trained performers. The lyric hymn of Apollo blended with dithyrambic odes to Bacchus; the strophe was distinguished from the antistrophe, and the epode was added; the dialogue between choragoi and exarchi followed; and, finally, came the separation of the chorus into these speakers and the choreutæ, a distinction as important as the previous one into chorus and spectators. Thus were all the component parts of tragedy completed, before the Persian war, when every thing the Greeks did was great and fascinating, as if created by magic, and their dramatic compositions were the most beautiful of all.

The finest genius of a great era always turns toward the highest sphere for exercise, and thus preserves an equilibrium between popular taste and the direction of its talent. When lyrical poetry had transmigrated into choral song, and epic history merged into a dramatic plot and dialogue, the greatest of tragedians extant was appointed to consecrate the union and preserve its worth. Æschylus was born at Eleusis, B.C. 525, about the time Phrynichus elevated the Thespian romance into dramatic personation, and his advent was opportune to impress upon this department of letters a deep and enduring stamp. With an ardent temperament, early exalted by the fervid strains of Homer, he imbibed, in maturity, the ambrosial influence of the above-named precursor, in company with his senior associate, Pindar, and with him wove thoughts to the lofty music of the dithyrambic ode. Passing through this order of excellence to a still higher range, in the same year Athenian valor lighted the flames of the Persian war at the conflagration of Sardis, the son of Euphorion produced his first tragedy. Pratinas and Chœrilus were for a season his competitors; but he soon distanced them all, and won the ivy chaplet, then first bestowed, instead of the goat and ox, as the most glorious literary crown.

At this period the structural skill of the Athenians had greatly improved, and as the celebrity of their drama increased, immense theatres arose on the hill-side, and were thronged by thousands, tier above tier, open to the wonders of expanding nature, embellished by the living sun. The Ægean on one hand, and vast mountains on the other, fanned by the breeze and relieved against brilliant skies, were harmonious features which nature accumulated[Pg 37] round the scene. The gigantic proportions of the theatre, and the mighty range of the audience, were fully equaled by the performance itself, when Themistocles felt honored in appearing as choragus, and through kindred interpreters Æschylus unfolded the mysteries of the thrilling plot. Advancing intellect demanded grand ideal personifications; and, to meet the cravings of an age which even the perfect epic could no longer satisfy, philosophy passed into poetry, and what Homer had done for more material thought, Æschylus achieved for mind. All the vague mysteries and symbolical ethics of the East were measurably purged from alloy, while their substance was melted into the tortured immortality of Prometheus, and bound to that mount of all literary beauty, the Acropolis.

As Æschylus expressed the race and period from which emerged Themistocles and Aristides, Sophocles was the correlative of Phidias, and the great Olympian who was the patron of them both. Indeed, from the majesty of his mien, and the symmetrical grandeur of his genius, he was called the Pericles of poetry. Supreme power lurked in his repose, and his thunders startled all the more because they broke upon the multitude from cloudless skies.

Of all the great originals at Athens, the drama was the most indigenous, and under the culture of Sophocles perfected its growth. Imagination had fulmined with broader and brighter flashes on the preceding generation; but the works of his hand, though equally fresh from the fountains of nature, were more imbued with reason, and the solidity of manly strength. The age of Pericles was peculiarly the age of art; and Sophocles was but one of many who, to excel in his own department, mastered every cognate secret of wisdom or beauty, and brought all into subordination to his own absorbing design. He lived at a time when the trophies of Miltiades, the ambition of Alcibiades, the extravagance of Cimon, and the taste of Pericles, not less than the science and art, erudition and enthusiasm, philosophy and eloquence, diffused through all classes of the general populace, rendered the Athenians at once the most competent to appreciate, and the most difficult to please. Recondite disquisition was a pastime, the Agora itself but a genial academe; so elevated and yet so delicate were the soul and sensibilities of the excited mass, that the wisest of their[Pg 38] sages was justified in asserting that the common people were the most accurate judges of whatever was graceful, harmonious, or sublime.

In the growth of a flower there is continued development, visibly marked by successive mutations, but indivisibly connected from beginning to end. Simultaneous with complete maturity glows the instant of consummate bloom, the highest point of fullness, fragrance, and fascination. That splendid culmination in the progressive refinement which adorned and made fruitful the garden of Greece, was signalized by the faultless forms and transparent language left us by Sophocles. The lucid beauty of his works was the chosen mirror of Athens, to reflect internal harmony, and the greatest beauty of soul. The dazzling glories of Greece in general, and of Athens in particular, imbued the great writers with corresponding ideas of the greatness of human nature, which they endeavored to represent in its struggles with fate and the gods. In the Prometheus of Æschylus especially, the wilderness and other natural horrors are made to relieve the statuesque severity of the scene, and are employed, like the chains and wedge, as instruments by which Jupiter seeks to intimidate the benefactor of mankind. But in such delineations as Edipus at Colonus, Ajax, and Philoctetes, Sophocles, in his glorious art, showed a great advancement beyond his predecessors, by intermingling the emotions of human love, and causing the more cheerful sentiments, inspired by lovelier natural scenes, to become important elements, not merely in the imaginative adornment, but also in the dramatic plan. If the Ionic epic was a tranquil lake, mirroring a serene sky in its bosom, and transfiguring diversified charms along its smiling shores; the Attic drama became a mighty stream which calmly yet resistlessly courses within its stedfast banks, is impeded by no obstacle, diverted by no attraction, salutes with equal dignity the sunny mead and gloomy mountain shadow, and, after a majestic sweep from its far-off source, mingles its strength at last in the omnipotence of the sea. Thus the highest wealth of refined poetry was preserved in the pure casket of the richest tongue, and the Attic drama was left to man as the masterpiece of linguistic art. Sophocles, like the fabled Theban, seems to have built up his elegant fabric with the charms of music; and if Æschylus first elevated tragedy to heroic dignity, he softened its[Pg 39] rugged strength into harmonious sweetness, and stamped upon the precious treasure the signet of immortal worth.

Euripides, like his predecessors, was a proficient in a great variety of arts, but neither sublime in conception, nor severe in style, as Æschylus and Sophocles had been. But his spirit teemed with splendid and amiable qualities, whose captivating power was highly relished by the age it came to decorate and complete. The energetic dignity of the first great master, and the chaste sweetness of his still greater rival, had passed; now appeared one who was indeed worthy of much admiration, but the least divine of the noble triad, whose natural course declined from the elevated cothurnus toward level ground.

When Euripides clothed Pentheus in female dress, and exhibited Hercules as a glutton, he showed himself to be the precursor of comedy, that first symptom of literary decline, and thus won the praise of Menander, as he deserved the lash of Aristophanes. The latter, who was his cotemporary, unceasingly castigated his effeminate prettiness, but never attacked the manly elegance of Sophocles, or the gigantic vigor of Æschylus. Agathon, with others of some note, continued for a season to write for the stage; but in Euripides the forcible and refined tragedy of Greece came to an end. As the nine Muses wept at the funeral of Achilles, so grieved the nations at that mighty fall.

There was the wisdom of a deep moral in that Athenian law, which interdicted a judge of the Areopagus from writing a comedy. Until a grosser age supervened, the Greeks were not inclined to scrutinize the ludicrous side of things. The goddess of the Iliad, who warded off the dart from her favorite, was an apt symbol of the Genius of Civilization, throned on the Acropolis, where Beauty, mother of Excellence, threw down her mantle and intercepted the arrows of every foe. Greek farce was often insolent, but never utterly vicious. While Aristophanes portrayed the foibles of town-life with a caustic hand, he ceased not to keep in view a healthful suburb of gardens in redeeming bloom. As Minerva, with precious elixir, concealed the wrinkles of Ulysses, the age of Pericles performed well its mission of investing every thing venerable and instructive with the most elaborate charms.

All the gentler shapes of fancy that, in the preparatory time,[Pg 40] bloomed in the lyrics of Greece, were only flowers unfolding round the aspiring trunk of tragedy, attracted by its superior strength, and sheltered by the majesty of its shade. Æschylus, however triumphant in the field of martial prowess one day, was the next not less ambitious of poetic garlands at the Olympic games. And Thebes was not more gloriously embalmed in the melody of Pindar, than was Colonos through the art of Sophocles, as her melodious thrush in his verse enjoys a perpetual May.

A marked peculiarity of Greek civilization consists in the fact that literature there led all excellence, illustrated and sustained by the harmonious accompaniment of the sister arts. In the East, each work, whatever its kind, stood imperfect and independent of all beside. But in the best age of the best works in the first literary metropolis of the West, it would be nearly, if not quite, impossible to point out a single production that did not refer to the written book, thus furnishing the means of just appreciation, by a comparison with the particular myth or action it was designed to personate. What the writer expressed in words, the correlative artist chanted, painted, sculptured, or built in more material, but not less beautiful forms. The drama most impressively exemplified this fact, using words as a poet, but adding the simultaneous commentary of melody, statuesque motion, pictorial resemblance, and architectural grandeur. This was the absorption of the lyric, the personation of the epic, and the consummation of transcendant dramatic art.

Athens was the inventress of learning, and the first great foundation of republican law. Like the motion of a serpent, which the Egyptians made the emblem of intellectual power, or like the path of lightning through murky air, at each actual advance humanity may seem to recede, but every such retrogressive movement really accumulates force to carry itself in advance. True, patriotism loves its object to such a degree, that it is ready to incur any sacrifice in favor of those it would benefit, but ceases to be a virtue when it selfishly reclines enamored of its own visage. Narcissus was not the type of national benefactors, but the great law-givers of Sparta and Athens were, when they traveled far, and at great hazards, to gather knowledge for the education of their countrymen.

The illustrious son of Eumonius was the great law-giver of the Doric race, whose institutions have excited much curiosity, but which are involved in an obscurity too dense to be easily removed. He was one of the very few great spirits of Sparta, and like his co-patriot Leonidas, passed through a dubious path from an obscure birth to everlasting fame. In the light of history, the whole life of the latter, especially, lies in a single action, and we can learn nothing authentic of him until the last few days of his career. In the annals of renown, only one proud page is dedicated to the memory of such men, and that contains nothing but an epitaph.

Solon, on the contrary, stands out clearly in the effulgence which under more auspicious influences poured on Attica. He was the second and more successful law-giver of his race, and also stood pre-eminent among the sages of his land. Success first attended him in poetry, and it was the opinion of Plato, that if he had elaborated his compositions with maturer care, they would have equaled the most celebrated productions of the ancients. But the prospective good of nations required him to apply the great endowments he possessed to moral and political purposes; and, according to Plutarch, "he cultivated chiefly that part of philosophy which treats of civil obligations." He pursued commerce, traveled widely, and, in patient research, accumulated those stores of observation and erudition which rendered him an honor to Athens, and a great benefactor to mankind.

History, properly so called, originated with the Greeks, and in natural clearness and vivacity, portraiture of diversified incidents and profound observation of man, eminent success was first by that people attained. The great coryphæus in the prosaic chorus, Herodotus, has been compared to Homer, on account of his manifold charms and transparency of narrative. The depth and comprehensiveness of his knowledge, inquiries, attainments, and commentaries on antiquities in general, excite in competent judges the profoundest astonishment. He is called the father of history, as he was the first to pass from the mere traditions which furnished themes to the poets, and gave dignity to didactic prose as an independent branch of literature.

Human reason is progressive chiefly by virtue of remembrance and language; hence were the Muses beautifully represented as being[Pg 42] the daughters of Memory, the only power through which, in the infancy of letters, the harvests of thought could be garnered and preserved. The first national annals were cast under the patronage of the fair Nine, but the Muses of the great Dorian turned to the Ionic dialect as their most fitting vernacular. The civilization of Greece was the first that was unfolded by a natural growth, and its crowning bloom appeared only when every other portion of the wondrous plant had become perfectly matured. It awoke like a joyous infant, under the fairest heavens, and was nourished by all beautifying and ennobling influences. Its life was led apart from exhausting drudgery and effeminate ease, among fair festivals and solemn assemblies, full of healthful exhilaration, innocent curiosity, and confiding faith. Pindar preferred the Doric dialect to his native Æolic, in which many had sung. Like the other leaders of his race, he imitated his predecessors in nothing, but by inventing; he employed the form demanded by the nature of his art, and chose the language with certainty and care, which refused submission to the yoke of authority. The principle, that in each realm of art, whatever is accidental should be excluded, was thoroughly recognized in Greece, where even what fell in by accident, as the chorus of the drama, soon became entirely fused into the chief parts of the action, like an organic member of the whole. The singer of the Iliad was born under the sky of Ionia, and he molded his native dialect forever to epic poetry. The thoughtful Herodotus preferred the same language to the Doric, his native tongue, and employed the Ionic, which was just then putting forth its fairest buds of promise. Thus, the epos of history was twin-born with the epos of poetry. The wanderings of Ulysses, the Argonauts, and primitive heroes, embrace the whole extent of the then known or imagined world, the various manners, countries, and cities included. All these the great annalist works into the rich and variegated picture, which, like a moving panorama, he unfolds to the enraptured gaze. Minuteness, likeness, and strength were requisite as the medium of expression, and not in the old Doric, but in the new Ionic, were these found happily combined. Hence, in historical writing with the Greeks, as in every other department of art, we see that wonderful concord between the substance and the form,[Pg 43] that harmony of inward and outward music, which is the first and most indispensable condition of beauty.

Up to this period, history had been composed expressly for recital at the national games, and was couched in a rhetorical transition from the preceding poetical form. The minstrel of the Homeric banquet became the eulogist of his countrymen before applauding thousands at Olympia; but now arose another master who foresaw that his work would survive the forms of society then existing, and he aimed not so much for a transient hearing, as to be perpetually read. The Attic Thucydides had listened to Herodotus in the great presence of the nation, and became inspired with an enthusiasm which bore him to the height of superior excellence. He was cotemporary with Socrates, and under Anaxagoras and Antiphon, matured that compressed eloquence which was to commemorate an age then dawning full of stirring incident. He renounced the episodic movement common to his great predecessor, and instead of supplying a pastime for the present, aspired to portray universal man, and inculcate profound lessons respecting the Providence that rules the world.

Thucydides perfected that form of historical writing which is peculiarly Greek, and was succeeded by Xenophon, whose third remove was clearly beyond the culminating point. Polybius developed the idea of universal disquisition, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, was honored as the first of historic critics; but after the fall of freedom, there was little worthy for one either to portray or appreciate.

It was in the day of Themistocles especially, the Greeks appear to have been sensible that they were instruments in the hands of destiny, and that their greatness was greatly to sway the generations of all coming time. This national consciousness, increasingly intensified in description and illustration, is strongly impressed on the sententious pages of Thucydides. The theme of Herodotus was a particular war, the Persian, and he treated it as an epical artist. But his acuter successor added philosophical composition to the densest power of combination, and was the first to attempt the analysis and portraiture of character. Thus, as in every other literary walk, the march of historical excellence became most extended and regular at the mighty heart of intelligence; on the spot[Pg 44] where its origin was indigenous, its perfection was most splendidly evolved.

Though fortune for the moment gave the Spartan, Eurybiades, the nominal command at Salamis, genius predestined the Athenian, Themistocles, to actual pre-eminence over his age, that he might command the remotest sequences of events. Certainly he was the greatest of his own age, and was not soon surpassed. Pisistratus, Cimon, Aristides, and Pericles, were of noble birth; but Themistocles was the first, and, except Demosthenes, the greatest of those who rose from the humblest ranks, but none the less ennobled himself, while he elevated the common fortunes in his own ascent. His genius alone was the architect of all his grandeur, and drew from Diodorus the exclamation, "What other man could, in the same time, have placed Greece at the head of nations, Athens at the head of Greece, himself at the head of Athens? In the most illustrious age the most illustrious man."

But the age of warlike glory ended with the occasion for its use, and an appropriate link was required between the ostentation of Themistocles and the intellectual sovereignty of Pericles. This was supplied in Cimon, who fostered popular spectacles, and invested them with increased magnificence; built the Theseion, embellished the public buildings before extant, and originated those classic colonnades, beneath which, sheltered from sun or rain, the inquisitive citizens were accustomed to hold civil, literary, or artistic debate. The Agora, adorned with oriental planes; and the palm-groves of Academe, the immortal school of Plato, were his work. His hand formed the secluded walks, fashioned the foliaged alcoves, adorned each nook with its relevant bust or statue, and poured through the green retreats the melodious waters of the Ilissus, in sparkling fountains, or eddying pools, to rest the weary, and exhilarate the sad. Thus he more fully realized the social policy, commenced by Pisistratus, who was the first to elicit diversified talents from the recesses of private life, with the intention of causing all to merge into one animated, multifarious, and invincible public life. The works now written, and the sublime creations of art at this time multiplied, were the first foundation of culture for the futurity of the human mind. It was an age that gave to the world what can nowhere else be obtained. The priceless legacy was produced[Pg 45] by that wonderful people during the brief period of freedom and undiminished greatness, when their literature was made to fulmine on the capacities of man, and reflect the brightest glory on the principles of democratic polity.

Pericles was not less ambitious to aggrandize Athens, than were his more martial or plebeian precursors; but he well understood the destiny of his race, and knew on what surer foundations to build than aristocratic or regal titles, which, if he had the power to possess, he always affected to despise. The wider extension of national domain was to yield to the loftier cultivation of the national mind. Obedient to his behest, and in harmony with the popular will, all superior proficients gathered round the Acropolis, a spot too sacred for human habitations, and, by their united labors, soon rendered it the central glory of "a city of the gods."

In his youth, Pericles had known Pindar and Empedocles. He had seen the prison of Miltiades, and turned from a music lesson to gaze after Aristides driven into exile. Æschylus he early loved, and exercised maturer thought with Sophocles, in debates on eloquence. By Euripides had he been instructed in ethical philosophy; and Protagorus and Democritus, Anaxagoras and Meton, did he question as to the best rules of state polity. Herodotus and Thucydides initiated him into history. Acron and Hippocrates imbued him with a beneficent philosophy; Ictinus built to his order, the Parthenon, worthy of Polygnotus to paint; while Phidias set up under the same auspices the tutelary deity of the land, in ivory and gold. Thus trained among a people susceptible and fastidious, that had itself become a Pericles, competent to appreciate, in every department the high excellence they inspired and recompensed, he was the first to mirror to themselves fully, the exalted models after which universal poetry prompted them to aspire. Themistocles had led them to deeds of daring and enterprise, but the adroit son of Xanthippus soon eclipsed every competitor, even that mighty Cimon, whose extraordinary qualities had prepared the way for his supremacy.

The grave aspect of Pericles, his composed gait, the decorous arrangement of his robe, and the subdued modulation of his voice, are dwelt upon by his eulogists, just as if his posthumous statue had been the subject of their comments. It was this close and[Pg 46] constant attention to the inner spirit and external expression of all thought, art, and manners, that distinguished the memorable period when the grand style characterized every thing. To use the words of Plutarch: "Pericles gave to the study of philosophy the color of rhetoric. The most brilliant imagination seconded all the powers of logic. Sometimes he thundered with vehemence, and set all Greece in flames; at other times the goddess of persuasion, with all her allurements, dwelt upon his tongue, and no one could defend himself from the solidity of his argument, and the sweetness of his discourse."

This was the era of great orators, such as Lysias, Eschines, and Isocrates. Like the shout of Stentor, rousing the prowess of comrades, who, single-handed, rushed upon embattled armies, clad in iron, so awoke mighty eloquence, which shook impassioned democracies, annihilated tyrannies, and fostered all ennobling arts. But the age of criticism came after the age of invention; Aristotle after Sophocles, Longinus after Homer, the Sophists after Pericles. Demosthenes was the last great writer whose works were addressed to the Greeks as a nation. His was the genius of industry, always luminous and constantly at work; like that Indian bird which could not only enjoy the sunshine all day, but secured no ignoble resemblance at night, by hanging glow-worms on the boughs about its nest. Demosthenes was a great orator, and nothing more. He represented a period of civilization which had passed, and therefore his downfall was inevitable. So long as the democratic spirit pervaded the masses he performed prodigies in the tribune; but when the empire of beauty was about to be displaced by the empire of force, he ran away at Cherronea, and without dignity. The eloquence of a great nation, expressed in Pericles, was succeeded by the Phillipics of a great partizan, and when this was silenced, the age of its origin had closed.

Pericles was the first to commit his speeches to writing before they were delivered; and, in his pride of universal accomplishment, he signalized the zenith of his country's glory and its decline. In all the progress of Greece up to the splendor of her culmination, originality was sought and exemplified only in some one grand pursuit. The epic bard was not ambitious of rending the ivy destined to adorn the brows of lyric poets; nor did the master of[Pg 47] tragedy, with unlaced buskin, stride carelessly over Thalia's stage, to lay irreverent hands on Homer's harp. The historian, studious in private to portray the annals of his country, came not to the Agora to contest honors with the public orator; nor did the latter, with foolish ambition, endeavor to excel the sages who, in the Portico, at the Lyceum, or under plane-trees on the banks of the Ilissus, explained the problems of the universe; but each one made some exalted endeavor the speciality of his life, on it concentrated all the rays of his intellect, and scorned no measure of time or toil requisite to insure absolute perfection in his work. Thoughts so elaborated became never setting stars, to cheer the world, and point unerringly through the cycles of a corrupt taste to ideal excellence. As each growth, minute or majestic, was equally perfect of its kind, though differenced by peculiarity of form and tints, the whole was charmingly blended in that wreath of consummate beauty, which, in the age of Pericles, Greece hung round the constitution of the state, high on the central shrine of the most magnificent temple of her gods.

Architecture is the metaphysics of the fine arts, and should be made the basis of all researches in this department, since it is the oldest and bears the most comprehensive type. It teems with the oracular inscriptions of entombed empires, and either affords information where other testimonies are silent, or confirms the facts which more dubious history asserts. Within its ruined temples yet linger the echoes of cycles long since departed, and which symbolized on their track the mightiest impulses of emulative nations in those monuments which inventive genius, coalescing with constructive skill, stamped with the attractions of beauty and strength.

Egyptian civilization was thoroughly exclusive, and possessed no disposition to diffuse itself. On the contrary, the Indo-Germanic race rapidly assimilated surrounding nations to itself, and with that energetic spirit of propagandism which was its primary element, made the reservoir of its accumulated worth the fountain of all subsequent culture. The great Surya people of northern India are supposed to be the original Cyclopœans who reared the gloomy grandeur of Egyptian Thebes, and the magnificence of Solomon's temple, who constructed the Catabothra of Bœotia, drained the valleys of Thessaly, constructed the canals of Ceylon, and left the venerable walls of Mycenæ on their westward course.

The monuments of the East attest the unreasoning submission of thousands to despotic power, and teem with the reminiscences of gloomy superstition, but both in outline and execution, the spirit of the beautiful is wanting. Vestiges of Assyria, like an earlier Pompeii, have lately been disinterred, and we are permitted to look upon, perhaps, the identical figures on which the prophets gazed,[Pg 49] and which so moved Aholibah, when "she saw men portrayed upon the wall, the images of the Chaldeans portrayed with vermilion, girdled with girdles upon their loins, exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads, all of them princes to look to, after the manner of the Babylonians of Chaldea, the land of their nativity." Ezek. xxiii. 14, 15. Persian art, judging from what has recently been brought to light, combined much of Egypt and Assyria in its manner. The types of wisdom and power, and even the Persian alphabet, were of Assyrian character.

The temple which the monarch of Israel dedicated, and his devotion enriched, owed its artistic attractions to Tyrian skill. The descriptions of these preserved in the archives of Judea, clearly vindicate the justness of Homer's representations respecting the precious metals of the East, and the progress there made in ornamental art. Even females could divide the prey: "To Sisera, a prey of colors of needle work on both sides, meet for the necks of them that take the spoil." Judg. v. 30. Of such, the treasury of Priam was replenished, and Sidonian artists were not less expert. Helen embroiders a picture of a battle between the Greeks and Trojans; Andromache transfers flowers to a transparent vail; and Penelope weaves a web of pensive beauty, honorable to the hand of filial piety, to grace the funeral of Laertes. Many evidences demonstrate that the whole of Greece, from the era of the supposed godships of Poseidon and Zeus, down to the close of the Trojan war, was Indian not only in language and religion, but in all the arts of war and peace.

The discovery and use of metals hold the first place in the history of human progress, and in the momentous origin of the murderous sword, we have the first of inventions. The fratricide Cain fled to central Asia, the cradle of ambitious conquest, and there hereditary classes, trades, and arts arose. Thence descended eastward, the nomadic tribes who still wander amid the vast remains of the primitive mining operations of the oriental world. From the more amiable Seth, the patriarchs of peace emigrated in another direction to people cities, foster science, promote writing, and transmit sacred traditions on durable monuments of stone. The struggle of contrasted races is the leading subject of all history, and its primary development lies between the passion shown by one for[Pg 50] war, and by the other for more peaceful arts. Moab, Ammon, and Bashan, the giants of barbarism, have ever moved westward in advance of the vanguard of civilization, and been vanquished thereby.

The infancy of Greek art was the infancy of a Hercules, who strangled serpents in his cradle. However superior as to intrinsic worth, it must be acknowledged to be an offspring of Egypt. As we have seen in western literature, a kind of hereditary lineage connects it with the East, and this is attested by evidence too palpable to be denied. Native elements appear to have combined with foreign art in Assyria; but Nimroud and Karsabad prove that the style of that intermediate region, at a certain period of its development, was directly derived from the valley of the Nile. The Assyrian types of art furnished Lydia and Caria, probably, with improved elements, from whom the Asiatic Greeks obtained the means of advancing toward that high excellence which the most refined race was destined to achieve. The earliest proofs of their skill come to us on coins, and that the Lydians were the first on earth to excel in that kind of work, Homer distinctly asserts. But while an Asiatic origin must be assigned to all the arts of Greece, it should not be forgotten that the Hellenic organization alone perfected each and every department with that exquisite refinement which no other people has ever been able to attain. Their wonderful originality is indicated by the fact, that their very earliest coins, possess in their embryo state, the germs of that beauty and sublimity which afterward were realized by the greatest artists in their grandest works. In the smallest seal, as in the most colossal form, the charming simplicity and repose prevail, which forever mark the leading traits of the Attic mind. Coins made of gold in Asia, preceded the silver coinage of Athens, but even in this earliest imprint of archaic skill, we see rudely executed all that which subsequently characterized those groups of Centaurs and Amazons that enriched the metopes and pediments of the Parthenon.

When compared with Indian and Egyptian remains, the Persian column must be considered as presenting an approximation to the perfect form, and yet it lacks that purity of taste, that refined and chastened intellect, which distinguishes the works of Greece. The lotus and palm, were indeed imitated at Carnak and Persepolis, but Athens saw the acanthus and honeysuckle surmount shafts of manly[Pg 51] strength with amarynths of beauty such as the East never knew. India excavated the cell, and Egypt quarried the column; then came Greece to perfect the entablature system, and add that crowning glory, the triangular pediment. The three orders in their succession, exhausted every realm of invention, and perfected structural types unsurpassed by human powers; and while the mechanical principles remained identified with the most unadorned Cyclopean gateway, or rudest cromlech, an exquisite system of ornament embraced every feature, and refined all into consummate dignity and elegance.

All the institutions of Greece bore the impressive signet of national character. In government, dialect, and invention, despite minor differences, there was a general uniformity which rendered them distinct, not only from Phœnicians or Egyptians, but also from the kindred inhabitants of Lydia, Italy, and Macedonia. Though at the beginning germs were derived from the East, it is not less true that at the time of ripest maturity not the least tinge of foreign influence was discernible in their literature, politics, religion or art. Grecian architecture, especially, like their poetry, was the natural expression of the national mind. It was influenced by the peculiarity of the land in which it originated, and was more than national; it was local, born under the sky of Hellas only, and in no colony did it ever attain the comprehensive beauty which signalized the city of its birth. Sparta might boast of the hard bones and muscles of well-trained athletes, but grace and beauty never entered her walls. The Athenians borrowed materials and suggestions from diverse sources, but their skill was entirely their own. They invented all the component parts of classic architecture, the proportions, characters, and distinctions, with a corresponding nomenclature by which each order and every ornament is still designated. Symmetry, proportion, and decoration; the solidity and gracefulness of nature, relieved by historical sculpture, and illuminated by chromatic splendor, with the perfection of reason interpenetrating and presiding over all, constituted that perfect model of noble simplicity which always attracts and never offends.

The Dorians produced the first pure architectural style, and carried it to the highest perfection, without any assistance from the fallen palaces of the Atreidæ. The Æschylean majesty was the highest[Pg 52] conception of even that extraordinary people. The Parthenon was the noblest production of the noblest masters, and should be accepted as the highest exemplification of the national skill.

The order of columns at Persepolis seems to be the proto-Ionic, as certain pillars have been supposed to be proto-Dorics, but neither, in fact, deserve, in the slightest degree, that admiration which belongs legitimately to those honored names. The temple of the Ilissus was the most ancient monument of the true middle order, and was a significant prelude to those more glorious works destined to immortalize the administration of Pericles when freed from the rivalry of Cimon, the restraints of the Areopagus, and the opposing aristocrats. Within twenty years all the grandest works were executed, and then the point of culmination in that lovely land was forever passed.

Of the three orders perfected by the Greeks, the Corinthian would appear to be the most entirely original, and, at the time of its invention, the exactest symbol of their mind. The flower had fully bloomed, and decrepitude was already begun. They could no longer adequately execute the Doric order, with its integral sculpture and painting, and had ceased to be satisfied with the chaste gracefulness of Asiatic volutes. They began by raising the honeysuckle from around the necking of the Ionic capital, and extended it over a vase-form under a light abacus, intermingled with a few rosettes, but omitting altogether the volutes. To this was after ward added the Persepolitan water-leaf, and finally the crisp acanthus of Attica gave a rich variety to the order, which constitutes its crowning charm. The choragic monument of Lysicrates is the only pure type of this style; and if sculpture and painting must be banished from architecture, this is, doubtless, the most beautiful order extant.

Architecture expresses the difference among races, as language does the variety of dialects. The Dorians built in the same style that was employed by Pindar, Æschylus, and Thucydides in speech. The simplicity and elegance of the Ionians are exemplified in their temple graces, not less than in Homer's matchless verse, and the smooth rhythm of Herodotus. The Corinthians, refined to effeminacy, were the last architectural inventors in the old world, and they stamped upon their production the delicate luxuriance which[Pg 53] characterizes the language of Isocrates. The opposing principles of Dorism and Ionism which prevailed in all the institutions of Greece, politics, literature, customs, and art, were boldly embodied in sculpture and architecture. The former came from Egypt, and the latter from Asia; but both were alike indebted to western genius for the refined symmetry which their respective orders finally assumed. The zenith of perfection was not reached until the Doric influence was impregnated by the Ionic, the material by the spiritual, and Corinthian delicacy was born to perish in the grave of its exhausted parents.

Egyptian sculpture was the archaic state of Greek sculpture, as is clearly indicated by specimens yet extant. The types of the Nile, which remained unchanged through many centuries, were no sooner transferred to the Ilissus than a wonderful improvement succeeded. The remains of the temple of Jupiter in Ægina show the metamorphosis of the uncouth East into the refinement of the West in the very act of taking place. The heads of the figures are Egyptian, according to the prescriptive sanctity of priestly rule, heavy and immobile; but the limbs are detached, and move with the natural freedom of Greek taste. The conservative East regarded innovation as destructive of the divine, while the progressive West sought for near approach to divinity in increased perfection. Hence the figure of Minerva on this edifice, the central one of the pediment, is more oriental than the rest, as if less liberty should be taken with the personal image of a being fully divine; but this hereditary scruple was soon overcome, and, in direct contrast with Egypt, Grecian deities became most celestial in form.

The progress of perfected sculpture was striking and continuous. The Herma was the first step in true statuesque art, when the Greek placed a human head on a pillar by the wayside, fashioned after the proportions of the human form. Then the resemblance of life extended to the loins, preparatory to that further realization when the bust spread vital beauty and activity throughout every speaking feature or graceful limb, rendering the statue complete. Last of all came the associated group, simultaneous with architectonic perfection, to which it added manifold charms. Then was the memorable era when the images of gods and heroes possessed not less truth and majesty than if the divinities had themselves sat for their[Pg 54] pictured or sculptured portraits; and all this resulted because art had become the greatest national activity, and the entire nation was merely a transcendant artist. In a chronological review, the ancient monuments of Asia and Egypt must be considered before those of Greece; but the true history of art, in its continuous development, as in every other civilizing power, began alone with that sagacious people. To the last, the East retained in its sculpture those symbolical images which are utterly destructive of elegance in imitative representations; but the West soon emancipated itself, and came step by step to elicit from marble perfected human features under the attitude and aspect of divinity. Therein is most clearly traced the mysterious symbolism of the inner mind of that people. The reason and imagination of Greece were poured with profusion and power into artistic creations, and the faculties from which these works sprang are in turn most forcibly addressed. Like excites like; and if ancient sculpture shines on, through all time, with inextinguishable beams, it is simply because the original creation transpired under the transmuting and glorifying influence of impassioned thought. Supremacy in art among that people was not an accidental inspiration of a few artists, but the predominant spirit of the age and great heritage of a race. Their language was the first organ of speech thoroughly eliminated, and art, its correlative, was the highest material medium of mind. The mystery of the human form was accurately conceived by the Hellenic genius, and thus the mythological Sphinx, whose motto is Man, which had ever been inaccessible to the race of Shem, was by Japhetic intellect clearly revealed. In her most glorious days, the sumptuous temples of Athens, amid the elaborate graces of their moldings, the living foliage of their capitals, and the multiform friezes whereon Lapithæ and Centaurs exhibited the most impressive action, did yet preserve the same outline of simplicity with which the wooden hut of Pelasgus was marked.

In consequence of the excitement, surprise, joy, and glory of their first conquest over the Persians, the Greeks developed all their energies, and the brief period of their highest excellence terminated soon after the final triumph over that great foe, so inseparable is national enthusiasm from exalted perfection in art. The Parthenon and Propylæa were trophies of Marathon and Salamis, monuments[Pg 55] of past success, and pledges of future progress. Then supreme homage was paid to superior talent; and popular admiration, as profound as it was general, gave birth to those masterly productions its paintings deserved. The same combination of boldness and gentleness which constitutes the very essence of classic literature, imparted its peculiar expression to the plastic art of Greece. Both, in their best days, were equally imbued with that lofty impulse which antique traditions excited, and the national genius was most ambitious to perpetuate. The Persians brought marble with them, intending to erect a memorial of the anticipated victory, which their conquerors appropriated, and commissioned Phidias to cut it into a statue of Nemesis. Such was the destiny of all oriental elements, and the use made of them by the valiant genius of occidental republicans. When the first great battle of opinion had been won, and the Persian, like the Mede, was overthrown, a few years of active freedom produced more of civilizing art, than had been generated under the pressure of whole centuries of despotic repose.

The art of the first Pharaohs, as well as that of the last Ptolemies, is brought down to us in well preserved relics, and by means of these, at a single glance, we can survey a boundless historic period, during which, in the first progressive land, civilization had passed from the lowest to the highest point; from the Pelasgi to the Parthenon, from the wooden works of Dædalus to the marble glories of Phidias; from the fabulous Orpheus, and mythological Amphion, to Homer and Sophocles; in a word, from Cecrops to Pericles. But on the Nile, beyond certain ignoble and arbitrary types, sculpture never advanced. Dædalus is reputed to have been the first statuary in Greece, but he was more of a mechanist than sculptor, the architect of labyrinths, carver of wood, and inventor of wings. He was the countryman and cotemporary of Theseus, equal to that hero in the adventures of his life, born of a royal race, admired for his works while living, and honored by the Egyptians with a special chapel after death. About two centuries later, appeared Dipœmus and Scyllis. They were born in Crete, under the Median empire, but worked at Sicyon, and made statues of Apollo, Diana, Minerva, and Hercules. They were the first to use the white marble of Paros, and gave to each divinity a peculiar personal appearance so entirely distinct, as to cause the offensive symbolism of[Pg 56] preceding art to be laid aside. The slow progress of sculpture may be further traced, until a single mighty master raised his profession to a height, of which the world had entertained no previous conception. The Greeks could produce beauty without meretricious ornament, delicacy without affectation, strength without coarseness, and the highest degree of action without the slightest disturbance of equilibrium. Proud only of progressive invention, they preserved their first rude monuments side by side with their later masterpieces, and appealed to this aggregate as the true archives of nobility, their highest credentials to glory. The plastic sense, which usually disappears with the infancy of nations, was fostered to the fullness of adult perfection among this people. Whatever of beauty real objects supplied to their hands, the inspiration of fervid genius transfigured into the most beautiful idealized forms. As was said by one of their number, the higher nature of the divinities passed into the arts; and we have reason to believe that sculpture especially, did wear a celestial aspect in its representation of glorified heroes and the highest gods. The law which Plato long after prescribed to artists, seems to have been instinctively observed from the earliest era, "that they should create nothing illiberal or deformed, as well as nothing immoral and loose, but should everywhere strive to attain to the nature of the beautiful and the becoming." Latent worth doubtless lay imprisoned in the uncouth sculpture of the East, but it was only when moved westward, that the fair prisoner was set free; like Aphrodite, born without a pang, in the enfranchisement of the sea, and landed on the blooming shore of Paphos, redolent of spontaneous charms.

Homer, and the other poets, as they were the fountains of all other elements of culture, nourished also the plastic sense in the common mind. From the tragic writers, especially, emanated a world of sculpture, so that nearly all the great spirits generated in the regions of fable, were happily embodied in substantial art. Hipparchus, a few years before the birth of Phidias, formed the first public library at Athens, and placed therein the complete works of Homer, Hesiod, Sappho, Anacreon, and Simonides. The public games were not less favorable in their influence on plastic art. They were great artistic congresses, wherein each department was exhibited for the special benefit of itself, and in regular succession;[Pg 57] just like various pieces of music at a modern concert, without discord between them. Not only in the popular poetry, but in the public manners as well, was manifested that refined grace and equanimity between excessive freedom and coarse formality, which was embodied in sculpture as its highest form. The second desire of Simonides, was, that he might possess a handsome figure, and the gymnastic exercises customary in the healthful serenity of his native land, did much to realize the wish. The most eminent men in their youth, sought renown in the development of natural qualities, and thereby laid a substantial basis for the magnificence of acquired accomplishments. Each successful competitor was honored with a statue of the highest order and most perfect resemblance. Hieratic models were utterly discarded, and not only was the real portrait preserved, but also the very attitude in which the victory was gained. Even horses which had borne off prizes, were reproduced by the exactest imitative skill, and all the most natural forms were elevated to that ideal of perfection which constituted the models of excellence, and the best incentive to yet higher improvement of surpassing worth.

We have observed that Hermes were the first sculptured productions of Greece. These most abounded at Athens, where, for a long time, the word Hermoglyph was the only term in use to designate a sculptor of any kind. But soon after the Persians had despoiled that city of her ancient monuments, she acquired immense resources, by which, under the guidance of superlative taste, she soon arose to be the head of the national confederacy, and most splendid abode of art. Architects and sculptors, painters, lapidaries, and workers in precious metals vied with each other in adorning the lettered empress of earth and sea. The monuments of Ictinus, Phidias, Callicrates, and Mnesicles arose, surrounded with kindred glories, thenceforth to become masterpieces for the emulation of mankind. What was especially needed, was something that would mold all surrounding elements of beauty into one perfect and homogeneous whole, like the unity of diversified expressions in the opera, and this was gloriously realized in the perfected temple. Appropriate material was quarried from Paros and Pentelicus, which when wrought into graceful and sublime forms, stood on the terraced height in serene majesty, and glowed through the sparkling atmosphere[Pg 58] with enhanced splendor borrowed from harmonized colors and burnished gold. In Greece, history and art from the beginning, were closely allied. The breastplates, helmets, and shields, as well as altars, temples, and tombs, were all made to glorify an honored ancestry, through the blandishments of material art. Homer and Hesiod brightened the dawn of national renown, as they sang the artistic triumphs of Vulcan, embossed on the weapons which Hercules and Achilles bore. The arcades of nature, and the canopied walks which architecture so magnificently provided, were transformed into vast galleries, all aglow with brilliantly harmonized tints; and a wanderer the most remote from the metropolis, still found the annals of his country embodied in marble, and each great personage strongly characterized by the sculptor's chisel. Every subordinate democracy had its Prytancum, Odeon, Pnyx, Gymnasium, and Theatres; and when Athens usurped pre-eminent control, her citizens were proud to erect public monuments worthy of her ambition, and whose dazzling magnificence should reconcile the other states to her supremacy. So greatly was this the passion of the people themselves, that when Pericles proposed to exonerate them from debts incurred by the immense works of his administration, if he might be permitted to inscribe them with his own name, the proposition was rejected at once, and every responsibility was cheerfully accepted as their own.

Phidias was an Athenian, the son of Charmidas, and cousin to the distinguished painter, Panænus, whose associated skill he employed on several of his works. Doubtless this fact should explain much of his grace of outline, and power of relief. He proved himself equally successful in the sublime and minute, by turning from the awful majesty of his marble Jupiter to stamp like perfection on the grasshopper or bee of bronze. This Æschylus of sculpture began with works in ivory, continued to develop his power through statues of metal, and finally attained the highest excellence in colossal marble groups. He was born under the full blaze of Grecian freedom, and carried his profession to the loftiest height of excellence, through a knowledge of all the arts and sciences that could enhance its attraction, or dignify its pursuit. He was not only a painter and poet, but was also familiar with the gorgeous fictions of mythology, and the more sober records of history, the knowledge of[Pg 59] optics, and the severest discipline of geometric science. It is probable that Phidias planned all the works about the Parthenon, and that Callicrates and Ictinus executed the architectural portions, while Alcamenes and other pupils wrought nearly to the surface most of the sculptural forms. But as his genius outlined the general plan, so his hand imparted the finishing touch to the varied parts.

The most marked characteristic of the first half of the Periclean age was placid majesty. Jupiter sat in supreme quietude, with thunderbolts resting in his lap; Juno reposed on her own feminine dignity; and Minerva showed supreme power, less through outward impulse than by sovereign self-control, and inward intent. When the highest period of calm beauty was passed, and another cycle drew near, full of force, greater excitement is exhibited in corresponding art, and with increased harmony with the changed spirit it portrayed. Such was Niobe and her children, pursued by Apollo and Diana, Gladiators in mortal struggle, and the passionate group of Laocoon. But at the best period no Greek artist would ever introduce in sculpture grim Pluto and sad Proserpine, or the monster Cerberus. He loved every thing that was beautiful; and, instead of damaging the uniform placidity of his works with such images of terror and aversion, he represented even the Furies as bearing a serene countenance. This calmness is the prevailing charm of Greek art. Its great depth, like that of the sea, remains undisturbed, however much the tempests may rage; and so, in their artistic figures: under every billow of passion reposes a great, self-collected soul. We may often be called to contemplate the struggling of brave heroes, but they are never altogether overcome by their pangs. The strongest emotions do not repel the spectator, but attract him rather; as in the dying Gladiator, or tortured Laocoon. While the misery we contemplate pierces to the very soul, it yet inspires us with a wish that we could endure with a fortitude like that we see. Beauty was latent in Periclean Greeks, like fire in crystal, which, however brilliant when excited, habitually rests in quiet, and robs not its abode of either purity or strength. They were as full of emotion as of heroism, and, as Agamemnon, after the victory, poured tears on the funeral pyre, they were never braver than at the very time they wept. Winkleman suggests,[Pg 60] that beauty with the ancients was the balance of expression, and, in this respect, the groups of Niobe and Laocoon are the best examples; the one in the sublime and serious, the other in the learned and ornamental style.

But the glory of Athens, as a single figure, and marking the highest culmination, was Minerva, of the Parthenon. Above all others she bore the charms of celestial youth, under the expression of severest virtue. Doubtless no more glorious contrast could be found to the stiff and conventional uncouthness of the Memnonian statues, than was produced in that fine realization of cultivated intellect invested with invincible power. The spirit of the beautiful was embodied in her whose masculine wisdom was tempered with feminine grace, the severity of dominion softened into elegance, and the sedateness of philosophy dissolved in the fervor of patriotic enthusiasm. Her majestic form of ivory rose forty feet in the dazzled air, draped in robes and ornaments of gold. At her feet lay a shield, covered with exquisite sculpture, representing, on the convex side, the Amazonian war, the Athenian leader being the portrait of Pericles, and on the concave side were giants warring against heaven. On her golden sandals were depicted the battle of the Centaurs. By special decree the Athenians forbade Phidias from inscribing his name on this, the divinest Pallas of his creation, in order that they might share equally among themselves the honor of an undertaking which the people in common had conceived and sustained.

The grandest inspiration came from Marathon, and was exemplified in that glorious art which best expressed the manliness of the Grecian race, and rose highest in the republic in its freest hour. From the battle of Salamis to Pericles, scarcely fifty years elapsed, in which brief period art had advanced from eastern archaism to the most refined western excellence, from the rude carving of Selinus to the consummate sculptures of the Parthenon. The finest group of antiquity is preserved to us from the western front of that magnificent temple. Notwithstanding the variety of the figures, there is not one which is inert, or which represents a perpendicular line. In the centre are Neptune, with the trident in his left hand, and Minerva, with the spear in her right, with their chariots and attendants. The goddess of wisdom wields the strongest hand, and[Pg 61] the sculptor has so adroitly managed the composition, as to place Neptune in the way of his own horses, while Minerva is allowed free passage in her nobler career. This pediment, looking down upon the mighty metropolis, and the Ægean bathing its western brim, bore a record and prophecy of high significance to him who approached by land or sea.

Cimon ornamented the public squares of Athens from his private fortune; and Pericles added markets, halls, gymnasia, and temples, all of which he caused to be adorned with innumerable statues by superior masters. The crowded wonders of the Acropolis, in particular, seemed to the astonished visitor, one great offering, the aggregate of national enthusiasms expressed in transcendant art. Toward this subordinate Olympus, a gigantic flight of steps conducted through the Propylæa, which opened its fivefold gates of bronze to a world of men and gods in precious forms, peopling marble halls, and adorning brilliant shrines. Here, for the temple of Polias, Phidias erected that statue of Minerva whose brazen helmet gleamed far off to greet the mariner as he doubled the Sunian promontory; and that other Pallas, named the Lemnian beauty; and a third, the "immortal maid," and protectress of the Parthenon, to whose colossal fascinations of ivory and gold allusion has already been made. So much were that democratic people animated with the passion of Pericles, which themselves had mainly inspired, that when Phidias recommended marble as being a cheaper material than ivory for the gigantic figure required, it was for that very reason that ivory was unanimously preferred. Miracles indeed abounded on every hand, and as the great patron and perfecter of them all, stood there the incarnation of his age, each masterpiece attested the culmination of that glorious star which blazed in tranquil beauty while he lived, and paled in tempest when he died. The outward decline of Greece was strangely sudden, and left a blank which has never been filled; but the empire of her inner spirit can never perish, so long as heroism may arouse, poetry enrapture, art embellish, or wisdom instruct the nations in their predestined progress. The epitaph—Here is the heart; the spirit is everywhere—most appropriately belongs to the capital of Attica. From her gates went forth colonies of beautiful intellect throughout the civilized world; and the light of her genius, lingering around the[Pg 62] ruins of her skill, still serves to model all the masterly productions of earth. Like the venerable Nestor's cap of sculptured gold, the material may have perished, but the power which conceived and executed it has proved itself immortal.

Proficiency in sculpture was at one time widely diffused; it rose rapidly to the highest excellence, and as rapidly descended to a corresponding depth. The great Socrates was himself a statuary. Pausanias saw, at the entrance of the Athenian Acropolis, a group of Graces draped, which was executed by the philosopher. Praxiteles, at a later period, was distinguished for delicate grace and most careful finish. When Nicomedes, of Bythinia, wished to purchase of the Cnidians the Aphrodite by this artist, with the condition of discharging the city of its oppressive debt, they preferred to endure any hardship rather than suffer such a loss. This tender solicitude for the preservation of the beautiful was utterly unlike a mere mania for museum collections, and was not limited to plastic art; it grew up in common with all Grecian culture, and is to be found in all the phenomena of exalted Hellenic life. Art was indigenous to that prolific soil, and graced the maturest fruit, as well as nourished the deepest roots, of existence. While the auspices of freedom remained, she constantly derived fresh vigor, as Antæus gained strength from contact with mother earth, borrowing radiance from Olympus, and growing in conscious companionship with heroes and gods.

Critias, Nestœlis, and Hegias succeeded each other with some distinction, but not much was added to plastic art until Polycletus was born to raise alto-relievo to perfection, and won the proud renown of being the Sophocles of sculpture. He excelled in exquisite symmetry and superlative polish. The statue he made of a Persian life-guard was so exact in its proportions, and careful in its finish, that it was called the Rule. But the highest excellence in art had passed, and Myron, and Scopas, in their works which commemorated war, the chase, or the terrors of a violent death, foretokened the tempestuous age about to break in desolation all over earth.

Having thus briefly sketched the progress and character of both architecture and sculpture, let us now glance at the painting of the Periclean age.

As we have before said, architecture was the first of the fine arts,[Pg 63] and the pursuit of the beautiful in this paved the way for all the rest. Color, as an artistic element, was first used to define hieroglyphics, and afterward was largely employed in mural decorations. The most characteristic production of Egypt was its obelisks, and these have made the world best acquainted with the spirit of the East by being transported without mutilation to the great cities of the West. Artificial tints on these are not common, but masses of wall are still seen, with pictorial representations of great variety, almost as vivid as they were three thousand years ago. But the type and form of her mummies was all that ever belonged to the land of the Pharaohs in the history of art. Every thing which contained life, growth, and power, from the simplest wayside Herma to Jupiter Olympus on his resplendent throne, sprang exclusively from the inventive and executive genius of Greece.

There is no proof that the art of Mosaics was indigenous in Africa. That it existed in Persia as early as the age of Ahasuerus is recorded in the first chapter of Esther, where it is mentioned that in the royal palace of Shushan "the beds were of gold and silver, upon a pavement of red and blue and white marble." In this and many other respects, the spoils of war taken from the Persian invaders, conveyed to their victors important lessons in the arts of peace. The excellence which this kind of art eventually attained, and the profusion of its use, is quaintly indicated by the incident referred to by Claudius Galenus as follows: "Diogenes, the cynic, having entered a mansion in which all the Olympian deities were figured in chaste Mosaics, spat in the face of the host, saying it was the least noble spot he saw." Athenæus also mentions a work, formed of many colored stones, in small fragments, which represented the whole story of the Iliad.

The Graces rocked the cradle of Greek art, Admiration taught her to speak, and painting was her most phonetic idiom. A legend not unworthy of belief tells us that a Corinthian maid, by means of a secret lamp, traced the shadow of her departing lover, and thus outlined portrait was formed. As Love made the first essay in this department of art, so he never ceased to guide the hands which beautified the age of Pericles. A wise law prohibited the choice of an ugly subject, and the popular sentiment so generally limited pictorial representation to the realm of elegance, that Pyricus,[Pg 64] who ventured to depict apes and kitchen herbs, was surnamed Rhypographer, or "Dirt Painter."

The etymology of the word used by the Greeks to express painting was the same which they employed for writing, and this renders the affinity of method and materials certain. Their first efforts were striagrams, simple outlines of a shade; thence they advanced to the monogram, or form without light or shade; from this they arose to the monochrom, or design with a single pigment, on a waxed tablet; and in the end, by means of the pencil, then first used, they invented the polychrom, and thus raised the stained drawing to a legitimate picture, glowing through all the magic scale of rainbow tints. The progressive steps in the attainment of excellence in this art are distinctly marked by the terms employed by Quinctilian, when he says that Zeuxis discovered light and shade; Pamphilus was exquisite for subtlety of line; Protogenes, for finish; Apelles, for grace; Theon, for poetical conceptions; Polygnotus, for simplicity of color and form; Aristides, for expression; and Amphion, for composition.

When Neptune and Minerva disputed as to who should name the capital of Cecropia, the Olympian hierarchy decided that the right should be given to the one who bestowed the greatest benefit on man. Neptune smote the earth with his trident, from whence sprang a war-horse; while Minerva produced an olive-tree. Thenceforth, as the greatest glory of the age, the arts of peace prevailed, and the product and proof of the noblest fame was set forth in mighty sculpture along the western pediment of the Parthenon. This was of pure Attic origin, and worthily crowned the reminiscences of oriental skill beneath. Egypt gathered the palm and lotus, the papyrus and date-leaves together, and produced the column, that symbol of strength, fastened like a bundle of sticks, the binding together of which probably suggested elegant flutings to the Greeks. But, while mechanical execution absolutely perfect, and great exactness in copyism of ignoble types, were imported from the East, in vain do we there seek, from Moses to Ptolemy, for the least approximation to natural forms. In the land of its growth, the lotus-leaf never alters, nor do the owl and ibis borrow one truthful characteristic from the models which abounded in the valley of the Nile. According to Herodotus, a heroic mythology, that great lever[Pg 65] of Greek art, was altogether wanting in Egypt; and for this reason, doubtless, of their individual poets, sculptors, and painters, we do not possess the slightest record. On the contrary, in the great western metropolis, infant art was progressively nourished by the refined spirit of both natural and ideal excellence; the permanent traces of which perpetually remain on the painted vases and delicate basso-relievos which in the temples of Theseus and Minerva adorned the councils of the supreme gods.

By means of polychromy, the Greeks endeavored to add elegance to their buildings, without detracting from their majesty, knowing well that this exquisite system of coloring, when applied under their pure sky, illuminated by brilliant sunshine, and encompassed by gorgeous vegetation, would bring artificial beauty into complete unison with the richness of nature. Thus colored statuary harmonized with mural historic painting, and this looked out from broad panels of beauty through tinted colonnades upon the sky, the groves, fields, and sparkling seas. By this combination, Athenian structures were rendered most worthy of admiration, because in them works which, taken separately, might move through single attractions, or approach the sublime, were so happily combined, as instantly to evoke a sentiment of perfection and delight such as no other monuments ever possessed. Colors were so graduated that the temple they vitalized was made to resemble and reflect the charming vicissitudes of a lovely Grecian day: cool in the morning, dazzling at noon, and at evening burned with all the glowing gorgeousness of the setting sun. Euphranor and Micon, to excite the emulation of compatriots, depicted the exploits of heroes in the Porticoes; Protogenes and Olbiades drew the portraits of renowned legislators in the Curia; the Odeia were decorated with the pictorial forms of poets, and with the Graces, their inseparable companions; the Gymnasia exhibited the godlike champions in the contests of Mars and the Muses; and even the Propylæa became more famous for the precious works of the painters than for the marbles out of which its structural grandeur was formed. But Phidias alone excepted, Polygnotus was perhaps the greatest public genius in the greatest artistic age. The pictures painted by him as votive offerings of the Cnidians were much admired, and the whole nation honored him for other monumental works. The Lesche, filled with the splendors[Pg 66] of his skill, was the grand glyptothek of Athens, and first picture-gallery of the Grecian world.

In the Periclean age, art was held as a glory, not as a luxury. Private life was frugal and modest, while the public monuments were soaring in proudest display. Socrates, the cotemporary of Pericles, according to his own testimony preserved by Xenophon, occupied a house which, with all it contained, was valued at five minæ, or about ninety dollars. The dwellings of Miltiades, Aristides, Themistocles, and Cimon were contracted and devoid of all decoration. Alcibiades was the first who introduced painting as an ornament to his living apartments. But a passion for art actuated all classes, and was most prominent in the highest. Thus the beautiful Elpinice, sister of Cimon, took a pride in being a model to Polygnotus, at the same time her potent brother, at the head of the republic, triumphed over the mighty king. With kindred zeal, the populace of Croton gathered all the fairest damsels before Zeuxis, in order that from them he might select the best features with which to execute their commission to paint Helen. The astonishing progress made at that period in sculpture and painting was seen in the contrast which existed between an Indian idol, or Egyptian Isis, and the Jupiter of Phidias; between the infantile fancies of a Chinese designer, and the ineffable charms of a picture by Apelles. While Socrates employed the language of Homer as the medium of moral discourse, and Plato thence derived images and reasoning to convey the theologies of Orpheus and Pythagoras, Agatharcus invented dramatic painting, and drew for Æschylus the first scene that ever agreed with the rules of linear perspective. A picture of the battle of Marathon, representing Miltiades erect in the foreground, was solemnly guarded by the public, and deemed an adequate reward by that great captain. A pendant to this is said to have been one representing Aristides watching at night over the bloody field, in sight of the blue sea, no longer crowded by the barbarian fleet, and the white columns of the temple of Hercules, near which the Athenians had pitched their tents.

But when freedom ceased to preside over the public fortunes of Greece, grandeur and beauty withdrew from her private minds. As Philip of Macedon drew near, the propitious gods of Olympia migrated to Pella, and all the fair heritage assumed a sickly hue in[Pg 67] the deepening shade. As rhetoric vainly mimicked the deep thunders of eloquence which had passed, and metaphysical sophistry was substituted for that lofty philosophy which had guided honorable destinies, so the grand taste which at first dictated to art the monumental style, degenerated into mere prettiness, or expanded into the heaviness of an unhealthy growth. But soon even the portion which yet retained some elegance ceased altogether, and what remained was rapidly transformed into the type of an age already gaining the ascendancy—colossal might. Phidias excelled in graphic as in plastic art. According to Pliny, his Medusa's head was a wonderful picture. Alcamenes, the Athenian, continued for a while the style of that great master, as did Agoracritus and Scopas of Paros. But the latter, like Lysippus, were transitional to Praxiteles of Cnidos, in whom great art expired. Original genius ceased to produce models of its own, and only expert imitators of mighty predecessors succeeded. Pamphilus was the Perugino, and Zeuxis, of Crotona, the Raphael, of Periclean painters. Apelles seems to have been the Titian of his age, and Protogenes, of Rhodes, a Greek Leonardo, whose picture of Temperance, his cotemporary Apelles declared, was worthy of being carried to heaven by the Graces. But with these masters pictorial art declined, and, like architectural and plastic art, was marked with the grossness of a coming age.

Cheronea was the grave of Grecian excellence, as Marathon had been the glorious scene of its birth. The principle of despotism there came into collision with that of democracy, and with fearful odds in favor of the former; but the result first demonstrated, as was afterward repeated at Thermopylæ, Salamis, and Platæa, the difference between the man who fights for another and him who contends for his own rights. From the days of Themistocles to the present hour, no writer has discussed the nature and influence of free institutions without drawing largely from this portion of Grecian heroism. It is impossible to estimate the influence of those battles on the destinies of mankind, as in all succeeding ages they have constituted the staple of patriotic appeal, the battle-cry of desperate struggles, and thrilling key-notes of triumphant songs. Thus consecrated to free government by martyred patriots, they are the universal watchwords of independence throughout the world. The[Pg 68] calm fortitude of that invincible age was expressed in every department of art, even its melody. Music was an accomplishment in which the Greeks generally excelled. Alcibiades, however, surrendered the use of the flute, because it deranged the beauty of his features; and Themistocles, also, rejected its instruments, saying, "It is true I never learned how to tune a harp, or play upon a lute, but I know how to raise a small city to glory and greatness." Perhaps the best instance and symbol of all was Achilles. He was fed on the marrow of lions, and trained for conflict by the centaur Chiron, who was not less skillful in music than in the art of war. Resting from the chase of wild beasts in the desert, or, after the victorious fight with Trojans, sitting alone by the sea-shore, the lyre was the companion of his leisure, and, playing with its chords, he could control inward wrath by his own melody.

If architecture is the most significant and enduring portion of the history of a people, a sure index of their mental state and social progress, plastic and graphic art are also striking exponents of their national character. The beautiful marble which forms the cliffs and coasts of Greece, notwithstanding its homogeneous transformation, betrays by veins and fossils its sedimentary formation. And so Hellenism, although it may be homogeneous, nevertheless betrays its secondary origin, and the sedimentary material which constitutes its groundwork. The rudimentary vestiges bear the same impress in Assyria, Egypt, and even among savage races; but the Greeks ignored the origin of these, rose above their hieratical meanings, and stamped all creations with their own peculiar manner. Their system of polychromy was the richest in antiquity, combining the lapidary style brought by the Dorians from Egypt, and the more brilliant tints which were attained when the Ionic mind penetrated Doric matter, and transfigured it with all the glories of Asiatic color. As Homer describes only progressive actions, so his great race executed nothing but what was bounded by the delicate lines of grace. The Parthenon has generally been regarded as being exactly rectilinear; but Penrose has recently demonstrated, by careful admeasurements, that probably there is not a straight line in the building. All is embraced within mathematical curves, accurately calculated, and designed to correct the disagreeable effect produced on a practiced eye by perfectly straight lines. Taken as[Pg 69] a whole, this work is sublimely grand, and, in its minutest details, it is perfectly wonderful. When unmutilated, it was the aggregate of all artistic worth, and yet remains, of its age, the chief emblem of intellectual majesty.

The Greek sculptor invested his work with an inexpressible serenity, as if it were a spirit without a passion, as appears in the Apollo and Antinous. Pride and scorn are strongly marked in these, yet over the whole figure is thrown a heavenly calm and placidness; there is no swelling vein, no contorted muscle, but a general smoothness and unperturbed dignity. The same subdued air and tone prevailed in the paintings of the best age. Achilles appears grieved at having slain Penthesilea; the brave beauty, bathed in her own blood so heroically shed, demands the esteem of her mightier antagonist, and elicits the exclamations of both compassion and love. The Greeks never painted a Fury, nor did extravagant rage or frightful despair degrade any of their productions. Indignant Jupiter hurled his lightnings with a serene brow; and Timanthes, in painting the sacrifice of Iphigenia, rather than over-pass the limits within which the Graces moved, when he knew that the grief of Agamemnon, the father, would spread contortions over the face of the hero, concealed the extreme of distress, and perfected at once the merit of the picture and the purity of his taste. The Philoctetes of Pythagoras of Leontini, appeared to impart his pain to the beholder; but this was telegraphed to the soul by the magnetic sympathy latent in all the work, and not by means of ugly features. Hercules in the poisoned garment, depicted by an unknown master of that age, was not the Hercules whom Sophocles described, shrieking so horridly that the rocks of Locris and headlands of Eubœa resounded therewith. What was truthful and appropriate in language, was not attempted to be adequately expressed through the distortions of inappropriate art. Zeuxis derived his inspiration from Homer, and when he had painted his Helen, he had the courage to write at her feet the renowned verses, in which the enraptured elders confess their admiration. This contest between poetry and painting was so remarkable, that the victory remained undecided, as both the poet and painter were deemed worthy of a crown. The Diana of Apelles also followed Homer closely, with the Graces mingling in the accompanying train of her Nymphs.[Pg 70] In these instances, as with Phidias in his own loftier sphere, the imagination of the artist was fired by the exalted image of the poet, and thus became more capable of just and captivating representation.

But perhaps the grandest combination of glorious arts it is possible to conceive, was that which existed when Demosthenes addressed six thousand of his countrymen at the Pnyx. In the presence of this vast multitude, he ascended the bema, and saw beneath him the Agora, filled with statues and altars to heroes and gods. To the north lay the olive groves of wisdom, and sunny villages along the fruitful plains beneath the craggy heights of Parnes and Cithæron; while to the south sparkled the blue Ægean, whitened by many a sail. Before him was the Hill of Mars, seat of that most venerable tribunal, the Areopagus. Above him towered the Acropolis, with its temples glittering in the air; on the left, stood the lofty statue of Minerva Promachus, with helmet and spear ready to repel all who dared to invade her pride of place; and on the right, rising in supreme and stately splendor, was the marble Parthenon, glowing with chromatic legends spread behind the colonnades, and relieved with sculpture tipped with gold.

The splendid noon of Grecian greatness was succeeded by a splendid evening, divinely prolonged. Mental pre-eminence survived long after her political supremacy was overthrown; and even when trampled in the dust, she still won reverence from her brutal foe.

If we trace the march of scientific knowledge through the dense strata of departed ages to its root, it will doubtless be found in the remote East, while all prolific growth is toward the West. As often as the storms of conquest have passed over the plains of India, the arts of production continue to be practiced in the very places of their first endeavors. Hindoos of the present day, with no other auxiliaries than their hatchets and hands, can smelt iron, which they will convert into steel, equal to the best prepared in Europe. It is believed that the tools with which the Egyptians covered their obelisks and temples of porphyry and syenite with hieroglyphics, were made of Indian steel. Bailly refers the origin of the arts and sciences, astronomy, the old lunar zodiac, and the discovery of the planets, to northern Asia. Doubtless that was the source of the progressive race, of which science was the chief instrument, and Greek culture the first adequate expression.

As criticism comes naturally after poetry, so science succeeds a great exhibition of art. A close and profound analogy exists between them, and in this order. Genius spontaneously executes great, curious, and beautiful works, before scientific reason pauses to sit in judgment upon the principles according to which the artistic processes were conducted. Expert workers in brass and iron existed long before the chemistry of metals was known, as wine sparkled in crystal and golden goblets before vinous fermentation formed a chapter of science. Pyramids and cromlechs were raised into the air in cyclopian massiveness, before a theory of mechanical powers had been defined. Dyeing was early in use with the Hindoos, from whom the Egyptians learned the art, as they did that of calico printing. That was one of the many varieties of[Pg 72] practical science which certainly came from the remote East. Paper making was first known in India, where, for a long time, it was formed of cotton and other substitutes for hemp and flax. In the Himalayas, it is still manufactured of the inner bark of trees, and in sheets of immense size. The invention of a loom, and the common mode of weaving, is alluded to in the Rig Veda, B.C. 1200 years. The Institutes of Manu, say: "Let a weaver who has received ten palas of cotton thread, give them back, increased to eleven by rice-water and the like used in weaving."

But the nurses of infant science on the banks of the Ganges, the Euphrates, and the Nile, enslaved it to their own superstitions, and forever arrested its growth at the immutable boundary of their own contracted technicalities. So little real skill did the Egyptians possess, that it was necessary for Thales to show them how to find the height of the pyramids by the length of their shadows. Osiris was a king of that mummified land, and the historical course of science was foretokened by the fabulous account respecting him. Diodorus states that he passed through Ethiopia, Arabia, India, and Asia; crossed the Hellespont into Europe, and went from Thrace to western Greece, and the nations beyond, teaching them agriculture, and the cultivation of the vine. This was unquestionably invented after the Egyptian priesthood had received much information from the Greeks, and had become ashamed of their own gods, who had always confined their beneficent acts entirely to the borders of the Nile. Nevertheless, the statement is interesting, as it indicates the natural course of improvement.

True scientific progress primarily appeared in those mathematical ideas which first escaped from theological jurisdiction, and have ever since increasingly dispersed the gloom of superstition. The East was all eyes and no sight, when reason was most requisite for practical use; like Argus, whose hundred eyes were found napping when work was to be done. The West was much more effective, because its executive skill was fully equal to its speculative; like Cyclops, whose rugged two hands, co-operative with his vigilant one eye, forged for Neptune the trident which insured him the empire of the sea. The study of natural forces increased in proportion to the necessity for their use as correlatives to manual toil. They were thus made greatly to increase the power of man, at the same time they[Pg 73] materially economized his time. It was impossible even to the enduring energies of Hercules, unassisted to cleanse the Augean stables; but by the co-operation of a natural force, in the waters of the Alpheus, the needful end was speedily and effectually obtained. A legend describes how Arachne, proud of her proficiency in needle-work, presumed to challenge Minerva to a trial of skill. But the contest was most unequal, because the latter added science to natural handicraft, and this combination was too powerful for any one to withstand. The discomfited Arachne was degraded from her high position among mortals, and, transformed into a spider, was thenceforth compelled to spin the same web in the same way, alike in summer zephyrs and wintry blasts.

Science exists in the mind; it is nature seen by the reason, and not merely by the senses. The sciences are necessarily progressive in the outward world, because of their internal connection. When a particular fundamental principle is in the process of discovery, it is objective, that is the object contemplated; but when once eliminated it becomes subjective, a new light to act as guide and evolver of kindred principles which lie beyond it, and are of more comprehensive use. The development of man as a race is the unfolding of this inherent dependence of one science upon another, the continuous revelation of that great patrimony of knowledge which is predestined to insure progress, emancipate reason, and entail the highest improvement consistent with a mortal state. When the Greek passed from the outer world of nature in search of wisdom, and descended to the depths of human consciousness, he was no longer traditional; his thought was science, and we can see both its birth and progressiveness. Then only might the world expect that, as Plato says his master once desired, that "Nature should have interpretation according to reason." With Socrates, and the scientific thinkers of his school, philosophy advanced from the realm of nature into the realm of man, and became a moral science. But its early cultivators were copious in abstract principles rather than in practical applications. As Canning said, they were the horses of the chariot of industry, and, going in advance of systemizers, they searched for truth for its own dear sake. Science was indeed beautiful in that serene height of abstract theory it was her first aim to secure, resources so copious and elevated that they might[Pg 74] irrigate all lands in their descending flow; as the dove that brought the olive-branch to the ark of man's hopes needed to take a higher and longer flight than the one measured by the tree whence she came.

Strange elements of civilization were gathered by the Greeks on every side, all of which were rapidly assimilated to a lofty type, and subordinated to the noblest use. Providence, with the wisest intent, did not permit them to advance far in the right track of scientific discovery. The time had not yet arrived for that, and their fine endowments were made subordinate to human happiness in more auspicious modes than through the accumulation of physical knowledge. They were fitted rather to self-scrutiny, guided by the mind alone, than to explore the grosser world of sense. To regulate and define common conceptions under the law of observation was not their forte; but they were prompt and facile to analyze and expand them through generalized reflection. The refined children of Hellas were subjective rather than objective in all their habits of thought; and the Good, the Beautiful, and the Perfect, were their favorite speculative themes. Nevertheless, the earliest waking of science was in their schools; with them the speculative faculty in physical inquiries was first unfolded. During the protracted prelude during which practical knowledge was becoming separated from metaphysical, the more sagacious of their leaders were called sophoi, or wise men. Afterward this term was changed, as we shall have occasion to note in the succeeding chapter. The physical sciences, as treated by the early Italic and Ionic schools, embraced numerous great questions, and comprehended the widest field of universal erudition that was ever attempted. But proceeding according to a method radically wrong, they were unsuccessful. Greek scholarship in science, as in every other department, at the outset aimed at universality. Untamed by toil, and undismayed by reverses, they went bravely to their task, and strove to read the entire volume of nature at one glance. To discover the origin and principle of the universe, expressed in a single word, was their vain endeavor. Thales declared water to be the original of all; and Anaximenes, air; while Heraclitus pronounced fire to be the essential principle of the universe. The poetical theogonies and cosmogonies of preceding ages gave tone to speculation in the dawn[Pg 75] of science, and a physical cosmogony was the primary result. Preceding nations, as the Egyptians, had no cosmal theories, and felt the need of none; not so the Greeks, they were born with a craving to discover the reasons of things, and to explain somehow the mysteries which duller races had little capacity, and less desire to comprehend.

Astrology bore a high antiquity in the East, and contained within itself some rays of light, but never rose above a degraded astronomy. It prepared the way for science, by leading to the habit of grouping phenomena under the pictorial and mythological relations which were supposed to exist among the stars. Actual truths are gradually approximated, but when once really attained, they forever remain the fundamental treasure of man, and may be traced in all the superadditions of brighter days. Thus, in the dim light of speculative suggestion, the Copernican system was anticipated by Aristarchus, the resolution of the heavenly appearances into circular motions was intimated by Plato, and the numerical relations of musical intervals is to be ascribed to Pythagoras. But so completely at fault as to method were even the latest natural philosophers, that no physical doctrine as now received, can be traced so far back as Aristotle.

Astronomy is undoubtedly the most ancient and remarkable science. Chaldea and Egypt probably gave to it somewhat of a scientific form, before the age of intellectuality represented by the Greeks. The Egyptians advanced one step in the right direction, when they determined the path of the sun; and Thales, who, like Moses, was learned in all the science of that Pharaonic people, introduced what he had gleaned into his own land, and became the father of astronomy. The great advance which he made is indicated by the fact that he was the first to predict an eclipse. This science, moreover, profited by the authority with which Plato taught the supremacy of mathematical order; and the truths of harmonics which gave rise to the Pythagorean passion for numbers, were cultivated with great care in that school. But after these first impulses, in the opinion of Dr. Whewell, the sciences owed nothing to the philosophical sects; and the vast and complex accumulations and apparatus of the Stagirite, do not appear to have led to any theoretical physical truths.

As intimated before, Thales of Miletus, was the father of mathematical science, as of Grecian philosophy in general. The discoveries of that early period were of the most elementary kind, but of sufficient importance to give impulse to more dignified researches. His pupil, Pythagoras, made great advancement, and introduced music into his explanations of scientific phenomena. Democritus and Anaxagoras, the friend of Pericles, improved upon the attainments of their predecessors. The latter employed himself in his prison on the quadrature of the circle. Hippocrates, originally a merchant of Chio, became a geometer at Athens, and was the first to solve the problem of a double cube. Archylas, the teacher of Plato, and Eudoxus, one of that great man's scholars, measured cylindrical surfaces, and attained important results by means of conic sections. Thales is reputed to have introduced the sun-dial into Greece, to have observed the obliquity of the ecliptic, and taught that the earth was spherical, and in the centre of the universe. The cycle of nineteen years, called the golden number, invented for the purpose of making the solar and lunar year coincide, was the most important practical result which the astronomy of the Periclean age attained. Meton and Euctemon proposed it for the adoption of the Athenians, by whom it was adopted B.C. 433 years, and is still in use to determine movable feasts.

Pythagoras, the cotemporary of Anaxagoras, greatly improved every branch of science. He is said to have been taken prisoner by Cambyses, and thus to have become acquainted with all the mysteries of the Persian Magi. He settled at Crotona, in Italy, and founded the Italian sect. The physical sciences, particularly natural history, and the science of medicine, were created by the Greeks. The writings of Hippocrates and Galen instructed the age of Pericles in the science of anatomy, which, with geometry and numbers, enabled the greatest of the artists to determine his drawing, proportions, and motion. It was genius guided by science that enabled the master to endow his work with life, action, and sentiment.

Science in Greece, like life itself, was thoroughly republican and expansive, so long as vital growth was permitted. Their navigation extended even to the Baltic, as the voyage of Pytheas is a proof; they rather surpassed than yielded to the Phœnicians in the activity of their trade, and the wealth as well as extent of their colonies.[Pg 77] It was in their superiority of scientific attainments that the Grecian colonists mainly excelled. Carthage, for instance, was at the same time powerful in conquest and commerce, but despite all her intellectual culture, she was inferior to smaller cities planted on the opposite coasts.

In the time of Homer, all Italy was "an unknown country." Phocean navigators discovered the Tyrrhenian sea, west of Sicily, and yet more daring adventurers from Tartessus sailed to the Pillars of Hercules. In due time, Colæus of Samos, clearing for Egypt, was driven by easterly winds (Herodotus adds significantly, "not without divine intervention,") through the straits into the ocean. Thus was the remotest border of the known world unwillingly passed, and a nearer approach made to the divinely attested Hesperides of the West.

In contemplating the sublime and immortal rank which Greece held in the designs of Providence, the relation of her commerce to science should not be overlooked. The fable respecting the flight of Dædalus from Crete, is supposed to signify that he escaped by means of a vessel with sails, the first use of which, in that primitive age, might well be regarded as a description of wings. Inland and maritime navigation, were made to contribute much to that prolific race. Ivory, ebony, indigo, the purple dye mentioned by Ctesias, and gum-resins were imported from Arabia and Africa, together with pearls and cotton from the Persian Gulf. Caravans of camels richly ladened crossed Arabia to Egypt, and the great rivers Euphrates and Tigris conveyed vast stores of raw material to western Asia and Greece. Not only were the shrines of many a deity enriched with vessels and decorations wrought out of "barbaric gold," but every department of productive art and science was kept active through the demands of a wide and untrammeled commerce. The great intelligences of the age struggled with laudable intent, to embody the conceptions, and diffuse the effulgence they possessed. As in that national game so significant of the master-passion and glorious mission of the Greeks, they threw onward the blazing torch from one to the other, until light kindled in every eye, and the flying symbol exhilarated every breast. No man then professed to teach, and was paid for teaching, who yet had nothing to communicate.

For ten centuries the Greeks marched at the head of humanity, while Athens remained the centre to which the winds and the waves bore germs of civilization from the East, and whence, by the same instrumentalities, the seeds of yet richer harvests were scattered toward a more distant West. Hesiod, in his Works and Days, gave many practical lessons on agriculture, and more prosaic, but not less useful proficients arose on every hand to impart the most valuable instruction to each aspirant. The last effort of Grecian science was to mingle and combine in one system, all that the nations of the earth up to that era had produced. Diversified ideas of every shape and degree of worth were gathered around the torch of intense national enthusiasm, were made to comprehend and modify one another, and, in their sublimated union, gave birth to the first cultivated world. Plato was nearly cotemporary with Phidias, and, considering the great influence of his philosophic theory concerning the power of the soul to mold the outward person into its own pattern of virtue or vice, we can little doubt that the artist in his studio was greatly influenced by the sage of the Academy, both as to the choice of subjects and mode of treating them. But when the age of consummate art had passed, the Greeks perfected another great legacy to their successors, by making the last generation of her national industry the successful devotees of science.

When every other department of literature and art in Athens were at their greatest splendor, the mathematics also flourished most; the former soon began to decline, but the sciences continued in power long after beauty in art had been eclipsed. Aristotle wrote nine books on animals. He may be fixed upon as representing the highest stage of knowledge and system the Greeks ever attained. Athenæus states, that Alexander gave him large sums of money, and several thousands of men, to hunt, fish, and otherwise aid in furnishing a vast collection in natural history, under the supervision of the philosopher. He was not only the first, but the only one of the ancients, who treated of separate species in the animal kingdom. But, although his system of physics accumulated numerous facts, Aristotle deduced not one general law to explain them. He knew the property of the lever as well, and many other correlative truths, but there was no correct theory of mechanical[Pg 79] powers in the world, before Archimedes struck upon a generic principle of science. Before him, no one had arranged the facts of space, body, and motion, under the idea of mechanical cause, which is force.

The civilization of Greece is borne to us, not upon the shields of her warriors, though they were such as Epaminondas, Miltiades, or Theseus. But in her inventive skill and artistic taste, in her ships and argosies, in her industrial prowess and the freedom consequent thereupon, were the power and wealth which made her the Panopticon of the nations. Freedom of production, and freedom of barter, were the guiding commercial principles under which science and fame grew together and matured the greatest strength. Athens was indebted to the enterprise of her citizens, and not to martial conquest, for her glory. The ships that crowded the gulf of Salamis, were built of wood, purchased from Thrace and Macedonia, and choice material for the furniture of their halls and palaces, from Byzantium. Phrygia supplied them with wool, and imports from Miletus were woven in their looms. The choicest products of Pontus, Cyprus, and the Peloponnesus, did the Athenians obtain; while, for them, from Britain, overland through Gaul, the Carthagenians exported tin, and exchanged with them diversified commodities. Spain yielded them its iron, and the quarries of Hymettus and Pentelicus furnished marble for the adornment of their own lands, and for copious export. As is shown in McCullagh's "Industrial History of Free Nations," they never had an idea that population could outstrip production, or production over supply the population. "If a man were in debt, they did not confine him between stone-walls, useless to himself and his creditors: they provided that he should labor until he had paid back the amount of the debt. It was upon the seas of commercial treaty they learned their lessons of freedom; and thence, too, did those gems of art, which have since been the wonder and the worship of the world, increase and delight. The beauty of their heavens shed an influence over their soul; the tenderness of their scenes, we know, enwove themselves into even the tables, chairs, couches, and drinking vessels. The Grecian moved amid a perpetual retinue of beauties; the painting, the statue, the vase, the temple, all assumed novel forms of elegance. In all this it is not the splendor of Athens[Pg 80] which attracts us most, it is that indefatigable genius of enterprise and industry which, from the caves of the Morea, plucked the laurel, and made the wild waves of the Ægean tributary to her wants and her valor." So prevalent was this spirit of free trade and personal enterprise, that ordinary mechanics often gained great power in the republic; as in the person of Cleon, the tanner, who became a worthy successor of Pericles. The port of the great artistic, manufacturing, and commercial emporium, was so thronged with ships from every clime, as to justify the saying of Xenophon, that the dominion of the sea secured to the Athenians the sweets of the world. Nor were their own craft insignificant in size, or any way unworthy of the great people they served. Demosthenes refers to one ship which carried three hundred men, a full cargo, numerous slaves, and the ordinary crew.

It is granted that art was the parent of science; the genial and comely mother of a daughter possessing a yet loftier and serener beauty than herself. It is equally true that Doric columns, and decorated entablatures, were perfected like the integral parts of the Attic drama, before professional critics vouchsafed to apply rules for the three unities, or canons of monumental forms. What creative spirit in their age actually did, scientific judges afterward patronized with frigid nomenclatures, and learnedly demonstrated that it might by certain rules be done.

Under the Ptolemies, neither poets nor artists were produced; but the mathematical school of Alexandria exhibited an extraordinary succession of remarkable men. Within the secluded halls and ample libraries of that central college, the exact sciences were assiduously cultivated, and for more than a thousand years immense resources of learning were stored, in due time to be dispersed over the prepared West. The works of Euclid, Apollonius, and Archimedes, contain a valuable treasure of the mathematical knowledge of antiquity; but at the early period when they lived, science was so immature, and the amount of observations so limited, they could only lay the foundation of that excellence to which posterity has since arrived. At the conclusion of the Aristotelian treatises the exploration of this realm subsided, and the human mind remained, in appearance, stationary for nearly two thousand years.

The term philosopher, or lover of wisdom, is an appellation which was first applied by Pythagoras, of Samos. He was the originator of the Italic, as Thales, his predecessor, one of the sophoi or wise men, was of the Ionic school, about B.C. 640 years. Philosophy means a search after wisdom. When this is looked for among the things that are seen and handled, weighed and measured, it is physical philosophy. But he who seeks for an object which is not of this material kind, is called a metaphysical philosopher.

All philosophical elements are in the East, but enveloped in one another, needing a distinct and matured growth. As the roots of the modern world are in classic antiquity, so those of classic antiquity are on the coasts of Egypt, in the vales of Persia, and on the heights of Asia. The oriental world preceded Greece, but has left no legible record of her past. In the progressive West alone does authentic history begin, and this is embodied in history, as in every other branch of human improvement. The world of humanity was seen to take a step forward, when civilization descended through Asia Minor, and traversed the Mediterranean to rest on the coasts of Attica. Then all the elements of human nature came under a new condition, and soon adopted the permanent order of an independent march.

The earliest philosophy of Greece had an Asiatic origin, and was received through Ionia. Many fragments from that source were incorporated in the works of Homer and Hesiod, and others are quoted by the primitive annalists from the still more ancient oracular poetry. Sir William Jones was of the opinion that the six leading schools, whose principles are explained in the Dersana Sastra, comprise all the metaphysics of the old Academy, the Stoa, and the[Pg 82] Lyceum. "Nor," continues he, "is it possible to read the Vedasta, or the many compositions in illustration of it, without believing that Pythagoras and Plato derived their sublime theories from the same fountain with the sages of India." In the mathematical sciences, the Hindoos were acquainted with the decimal notation by nine digits and zero. In algebra, Mr. Colebrooke found reason to conclude that the Greeks were far behind the Hindoos; but it is possible that the latter was obtained from the Morea at a later period through the Arabs. But on the question of philosophy, there can be no doubt that incipient notions existed in Hindoostan, compared with which the antiquity of Pythagoras is but of yesterday; and in point of daring, the boldest flights of Plato were tame and commonplace.

Grecian art, which rose to absolute perfection, ended also with itself, and presents a striking exemplification of the perishable nature of merely instinctive greatness. But the philosophy of that wonderful people was more immutably founded, and has never ceased to show that the human race, unlike an unbroken circle constantly revolving upon itself, progressively advances into the infinite, and shines unremittingly with inborn ardor to attain the highest and noblest ends. Humanity, that is, thought, art, science, philosophy, and religion, the powers which are represented in history, embraces all, profits by all, advances continually through all, and never retrogrades. A given system may perish, and this may be a misfortune to itself, but not to the general weal. If it possessed real life, that life is still realized in some higher manifestation, but perhaps so modified by co-operative elements as to appear lost. It may indeed be obscured, but can never be obliterated. Vicissitudes and revolutions may rapidly succeed, and in great confusion; but human destiny is higher and better than these, it accepts all, assimilates all, and subordinates all to its own supreme behests. Every epoch, in retiring from the stage of the world, leaves after it a long heritage of contrary interests; but these only wait for a sufficient accumulation of other like elements, that with them a homogeneous amalgam may be formed as the basis of yet worthier superadditions. The Hellenic mind invented the art of deducing truth from principles by the dialectical process, and this divinest of Japhetic discoveries has exerted the most auspicious influence on subsequent[Pg 83] philosophy and religion. The world had already learned much when the Greek first demonstrated that reasoning might often err, but reason never. That is the only medium through which truth is conveyed, and Greek philosophy was truly precious when it became to mankind the translation of the instinctive consciousness of God into reasoning. This was first applied to fathom the depths of physical speculation; and, then, in the consecrated soul of Socrates, it labored to possess the bosom of universal humanity, that thereby it might unfold to all the highest science. Shem transformed figurative signs into simple letters, and invented the Alphabet; but that greater prophet of the human race, Japhet, did vastly more, by translating the hieroglyphics of thought into simple elements, thereby inventing dialectical philosophy. This changed myths, legends, and visions, as well as more authentic annals into the heirloom of mankind by reason, and became at once and for all time the great organon for dealing with both conception and existence of all kinds everywhere.

There was military activity enough among the Greeks to preserve them from intellectual and moral torpor, but fortunately it did not exist in sufficient force to engross the faculties of superior minds. Therefore, energies of the highest order were thrown back upon intellectual pursuits; and the masses, so led, were also inclined to like culture, especially in the direction of æsthetics and philosophy. The bold writers of the Republic shrunk not from propounding all those problems in science and morals most interesting to man; and, whatever may have been their skill in solving them, they certainly were the first to point the way to true greatness. But for the restless spirit of inquiry which was awakened by Greek philosophers, the western nations might still have been slumbering in barbarian ignorance. Ancient dialectics prepared the way for modern progress, by teaching intellect to discipline and comprehend itself, in order that it may accurately scan nature and bind her forces to the car of human welfare. Such was the idea expressed by Aristotle, when he said: "The order of the universe is like that of a family, of which each member has its part not arbitrarily or capriciously enforced, but prefixed and appointed; all in their diversified functions conspiring to the harmony of the whole."

Philosophy, like the literature, art, and science of the ancients,[Pg 84] had its origin among the Asiatic Greeks. The same region that gave existence and character to Homer and Herodotus, produced also Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Heraclitus, founders of the Ionic school. They belonged to the same region, studied under like auspices, and formed continuous links in the great chain of perpetual progress. To the same source is to be accredited those who extended the Ionic doctrines to Magna Grecia and southern Italy, such as the poet Zenophanes, and that mighty founder of the most erudite confederacy, Pythagoras.

Anaxagoras, successor of Anaximenes, was born B.C. 500 years. After giving great distinction to the Ionic school, he came to reside at Athens, where he taught Pericles and Euripides, at the same time he was opening the source from which Socrates derived his knowledge of natural philosophy.

Parmenides, Zeus, and Leucippus, natives of Elea, enhanced the reputation of the Eleatic school, founded by Zenophanes, about B.C. 500 years. Democritus, a disciple of Leucippus, increased its fame still more, but modified its doctrines extensively.

Socrates, according to Cicero, "brought down philosophy from heaven to dwell upon earth, who made her even an inmate of our habitations." His discomfiture of the Sophists, whose futile logic inflicted much injury on the Athenian mind, was a great blessing to his country, but one which cost the benefactor his life. His doctrines were never committed to writing by himself, but have been preserved in substance by his distinguished pupils Plato and Xenophon.

The Cyrenaic sect was founded by Aristippus, a disciple of Socrates. It degenerated through the varied succession of Theodorus, Hegesias, and Anniceris, to merge finally in the kindred doctrines on happiness inculcated by Epicurus.

Antisthenes was the first of the Cynics, and was succeeded by the more notorious Diogenes. This school was composed of disciplinarians, rather than doctrinists, whose whole business was the endeavor to arrange the circumstances of life, that they may produce the maximum of pleasure and the minimum of pain. The caustic wit of Diogenes was directed against more refined teachers, especially his great cotemporary, Plato. The latter, in terms which implied respect for the evident talents of a rival whom he had so much reason to despise, called him "a Socrates run mad."

Archelaus succeeded Diogenes, and was called, by way of eminence, "the natural philosopher." Before him, Anaxagoras had taught occasional disciples in Athens; but it is probable that Archelaus was the first to open a regular school there. He transferred the chair of philosophy from Ionia to the metropolis of Minerva 450 years before Christ.

The Megaric sect of Sophists was the last and worst. It was founded by Euclides, and produced Eubulides, Alexinus, Eleensis, Diodorus, and Stilpo. Cotemporary criticism applied to some of these such epithets as the Wrangler, or the Driveler, which, doubtless, were well deserved. Stilpo was the last gleam of philosophic worth in Greece.

Of the religious views of Socrates, we shall treat in the succeeding chapter. Under the present head, it is sufficient to say, that his moral worth illustrated the age in which he lived; and his admiring disciples branched into so many distinguished families or schools, that he is justly called the great patriarch of philosophy. Socrates was the first philosophic thinker who demanded of himself and of all others a reason for their thoughts. He roused the spirit, and rendered it fruitful by rugged husbandry. He insisted that men should understand themselves, and so express their reason as to be understood by him. Thus he produced all he desired, movement, advancement in reflection; and leaving successors to arrange systems, it was enough for him to supervise the birth and growth of living thoughts. As the Pythagoreans were the authors of mathematics and cosmology, Socrates consummated the scientific endeavor, and added psychology. Thus the dignity and importance of human personality stood revealed, the crowning light most needed to complete the age of Pericles. Around this fundamental idea created by psychology was gathered the idea of personal grandeur, in heaven as upon earth, in literature, art, science, philosophy, and religion. As soon as philosophic genius proclaimed the supreme importance of the study of human personality, the higher divinities became personal, and the representations of art no longer fell into exaggerated forms, but were definite, expressive, and refined. Moreover, as this principle prevailed and was acutely felt, legislation became liberal, and the social polity was necessarily democratic.

Plato, the great glory of Athenian philosophy, was born in[Pg 86] Ægina, about B.C. 430 years. Descending from Codrus and Solon, his lineage was most distinguished; but his genius was much more illustrious than any ancestral fame. He learned dialectics from Euclides the Megaric; studied the Pythagorean system under Phitolaus and Archytas; and traveled into Egypt to accomplish himself in all that which the geometry and other learning of that country could impart. Returning to Greece, he became the most characteristic and renowned teacher of philosophy in the Periclean age. Demosthenes, Isocrates, and Aristotle were among his disciples, and continuators of his immense mental and moral worth. Plato also visited Italy, where he gathered the noble germs which he grafted on the doctrines of Socrates, and which are not accounted for in Xenophon. On his final return to Athens, he took possession of a modest apartment adjacent to the groves and grounds which had been bequeathed by Academus to the public, wherein he lectured to the public on sublime themes. He divided philosophy into three parts—Morals, Physics, and Dialectics. The first division included politics, and under the second, that science which afterward came to be distinguished by the name of metaphysics. In his Commonwealth, the object of Plato was to project a perfect model to which human institutions might in some remote degree approximate. He seems even at that early day to have had a presentiment of the ennobling republicanism which human progress would necessitate and attain. His writings form a mass of literary and moral wisdom, inculcated with the highest charm of thought and manner, which had ever appeared to exalt the imagination and affect the heart. He was, doubtless, the best prose writer of antiquity; in the form and force of his composition, he stands at the highest point of refinement Attic genius ever attained. He died at Athens, eighty-one years old, and was honored with a monument in the Academy, upon which his famous pupil, Aristotle, inscribed an epitaph in terms of reverence and gratitude.

The philosophy to which Plato gives his name, recalls at once all that is most profound in thought and pleasing in imagination. But no isolated genius can be correctly appreciated. His predecessors, Socrates and Anaxagoras, as well as his successors, the Neoplatonists, must be taken into joint consideration, or the great master in whom philosophic grandeur culminated will not himself be properly[Pg 87] understood. Neither is the Sceptic school of Pyrrho, nor the Stoic school of Zeus; Democritus, of Abdera, radiant with smiles, or Heraclitus, of Ephesus, bathed in tears, to be discarded from the view, when we would sum up the aggregated worth of that philosophic age. But the hour has come when the god of philosophy, a son of Metis, or Wisdom, realized the menace put into the mouth of Prometheus by Æschylus, and Zeus with his compeers is driven into the caverns of the West to share the exile of Cronus. Who was the predestined instrument of all this?

Stagirus, the birthplace of Aristotle, was situated on the western side of the Strymonic gulf; a region which, in soil and appearance, resembles much the southern part of the bay of Naples. When seventeen years old, he came to Athens, the centre of all civilization, and the focus of every thing that was brilliant in action or thought. Plato fired his mind, and fortified that wonderful industry in his hardy pupil, which enabled him, first among men, to acquire almost encyclopædic knowledge in collecting, criticizing, and digesting the most comprehensive mass of materials. So extraordinary was the application of Aristotle, that Plato called his residence "the house of the reader."

How wonderful is Providence! While Aristotle was exiled in Mytilene, and when the auspices of human progress were most foreboding, he was invited to undertake the training of one who, in the world of action, was destined to achieve an empire which only that of his master in the world of thought could ever surpass. In the conjunction of two such spirits, according to the predetermined mode and moment, the invaluable accumulation of Periclean wealth was to be distributed westward without the slightest loss. The great transition hero needed to be trained in a way befitting his mission, and this required that he should be imbued with something better than the austerity of Leonidas, or the flattery of Lysimachus, so that his character might command respect, and his judgment preserve it. Through the influence of Aristotle on Alexander, this conservative result was attained. The rude and intemperate barbarian became ameliorated, and soon manifested that love for philosophy and elegant letters, which were the fairest traits of his life. So strong did this elevating passion become, even amid the ignoble pursuits of war, that being at the extremity[Pg 88] of Asia, in a letter to Harpalus, he desired the works of Philestris, the historian, the tragedies of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and the dithyrambs of Telestis and Philoxenus, to be sent to him. Homer was his constant traveling companion; a copy of whom was often in his hands, and deposited by the side of his dagger under his nightly pillow. Thus did the beautiful age of Pericles blend with the martial force about to succeed.

When Aristotle returned to Athens to close the great era of philosophic vigor, being near the temple of Apollo Lyceus, his school was known as the Lyceum, and here every morning and evening he addressed a numerous body of scholars. Among the acute and impressible Greeks nearly all objects, however ideal in their original treatment, subsequently received a practical form. As the imaginative sublimities of their poets became embodied in glorious sculptures, so the theories of their early philosophy were wrought out politically, or gave way to cumulative mathematical demonstration. Plato, in dialogues and dissertations, philosophized with all the fervor of an artist; while the method of Aristotle was strictly scientific in the minute as well as enlarged sense of the word. To the first, philosophy was a speciality which engrossed a protracted life; but the latter treated not only of natural science, and natural history as well, but he also wrote on politics, general history, and criticism, so that it may be said truly that he epitomized the entire knowledge of the Greeks. The age of Plato was an age of ideals; but with Aristotle the realistic age had dawned. Pericles had begun to take part in public affairs one year before the birth of Socrates; Olynthus was taken by Philip of Macedon the very year in which Plato died. This intermediate period of one hundred and twenty years was all occupied with some ideal of beauty, wisdom, or freedom, in the persons of poets, architects, sculptors, painters, statesmen, who were striving to realize it, dreaming of it, or sporting with it to amaze and bewilder their fellow-men. But the name of Aristotle, as that of Philip, is a signal that concentrated organizing power has appeared in the realms of thought and action, and that the coming age requires a philosophical expounder who shall in his own career govern the old and represent the new. It was at Athens that Aristotle collected all the treasures of scientific facts the conquered nations could[Pg 89] contribute, and wrote there the great works which were still young in their influence when the Macedonian madman had long since crumbled into dust.

To the followers of Plato in the Academy, of Aristotle in the Lyceum, the Cynics of the Cynosargus, and Stoics of the Portico, Epicurus came in the decrepid effeminacy of the age at the moment of its lowest degradation, and, amid the parterres of prettiness which, with the pittance of eighty minæ, he purchased for the purpose, established the so-called philosophy of the Garden. Such was the last expression of that Ionian school which shared somewhat of the Hindoo national character, wherein it originated, and so far resembled a hot-house seed. Opening with gorgeous colors and rich perfume, it grew rapidly, and produced precocious and abundant fruit. But the more western growth was like the oak, hardened by wind and weather, striking its roots into solid earth, and stretching its branches in free air toward both sun and stars. In the Ionic school the human soul performed but a feeble part. The Italic school, on the contrary, was mathematic and astronomic, and at the same time idealistic; it was at once the brain and heart of Grecian progress and power. The former regarded the relations of phenomena as simple modifications of the same, and founded the abstract upon the concrete; whereas, the latter neglected the phenomena themselves for their relations, founding thus the concrete upon the abstract. To the Ionic school the centre of the world's system is the earth; but the centre of the universal system, according to conscious reason in the Italic school, is the sun. Ten fundamental numbers therein formed the decadal astronomy, the harmonious kosmos, whose laws of movement around the great central luminary produced the sweet music of the spheres.

Empedocles, of Agrigentum, B.C. 455, presents the most western phase of Greek character, and the one which in the clearest manner anticipated the age to come. He noted the great changes which transpired in society, and believed he saw their counterpart in the convulsions going on within and upon the earth. The war of disorganized humanity, passions against nature, and the conflict of enraged elements among themselves, were closely considered, but doubtless with a confusion of physics and ethics in his mind.[Pg 90] Love, hatred, friendship, treason, were all recognized mixed up in the fearful warfare of earth, air, fire, and water. Great nature was no imaginary battle-field to the mind of Empedocles; the hosts which Homer had portrayed fighting for Greeks and Trojans, were still in deadly struggle, and his vivid speculations soon after became actual history. Cotemporaries called him the enchanter; because, as a zealous student of the outer world, he could not disengage himself from the perplexities which he found within his own constitution, but followed out with fervor the greatest question of our being. He not only won at the chariot race, as his father did before him, and fought for the liberties of his native Agrigentum, that last hold of freedom in the West, but as poet, as well as philosopher, he forms a curious link between Homer, Pindar, and his Roman admirer, Lucretius.

As often as the historian and philosopher speak of heroic virtues, they will mention Lycurgus, and the influence of his legislation. But when they glance at the higher objects man was made to attain, the harmonious development and adornment of all the powers in his possession, they must look to the laws of a nobler culture in Attic climes. It was there only, that all ennobling influences were blended and subordinated to the highest use by the best minds. Plato frequented the studios of artists, to acquire correct ideas of beauty; and Aristotle, in his Politics, says, that "all were taught literature, gymnastics, and music; and many also, the art of design, as being useful and abundantly available for the purposes of life." But not one beautiful flower of intellect or art sprang in Laconian soil, to acquire thereon either healthful vigor or attractive growth. No gladdening voice of the poet has thence descended, nor were the obscurities of nature, and the depths of immortal consciousness either investigated or enlightened by any of her sons.

Thus from the sublime terrace of the Acropolis, have we cast another glance over that glorious land where Homer breathed forth those songs for six and twenty centuries unexcelled; where Phidias, like his own Jupiter, sat serene on the loftiest throne of art; where Pericles ruled with sovereign grandeur in the first of cities, not by mercenary arms, but by the magic influence of mind; where Socrates first scanned the human heart, and learned to[Pg 91] analyze its deep and mighty workings; and whence the royal pupil of Aristotle, the last and greatest of universal victors, went forth on the mission of conquest, not designedly to plunder and destroy, but to spread the literature, arts, science, philosophy, and religion of immortal Greece throughout the civilized world.

The East is the native land of religion, whence a perpetual exodus has continually advanced toward the West. As the sun in the beginning, so truth and life first shone from the orient; and the march of civilization has ever since been in the direction of that great orb.

The Assyrians were not monotheistic, but they were far from being so polytheistic as the Egyptians, who were imbued with an African fetichism such as never debased the Asiatic race. Hence, their symbolism was much simpler and less repulsive than that of the Egyptians. The ancient Persians were less superstitious than the Assyrians, and presented their paraphrase of Te Deum first among intellectual nations without temples. They have left nothing that pertains to sacred art, not even tombs. With them God was omnipresent, fire his symbol, the firmament his throne, the sun and stars his representatives, the elements his ministers, and the most acceptable worship a holy life. But a belief in the existence and exercise of supernatural powers is older than the magism or magic, whose origin belongs to that indefinite antiquity which witnessed the feuds of Ninus and Zoroaster, when the gods instructed the Indian devotee how to subordinate them to his purposes, or when Odin discovered the Runes, which could chain the elements and awake the dead. Earlier than Assyrian Chaldeans, Israelitish Levites, or Median and Persian Magi, religious sentiments were native to man, and magician and priest were synonymous terms. Then was the arbiter of weal and woe, of blessings and curses, invested with the awful privilege of invoking the gods and performing religious services. Aided by popular credulity, the inspired seer could move mountains, stir up Leviathan, govern disease, or, like Balaam, destroy foes by imprecations.

It would be a hopeless task to trace with accuracy the theology of the earliest periods, buried as it is under a mass of allegory and fable which can not now be removed. Yet there are indications of a purer morality, and a more worthy faith, than is portrayed in the anthropomorphic mythology of the Hesiodic and Homeric poems. Inachus is supposed to have migrated from the Asian shore about the same time the Israelites entered Egypt. Then, the worship prevalent among the Nomadic tribes of Asia, according to Job, was that of one almighty Creator, typified by, and already half confounded with light, either the sun or other celestial bodies. Plato speaks vaguely of the divine unity, and Aristotle more distinctly avers, that "it was an ancient saying received by all from their ancestors, that all things exist by and through the power of God, who being one, was known by many names according to his modes of manifestation."

In the opening chapter of this work, allusion was made to the Kylas mountain in Asia, from the lofty terraces of which the ancestors of the Greeks descended, bringing with them to Hellas a memento of their origin in the word koilon, which they used to designate heaven, and illustrating their hereditary theology by going for congenial worship to the loftiest shrines. The best authority tells us that they were exceedingly religious, a fact which even their grossest errors confirm. Endowed with the most acute and active sensibilities, the Greek sought to satisfy the ardent aspirations of his devout spirit; he even yearned to be himself enrolled among the deified heroes whom his valor or imagination had exalted to the dazzling halls of Olympus. This general impulse may be illustrated by particular examples, as in the subtle Themistocles and majestic Pericles, who placidly hailed in worship traditions discarded by the historic mind as transparent fictions. So powerful and all pervading was the religiousness of the cultivated Greeks, that the same judgment which so profoundly harmonized with the severe grandeur of the Olympian Jove, enthroned by Phidias amid the marshaled columns of the national temple, bowed to the legend of Aphrodite, the foam-born queen of Love. Heroism and piety were perpetually invigorated at costly fanes; and how deeply the spirit of worship and belief in retribution, were impressed upon the most powerful intellect, is shown by the awful apostrophe of Demosthenes[Pg 94] to the heroes who fell at Marathon, and the breathless attention which then absorbed the very soul of the Athenian.

In the land of Ham nothing was nobler than a few dull emblems of thought, sitting on a lotus leaf, immersed in the contemplation of their own divinity, or fierce warrior-deities, Molochs, Baals, or Saturns, while the classic West deified the sentiments of the human mind; and, though steeped in viciousness, yet represented as beings presiding over nature in beautiful and commanding forms. A potent spell of fascination dwelt in the mere abstractions of pagan thought embodied in a Hebe, Venus, or Minerva; and false as were the spiritual views of their authors, they exercised a charm of imagination which still speaks to more enlightened intellects, and evokes sad regrets from holier hearts. The province of Shem was faith and not philosophy. His descendants were never successful in dialectics, and the best of them under the old dispensation only stated the matter of their belief, but never undertook to prove it. When Job attempted religious argumentation, and would justify the ways of God to man by a process of theodicean philosophy, he acknowledged his failure by avowing the incomprehensibility of human destinies. And when the pious and philosophic Ecclesiastes attempted to argue on rationalistic principles, he fell into inextricable doubt, and could resist despair only by implicit submission to the word vouchsafed from heaven: "Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man." Such was the last dictum of Hebraism in the fifth century before Christ, at the moment when the daring speculation of Japhet had passed its culminating point. This, too, was the age of Haggai and Malachi, in whom sacred truth is announced in purely didactic and not argumentative forms. Without anticipating the designs of Providence, we think with inexpressible delight of the last and best expression of Jewish faith united to Japhetic reason, and happily blended together in the splendors of an infinitely loftier wisdom to enlighten mankind.

The functions of humanity are of a social nature; they merge in the whole species, and have religion for their foundation and centre. If absolute isolation were possible to man, it would virtually nullify his existence. Only societies act in and upon the world, with religion for their bond and protection. Among the nations which[Pg 95] have shared in the work of progress accomplished hitherto, each has exerted an influence by some characteristic feature, some special function in the general advance. In addition to the literature, art, science, and philosophy of the Greeks, we should carefully note the great civilizing might which dwelt in their religion. This was felt by them to be an infinite and universal necessity. Without it, the social state is impossible, since the nature of man demands active progress under a moral law too exalted to emanate from human will. It must be divinely ordained, and in a way which clearly indicates the means and end of human perfection. That alone can create and proclaim the legitimate end of human activity, at the same time it becomes synonymous with religious morality.

The ideas which obtain among different nations respecting their own creation, are usually much like themselves. Scandinavians suppose that they sprang from dense forests on their hills, the Libyans from the sands of their native deserts, while the Egyptians conceived themselves to have arisen from the mud of the Nile. But the cheerful and active Greek associated his origin with the grasshopper, and went singing on his agile way. A kindred diversity exists in the choice made by nations as to the objects to be adored. The Egyptians deified water, the Phrygians earth, the Assyrians air, and the Persians fire. But the Greek, impelled by nobler instincts, went beyond grosser natures and deified himself. The mighty conclave shining round the resplendent heights of Olympus, was only the counterpart of a vast congregation worshiping below. As Amon or Osiris presides among the deities of a lower grade, Pan, with the music of his pipe, directs the chorus of the constellations, and Zeus leads the solemn procession of celestial troops in the astronomical theology of the Pythagoreans. The apotheosis of Orpheus, with his harp, in their scientific heavens, is a starry record of oriental worship sublimated by the devout intellect of Greece. The nations of antiquity believed that their ancestors dwelt closely allied to the gods, or were gods themselves. Cadmus and Cecrops were half human, half divine. The Greeks inherited many cosmogonical legends from the Hindoos, out of which was composed the theogony of Hesiod. Thebes rising to the sound of Amphion's lyre, was the world awakening at the music of the shell of Vishnou. Conflicting Centaurs and Lapithæ, Titans and giants, are supposed[Pg 96] to represent the elemental discord out of which arose the stability and harmony of nature.

The great heroes of India became the chief gods of Greece; so that their mythology was not a pure invention, but rested on a historical basis. The introduction of the Lamaic worship into north-eastern Hellas, is distinctly preserved in the earliest religious annals. The famous moralist Pythagoras was the special devotee and professor of eastern doctrines, and, under their inspiration, established a brotherhood strictly devotional, and with observances of monastic sanctity. Grote speaks of this great preacher to the Grecian race in the following terms: "In his prominent vocation, analogous to that of Epimenides, Orpheus, or Melampus, he appears as the revealer of a mode of life calculated to raise his disciples above the level of mankind, and to recommend them to the favor of the gods; the Pythagorean life, like the Orphic life, being intended as the exclusive prerogative of the brotherhood, approached only by probation and initiatory ceremonies, which were adapted to select enthusiasts rather than to an indiscriminate crowd, and exacting active mental devotion to the master." Traditionary history commemorates a wonderful reformation produced by this stern religionist in different lands. The effect produced among the Crotoniates by the illustrious missionary of morality is indicated by the recorded fact, that two thousand persons were converted under his first discourse. The Supreme Council were so penetrated with the noble powers of the Lamaic apostle that they offered him the exalted post of their President, and placed at the head of the religious female processions his wife and daughter.

The religion of the Greeks was the deification of the faculties and affections of man. Human character and personality preponderated therein, but it was neither inert nor wanting in intellect. The passionless, immovable deities of Egypt and Persia were superseded by the active and powerful hierarchy of Olympus. Free and independent, they were presided over by the great conqueror of those blind and deaf gods of necessity, who had reigned absolutely over all the ancient East. Under this new dispensation, the various forces of nature were emancipated and endowed with the affections, and subjected to the weaknesses, of mortal beings. Fountains, rivers, trees, forests, mountains, rose into objects of adoration under the[Pg 97] form of nymphs, goddesses, and gods. Social existence was elevated to a corresponding degree, by the removal of castes, and the sacerdotal despotisms which had so long impeded the progress of democratic principles in individual and social life. Preceding nations, of lively sensibility, had reverenced as deities single rays of the Divine Being separated from their great centre; but the polytheism which prevailed over adolescent men, appeared in Hellas invested with a purer majesty. Oriental polytheism desecrated its altars and temples with images of deformity; but the West conceived a nobler symbol of divinity, when the Greek created God in his own image, and seemed to inhale life-giving breath while he worshiped in the midst of every phenomenon that could refine his taste or stimulate his imagination. This was utterly inadequate to the attainment of the great end of spiritual existence; but one important step in paganism was gained; natural religion, which had before been absorbed in the immeasurableness of the formless infinite, became fixed to the eye under the limitations of a cognizable form, eminently human, but suggestive of the divine. Thus, religion produced ideality in art, and art fostered enthusiasm in religion. The beauty and dignity of many altar-statues appeared to have descended from a higher sphere, and commanded the reverence due to beings of celestial birth. The earthly was so blended with the heavenly, and visibly presented, that Plato looked upon the harmony as something complete, and most ennobling in its power of assimilation. In all the public enterprises and festal assemblies of the Greeks, a high religious tone was present which paid homage only to the exalted and the beautiful. They were of the earth, earthy; but it is impossible not to look back with respect upon that people whose whole civilization was imbued with a spirit of renunciation, sublime self-sacrifice, and beneficent deeds. The magical splendor which yet pours about them, in the depths of that old world, after so many centuries, is nothing else than the reflection of their purer worship and nobler stamp of character. Of all the states, Athens, in this regard, as in every other, was by far the noblest. Sparta, it is true, appreciated highly the blessings of liberty, and was not only content by a joyless existence to purchase this, but delighted even to sacrifice life for its preservation. But the refined capital of Minerva went beyond the severe law which[Pg 98] makes a useful slave, as one would harden a growth of oak; she elicited perfume from the fairest bloom of the soul, wherein the moral man was made to unfold in the development of a higher freedom. The genius of the Greek was as profoundly devotional as it was emulative. To his sensitive imagination, the fair objects of nature became invested with a living personality; day and night presented engrossing deities, while he adored the golden-haired Phœbus, or the silvery Artemis. Actuated by a glowing fancy, material creation seemed spiritualized, and each agreeable retreat was the habitation of a god. Naiads in the fountains; Dryads in the groves; Fauns, Satyrs, and Oreads on the mountains, indissolubly associated sublunary scenes with intelligent beings, and kindled the starry heavens with the effulgence of supreme divinities.

The dawn of civilization has ever been confined to those who were intrusted with the care of sacred ceremonies, and who devoted their exclusive knowledge to the support of their religion. In the beginning all contemplation was religious; the whole universe was esteemed divine, and it was to the solving of this problem that the first efforts of mind were given. "Whence, and who am I?" are the first questions which occur to Brahma, as represented in Hindoo theology, when he awakens to conscious being amid the expanse of waters. But the early Greek sages surveyed nature with the more penetrating glance of a Lynceus, or Atlas, who saw down into the ocean depths. There was no distinct astronomy, history, philosophy, or theology; there was but one mental exercise, whose results were called "Wisdom." It was this personification that Solomon saw standing alone with God before the creation. All mythologies may in one sense claim to rank as truths, inasmuch as they in fact represent what once existed as mental conceptions. On this principle the Grecian dogmas, though in reality absurdities, are most worthy of attention, because they are expressed in the purest forms. Their conceptions of super-human beings were products of the devotional sentiment. Nature was to them a perpetually flowing fountain, whose pellucid waters mirrored earth and sky; like the stream in which Narcissus was dazzled by the reflection of his own image, and beneath whose surface he bent in sadness, and was melted into its transparent depths.

Efforts to deify the beautiful existed among the Hindoos and Hebrews, as well as among the Greeks; but in the former races, a wish to blend in one expression a great variety of theological ideas obliterated elegance, and rendered the idols of Egypt and India elaborate metaphysical enigmas, a sculptured library of symbols, instead of an attractive gallery of religious art. But in Greece, the development of sacred imagery fell into the hands of masters in whom the character of priest was subordinate to that of artist; from the servant art became the mistress, the teacher, even the institutor of the religion in whose aid she had been employed, and the works so produced were received as fresh revelations from heaven.

Poets gave a local habitation to the gods, and were the first teachers of religion. With the eye of taste, and impelled by sentimental reverence, they people the hills and groves, glens and rivers, with imaginary beings. Much of the Homeric theology is of Egyptian parentage, but in his hands all borrowed material was greatly improved. Mere personification of natural powers became moral agents; and, instead of being represented under disgusting images, they became models of human beauty, elegance, and majesty. The inspired bards, though blind without, were full of eyes within, and Acteon-like, gazed on nature's naked loveliness through the light of their illumined souls. To these poet-priests of nature, like Orpheus, or Eumolpus, was ascribed the first religious establishment, as well as the first practical compositions. The commencement of literature was not a scheme contrived to win the savage to civilization: it was the wild and spontaneous outburst of religious enthusiasm. If powerful institutions are always ascribed to distinguished men only, it is simply because that the full light of common thoughts is never condensed and vividly set forth but by that exalted order of genius which is the rarest of gifts. Minds of the finest tone express the most comprehensive doctrines, as the lyre of Orpheus, and the pipe of Silenus, sung how heaven and earth rose out of chaos. Atlas taught respecting men and beasts, tempestuous elements, and the eclipses and irregularities of the heavenly bodies. The laws of Menu, like those of Moses, begin with cosmogony; and Niebuhr has shown that the history of the Etruscans, like that of the Brahmins and Chaldeans, is contained[Pg 100] in an astronomico-theological outline embracing the whole course of time.

Evidently the first colonizers of Greece brought with them much of the simple faith and worship recorded in the Hebrew writings. A stone, or the trunk of a tree, was set up for a memorial, and, according to the alarm that had been felt, or the deliverance experienced, on some spot thereby sanctified, worship was offered to that great Being whose rule all acknowledged, but whose name none ventured to pronounce. Doubtless the excess of awe, if no more mundane influence, generated superstition; as the vow of Jephtha had its parallel in the almost cotemporaneous sacrifice of Iphigenia, and of Polyxena. It was this barbarous race that the polished and erudite traveler, Orpheus, endeavored to civilize. Perhaps, as in later times, he imagined that hidden doctrines would best improve the higher classes; while the minds of the vulgar would be easier won by fables, and weaned from gloomy superstitions by the worship of divine benevolence, manifested in the varied products and powers of nature. The attempt, however, failed, and the grossness of depraved perceptions converted those different manifestations into separate deities, so that different localities and cities came to have their tutelary stone, or wooden idol, or marble statue. The temple was built on the spot hallowed by devotion, as at Bethel; but in a subsequent age the impulse of the original consecration was no longer felt, and its intent was forgotten. The gorgeous fane, and the fascinating image therein, became objects of degenerate worship; the source of profit to a mercenary priesthood, and of deterioration to the most intellectual and moral of mankind.

Monuments were early erected in grateful commemoration of religious events, as the hill of stones by Jacob and Laban; or to gratify secular ambition, as was exemplified in the tower of Babel. In Greece, when the pioneers were feeble, the first settlers chose some hill readily defensible, and having fortified the summit as the first space to be occupied, they proceeded to build a taphos, or temple for the divinity. Such was the origin of Athens. The inclosed city was called Cecropia, from Cecrops, it is said, who first founded the state, and his was the first place of worship for the original inhabitants. Others interpret Acropolis to mean "Height of the City," which, in this instance, was accessible only on the[Pg 101] western side, through the Propylæa, and was crowned by that shrine of Truth and Wisdom, the Parthenon. Religious instincts have ever sought the vast solitudes of untainted nature, or the open heights of the mighty temple of the great God, whereon the pure spirit of love reigns and smiles over all. Pilgrimages were made to the oaks of Mamre, near Hebron, from the days of Abraham; and the nations surrounding the divinely favored tribes conspired to attach the idea of veneration to rivers and fountains, and were accustomed not only to dedicate trees and groves to their deities, but even to sacrifice on high mountains; customs which were practiced by the Jews themselves, previous to the building of Solomon's temple. The beginning of wisdom was in the wilds of Asia, and it was there that the God of nature implanted grand ideas in the minds of shepherds, meditating on those antique eminences, teaching them to wonder and adore. As the loftiest mountains are surmounted with the most unsullied snow, so the purest sentiments crowned their elevated souls, and forever rendered them the chief source of fertilizing streams to all lands, through every region of thought.

In Greece, there was no hereditary priesthood, as in Egypt. The right of presiding at public sacrifices pertained to the highest civil office, and probably the head of each family was also its ecclesiastic; but there was no priestly combination with secular power, and no national creed. Nestor, at home, conducts religious service, aided by his sons, and Achilles offers sacrifice to the manes of Patroclus. Pausanias informs us that early in Arcadia, the twelve gods were worshiped under the forms of rude stones; and before Dædalus, the statues had eyes nearly shut, legs close together, and the arms scarcely detached from the body; but as the correlative arts and sciences improved, sculpture, like the civilization it expressed, acquired freedom, proportion, and natural action. Altars were commonly erected in the open air, and propitiatory offerings most frequently smoked before Zeus, Poseidon, Athene, and Apollo. The first three of these are better known under their Latin designations of Jupiter, Neptune, and Minerva. The supremacy of the first over all inferior deities is decisively marked. His own declaration, according to Homer, is at the same time the most affirmative on this point, and a curious indication of the social condition of the[Pg 102] gods. Says the supreme, "If I catch any one of you helping the Trojans or the Greeks, he shall either make his escape to Olympus disgraced and bruised, or else I will seize him, and throw him into Tartarus. Then you shall know my supremacy in power. Come, now, make the trial; hang a gold chain from heaven, and fasten yourselves at the end of it, all of you, gods and goddesses; you can not pull Zeus down, but, whenever I please, I can pull you up with the earth and the sea, wind the chain round Olympus, and there you would all dangle in the air."

According to Herodotus, the Egyptians invented twelve gods, which were imported into Greece. These were, doubtless, of the lowest order of merit, but of sufficient importance to justify the report that the worship of stone images originated in the East. Venus was first adored at Paphos under the form of an ærolite fallen from heaven. It was by such circumstances that a special sanctity was conferred upon particular localities. The artistic merit of the idols was vastly improved, but still the theology of the Greeks remained purely anthropomorphous, the human form being to them the paragon of excellence. But to his whole intellectual being this was a representative, the embodiment and very identity of divinity. All the susceptibilities of his immortal nature, full of the endless enthusiasms respecting every thing splendid, so that in the estimation of an apostle, he was "very religious," were exercised to refine this image and exalt it. Living, he did this, and dying, he looked beyond the grave but to a world of men, sublimated, indeed, but still with human passions, and capable of human enjoyments. He turned with fond desire toward the radiance of the descending sun, which with genial glories seemed wooing him to another and purer earth. The great ocean stream severed the world of debasing toil from the bright sphere of not less active but nobler pursuits, and on that western shore he anticipated fairer as well as more abundant fruits than the East might behold. The great national altar on the Acropolis was exterior to the temple, and fronted the setting sun.

Egyptian worship was so closely allied to that of India, that when the sepoys in Sir Ralph Abercrombie's expedition entered the ancient temples in the valley of the Nile, they immediately asserted that their own divinities were discovered upon the walls, and worshiped[Pg 103] them accordingly. But no such identity ever existed with the purer forms of the West. All the gods of Hellenic Greeks, from Jupiter down to Hercules, were the ancestors of the primitive Pelasgic tribes which existed in Asia Minor, Crete, and the islands of the Archipelago, but seldom in Greece itself. At its intellectual and moral centre, Egyptian fetichism had some influence on the one hand, and Indo-Germanic metaphysics a good deal on the other; still the chief element in Greek mythology was hero-worship, made as unexceptionable as it could be by a people whose religion mainly consisted in ancestral adoration. True, their whole system was a fable and an absurdity; but the puerilities which defaced its beauty were the remnant of a more barbarous state of things upon which they improved, and we may wonder most that they so for emancipated themselves.

Orpheus is said to have come from Thrace, a region of indefinite extent in the estimation of the Greek, and one which was a chief source of the Hellenic sacred rites. Both the Orphic and Pythagorean doctrines Herodotus believed to have emanated from Egypt, which would appear to support the fact of a double current of emigration, clearly proved on other grounds. This great religionist was older than Homer, and seems to have exerted a great influence on the civilization of Greece. It is said he accompanied Jason and the other Argonauts on their piratical expedition, that he visited Egypt, and brought thence the doctrine which greatly corrupted the rude but simple theology of primitive times. Many hymns attributed to him are probably spurious; but enough was authentic to the ancients to justify the conclusion that he taught the doctrine of one self-existing God, the maker of all things, and who is present to us in all His works. But this great truth was always somewhat disguised, and grew increasingly fabulous. Cudworth preserves the following specimen: "The origin of the earth was ocean; when the water subsided, mud remained, and from both of these sprang a living creature—a dragon having the head of a lion growing from it, and in the midst, the face of God; by name Hercules, or Chronos." By him an immense egg was produced, which being split into two parts, one became the heavens the other the earth. Heaven and earth mingled, and produced Titans or giants.

The Delphic oracle occupied a high position in the political and[Pg 104] religious government of mankind. It had a powerful influence in molding the first national confederacy, and was its presiding centre. Both Strabo and Pausanias specially refer to the Amphictyonic league, as being formed for the maintenance of harmony and union among the states which composed it. The original confederacy was greatly enlarged by the Dorian accession; oracular control was thus extended throughout the Peloponnesus, and soon embraced within its influence the entire Grecian world. By this central assimilative and directing power the mighty republic was happily consummated, and its citizens first termed Hellenes. It was by the peculiarity of its oracular system, even more than by the other traits we have noticed, that the Greek religion was distinguished from that which prevailed in Egypt, and the yet remoter East. Based as it was on delusion, it still was a great improvement upon the preceding, inasmuch as it was presented in a higher character than the mere constitution of nature. According to the Delphic teaching, the supreme Deity was a moral and personal being, actively interesting himself in human affairs, and claiming authority over human volitions. Hence, while the oriental systems displayed only a crowd of mere personifications of natural powers, without moral character or substantial being, the system of the Greeks presented a divine reality for the human mind to embrace; an actual course of Providence, and deities palpably real to religious feelings. Amidst a multitude of deformities, the most marked feature of the Greek religion stood forth in enhancing, if not with ennobling beauty. The Egyptians worshiped animals, but the Greeks never sank lower than the worship of idealized man. The former were superstitious upon physical objects, their system resting upon a physical deity; but the latter adored a moral deity, and, however disastrous superstition ever is, hero-worship was not entirely void of redeeming qualities. It held up ancient worthies for the imitation of successors, rendered their memories motives to excellence, and, by the sublimating power of oracular canonization, exerted a mighty influence in the spheres of political and moral life. Lessons of respect for antiquity, and submission to authority, were constantly inculcated, the effect of which shines clearly in the Grecian character, exemplified in all the tumultuous growth and varied grandeur of her democracy. It was a lofty hero-worship,[Pg 105] fostered by their sacred system, which fortified the sentiments of reverence and subordination in the popular mind, and supplied at once motive and restraint in every sphere of secular and religious life. Their approximation to truth took the boldest form of superstition, and indicates the working of a higher order of mind than had yet appeared. The Greeks were a nation of poets and philosophers as acutely refined in understanding as they were tender of heart, and, since we still turn their writings to a moral account, our sympathy for the worth they attained should furnish some degree of apology for the errors which they unfortunately embraced. The reality and firmness of their belief in divination was tested, for example, at Platæa, when the Greeks sustained the charge of the Persian cavalry, and "because the victims were not favorable, there fell of them at that time very many, and far more were wounded." And whether the national fleet should risk a battle at Salamis was determined in council by the appearance of an owl. How strange that when courage and wisdom had failed to persuade, superstition saved the liberties of the world! It is painful to contemplate the human mind debased by such childish absurdities, commingled with traits so fair, and excellences so great. Still, despite all its fraud and folly, the religion of Greece contained much that was both admirable in morality and profound in speculation. Hooker remarks, "The right conceit that they had, that to perjury vengeance is due, was not without good effect, as touching the course of their lives."

The tragic genius of Æschylus was imbued with religious sentiment, and found its fittest material in the simple and sublime traditions of his forefathers. He has handed down to our days clear memorials of the still popular faith, in his noble drama of Prometheus Bound; wherein he represents Jupiter as sending to beg from the tortured prophet a revelation of the yet future decrees of destiny. This mythical benefactor, the most significant of ancient religious fables, was a Japhetite, who brought his celestial fire from the remote East to man. Prometheus indignantly refuses to gratify the curiosity of his oppressor, and utters severe invectives against the new power of Jove. He alludes to wars in which he had himself assisted him, leads us back to the first colonization of Greece, and leaves us justly to conclude that the nature-worship of Orpheus[Pg 106] had been mixed up with hero-worship also, and that the Jupiter of the poets was little better than a Cretan pirate, who, with his associates, drove out the Asian chief already beginning to civilize the people, and banished him to the wild regions of the Caucasus. The several centuries which transpired between Prometheus and Hesiod was a period long enough in legendary times to invest heroes, or benefactors of the human race, with supernatural attributes. Æschylus set forth a yet sublimer article of Athenian belief, when he represented the two Powers, immovable destiny and human consciousness, weighing the motives of the son of Agamemnon, and, under the presiding auspices of the goddess of Wisdom, leaving the ultimate decision to the Areopagus. God-conscious reason was thus called upon to sit in judgment upon the past, and to proclaim the eternal ways of infinite justice to coming generations. Herodotus, also, in the clear light of Hellenic freedom, recapitulated lapsed centuries, and foretold future destinies, through the prophetic mirror of Nemesis, that clearest reflection of Greek religiousness; and, like his predecessor, pictured the divine drama of eternal law and retribution. Thucydides followed, and became the final prophet of the great struggle of his nation, and her influence in the developments of future time.

Sophocles, of all the dramatists, was the most religious; his whole life was said to be one continual worship, and his writings are redolent of his tender spirit. The Œdipus Colonæus was a marked consecration after death; the gods conferred that honor, to show that in the terrible example they made of him, it was not personal vengeance, but a salutary admonition designed for the whole human race. That the self-condemned criminal should at last find peace in the grove of the Furies, the very spot from which guilt would instinctively shrink with acutest horror, bears a moral of profound and tranquilizing significancy.

The moral charms of domestic affection in antiquity are depicted by Homer, in what is undoubtedly an embellished, but may have been a real, scene. The manly beauty of Hector, the feminine graces of Andromache, and the budding charms of the babe Astyanax, live before us in vivid representation. Such a blending of gentleness and strength is not often seen on earth, as was manifested by him who set aside his burnished armor lest its strange[Pg 107] dazzling should frighten his child. Paternal affection indeed sits gracefully on the plumed helmet of this bravest hero of Troy, but not even that can dissuade him from the conscientious discharge of a most comprehensive duty. Neither the entreaties of a wife, the prayers of a father, the tears of a mother, nor his own fondest parental hopes, could divert him from his devotion to country and religion. He knows and feels that inexorable fate has declared against him, but he bows to the will of the gods with a heroism equaled only by the placid self-denial which silences both inclination and interest in his bosom.

The ancient games were moral in their purpose and influence. Of the great number of athletes who gained prizes thereat, very few became famous in warlike pursuits. Their enthusiasm flowed from a higher and purer source. The vigorous, disinterested, salutary, and heaven-appointed contest was to the Greeks a thrilling symbol of an exalted life, the struggle through an emulative career of exhausting duties, in order to attain and enjoy, at the goal of consummate glory, the reward of a blissful immortality.

All the stray sybilline leaves of ancient history and legendary faith are inscribed with indications of a moral order of the universe, and encourage the expectation of perpetual progress. Pindar believed that the beginning and end of man were divinely ordained; and while many erudite teachers held to the supremacy of fate, none were ever so foolish as to suppose that accident governed the world.

Socrates was the first to turn speculation from physical nature to man; and his celebrated "demon" announced the birth of conscience into the Grecian world. It was a divine teacher ever present, taking cognizance of the most secret movements of mind and will, and who reproved, restrained, warned him as to all things everywhere. So far from wondering at his martyrdom, in view of the purity and boldness of his teaching, Mr. Grote very reasonably wonders how such a man should have been allowed to go on teaching so long. No state, he adds, ever showed so much tolerance for differences of opinion as Athens. According to his various writings, we infer that the god of Plato was not an idea simply, but a real being, endowed with supreme intelligence, movement, and life. He was beauty without mixture, and went out of himself to produce man and the world by the effusion of his own goodness. This[Pg 108] great pupil of Socratic wisdom was profoundly imbued with that religious sentiment which is the lofty distinction of humanity, and which neither superstition can utterly debase, nor worldliness extinguish. But a feeling alone, however refined, can never constitute safety in religion. The Republic terminates with a noble discussion on immortality, and if it has been less popular than the Phœdo, it is because the scenery of it is less startling; but for intrinsic worth, it is doubtless entitled to the greatest consideration.

Gross polytheism was the creed of the multitude, but this was much refined by the moralists. The graces and perfections of the great intelligences that rule the world, under the controlling wisdom and care of the one omnipotent, were so described in the dialogues of Plato, and by Pythagoreans, as to furnish not only models of perfect beauty to art, but also the most attractive traits of person and character to the various orders of the Grecian hierarchy.

The Greeks felt that the origin of art was divine, since it was the offspring of religion. The first rhythmical expression was a hymn, and the first creations of plastic genius were dedicated to the worship of the Godhead. Jupiter, whose awful nod shook the poles, was yet benignant in his majesty, and could smile with bewitching fascination on his daughter Venus. Beauty was universally expressed, whether in the gorgeous sanctuary of their religious worship, or the simplest implement of ordinary use; the heart-rending anguish of the priest Laocoon and his sons, or in the sculptured deity of day himself. In the opinion of Visconti, the Apollo Belvidere is the Deliverer from Evil as well as God of Light, and was made by Calamis, to be set up at Athens in memory of a plague which had desolated that city. In life, the consecrated champion was greeted with the praises of appreciative countrymen, and divine honors followed his decease.

The idea of divine omniscience seems to have profoundly actuated the Greeks in the execution of all their great religious works. It gave perfection to every part of their edifices, essential and ornamental, and impressed upon each part alike a feeling purely devotional. What escaped the human eye, the Deity beheld, and therefore every mass and molding, frieze and pediment, bas-relief and statue, should be rendered equally worthy of that immortal Being[Pg 109] to whom the edifice was consecrated. As fine a finish was bestowed upon the hidden portions as upon the exposed, as is proved by the fragmentary masterpieces we still possess, the most elaborated features of which were never seen from below when in their original positions. The material which Athens employed to eternize her mental conceptions was happily adapted in texture and tone to the end desired. On one side lay the quarries of sparkling Phenolic and veined Carystian, and, on the other side, the pearl-like beauty of Megarean; all of which, impregnated by the creative genius of the poets, and obedient to the talismanic touch of the sculptors, came forth from the marble tomb of Attica a new-born progeny stamped with all the lineaments of their noble parent. Thus, as the thought of Homer coalesced with the executive might of Phidias and his associates, the awful gods of his country spread an invincible palladium over the patriotic citizen, and rendered their terror ever present to the eyes of treachery and guilt. If the Sphinx, the Centaur, and Satyr were sometimes demanded by the legendary element of the ancestral East yet lingering in the national faith, the effort to subjugate the grotesque to the laws of beauty was no less successful than it was difficult, and twenty centuries have admired the result. The corporate religious crafts of India and Egypt were abandoned, but the divinest element therein was still preserved, and made to cast a hallowed spell over country and home, making each father the high priest of his domestic temple, and planting household gods round every hearth. An all-pervading religious influence was stamped on every rank of character, every region of nature, every type of art, and every department of enterprise. It exalted the dauntless courage of Miltiades, and added energy to the lofty daring of Themistocles, as they were conscious that the gods from Olympus gazed upon them in the fight, and were their guardians, as of old they had been to their ancestors on the plains of Troy.

With a very few exceptional cases, the art of the Greeks is never voluptuous, even in its earthly matter and shape. Under the pious feelings of the maker, as he breathed into it the soul of a lofty enthusiasm, dead material shaped itself into a nature as elevated as the source from which its strength was derived. And this moral dignity and grace which were born from the artist in his process of[Pg 110] creation, communicated themselves in turn to the beholder; and the consecrated feeling in which the godlike conception was developed, generated an atmosphere of sanctity around it, as manifested divinity is supposed to drive demons away. It was fitting that in the groves of Delphi, Lycurgus should conceive the idea of his laws, and from the mouth of Apollo receive their ratification. All the great and wise legislators of antiquity cultivated an intercourse with the gods, and continued to covet the privilege of their society. The excellence of great works of religious art consists in the principle, that the purity and nobleness with which they were imbued pass into their admirers; and thus the serene repose and celestial fervor in which they are conceived are perpetually reproduced so long as the original qualities endure. The earliest poetry was religious, and its spirit migrated through succeeding generations; and, even down to the most degenerate age, perpetuated a delicate moral sense in the judgment, and mostly, also, in the works of the Greek nation. The refined taste, for which they have always been extolled, was produced entirely by this. Even the wit-intoxicated muse of Aristophanes perpetually maintains a chaste demeanor, and shows on her earnest countenance the moral meaning of her gayety.

Although the system of Athenian life was deformed by many imperfections, yet never at an earlier period had so much energy, virtue, and beauty, been developed; never was blind force and obdurate will so disciplined and ennobled, as during the century which preceded the death of Socrates. If the early Pythian and Dodonean oracles tended to consolidate national union, the improved wisdom of later philosophers did much to cultivate the citizens. Many a Grecian, engarlanded with laurel, then adorned the various walks of secular and moral life. It is probable that some were self-deceived, when no unworthy fraud was intended. Vividly conscious of a calling to some great vocation, and seeking, in the depths of their own imperfect religiousness, for the means of fulfilling it, they felt what seemed to be veritable inspiration, and accepted as the voices of supernatural beings what was in fact only the promptings of their own minds. To this influence, in great part, must be accredited much of the sublimity of Homer, patriotism of Tyrtæus, enthusiasm of Pindar, terror of Æschylus, and[Pg 111] tenderness of Sophocles. The presence of divinity was indeed so palpable and enduring, that many nations, invulnerable to Grecian arms, received her beautiful system of mythology, and crowded her temples with eagerness to listen to her sacred instruction. Lightning strikes only kindred matter, which it seeks and salutes in the vividness of its own flash; and thus do great and effulgent examples glow into genial hearts, strengthen their illuminating power as they extend, and burn with greater splendor the wider they are diffused.

The more reflecting among the ancients seem to have keenly felt that earth and time are not ample enough to admit the full unfolding of the human soul. In man, the microcosm, they recognized the universe and its Maker, but it was by a very imperfect vision. They needed a clearer light, even that of the true God, to fill the profundity within them, and to reveal eternity unto them, that they might in reality know the vastness of their spiritual being. The vital seeds which the Almighty cast with a bountiful hand into the new-made earth, and which have not yet produced all their fruits, in Attica sprang up with a wonderful profusion, but the harvest was that of beauty, and not holiness. The dew of Hermon, the eternal sunshine of Zion, the transforming and tempering breath of Jehovah, are ever requisite to develop the higher capabilities of the soul, and elicit sanctified fruit from those mighty powers which, for bliss or bane, germinate in every mortal breast, and can never die. The poetical idolatry of Greece is often invested with a magical beauty to classical enthusiasts; but the thoughtful reader of history will often stumble upon most disenchanting facts, such as, for instance, that Themistocles, the deliverer of his country, offered up three youths, to propitiate the favor of his gods. A supreme Being was nominally recognized; and, though this doctrine was practically destroyed by the admission of subordinate deities to share in the offices of praise and prayer, still it was better than absolute atheism. The pillar of cloud by day, and of fire by night, clearly or dimly seen, has never ceased to lead the vanguard of advancing humanity. It was something that the voice of praise, humiliation, and prayer, was raised to some object in public worship, and thus the feelings of religion kept alive in aspiring souls. It is to be deplored that the most cultivated of ancient nations did[Pg 112] not possess and appreciate purer religious light; and most of all is it a grief and a warning that, if in the time of Homer, social morality was bad, in the age of Pericles it was worse. When Athenian life had received the most exquisite polish, and human intellect the richest discipline, then it was that public fanes were most abandoned, and private virtue was most debased.

Nature is most perfect in her forms the higher she ascends; and man, standing at the apex of her wonders, is appointed to partake of the divine nature, through the homogeneous medium who bends from a celestial height for his relief; when so reached and renovated, the godlike part of the redeemed is molded to a whole of the purest, holiest, and, therefore, most enchanting harmony. The Greeks had their idealization of beneficence and atonement set forth in Hercules and Prometheus. The genealogy of the first was connected with Egypt and Persia. He was lineally descended from Perseus, whose mortal mother claimed connection with an Egyptian emigrant. He was the great epic subject of the poets before Homer, the model chief of those who fought at Thebes or Troy, and, at a later period, was the allegory of human effort ascending through rugged valor to the highest virtue. He was the ideal perfection of the ordinary life of the Greeks, as the higher exaggeration of heroes, invested with immortality, became gods. Every pagan nation has had such a mythical being, whose strength or weakness, victories or defeats, measurably describe the career of the sun through the seasons. A Scythian, an Etruscan, and a Lydian Hercules existed, whose legends all became tributary to those of the Greek hero. His name is supposed to mean rover and perambulator of earth, as well as hyperion of the sky, and he was the patronizing model of those famous navigators who spread his altars from coast to coast through the Mediterranean, to the extreme West, where Arkaleus built the city of Gades (Cadiz), on which perpetual fire burned at his shrine. So deep and pervading were religious sentiments in that wonderful people at the best epoch, that not only in lowland towns, and on metropolitan eminences, were temples erected to the national deities, but also on lofty promontories; near the sea, beneficent zeal provided fanes exclusively for the casual worship of the passing mariner. The notion of a suffering deity, of one who, tortured, blinded, or imprisoned, might represent[Pg 113] the earthly speculations of his worshipers, and, as a penitent, their religious emotions, was widely spread, from India westward, and by the Greeks was fixed forever in Prometheus, the ever dying and yet deathless Titan. Ancient sages taught that the discord of stormy elements would be dissolved and reduced to peace by the power of love, and the magic of beauty in the renovated soul would eventually curb its passions with a gentle rein; but how the infinite should coalesce with the finite, God with man, and thus transform the soul by planting therein the germ of almighty blessedness, they never by uninspired wisdom could comprehend. A mediator of unearthly excellence was indeed requisite; one who would realize in his person the loftiest ideas of beauty and sublimity, whose wisdom would be competent to elevate beyond mere morality, and whose grace would forever unfold the revelation of heavenly life. Not only, like the son of Tydeus, ought that luminary to come forth, with glory blazing round it, and kindling admiration, as well as emulous delight, in the outward world, but his beauty must specially pervade within, and transfigure every secret impulse with the splendors of his imparted Godhead.

Such a divine need was generally felt, and this was the cause of that high estimation in the common mind which the devout moralists enjoyed. Homer inculcated the idea that life is a contest; and Plato directed his hearers to the search after unity as the source of truth and beauty; Æschylus to power; Euripides to the law of expiation. The contempt of life and pleasure, the superiority of the intellectual over the physical nature, are expressed by these and kindred writers in great thoughts which are almost identical with the light of faith. Heraclitus taught Hesiod, Pythagoras, Zenophanes, and Hecateus, that the sole wisdom consists in knowing the will according to which all things in the world are governed. Marsilius Ficinus says that Socrates was raised up by heaven to pacify minds; and St. John Chrysostom proposes him as an example of Christian poverty and monastic profession. St. Augustine entertained equal admiration for one who preferred eternal to temporal things, fearing to act unjustly more than death, and for conscience sake was ready to undergo labor, penury, insult, and death. In the Enthypro of Platonician wisdom, Socrates disengages ideas from words; in the Apology, he shows that the[Pg 114] wisest are the most humble, and that we must bear our witness to truth, even at the risk of our lives; in the Laws, that the soul has need of a celestial light to be able to see; in the Crito, that the least duty is to be preferred to the greatest advantage; in the Phædo, that life should be employed in elevating the soul—that there is a future existence—and that the soul should be disengaged from the body; in the Theætetus, that, the germ of truth resides in all men, but that no individual has the full measure of truth; in the Gorgias, that it is better to suffer than to commit injustice; that it is useful to the soul to be chastised, and that he who suffers punishment is delivered from the evil of his soul; in the Euthydemus, that the science of the Sophists is empty and vain; in the second Alcibiades, that it is better to be ignorant than to have false knowledge; in the Theages, that the only true wisdom is love; in the Phædrus, that it is love, or, as Socrates defines it, the desire of something that is wanting, which gives wings to the soul, and enables it to mount to heaven; in the Meno, that virtue is the gift of God, not of nature, but an infusion by a divine influence; in the Banquet, that love leads us to contemplate the supreme beauty, the universal type, the Creator, from which vision we derive virtue and immortality. In view of such focal beamings at the heart of pagan night, we need not wonder that Thomas of Villanova should exclaim with enthusiasm, "Let philosophers know, that faith is not without wisdom; the evangelist does not Platonize, but Plato evangelized."

The mythical beings of Grecian theology display in their beautiful but ineffectual imagery the first efforts of cultivated minds to communicate with nature and her God. They resemble the flowers which fancy strewed before the youthful steps of Psyche when she first set out in pursuit of the immortal object of her love. The parable of the Syrens teems with valuable moral instruction. They dwelt in fair and lovely islands, full of beauty, and through whose leafy alcoves moved a perpetual loveliness. On the tops of tall rocks sat the enchantresses, pouring their tender and ravishing music on the ears of passing mortals, till they turned their prows thitherward, and rushed into the destruction to which the deceitful song was a fatal prelude. Two by their wisdom and piety escaped. Ulysses caused his arms to be bound to the mast, and the ears of[Pg 115] his company to be filled with wax, with special orders to his mariners that they should not loose him even though he desired it. But Orpheus, disdaining to be so bound, with sweet melody went by, singing praises to the gods, thus outsounding the melody of the Syrens, and so escaped.

The most influential teachers among the Greeks declared the inutility of profuse legislation, and taught that "the halls should not be filled with legal tablets, but the soul with the image of righteousness." They sought less to guard the citizen by force and fear than to fortify him with a sense of his duty and its dignity. Parental authority was sustained by legislative sanction, as well as by popular customs, and even up to the first steps of public life was constantly guarded by the elders; but the principal intent was ever to kindle filial esteem into the potency of living law, to illuminate progressive youth in the path of virtue and of fame. Sound morals were recognized as the only sure foundation of republican freedom, and the general watchfulness over this constituted the spirit of ancient religion, and the origin of free states. To such an extent did parental influence and pious example, rather than arbitrary statutes and severe punishments, prevail at Athens, that the youth generally were moral and temperate; despite their national inflammability, the most authentic records affirm, that both in domestic and public life they remained sober and moral, until broken down by the interference of hostile power. Following the defeat of Cheronea, the change in the Greek character was rapid. The guiding stars of literature and art were lost in clouds; and morals, which had attained a splendid maturity, lost both strength and hue.

Sacred ceremonies at Athens were the most luminous that prevailed in Greece, and were most characteristic of the city of intelligence. In the great Panathenean rites, there was carried in solemn procession to the Acropolis a symbolical vessel covered with a vail upon which were figured the triumph of Pallas over the Titans, children of earth who undertook to scale Olympus and dethrone Jove. The conflict between physical and moral force was therein represented, that triumph above mere natural religion which exists in mental supremacy and the civilization of law. Moreover, Athenian coins preserve to us allusions to impressive rites which[Pg 116] were performed three times a year in honor of Vulcan and Prometheus. The votaries assembled at night, and at the altar of the deity, upon which a fire continually burned, at a given signal lighted a torch and ran with the blazing symbol to the city's outer bound. If the lights of some became extinguished, the more fortunate still pursued with greater zeal, and he was most honored who first reached the goal with his torch a-light. But the religion of Greece was not characterized by ritual splendor only; on the contrary, their public worship was marked by the simplicity of devout fervor, as well as by the chasteness of fine taste and that unadorned solemnity which had been inherited from the patriarchal ages. They were much less inclined to pomp and finery connected with their devotion, than are the moderns. Rude emblems were sometimes borne at sacred solemnities, but they were in the hands of honorable women, and all offense to religious feeling was arrested in their being first hallowed by the dignity of the festival.

It was a doctrine of immemorial antiquity, that death is far better than life; that the worst mortality belongs to those who are immersed in the Lethe passions and fascinations of earth, and that the true life begins only when the soul is emancipated for its return. All initiation was but introductory to the great change at death. Many regarded water as the source and purifier of all things—efficacious to renew both body and mind, as the virginity of Juno was restored when she bathed in the fountain Parthenion. Baptism, anointing, embalming, burying, or burning, were preparatory symbols, like the initiation of Hercules before descending to the shades, pointing out the moral change which should precede the renewal of existence. The funeral ceremonies of the Greeks were in harmony with that feeling which through all antiquity paid marked respect to the dead, whose eyes were closed by relatives most nearly allied. The funeral robe was often woven by the prospective piety of filial hands, as the web of Penelope was destined to shroud her husband's father. The body, washed, anointed, and swathed, was placed with its feet toward the door, and as the train of mourners went forth, women and bards raised a funeral chant, interrupted by nearest kindred, who eulogized the departed, and bewailed their own loss. Reaching the pyre of wood, the corpse was burned and the ashes collected in a golden vase. While the[Pg 117] body lay in state, the chief mourners supported the head. Dark garments, and long abstinence from convivial gatherings, were the outward signs of sorrow. The excessive grief of Achilles showed itself by his throwing dust on his head; torn habiliments and lacerated cheeks were the offerings made to Agamemnon; and a single lock of hair was the touching tribute to his memory by the filial affection of Orestes. The lifeless form was covered and crowned with flowers, a piece of money placed in its mouth, as a fee to Charon for being ferried over the Styx, and a cake of honeyed flour to appease Cerberus. Bust, statue, and mausoleum, grassy mound, inscribed marble, and monumental brass, attested the universal desire of sepulchral honors. The immortality of affectionate remembrances and of public renown was a profound aspiration in their breasts. If the dead were ever insulted, it was the rare instance of momentary rage toward a stubborn foe, and soon gave place to worthier emotions. Achilles dragged behind his chariot the corpse of Hector thrice round the tomb of his beloved Patroclus; but, after the first burst of passion, he ordered his own slaves to wash and anoint the mutilated remains, himself assisting to raise them to a litter, swathed in costly garments, that the eye of a broken-hearted father might bear the sight.

The statesmen of Greece, superior as they were in universality of accomplishment, were incomplete personages compared with the pure theocratic natures of antiquity, of whom Moses is the most familiar and accurate type. Many of them were not only priest and magistrate, but also philosopher, artist, engineer, and physician; such a combination for intensity, regularity, and permanence of human power, never was found elsewhere. Pericles, through the whole tenor of his administration, seemed to have had the permanent welfare of his fellow-countrymen at heart, and is said to have boasted, with the benevolence of a true patriot, that he never caused a citizen to put on mourning.

The Greek was by no means insensible to high destinies, as he majestically assumed the moral dominion on earth to which he was born; but he formed no idea of future happiness, nor of intellectual dignity vaster than his own. He girded himself for the fearful contest which was his inheritance, bravely struggling against the terrible powers of destiny and the certainty of death. Amazed at[Pg 118] his temerity, the sun started back in his course; opposing deities, wounded by his spear, fled howling to Olympus; and the dread abodes of Tartarus yielded up the departed to his triumphant call. Concentrating in the present the intensity of immortal aspirations, he sought to link them forever to the perishable body. Earthly as was his spirit, he yet supremely coveted eternal life, and labored through transcendent genius and fortitude to unite himself immediately with the gods, and ultimately soar amid the splendid hierarchy of the upper skies.

The worship of Greece was the Beautiful, and Athens was its most magnificent Shrine. One of her latest and fairest altars was dedicated to the Unknown God. Would that the plinth of artistic beauty had also been the memento of spiritual prayer. Alas! that after all the fine imaginings and glorious achievements of the wondrous Greeks, we must still feel that their loftiest conceptions of divine worship were really as void of true consolation as the empty urn which Electra washed with her tears.

"Thy foot will not stumble, if thou ascribest every thing good and noble to Providence, whether it takes place among the Greeks or ourselves, for God is everywhere the author of all that is good. Some things, indeed, originate immediately with Him, as the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, others again mediately, as philosophy. And even this, he appears to have imparted immediately to the Greeks, until they were called by the Lord; for philosophy led the Greeks to Christ, as the law did the Jews."—Clemens of Alexandria.

"In the history of a war, we speak only of the generals, and those who performed actions of distinction. In like manner the battles of the human mind, if I may use the expression, have been won by a few intellectual heroes. The history of the development of art and its various forms may be therefore exhibited in the characteristic view of a number, by no means considerable, of elevated and creative minds."—Augustus William Schlegel.

"These individual lives, running like so many colored threads, through our record, may impart to it that personal interest and dramatic unity which otherwise it would lack."—Doctor Arnold.

"I saw the ram pushing westward, and northward, and southward; so that no beasts might stand before him, neither was there any that could deliver out of his hand; but he did according to his will, and became great."—Daniel, viii. 4.

Civilization in Greece was beautiful, in Rome invincible. As this latter empire spread, it invaded savage races on every hand, and gave birth to a new world, still more vast, the world of commercial progress, stretching along the Mediterranean and Baltic shores into the unbounded ocean of the West. While Providence was concentrating its conservative forces in Alexander, for the execution of gracious designs, the future heiress of Greece was slumbering in her cradle on the Sicilian and Italian coasts, near where the new centre was preparing, which was to draw around it the barbarous nations of earth. That the graceful progeny of Athene should have migrated with facility from the serene clime of their native home to the stormy wilds of Etruscan Rome was not strange, since naturalists assert that birds of Paradise fly best against the wind; it drifts their gorgeous plumage behind them, which only impedes when before the gale.

The most careful consideration of ancient history leads to the belief that many of the nations which flourished in Italy, long before the Roman empire attained its height of power and splendor, were distinguished by a harmony of culture, an exuberance of being, a diversity of manifestation, and originality of genius, which Rome in her best days never exceeded. They each contained an important element of civilization, but only in an incipient degree; they were of co-operative capacity, and when the predominant[Pg 122] quality of the new cycle arose with complete development to its culminating point, martial Rome executed the most fulminating and comprehensive of primordial missions. Had not Greece preceded them with the humanizing influences of the beautiful, the great nation would have been nothing but a remorseless slayer of men, furnishing no compensation for the thralldom which was imposed from land to land by her fiery and bloody arms. The former caused Beauty to dwell as a divinity in the midst of men; the latter erected the god of war as the national deity, and compelled all peoples to the ignoble worship.

Rome was destined, through force, to show the world, despite the greatest obstacles, what energetic will, unity, earnestness, and pertinacity of purpose, could do. She was doubtless superior to most nations in military skill, and this gave her great advantage; but her unique peculiarity consisted in the fact, that, till her co-operative work was done, she never despaired, and this attribute of fortitude alone conquered the world. Ruin as often threatened the Romans as it did other champions, and they would have fallen as others fell, had not internal resources increased, and heroical resolution been confirmed, in proportion as outward support failed them. The spectacle of physical force which they presented was the grandest of earth; but it was moral force, something grander still, which fortified the physical force, and rendered it such a mighty agent of civilization. War has numerous advantages which are overruled for good, and the misfortunes of some nations are made to supply prosperity to others. The most fruitful fields have been fertilized by wholesale carnage, that scourge and civilizer of mankind. As the sea retires in one quarter at the same time it advances in another, swallows up the productiveness of this shore to augment the territory and richness of that, so do great natural fluctuations transpire under the control of that sovereign law by which all things are changed but nothing destroyed. The invasion of Persia was virtually the creation of Greece, and the overthrow of the latter enriched the world. When the fair continent had fully emerged from the flood of Pelasgic barbarism, afar in the West, on Latian plains, the infant state of Rome was obscurely struggling into power against the neighboring confederacies in which the old Etruscan culture was rapidly sinking into decay. While the gloomy[Pg 123] wilds of Gaul and Germany yet lay scarcely known, Gela, in the Greek colony at Syracuse, maintained the splendor of a Grecian name, and by a single defeat in Sicily the pride of Carthage was subdued. Nations, like individuals, have each a special mission on earth. Many are either co-operative only or secondary, and but a few are manifestly primordial. Thus the mission of Greece was beauty, that of Rome, force. In those special spheres they manifested the natural attributes of humanity in a fashion and to a degree never before reached by any nation. But as all secondary nations co-operated to execute the mission given to each great primordial power, so these two predominant branches of the Japhetic race co-operated, in subordination to the one leading purpose of Providence, to perpetuate progress and improve mankind.

The rude elements of the Indo-European stock were early scattered from Caucasus to the Alpine North. The Hellenic family were the first raised to a high degree of refinement, and they planted their offspring even to the extremity of the Italian peninsula. When other kindred branches, like the Oscans and Sabines, superseded these, they gave a composite character to the new language thus formed, an amalgamation of Attic flexibility with Latin strength. But the body was more ponderous than the soul; the plastic property so prominent in the Greek tongue was lost in the harder and stiffer enunciation of unpolished Rome. The former, like a lucid substance, seemed to crystallize spontaneously into the most beautiful forms; but the latter, like granite, could be rendered attractive only by artificial polish, and that of the most laborious kind. It was the language of solidity, gravity, and energy; the fit medium for expressing the dictum of imperial might, but was not adapted to convey either the sentiments of love or the products of meditation. The great orator, in his defense of the poet Archias, informs us that Greek literature was read by almost all nations of the world, while Latin was still confined within very narrow boundaries. Such was the wonderful vitality of Greek in its ancient form, and yet it lived only with such as spoke it as their vernacular in the fatherland or its provinces. Like all true and original creations of genius, it never survived the fostering care of devotees, but sank back with their decay, and again became limited within the boundaries of its first home. In the end, as in the beginning,[Pg 124] Athens was the University of the whole classic world. On the contrary, Latin was propagated chiefly by conquest, absorbing all barbarous dialects into itself, and, like the dominion of its masters, becoming the stronger the further west it was spread. Under the auspices of the Republic, it became united with the Celtic and Iberian in Spain, and was planted by Julius Cæsar in Britain, as well as Gaul. Greek is still spoken at Athens; but Latin, when it had been engrafted on the rest of Europe, and gave birth to all modern tongues, became again grossly barbarized and died.

By what route the progenitors of the Oscans, Sabines, Itali, and Umbrians came from the original cradle of the human race, is not clearly known. They were evidently kindred to the Pelasgi of the Morea, and used the Phœnician alphabet. Their dress and national symbol, the eagle, were Lydian, and their theology, like the more refined system of the Greeks, was derived from the remotest East. The Romans were composite from the first, and in every thing. The septi-montium upon which their primitive city stood, was occupied by different tribes. If we may trust mythical tradition, a Latin tribe had their settlement on mount Palatine, and a Sabine community occupied the adjacent Quirinal and Capitoline heights. Mutual jealousy kept them a long time separate, but at length the privilege of intermarriage was conceded, and the different tribes became one people. The Etruscans were of purest Pelasgian origin, and for a long period possessed the greatest civilizing power in the West. When subdued politically, they still left the most indelible stamp on the arts and fortunes of the Roman people. These ethnical affinities are correlative to the linguistic affinities of the great martial cycle, and best indicate out of what elements its language was composed.

The ancient Latin alphabet was an offshoot from primitive Greek, and evidently came from the same source. Its later departure from the original current, and modifications of its forms, are all traceable through the means of inscriptions on funereal urns, coins, and historical monuments. The alphabets of Gaul, Germany, Etruria, and Spain, were formed from the Greek; and even the Latin letters may be termed the universal alphabet, for it was the immediate parent of all the present modes of writing. But this mother-tongue[Pg 125] did not, like its nobler parent, proceed from a single germ, and gradually unfold by a natural growth. It merged in the bosom of foreign elements, and presented great and striking contrasts in its progress. In the Republic it was like the people, high-minded, and competent for the debate of mighty interests; under regal or imperial sway, it became the fitting medium of an extravagant court, cramped and debauched by foreign manners. At the epoch of Livius Andronicus, B.C. 240, or the first Punic war, the language was elicited from various dialects, and consolidated into the vernacular of a whole people. The Oscan, Sabine, and Etrurian, or Tuscan, were the leading native elements; but the primitive Greek, or Pelasgic, was early blended with the Latin, greatly enriching it, and imparting to it the chief basis of its forms. From the first Punic to the first civil war, B.C. 88, was a period of marked improvement. Increased intercourse with the Greeks, after the second Punic war, greatly improved their native literature, aroused and directed all their energies to practical life, and the affairs of state. Greek models were held up to the enthusiasm of those who emulated at first, and afterward imitated, the masters whom they could never hope to excel. Thus the language of the Romans did not originate in the rules of art, but in the free outflowings of national character. Hence, Quintilian compares the writings of Ennius to an ancient sacred grove of primeval trees, with their stately trunks. Something of Greek pliancy was imparted, while the tongue was becoming harmonized, by the translations of the Odyssey made by Titus Andronicus, and by Nævius from Æschylus and Euripides. The progress of improvement continued, and by the time of Augustus the Roman language was formed. Then, in distinction from the Latin, or provincial speech, it was said to be "the refined language of the city, containing nothing which could offend, nothing which could displease, nothing which could be reprehended, nothing of foreign sound or odor."

Much of the original material employed in early Roman literature was doubtless furnished by the subjugation of Etruria to her arms; but gross indigenous elements needed to be quickened into symmetrical growth, and the greater conquest of Greece itself was alone equal to that miracle. The beautiful captive wound her charms around the barbarous captor, and held him in subjection to[Pg 126] a vassalage infinitely more glorious than all his boasted freedom and universal mastery in arms.

How wise is Providence! The south of Italy had for many centuries been peopled with colonists from Greece, who retained and cultivated the arts and literature of the mother country. When sufficient substance had been collected on the seven rugged hills, to form a basis of national literature, Tarentum was subjugated, and all that was valuable in that interesting country was removed to nourish the first literary pursuits at Rome. Two years after this arose the first Punic war, the result of which was the conquest of Sicily, that charming land whereon the flowers of Grecian poesy had blossomed with even fairer charms than on the neighboring continent. When we come to consider bucolic poetry, the most healthful and original growth of Roman letters, we should remember that this was the spot of its birth. It was in Sicily that the pastoral and comic muses prompted Stersichorus first to reduce lyrical compositions to the regular division of strophe, antistrophe, and epode. It was here that Empedocles "married to immortal verse" the "illustrious discoveries" of his "divine mind." Here Epicharmus invented comedy, which was cultivated by Philemon, Apollodorus, Carcinus, Sophron, and various others. Tragedy also found successful votaries in Empedocles, Sosicles, and Achæus. It was in Sicily, too, that the Mīme was invented, or, at least, perfected; Pindar, Æschylus, and Simonides, had resided at the court of Hiero I., and Theognis of Megara, committed his precepts to elegiacs in Sicily. The Dionysii also were authors, as well as patrons of literary men. It is, moreover, believed that when the Romans came into possession of Sicily, Theocritus was yet living. Many of the most creative minds in the conquered provinces now began to reside at Rome, bringing art and cultivation with them; and from this period literature in the metropolis assumed somewhat of a regular and connected form.

The great majority of the citizens undervalued and even despised devotion to sedentary and contemplative pursuits. They were ambitious, and lived for conquest; but it was the extension of political domination they strove for, not the enlargement of literary renown. The old Roman was charmed by the glory of his country abroad, and the wise administration of her constitution at home. Military[Pg 127] prowess was the foundation and guarantee of both, so that beyond politics and war he felt little concern. He was susceptible to every thing that related to success in arms; but exercises of a purer mental cast, even the most exciting, such as tragedy, never captivated the feelings nor acquired an influence over the mass of the people, as was universal in Greece. Amid the dust and destruction of perpetual conflict, learning was but a sickly plant, and it required all the artificial heat of courtly patronage to bring any thing to maturity. Accius was patronized by D. Brutus; Ennius by Lucilius and the Scipios; Terence by Africanus and Lælius; Lucretius by the Memmii; Tibullus by Messala; Propertius by Ælius Gallus; Virgil and his friends by Augustus, Mæcenas, and Pollio; Martial and Quintilian by Domitian.

But, with the utmost adventitious aid, Roman literature, which never appeared greatly to deserve the epithet national, was of the rudest and most meagre description, and should be divided into three periods. The first period was dramatic; the second, prosaic; and the third, rhetorical. All the acting tragedy ever produced by Romans was limited to the first period; also the comedies of Plautus and Terence, the only works which have survived to claim admiration in modern times. It was the era of life, when all the vigorous germs of after growth were started. Epic poetry, rugged and monotonous as it was, yet then had a partial development, simultaneously with the first composition of national annals, and the foundation of accurate and thoughtful jurisprudence. It was also in that primary period that C. Gracchus became the father of Latin prose; but the language of the first great orator of western democracy under Italian skies was yet very inferior to the impassioned and noble sentiments it conveyed.

The second period was that of special refinement in prose, and of increased erudition. Cæsar and Sallust are its exponents as historians, and Cicero is its chief representative as an orator and philosopher. In a word, it was the great culmination of the Augustan age, wherein Lucretius and Catullus were the harbingers of Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, and the varied treasures of all the great masters of prose and learned poetry were garnered in the lucid narrative of Livy.

As the first period was redolent of life, and the second teemed[Pg 128] with learning, so the third is known by its excessive embellishment. It was called "the silver age," and was covered with abundance of filigree. It produced the only fabulist of Rome, Phædrus; Juvenal, the satirist; Martial, the epigrammatist; Tacitus, the historian; Quintilian, the critic; and the elegant letter-writer, Pliny. These are the best names of the later period of the Augustan age, and these decisively mark the progress of decline. Fancifulness and formalism ruled supreme, and whatever of independent thought the earlier periods had known, was now superseded by servility and decay.

The Romans inherited no legendary stories adapted to the higher order of dramatic composition. The early traditions which formed the groundwork of their history were private, and not public, property—the pedigrees and memorials of separate families, and therefore not interesting to the people at large. There were no Attic Eumolpidæ on the seven hills to preserve antique reminiscences as a national treasure, nor did they, like fragrant plants, twine themselves along the rocky base of the Roman capitol, as the thrilling traditions of ancestral Greece did round the chaste altars of that susceptible people. The Latin poets might sometimes collect withered fictions, and weave them into their rhythmical records of antiquity; but they possessed no vital beauty, no talismanic power for awakening national enthusiasm. Indeed, who could heartily enjoy allusions to the past, since old Rome had been superseded by a new race. The few veterans who yet survived the bloody wars of Greece, Africa, Gaul, and Spain, were settled in remote military colonies, and a careless disregard of every thing in the metropolis, except luxurious sustenance and shows, paved the way for a speedy downfall. Rome was peopled with step-sons only, as Scipio Æmilius designated the populace, and the tragedy most genial to their taste and ambition was that which was most replete with fulsome compliments to favorite individuals. In Greece, the poet was deemed an inspired being, and his tongue was regarded as the divinest medium for the communion of the visible with the invisible; but at Rome, poetry was nothing more than a dull recreation, and its author was no better than a parasite or a slave. At Athens, the impersonation of a tragedy was an act of worship; the theatre was a temple, and the altar of a deity was its central,[Pg 129] point. With the Romans, the thymele existed no longer as a memorial of sacred sacrifice, and the stage deteriorated into the mere arena of disgusting amusement. Pliny, in his history, and Cicero, in eloquent regrets, have told us how the bloody combats of gladiators, the miserable captives and malefactors stretched on crosses, expiring in excruciating agonies, or mangled by wild beasts, were the real tragedies coveted by the people. The sham-fights and Naumachiæ, though only imitations, were real dramas, in which those pursuits which most deeply interested the spectators, and which constituted their highest glories, were visibly represented. Gorgeous spectacles fed personal vanity in their national greatness. The spoil of conquered nations, borne in procession across the stage, reminded them of their triumphs and their victories. The magnificent costumes of the actors who attended the model of some captured city, preceded and followed by artistic spoils, represented in mimic grandeur the ovation of a successful warrior, whose return from a distant expedition, laden with plunder, realized the highest aspirations of Rome; whilst corresponding scenery, glittering with glass, silver, and gold, intermingled and sustained by variegated pillars of foreign marbles, told ostentatiously of their mental extravagance and material wealth. To such a people there was neither attraction nor profit in the moral woes of tragedy, and one could not expect that a legitimate drama under such circumstances would be national. Hence, in the popular eye, the scenic decorations and theatrical dresses became the chief objects of regard, while the poet's office was entirely subordinate, and plays became as devoid of intellect as they were debasing to taste.

In reviewing with more detail the three periods of dramatic progress at Rome, such as it was, we have to consider the origin and character of their comedy. The Greek works of Menander, Diphilus, and Apollodorus, formed a rich store of materials for Roman adoption, and were so employed with as much success as Plautus, Cæilius Statius, and Terence could command. Their standard was worldly prudence, resting on the dangerous ground of Epicurean philosophy; and therefore Roman comedy inculcated no virtue even so salutary as Stoicism, though it sometimes encouraged the benevolent affections. Creative imagination was a rare quality in the Roman mind; therefore, literature with them was not of a[Pg 130] spontaneous growth. For a short period, it was the recreation of a few; but with the many it was never a valued delight. Even Cicero, the truest literary spirit of his nation, could recognize but one end and object in all study, namely, those sciences which render a man useful to his country. External utility and not internal impulse, was the final cause of Roman literature. In preceding nations poetry was the original and spontaneous production; but the earliest literary effort of the Romans was history, a dry record of facts, and not ideas. The first poetical form ever attempted by them was satire, and it is characteristic of the rude and coarse people among whom it had its origin. They loved strife, both physical and mental; with them was found little or no salutary intellectual exercise, except in legal conflicts and partisan debates. They were gladiators in the forum, as in the circus, and with rustic taste took equal delight in bandying sarcastic words or struggling in a wrestling match. The Romans were a stern, not an æsthetic people; they had a natural aptitude for satire, and that was the only literary merit they possessed. Yet even in this department, as Horace confessed, Lucilius, the founder of Roman satire, was a disciple of the Greek Eupolis, Cratinus, and Aristophanes. But the cynical humor and prompt extemporaneous gibe native to the progeny of a she-wolf eminently qualified them to excel in a walk wherein they were certainly most at home.

Livius Andronicus, the first literary character at Rome, was a native of the Greek colony at Tarentum, born B.C. 240, and originally a slave. He probably came into that condition by the fortunes of war, and, like many others in the same circumstances, was employed as a tutor in the metropolis. To interest his cotemporaries in the ancient legends of Italy, he translated the Odyssey, in the old Saturnian measure, and also divers ancient hymns. By this means, the conquerors of the day were made to take a lively interest in Circe's fairy abode, within sight of a promontory of Latium, one of whose sons was Latinus, the patriarch of the Latin name.

Nævius, if not actually born at Rome, was from the earliest boyhood a resident in the capital, and was the first poet of real national worth. Like most subsequent writers, he was a servile imitator, but attained more than ordinary success in applying Greek taste to[Pg 131] the development of Roman character. A bold republican and brave soldier, he breathed a martial enthusiasm into his poems, which in no slight measure aided the battles of his country in the first Punic war. The upright and inflexible Cato was his fast and enduring friend.

Plautus, unlike his two famous successors, had no patron but the public. Perhaps the Scipios and Lælii, and their fastidious associates, could not endure his broad humor and groveling inuendos. But his coarse fun and audacious action held the not over-critical ears of the undistinguished mass, whom, Horace says, he hurried on from scene to scene, from incident to incident, from jest to jest, so that they had no opportunity of feeling fatigue. Another cause of his popularity was, that although Greek was the fountain whence he drew his stores, his wit, mode of thought, and language, were veritably Roman; his style was not only his own, and Latin in fact, but Latin of the most effective kind.

P. Terentius Afer, born B.C. 195, was a slave in the family of P. Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator. It was customary to distinguish slaves by an ethical name, and thus Afer points to an African origin. Whether he was a native of Carthage is uncertain, but he doubtless came into Roman hands through the Carthagenian slave-market, and was destined to achieve a high renown. Under Lucanus he acquired a refined and accurate knowledge of the Latin tongue, and, it is probable, also, soon obtained his freedom. A beautiful story is recorded of his original success. Having offered his first dramatic sketch for acceptance to the Curule Ædiles, they referred him to the critical judgment or Cæcilius Statius, then at the height of his popularity. Terence, according to the record, in humble garb was introduced to the poet whilst he was at supper, and, seated on a low stool near the couch on which Cæcilius was reclining, he commenced reading. He had finished but a few lines when he was invited to sit by his critic and sup with him. Before the reading was ended he had won the unqualified admiration of his hearer. The result was that Terence was immediately sought for by the distinguished, and became a favorite guest and companion with those who could appreciate his powers. The great Roman nobility, such as the Scipiones, the Lælii, the Scavolæ, and the Metelli, had some taste for literature;[Pg 132] and, like the Tyranni of Sicily in later ages, were accustomed to assemble around them circles of the refined, of whom the hospitable host was proud to be recognized as the nucleus and centre. If Terence was inferior to Plautus in vivacity and intrigue, as well as in the powerful delineation of national character, he was superior in elegance of language and purity of taste. He was the first to substitute delicacy of sentiment for vulgarity, and knew how to touch the heart as well as gratify the intellect.

Cæcilius Statius, the venerable and auspicious friend of Terence, referred to above, was himself an emancipated slave, born at Milan, and who rose to the head of comic poetry at Rome. Greece was the ordinary fountain to him, as to others; but he excelled most of his fellow-imitators in dignity, pathos, and the conduct of his plot. In the estimation of Cicero, Statius excelled in comedy, as Ennius did in epic poetry, and Pacuvius in tragedy.

Roman comedy possessed some claims to originality, though to no exalted degree; but Roman tragedy was derived from Athens almost entire, and had not the merit of either literal translation or clever imitation. Ennius, born B.C. 239, was the transition link between the old school and the new. Originating in the wild and mountainous Calabria, he began life in a military career, and rose to the rank of a centurion. It is said that Cato, in his voyage from Africa to Rome, visited Sardinia, and finding Ennius in that island, took him home with him. He enjoyed the esteem of the leading literary societies at Rome; and at his death, when seventy years old, he was buried in the tomb of the Scipios, at the request of the great conqueror of Hannibal, whose fame, embalmed in his verse, he transmitted to posterity. It indicates the progressive condition of literature in the metropolis, that Ennius, who was evidently a gentleman, was the first writer of the time who achieved for himself the enviable privileges of a citizen, to which Livius had not aspired, and Nævius, the freedman, could never attain. Enjoying the friendship of Cato the Censor, and Scipio Africanus the elder, when aristocratic wealth was beginning to be greatly revered, the republican poet, cleaving to his lowly hut on the Aventine, still lived the life of the Cincinnati, the Curii, and the Fabricii of the good old heroic times.

Under the auspices of Pacuvius, and simultaneously with the[Pg 133] best comedy, tragedy reached the highest degree of excellence. He was born at Brundusium, B.C. 220, and was nearly related to the poet Ennius. Pacuvius resided at Rome till after his eightieth year, and formed one of that literary circle of which Lælius was the chief ornament. In the evening of life he retired to Tarentum, where he died ninety years old. His tragedies were chiefly adaptations of Greek originals to the Roman stage; the plots being entirely borrowed, but the treatment and language were his own.

Attius was born B.C. 170, and became somewhat distinguished while his senior and master, Pacuvius, was yet alive. They met on friendly terms to discuss the young rival's tragedy of "Atreus." Pacuvius commended its good points, but declared it to be somewhat harsh and hard. "You are right," replied Attius, "but I hope to improve. Fruits which are at first hard and sour, become soft and mellow, but those which begin by being soft, end in being rotten." Another fact equally significant of his conscious dignity is given by Valerius Maximus, who relates that in the assemblies of the poets, he refused to rise at the entrance of Julius Cæsar, because he felt that in the republic of letters he was his superior. The statement is plausible, as the great hero was then in his youth. The political state of the people was now rapidly growing worse, and real tragedies were being so violently acted that there was little room in the popular heart for fictitious woes. The sanguinary influence of the amphitheatre seemed to have brutalized the entire nation, the vast area of which was one theatre of dreadful tragic scenes. Amidst these, the voice of the dramatic muse was hushed. Native authors then had no literary quarries of their own to work into original shapes, but they could build up splendid edifices with materials derived from polished and prolific Greece. The existence of tragedy was not long at Rome; the dramatic spirit, as a mental excellence, never belonged to that people, and with Attius, even its form disappeared.

The history of literature among the Romans is without a parallel. So prosaic and practical were the people, that they remained five centuries without an eminent poet. Even when the dazzling glories of the Grecian muse fell upon them it was only the art of imitation that they cultivated. True inspiration was foreign to their cast of mind. The most original of their writers entertained no higher[Pg 134] idea of originality than to make it consist in the importation of a new form from Greece; and, on the ground of his own practice, affected to despise those who copied for the second or third time. Indeed, the word imitation was applied only to Latin authors, it being understood that borrowing from the Greeks, or conforming to them, implied their chief excellence. Unkindled by the Grecian torch, Roman intellect was inert; and unillumined by its formative power, their productions were both uncouth and void of enduring worth.

The Mīmi were the most indigenous to the Roman mind, and have left their traces in the modern buffoonery of Pulcinello and Harlequin. It is believed that the Romans owed their first idea of dramatic composition to the Etrurians, and the effusions of a sportive humor to the Oscians; but all matured productions, of a higher order, came from the Greeks. Curtius, sacrificing every personal inclination to an absorbing love of country, was a truer exemplification of their national spirit, than any thing they achieved in elegant letters or art. They always betrayed that their first founder was not suckled at the breast of gentle humanity, but of a ferocious beast. Schlegel has well said of them, "They were the tragedians of the history of the world, who exhibited many a deep tragedy of kings led in chains, and pining in dungeons; they were the iron necessity of other nations; universal destroyers for the sake of rearing at last from the ruins, the mausoleum of their own dignity and freedom, in the midst of an obsequious world, reduced to one dull uniformity."

The style in which the Roman theatres were built, and the means resorted to for the purpose of superficial excitement, indicate that whatever dramatic taste the people may have once possessed, it had come to be greatly decayed. The edifice erected by Pompey was so huge that forty thousand spectators could be seated at once, and must have depended upon something else than the human voice to instruct or please. The relation which Pliny gives of the architectural decoration of the stage erected by Scaurus seems incredible. When magnificence could be carried no further, they endeavored to surprise by mechanical inventions; two theatres, placed on pivots, back to back, were so made that they could be wheeled round and form one vast amphitheatre, thus sinking[Pg 135] legitimate tragedy into the lowest clap-trap of melo-dramatic show.

It was not to be expected that a people filled with such an unbounded lust for dominion would excel in the more delicate walks of literature and art. But the unscrupulous desire of the Romans to extend the power and glory of the Republic was compatible with vigorous statesmanship, and all the kindred subjects requisite to the advancement of social science. Their mother tongue was the language of command, and proficients therein could much easier produce works in prose, since these would arise from a practical view to utility only, and would require a treatment characterized by science rather than by art. But, as in poetry, so in prose, the Romans were perpetually imitative; they frequently showed talent, but rarely genius, and aimed at erudition, not invention. Those who first devoted themselves to historical research, were also eminent in the public service. Fabius Pictor belonged to an eminent patrician family, and Cincius Alimentus was of honorable birth. Such were Roman historians until the time of Sulla, whose cotemporary, L. Otacilius Pititus, was the first freedman who began to write history. The primary efforts of these authors and their associates were devoted to the transfer of poetical records into prose, the more appropriate vehicle of national annals.

M. Porcius Cato Censorius was born at Tusculum, B.C. 234. He displayed uncommon versatility of talent, and attained a place among the first orators, jurists, economists, and historians, of his day. Plautus and Terence were his cotemporaries. Cato enjoyed the advantage of a personal acquaintance with Polybius, the Greek historian, and the philosophers, Carneades, Critolaus, and Diogenes, who were compelled from Athens to lecture at Rome. At the same time Crates arrived from Pergamus, and the taste for Greek literature was so quickened, that the venerable prejudice against it in Cato was overcome, and very late in his life he sat down to learn the language of a people whom he had hated and despised. Early in life he became a soldier, served in the Hannibalian war, was under Fabius Maximus, both in Campania and Tarentum, and did the state some service in the decisive battle of the Metaurus. Stern in integrity, and rural in taste, like Carius Dentatus, and Quintius Cincinnatus, between his campaigns he employed himself[Pg 136] in agricultural pursuits, on his Sabine farm. Valerius Flaccus invited him to his town-house at Rome, where the rustic pleader almost immediately became famous in the highest courts, and was soon sent to govern the province of Spain. This office was happily fitted to his talents, and on that western field he reaped the richest harvest of fame. The inherent love of truth and justice in Cato made him detest every demand for respect that did not rest on personal merit. Adventitious rank he despised, and was an unrelenting foe to aristocracy, as being arbitrary, conventional, and oppressive. The most amiable trait in his character was a burning indignation against wrong. He was self-educated, and perfectly original in character and genius. His learning was immense, but all his opinions were his own. Despite the imperfections of Cato, he was, intellectually and morally, the greatest man pagan Rome produced. Several inferior historians succeeded, but none worthy of note, previous to the revival-period of Cicero.

Polybius was carried captive to Rome, where he wrote his history in the language of his fallen country; and, when his learned co-patriots were permitted to return, he remained in Rome, greatly respected, and became both friend and adviser to the younger Scipio. The histories of Lucius Lucullus, Aulus Albinus, and Scipio Africanus, designed especially for the educated classes, were written in Greek. The earliest improvements in Latin were made by the epic and dramatic poets. At a later period, statesmen and orators exerted a strong popular influence in regard to prose composition, and thus the common people were gradually fortified with earnestness and practical intelligence.

Caius Julius Cæsar was born B.C. 101, and was a voluminous writer, as well as unequaled soldier. A strong man will stamp his individuality on his pages, as well as exhibit it in his acts. Such was the case with Cæsar, the first Roman whose expressions were well balanced and full of literary force. His composition at night was the fitting counterpart of his conduct by day. Whether he wielded the baton of supreme command on the battle-field, or quietly inscribed its history while the wounds of thousands were yet bleeding, his sword and pen alike went directly to the end desired, and triumph crowned every literary as well as martial attempt. He was said to know every man in his army by name,[Pg 137] and he appears to have had an equally intimate acquaintance with the language in which he wrote. Every word, like a mailed soldier, was made to occupy its appropriate place, and his brief sentences stood in serrated strength, doing the most efficient service with least waste of time and space. Nothing could be subtracted from his brevity, or substituted for his chosen elements and positions of might. Xenophon, several of Alexander's generals, and Hannibal himself, also wrote annals of their own achievements; but the great Roman alone was the superlative martial writer, as he was the unconquered champion in war. The history of campaigns was a department of composition in which the genius of that people was best adapted to shine, and the boldest of their conquerors was also the brightest exponent of their national spirit.

Caius Crispus Sallustius, born fifteen years later than the great writer just noticed, and much inferior to him in harmony of arrangement and clearness of expression, yet had few equals among his countrymen as a writer. The beautiful historians of Greece were more easily copied than any other department of their letters, and this enabled the Romans to produce clever imitations. Thucydides was the model followed by Sallust, whose servility crippled the modicum of genius he originally possessed.

Titus Livius was born B.C. 17, at Padua, and removed to Rome, where he enjoyed the protection and regard of Augustus. The gross materialism of Epicurus was most genial to the national sense, and received at their hands a general adoption. The same gloomy impress lies upon the pages of Livy, and we close his work with the feeling that we have been conducted through "a stately gallery of gay and tragic pictures." Battles and triumphs are delineated with circumstantial vividness; but little light is thrown upon the constitution of the immortal mind, nor is the information thus communicated conducive to healthful order or energy.

Caius Cornelius Tacitus was born A.D. 57, forty-three years after the death of Augustus. His father is supposed to have been of the equestrian order, and Procurator of Belgian Gaul. Better auspices dawned when Trajan, the last of efficient Cæsars, ascended the throne, and like the sudden beauty which sometimes adorns the close of a lowering day, rivalled the greatness of old Rome. As his fitting co-operative in concluding the historic cycle of the Augustan[Pg 138] age, Tacitus, educated under Vespasian and Titus, and who had learned to analyze his race under Domitian and Nerva, arose with Trajan to enjoy the last bright hour of his nation, and to portray the dreadfulness of the coming night. The depth of his spirit, and pungency of his expressions, are the last and best exponents of Augustan prose literature. What began with Cæsar in simple majesty, and was continued by Livy under the attractions of rhetorical extravagance, was by Tacitus garnered and uttered in the final expression of invincible victory and disdain. The historian of despotic cruelty threw the links of the world's fetters along the iron pages of his masterly Annals, while the shadows of Teutonic grandeur seem already gathering over his sad visage as he writes.

Suetonius and Cornelius Nepos need only be named in this connection, while we pass to a more particular mention of Plutarchus of Chæronea. He was, probably, a few years senior to Tacitus, and also wrote under the reign of Trajan. Plutarch is the representative of popular biography; he stands between the historian, the poet, and the romancer, to catch the beautiful lights of all. His account of Theseus resembles a legend from an old chronicle, or a chapter of magic; memoirs as depicted by his hand are exceedingly picturesque, in the presence of which reading becomes sight, as some vivid touch lights up the centre and animates the whole. For instance, the white charger of Sylla, lashed by a servant who saw his danger, carries the rider with a plunge between two falling spears. Again, Pyrrhus, wounded and faint, suddenly opens his eyes on Zopyrus in the act of waving a sword over his neck, and darts at him so fierce a look, that he springs back in terror, while his guilty hands tremble. And how startling is the aspect of Cæsar in the senate house, surrounded by conspirators, and turning his face in every direction, to meet only the murderous gleamings of steel!

The Roman prose writers excelled the poets in original worth. Their historical style, however, like their Corinthian order of art, was founded upon the Greek, but became much more florid than the original. Livy, for instance, the most perfect master of the Roman tongue as a national historian, is also the best illustration of this fault. Though excessively ornate in his emulation of the ancients, he yet retained something of their merit. Under the later[Pg 139] Cæsars, history, that department of Augustan literature of most sterling worth, grew increasingly corrupt in matter, and deteriorated in style, until the fulsome meanness and insipidity of Velleius was reached, the lowest nadir of historic art. The advancement of the government in despotism is marked by a corresponding debasement in cotemporary writing. Seneca, for example, threw himself into the cold embrace of Stoicism, and becamed resigned as far as possible to the philosophy of endurance and the literature of despair.

Eloquence is a plant indigenous to a free soil, and was nearly a stranger to the Romans until it was nurtured in the schools of Tisias and Corax, when, on the dethronement of the tyrants, the dawn of freedom brightened upon Sicily. At length the privilege of unfettered debate which had first found a congenial home in Greece, arose in republican Rome. The plebeians, in their conflicts with the patricians, found an efficient advocate in Menenius Agrippa, who led them back from the sacred mountain with his rustic wisdom. Cases of oppression found some Icilius or Virginius armed with a panoply of burning indignation, and many a Siccius Dentatus, unskilled in pedantic terms, could appeal to his honorable wounds and scars in front received in patriotic service, and to the vestiges of torture marked by cruelty on his back. The unwritten literature of active life long preceded the office of formal history, and efficient oratory gradually arose to counteract by its antagonistic spirit the warlike fierceness of an utilitarian people. As when the great soldier, Scipio Africanus Major, was unjustly accused by a malignant opponent, the necessity of personal defense unexpectedly developed him into a consummate orator. Livy adorned the whole speech with his own rhetoric, but A. Gellius has preserved the peroration intact, which refers to the fortunate anniversary on which the defense was made: "I call to remembrance, Romans," said he, "that this is the very day on which I vanquished in a bloody battle on the plains of Africa the Carthaginian Hannibal, the most formidable enemy Rome ever encountered. I obtained for you a peace and an unlooked-for victory. Let us not, then, be ungrateful to heaven, but let us leave this knave, and at once offer our grateful thanksgivings to Jove, supremely good and great." The people obeyed his summons, the[Pg 140] forum was deserted, and crowds followed the eloquent hero with acclamations to the Capitol.

The eloquence of Cato was mentioned, in our general notice of his versatile talents. He was equally successful as a speaker and a writer. The father of the Gracchi was distinguished among his cotemporaries for effective oratory, but no specimens have survived.

Scipio Africanus Minor was admirably qualified to be the link between the old and new style of eloquence. In his soldier-like character, the harder outlines of Roman sternness were modified by an ardent love of learning. His first campaign was in Greece, where he formed a literary friendship with leading minds, and especially with Polybius, which ripened into the closest intimacy when that great historian came as a hostage to Rome. He abhorred the degeneracy of manners, Greek and Roman, but preserving his own moral nature uncorrupted thereby, he was faithful in all the active duties of intelligent citizenship. Greek refinement had not destroyed the frankness, whilst it had humanized the boldness of the Roman; but prompted him to love the beautiful as well as the good, and to believe that elegance was by no means incompatible with strength. Lælius was his friend, and Servius Sulpicius Galba his successor in the more cultivated style of animated oratory.

But the Gracchi have the strongest claim upon the grateful remembrance of all who love democratic freedom. They paid the penalty usually connected with high destinies; but their death was the occasion of a better life to millions. Political changes which had been advancing slowly, but surely, for centuries, found in those two brothers the fitting instruments of a glorious consummation. Under their direction, the result of a long and obstinate struggle was, that the old distinction of patrician and plebeian was abolished. Plebeians held the consulship and censorship, and patricians, like the Gracchi, stood forward as plebeian tribunes and champions of popular rights. Such revolutionary periods usually produce extraordinary powers of eloquence, as in this instance. Lepidus Porcina, greatly imbued with Attic gentleness, was the model followed by Tiberius Gracchus; and Papirius Carbo, who united the gift of a delightful voice to verbal copiousness, was his ultra-liberal colleague; while Æmilius Scaurus, and Rutilius Rufus, were distinguished for opposing strength.

The Gracchi themselves were distinguished for gentle vigor, aided by a happy combination of accomplished endowments. Their father possessed an exalted character, and their mother inherited the strong mind and energetic genius of Scipio. She was well acquainted with Greek and Latin literature, with which she early imbued her aspiring sons. Tiberius was cool and sedate in speech, as in temperament; free from the storms of passion, he was self-possessed in debate, as stoical in disasters as was his philosophic creed. Caius, who was nine years younger, was morally inferior to Tiberius, but greatly his superior in intellect. He was less unswerving in purpose, but he was more susceptible of generous impulses, and had a much greater measure of creative genius. Cicero says that his imagination, lashed by the violence of his passions, required a strong curb; but for that very reason it gushed forth as from a natural fountain, and like a torrent swept all before it. On one occasion, his look, his voice, his gestures, were so inexpressibly affecting, that even his enemies were dissolved in tears. His education enabled him to rid himself of the harshness of the old school, and to gain the reputation of being the father of Roman prose.

M. Antonius entered public life under brilliant auspices, but he was greater as a judicial than as a deliberative orator. L. Licinius Crassus was four years younger than Antony, having been born B.C. 140. The last and most distinguished of the pre-Ciceronian orators, was Q. Hortensius, son of L. Hortensius, prætor of Sicily, and was born B.C. 97. When Crassus and Antony were dead, he was left the acknowledged leader of the forum until the effacing brightness of Rome's culminating star arose. In the cause of Quintius, the two great orators first came into direct conflict, when the mightier rival paid the highest possible compliment to the talents and genius of Hortensius, at the same time he clearly excelled him. As supreme as was the career of Cicero in the realm of eloquence, he was yet more influential in the department of philosophy at Rome, and we reserve a more extended notice of him for the chapter under that head.

After the battle of Actium, the spirit of faction and tumult subsided in a measure; and the love of letters, with a better sway, succeeded to that love of arms which had occupied every Roman[Pg 142] mind for seven hundred years. The empire was at peace, and universal plunder had immensely enriched the metropolis. Gorgeous embellishment began to be admired, without producing correct taste; and, as a higher order of mind endeavored to cultivate a national literature, the language, like the capital of brick, seemed to have become marble. But never was Rome able to attain superior distinction in elegant letters, or diffuse among her citizens a general taste for refinement. An Athenian of the humblest rank could sit from morning to evening intent upon the scenes of Æschylus or Sophocles; but the Roman plebeian soon wearied of mental exhilaration, and turned to the more genial enjoyment of beast mangled by beast, and man by man. Nor was this peculiar to the lower classes. Knights and senators would hazard life in forcing their way into the amphitheatre, where they often struggled on the arena with their own slaves. Nothing beautiful was ever loved by them for its own sake, but might be haughtily patronized as an appendage to sensual delights. Throngs of poets and musicians attended at the public baths to recite or sing; and at supper, old and young bound their heads with laurel, not the amaranth of Minerva, but the gory weed of Mars. This was only an affected love of letters, and was equally gratified when entertained, at intervals, by wandering sophists, gladiators, jesters, or conjurors, as was common around the triclinium of the emperor himself. At the best epoch, a passion for literature and art was not the enthusiasm of appreciative genius, but only a transient fashion of the court.

After the death of Brutus, the world of letters shared in the universal change which transpired in the political world, so that literature under Augustus soon assumed a new and general tone entirely its own. The first five centuries of the republic formed the foundation on which the whole superstructure of the Augustan age was built. Literature was the last and least thing for that people to produce, and no indications of valuable fruit appeared until the end of the first Punic war. About two centuries later, Cicero, who became the representative of eloquence, philosophy, and sounding prose, was succeeded by Augustus, under whose auspices passed the golden age of Latin poetry. A hundred and fifty years later, classical literature died with Hadrian; chilled by the baleful influence[Pg 143] of his tyrannical successors, the literati who had been patronized by the luxurious court sank into contempt. The only appropriate epithet which cotemporaries employed to characterize the age, was "iron," and it must have been both hard and cold. Sensual enjoyment deteriorated popular taste, and impotent revery took the place of energetic thought in the higher order of minds. Since Cicero, the flourishing period of eloquence had disappeared, and insipid daintiness of language was the only linguistic excellence admired. Seneca referred to this national degradation in literature, when he said, "Wherever you perceive that a corrupt taste pleases, be sure that the morals of the people have degenerated."

Varro, Cæsar, and Cicero contributed most to the perfection of the Roman dialect. The period of its greatest elegance extended from the reign of Augustus to that of Claudius, A.D. 54. By that time the struggle for liberty had been extinguished in those public calamities which plunged so many leading families into wretchedness, and caused the national spirit to be completely broken down. The period which embraced the lives of Cicero and Augustus constituted the best epoch of both prose and poetry. Dramatic literature, it is true, never recovered from the trance into which it fell after the days of Attius and Terence, yet Æsopus and Roscius, the great tragedian and the favorite comedian in the time of the greatest orator at Rome, amassed great wealth. But the theatrical entertainments which had now taken the place of legitimate dramas, were termed mimes, and were ludicrous imitations of popular customs or persons. The name was Greek, but the composition was entirely Roman in style and purpose. Their indecent coarseness of burlesque dialogue gratified the populace, and prepared the way for modern pantomime.

Decius Laberius, born at Puteoli, B.C. 45, under the dictatorship of Julius Cæsar, was a Mīme who became distinguished in this sort of composition, and won even the praise of Horace. Another was C. Valerius Catullus, born B.C. 86, and who was nine years younger than the great didactic poet and philosopher, Lucretius, whom we shall notice under the head of philosophy. Catullus belonged to a respectable family, residing on the Lago di Garda, near Verona. At an early age he went to Rome, became very erudite, and plunged into the licentious excesses of the capital.[Pg 144] Catullus possessed captivating talents, but of a perverted use; satire as vindictive in spirit as it was varied in power. His poetry was such as might be expected from the tenor of his life, and a career which began in extravagant debauchery terminated in hopeless ruin.

P. Virgilius Maro, born B.C. 70, was a citizen of Mantua. Most of his early training was at Cremona, whence he removed to Milan, and afterward to Naples, where he studied Greek literature and philosophy under the direction of Parthenius. Congenial tastes recommended him to Assinius Pollio, who aided the poet in his pecuniary distress, and introduced him to the wealthiest patron of literature at Rome. By that means the favor of Octavius was reached, and bright fortunes were secured. In the maturity of his faculties, Virgil visited Greece for the purpose of giving the final polish to his great epic poem. At Athens he met Augustus, who was on his way back from Samos, and both returned together. But the beautiful spirit that yet reigned over the scenes of his recent visit evidently inspired his latest and finest writing. The favorite haunts of the muses, the time-honored contests of Olympia, the living and breathing masterpieces which he admired in that home of art, adorn the opening of the third Georgic. But Virgil had all his life borrowed so unsparingly from Grecian invention, that we may infer his intention to have been, not to produce much, if any thing, new, but skillfully to collect and smoothly repeat in his rougher tongue what long before had been much more elegantly and vividly expressed. His Æneid was artificially polished to a high degree, but can never be taken as a specimen of what great unassisted invention might effect. If from the structure of its fable, one should deduct the portions taken from the Iliad and Odyssey, together with what was appropriated from the Troades of Euripides, and the lost poem of the lesser Iliad, doubtless but little original matter would remain to glorify the best specimen of Augustan poetry in its best time.

Had Virgil given more prominence to the old heroic traditions and rural pursuits of his ancestors, he would have taken a stronger hold upon cotemporaries, and increased his influence with posterity. The enlargement of his epic scope would have added freedom to its treatment, and enhanced the value of its use. But, submitting[Pg 145] to court artificialness, rendered more pernicious by his dependance thereon, the stiff arrangement of Virgil's greatest poem grows more and more formal as the plan proceeds. The Æneid opens with a copious use of early Greek inventions respecting the Trojan period, and the origin of the Romans. The further we leave these behind, the duller is the prospect; and when we have finished the greatest national poem of the Augustan age, really valuable as it is, we do not wonder that the author himself, in view of the nobler models he had copied, wished his own work were destroyed. Fine conceptions and careful finish Virgil doubtless possessed, but the corrupt Ovid was perhaps more of a spontaneous poet, and the careless Lucretius bore an intenser charm of nationality, impelled as he was by inspiration more truly Roman. He exhibited less art, and stalked forth with fewer airs of affected dignity; but whatever of strength and elegance he did employ, were more decidedly his own.

The specific qualities of Roman writers are clearly marked. In Livy, it is the manner of telling a story; in Sallust, personal identification with the character; in Tacitus, the analysis of the deed into its motive; and in the style of Virgil, the intimation of rank is equally plain. He who was helped up out of abject dependance, in his pride of place shrunk from all contact with poverty. In the hut of a herdsman, or seated with a shepherd in the shade, he still wears the air of dignity, relaxing with difficulty into bucolics. He accepts a maple cup from a peasant, with the patronizing mien of a courtier, who is thinking all the while of the last amphora opened by the princely Mecænas. Nevertheless Virgil had in him a true and natural love for rural purity, which was so sadly perverted by the astute formalism of the imperial court. In the healthful old times of the Republic, the noblest citizens and most illustrious authors were agriculturists by habitual pursuit, or chosen recreation. This feeling remained in Virgil to the last, glowing in the Eclogues, and especially in the Georgics most happily expressed. If he had given undivided attention to this species of literature in his riper years, he might have been to a still higher degree the poet of his nation; but, like all the rest, he was drawn near the throne of despotic rule, and both lived and died the poet of the metropolis.

But even less original than the epic was the lyrical poetry of the Augustan age, the great master of which was Horatius Flaccus, born B.C. 65. He infused little personal feeling into his writings, especially the lesser odes; in the place of nature, we have art, and instead of grand enthusiasm, a plenty of pretty imitation. Sometimes, however, he leaves the Greeks and draws wholly from himself, which effusions are the means of a permanent influence, and render their author, in his way, the best writer of Rome. Most of the poetry of that age was written to express gratitude to a patron, or court favor from a prince. As the great portion of readers were of the patrician rank, the composition was fashioned to patrician taste, and was as full of sycophancy as the sentiments expressed were undignified. Popular eloquence was no more, and, when free prose was silenced, the fulsome epoch of poetic flattery began. The profuse coffers of Octavius were opened in extravagant rewards to prostituted talents, and Virgil, Propertius, and Horace, polished their praise, and pocketed the gold. Of this talented trio, it is believed that Propertius was best qualified for the execution of an epic worthy of Rome; he, however, aspired less after fame than to enjoy the morbid sensibility of disappointed love, and has left only a few writings steeped in tenderness, but possessing very little worth.

Ovidius Naso, born B.C. 43, lived in a voluptuous age, and his works are imbued with all its grossness. To the first half of the Augustan epoch is commonly attributed the chief aggregate of genius and talent of greatest distinction, but it was only the occasion of their development, and not the period of their origin. All the really great of after renown, were the produce of republicanism, and whose youth had ardently admired the freedom from which their chief strength was derived. The most rugged of those who were drawn to the capital to adorn its imperialism with refined letters, were deteriorated by the frigid subserviency to which they submitted; while those who were actually born under Augustus, and exemplified the spirit of their time, like Ovid, were both in sentiment and style, infamously bad.

Least of all were the Romans successful in tragedy, that noblest form of literary composition, and in which the Greeks most excelled. True, those specimens which were anciently regarded as the best,[Pg 147] such as the Medea of Ovid, and the Thyestes of Varius, are not now extant; but all that does remain is stamped with the manners of a people too frivolous and vitiated to render tragedy either dignified or interesting. Their taste and talents were fitted only to produce and relish representations of low comedy. But here, too, as in every other walk, they were radically defective as to original merit, many of their comedies being nothing better than free translations from the Greek. Plautus is infected with all the faults of Aristophanes, and is vastly inferior in the pungency of his wit; though his plots may be more natural, and his talents have a less malicious design. The minor epic poets failed still more egregiously, both as to the sentiments ascribed to their heroes, and the modes of their expression. Ovid is frequently puerile to the last degree; and Lucan labors continually after the happy turn of an epigram, but seldom with success. Claudian and Statius are habitually bombastic, but never sublime; and their successors sunk even lower the depressed level of cotemporary worth. The Augustan age, in its best period, was in some respects like a well-cultivated garden, full of choice exotics, but containing little of natural growth; an assemblage of beauties, gathered from various regions, and sometimes grouped with an approach to elegance.

In the age of Augustus, there were a moderately large number of literati, but few patrons; Mecænas stood first and alone; even the emperor himself was second. The Romans possessed the means of greatly enlarging the field of human knowledge, and the elder Pliny, artificial as he was, indicated how well those means might have been employed. But that people were utterly defective as to simplicity of life, and could not, therefore, excel in the more natural forms of literature. Theocritus, whose genius was Grecian, infused much beauty into his pastorals, and left small room for novelty to his successor, Virgil. The latter gave little attention to the real life of shepherds, and wrote eclogues, highly finished in manner, but in substance, quite unnatural. That author, like all his compeers, lived too much in an artificial world, and was too conversant with corrupt courts, and splendid dissipations, to admire unadorned beauty, and out of it to coin literary delights to nourish and exalt the sons of purity and peace. And yet it was in didactic poetry the Romans were most successful. The Georgics of Virgil, and the[Pg 148] poetical dogmatics of Lucretius, display the opened treasures of, perhaps, the only original mine Latins ever worked.

Greeks of the later period were sometimes caustic in their criticisms on cotemporaries, but the great majority of their writers were too amiable to employ satire; and this only novelty in literature, of which they were happily ignorant, it was the equivocal honor of the Romans to invent. It was this form which comedy assumed among a people who could not appreciate the legitimate drama. Ennius was the inventor of the name, Lucilius of its substance. Persius used it for didactic purposes, and Terence and Juvenal gave increased reputation to this new form of lettered malice. But Horace alone seems to have understood the only useful end to which poetic sarcasm might be applied, by making it the vehicle of amusing narrative, and picturesque description. His sometimes elegant raillery at popular foibles, and inveterate vices, doubtless had a better effect than could have been reached by more serious discourse.

A life of literary or artistic pursuits, was never in high estimation among the Romans. This is indicated by the frequent occasions Cicero employs to apologize for occupations which, at Athens, throughout her glorious career, so far from requiring excuse, would have been esteemed the strongest claim to popular regard. Virgil, too, in some of his most exquisite lines of the sixth Æneid, hesitates not to speak slightingly of the arts, and even of oratory; and to represent no pursuit as becoming the majesty of a Roman, but to hold the sceptre, dictate laws, to spare the prostrate, and humble the proud. Horace had a true feeling for heroic greatness, and would have produced writings worthy of himself, probably, had the rare gifts of his republican youth been exercised under the same auspices in their maturity. When the commonwealth was overthrown, he may have suffered many bitter regrets. Some charitably believe that the excess of his mirth is only the mask of unavailing grief. A happier inspiration occasionally emits jets of patriotic flame, but in general all the native fires of his genius were subdued to the base office of illuminating a palace he had too much reason to despise. Inclination, not less than conviction, may have prompted him to become the defender of free speech in perpetual support of democratic progress; but policy dictated that he should write as a royalist, and glorify the empire of force. When[Pg 149] the great Cicero was sacrificed in a fitful effort again to be free, Horace was too cowardly and recreant to indite one word in his behalf, or even to mention his name. Imperial tyrants trampled on all the germs of free thought, till nothing but a barren field remained, and then such creatures as Lucan, once a professed republican, sank into the hireling's wealth, and splendidly crouched at Nero's feet. He found nothing near and national to commend, and so he praised the superseded Cato, with other heroes yet more remote. Persius pursued the same low trade, and completed the picture of an age thoroughly corrupt.

Almost the only redeeming fact in the history of Roman literature was, that the most elevated individuals took an active part in its early culture, and co-operated with all subordinate endeavors to perfect its merit. Hence the air of majesty stamped upon their published thought, and which wears an aspect of greatness in contrast with the preceding age of beauty. Despite the servility of Roman writers, their works obtained an appearance of dignity and worth, by forming the great point of union between the ancient and the modern world. That which most atones for innumerable defects, is their one great and pervading idea of Rome itself; Rome so wonderful in her energy and laws, so colossal in her conquests and crimes. Something of this independent dignity appears in even the most slavish imitator, and relieves the otherwise ignoble traits of his character. But this stamp of grandeur was impressed on her literature only while Rome was extending her dominion over the world, impelled by an irresistible confidence in the ascendency of her victorious star. Rough, obdurate, and almost uncivilized, Rome disdained the practice and despised the advantages of commerce. The mother-country possessed no arts of refinement to export to the countries she conquered, or the colonies she planted; so far from producing an overplus to supply the destitute, she often dispossessed those who were more refined, and who were in a measure themselves enriched. When Greece submitted to Roman power, she obtained a more illustrious triumph over rustic ignorance and military force, through the influence of literature, science, and the elegant arts.

As western Asia, from the earliest times, was the great highway of culture to Greece, so the Ægean islands and the western colonies[Pg 150] were the intermediate steps to Roman supremacy, even to the Atlantic coast. The sphere of civilization was vastly developed by the indefatigable attempts of Alexander to mix all the eastern nations; but the unity which he failed to create under the spiritual influence of Greece was infinitely extended and established through the agency of material Rome. At the same time their martial influence was rising, the greatness of their character, strictness of their laws, love of their country, and high opinion of themselves common to that nation, rose with correlative might. But these more noble characteristics changed as soon as universal conquest was reached, and their fall was as humiliating as their ascent had been sublime. The empire was quickly dissolved, because, inveterate in national vanity, Rome refused to be instructed by defeat, but construed fatal disasters into occasions for vain hope. From the accession of Augustus to Theodosius the Great, A.D. 395, every national incident was a manifestation of apparent decay; but in reality, at the same time, there was gathering underneath a deeper and purer tide of civilization, in due time to burst forth with redeeming power yet further west.

Rome was the second link between the ancient and modern world. In her career of conquest, she garnered all wealth by force; and when she fell, it was at the exact moment when her hoarded treasures would best promote the fortunes of mankind. The eagles of Rome soared with talons and pinions wet with gore, but the seeds of great institutions were thus made the more firmly to adhere, and they bore them over Apennines and the Alps. They were most signally the instruments of Providence for benefitting succeeding nations in literature and religion. By the consequences which ensued upon Roman conquests, the way was cleared for the most auspicious propagation of Christianity; and the suddenness of her fall, as clearly as the savageness of her ascendancy, proved that the wisest scheme of selfishness carries within itself the guaranty of utter dissolution. Into the richness of her ruins were cast the seeds of intellectual renovation, and posterity was made to reap rich harvests from fields plowed by chariots of war and fructified with human blood. That mighty nation was predestined to be a transporter, and not a producer, of ennobling worth; and it was wisely ordered that she should possess no native production of sufficient[Pg 151] splendor to make her regardless of those that might come in her way, and whose superior worth she might appropriate. Cicero and Pliny, with their literary associates, were not propounders of new theories, but transmitters and commentators of the old. Thus every age has been conserved, without accumulating a burden too great; and the mighty aggregate, fused into an appropriate adaptation to future uses, has come down to us. If a thousand tributaries, from every direction, were made to pour their currents into one great central reservoir, it was with the divine intention, when the fitting epoch arrived, to empty all the mighty tide towards the western main, and by that means, at a later era, to infuse into a prolific soil all the wisdom of the ancient world.

Greece carried individual culture to the highest pitch, but never established social relations on a sufficiently solid basis. It was not her mission to combine subjugated nations into a consolidated union, as the terrible Peloponnesian war and the lamentable history of Alexander and his successors but too sadly proved. To work out the principle of association on a broad and enduring scale was a task destined for the Roman race, and sublimely was it performed. Through the protracted process of conflict between contrasted nations, and their homogeneous assimilation, the great centre of progressive culture was removed another step from the East. More skillful in the art of establishing durable political ties, Rome was soon surrounded by a social net-work which embraced all the historic races. It was a vast empire which recombined preceding epochs, and presented the spectacle of the most brilliant interlacing of universal associations the world has ever seen.

The first extensive library at Rome, was that of Paulus Æmilus, taken B.C. 167, from Perses, king of Macedon. The next, and the largest in the world, was collected by the Saracens at Cordova, in Spain. Books, like every other civilizing element, followed the sun. Before Carthage perished, Greek was widely known along the Mediterranean shores. Hannibal wrote the history of his wars in that language, and through the same luminous medium were the maritime adventures of Carthaginian navigators described. But as the conquering power of Rome stamped all nationalities with its image and superscription, so the superinduction of their language extinguished the living idioms of many tribes, or absorbed into[Pg 152] itself all the sources of expansive and formative life which they contained. When sufficiently matured, the Latin language was spread over a much larger surface of the world than the Grecian, even before the seat of empire was removed to Byzantium. The diffusion of a tongue so strongly endowed, and imbued with such prolific means of promoting national union, tended powerfully toward making mankind human, by furnishing them with a common country. To this end, Cincinnatus lived in democratic simplicity, tilling his own soil, and yet nobler than a lord; he was as competent as he was ready for any public service, but first bound the brightest laurel to the plow. Splendors multiplied and power increased, while the elder Scipio lay in the bosom of Ennius, Lælius was flattered by the rumor of his helping Terence, and Virgil brightened the purple of Rome's great emperor. Then imperial eagles and mailed legions executed the commands of a single individual on the seven hills, and the strength which had been created by the republic enabled a tyrant like Tiberius to rivet the chains of the world. The era of exalted literary worth, imperfect at the best, continued only about one century, and thenceforth till the extinction of the language, the progress of corruption was rapid and fatal. After the reign of Trajan, all healthful development ceased. In the fourth century, such works as those of Ammianus Marcellinus, Bœthius Fronto, Lactantius, and Symmachus, proved that the utmost degradation was not yet attained, but these were the last vital utterances of the Roman tongue. A few years after, and the greater part of the language was either foreign or provincial. Pure Latin was forever dead.

It is painful to contemplate the countless battles and destructive wars which so becloud and disfigure the Augustan age. But we should recollect that the annals of past nations, with all their endless and apparently useless contests, are but motes in the sun compared with the great whole of human destiny. Amid the thickest gloom, Tacitus, with searching eye, fathomed the mission of his age, and saw that the great system of pacification which Octavius Cæsar promised to the nations was delusive, and that there were yet more desolating revolutions to transpire before heaven's highest boon of freedom could be enjoyed. The one, imperishable, ever-progressive, and all-devouring city, Rome, was to gather all oriental wealth to[Pg 153] herself; and then, as she had taken the sword to reap with, so should the sword become the grand instrument of distribution, and the great West be sown with the spoils. The first repulse was at Numantia, in Spain, when Scipio saw Roman invincibility broken, and the hour sounded when Rome herself must take blows as well as give. Gaul cost her fifteen stubborn battles and a most costly effusion of blood, which were afterward repaid by perpetual levies made on Italian territory and wealth. At this moment, Celts are masters in her capital. Cimbri and Teutones, with wives and children, descended upon the prepared field in whole tribes, directly the time had come for salutary amalgamation in view of prospective destinies; and the knell of the Augustan age resounded from afar, when Varus was defeated by the German Arminius in his native woods.

Roman genius was somewhat inventive, but it was exercised only in pandering to sensual gratification. There the plow, the pen, and the chisel were all in the hands of slaves. No free-souled Plato enchanted appreciative throngs in the umbrageous walks of a Latin Academy, nor was there a Demosthenes to wave the stormy democracy into a calm from some sunny hill-side. Very few artists of Roman blood possessed talents which might have been symbolized by a precious ring on their finger, such as Pliny says was worn by Pyrrhus, in which nature had produced the figure of Apollo and the nine muses. At their birth, the gods of power may have descended to offer gifts, but it is certain the gentler graces did not attend.

In reviewing the arts of Rome, as in the corresponding chapter on the productions of Greece, we will first consider their architecture, and then the subordinate departments of plastic and pictorial works. Roman, Greek, and Egyptian architecture are to be viewed as constituting but one vital and continuous trunk; each having grown out of its predecessor, and the last destined to produce yet another and, perchance, a nobler growth.

The Romans were not originally an art-loving people, and never did any thing valuable of that kind for themselves. From the time of their foundation down to B.C. 167, they were entirely dependent upon the inhabitants of Etruria, and upon the Greeks from that time till their dominion was past. They began by conquest, and employed such talents as they could best subdue. The architecture which the Etruscans are supposed to have brought with them from Asia Minor, derived thither from Assyria, was employed as the most powerful principle of support, and the most facile[Pg 155] means of extension. By means of this, the whole city was undermined by drains, inclosed with cuneiform stones, and immense fabrics rose on the seven hills. Vastness of size, and the absence of elegance, characterized their monuments from the first. A debased type of Doric was their favorite style in the early period, as in the great temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, which was adorned with figures prepared by the Tuscans in baked clay, or terra-cotta, and, when finished, sent to Rome. The use of the arch no doubt introduced a new and valuable principle of construction, and of great utility when consistently employed. But, unfortunately, the Greek outlines were still adhered to mainly, and imposture from the very outset ever characterized monumental art in the hands of the Roman race. False entablatures were fabricated; the arch, as a constructive element, was concealed; and as the real formation of the building could not be shown, sham features and fanciful ornaments were multiplied for the vile ends of disguise. During the great age of Grecian art, not a single specimen of concave roofing, scarcely a sloping jamb, was produced; if any approach to either was found, it was never in the pure Doric, but only in the semi-Pelasgic Ionic order. It shows how much more Rome was Etruscan than Greece Pelasgic, that it was left to that inartistic people to create domical buildings, and to carry them to the degree of perfection they did in their circular peristylar temples, and more especially in the Pantheon. That edifice, the great masterpiece and symbol of its age, and which has never been excelled, is at the same time the most striking exemplification of the vicious innovation made by combining rectilinear and circular forms. The Greeks never built round temples. The choragic monument of Lysicrates, and tower of the Winds, were mere playthings, produced at the latest period of architectural excellence; but even these were fine specimens of original invention and truthful execution. It was not at Athens, but at Rome, that architects endeavored to enhance their reputation, by secreting the real features of their work.

But when the arch is made the life of the whole building, standing out in all its boldness and majesty, the work is infinitely nobler than when accompanied by the incongruous Grecian mask. The original Etruscans had the independence so to use the grand principle they were the first properly to appreciate, and the creations[Pg 156] of their hands are of the greatest intrinsic worth. Their roads and bridges, tombs and city walls, cloacæ and tunnels are so extraordinary that, after twenty-five centuries, they remain unsurpassed even by their gigantic conquerors. They drained marshes, cultivated barren plains, and brought Italy from a savage state to that degree of civilization which enabled the Romans to profit by, more than the great originals who prepared the field of their first occupancy, and then were displaced. Such is necessarily the history of human progress, when excellence of a given kind is made to yield to some other superior force, but which in turn will succumb to the same law, and contribute to the greatest good of the greatest number in the end.

It is interesting to reflect on the contrast which existed between the architectural principle of two great primordial people in almost simultaneous developement. At a time when her existence was scarcely known to the refined republics of Greece, the barbarian state on the banks of the Tiber began to employ the mightiest of mechanical discoveries, through the means of which vast spaces were roofed in with stone or brick, while, through ignorance or contempt of it, the most glorious temples of Pentelic marble remained exposed to shower and sun, or were imperfectly sheltered by a covering of wood. The sewers of Rome were a vast improvement in practical mechanics over the structures at Athens; and if Etruscan genius had been permitted to work out completely its own ideas, a simple, noble, and majestic style would doubtless have been developed. As it was, their rudest works announced the fundamental principles of excellence and consistency which belonged not to edifices of greater ambition; and Rome had the honor of transmitting a prolific germ under the westering sun, where it arose and justly claimed to be considered the noblest offspring of the human mind.

When the principle of mutual support was hit upon, and the arch sprang self-balanced from impost to impost, the Roman was put in possession of an immense advantage over the restricted capacities of the Greek entablature. He was no longer tied to the width or length of quarried blocks, put in vertical or horizontal positions, but could bend more pliant materials in yet firmer construction upward and outward to an illimitable extent. In its use[Pg 157] they soon became the best builders the world had ever seen, and the worst architects. The magnitude of their great works, and boldness of execution, the vastness of design and mechanical skill, displayed in their existing monuments, compel us to admire the constructive talent of Rome, as Greece taught us to revere inventive genius. Unyielding energy and graceful elegance are brought into striking contrast. On the one hand, we behold the same iron greatness, indomitable will, and union of physical with moral vigor, combined with indifference to intellectual beauty, which bent alike the material and political world beneath the yoke of old Rome. On the other hand, in the Grecian temple shines the purest product of mind, perfect in symmetry, chaste in ornament, and resplendent with all the attractions of immortal youth. The best and only satisfactory works of the Romans are those we usually classify under the head of engineering; such as roads, bridges, aqueducts, and fortifications, and these are projected on a scale, and executed with a solidity, worthy of the greatness of their empire. But in architecture properly so called, nothing of their creation is to be admired but the colossal mass, and its constructive extravagance.

As the idea of the beautiful is a principle divinely positive in the arts and life of the Greeks, so greatness defined everything in the Roman contest for supremacy, and was the central point around which developed all the historical impressiveness of their character. Of all arts architecture most admits of artificial beauty, which they could not confer, and therefore they made it only great. Chaste elegance, that genuine sense of the artist, was never born in the Roman mind; but they possessed uncommon force of nature, and best succeeded in stamping on their fabrics the air of undaunted firmness in the struggle of rude reality. The Roman style is rugged even to uncouthness, but it has the redeeming quality of actually speaking the mind of its authors, the whole course of whose history was indomitable will. The conquest of the world, and not the perfection of art, was their destiny; not the sudden achievement of a few assaults, the results of which should perish with their fortunate leaders, but the gradual advance of a single one, through many champions, destined through all vicissitudes to universal empire. From the first moment Rome appears on the political stage, this one great mission is manifest in all her action and arts. Never[Pg 158] was greatness more truly national, but it was in diametrical contrast to the glory of the Grecian race. Individuals stood forth among the latter, in every separate department of intellectual proficiency, which rendered each a distinct model; but at Rome, with a longer list of great men than any other nation, their personal being is lost in that of the state. Camillus, Curius, and Scipio had no aim or aspiration of their own; they existed but to fortify and extend the commonwealth in their own generation, and to transmit the like calling to their successors. Rome only had a personal existence; her bravest children might perish, but herself the eternal, was unaffected; others, to whose fortunes she was equally indifferent, would arise to take their places in the continuous battle of seven centuries to attain the subjugation of the world. It was for Rome alone of all nations to return thanks to a vanquished general for not having despaired of the republic. She never could produce or appreciate mere art and beauty, and whatever of elegant refinement the Augustan age finally possessed was a borrowed gift which the holders knew not how to exercise.

Of those states which were grouped around the Mediterranean sea, Greece was certainly the intellectual mistress; but the Romans, by situation and race, inherited from them all whatever had before been accumulated in Asia and Africa, amalgamated the diversified elements into one empire of brute force, and thus opened the way for a more glorious progress. As a political phenomenon she stood alone, an empire aggregated out of discordant materials; not a mere conquest, like that of Alexander, to fall to pieces at the death of him who created it, but a coerced combination, substantiated by steadiness of purpose, and energy in administration, that half awed, half conciliated, its subjects in their bonds, and which caused the empire, externally, to cohere long after its heart had become corrupt, and the system was rotten to the core. The wealth of Rome could purchase, and her power could compel, the arts of conquered nations; and her political relations enabled her to accumulate in the metropolis those treasures which purer hands had created, and which her love of ostentation rendered it desirable she should possess. But we believe there is not extant one single passage of a Roman author, that shows a knowledge of what true art is, or what are its legitimate uses. From the fall of Carthage[Pg 159] to the age of Constantine, not one general effort to achieve a noble end dignifies the annals of that belligerent people; but sickening scenes of domineering vice succeed each other, till the mind shrinks from the revolting picture. As long as they could live in idleness, or struggle in battle, as long as the streets were filled with pageants, and amphitheatres reeked with martyr-blood, they cared not what new tribe was butchered by their master, or how the so-called liberties of Rome were trampled upon. It is vain to expect beautiful art to flourish under such auspices. One shudders at the thought that those servile, bloody hands could fashion forms of representative excellence, or that minds which revelled in such scenes could admire its creations when exhibited before them.

In attempting to estimate correctly the architecture of Rome, or any of her correlative arts, we must apply a mode of criticism which is entirely inapplicable to those styles of which we have hitherto treated. In Greece, we can contemplate an artistic work with the same unmingled delight we feel when studying a work of nature; but, in Rome, there is no one building on which we look with unqualified pleasure, none in which imperfections are not obvious to the most uncritical eye. In every instance, the destroying hand of time has been merciful, in hiding defects, and concealing vulgarities, so that the chief attractions that remain are the result of his hallowing touch, and the halo of association which spreads around excrescences that, in their nakedness, would shock and disgust us. When their artists attempted an exalted range of invention, they wandered into exaggerated forms of Titanic strength, and here their loftiest flight was terminated. They were blinded to the path of spiritual beauty, and in striving to storm heaven, and compel divinity, they failed in all their presumptuous endeavors. That which was born and slowly nurtured on the banks of the Nile and the Euphrates, suddenly sprang into its manhood of superlative worth in Greece, and perished at Rome in decrepitude and crime.

Under the reign of the first Tarquin, Rome was fortified, cleansed, and somewhat embellished. The low grounds about the Forum were drained, which prepared the way for the second Tarquin to construct that Cloaca Maxima, which was every way a masterly work. Servius Tullius enlarged the city, and completed the temple[Pg 160] of Jupiter Capitolinus, B.C. 508. As the name imports, it stood on the Mons Capitolinus, and embraced four acres of ground. It was twice destroyed, and twice rebuilt on the same foundation, by Vespasian, and Domitian. It is impossible now to trace the architecture of the Romans during the three hundred and sixty-three years which transpired between the time of their last king, and the subjugation of Greece by that people, in the year B.C. 145. But many of their grandest structures yet remain, and there is no great difficulty in estimating their comparative value.

The Doric order of the Greeks had degenerated sadly in style and design, before the Romans began to build; besides, it was utterly unsuited to their use, since they had neither sculpture nor painting with which it should be completed and adorned. But it was in keeping with their inartistic character to adopt what they could not comprehend, and yet further degrade its already attenuated columns into a closer resemblance to the wooden posts of their Etruscan teachers. No specimen of the Ionic order probably existed in Italy, anterior to the epoch of Roman superiority, and the imitation of it was, therefore, not attempted till a late period. In the times of imperial voluptuousness, however, they did use it to some extent, and succeeded in degrading that delicate type of art more grossly even than they did the sturdy Doric. Nothing could be more lean and ungraceful than the Ionic order became in the hands of Roman builders, who, having no skill of their own as architects, were successful only in defacing what departed genius had produced.

One of the first things the Romans borrowed from Greece was their Corinthian order; but we neither know when it was introduced into Rome, nor can we trace its history from the time it was lost under Alexander the Great, during the three hundred years that transpired before its reappearance in the age of Augustus. To the purposes of a people who were as unable to appreciate as to execute the Doric, or even the lighter, but not less elegant, Ionic, the richness of the Corinthian was admirably adapted. The plan of a building, after that order, required little thought, and its execution necessitated still less. No delicate spirals, sculpture, or painting, was requisite, but every thing was purely mechanical, and such as any stone-mason could execute. The pillars could be[Pg 161] lengthened, or shortened, at will, the intercolumniations made wide or narrow, and be placed at angles, or used in interiors with equal facility. No wonder, therefore, that this order became a favorite with the Romans; and though it was brought from Greece, and at first executed by imported Attic genius, they so modified its features as to give them a thoroughly Roman aspect, and in the temple of Jupiter Stator left the most perfect specimen of monumental art Rome ever produced. From bad to worse they proceeded, and blended their degraded Ionic, or Corinthian styles, into the hideousness of their Composite order. For them to make one harmonious whole out of two realms of artistic excellence, was not to be expected; they could only combine, without uniting, and join incongruous parts, while not one joint was concealed. To fit two into one, as the Greeks had elaborated one out of two, required invention and taste, of which the Romans had neither; therefore, in all their architecture, they have left some grand works of talent, but not one monument that attests the presence of creative and delicate genius.

Rome arrived at the zenith of architectural science, such as it was, under the reign of Augustus, as Athens attained infinitely superior honors under Pericles. But, with the single exception of Trajan, not one epoch after that great exponent of his age was marked by structural magnificence erected by Romans. When Virgil, Homer, Cicero, and Livy, were publishing their works, the metropolis was graced with a number of gorgeous temples; but the decline of letters and arts soon followed, and architecture, especially, sunk to the last degree.

The Parthenon and the Pantheon, those two great types of their respective ages, might be compared on the score of magnificence, but they were utterly devoid of resemblance as masterpieces of art. The quadrangular portico of the latter may be presumed to have been intended to signify the union of architectural powers; without some such reason the rectilinear front would not have been stuck before a circular edifice, and the egregious anomaly can be accounted for on no more plausible ground. That Rome bore the arts, as she did the spoils, and even the gods of conquered nations, to her own haughty abode, is true; but it is not less evident that she was destitute of all the arts and elegances of high civilization till she imported[Pg 162] them from Greece, and that she had neither definite principles, nor correct artistic conceptions, of her own.

The celebrated temple of all the gods to which we have just referred, is supposed to have been erected in the time of the Republic, and that the portico was appended A.D. 14, by Agrippa. Of all the temples of the Romans, the Pantheon is by far the most original and typical, and as a rotunda it is unmatched in the ancient world. There is a simplicity about its proportions, the height being exactly equal to the width, and in the mode by which it is lighted through a single aperture in the roof, which gives it a character of grandeur that redeems the clumsiness of detail, which would nearly spoil any edifice less grand in conception. That majestic dome is the only Roman structure extant that has power to carry the mind beyond the imperial mass of crime out of which tower the splendors of the Augustan age, and tells us of that grand old Republic whose glory elicited the worth and illuminated the figures of subsequent history.

Vespasian and his son Titus cumbered the city, and astonished the world by such masses of building in amphitheatres and baths as will probably never again be reared. The Coliseum, so named, according to some, from its gigantic dimensions, but in the more probable opinion of others, from its proximity to a colossal statue of Nero, is said to have seated 109,000 persons at one time, to view at their ease the bloody sports of the arena. The probability of this astonishing fact will appear not only from its enormous height and great number of ascending stages, but especially from the fact that it covers nearly six acres of ground. As the Pantheon was the type of the first half of the Augustan age, so does the Coliseum represent the later period, and was a fit arena for the degenerate progeny of a brute. It is the best type of the Roman style, containing at once all its beauties and defects. In size and splendor, it comported with the empire at its culminating height, and the purpose for which it was built rendered it the favorite building of the metropolitan city in the days of its greatest glory. Even now its ruins appear as eternal as the Roman name, and present us a more adequate picture of the times in which they stood unimpaired than the pages of Livy or Tacitus. Despite our better judgment, they awe us into admiration of the greatness of that martial people,[Pg 163] though, in fact, few buildings were ever more tasteless in design, or more faulty in execution.

Standing within that immense fabric, one cannot but feel that Rome, as mistress of the world, with unlimited wealth and power, and a proud feeling of conscious pre-eminence, beyond all other nations had the greatest means of cultivating the liberal arts. On the foundation laid in Greece, she might have built models of usefulness for the world to a boundless extent; but, as it was, she only altered what she had neither the capacity nor disposition to improve, and advanced only in the path of degradation till the lowest depth was reached.

The Marmertine prison, begun by Ancus Martius, and completed by Servius Tullius, yet remains nearly perfect, and is a good example of primitive masonry. In the time of the Republic, the Appian road, used to this day, was commenced by Appius Claudius Cæcus. The Forums of Julius Cæsar, of Augustus, of Nerva, and of Trajan, were adorned by many of the noblest structures in Rome. But the most useful works were exterior to the city, such as those wonderful engineering structures, the aqueducts. Of these, the Appian, Martian, and Claudian were most celebrated. The last-mentioned, completed by the emperor Claudius, A.D. 51, and yet in existence, is forty-six miles in length; for thirty-six, it runs under ground; and a series of lofty arches, six miles in length, forms a noble feature in the Campagna, still supplying the city with pure water. That commenced by Quintus Martius, B.C. 145, was also an astonishing undertaking, upwards of sixty miles in length, comprising three separate channels conveying water from different sources, and partly carried on an arcade of seven thousand arches, seventy feet in height. Neither were these colossal works confined to the seat of empire alone, but were executed in the remoter West as well, as at Segovia, Metz, and Nimes. As one sees this vast supply of pure water still poured from the Sabine hills through the ancient aqueducts, he feels how superior were the republican contributions to the true greatness of Rome, compared with all the imperial and later works.

It should be particularly observed that the Romans emulated only the pictorial half of Greek design; and this they greatly increased, regarding the refinements of propriety as virtues too[Pg 164] insipid to be admired. They were evidently pleased with the columnar ordinance of a Greek temple, but had no affinity with the instinctive sense of propriety so prominent in Athenian architects, and could not understand the true purpose of a colonnade. They did not look at pillars, entablatures, and pediments as expressions, but simply as physical substances, which in their combinations formed a picturesque object, which could be used in a scenic display of sensual magnificence. Impelled by an insane passion for decoration, the architects of the Augustan age emblazoned the imperial city with a thousand monumental errors which in due time subsided into effete grossness, and became the compost to nourish an entirely new and superior type of art. Such is the wisdom and goodness of Providence!

Another class of national monuments clearly indicate how the Romans were differenced from the Greeks. The history of the latter speaks of valor, power, and conquests, as well as that of the former people. Where are her architectural monuments of conquered countries and captured spoils? She had them, but they were mere temporary trophies constructed of wood. With glorious Greece, the day of triumph was the day of magnanimity, and in the presence of great art, which ought never to be desecrated in the forms of self glory, she was willing to let the songs of victory dwindle speedily into silence. But the Romans were actuated by entirely opposite feelings. In a Greek portico columns are native to the occasion as the flower to its parent soil; but in a triumphal arch as constructed by the Romans, the columns support nothing that is necessary, nor are they in the slightest degree constructive, but are forced in with every thing else to typify national ostentation. Outward symbols, and inner panels of bas-relief cut in precious marbles, as uncouthly executed as the architectural members, illustrate the triumphal procession of a conqueror, leading vanquished captives in chains. If you would clearly read the lessons of art, that most legible commentary on national character, ascend reverently the Propylæum in presence of the sculptured Parthenon, and then go scan the monstrous arches of Titus, Septimus Severus, and Constantine.

The final expression of eastern beauty was embodied in the immense temple of Diana at Ephesus. Ctesiphon designed it about[Pg 165] B.C. 366, all the Asiatic colonies of Greece contributing to the expense of its erection. It was four hundred years in progress, and was burned by Eratostratus, with the object of immortalizing his name, on the same night that Alexander was born. Then began the age of martial greatness and artistic deterioration which ended not till Christianity came to gaze on the desecrated relics of Judea at Rome, and passed yet further west through the arches of paganism to originate more aspiring and glorious shines.

The triumphal monuments raised to commemorate the conquests of Titus, Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, Severus, and Constantine, together with the Trajan, Antonine, and Theodosian columns, bear the principal compositions of national sculpture; and these, it is believed, were mostly executed by Greeks. The coerced hand must perform its task, and the results were made to breathe the spirit of war, conquest, and universal dominion. But in vain do we search for one graceful figure or attractive charm. They are mere military bulletins carved in stone, petrified paragraphs of ostentatious success, gross in conception, and pernicious in sentiment. They owe no inspiration to the muses, and can claim neither epic dignity nor dramatic force. The principal groups are mobs of Romans, as insensible to beauty as the armor they bear, and dealing death to their equally barbarian foes, or driving them in chains to the mount Capitoline. Subjects are often chosen still more unfit for art, such as soldiers felling timber, carrying rubbish, driving piles, building walls, working battering-rams, or dragging victims to mortal torture. The expression of their heads is so ferocious and savage, as to excite the deepest compassion for the weaker combatants who might fall into their hands.

If we would know the source of all Roman art, plastic as well as monumental, we must visit the shores of venerable and plundered Hellas, with Pausanias and Strabo for our guides. Despite desolating domestic wars, the inroads of barbarian hordes, and the hostilities of Macedonian and Roman conquerors, innumerable remains of ancient art are still there to be found. But, as Cicero says, that at Syracuse, after the temples had been plundered by the hand of Verres, those who guided travellers showed them not what still existed there, but enumerated what had been taken away, so the contemplation of what had been preserved from those[Pg 166] times, and what has since been brought to light, reminds us of the infinitely greater affluence which, in the age of bloom and vigor, had adorned the plains and glorified the cities of Greece. Mummius completed the conquest of that land B.C. 146, the same year that Carthage was razed to the ground, and plundered more works of art than all his predecessors put together. He destroyed many works through ignorance, and his soldiers were seen playing at dice upon one of the most precious pictures of Aristides. When Octavius won the victory at Actium, he enlarged the temple of Apollo upon that promontory, and expressed his gratitude by dedicating the statue of Apollo, by Scopas, in a temple at Rome, on the Palatine hill. His declaration that he had found Rome of brick, and would leave it of marble, Augustus probably hoped to realize after that mode of procedure. Nero threw down the statues of victors in Greece out of envy, and illustrated his own taste by gilding a statue of Alexander, by Lysippus. Imperial vanity and infamous extravagance may be further estimated by his having had his portrait painted one hundred and twenty feet high, while he wrested five hundred statues from Delphi alone to adorn his Golden House. The amount of sculpture accumulated at Rome must have been immense. Marcus Scaurus decorated his temporary theatre with three thousand statues. Two thousand were taken from the Volscians; Lucullus captured many; and, after the conquest of Acaia, Mummius filled the city. Three thousand were added from Rhodes, and not fewer from Olympia, beside a multitude from Delphi and Athens. The imperial palaces and baths of Dioclesian and Caracalla, mausolea of Augustus, and of Hadrian, were stored with vast treasures stolen from rightful proprietors, or executed by inferior sculptors, beside rows of plastic art which lined the Flaminian way. But neither their abundance nor magnificence could produce that vivid impression on the refined which never failed to result from the study of pure taste and skill in their native home.

Literature and art were never primary pursuits with the Romans, but secondary only and subordinate, adopted without fervor, and employed for their one great intent, the extension and consolidation of a martial empire. The honors which Greece bestowed on artists and authors, Rome gave only to soldiers of high or low degree.[Pg 167] The former was forced into a provincial relation to the latter, but Rome was never more than a mental and artistic colony to the intellectual people thus reduced to political subjection. Grecian invention continued its admirable productions under the emperors of the new West, and at the same time furnished them literature, science, philosophy, religion, and the arts. Menelaus and Patrocles, Antigone and Hæmon, Pætus and Arria, Orestes and Electra, the Toro Farnese, and Laocoon, were sculptured between the middle of the Roman Republic and the last of the Cæsars. Before the lowest debasement of art had arrived, some few tolerable basso-relievos were also produced from Homer and the ancient tragedians, and were among the latest creations of free and legitimate art. Then came the cumbrous pediments, imperial statues, consular portraits, gems and coins, wrought by the dependent Greek, to feed the impious ambition or ignorant vanity of his insolent master during the latter ferocities of the empire.

When the great depositories of art in Greece and her western colonies fell under the control of the Romans, the villas of the rich in the metropolis and chief cities were converted into great halls of art. Earlier, martial Rome, which, according to the expression of Plutarch, knew no ornaments but arms and spoils, furnished to the unwarlike and luxurious spectators no pleasing or unalarming spectacle. "To melt brass, and breathe into it the soul of art, or to create living forms in marble," the Roman had not learned. "His art was government and war." Etrurian artists had furnished him with what religion required, of wood or clay, sufficient for all the devotional sensibility he possessed. But after Marcellus had turned the rude minds of the citizens to the admiration of the works he obtained by conquest over Syracuse, all military leaders became anxious to add splendor to their triumphs by trophies of art. Thus, in the course of a century, most of the finest art extant traveled to Rome, at first a metropolitan decoration, but anon, an ambitious ornament to private dwellings. At length, the common soldier learned to despise the temples of the gods; to confound what was sacred with what was profane; to covet fine sculptures and rich furniture, and to nourish a mercenary ambition, which became a new pretext for violence in war, and extravagance in peace. As in the Republic, Lucullus and others regarded the[Pg 168] masterpieces of the Greeks as the fairest embellishments of their rural mansions, so the imperial Cæsars grasped at all within reach, and never had enough. Soon there dwelt in Rome as many statues as men; and the treasures disinterred in modern times at Tibur and Tusculum, on the Alban Mount, at Antium, and elsewhere in the neighborhood of the original seat of power, indicate that the surrounding region was not less rich than the capital itself. But a profound sense of art was never created at Rome, and, notwithstanding all the variety of excellence they brought together from afar, not one distinguished Roman artist lives on the record of fame.

History testifies that the carrying away works of art appeared as robbery of sanctuaries in mythological times, as base plundering in the Persian invasions, and to be excused only on the score of pecuniary want in the Phocian war. But under the Romans, this became a regular recompense, which they appropriated on account of their victories. For instance, when Corinth was destroyed by the army under Lucius Mummius, its most precious treasure of sculptures and paintings was preserved. These he resolved to send to Rome; but the orders which he issued on the occasion curiously illustrate the artistic taste and capacities of the age. "If any of these spoils," he said to those who were to transport them, "be lost or injured, you shall repair or replace them at your own expense." The successors of Augustus sometimes patronized sculpture, but no native merit was produced. Nero, somewhat educated in art by his tutor, Seneca, ordered a statue of himself, a hundred and ten feet high, to be cast by Zenodorus, and virtually stole at one time five hundred statues from Delphi, among which, as is supposed, were the Apollo Belvidere and Fighting Gladiator. According to Winklemann, the encouragement which the Antonines gave to the arts was only that apparent revivescence which is the precursor of death. Under the brutal Commodus, the arts, which the school of Adrian had freely nourished, sunk, like a river which is lost in a subterranean channel, to rise again further on with a wider and richer flow.

Down even to the reigns of Julian and Theodosius, Greek artists continued to repair to their mother country to copy the two great masterpieces of Phidias, his Jupiter at Elis, and his Minerva at[Pg 169] Athens. And it is pleasing to see how Horace entered into the spirit of ancient art, when he declared to his friend Censorinus that he would give him all the riches of the world, provided he had but the chief productions of Parrhasius and Scopas. Cicero also entered into like feelings, when he desired to collect together the works of Greek artists, declaring that this was "his greatest delight." He tells his friend Atticus that if he had but his collection he should exceed Crassus in riches, and would despise all the villas and territories that might be offered to him. The real love of art in the vain orator, however, was very moderate, as he was afraid to be held by the judges as a connoisseur.

The public games of Greece were peaceful and intellectual, adapted as much to invigorate moral strength as to develop manly beauty. Those of Rome were exhibitions, not of mental, but of physical energy, and were both sanguinary and brutalizing. The former were often theatrical to an exalted degree, but never amphitheatrical, as was always the case with the latter. The tragic feeling of Greece is represented by the sculptured grief of Niobe, that of Rome by the death-struggles which distort the features and muscles of Laocoon. The latter work, together with the Tauro Farnese, the Dying Gladiator, the Gladiator of Agesias, and several kindred works, were all executed in the Augustan age, some of them at a late period. The Meleager and Mercury of the Vatican, the Venus of Capua, and the Ludovisi Mars, must also be regarded as the productions of Greek art, so modified as to please Roman taste. What a radical change was wrought in sculpture, in its westward progress, is best exemplified in the colossal Nile and Tiber of the Vatican and Louvre. It is obvious that these representations of river-gods are based on that original Greek type which was so nobly embodied in the Ilissus of the Parthenon; the general reclining attitude is the same, but the whole motive of the art is altered; new symbols and accessories are added, to express an inferior idea in more copious but less eloquent language. The same general statement applies to the numerous allegorical figures which are preserved in Italian galleries, with the collateral illustration of Roman coins.

Augustan art was formed from Greek models, in the same time and mode as Augustan literature, with one important exception.[Pg 170] The latter was engrafted on an original stock of ballad-poetry, the process of adaptation being their own work; but Greek art was transferred rather than engrafted, the cultivation of the exotic being entrusted to strangers and hirelings. Augustan letters were formed by the Romans themselves, Augustan sculptures by Greek artists working under Roman dictation. The monuments of Rome afford the best examples on a great scale of the historic style of sculpture peculiar to that people, which is valuable in reference to their portrait art, a collateral department, such as biography is to general history. The series of busts in the Vatican, the Capitol, the Museo Borbonico, and at Florence, show how successfully this class of art was cultivated down to a very late period of the empire. The Roman sarcophagi form a distinct order of monuments, and are also of the later period. The bas-reliefs with which they are decorated generally, are borrowed from Greek myths, such as the story of Niobe, but in treatment, the delicate wisdom of the original is gradually ignored.

When Greece fell, there were but three superior artists, Lysippus the sculptor, Apelles the painter, and Pyrgoteles the gem-engraver. The first introduced a new style of art, which foretokened the age already begun. He made his figures larger than life, and the huge instead of the beautiful followed evermore, till the empire of force had in turn perished. A hundred colossi of the sun arose in the single island of Rhodes, the most famous of which, by Chares of Lindus, was completed B.C. 280. The imposing group of Dirce and the Bull, executed by artists born at Tralles, is another expression of that time. But the most significant symbol of the Augustan age and its spirit is that famous work made by three Rhodian sculptors, the Laocoon. It was probably executed about the time of Titus, as Pliny first saw it in the palace of that emperor, and referred to it as a novelty. In that group, violent action and intense suffering are shown in the same instant simultaneously; we pity the younger son, tremblingly hope for the elder, and despair of all three as that horrid shriek rings from the distorted mouth of the father, maddened by agony into a forgetfulness of his own offspring writhing with him in serpent-folds, and fatally crushed by the meshes of a living net. What the transcendent statue by Phidias was to the majestic Jupiter of Homer, the sculptured[Pg 171] Laocoon was to the description by Virgil, but in a very inferior degree. From the time the haughty dwellers on mount Capitoline had been obliged to adopt old Etruscan statues to perpetuate their own historical events, the Romans never excelled in noble art. It was a characteristic fact, that Clodius, after the banishment of Cicero, on the ruins of his palace dedicated to Liberty a statue which in its primary use had represented a Bœotian courtesan. To the end, that rough race never possessed the enlightened eyes, purged of their blinding film, like those of Diomed, to discern the fine texture of celestial forms, or to admire their charms.

Roman painting will require but a brief notice. Early in the Augustan age, easel-painting was neglected, and wall-decoration came into special favor, as the handmaid of luxury. In the time of Vespasian, according to Pliny, painting was a perishing art, and with the most splendid colors nothing worth speaking of was produced. Scenography, originally derived from Asia Minor, was cultivated at Rome, by Ludius. He executed, as room decorations, villas and porticoes, artificial gardens, parks, streams, canals, and marine views, enlivened with comical figures in all sorts of rural occupations. The perspective theatrical paintings, by which the Greek drama was illustrated, gradually extended the art of landscape, since it increased the demand for a deceptive imagination of inanimate objects, such as buildings, woods, and rocks. This was imitated by the Romans, and transferred from the playhouse to their halls adorned with pillars, where the long surfaces of the wall were at first covered with pictures in small, and afterwards with wide prospects of towns, shores of the sea, and extensive pastures upon which the cattle are feeding. In the time of the later Cæsars, landscape painting became a distinct branch; but, according to the specimens preserved to us in Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Stabiæ, these pictures of nature were more allied to private villas and artificial gardens, than to broad views of the open country.

In the age of Hadrian, painting flourished to a limited degree. Ætion made a composition of Alexander and Roxane, with Erotes busied about him in the king's armor, which Lucian greatly admired. But painting continued to sink into a mere daubing of colors, and was commonly an occupation of slaves to adorn walls in the most expeditious manner, according to the caprice of tasteless[Pg 172] tyrants. Foreign artists were often employed servilely to copy the old masters; while the purity of native taste was exemplified in one of the annual ceremonies at Rome, which consisted in fresh painting the statue of Jupiter, in the capitol, with bright vermilion. The time delighted in tricks of all kinds. In the golden house of Nero, a Pallas, by Fabullus, was admired, which looked at every one who directed his eyes toward her; and the picture of the tyrant himself, one hundred and twenty feet high, on canvass, is justly reckoned by Pliny as one of the fooleries of the age.

Ancient coins throw much light upon Roman art. They make us feel the reality of great events connected with the rise and fall of the empire more vividly than any written records. The annual coinage, bearing the names and portraits of leading personages, indeed, formed the most legible and enduring "state gazette," continued without interruption from Pacuvius, B.C. 200, who was an artist as well as poet, down to the fifth century. In this department of Roman art, as in every other, the progress of growth, decline, and decay, is distinctly marked. The last coins, like the last temples, statues, and pictures, foretokening Gothic art, were as marked features of transition, as those which were stamped on Grecian genius as it migrated into Rome. Starting from the heart of the Etruscan nation, which was partly of an oriental derivation, art in the Augustan age ran through its second cycle, correspondant to that of the Periclean, showing that the evolution which in Greece had been illustrated in consummate statues, was strictly normal, and the same which in Etruria, at the outset, dawned in drawings upon vases. The strong influence which Assyria had thrown over some parts of Lydia, in Asia Minor, was carried far west by the Etruscans, who quitted that district and settled in the north-west of Italy. They were celebrated workers in clay and bronze; and the ornaments and figures wrought by them on these materials are identical with the figures upon the bronze bowls and plates recently discovered by Mr. Layard at Nineveh. The Etruscans were well acquainted with agriculture, as well as many other practical arts, and knew how to work the iron of Elba. Thus it was that Providence placed the formative element of the Augustan age at the right time and in the right place to execute its mission under the wisdom of a divine intent.

When the appropriate field had been cleared, and all fitting agencies were prepared, the advent of Christianity rendered possible the full development of the human soul, and a corresponding improvement of noble art. The preliminary throes of a heavenly birth transpired under the last decay of paganism, the impressions of which are preserved in the primitive sculptures, mosaics, and illuminations of the yet persecuted church. In the catacombs under Rome are numerous works of the late Augustan period, not to be exceeded in interest by any other remains of past ages. Many entire days may be well spent in that sanctuary of antiquity, where Paganism and Christianity confront each other engaged in mortal conflict. Great numbers of the vestiges of that struggle and auspicious triumph have been taken from the subterranean chapels and tombs, and are now affixed to the walls of the Vatican, where they furnish abundance of enjoyment and reflection to one studious of the great unfoldings of the divine purpose in human progress. These "sermons in stones" are addressed to the heart, not to the head; and possess great value from being the creation of the purest portion of the "catholic and apostolic church" then extant. In all the Lapidarian Gallery, there are no prayers for the dead, nor to the apostles or early saints; and, with the exception of such relics as "eternal sleep," "eternal home," etc., not one expression contrary to the plain sense of Scripture. This is the more remarkable when it is known that the catacombs remained open during half of the fifth century.

That Mosaic should be popular with the Romans was natural, since their thoughts, mythology, social and philosophical systems, exhibited only one vast composition made up of precious fragments plundered from the East, and maintained in a gorgeous form on their grand system of forcible compact and consolidated union. Pliny states that Scylla was the first Roman who caused stone-laid work to be produced, about B.C. 80. Many elegant spoils from Greece were deposited in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, and were probably adopted as decorations, which created in the minds of luxurious and ostentatious patricians an anxiety for other magnificent embellishments, and thus occasioned Mosaic. The most noble specimen of it now extant is the splendid pavement of the Pantheon, the historical worth of which is commensurate with its[Pg 174] great superficial extent. Porphyry, Giallo Antico, and Pavonazzetto are the principal marbles employed, and they are arranged simply in round and square slabs. Fine fragments have been found in the Baths of Caracalla, and are preserved, with numerous other specimens, in the great Mosaic depository of the Vatican. The most generally known, and by far the most exquisite example of this art still existing, is the picture usually called "Pliny's Doves." It is in the museum of the Capitol, and represents a metal bason, on the edge of which four doves are sitting; one of them is stooping to drink, and not only the shadow cast by it, but even the reflection of part of the head in the water, is beautifully shown. The vast accumulation of precious material after each campaign greatly enhanced the passion for Mosaic decoration, and it was copiously produced till the end of the second century. The church early adopted this art for sacred symbolic purposes, and during the mediæval period, carried it to the highest perfection. The only specimen of primitive work now extant, is the curious incrustation which lines the vaulting of the Baptistery erected by Constantine, dedicated to Santa Constanza, and which represents a vine covering, as it were, the whole roof.

Illuminated books were known to the pagan Romans, and were at a later period made in a most attractive style by Christian zeal. In the time of Pliny, written volumes were decorated with pictures; and Dibdin refers to a collection of seven hundred notices by Varro, of eminent men, illustrated by portraits. This book appears to have been seen by Symmachus at the end of the fourth century, who speaks of it in one of his letters. The Vatican Virgil has but little ornament; and of enriched initials, or ornamental borders, the early Latin MSS. have none. In the fifth century, a great improvement began, which will be noticed in its proper place. The process of laying on and burnishing gold and silver appears to have been familiar to the oriental nations from a remote antiquity. There is no instance of its use in the Egyptian papyri, yet it is not unreasonable to believe that the Greeks acquired the art from the East, and conveyed it westward with all other elements of artistic worth. Among the later generations of that people, the usage became so common that the scribes or artists in gold constituted a distinct class. The luxury thus introduced to the Romans was augmented[Pg 175] by writing on vellum, stained of a purple or rose color, the earliest instance of which is recorded by Julius Capitolinus, in his life of the emperor Maximinus the younger, to whom his mother made a present of the works of Homer, written on purple vellum, in letters of gold. This was at the commencement of the third century. Thence a rapid decline succeeded until, under the auspices of rising Christianity, this beautiful art rose to the highest point. Before the fourth century ended, St. Jerome tells us its use was more frequent, but always applied to copies of the Bible, and devotional books, written for the libraries of princes, and the service of monasteries.

Thus have we briefly sketched the arts of that people who, at all periods, and in every form, have built out of ruins. A band of robbers found on the banks of the Tiber a city abandoned by its builders, and which they chose to inhabit. But outcasts as they were, they brought few women with them, and these they took by violence from the peaceful Etruscans. No attractive house, nor ample temple, was erected by the Romans for five hundred years, so barbarous was the genius of the people. Corinth and Syracuse, two most magnificent cities, left no impression on their conquerors; their drinking vessels were of gold, while their temples and deities were of uncouth stone, or brittle clay. Nero built an immense palace, gilded in the most costly manner throughout. But the masters of the world, trembling to enter it, commanded its destruction, and removed the works of Phidias and Praxiteles, of Scopas and Lysippus, of Apelles and Zeuxis, and, in a fearful conflagration, poured forth torrents of precious metals from its ceilings, its arches, and its architraves, in order to construct out of its scathed kitchens and stables a bath and amphitheatre for the Roman people. They did less in their city than in their colonies, for the ultimate welfare of humanity. The most majestic and solid specimen of engineering was the bridge with which they spanned the Danube; and the grandest of their works was the wall they erected against the Caledonians. About B.C. 200, the Chinese completed their immense wall, to fence themselves in; and the Romans would fain ward the northern barbarians off. But Providence, leaving the effete East to its chosen isolation, with irresistible movement sweeps outward on the broad current of progressive civilization, and lifts the curtain of a new act in the still more glorious West.

We are told by Livy that, soon after his disappearance from among men, the spirit of Romulus revisited the distinguished senator, Proculus Julius, and addressed him as follows: "Go, tell my countrymen it is the decree of heaven, that the city I have founded shall become the mistress of the world. Let her cultivate assiduously the military art. Then let her be assured, and transmit the assurance from age to age, that no mortal power can resist the arms of Rome." Strict and persevering obedience to this counsel eventually caused that colossal power to extend itself from Siberia to the Great Desert, and from the Ganges to the Atlantic. But it would be in vain to look to such a people, actuated by martial ambition only, for the general and successful cultivation of science. Regal, republican, and imperial Rome, was undoubtedly a perfect model of a predatory state, but the last to excel in refined and erudite thought.

The old Romans were much attached to agriculture, as a general pursuit. It was only at a late period that commerce, literature, art, and science, were introduced among them, and then only in a subordinate place. Among the Greeks, most proper names, and almost all the most distinguished, were derived from gods and heroes, and bore a significancy both poetical and glorious. Among the Romans, on the contrary, the names of many of their most distinguished families, such as Fabius, Lentulus, Piso, Cicero, and many others, were taken from vegetable productions, and the occupations of agriculture. Others, as Secundus, Quintus, Septimus, and Octavius, are derived from the numbers of the old popular reckoning. But mathematics never flourished with that people, while agriculture was a science in which they first and chiefly excelled. It was[Pg 177] one of the very few departments in which Rome produced original writers. The language and science of conquered peoples were generally despised as barbarian, but renderings into the Latin were sometimes made, as when the writings of the Punic Mago upon agriculture were translated at the command of the senate of Rome.

The Etruscan race were early subject to the Grecian influence, through a current of Tyrrhenian Pelasgi, and they continued the westward development of science thence received, by penetrating the north of Italy, and across the Alps. The influence which they exerted upon the political character and scientific progress of the ancient Romans, was very great. The impression which the latter left upon universal civilization, vastly extended the scope of thought, but very much of it grew out of a particular element in primitive Etruscan character. This consisted in their close intimacy with natural phenomena. Many of their most sagacious minds were organized into a college, who gave themselves to divination and the observation of meteorological occurrences. The Fulgatores, or interpreters of the lightning, occupied themselves with the direction of the electric fluid, and with turning it aside, or drawing it down. An account is given by Father Angelo Cortenovis, perhaps fabulous, that the tomb of Lars Porsena, described by Varro, was furnished with a brazen helmet, and a brazen chain appended, which formed a collector of atmospheric electricity, or a conductor of lightning. If such was the fact, or, as Michaelis believed, the metallic points upon Solomon's temple were for the like purpose, they must have been formed at a time when mankind possessed the remnants of an ante-historical knowledge of natural philosophy, which was speedily beclouded to be unfolded under fairer auspices. That the connection between lightning and conducting metals was early discovered, is clear from the notice taken of it by Ctesias. He said, "He has two iron swords in his possession, presents from the king (Artaxerxes Mnemon) and his mother (Parysatis); these swords, if planted in the earth, turned aside clouds, hail, and lightning. He has himself seen their effect; for the king had made the experiment twice before his eyes." Humboldt says, "The close attention paid by the Tuscans to the meteorological processes of the atmosphere, and to every thing which varied from the ordinary course of nature, makes it certainly a subject of regret[Pg 178] that none of the lightning-books have come down to us. The epochs of the appearance of great comets, or the fall of meteoric stones, and the crowds of falling stars, were, without doubt, as clearly laid down in them, as in the more ancient Chinese annals used by Edward Biot." Creuzer, in his Symbols and Mythology of the Ancient Nations, has attempted to show that the peculiarity of the country in Etruria produced the characteristic direction of the mind of its inhabitants. There is a strong analogy between the power over lightning, attributed to Prometheus, and the wonderful pretended attraction of the lightning of the Fulgatores. But there was no science in the operation, which consisted in exorcising only, and possessed nothing more effective or practical than the carved ass's head, by means of which, according to their religious customs, they defended themselves during a thunder-storm. Otfried Mūller states that, according to the complex Etrurian theory of Auguries, the soft, warming lightning, which Jupiter sent down, by his own authority and power, was distinguished from the more violent electrical mode of castigation, which, according to the constitution of the heavens, he only dared send down after a previous consultation with all the twelve gods. Lightning from the higher cloud-region they carefully distinguished from those flashes which Saturn caused to arise from below, and which they called terrestrial lightning, a distinction much more intelligently discriminated by modern science. After an imperfect but continuous mode, complete registers of the daily condition of the weather were established.

The Aquileges, those who were specially skilled in drawing forth springs of water and examining its properties, originated a somewhat critical investigation of geological phenomena, such as the strata of rocks and the inequalities of earth-formations. Diodorus extols the Tuscan race as a people addicted to the study of nature. They were undoubtedly, in their day, the most efficient promoters of physical knowledge, and laid the foundation of science for the Augustan age.

The knowledge of a great part of the surface of the eastern world was first attained by the conquests made by Alexander. These occurred at a time when the Grecian language and philosophy were so widely spread, that scientific observation and the systematic arrangement of general phenomena, could be rendered most lucid[Pg 179] to the mind, and most profitable to the world. By another most providential coincidence, at the moment when an immense store of new materials was thus gathered for study and use, the great Stagirite was at hand to direct inquiry into the facts of natural history, with a comprehensive sagacity never before known. Having explored every possible depth of speculative investigation, and spread out all realms in a map of practical improvement, bounded and defined by definite scientific language, he gave the immense treasure to the West, then just prepared for the donation. Anterior to the Augustan age, science had accumulated many materials, but could hardly be said to exhibit a growing body of determinate results. The Alexandrian school opened on the eastern edge of a new cycle, whose unfolding was manifestly one of great advancement. It was among the Romans that the idea of progressive science was first conceived and declared as a law. Pliny would not despair of seeing proficiency perpetually increased. Seneca, also, felt assured that the time would come when what was now dark would be luminous, and that which is now most admired would be entirely eclipsed by infinitely more resplendent discoveries. Such hopeful sentiments show a confidence of the increase of knowledge, which was not expressed in earlier times. It is especially to be observed that this anticipation, both in Pliny and Seneca, was prompted by the discoveries at that time made in astronomy; which, as Whewell remarks, was "the only progressive science produced by the ancient world." At a later period, Ovid, in the chorus to his Medea, expressed a like confidence in regard to maritime discovery. But the prospect of scientific progress was not connected with much, if any, general improvement of mankind, even in the estimation of those who entertained the fondest expectations. It must, therefore, have afforded some consolation to those who lived when the old world was decomposing, and when its heart, mind and soul, all bore tokens of a great and radical change, to gaze on any bright gleams which science revealed through the clouds of the future.

The Ptolemies, by their love for the sciences, their splendid establishments for promoting intellectual development, and their unwearied endeavors to extend the advantages of commerce, gave an impulse to the study of nature and the knowledge of geography,[Pg 180] such as had not existed in any preceding nation. Even before the first Punic war had shaken the power of Carthage, Alexandria had become the greatest emporium of trade and thought in the world. When martial force had laid the broad foundations of empire far down the track of national destinies, Egypt became a province, and all its immensely valuable attainments in science were transferred to the Romans. As the companions of Alexander had become acquainted with the monsoon winds, which render such powerful assistance in voyages between the east coast of Africa and the west coast of Asia, so the Cæsars, in due time and order, were put in possession of means by which they might compass the western shores of Europe. Thus greater portions of the globe have become accessible, the nations have been drawn together more closely, and the sphere of human knowledge has been progressively enlarged. This direction of Greek thought, which was productive of such grand results, and had been so long in a quiet state of preparation, was manifested in the noblest way at the era of transition from Pericles to Augustus. Its extension at the time of the Lagides may be considered as a very important step in the general knowledge of nature ultimately attained.

Before the appearance of Aristotle, the phenomena of nature had not been studied by the aid of acute observation, and for their interpretation they were surrendered to obscure guesses and arbitrary hypotheses. But in the new age which succeeded, much more careful attention to empirical analysis was manifested. Facts were sifted, and synthetical results obtained. The securer road of induction was opened, and speculations in natural philosophy assumed more and more the form and worth of practical knowledge. An ardent desire to study facts succeeded the power and passion to amass them, and a science was born of nobler aspect than a merely spiritless and empty erudition. The peculiar character of Ptolemean scholasticism preserved itself until near the fall of the western empire, and formed an all-prevailing element in Roman science. Much assistance was derived from the great collections originally in the museum at Alexandria, and the two libraries at Bruchium and at Rhacotis. Connected with the first was a large body of learned men, whose diversified talents and universal knowledge enabled them to generalize all the elements that had been agglomerated for[Pg 181] the advantage of a yet more critical age. The library of Bruchium was the oldest, and suffered at the burning of the fleet in the time of Julius Cæsar. The library of Rhacotis made a part of the Serapeum, where it was united to the museum. The collection of Pergamus was, by the generosity of Anthony, incorporated with the library of Rhacotis.

Doubtless the germ of all subsequent progress in the natural sciences was to be found in Plato's high regard for the development of a mathematical mode of thought, and in the system which Aristotle set forth respecting all organized beings. These were the guiding-stars which conducted all great masters of learning amid fanatical errors for many centuries, and prevented the utter loss of a scientific method. Step by step the progress went forward. Eratosthenes of Cyrene projected a systematic "Universal Geography;" and, outstripping the "System of Floodgates," by Strato of Lampsacus, followed the rush of waters through the Dardanelles, and went forth in thought beyond the Pillars of Hercules to attempt the solution of the problem concerning the similarity of the level of the ocean around all the continents. A corresponding illustration of the intellectual activity of the age appeared in the attempt to determine, by approximation, the circumference of the earth. The data arrived at by Bematist, were indeed incomplete; but the device to raise himself from the narrow segment of his native land, measure adjacent degrees, and finally obtain a knowledge of the size of the entire globe, is a striking index to the Augustan age.

But the splendid progress made in the scientific acquaintance with the celestial bodies at that time, is most worthy of note. Aristyllus and Timochares determined the position of fixed stars. Aristarchus of Samos, the cotemporary of Cleanthes, was acquainted with the ancient Pythagorean ideas, attempted to explore thoroughly the construction of the universe, and guessed at the double movement of the earth round its axis, as well as its progress round a central sun. Seleucus of Euthræ, a century later attempted to confirm the opinion of the Samian writer; and Hipparchus, the founder of scientific astronomy, became the greatest original observer of the stars in the whole of antiquity. He was the first author of astronomical tables, and the discoverer of the precession of the equinoxes. His own observations were made at Rhodes, and upon comparing[Pg 182] them with those of Timochares and Aristyllus, he was led to this great discovery. In the same hands, celestial phenomena were first employed to determine the geographical position of certain places. The new map of the world, constructed by Hipparchus, touched upon eclipses, and the measurement of shadows, for the determination of the geographical latitudes and longitudes. Improvements cluster, and a new aid of great value soon appeared, in the hydraulic clock of Ctesibius, which measured time much more accurately than the Clypsydra, or water-glasses, formerly in use. For a corresponding improvement in the determination of space, better instruments were invented from time to time, dating from the ancient sun-dial and the scaphæ to the discovery of the Astrolabes, the solstitial rings, and the dioptric lines. Wider views and keener organs were afforded to increased scientific skill, which gradually led to a closer acquaintance with the loftiest planetary movement. But the knowledge of the absolute size, form, and physical properties of these bodies, made no progress whatever, that being reserved as the leading glory of a posterior age.

The Augustan period, though it attained not to true astronomical science in the highest form, was yet remarkable in some departments of mathematics. Euclid, Appollonius of Perga, and Archimedes, were geometers of the highest class, who were intermediate between Plato and the Menæchmean figures and the age of Kepler and Tycho, Galileo and Laplace.

Archimedes was born B.C. 287, and is said to have been related by blood to Hiero, king of Syracuse. He was too late to associate with Euclid, but found a friend and genial companion in Conon, another distinguished mathematician of that age. In his researches Archimedes used "his beloved Doric dialect," and contributed much to the improvement of mathematical science. His first discoveries related to the area of the parabola, the surface and solidity of the sphere and cylinder, the properties of spheroids, and of that spiral which is called indifferently the spiral of Conon or of Archimedes. The speculations respecting the sphere and cylinder appear to have interested this great man the most, for he wished to have his grave marked by these solids, and was the first mathematician who caused his scientific discoveries to be inscribed on his tomb. Of his astronomical studies, none have reached our[Pg 183] times, excepting the method of determining the sun's apparent diameter. Cicero speaks of an orrery, as it would be called in modern times, made by Archimedes, and exhibiting the motion of the sun, the moon, and the planets; which he uses as an argument against those who deny a Providence. "Shall we," says he, "attribute more intelligence to Archimedes for making the imitation, than to nature for framing the original?"

Perhaps the most remarkable of his discoveries were those he made in mechanics, and their adaptation by him to practical use. The lever, the wheel and axle, the polyspact or pulley, the wedge, and the screw were known to him. He seems to have turned much of his attention to the construction of powerful machines, and boasted of the unlimited extent of his art in the well-known expression, "Give me a spot to stand on, and I will move the earth." He is said to have enabled Hiero, through a mechanical contrivance, to push a large ship into the sea, by his individual strength. His application was so intense that he required to be reminded of the common duties of eating and drinking by those about him; and while his servants were placing him in his bath, he would still continue drawing mathematical diagrams with any materials within his reach. "So that," according to Plutarch, "this abstraction made people say, and not unreasonably, that he was accompanied by an invisible siren, to whose song he was listening."

By his proficiency in the "Equilibrium of Bodies in Fluids," he detected the true weight of Hiero's crown, and exclaimed to the startled public, "I have found it! I have found it!" So greatly was his inventive power feared by the often repulsed Romans, that at last the appearance of a rope or a pole above the wall of a besieged city threw them into a panic, for fear of some new "infernal machine." His burning mirrors occasioned Lucian to say that Archimedes, by his mechanical skill, burnt the Roman ships. Galen refers to the same fact. Archimedes lent great aid in the final defense of his beloved Syracuse, but the fortune of Rome was overwhelming at last. It is said that Marcellus gave strict orders to preserve a person of whose genius he had seen such extraordinary proofs, but this was forgotten in the license of war. A ruthless soldier burst upon the venerable philosopher absorbed over a[Pg 184] diagram, and smote him dead. Cicero, traveling in Sicily about a hundred and fifty years later, had great difficulty in finding his tomb. "I recollected," he says, "some verses which I had understood to be inscribed on his monument, which indicated that on the top of it there was a sphere and a cylinder. On looking over the burying-ground (for at the gate of the city the tombs are very numerous and crowded), I saw a small pillar just appearing above the brushwood, with a sphere and cylinder upon it, and immediately told those who were with me, who were the principal persons in Syracuse, that I believed that to be what I was seeking. Workmen were sent in with tools to clear and open the place, and when it was accessible, we went to the opposite side of the pedestal; there we found the inscription, with the latter portions of the lines worn away, so that about half of it was gone. And thus, one of the most illustrious cities of Greece, and one formerly of the most literary, would have remained ignorant of the monument of a citizen so distinguished for his talents, if they had not learnt it from a man of a small Samnite village."

When the dominion of the Romans supervened upon that of the Greeks, and bore all irresistibly to the West, much that was glorious appeared to be obscured, but nothing was lost. All the materials which flowed into the vast stream of Roman civilization, from the valley of the Nile, from Phœnicia, the Euphrates, and the Ilissus, arrived by ways and in times which infinite wisdom saw to be best, and from Octavius to Constantine were amalgamated, and thenceforth still further removed for the grandest use. From India to the Atlantic coast, from Libyan borders to Caledonian hills, not only was the greatest variety in the forms of earth, its organic productions and physical phenomena presented to general notice, but also the human race was seen in all the gradations of civilized and savage life. In the East, effete races existed still in the possession of ancient knowledge, and in the exercise of ancient arts; while in the West, over gathering hordes of energetic barbarians, the fresh dawn of a mightier life was beginning to rise. In the time of Ælius Gallius and Bulbus, distant scientific expeditions were undertaken; and under Augustus, a general survey of the entire empire was commenced by Zenodoxus and Polycletus. The same Grecian geometricians, or others under their direction, prepared itineraries[Pg 185] and special topographical accounts to be distributed among the rulers of the several provinces. They were the first statistical works undertaken in Europe. Roads were divided into miles, and extended to the remotest boundaries, so that Hadrian, in an uninterrupted journey which occupied eleven years, traveled with ease from the peninsula of Iberia to Judea, Egypt, and Mauritania. It might reasonably be expected that such a vast field, so diversified in climate and productions, and which might with so much facility be explored by state officers and their retinues of learned men, would have produced numerous proficients in science. On the contrary, during the four centuries, when the Romans held undivided sway over the known world, Dioscorides the Cilician, and Galenus of Pergamus, were the only natural philosophers. The first made some approach to botanical science, and increased the number of species of plants, which had been described. And it was at this time that Galen, by the care of his dissections, and the extent of physiological researches, has been declared worthy of being placed near to Aristotle, and generally above him. Ptolemæus, whom we before mentioned as a systematic astronomer and geographer, is a third bright name to be added to the experimental philosophers Dioscorides and Galen. He measured the refraction of light, and was the first founder of an important part of optics. All these distinguished masters of such science as existed among the Romans were Greeks, as we have before seen was the case with the prime leaders in the departments of literature and art.

As the soldiers of Alexander of Macedon brought home the jungle-fowl of India, and domesticated it in Europe; so the agents of Providence, acting in the realms of science, gathered up and transmitted just such elements as their successors would most need. As soon as mineral acids could be obtained, chemistry first began, a powerful means of decomposing matter; therewith the distillation of sea-water, described by Alexander of Aphrodisias in the time of Caracalla, became an invention of great importance. The new solvent was variously applied, and the scientific mind gradually became acquainted with the compound nature of matter, its chemical constituents, and their mutual affinities.

Anatomical knowledge also improved under Roman teachers. Marinus, and Rufus of Ephesus, dissected monkeys, and distinguished[Pg 186] between the nerves of motion and the nerves of sense. Ælian of Præneste wrote a history of animals, and Oppianus of Cilicia, a poem upon fishes. These contained some accurate descriptions, but few facts founded upon their own examination, or worthy of a standard work on natural history. Great numbers of elephants, elks, ostriches, crocodiles, panthers, tigers, and lions, were slaughtered in the Roman amphitheatre during four centuries, but without any result save that of a brutal enjoyment. In that great metropolis there was no academy of science, and no general interest in a high range of intellectual pursuits. Antonius Castor, the Roman physician, was the only citizen who is reported to have had a botanical garden, probably made to imitate those of Theophrastus and Mithridates, but of no more practical use to science than was the collection of fossil bones made by the emperor Augustus, in the museum of natural curiosities. Galen, the only anatomist of true scientific method, flourished under the Antonines, and died about A.D. 203. He was originally from Pergamus, but went early to Alexandria, where he perfected his professional skill, and then removed to Rome, the scene of his great trials and triumphs. His superiority excited the jealous hatred of the metropolitan physicians; but the reputation he had earned was superior to their malice. Galen regarded his chief publication as "a religious hymn in honor of the Creator."

The noble undertaking of a "Description of the World," by Caius Plinius the Second, was doubtless the greatest contribution to general science made during the Augustan age. It comprised thirty-seven books, and was the first great Encyclopedia of Nature and Art. In all antiquity nothing had ever been attempted in like manner, and for many centuries it remained perfectly unique. In its dedication to Titus, the author appropriately applied to his work a Greek expression which signifies the abstract and compendium of universal knowledge and science.

The "Historia Naturalis" of Pliny includes a description of the heavens and the earth; the position and course of the celestial bodies, the meteoric phenomena of the atmosphere, the form of the earth's surface, and everything relating to its productions, from the plants and the mollusca of the ocean up to the human race. According to Humboldt, all these subjects were treated of and applied,[Pg 187] in the most varied way, and brought forth the noblest fruit of descriptive genius. The elements of general knowledge were copiously employed in this great work, but without strict order in the arrangement. "The road over which I am about to travel," says Pliny, with a noble pride, "has been hitherto untrodden; no one of our nation, or of the Greeks, has alone undertaken to treat of the entire subject, namely Nature. If my enterprise does not succeed, it is, nevertheless, a fine and grand thing to have attempted it." The intelligent author attempted an immense picture, and did not entirely succeed; but the want of success depended principally upon a want of capacity to make the description of nature subordinate to scientific generalizations, and in view of the comprehensive laws of creation. Eratosthenes and Strabo had referred, not only to a description of mountains, but to an account of the entire earth; of their investigations, however, Pliny made but very little use. Not more did he profit by Aristotle's work on the anatomical history of animals. As overseer of the fleet in lower Italy, and as governor of Spain, he had but little time for extended research in natural science, and was often compelled to commit the execution of large portions of his designs to inferior hands.

Pliny the younger, in his letters, characterizes the work of his uncle truly "as a learned book, full of matter, not less manifold in its subjects than nature herself is." There are many things in Pliny which are generally objected to as unnecessary and foreign to his subject, but that most competent critic, Alexander Von Humboldt, is disposed to speak of the general result in terms of praise. "It appears to me to be particularly gratifying, that he so frequently, and always with so much pleasure, alludes to the influence exerted by nature upon the moral and intellectual development of man. His plan of connecting the subject is seldom well chosen. For example, the account of mineral and vegetable matter leads him to a fragment from the history of sculpture; a fragment which has been of almost more importance for the present condition of our knowledge than anything referring to descriptive natural history which can be extracted from the work." Pliny evidently had a feeling for art, but he seldom betrayed an artistic feeling in the forms of his scientific disquisition. His data came from books rather than from nature direct, and a sombre hue invested all he[Pg 188] wrote. As Aristotle had garnered all anterior wealth in the same department, and passed it over to the Romans, so Pliny, in turn, gathered up later accumulations, and transmitted the grand aggregate to the middle ages. Providence always has the man ready for the needful task.

That the ancients made some powerful applications of the lens is evident from the account given by Lucian and Galen, that Archimedes burned the Roman fleet at the siege of Syracuse, by means of glasses, B.C. 212. But neither the Greeks nor Romans have left us any account of the lens being applied to increase the stores of discovery in natural science. The only authentic records we have respecting the microscope, or its still more powerful correlative, belong to that age of scientific invention for the advent of which the Augustan age was appointed to prepare.

Lucullus and Pompeius, by their eastern victories, made the Romans acquainted with Greek science and philosophy; the consequence of which was that many accomplished teachers streamed from those erudite regions to traffic their superior knowledge for Roman wealth. The latter really enjoyed nothing disconnected with the tumultuous excitement of war, even in the brief intervals of general peace. A master-passion for the sensations of battle morbidly existed in every breast, and yearned for gratification in the combats of gladiators, or the yet wilder brutality of the circus. The cruel and ostentatious spectacles which arose with the conquests of the republic, were continued with enhanced extravagance under the empire, fostered by the wealth, excitement, and corruption, which those conquests had introduced. There was no affinity of soul for refined and tranquil pleasure in the Romans; so that, if the legitimate drama was attempted, the admiring mob felt the keenest delight on viewing a mimic procession, or could interrupt the plot by vociferous exclamations for novelties of a yet more exciting and degrading kind. Civilization advanced perpetually, but from the period of culmination under Augustus, as before under Pericles, each step of progress was marked by its decline. As the palaces were enlarged, they were filled by impoverished dependents. Scipio, Metellus, and others, form courts around themselves, wherein the arts and sciences are taught by slaves, while the streets resound with the exulting shouts of those who conduct thousands[Pg 189] of captives to bondage or death. The great become greater, and the little become less; until the exhausted empire succumbs to barbarians, and a superseded civilization disappears from earth.

The elder Gracchus, that truly noble Roman, attempted first to enlarge the number of landed proprietors, and then to fortify them with the energy of self-respect, through the dignity of free toil. The extension of an enlightened yeomanry, happily employed in the avocations of scientific agriculture, was the ambition of his life, and the occasion of his martyr-death. The republican tribune fell under patrician clubs, and not in vain was his corpse dragged through the streets, and thrown into the Tiber. Says Bancroft, "The deluded nobles raised the full chorus of victory and joy. They believed that the Senate had routed the people; but it was the avenging spirit of slavery that had struck the first deadly wound into the bosom of Rome. When a funeral pyre was kindled to the manes of Tiberius Gracchus, the retributive Nemesis lighted the torch, which, though it burned secretly for a while, at last kindled the furies of social war, and involved the civilized world in the conflagration."

The first outbreak of righteous indignation was in the West, and thence the war-cry of freedom spread far and wide. From the plains of Lombardy, it reached the fields of Campania, and was echoed beyond the Apennines. A fit leader sprang to the head of outraged thousands, and pointed to the Alps, telling them that beyond those dazzling heights was a home and a hope for the free. But in vain. To grace the triumph of Trajan over the Dacians, a combat of ten thousand gladiators, and eleven thousand wild beasts, was offered to the metropolitans. Spartacus, and six thousand of his rebelling associates were crucified, thus lining the road from Capua to the Capitol with monuments of Roman refinement and power.

Julius Cæsar, in the capacity of quæstor, came to Gades (Cadiz), in further Spain, and, not far from the temple of Hercules, beheld the statue of Alexander the Great. Then and there, in that remotest West, he was quickened by the most daring resolution, and immediately returned to Rome, fired with the purpose which soon after leaped the Rubicon and won the world. History records that he caused one important practical application to be made of astronomical[Pg 190] science, in the correction of the calendar; this was due to the Alexandrian school, and was executed by the astronomer Sosigenes, who came from Egypt to Rome for the purpose. Thus was that age bounded by divine purpose and human ambition; Cæsar finding his motive to martial conquest on the same remote boundary where Pliny conceived the design of encyclopædic science. Moreover, the sagacious warrior found in the mode of arming and fighting there an improvement which he, with the greatest advantage, introduced into his own army. It was principally to his German auxiliaries, and the more effective mode of warfare he had learned from them, that he believed himself indebted for victory at Pharsalia, the crowning battle of his fortunes. Augustus formed his body-guard out of westerners only, and all succeeding emperors sought more and more to enlist Germans in their armies. The great scale of human destiny ever weighs heaviest in the West.

But jurisprudence was that department of science in which the Romans thought with most originality, and have exerted the greatest benefit. In that they were most at home, and from necessity as well as temperament, they cultivated their legal system with great care. It had its foundation in their elder jurisprudence, in which ultra-democratic principles prevailed; afterward the written code of the primitive period was a good deal modified, and greatly enlarged. Cæsar had formed the project of a general digest of Roman laws; but this great design, like many other kindred ones, fell in his violent death. Under Augustus, however, great lawyers of opposite schools, arose to mature a system of scientific jurisprudence which has exerted the mightiest influence on after ages. The people who outraged every principle of private rights, social justice, and public law, were the very nation who most accurately defined the laws they had themselves violated. The frequency and extent of colossal wrongs in that age necessitated a corresponding distinctness and majesty in the proclamation of rights. The Romans were distinguished for a sound judgment, and strong practical sense, qualities which eminently fitted them to mold the forms, and establish the titles connected with that equity which should every where preside over the relations of civil life. In this department of science alone, the help which they derived from Greece was very slight. The mere framework, so far as the laws of the twelve[Pg 191] tables are concerned, came to them from Athens; but the grand edifice was completed by their own hands, a source and model which has affected the legal systems of the whole civilized world. The Scævolæ, M. Manilius, and M. Junius Brutus, were eminent legalists of the earlier period. Ælius Gallus, prefect of Egypt under Augustus, and the friend of Strabo the geographer, also his namesake, C. Aquilius Gallus, were distinguished at a later date. The latter was the most erudite lawyer, previous to the brilliant days of Cicero, and was the greatest reformer of his profession. Nor does it appear that he was lacking in fees, since we are told by Pliny that he owned and occupied a splendid palace on the Viminal hill. He served the office of prætor in company with Cicero, B.C. 67, and both before and after that he often sat as judge. It was before him that Cicero defended both Cæcina and Cluentius.

The Forum still awes the visitor, and affects strong minds the strongliest, because therein Rome was the law-giver of nations, whence oracles of justice emanated that still are the guides of civil life. The deep and comprehensive thinker will thrill under the power of an invisible divinity, as he looks down upon the narrow scene whereon transpired the entire history of the stupendous empire, from Romulus to Constantine. By the councils of statesmen, meditations of philosophers, and enthusiasm of orators, the history of mankind, not only then but through all time, was projected, rehearsed, and confirmed. On that spot dwelt a tremendous moral power, which, in moldering Rome, forecast the fate of the world.

But we are not to forget in this regard that in the dark recesses of the catacombs the torch of a brighter science has been kindled, which has already burned in beauty to the surface, and is spreading hope and life among the barbarous hordes who descend upon the exhausted East to destroy, but are destined to return laden with the richest blessings for the West. Even Trajan desired that the feeble and despised disciples of the Nazarene should be required to sacrifice to pagan gods, and to be punished if they refused. The same system was continued under Adrian, Antoninus, and Marcus Aurelius. But, under the command of the latter emperor, a legion wholly composed of Christians, insured, by its valor, a victory to the Roman army, and a new power was evidently gaining the ascendency.[Pg 192] As a succeeding cycle draws near, the final struggles of the old grow spasmodic. From A.D. 302, to 311, in every part of the empire, martyr blood was shed in torrents; and soon after, Christianity, triumphant, ascended the throne of the Cæsars, with Constantine. From the middle of the second century, the new faith was contented with issuing the humblest forms of apology to its persecutors, and trimmed its lamp in meek seclusion, aided mainly by St. Justin, and Tertullian. But in the third century, Christian literature became more scientific. It was the beginning of theology, and the formal construction of dogmas. This work, like all other tides of progress, began in the remote East, and swept perpetually toward the West. Alexandria was the first great school, and Clement, Origen, and Cyprian, the leading masters. They with their associates and successors worked on silently, but successfully, in their aggressions against paganism, till they had laid the broad and solid basis of a mightier civilization to come.

Greek philosophy was early divided into two great systems represented by Plato and Aristotle. The first gathered the moral beauty of his age into his teaching, and was the progenitor of moralists; while the second, who came upon the central highway of civilization at a later period, expressed the other half of the mental world, and was the patriarch of natural philosophers. The Platonists and Aristotleians were perpetuated in continuous but separate lines of disciples, until both schools had become quite degenerate in the third century before Christ, when they were mainly displaced during the Augustan age by the disciples of Zeno and Epicurus. Then began the dismemberment of Greek speculation, and the founder of the Academy, with his famous pupil and rival, the first of peripatetics, who in their joint action gave to philosophy all its parts, and constituted it a science, were virtually set aside. And yet portions of their several systems continually re-appeared in the multiform schools which subsequently arose; but so long as philosophical disquisition obtained in any sect, morals were an inheritance from Plato, and natural philosophy from Aristotle.

Stoicism and Epicureanism originated at nearly the same time, and were in violent struggle with each other until about a century before the Christian era. When at the lowest degree of exhaustion, they passed into Rome, and were cultivated without any speculative originality, but became in many instances a favorite recreation with men of might. The Periclean age had been filled by a philosophy which, without forgetting the universe and God, had especially a human and moral character. The age which followed was intensely practical, and borrowed only such speculative theories as were suited[Pg 194] to their martial and ambitious pursuits. The age of Augustus was characterized throughout by eclecticism in philosophy, and that not of the noblest kind. But the three great objects of thought, nature, man, God, were not overlooked; through the first the culminating point was reached, and as the epoch closed religious philosophy began to beam with auspicious light.

As in the realm of art, we found the absence of all true grandeur and simplicity, so will the facts appear in the department now under consideration. The sublime folly of Stoicism only leads to the baseness of Epicurean belief. Such will doubtless be observed down to the second century of Christian truth on earth, when there was no longer any thing great to think or act under the empire, and the only genial asylum for aspiring souls was the invisible world.

When Rome had become the centre of civilization, she possessed no native works adequate to the wants of the age. Greek literature and philosophy were introduced in systems greatly epitomized, to master which was deemed an accomplishment not to be hoped for by the common mind. Very few acquired that more adequate appreciation which Cato and Scipio, Atticus and Cicero possessed. In the early days of the Republic there were many illustrious examples of practical Stoicism; but the system of philosophy known by that name, though best adapted to the mental structure of that people, attained its highest development not until a late period under the empire. After the literary stores of Greece had been introduced, each system had its run, and the hardy discipline of the Porch was particularly admired.

Antisthenes, the founder of this Cynical sect, was born at Athens, B.C. 420, of a Thracian mother. Hereditary character fitted the appropriate agent at the outset to mold the destinies of western hordes. From all accounts, the external conduct of Antisthenes was excessively absurd and extravagant; but in intellect he was respectable, and as a man, was in many respects superior to the generality of his followers. Unlike them, he never decried science and literature, but was himself an author; and he is said to have left behind him ten volumes of his works, though they have all now perished. According to Cicero, he maintained the unity of the supreme Being in opposition to popular polytheism, and that his writings[Pg 195] were valuable, rather as monuments of his sagacity than of his erudition.

Diogenes, born B.C. 414, was extremely licentious in early life, but at a later period, as is not uncommon, rushed to the opposite extreme of morose asceticism and fanatical mortification. All writers represent his temperament as being fervid and enthusiastic, and his humor as coarse as it was caustic. The fragmentary sayings of his which have been preserved exhibit a homely fierceness, in which it is difficult to say whether the character of sagacity or scurrility most predominates. Calling out once, "Men, come hither," and numbers flocking about him, he beat them all away with a stick, saying, "I called for men, and not varlets." Seeing some women hanged upon an olive tree, "I wish," remarked he, "that all trees bore the same fruit!" Such indiscriminate scoffing tended to repress the nobler impulses of our better nature, and to chill that enthusiasm without which nothing great or good was ever accomplished. It was an intrinsically mean spirit, clearly seen and well rebuked on the occasion referred to in the following anecdote: When Diogenes trod upon Plato's robe, and exclaimed, "I trample under foot the pride of Plato," the sage replied, "True, but it is with the greater pride of Diogenes."

Zeno was born B.C. 362, at Citium, on the coast of Cyprus. His father was engaged in commerce, and had imported some disquisitions written by the pupils of Socrates. The sparks from Athens fell where they kindled, and young Zeno soon devoted himself wholly to philosophy. The Cynic, Crates, prepared him for still maturer discipline under the tuition of Xenocrates and of Stilpo. After this protracted preparation, he opened a school of his own, and selected the Portico, a public edifice, ornamented with pictorial works by Polygnotus, Myco, and Pandamus. Hence the descriptive phrase in the history of philosophy of the Painted Porch, and the philosophers of the Porch. The regularity of life, severity of doctrine, and keenness of argument common to this new master, gave him great influence through a long life. He is said to have been tall in stature, thin in person, and abstemious, with a countenance by no means attractive. He died at the advanced age of ninety-eight. In his later period, Epicurus grew apprehensive of his perpetually growing fame, and was jealous of his moral superiority.

Cleanthes, born B.C. 320, greatly modified the doctrines of the Stoical school. He was originally a wrestler, and preserved through life much of that hardy vigor of body which qualified him for the functions of a gladiator. He was extremely poor, and whilst attending the school of Zeno by day, he was compelled to work at night to earn a scanty sustenance. It is related that his robust appearance, whilst apparently an idler, excited municipal suspicion; and when he was required to account for his mode of living, a gardener for whom he drew water, and a woman for whom he ground flour, came forward to attest his honest industry. He was not quick to invent, but was indefatigable to explore what others had taught. Fifty-six volumes are said to have been written by him, but none of them are now extant.

Chrysippus, born in Cilicia, B.C. 280; and Posidonius, who died B.C. 135, were the chief links to extend this chain westward, and connect it with that great Stoic who arose on the remotest border of the Augustan age.

Lucius Annæus Seneca was born at Cordova, only eight years before Christ. His father was an eminent writer on rhetoric, some of whose productions are still extant. The son was delicate in health, but nothing could repress his love of research. He first studied the Peripatetic philosophy under Papirius Fabian, and afterwards, as far as a master who professed to despise all learning could teach, he learned the follies of the Cynics from Demetrius. By his father's request, Seneca then entered upon public life, and became a pleader at the bar. In this walk he so far distinguished himself as finally to become a distinguished favorite in the court of Claudius. But in consequence of some difficulty respecting Julia, the daughter of Germanicus, he fell into disgrace, and was banished to the island of Corsica. It is said that Agrippina, the mother of Nero, interceded in his behalf, and Seneca was recalled. On returning to Rome, he first became the tutor of Nero, and subsequently his minister. The wretched pupil, in the exercise of imperial suspicion, as false probably as it was murderous, caused his teacher and friend to be destroyed. From the exhausted and emaciated state of his frame, the death of Seneca is reported to have been a painful one. In the presence of his wife and other friends, he opened the veins of his arms and legs; and, as the process[Pg 197] was too slow, he ordered a draught of poison to be administered to him. Still lingering, he desired to be laid in a warm bath, and as he entered, he sprinkled the standers by, saying, "I offer this libation to Jupiter the deliverer." His vital blood then gushed forth, and he speedily expired.

Epictetus, whose living influence extended towards the end of the second century of the Christian era, was the great ornament of the Stoic school during the reigns of Domitian and Hadrian. He was born a slave, and was maimed in person, but obtained his manumission by excellence of conduct, and proved himself one of the best monitors of his age. Ten years later, the emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus came forth the next in succession to this illustrious slave among the ornaments of the Stoic school. The reign of this victorious and philosophic monarch forms part of the happy period in which the vast extent of the Roman empire has been characterized as having "been governed by absolute power under the guidance of virtue and wisdom." Antoninus early profited by the lessons of severe wisdom, and honored them by an exemplary life. In his palace he preserved the systematic regularity of a general, and in his camp he composed a great part of those philosophical meditations which have cast so much renown on his name. The lives of Cato and Brutus also, the one more formal and severe, as of a person evidently aiming to support a character, the other more genial and free, like one who had really caught the spirit of the old republican time, were molded strongly by the same creed. Both were true utterances of Roman Stoicism, and have thrown a splendor around the doctrine which it could never have obtained either from its first teachers or from Seneca and the rhetoricians who perpetuated its vitiating existence down to the lowest point of feebleness.

When Greek philosophy was introduced among the Romans, Stoicism was the most popular, but the creed of Epicurus was adopted by many distinguished men. The popular poem of Lucretius was a captivating recommendation of the system to many; and other writers, such as Horace and Atticus, Pliny the younger, and Lucian of Samosata, are known to have been of this school.

Epicurus was born in the island of Samos, B.C. 341. When in his thirty-second year, he first opened a school at Mitylene, where,[Pg 198] and at Lampsacus, he taught for five years. This was at the time when sophists and sensualists were wanted at Rome, and they were brought there as part of the spoils of the conqueror, to march, like other slaves, in his triumph, and furnish an additional luxury. When Rome had become politically dominant to the largest extent, she yet remained in arts and letters the humble pupil of Greece. Augustan literature, in all of its departments, was to a great degree borrowed from the Greek, but with every kind of derivative process, from servile translation to the most adroit adaptation. Lucretius, Catullus, Horace, Virgil, Cicero, were all indebted to Greek models, as well as Terence, Ovid, and Seneca, but each to a graduated extent. They all borrowed according to their wants, each one transforming his plunder with more or less originality, according to the powers of his mind. Philosophy at Rome emitted many sparks of light, fragments of moral truth, but left behind no symmetrical and consistent system except that of Epicurus, a creed formed on a plain so low that no declination could be made to appear. It has been remarked, that while of the eight teachers in the Porch, from Zeno to Posidonius, every one modified the doctrines of his predecessor; and while the beautiful philosophy of Plato had degenerated into dishonorable scepticism, the Epicurean system remained unchanged. This has been accounted for on the ground just mentioned, and also with reference to the power of that mental indolence which disposes the mind to rest contented with views that are comprehensible without reflection, and which are not inimical to the indulgence of lust. The more thoughtful Romans were obliged to take what they could get, and they adopted the late and degenerated systems of Greek philosophy for two reasons: first, they had a natural affinity for them, and secondly, they were incapable of appreciating the earlier and better schools. The doctrine of Epicurus attracted a crowd of partisans in the martial metropolis, in consequence of its accommodating character, and the indulgence it afforded to the most groveling desires. But very few of the Roman Epicureans distinguished themselves as philosophers, and not one advanced a step beyond the doctrines of his master.

Lucretius Carus, born B.C. 95, claims a place among philosophers as well as poets. In his time, the Epicurean principles obtained the greatest popularity, and that in no small degree[Pg 199] through his own splendid talents. Consistently with his frigid atheism, and proud rejection of a superintending Providence, the perverted child of genius, who had risen on the breath of popular favor to the equestrian rank, died a wretched suicide when only forty-four years old.

We should not forget that the Epicureans, the Stoics, the Academics, and other sects, subsequent to the time of Alexander, are not to be spoken of as the Greek schools. They belong to a later and generally different age, in which little of philosophic worth was produced, and still less remains. Of Epicurus three letters are preserved by Diogenes Laertius; of Zeno, nothing; of Cleanthes, a single hymn to Jupiter; of the Academics, or New Platonists, a few traditions only.

The device on an old Roman coin, of Julius Cæsar bearing a book in one hand and a sword in the other, represents the genius of many a distinguished citizen of the Republic. Of such was Varro, for he was a soldier, and at the same time the most erudite of his countrymen. He was born at Rieti, near the celebrated cascade of Terni, in Italy. Cæsar appreciated the extensive learning of Varro, and entrusted to him the formation of the great public library. He was a man of ponderous information and unwearied industry, but without a spark of literary taste or philosophical genius. No Roman author wrote so much as he did, and, excepting Pliny, no one probably read so much; yet, notwithstanding all his learning and diligence, he has left nothing that is possessed of either superficial polish or substantial worth.

Not so Marcus Tullius Cicero. He was born B.C. 107, and in the realm of philosophy, as in eloquence, was the noblest Roman of them all. Like most young men of good family, he was instructed by Greek preceptors, and early occupied himself with ancient philosophy, directing his attention principally to the Academic and Stoic systems. Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus engrossed his esteem by turns, as he was an eclectic in taste, and confined himself to no particular school. But his philosophical works, wrought upon the model of Plato, are the most valuable collection of interesting discussions on the grandest themes. In the era of Cicero, scepticism and dogmatism distracted the schools and destroyed the life of philosophy. As Sir James Mackintosh has said,[Pg 200] "The Sceptics could only perplex, and confute, and destroy. Their occupation was gone as soon as they succeeded. They had nothing to substitute for what they overthrew; and they rendered their own art of no further use. They were no more than venomous animals, who stung their victims to death, but also breathed their last into the wound."

Cicero speculated after a mode which admitted of great freedom to his genius, controlled by no particular sect, but was at heart most interested in the severest principles, and became almost a Stoic. Doubtless that was the noblest school then extant, the most harmonious with the spirit of Rome, and which preserved her greatest citizens amid the dissoluteness and ferocity of her imperial career. The ennobling influence exerted by that system was exemplified while it exalted the slave of one of Nero's courtiers to become an efficient moral teacher, and breathed equity and mercy into the ordinary concerns of every man. Especially was it honored by the examples of Marcius Portius Cato, and of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, who did much to keep alive a loftier regard for virtue and truth throughout all time.

The historians of philosophy have often admired the memorable scenes in which Cæsar mastered a nobility of which Lucullus and Hortensius, Sulpicius and Catullus, Pompey and Cicero, Brutus and Cato, were members. From the time of Scipio, they had sought the Greek philosophy as an amusement or an ornament. The influence of the degenerate Grecian systems was exerted upon all the leading spirits of Rome during five centuries, from Carneades to Constantine. Cassius was an Epicurean, and so was the adroit time-server Atticus, the courtier of each fortunate tyrant of the hour, who could embrace Cicero in all the apparent frankness of true friendship, and then abandon him to kiss the hand of Anthony, imbrued in his blood. Marcus Brutus represented the nobler school of Plato; and if in a fearful crisis he trampled on all venerable precedents of justice to guard the sacred principle itself, it was the result of a direful necessity which he could neither avoid nor resist.

Krug, in his history of philosophy, admits only two divisions, those of ancient and modern. He assumes as the line of demarcation, the decline of government, manners, arts, and sciences, during[Pg 201] the first five centuries of the Christian era. In the above rapid review, we have already passed the culminating point in pagan philosophy at Rome, in the age of Augustus and Cicero. When Alexander had annihilated the republican liberty of Greece, he opened the way for an active commerce between the East and the West, which greatly contributed to enlarge the sphere of the new type of dialectic science. From Periclean excellence, a progressive decline became observable in the spirit of philosophy, which was continuously directed to humbler objects, of a more pedantic character, in commentaries, and compilations without end. Thus Alexandria, from the time of the Ptolemies, became the point of departure whence all the remnants of ancient wisdom emigrated to the opening wilds of the West. Every thing was wisely arranged with this intent. Indian sages came there to meditate, and perceived the connection between their faith and the old Egyptian mysteries. The Persian, who had before waged war against those mysteries, at length declared his belief in the conflict of good and evil powers. Thither came a powerful colony of Jews, and not only built a temple in Egypt, but at the command of an Egyptian monarch the Jewish scriptures were translated into Greek. The same country where speculation began was destined to accumulate at the most favorable point the latest productions, amalgamated into a form exactly fitted to prospective uses, and then, through other agencies as wonderfully prepared be transmitted to the corresponding field. From Moses to Christ, every intellectual stream was made to be tributary to that central river; and from Christ to Constantine, the direction and destination are identical still. When Egypt became a Roman province, proof was given that there was something stronger in the world than Greek subtilty, and which in turn could be equally well subordinate to the ultimate good of mankind. Three Greeks, masters of the Peripatetic, Academic, and Stoic doctrines, were sent as hostages of war to Rome, at the same time that Lucullus and Sylla were enriching the Capitol with conquered libraries. The latter, after the capture of Athens, B.C. 84, sent thither the collection of Apellicon, which was particularly rich in the works of Aristotle. It is worthy of special note that then and there the works of the great founder of later systems were first published. But simultaneously with the era when Greece had lost[Pg 202] her political existence, and Rome her republican constitution, the spirit of ancient research was exhausted, and a new philosophy arose from the decay of effete systems. A fresh dogmatical system was established by the New Platonists on a broader basis, in order to prop up the ancient religion, and to oppose a barrier to the rapid progress of the new, but which ended in the wildest metaphysical dreams. In the mean time, Christian teachers, who at first rejected and condemned Greek philosophy, ended by adopting it, in part at least, thus intending to complete and fortify their religious system. This work of fundamental preparation continued until the disunion of the eastern and western empires opened the way for the erection of that grand and romantic superstructure for which the world was by the above instrumentalities prepared.

It was well observed by Justin Martyr, "Those persons before the Christian era, who endeavored by the strength of human understanding to investigate and ascertain the nature of things, were brought into the courts of justice as impious and over-curious." But with the Messiah came more auspicious days, when on all sides schools arose whose ruling character was religious, and whose processes were no longer abstraction, but inspiration and illumination. Philo, born some years before Christ, and Numerius, two centuries after, both leaders of Jewish cabals; and the leading Gnostics, Simon Magus, Menander the Samaritan, and Corinthus, of the first century, as well as Saturninus, Basilides, Carpocrates, and Valentinus, of the second, all had an important preparatory work to perform. Plotinus and Porphyry, too, wrought a good work in their day. And when the apostate Julian, as the incarnated school of Alexandria, became the hero of mysticism, and ascended the throne of Rome, it was that thus he might more manifestly extinguish the lingering brilliancy of the East, and occasion a fairer unfolding in the West. With him and Proclus, sensualism and idealism ended, and Greek philosophy expired in giving birth to that new civilization which dates from the sixth century.

Modern scholars have searched through the voluminous commentators upon Aristotle, which the learned eclecticism of the third, fourth, and fifth centuries of our era produced, some of them still only existing in manuscript, but have found but little worthy of preservation. The time had come when one could no longer[Pg 203] hear Plato, in his own silvery tongue, delivering that allegory which compares the human soul to a chariot with winged horses and driver, and which resolves its purest thoughts into reminiscences of a brighter life and nobler companionship. During the martial sway of imperial Rome, the beautiful philosophic fabric which the Greeks had fashioned, like the web of Penelope, was mutilated, defaced, and nearly destroyed.

The Romans were more arbitrary in their ideas than the Greeks, and much less inventive; they were neither as acute to demonstrate, nor as methodical to arrange the elements and results of knowledge. The literary medium of their theories was as declamatory as their notions were loose, and both their political and moral habits tended to obscure their dim conceptions of moral truth. The only redeeming quality amongst them, was national vigor, displayed mainly in warlike pursuits. From the first, the citizens of the Republic seem to have anticipated the attainment of universal empire, and they put forth endeavors commensurate with the presentiment they felt with regard to their destiny. Though unworthy to claim supremacy of esteem for any mental or philosophical enterprise of their own, it should be said to their credit, that they entertained a more vivid and enduring belief in the dignity and predetermined necessity of human advancement than was common to the Greeks. But national excellence in the realms of refined art and thought, was not to be expected while they assigned these pursuits chiefly to slaves. Virgil made one of his a poet; and Horace himself, like several inferior authors, was the son of a freedman. Leading philosophers and coarsest buffoons, the preceptor who taught, and the physician who healed, the architect who built, and the undertaker who buried, were all vassals. It has been said by the most valid authority, that not an avocation, connected with agriculture, manufactures, or education, can be named, but it was the patrimony of slaves.

Providence is to be honored by a grateful recognition of the part Rome performed in human advancement. Perpetual peace is the hypothesis of absolute immobility. But as progress is necessitated on the part of imperfect creatures in their perpetual approach towards perfection, war will be certain sometimes, and may always be profitable. War is the bloody exchange of ideas, shocks[Pg 204] incident to the car of improvement. The truth which was victorious and absolute yesterday, becomes relatively false to-day, and will need to be conquered by a greater and more enduring truth to-morrow. That, in turn, will have to retreat before some superior good, and thus only can consummate excellence be attained. Great leaders, whether martial or mental, are but embodied ideas, actuating and transforming the ages; and every thing about them, even their death, is but a phenomenon of universal life. Platea and Salamis, Arbela and Pharsalia, were the great steps of democracy toward universal mastership. Victory always remains with the new spirit; and freedom, like truth, never can become old; they are in God, and thereby the final battle and widest conquest must eventually be secured. Not one great campaign was ever lost to humanity, nor ever will be. Every historical nation has had specific seed given it to sow, from the harvest of which succeeding nations have derived strength to cultivate a rougher, but richer, field. The scenery changes with each act performed, but the plot goes steadily on. God is making the tour of the world, and every new phase of civilization is an additional proof of a divinely identical plan.

The first great element of humanity which received a full development was beauty, the nearest in space, and most like in character, to Eden. The next was force, that which was most requisite to take up and carry forward the materials of after growth, and this was unfolded in a position the most central and adapted to its comprehensive design. The third element was science; the discriminating, purifying, enlarging, and consolidating power destined to bear the precious aggregation of lapsed cycles upon the immense stage whereon should be unfolded an amelioration the most complete, through the richest benefits both human and divine. It was not possible for these to have a simultaneous development, but were vouchsafed in their proper order, that they might best insure the highest result. An epoch is the period required by a given principle for its matured growth, and will be displaced by its successor through some form of revolution. When the commission assigned a timely idea is performed, it will be superseded because the advent of its superior has come; but the antiquated ever wars against the necessity of removal, and sees not that progressive destiny has[Pg 205] rendered it obsolete. Hence the need of constraint, sometimes through arguments, and sometimes through arms. But in every instance, the successor adds completeness to what went before, and all the diversity of epochs and arms conduce to but one and the same end. Wait the rising of the next curtain, if you would better understand the wisdom of the transpiring plot. If one asks why this or that nation came into the world, answer by noting what there was to do, what idea to represent, and what means to be employed. We have seen what Greece existed for, and there is no more mystery as to the mission of Rome. We give an explanation of her wars, but have no apology to offer in their behalf.

The evening of Greek philosophy threw a few beautiful rays over the dark and tempestuous domain of the Augustan age. Its early lessons taught the Roman generals to appreciate the mental treasures which lay upon the track of their remote campaigns, and mitigated the savageness of war with the amenities of moral excellence. The classical tour of Æmilius, and the more refined pursuits of Africanus, were greatly superior to the coarseness of the earlier Anitius and the ignorant Mummius. Still more enlightened was the age and its heroes, when Sylla enjoyed at Athens the refined conversation of Atticus, his political opponent, and bore about with him the inestimable writings of Aristotle. At the brief epoch of culmination, Cæsar, from the remotest provinces, corresponded with Cicero on philosophical topics; and Pompey, when he had accepted the submission of both the East and the West, lowered his fasces in reverence of the wisdom of Posidosius.

Cato deprecated the introduction of Greek philosophy into his country, because he foresaw that in learning to dispute upon all things, the Romans would end by believing in nothing. The result verified the foreboding. Though repeatedly banished from the metropolis, the degenerate philosophers triumphed over the resistance of laws, the wisdom of the senate, and the destinies of the eternal city. A few dreamers, armed with scepticism, accomplished what the world's entire force was unable to achieve; they conquered with opinions the superb Republic which had subjugated earth with arms, thus adding another fact confirmatory of the general truth, that all the empires which history has recognized as established by time and prudence, sophists have overthrown.[Pg 206] When a false maxim becomes a ruling principle in popular opinion, the logic of nations, mightier than cannon, bears a fearful force for evil, as otherwise it is the most powerful agent of good. An individual may be made to recoil before conclusions, communities never. A fatal charm more potent than the horror of self-destruction entices them, and even in perishing they obey a general law, the inflexible rectitude of which can never be exhausted, whether applied to error or truth, and by virtue of which the upright are preserved until their goodness has been most widely and enduringly diffused. As every doctrine is composed necessarily of truth or error, usually a mixture of both, there is an influence for good or evil wrought upon the minds wherein it is received. But while falsehood may in some ages and places so accumulate as to work ruin to a degree, the mightier truth is in reserve which in due time will readjust the balance, and augment the good. False religion presided over the cradle of ancient nations, and false philosophy attended them to the tomb; nevertheless, each succeeding birth and death was a fresh ascent toward fairer realms and brighter hopes. The civilization of Rome was exceedingly imperfect. Much expense was employed to entertain the populace, but there was little virtue in their instruction. From all quarters of the known world crowds gathered in their theatres; literature and art flourished after a fashion, and extreme courtesy for a while added attractions to an effeminate and voluptuous philosophy. The people yielded to the blandishments so congenial to gross tastes, and their history celebrates a period of happiness such as Romans could enjoy, that characteristic felicity which began under the Triumvirate, and with Nero found a fitting end.

Greece developed individuality of the finest type, and Rome created a social compact on the grandest scale; but it was reserved for a yet further step in westward civilization to blend these two elements, personal independence and social loyalty, under the auspices of liberty governed by law. Neither the Greeks nor Romans had a separate term for institution, that truest exponent of modern society. But this grand conservative and redeeming power in due time appeared, when there arose, amidst the ruins of exhausted imperialism, a society both young and ardent, united in a firm and fruitful faith, inwardly gifted with preternatural power,[Pg 207] and endowed with an unlimited capacity for external expansion. This was Christianity, the blessed philosophy of God on earth. The necessity of replying to heathen adversaries, and the desire of defining and enforcing the Christian doctrines, gradually led to the formation of a species of philosophy peculiar to Christianity, and which successively assumed different aspects, with respect to its principles and object. The spirit of Grecian philosophy thus transferred into the writings of the early fathers, in after times proved the material germ of original speculations. Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Arnobius, and Lactantius, first employed philosophy as an auxiliary to assist in winning over the more cultivated classes to the Christian religion. Subsequently it was turned to the refutation of heresies, and lastly applied to the elucidation and formal statement of the prevailing creed.

Most distinguished of his age was Aurelius Augustinus, born A.D. 354, at Tagaste in Africa. After having studied the scholastic philosophy, and became an ardent disciple of the Manicheans, he was converted to the orthodox faith under the preaching of Ambrose, at Milan, A.D. 387, and eighteen years after was made bishop of Hippo. The religious philosophy of this great writer became the pivot of dogmatical science in the West, and has swayed the destinies of millions of minds from the time Justinian closed the classic schools, and the Gothic king Theodoric put Boethius, the last of the ancient philosophers, to death. Augustin, who ended the Augustan age of philosophy, while yet far from the great centre of the succeeding age, now sleeps at Pavia, in the very bosom of its domain. Such is the grand truth of universal history; all living greatness, and even the remains of the dead, move only toward the West.

The radical imperfection of paganism in the Periclean age consisted in the fact that all the sublime attributes of intellect but served to ennoble man in his present being. The strength of the moral affections, the perfection of beauty, the love of truth, and all that which for the Christian is to survive the grave and be immortally augmented when separate from earth, to them had little or no object beyond this life. To direct and enjoy the present was his chief concern, and in his view the universe was created only to this end. The god of day pursued his ceaseless round to cheer his waking toil, and the chaste queen of night watched over his repose. The universal Jove came down from Olympus to inspire him; Minerva protected him with her awful shield of wisdom; the graceful goddess of Love placed her shrine in his heart; and super-human beings, captivated with his superior charms, sought on earth a loveliness not to be found in heaven. Even the fates were subordinate to his welfare, and all existences centred round his destiny; so that, were he destroyed, all things would dissolve like an empty pageant, and heaven, earth, and hell, with all their denizens, would cease to be.

In the Augustan age the condition of paganism was still worse. When Rome rose, and steadily advanced to the attainment of universal empire, the religions of all the separate states subjugated were intimately interwoven with her political law, and that was concentrated in the metropolis, whither the religions, like all other spoils, were compelled to follow. Rent from their native soil, these religions, like so many automatons, were doubly senseless and impotent. The worship of Isis had a meaning in Egypt, it being a reverence for the powers of nature; in Rome it became an idolatry which signified only a sign and evidence of the victorious eagle of[Pg 209] the city. The more beautiful and significant myths of Greece were equally perverted or stupidly ignored. Mythologies the most diverse and conflicting were brought together only to contend with and neutralize each other. There was but one power left that seemed real, the emperor. Temples were erected to his honor, oaths were taken in his name, sacrifices were offered before him, and his statues alone offered an asylum. There was no state religion, but power and religion were identical. Man sacrificing to man sank to the lowest degradation of spiritual vassalage. Inspiring sentiment and religious fervor were extinguished, leaving nothing more attractive or exalting on national shrines than the deification of power, the apotheosis of might. But when Rome had destroyed the various nationalities of the world, there was yet a susceptibility in the human heart which she could not annihilate—something through which men might hold communion with each other—a bond beyond the mere relation of a citizen to his state. The auspicious hour had come, in the midst of utter desolation, when humanity began deeply to feel this, and it was the first dawn of a glorious day. Christianity arose and called upon men as moral beings, to the humblest of whom its founder lowered himself. The apsis of the basilica contained an Augusteum, where the statues of the Cæsars were divinely worshiped; but these were to be exchanged for holier symbols and a higher truth.

God never abandons his dependent creatures, but affords them light according to their destinies here below. Even amidst the darkest idolatry true adoration was presented by Job in Arabia, Melchisedec in Syria, and the Queen of Sheba in Æthiopia or India. Orpheus, the Thracian, older than Homer, living more than sixteen centuries before Christ, taught many things to be admired respecting God, the word, and the creation of the world. Justin Martyr, in his first apology to the Roman senate, says, "Socrates was accused for the same crime as that of which we are accused, namely, of asserting that there is but one God." Irenæus says that Plato had sounder views of religion than the heretics of his own day whom he was refuting. The conformity of his doctrine to some features of the Hebrew scriptures is well known. Augustin says, that if Plato could return to the world, he would doubtless become a Christian, as most of the Platonicians of his time did.

But something more was needed than the aspirations of patriots, or the sacred suggestions of philosophers, and the world's greatest want was met in the divine lessons imparted through the elect people of God. Out of the Abrahamic tribe of faith Moses formed the Jewish nation. Natural stubbornness and the lingering superstitions contracted from the sacerdotal caste of Egypt, necessitated the ritual and ceremonial regulations by which they were first encompassed. Moreover, inspired prophets, called from the humblest ranks of the people, counteracted the hierarchical and regal tendencies of the more aristocratic classes, and by degrees elevated all to the conception and adoption of comparative republicanism in church and state. Disciplined by successive revelations, and decimated by death, they gradually became competent to enjoy unmixed truth and liberty governed by law. The rule of conscience which the father of the faithful had made the distinctive law of his particular household, Moses extended throughout the legislation of the first religious nation; it only remained, in due time, for the humanly realized God to divinize man by extending this celestial influence and control over all mankind. It was necessary that the gross fetichism of the East should be entirely eradicated from the race destined to plant true religion on earth; and so the wandering tribes sojourned in the wilderness until the generation, contaminated by actual contact and intercourse in Egypt, were all dead. Then prophets more enlightened and progressive arose, who occupied an intermediate position between the material dispensation of Moses and the pure spirituality of Christ. External forms are more and more discarded in the later portions of their writings; and their views of the old dispensation become increasingly independent of those who lived near its origin. In the Messianic system toward which they gladly advance, is evidently expected a clearer light and less cumbrous service. The Hebraic dispensation was provisional, and appointed to generate what was necessary for all men; but it was neither designed nor adapted to continue longer than to do a preparatory work, since it was circumscribed to a small portion of the human family, and was unfitted for extension throughout the world. It ended as soon as the ideas coined in the die prepared by Jehovah were thrown into the hands of Japhet, whose mission it was to transfer them into all historic languages, and[Pg 211] give them a free circulation co-extensive with the commerce of the globe.

The fountain of faith was enlarged in Shem simultaneously with the immense development of admiration in Japhet. Both were equally aside from Egypt, and its reminiscences of Ham. The Hebrews were an alphabetic people, and never used a hieroglyphic, but despised symbolism in all its forms. They were the depository of that pure and sublime monotheism, which has been the special glory of the Shemitic races from the earliest time to the present day. The Indo-Germanic races, to which the Persians were allied closely in antiquity, and of which the Greeks were the purest exponent, borrowed temple-worship from over the sea, like every other element of artistic decoration, and perfected it. So far as the Jews possessed art, they appropriated it from the banks of the Euphrates, perhaps, but never from the Nile. In their best days, and under the auspices of two mighty kings, father and son, they were incapable of erecting a suitable religious edifice without foreign aid. Had it not been for his fortunate alliance with Hiram of Tyre, it is probable that Solomon would never have seen executed the temple which so greatly enhanced his fame. That was of Tyrian art, fashioned after Phœnician types, and foretokened how, still further west, the splendor of Shem, and taste of Japhet, would yet more closely commingle, and be mutually benefitted in the joint works of faith and love.

While colonization bore the Pelasgic into Italy, and there transmuted the ancient Shemitic tongue by a mixture of the Etruscan, and other dialects of that central peninsula, into the Latin, another matchless source of improvement was laid up in ancient literature. The sepulchre of human hope seemed to grow dark, but a lamp burned therein, which was yet to kindle a bright flame on purer altars. Fugitives from the smoldering ruins of Grecian glory, transported their gods through the flames, to establish a new worship in more favored climes. In the cause of mankind, apparent defeat has ever been positive victory; and all its triumphs have achieved increased benefits for all. When the hour is darkest, and the air most chill, then expect the first dawn on the edge of a sky that shall pour increased light upon all nations; the first lifting of a trumpet that with louder peals shall break up the sleep of the great tomb of destiny.

The translation of the Scriptures into Greek was begun about B.C. 285. The statement received in the time of Josephus was, that Ptolemy Philadelphus, desiring to possess a copy for his celebrated library at Alexandria, sent Aristeas and Andreas, two persons of rank, on a formal mission to Eleazer, the Jewish High Priest, for the purpose. It is perfectly natural that a rich and cultivated sovereign should have wished to possess, even as a literary curiosity, the book of the laws, history, and poetry of a nation, lying in his vicinity. But great numbers of Jews were within his own borders, and they must have constantly appealed to their law in their governmental transactions, which appeals could not be answered but by reference to an authority recognized by both parties. Hence, the Pentateuch alone was translated in the first instance; but the other books followed, at long intervals, and in other reigns. The important fact is, that the Septuagint was received as an authority nearly, if not quite, equal to the original, from the first, and could be read by the Jew in the synagogue, or the Christian in the church. Then note how striking was the epoch of this translation. It was exactly between the completion of the Jewish Canon by the prophecies of Malachi, and the long series of Jewish desolations which began with the Epiphanes. It was late enough to contain the entire body of old revelation vouchsafed to Shem, and sufficiently early to prepare the way for that more glorious unfolding of the divine purpose which it was reserved for the Japhetic race to execute.

Then followed the other appropriate preparatives for the coming of our Lord; the rebuilding of that temple which was thus to be more honored than by the Glory from heaven; the visions and predictions of those who looked for the great coming, day and night watching in the temple; the solemn and startling denunciations of the Baptist; the visible presence of the Eternal in the flesh; His mission; His power over nature, the human heart, and the Evil Spirit; His death for human sin; His rising again for human justification; His visible ascent to the throne of Heaven; the overwhelming miracles by which fortitude, knowledge, faith, and the power of communicating them all, were inspired into the peasants of Galilee; form an unspeakable display of light and wisdom, an illustration of Providence, which, through all the clouds of time and things, still fixes the eye on that spot above, where the[Pg 213] Sun of the Spirit shall break forth at last, and the full aspect of the heavens be shown to man. Thus it was that the old religion put on a newer and more perfect form. The seed planted in the day of Abraham was at first shut up, but in the day of Judah began to grow, and shot majestically above the earth in the day of Christ. The primal faith, which long lay buried in weakness, was raised in power, and the mortal body of the patriarchal dispensation put on immortal glory.

The corresponding preparation, which was attained through secular power, is equally worthy of special regard. When Christianity was to be given to the world, the Roman empire had received that form of government which most fully combined enterprise with solidity; the daring energy of a Republic, with the comprehensive ambition of a monarchy. Like all the great leaders of mankind, the genius of the Cæsars might stand for the representative of the empire. The unequaled union of the bold, the sagacious, and the indomitable, rendered that wonderful series of instruments superlatively adapted to cast up a highway, and gather out the stones from the path of human progress. When the shadow of the Roman eagle stretched over all nations, and the mandate of the emperor touched the extreme points of civilization, the final use of martial force was subordinate to that divine religion which was destined to spread speedily from Caucasus to Mauritania, and from the rising to the setting sun. The mighty empire was not to perish as it fell, but to cast off its pagan wretchedness, and become invested with the unsullied robe, and starry diadem, of a loftier sovereignty. The Babylonish, Persian, Grecian, and Roman empires, which successively constituted civilization, formed the central channel of life to the earth; they were the spine, whence issued sensation and motion to the general frame, the meridian, to which all the lines of the chart of human progress must be referred. These four had exercised an unceasing influence on Judah, as invaders, or sovereigns, up to the time when retributive justice opened the way for the immediate incarnation of infinite Love. The capture of Jerusalem by Titus, was the beginning of the consummation. A false Messiah was proclaimed to a people already morally ruined, and the frenzied insurrection under Barchochebas, A.D. 132, closed the existence of Judah. Hadrian completed the terrible work.[Pg 214] He built a theatre with the stones of the Temple, dedicated a temple to Jupiter on the spot where the altar of God had stood, placed the image of a swine on the city gates, and thenceforth excluded the Jews from their beloved metropolis. At that moment the church chose their chief presbyter from the Gentiles, instead of the race of Abraham, as was the custom before, and thus the bridge between Judaism and Christianity was forever broken down.

But the Roman empire was now, in turn, to perish. One of the high ends for which it was permitted, had been fulfilled in the extirpation of Judah, and its own final use was the diffusion of a diviner system. The tokens of coming doom multiplied from the hour the arch of Titus was completed. Leviathan still dashed the political ocean into foam, but the ebb was inevitably come, and he must soon be laid dry upon the shore. Let us briefly review the facts.

Tradition assigns to Numa, a Sabine, the establishment of the laws and regulations of the Roman polity, both civil and religious; but in the absence of authentic records, it is difficult to say how far the statements respecting this regal law-giver are to be relied upon. The spirit of the Roman religion was originally quite different from that of the Grecian. The former was plastically flexible, the latter sacerdotally immutable. After the bloody proscriptions and civil wars of preceding centuries, Octavius, under the name of Augustus, appeared as the restorer of general peace, and was the first absolute monarch of the Roman world. His long and comparatively tranquil reign was a brilliant period of national history. Under the supremacy of the Augustan age, innumerable divinities, from Syria, Egypt, Arabia, Persia, Africa, Spain, Gaul, Germany, and Britain, received Roman forms and personifications; but in all instances, wherever traces of grandeur or beauty appeared, they attested that which had been pillaged and transferred from ancient Greece. The distinguishing character and leading principle of the Roman state, from the earliest to the latest period of its history, was political idolatry in its most frightful shape, the greatest aberration of paganism. The spoils of all nations were made to flow into the "Eternal City," and the known world wore her chains. The Orontes and the Ganges, the Nile and the Thames, were tributary to the Tiber. The invincible legions held every province in awe, gold and silver were as profuse as iron, and to be a Roman citizen was the[Pg 215] ambition of a life. The Capitol, from its rocky height looked serenely down on a thousand temples, sacrificial processions went daily forth, and numberless victims bled at the altars of Neptune and Mars. The Pontifex ascended with supreme dominion to the loftiest shrine; while beneath, the Pantheon, and the temple of Apollo of the Palatine, and of Diana of the Janiculum, and the glorious house of Victory, were redolent with Sabæan incense. All worldly wisdom, wealth, and art, waited on the mistress of the world. Popularly considered, the ancestral deities of Rome had invested her children with such glory, that they lived in their worship, throve by their favor, and as long as they served them they were invincible. The pagan religion had a powerful control over unreflecting devotees. Its temples, priests, mysteries, sacrifices, and magnificent processions, which called to their aid the varied attractions of sculpture, painting, and music, awakened a variety of entrancing emotions, and conspired to work the most effective delusion. Moreover, the more enlightened took especial pains to cherish the prejudice that, to the deep popular respect for the gods of the Republic, the unexampled success of the national arms was to be attributed. The piety of Romulus and of Numa was believed to have laid the foundations of their greatness. To use their own language, "It was by exercising religious discipline in the camp, and by fortifying the city with sacred rites, with vestal virgins, and the various degrees of a numerous priesthood, that they had stretched their dominion beyond the paths of the sun and the limits of the ocean." So strongly were the Romans attached to their religion, that Æmilius Paulus, in his consulship, ordered the temples of Isis and Serapis, gods not legally recognized, to be destroyed, and, observing the religious fear which checked the people, he himself seized an axe, and struck the first blow against the portals of the sacred edifice. On several occasions the senate exerted its power to prevent religious innovations. Augustus directed his state-policy and energy to the restoring of the ancient laws, and the maintenance of the primitive belief. The effort was, however, too late; the impossibility of success in such an endeavor lay in the fact that old things were passing away, and all was soon to become new. The emperor strove to effect the closest union of divine worship with the state; but when a Nero was clothed with the highest priestly[Pg 216] dignity, when a Divus Tiberius, or a Divus Caligula received divine honors after death, surely redemption, rather than restoration, was what the world most required. Roman society was rapidly decaying through excessive vice and the outrageous inequality of conditions. The palaces of the rich were more like luxurious cities, while the middle class had totally disappeared, and the great mass of the population was composed of slaves. Immense speculations were made upon human beings. Atticus, the friend of Cicero, had slaves taught and trained, to sell at a higher price. Many citizens possessed from ten to twenty thousand vassals. They were decimated by famine, sufferings, and in gladiatorial combats; yet they formed about three-fourths of the whole population. Increasing fear was manifested in the murder of Pontius; in the cold-blooded destruction of all prisoners of distinction at the close of every triumph; in the ruin of Carthage; in the proscriptions and massacres of Marius and Sylla, and of the successive triumvirates; and in those of Tiberius, Nero, and their wretched successors. The greatness of Rome was exclusively heathen, until men mightier than the Cæsars trod her soil. The adherents of the old pagan creed might truly say, that when the altars of Victory ceased to smoke on the Capitol, she herself ceased to wait on the imperial eagles; the existence of Rome seemed bound up in the worship of the gods to whom the Tarquins had bowed, and under whose auspices Camillus and Scipio had marched forth to conquest. It is long since Æneas found Evander and Pallas celebrating on the supreme mount those services of religion for which Rome has always been noted, and through which she became so great. But the preparatory work which her sword has performed over dominions so immense, has come to an end; and before she can unfold the infinitely sublimer influence which is destined for her to employ, she has herself to bend before the Cross. All things of earth seemed about to perish. The antique civilization was drawing to a close, and creeds, manners, science, letters, sank to the lowest degradation, and chaos the most dismal was imminent.

It was then that the last of the prophets found an echo in the first of the Evangelists, and the new revelation began where the old ended. The words which Isaiah originally recorded, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight," and which announced[Pg 217] the mission of all natural forces ruled by a divine purpose, were repeated by Malachi at the close of the Hebrew scriptures, and constituted the first command of the precursor of the true Messiah. These words were written B.C. 420, at the time when philosophy was enlightening the Greeks with moral wisdom, and Rome was advancing toward the grandeur of her republican greatness; and were resounding in the accents of a living tongue when Darius and Alexander met at Arbela, B.C. 331, and the East fell into the embrace of the West. While these and such like potsherds were contending with each other from first to last, the splendor and omnipotence of the Deity were revealed to the prophet Elias, as he journeyed forty days toward the holy mountain, and divinely illuminated his mortal eyes. There came a great and mighty wind, which made havoc of trees and rocks, but God was not in the wind. There came afterward a violent earthquake with fire, but he was in neither the earthquake nor in the fire. Then there arose the soft breath and gentle movement of tender air; in this was the immediate presence of God, and in awe and reverence the prophet veiled his face. Such was the origin and nature of Christianity, compared with the crash and cruelty of war it came to supersede. In the lifetime of Augustus, Christ was born; under Tiberius, the foundation of the Christian religion was laid; and during the reign of Nero the authentic record of that infinite mercy brightened the first fair page of Roman history.

Of all ancient literatures, the Roman was most insensible to past beauty, and future progress. The only voice among them, which chimed with the continuous prophets and evangelists of advancing humanity was the vague aspiration of Virgil, expressed in his Eclogue to Pollio. Therein, the blessings of peace are celebrated, and the prospects of a yet better age are foreshadowed. Notwithstanding the power of prejudice and imperialism, the better instincts of enlightened man in every age have anticipated a still fairer golden age, and prepared for its advent. When the great orient from on high rose over the wilderness of Roman life, the Gentiles, with prompt gratitude hailed from the East its long-desired beams. At that time earth afforded nothing better for the soul to feed upon than the mere dross of religion, which remains in the crucible of a godless reason, after the evaporation of all spirit and life. Something[Pg 218] positive and inspiring was needed in palpable manifestation, and the blessedness of Heaven came into the great middle path of humanity to roll on the ages in brightening splendors. Says Bunsen, "Judaism died of having given birth to Him who proclaimed the Spirit of the Law. Hellenism met Christianity by its innate consciousness of the incarnation, and then died; surviving only by eternal thought and imperishable art. Romanism taught young Christianity to regulate the spirit in its application to the concerns of human society; when, after it became powerful, it taught a religious corporation to resist a despotic and corrupt court, and to civilize barbarians."

Jesus came to do his work of salvation, not as a mighty one, nor as a High Priest, or even as a Jew; he does it simply as the "Son of Man," an inestimable blessing for all mankind. The material temple was therefore doomed to be destroyed, never to be rebuilt; for thenceforth the temple of God is man. This union, which the great Mediator declared to be the essence of true religion, will be carried on by that Spirit of God which was in Jesus, and which by his being One with the Father, made him the very mirror and eternal thought of divine love. As Jesus, in his progressive life and work glorified the Father, so believing humanity, in the progressiveness of the truth on earth will glorify God in heaven. As it was up to the point where universal history culminated in the advent of Christ, so doubtless will it continue to be. Nations may perish by the judgment of God, and new nations take their place; but the truth and righteousness of God will become increasingly manifest, until all divine purposes are realized, and the whole world is blessed.

The Romans were distinguished by their keen enjoyment of carnal pleasures, and their excess in every form of physical and mental indulgence. Never were a people mightier in strength or more lawless in action. From the time when Brutus first stained his name with the blood of assassination, to the darker period when Nero rioted in the most brutal vices, never were a people more colossal in moral guilt as well as in martial dominion. The profusion and luxury of a Roman life were commensurate with their capacity for gross excitement and the means of gratifying it, both of which were boundless. All that earth could furnish they commanded,[Pg 219] but even this was insufficient to feed the flames of their lust, and, through grovelling debasement, they sank to the brink of extinction. The fitting symbol of their volcanic character and condition was Vesuvius when, B.C. 73, Spartacus, a fugitive slave, at the head of a hoard of gladiators and fellow-vassals in revolt, encamped on the summit, where they were blockaded in the midst of impending flames. The fearful unsatisfied desire to soar into infinity common to every human breast, in them took no nobler form than that powerful instinct of patriotism which burned in a few heroes and patriots. Regulus, who, with eyes cast down, tore himself from his kindred, quitted Rome, and hurried to the country of his enemies;—Decius, who, devoting himself to the infernal gods, invoked their vengeance upon his head, and rushed into the arms of death, seemed rather demigods than men. But, compared with the glowing cheerfulness of Leonidas, they were barbarians, since the law they fulfilled was without love. Even those who died at Thermopylæ can scarcely be regarded to have been actuated by true patriotism; but in fulfilling a national vow as they fell, there was something sublimer manifested than Rome ever knew, when the Spartan leader dictated that lofty inscription on the mountain-monument, "Stranger, tell at Lacedæmon, that we died here in obedience to her sacred laws."

Having attained an almost boundless power over the earth, the Romans neglected the traditional deities of their forefathers, and set themselves up as gods. The Egyptians deified brutes; the Greeks, ideas; and the Romans, men. The religion of the latter, or bond which kept the tumultuous aggregation of conquered nations moving sympathetically round one centre, was glory and luxury; hence, the monuments which the Romans have handed down to us as the true chronicles of their times, are least of all religious, such as the Coliseum, the Baths, Theatres, and Triumphal Arches. At the darkest and most oppressive hour appeared Jesus, and a religion was preached which gave to monotheism, until then a national worship of the Hebrews, a cosmopolitic character. All men were invited to become Christians by the apostles of that great founder of this faith, who had abstained not only from touching upon politics in general, but from any question which does not directly belong to religion and morality, or is not nearly allied with[Pg 220] either. Nothing was permitted to be an obstacle in the way of his religion being received at once in all climes and by all classes of mankind. The spiritual value of the individual was immeasurably raised, and Jehovah was proclaimed to be the God of all men, high or low, distant or near, and before whom all are equal. A territory was made known beyond the state; and every man, slave or citizen, was shown to be a moral agent, bound under the highest law to fulfill his duties and receive his reward according to his deeds. Religion was no longer the apotheosis of might, but the discharge of duty and the worship of love.

By its own unaided wisdom, the ancient world could never comprehend the mystery of creation. The Mosaic writings were early rendered into Greek, and many critics, probably, before Longinus, felt and admired their sublimity; but they knew not what to make of these remarkable novelties, and the best of the Greeks and Romans never wrote as if they were at home in them. Nor could it well be otherwise, since their notions respecting the origin of man, as well as concerning the purpose of all knowledge, were so absurd. The grosser element of the human being, earth, occupied the chief consideration, while the spark of divinity in man was viewed as a theft from heaven, and the reward of successful knavery. Still less could they comprehend the mystery of redemption. Their consciousness with respect to God was thoroughly disorganized, and through thousands of years they oscillated between the lower and higher life in perpetual restlessness. They dwelt perpetually between atonement and thanksgiving, without one true and distinct comprehension of either. The smoke of sacrifice ascended from innumerable oblations perpetually renewed, but the effective sacrifice was never found, and the benighted worshiper still felt himself alienated from God. The heart of humanity bore an enigma which time and sense could never solve. Bunsen well states the facts as follows: "Christ put an end to this unhappy discord by the free and loving surrender of his own will to that of the Father; an act of life and death, in which Christ and the whole Christian Church throughout the world with Him, recognize the self-sacrifice of the Deity himself, and which philosophy (in other words, reason awakened to consciousness,) demands as an eternal act of God. Through this act of eternal love, the act[Pg 221] of the Incarnate God, as many as believed in it, became recipients of the new spirit, of a new, divine, inward power. The inward consciousness of the eternal redeeming love of God (that is faith) imparted the capacity of feeling at one with God in spite of sin; for it gave men the power of severing sin, as an evil hostile element, from their real self, and therefore of freeing their life from that selfishness, which is the root of all evil in it. A free devotion to God and our brethren in thankful love now became possible—a devotion for God's sake, arising from a feeling of gratitude toward Him who first loved us. In the language of historical revelation this idea is thus expressed. The great atonement or sin-offering of mankind was consummated by Christ, by means of his personal sacrifice: the great thank-offering of mankind became possible through Christ, by means of the Spirit."

Thus, cotemporaneously with Augustus transpired that central event of all history. The free personal sacrifice of Christ offered once for all, gloriously realizing all that of which the whole Levitical priesthood and sacrifice was nothing but a shadow and a type. Man had already tenanted the earth thousands of years, when that child was born whose mission was to produce effects so incalculably great that even yet probably men are but seeing the beginning of them. As soon as the way was sufficiently prepared, Christ came to abolish the law by fulfilling it. He rendered manifest those sacred forms which a bigoted understanding had as yet failed to understand. From the bosom of a contracted people, the Son of Man arose to proclaim the Universal Father—that God who, as the most intelligent of Christians declared to the Athenians, "hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth." For this sublime doctrine the moment had at length arrived; a race of men existed who were ready to receive its announcement and appreciate its worth. Says Eusebius, "Like a sunbeam it streamed over the face of the earth." Mankind had now received something better than Greek or Roman cultivation, which is nothing but the varnish of civilization. The doctrines of Christ subdue and save humanity by making authority a thing inviolable, by making obedience a thing holy, and by making self-renouncement and charity things divine. Under the force of law, a Curtius or a Codrus could die for the salvation of his country, and[Pg 222] a Regulus for the superstition of his oath; but the Christian martyrs made the like sacrifice for conscience, and the baptism of their blood, falling under the Cross, was the primary seed of earth's richest harvest. In the hands of Providence new wine is never put into old bottles. The leaven of Christianity for a season seemed lost in the lump of human sin; nevertheless, it was doing its great work with resistless power. Its first progress was marked by blood and flame, only to be more widely seen and longer remembered. The ashes of meek heroes sowed the earth with Cadmean germs, powerful in growth and prolific of good. All adverse winds were let loose, but they only blew the fires of divine illumination into a loftier and wider splendor.

During the first three hundred years after the promulgation of Christianity, it was assailed by the learned, ridiculed by the sarcastic, opposed by the mighty, and on all sides persecuted and oppressed. Yet the church grew and prospered. The disciples of Christ had other lessons to learn and other duties to perform than the schools of human wisdom could inculcate, but this did not prevent the existence of many learned Christians. The great Origen was surpassed by none of his cotemporaries among the Greeks; and Minucius Felix, Tertullian, and Lactantius stood first in Latin ranks. It was a time when injured rights and insulted virtue demanded the most exalted oratory, and the early fathers were not wanting in its divinest use. Chrysostom, for example, warmed his century like a sun. In good time certain men of the most despised nation came up to the great city of power and pride. They were regarded as the scum and offscouring of the lowest ranks, and their religious rites were declared to be impious. Their God had been crucified under the Procurator of Judea, and his body had been stolen from a hidden grave. But the new doctrines continued to spread, although the magistrates resisted them, and more than ten times the Augusti raised their swords against the "execrable superstition." The altars of the great gods were deserted, their temples decayed, their images were dethroned, and in their stead, in their very place often, rose the edifices of those who adored the Nazarene, and scorned the ancient deities of the Quirites. Thenceforth Rome ceased to be invincible. The East was encroached upon, and the West fell under the flood of hostile barbarians. The[Pg 223] sceptre was removed to another city, and the huge universal empire was dissolved. Rome was humbled to the lowest degree, and bowed her neck to her captors.

The adaptation of the primitive apostles to their respective missions is worthy of especial attention. Peter was the rock of the church, representing its firmness to endure rather than its aggressive force. He was the teacher of order, as John was the disciple of love, and Paul the great champion of spiritual freedom and doctrinal faith. At Joppa was vouchsafed to Peter the vision that rebuked his Jewish prejudice, and which at Cæsarea prompted this key-holder of the heavenly kingdom before Cornelius the Italian, to unfold doors to an empire which soon threw Rome into the shade, and hung the fragrant amaranths of peace above the bloody trophies of war. It is probable that he was carried to the imperial city to suffer martyrdom; but that this apostle was teaching there when the Epistle to the Romans was written it is impossible to believe. To prove that fact, or even to admit that he was a teacher there after his brother apostle's writings were received, is to annihilate the assumption that Peter was the founder of the Roman church. He doubtless planted Christianity in oriental Babylon, but a mightier head and heart were employed to distribute the same inestimable treasure in the West. The spheres of the two great leaders were unlike, but in life and death their aims and rewards were one.

The zealous Pharisee who so long and learnedly sat at the feet of Gamaliel, and whose soul, so like a sea of glass mingled with fire, was thoroughly imbued with heavenly power on the plains of Damascus, was the predestined hero of liberty and truth to the progressive races. Asiatic by birth, but European in mental structure, his faculties were the best on earth for the work to which they were made subservient, when at Philippi his hand kindled the torch of salvation on the eastern edge of Europe, which thenceforth was to burn through all tempests, and with constantly increasing brightness, westward round the globe. Like the great law-giver of the old dispensation, this pioneer of the new was master of all the learning of the Egyptians, and when the completed accomplishments of Greece were superadded under the transforming power of divine grace, the mighty aggregate was thrown upon the great[Pg 224] deep, and commerce became a grand instrument of civilization. With the pagan signal of Castor and Pollux floating at mast-head, and the wealth of Africa stowed in the hold, this son of Asia bore a message to central Europe which would soon make every kernel of that seed-wheat to spring up over a renovated hemisphere, and to shake like Lebanon. His bonds never restrained his heroic zeal, but continued preaching the Gospel, and converted many of every rank, even some who were "saints of Cæsar's household." When set at liberty, he sailed to Syria, rapidly passed through Asia Minor, and returned through Macedonia and Corinth to Rome. Britain may have witnessed his devotion, and Spain caught the inspiration of his heavenly zeal. But his chief anxiety was centred in that great fountain of influence, Rome, where he had founded a church containing a "vast multitude," according to the expression of Tacitus, A.D. 65, and where, according to his own presentiment, he was martyred the same year.

The confessors who followed the apostles, like them won the approving testimony of conscience, and the profound esteem of all good men. Their blood was considered the seed of the church, which said concerning them: "To each victor is promised now the tree of life and exemption from the second death, now the hidden manna with the white stone, and an unknown name: now to be clothed in white, not to be blotted out of the book of life, and to be made a pillar in the temple of God, inscribed with the name of his God and Lord of the heavenly Jerusalem: and now to sit down with the Lord on his throne, once refused to the sons of Zebedee." About the beginning of the third century arose a discussion which throws light upon the spirit manifested by the martyr-victims of those days. Celsus, on the part of the heathen, reproached his opponents with the fortitude of Anaxarchus, who, when pounded in a mortar, exclaimed, "Pound the shell of Anaxarchus, himself you touch not." "What," he asks, "did your Deity say in his sufferings comparable to this?" Origen returned the appropriate answer, that a pious submission to God's will, or even a prayer, such as "if it be possible, let this cup pass from me," is more truly magnanimous than the affectation of insensibility, so lauded by stoical paganism. The martyr's surrender of his body to the executioner was esteemed an act of faith, a baptism unto Christ, and came to be[Pg 225] regarded as a sacrament of certain efficacy, seeing that no subsequent fall could annul its power. "Be thou faithful unto death," was evermore whispered in the ear of the confessor, "and I will give thee a crown of life." Thus pacific and defenceless, the primitive church conquered the proud array of pagan and imperial power; and the doubting world, forced to admit a divine interposition in behalf of this new religion, beheld a testimony from heaven to its truth. Perhaps the strongest confidence in the resurrection, and the most energetic subscription to the declaration, "If our earthly house of this tabernacle be dissolved, we have a building of God," was expressed by Ignatius, who, knowing the danger often incurred in obtaining the remains of the martyrs, expressed a wish to be so entirely devoured by beasts, that no fragment of his body should be found.

The emperor Julian was ambitious of establishing the old polytheism on the ruins of Christianity; and, without doubt, Diocletian was resolved at all hazards to extirpate the new creed. But the cause of truth was strong, and its strength received imperial protection in the triumph of Constantine. Under his auspices, a new metropolis arose on the site of antique Byzantium, and soon left eclipsed the ancient capital of the world. Thus the old pagan traditions were annihilated, and its prestige, so vivid and powerful in the imagination of all nations, was no more. The empire underwent a new division, and Constantine commenced a modification of the superseded institutions, which, under the law of continuous change, have lasted until our time. Fatal heresies arose during the fourth and fifth centuries, which caused much Christian activity to be wasted on purely theological subjects; still the church exercised the most pre-eminent influence, presenting the spectacle of a boundless and universal activity in intellectual labors, and in the progressive development, and advancement of civilization. Many, doubtless, like Celsus, were bold to say, "He must be void of understanding who can believe that Greeks and barbarians, in Asia, Europe, and Lybia, all nations to the ends of the earth, can unite in the reception of one and the same religious doctrine." But such happily was proved to be the fact. Such was the design of Jehovah, in that faith given to change all existing polities, Jewish as well as Gentile, into nations and states, governed by a law founded[Pg 226] upon justice and charity; and taking its highest inspirations from the love of God, as the common Father of mankind, declared, in the words of its great Founder, that "the field is the world."

The Roman bore little noblenesss of soul in life, and found corresponding gloom at its end. Brutus, whose patriotism was darkened by despair, and who died a suicide, exclaimed, "O, virtue! thou art but a name." In reviewing the moral condition of the ancients, we find something to admire, but much to condemn. All things that illustrate their religious views and customs, go not only to exemplify the apostolic declaration, "the world by wisdom knew not God," but equally attest the same writer's description of the vices common to the heathen world. Frivolity and mirth generally prevailed, but true happiness was unknown. A tone of sadness dwelt deepest in the popular heart, as appears not only in the choral odes of tragedy, but even in their comic writings; a sadness inseparable from the condition of gifted minds, conscious of present evils, ignorant of future bliss, and having no other resource than that insane philosophy, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." Gleams of divine Providence lay amid the gloomy abodes of polytheism; the great truth of future retribution was suggested in the poetic follies of Tartarus and Elysium. A few torn wreaths from the wreck of Paradise seem to have floated to the Italian shores, elegant to suggest, but impotent to save.

Many of the classic legends indicate a remote and universal consciousness of the natural and perpetual course of all civilizing powers. When Ulysses set sail from the isle of Circe, with tears he launched his dark vessel upon the sea, and, after sailing all day with a favorable wind, he arrived at sunset at the boundaries of the "deep flowing Oceanus," and the city of the Cimmerians, whose darkness is never dispelled. He there evokes the dead; then sails from outer ocean back into the sea, and when he returns to the Circean isle, whose site had been so clearly fixed in the West, he finds the gates of morning and of Aurora. In Læstrygonia, beyond the western horizon, were placed the herds of the sun, and the gardens of the Hesperides adjoined Eurythia, ruddy with the setting ray. There lived the aged Cronus, the three-bodied giant of the West, guarding his oxen, or the years sunk beneath the wave. But Hercules, in the character of Greek devotion, warring against[Pg 227] Phœnician superstition, slays the dog Orthos, and the gloomy herdsman Eurythion, and brings back the lost kine to Argos. Under the guidance of Minerva, or divine wisdom presiding over nature, he is enabled to wield his arms of light against the prince of darkness; but these labors have ever to be repeated, that the apples and the dog may be carefully restored by Minerva to their original and rightful places. These mythological fables are interesting, so far as they indicate the glimmerings of great events, but they also remind us of dark and desperate national characteristics. The Romans, especially, like the favorite deity, Bacchus, were terrible in war, but voluptuous and cruel in peace. Their demi-god, Hercules, who turned rivers from their courses, withdrew the dead from the world of shades, and struck terror into the powers of Orcus, was yet the slave of his appetites, and the dupe of his mistress. Mental imbecility was in him, as in his worshipers, the concomitant of extreme physical force. It was from no love of humanity that Cæsar led his warriors into Britain; and yet the circumstance of that conquest at exactly that time, affected the whole civilization of what is now earth's leading race. It is thus that every successive improvement rises, phœnix-like, from the ashes of the past.

In all ages, the most thoughtful have regarded religion as the unique foundation of duties, as, in turn, duties are the unique bond of society. Public conscience has never been obliterated, however much it has often been obscured. The legislators of antiquity were not in a condition well to understand the nature and relations of highest divinity, but such revelations as were in their possession they employed to consolidate the social edifice, by placing religion in the family, and in the state, as a part of the domestic constitution and general government. In a manner, they caused the laws of heaven to descend and become attached to all the events of human life, and every variety of civil compacts. They even submitted inanimate objects, as woods, waters, and the boundary-stones of their patrimonies, to celestial supervision; and, it would seem, strove to multiply their gods to an infinite extent, prompted by that instinctive consciousness which every where links the finite creature to his eternal Creator. "Let one attempt to build a city in the air," said Plutarch, "rather than expect to found and long preserve a state from which the gods are driven." Instructed by all preceding[Pg 228] experience, and universal tradition, ancient wisdom comprehended thoroughly that there was no national perpetuity save as religion contributed that divine force, foreign to the works of men, and indispensable to the creation of durable institutions. Aristotle recognized in this the common law, and Cicero declared it to be the source of all obligations, the base, support, and main regulator, of states constituted according to nature, and under the direction of supreme intelligence. Plato taught that in every Republic, the first endeavor should be to establish true religion, and to place the welfare of all youth under executive protection. When this was least regarded at Rome, as under the first Cæsars, all the bonds of society were at once loosened, and the empire subsequently suffered complete dissolution under the blows of those barbaric nations who were sent of God to overthrow an atheistic people, and prepare the way for a diviner faith. It is a sad prudence which, to obtain a few minutes of false peace, would sacrifice the future of faith and the life of society.

Jesus Christ changed neither religion, nor laws, nor duties; but by developing and consummating the primitive law in his own person, and through his disciples, he elevated a religious society into a body politic, the first perfect commonwealth, wherein he designed that all families should ultimately become one family, governed by his own legislation alone, himself their only chief.

"The entire succession of men, through the whole course of ages, must be regarded as one man, always living and incessantly learning."—Blaise Pascal.

"It is hard to find a whole age to imitate, or what century to propose for our example. Some have been far more approvable than others: but virtue and vice, panegyrics and satires, scatteringly to be found in all history, sets down not only things laudable but abominable; things which should never have been, or never have been known. So that noble patterns must be fetched here and there from single persons rather than whole nations, and from whole nations rather than any one."—Sir Thomas Brown.

"Always with a change of era, there had to be a change of practice and outward relations brought about, if not peaceably, then by violence, for brought about it had to be; there could be no rest come till then. How many eras and epochs not noted at the moment, which, indeed, is the blessedest condition of epochs, that they come quietly, making no proclamation of themselves, and are only visible long after. A Cromwell Rebellion, a French Revolution, striking on the horologe of time, to tell all mortals what a clock it has become, are too expensive, if one could help it."—Thomas Carlyle.

The fall of the western empire was a strange phenomenon. The Roman people did not only abandon the government in its struggles against the barbarous invaders, but when left to themselves, did not attempt any resistance on their own behalf. During the whole protracted conflict, the nation endured all the scourges of war, devastation, and famine, and suffered an entire change in its character and condition, without acting, remonstrating, or even appearing. Their passive submission to inevitable destiny at the great crisis of changeful progress was most complete.

We do wrong to regard the middle age as a blank in human history, a useless void between the refinement of antiquity and the freedom of modern times. No vital element of civilization actually died, though all may have fallen into deep sleep, from which they awoke in a wonderful and sublime manner after a thousand years. The substantial portion of antique knowledge and civilization never was forgotten, nor was its better spirit disused, but through subsequent and superior invention has re-appeared in many of the best and noblest productions of modern genius. The fullness of creative fancy characterized the period between the Trojan adventurers and the times of Solon and Pericles, the fountain-head of that variety, originality, and beauty, which marked the unrivaled productions of a later era. What that primary growth was to the richest harvest of Greece, the early centuries of mediæval literature were to[Pg 232] all the diversified wealth of modern Europe. The frigid tempestuousness of winter essentially precedes the silent process of vernal vegetation, just as spring must go before the rich maturity of autumnal fruit. When the sources of life were drying up in the immense body of Rome, the fountain of northern energy broke upon the mighty colossus, whose head was still of iron, though its feet were of clay. It fell for its own good and the welfare of the human race; for the sap of a loftier development was so to imbue it, that soon it should be created anew, full of a diviner strength and nobler life. The two opposing poles thus came into a needful contact with each other, and, by means of the elemental struggle occasioned by the civilization of the one, and the barbarism of the other, a happy equilibrium was established between both. The rugged North has always redeemed the effete South, and, by a succession of such amalgamations, secured to humanity perpetual improvement. It is only in this way that new races are assimilated to the old and raised above their level. The inert principle of barbarism at least possesses granite strength, to sustain the active element of civilization and bear it forward. An armful of green fuel thrown upon a dying fire, seems to quench it in clouds of smoke; but soon the moisture is evaporated, the fibres kindle to living flames, and the hearth glows with a purer and more grateful brightness than before.

The Middle Ages, according to the ordinary use of the term, comprise a thousand years, and extend from the invasion of France by Clovis, to that of Naples by Charles VIII. But in the sense of our own designation, the age of Leo X. includes that period, and just so much additional time as was requisite to the full expansion of the mediæval spirit, when it was superseded by another age as unlike its predecessor as this is different from the two which in succession went before. We should guard against exaggerating the influence of the Germanic invasions, lest we assign an accidental character to the temporal condition of the times under review. The invasions themselves were a necessary result of the final extinction of Roman domination. In our late sketch of the progressive greatness of that power, we saw that the Roman empire was bounded on one side by the great oriental theocracies, too remote and uncongenial for incorporation; and westward, by hunting or shepherd[Pg 233] hordes, who, not being settled nations, could not be effectually subdued. The process of invasion was gradual as that of conquest, though its apparent success could not be permanent till the vigor of the Roman heart was exhausted. The incorporation of barbarians in the imperial armies, and the abandonment of certain provinces, on condition that new invaders should be kept in check, prepared the way for that radical and marked transition which was consummated in the fifth century. The age of martial force was superseded by the age of scientific invention; an age full of military activity in its first centuries, but which essentially changed its character as the civilized world assumed its new position. It almost immediately lost its offensive attitude, and exercised those defensive functions which so strongly characterized feudal life. Political dispersion soon prevailed over the preceding system of concentration; and this afforded both motive and scope for the direct and special participation of individuals, rather than the thorough subordination of all partial movements to the absolute direction of centralized authority.

As in the preceding ages, so in this, the East was the source of all subsequent worth. Italy, in the northern deluge, was the predestined Mount Ararat; the last reached by the flood, and the first left. The history of modern Europe must necessarily be referred to Florence, as the history of all-conquering force has ever been ascribed to Rome. The great ascendancy of the Medici, and the influence of Italian genius at that epoch on literature, art, science, philosophy, and religion of the world, made that fair city the centre of light, the sovereign of thought, the beautifier of life, and the metropolis of civilization. The fall of old Rome and the rise of new Italy, were events as desirable as they were inevitable. The mission of the former had ceased before any foreign nation ventured across the Alps. With an animal instinct the superannuated body summoned all the remnants of vital energy to the heart, only to witness the fatal prostration of its members, and realize its final doom. Says Mariotti, "The barbarian invasion had then the effect of an inundation of the Nile. It found a land exhausted with its own efforts, burning and withering under the rays of the same tropical sun which had called into action its productive virtues, and languishing into a slow decay, from which no reaction could ever redeem[Pg 234] it. Then, from the bosom of unexplored mountains, prepared in the silence of untrodden regions, the flood roared from above: the overwhelming element washed away the last pale remnants of a faded vegetation; but the seasons had their own course. Gardens and fields smiled again on those desolate marshes. Palms and cedars again waved their crests to the skies in all the pride of youth, as if singing the praises of the Creator, and attesting that man alone perishes, and his works—but Nature is immortal."

Until the age of Odoacer and Theodoric, A.D. 493, there was nothing but ravage and ruin; but then the morning star of a brighter day arose, and under the auspices of these two monarchs, the foundation was commenced of the new social edifice. Alboin, king of the Lombards, was crowned in Italy, about A.D. 568, an epoch in which the great crisis which divided the ancient from the modern world was passed. This people were in Italy what the Saxons were in England. They were the bravest, and freest, as well as most barbarous of the Teutonic races. The conquest of the South not having cost them a drop of blood, it is said that the whole host, as they descended from their Alpine fastnesses, settled on the lands of fair Italy, rather as new tenants than conquerors. They carried along with them their wives and families, and cherished their adopted home with ardent enthusiasm. Their martial spirit eventually gave place to other not less active and laborious habits; and through their love of home, together with other domestic virtues, the German nations gave Italy, as well as Europe, that form of government of which our own age has witnessed the final catastrophe—the feudal system.

The Roman frontier on the banks of the Rhine and the Danube, with its long line of castles, fortresses, and cities, lay mainly within the German territory. Here the nations of central Europe saw their brethren of a kindred race living under the control of laws which the freer classes sought to repel by force of arms; but they could but observe the superior advantages of civilization, and desire to penetrate those beautiful countries whence they were derived. Consequently the Suevi, the Saxons, and the Goths opposed to the Roman fortifications a living frontier-wall, and moving westward, not only possessed themselves of, but soon peopled with new nations and vivifying powers both the South and North.[Pg 235] The protracted contest between the kings of Lombardy and the Greek Exarchs of Ravenna, provoked the arbitration of the Franks, and led to the establishment of their protectorate over Italy; as afterwards they became the head of the great Christian empire throned in Germany. Thenceforward the Franks constituted the leading state of the West. In the meantime its rival power in the East, the Byzantine empire, was sinking even lower in the scale of moral, political, and intellectual degradation. At the fitting moment, the Saracenic empire was called into provisional existence, and made to gather under the tedious uniformity of its despotic protection whatever of civilizing elements remained in the orient, and plant them where they might unfold a more salutary life from the fresh soil of the European West.

The Eastern Empire, founded by Constantine, had no ennobling traditions of any kind, for it was neither Greece nor Rome. It possessed neither the power nor the energy requisite to discover and appreciate the new end of activity introduced by Christian ideas. Hence, there was no progress in the intellectual domain, or in the fine arts; hence, also, every thing that tended to ameliorate the social state and exalt all ranks, advanced with languor at Byzantium. It was her office simply to guard the palladium of human weal during the ten centuries of western formations, and then to fall to rise no more till a succeeding cycle shall redeem her in common with the entire old hemisphere.

Greek literature continued to decline under the Greek emperors. A vast number of books, produced during this period, have been preserved, but only a very small portion of them inspire much interest. It is a singular fact, that, even when the Latin language was in its highest cultivation, no Greek seems to have studied it, much less to have attempted to write it. But the Latins, on the contrary, so long as any taste remained among them, did not cease to admire and to cultivate the language of Greece. Like every other valuable current, taste and learning move westward only. Placed between Asia and Europe, Byzantium became the great centre to which learned men could resort, and stimulate each other by mutual collision. Justinian reigned from A.D. 527 to 565. He was a talented prince, who, among the noblest objects of ambition, disdained not the less illustrious name of poet and[Pg 236] philosopher, lawyer and theologian, musician and architect. It might have been expected that under such auspices literature and art would not only claim the highest patronage, but produce corresponding results. Few works, however, of any eminence appeared, except the laborious compilations on jurisprudence, under the titles of the Code, the Pandects, and the Institutes, which were partly extracted from the writings of former civilians, and digested into a complete system of law, by the great scholar and statesman Tribonian. Justinian espoused such labors as were connected with his own glory; while in other respects he has been represented as an enemy to learning, when, by an edict, he imposed a perpetual silence on the schools of Athens; and when, from rapacity, or from the real want of money to complete the expensive edifices on which he was engaged, he confiscated the stipends, which, in many cities, had been appropriated from a remote period to support the masters of liberal arts.

As the tide ebbs here, it rises elsewhere. When the Mohammedan civilization had spread with the rapidity of lightning toward the West, where it was overpowered by France, Charlemagne created the first real elements of national organization; he so modified sacred and secular legislation as to establish civil power on the basis of spiritual authority. This followed immediately upon that fusion and variety to which Europe is indebted for all that manifoldness of excellence which may be traced in modern literature, art, and science. During ten centuries, a general confusion and fermentation was all that the superficial might observe; but a deeper investigation revealed an utility in the decrees of Providence of the sublimest moment, for it produced a new civilization, the richest and most fertile earth had borne. Instead of universal ruin, every thing bore the impress of regeneration. There was darkness, indeed, but it was a gloom out of which auspicious light arose, a healthy, vigorous barbarism which contained the latent seed of loftiest culture. Society at large was for a long time a chaotic mass, not, however, of dead matter, but of living and moving germs ready to spring into full bloom at the first touch of creative power. As from the bosom of primeval night, the brightness, vitality, and order of the universe were gradually unfolded, so the political and religious institutions of the Teutonic race, the mighty[Pg 237] fabric of mediæval civilization, sprung from the inborn vigor of noble barbarism. Mind was not less active nor less powerful than that in earlier ages, but still contained within itself the eternal elements from which a new creation was to spring. The waters subsided, and fertile soils again teemed with life; but new trees and plants, and new races appeared, and but few vestiges remained of the ancient order of things. It is cheering to contemplate the progressive national development, the fullness of life, the stir, the activity, manifested in the commerce and industry, art and science of Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and England, from the fifth to the fifteenth century, compared with the mournful monotony which pervaded the Byzantine empire. The dead treasures of Grecian knowledge were never turned to account till they were grasped by the vigorous Teutonic intellect in its maturity, and when, on the destruction of the eastern empire, the seeds of that immortal literature were scattered over the wide domain of the free West. The habits of mental exertion, prior to Pericles, which led to supreme political and intellectual dominion over the East, were confirmed by the emergencies of a foreign invasion. The genius of the Augustan age was matured in the civil wars which rocked the cradle of Rome and nourished her growth. But the restoration of literature and the arts in western Europe was achieved through an instrumentality utterly unlike the preceding steps of human advancement; and which, in vivacity and universality of interest prompted thereby, has no parallel in the progress of our race. The passionate exhilaration then kindled by great popular events, such as the attempt to recover the Holy Land, transformed all susceptible classes too powerfully to admit of a relapse into apathy or ignorance.

Thus the line of demarcation is clear, and the course of mediæval progress is not less evident. The tenth year of the fifth century saw Alaric with his Goths within the walls of Rome. By the year 476 of our era, Africa obeyed the Vandals; Spain and part of Gaul were subject to the Goths; the Burgundians and Franks occupied the remainder; and the Saxons ruled the most of Britain. From the great "Storehouse of Nations" were poured forth successive swarms of those barbarous tribes who were our progenitors, and who, in the moral course of things, pressed on from change to[Pg 238] change, as humanity is ever compelled to ascend the arduous steep of excellence. From the fifth to the tenth century, the various races mingled without being compounded; but the collision of mighty nations, and the mixture of diverse mother-tongues, soon confounded all the dialects, and gave rise to new ones in their place. During these centuries of confusion which preceded and prepared the way for modern languages, it was impossible for Europe to possess any native literature. The talent for writing was small, and, indeed, the very materials were yet more limited. Parchment was enormously dear, and paper was not yet invented, or introduced by commerce into the West. It is said that the most sublime works of antiquity were sometimes erased, for the purpose of substituting some private agreement or some legendary tale.

Literature, the immortality of speech, embalms all monarchs of thought, and guards their repose in the eternal pyramids of fame. "What is writing?" asked Pepin, the son of Charlemagne. Alcuin replied, "It is the guardian of history." The sumptuous cities which have lighted the world since the beginning of time, and all the progressive heroes who have constituted the vanguard of national improvement, are now seen only in the light furnished by the great annalists of early triumphs. The dart that pierced the Persian breast-plate molders in the dust of Marathon, and the gleam of the battle-axe, wielded by the impassioned crusader, has passed away; but the arrow of Pindar still quivers with the life of his bow, and the romantic adventures of mediæval zeal are perpetuated in the unwasting freshness of new-born letters. When Gothic night descended, the ancient classics were for a time forgotten; but in secluded retreats the ritual of genius continued to be solemnized, and the sacred fire of learning burned upon its shattered shrines, until torch after torch carried the flame to the remotest quarter in the track of the sun. That light never sets, but sheds itself upon succeeding generations in diversified hues of splendor. Homer glows in the softened beauty of Virgil, and Dantè passed the purified flambeau to Milton's mightier hand. Literature, like art, suffers fearful vicissitudes and mutilations; but, unlike her more fragile sister, she can not be easily destroyed. A casualty may shatter into dust that statue of Minerva whose limbs seemed[Pg 239] to breathe under the flowing robe, and her lips to move; but the fierceness of the Goth, the fanaticism of the crusader, and the frenzy of the iconoclast, have not extirpated Penelope and Electra, nor defaced the calm beauty of sublime martyr worth.

Poetry is the making of thought, and not the least interesting are the primitive productions of those who created the vernacular dialects of modern Europe. They call glorious shadows into the crystal of memory, as the Charmer of their day peopled his glass with faces of the absent. Mirrors of magic represent the inventions of the minstrel; and with the thrill of national affinity in our heart, our eyes perhaps lend a fascinating brightness to the providential wonders they behold.

The irruption of barbarians above described gradually shut out from the world the old Roman literature, and a period of general darkness transpired before the new languages arose to compensate for the loss. But while the corrupt Latin was retiring, the Italian and German languages were assuming their native form. The langue d'oc of the south of France was flourishing, closely connected with the Catalan; and the langue d'oïl of the north was rapidly becoming the French language. France was then the literary centre of Europe. Through the Normans, her language was spread from Sicily to England; her vernacular literature was imitated in Germany, and became naturalized in both Italy and Spain. The Troubadours of the south and the Trouvères of the north diffused a taste for letters in every direction, and their gay science was the partial inspirer and faithful companion of chivalry. The great age of Leo was commenced when the common people were addressed in their own native tongue, and it was indignantly, but truthfully, said, that "all the splendid distinctions of mankind were thereby thrown down; and the naked shepherd levelled with the knight clad in steel." The most valuable works were translated into the dialect of each tribe or nation, and the effect of this circumstance was very great in multiplying the number of readers and of thinkers, and in giving stability to the mutable forms of oral speech. Thus the foundations of the great social movements of European civilization were laid, in those modern languages which were the result of a slow popular elaboration, and in which the corresponding civilization is reflected. The Italians led the way, and lit that[Pg 240] torch which was passed over to Switzerland, and thence to Germany, France, Holland, England, and the still remoter West. The grave of the old civilization was the cradle of the new; a more auspicious dispensation, whose divinest apostles, as in preceding cycles, were requited with crucifixion and martyrdom.

The first period of Leoine literature arose in the scholastico-romantic epoch, which extended down to the renaissance, or epoch of enthusiasm for pagan antiquity. The temporal supremacy of this was prepared when Pepin the Younger undertook to defend "the Holy Church of the Republic of God" against the Lombards, and compelled them to evacuate the territory held by the Exarchate. He placed the keys of the conquered towns on the altar of St. Peter, and in this act he laid the foundation of the whole temporal power of the popes. Thenceforward the Gallic archbishops and monarchs received both pallium and crown from Rome, and all great powers were exercised in the West. The Merovingian race of kings had perished, and the Carlovingian house ruled with imperial splendor. While all the East was sinking into one common ruin, and the whole world appeared about to become the prey of the Moslem, the founder of this famous family, Pepin of Heristral caused the civil power to coalesce with ecclesiastical dominion under Gregory the Second, and presented the first effectual resistance to the Mahometan conquerors. The alliance between the pope and the emperor which was thus begun, Charlemagne perfected, and received his reward when, on Christmas-eve, A.D. 800, the diadem of the western empire was laid upon his head by the supreme pontiff in the ancient metropolis. Says Guizot, in his History of Representative Government, "Charlemagne desired conquests, in order to extend his renown and dominion; the Franks were unwilling to be without a share in their own government; Charlemagne held frequent national assemblies, and employed the principal members of the territorial aristocracy as dukes, counts, missi-dominici, and in other offices. The clergy were anxious to possess consideration, authority, and wealth. Charlemagne held them in great respect, employed many bishops in the public service, bestowed on them rich endowments, and attached them firmly to him, by proving himself a munificent friend and patron of those studies of which they were almost the only cultivators. In every direction toward which the[Pg 241] active and energetic minds of the time turned their attention, Charlemagne was always the first to look; and he proved himself more warlike than the warriors, more careful of the interests of the church than her most devout adherents, a greater friend of literature than the most learned men, always foremost in every career, and thus bringing every thing to a kind of unity, by the single fact that his genius was every where in harmony with his age, because he was its most perfect representative, and that he was capable of ruling it because he was superior to it. But the men who are thus before their age, in every respect, are the only men who can gain followers; Charlemagne's personal superiority was the indispensable condition of the transitory order which he established." This new and wonderful stage of progress in the social relations of men, and this transformation of the popular mind under the auspices of a Christian form of government, marked the seven centuries which elapsed from the reign of Charlemagne to the discovery of the New World, and the commencement of the Reformation.

That vast series of emigrations which planted tribes of Gothic blood over large tracts of Europe, and established that race as sovereigns in remote regions, came also into the British Islands. But the Anglo-Saxon invaders, instead of planting stationary garrisons, like the Romans, merely to overawe, introduced colonies, with an immense stream of active population. The gloom which long covered this field of high designs was that which goes before the dawn, and bright rays were soon observed to shine forth. The fierce savages who fought under Caractacus, Boadicea, or Galgacus, and those Britons who at a later period occupied the stately Roman towns in the south and west of the island, or cultivated the fertile districts that lay around their walls, were succeeded by a much superior race. Here, as elsewhere, literature began to be nourished by the consolidation of the new languages, which were successively developed in all European countries to such a degree that they were fully adequate as instruments for recording and using the results of human advancement. It was the age of Theodoric, Charlemagne, and Alfred, to whose royal influence, probably, together with the dispersion of the Normans, should be accredited the principal occasions, if not causes, of revived intellect.

At the accession of Charlemagne, we are told that no means of[Pg 242] education existed in his dominions; but Theodulf of Germany, Alcuin of England, and Clement of Ireland, were the true Paladins who repaired to his court. With the help of these masters, schools were established in all the chief cities; nor was the noble monarch ashamed to be the disciple of that in his own palace under the care of Alcuin. As early as the ninth century, Lyons, Fulda, Corvey, Rheims, and other large towns, enjoyed flourishing establishments of learning. At an earlier period, Pepin requested some books from the pontiff, Paul I. "I have sent to you what books I could find," replied his holiness. To such a benefactor to the apostolic see, the selection, doubtless, was as munificent as gratitude could make it; but, in fact, only seven works were sent, all Greek compositions. From the beginning, however, books fell into the channel common to all progress, and traveled westward only.

In the sixth century lived Gregory of Tours, whose ten volumes of original annals entitle him to be called the father of French and German story. In A.D. 668, Theodore, an Asiatic Greek by birth, was sent to old England by the pope, through whom and his companion, Adrian, some knowledge of the classics was diffused among the Anglo-Saxon race. Early in the eighth century arose the great ornament of that age and island, the Venerable Bede, who surpassed every other name in primitive literature of indigenous growth. The central school of York was established, whence the Anglo-Saxon Alcuin came to be the great luminary at the court of Charlemagne. But during the long wars waged by the successors of that great agent of Providence, all seemed to relapse into utter confusion again, and ignorance stretched its roots deeper down, to the year one thousand of our era, which has been considered as the lowest extreme of degradation, the nadir of human intelligence. It was indeed an iron age, but compared with the seventh and eighth centuries, the tenth possessed superior illumination as a whole. Darkness and calamity were still the concomitants of progress, but the shadows grew fainter as night declined, and the nations rejoiced in the new twilight which reddened into the lustre of a higher day. The intellectual energies of mankind might be impeded, but they were never in an absolutely stationary condition; but nations, as well as individuals, were born in the fitting time and place to advance the landmarks of popular improvement and the[Pg 243] general weal. At the moment when the great West lay apparently torpid, in the silent formation of a powerful amalgamation of all old historical elements, a new nation was suddenly produced to gather up whatever valuable relics remained in the East, and bring them across continents to the great fountain of subsequent improvement. Masters of the country of the Magi, and the Chaldeans, whence the first light had shone over mankind; of Egypt, the storehouse of human science; of Asia Minor, that fertile and beautiful land, where poetry and the fine arts had their origin; and of the burning plains of Africa, that dark domain of Ham, the country of impetuous eloquence, and subtle intellect; Arabian adventurers, the splendid bastard progeny of Shem, in a manner combined within themselves the advantages of all the nations which they had subjugated, and laid the invaluable treasures they accumulated at the feet of Japhet, on the throne of the West.

Of the new languages which were produced at the close of the tenth century, one appeared to prevail over all others, and became widely spread. Innumerable writers almost cotemporaneously employed this recent vernacular, which owed nothing of its originality to what is usually termed classical literature. They rapidly spread their reputation from Spain to Italy, and from Germany to England, and as suddenly disappeared. While the nations were yet listening in wonder, the voice of the Troubadours became silent, the Provençal dialect was abandoned, and its productions were ranked among the dead languages. This, too, was a part of that process in the moral world, as in the natural, wherein the fresh germ is hidden beneath decay, and that which we in our short-sightedness deplore, is most essential to the new life already proceeding from death. The greatest excellence is often elaborated amid the severest trials, and the calamities we would gladly avert, have most of all contributed to progress, intellectual and moral.

Simultaneous with the Provençal poetry, chivalry had its rise. It was the soul of the new literature, and gave to it a character generically different from any thing in antiquity. Chivalry is not synonymous with the feudal system; on the contrary, it is the ideal world, such as it existed in the imagination of the romance writers. Devotion to woman, and to honor, constituted its essential character. It is difficult to decide who were the inventors of that[Pg 244] chivalric spirit which burned in the mediæval romances; but no one can fail to be astonished as he observes how splendid and sudden was that burst of genius which the Troubadours and Trouvèrs exemplified. That it did not originate in the manners and traditions of the Germans, seems quite evident. Their brave, loyal, but rude habits, could never have contributed to the development of the sentiment and heroism of chivalry. The romance writers of the twelfth century placed the age of chivalry in the time of Charlemagne, and caused the Paladins of his court, as well as the famous emperor himself, to figure in many of the gorgeous fictions of loyalty, virtue, and grace. Chivalry existed rather in gallantry and sentiment, than in imagination; it was a lyric to be sung, and not an epic to be read. Its spirit hovered over the age at large, but the first romances actually composed, were produced in northern France, and especially in Normandy. As the renovating tempest deepened its tumultuous might, heaven came down to mitigate the savageness of earth, and religious gallantry soon made humane gentleness an indispensable accompaniment of true valor. Thus the spirit of chivalry was a consequence of feudal life, as it was an antidote against its evils. By the mediæval poets and romancers, we are carried into an exalted realm, wherein all things are great and marvelous. On every hand we come in contact with feats of prowess, tempered by generosity. The fierce spirit of the northern genius combines with the enthusiastic zeal of courteous bearing common to the south; and the imagination is often elevated to its highest pitch by the tremendous solemnities of Gothic superstition. Revelations of enrapturing beauty are mingled with the most frightful scenes of magical incantation, and such other images of terror as could have originated only in the wild conceptions of Teutonic mind.

In the opinion of many scholars, romance originated in Arabia, and was brought by that imaginative people from the remote East. That Odin came into Saxony out of Asia, is a Scandinavian tradition; and Tacitus mentions in his work on the manners of the Germans, a legend according to which, Ulysses came in the course of his wanderings into central Germany, and there founded the city of Asciburgum. What Solon was to the Homeridæ, Charlemagne was to the primitive bards of his land, for he caused all the popular[Pg 245] songs to be collected and committed to writing. The substance of many of those early poems we still possess in the Lay of the Nibelungen, and the Heldenbuck, or Book of Heroes, but these were produced at a period later than well-defined romance in France. Properly speaking, chivalry was a Norman invention, whose heroes were never tired of roving through France, Brittany, England, Scotland, and Ireland. It began far back in the middle age, and was perfected in the thirteenth century.

In the first portion of the mediæval epoch, that of Charlemagne, down to the time of pope Gregory the Seventh, and the convulsive movements of the crusades, the prevailing character of the age was great and simple, earnest, but mild withal. It soon became characterized by a marvelous daring, by lofty enthusiasm, and universal enterprise in real life, as well as in the domain of imagination. The age of chivalry, crusades, romance, and minstrelsy, was a special season of unfolding intellect and mental blossoming; it was the precursor of accelerated progress, the great intellectual spring-tide among all the nations of the West. If the literature of any nation is not preceded by a poetical antiquity before arriving at the period of mature and artistic development, it can never attain a national character, nor breathe the spirit of independent originality. What the heroical period was to the age of Pericles, and again to the age of Augustus, the first centuries of the age of Leo X. were to modern Europe. The fullness of creative fancy was the distinguishing characteristic alike in each successive instance. Legendary literature was exceedingly prevalent and influential from the seventh to the tenth century, that is, just about the time when modern civilization was struggling into existence. Guizot happily expresses the truth on this point. "As after the siege of Troy there were found, in every city of Greece, men who collected the traditions and adventures of heroes, and sung them for the recreation of the people, till these recitals became a national passion, a national poetry; so, at the time of which we speak, the traditions of what may be called the heroic ages of Christianity had the same interest for the nations of Europe. There were men who made it their business to collect them, to transcribe them, to read or recite them aloud, for the edification and delight of the people. And this was the only literature, properly so called, of that time."

The crusades were not less providential in their origin, than they were contagious in their progress, and revolutionary in their consequences. A sudden frenzy took possession of the minds of the western world, and poured itself upon the exhausted realms of the East, to the end that whatever remnants of good might yet remain therein, should be borne as a timely contribution to the new and more auspicious field. This important movement originated in the cultivated mind of Gerbert, in the first year of his pontificate; was accelerated by Hildebrand, and carried into most effectual execution by Urban II. and the eloquent Peter the Hermit. The first army marched A.D. 1096, and in 1099 Jerusalem was taken. The advantages derived from this event, in a literary point of view, were very great. The western champions of the cross in general passed through the great capital of the East; and in their transit the gates of Constantinople, and the palaces and churches, with their sumptuous and splendid decorations, were thrown open to their admiring view. This intercourse with a refined people, however transient, afforded the experience of many social conveniences, fresh conceptions of the refinements of polished letters and arts, together with the partial knowledge of a language in which few could be ignorant that works of immortal renown had been composed. Moreover, many Greek scholars, who could no longer find either employment or Security at home, emigrated into different regions of the West, and contributed largely to the promotion of learning, and to awaken the first feelings of a laudable curiosity which subsequent events more fully satisfied.

It should be also noted as a curious incident in the labyrinth of human affairs, that these crusading armies in their march toward the East, with a religious intent, most effectually promoted the political amelioration of the West. Individuals began to be freely and personally attached to other individuals, while all in common were attached to some particular town or city. This tie, which among the earlier barbarian tribes began under the relationship of chief and companion, at the crusading era was fortified by the relation of sovereign and vassal. Under this latter form, the principle had a wide and mighty influence upon the progress of civilization until its use had ceased, and better agencies supervened. Confusion and disorder prevailed for a while, but man is evermore haunted by a[Pg 247] taste for order and improvement. He may be rude, headstrong, and ignorant, but there is within him a still small voice, an instinct which aspires toward another and a higher destiny. Modern liberty is the offspring of feudalism. That system broke into pieces the before unbroken empire of despotism. It contained prolific seeds which took root in a rugged soil, ready to be transplanted where they would grow more stately and gracefully, and bear a better and more abundant fruit. The crusades struck the deathblow to the feudal system, created the only available transition from despotism to monarchy, and thus opened that westward avenue which was the grand arena of struggles for liberty. It was feudalism that gave birth to all that was noble, generous, and faithful, in the sentiments of truth and honor which graced the humble village shrine, or lofty baronial hall. The first literary delights which Europe tasted while emerging from barbarism, sprung up under the protection of feudalism; and it is to the same source that all the intellectual monuments of Germany, France, and England, are to be traced.

At the close of the ninth century appeared Rollo, who led the flower of the Norwegian nobles, the chivalry of western Scandinavia. They embarked not for plunder, but to lay the foundations of empire, to seek an appropriate field whereon to work out the great destiny for which they were reserved. They founded the order of Gentlemen, whose mission was to diffuse that spirit of chivalry which had but dimly dawned on the imagination of the older world, in the isolated careers of a Pericles, Epaminondas, or Scipio. To them belonged a rank and a nobility that resides not in prerogative, and has no necessary connection with coronets and ermine. It was that innate dignity which kings can not give, or parliaments annul; a distinction the Norman might well be proud to recognize as the birth-right of his fathers and his own. The best qualities of the Teutonic nations, to whom the cause of universal civilization is intrusted, find their germ in the genius of the Norman race. It is for that reason that we should linger reverently through the aisles once echoing to their tread, by the columns once darkened with their shadows, the fortresses that sheltered them while living, and the tombs that received them when dead. Let us never forget that while the monasteries were preserving the precious monuments[Pg 248] of the old world, the recesses of baronial heights witnessed the first essays of literature, and fostered the earliest productions of European imagination. But letters continued to decline from the fall of the western empire, for nearly five hundred years; they then gradually improved for about the same period, until they arrived at the highest splendor in the golden age of Leo X. From the opening of the eleventh century the prospects of literature began to brighten. Gerbert, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, Scotus, and Roger Bacon, were resplendent lights to herald yet mightier names.

During the long period which elapsed from the growth of feudality out of the ruins of the Roman empire, and the complete development of the principle of monarchy out of the feudal system, only one country guarded the elements of representative government, and caused them finally to prevail. From the beginning, the Anglo-Saxons lived most upon their own resources, and gave birth to their own civilization. From the fifth to the eleventh century, their institutions received the most natural and perfect development. Soon after the Saxon Heptarchy had been founded, as early as A.D. 582, the Danes and Romans made their way into England, and contributed greatly to the national worth. Alfred was a glorious exemplification of the truth, at a later period illustrated by Gustavus Vasa and Henry IV. of France, that the greatest princes are those who, though born to the throne, are nevertheless obliged to conquer its possession. Canute, the Dane, ascended the throne after Alfred, and was succeeded by Edward the Confessor, who was the last of the old Saxon dynasty restored. William, Duke of Normandy, contested the English throne with Harold, after Edward died, and on the 14th of October 1066, triumphed on the field of Hastings. Thus were the feudal institutions introduced into England when in their fullest vigor on the continent. All this was most opportune, since it bound the Normans to one another, and united the Saxons among themselves. It brought the two nations into the presence of each other with mutual powers and rights, and effected an amalgamation of the two systems of institutions under the sway of a strong central power, the most auspicious of ulterior results. This led directly to the predominance of a system of free government in England, and was consummated at exactly the right place and hour.

It could not be expected that much literary worth would appear immediately after the Norman conquest. But the twelfth century, from the accomplished Henry Beauclerc to the chivalrous Cœur de Lion, was greatly distinguished for classical scholarship, and continental literature of a recent formation began to be studied in England. In the thirteenth century, the Great Charter was extorted from King John, and intellectual progress was equalled only by commercial advancement and constitutional freedom. During all this perpetual progress through its fluctuating stages, the English universities were founded or regularly organized, as the guarantees of mental enfranchisement; and the single-handed heroism of Wallace in Scotland gave assurance of that patriotic spirit which was predestined to achieve a thousand triumphs beyond the field of Bannockburn.

The commencement of the twelfth century saw the enfranchisement of the communes in France. Louis le Gros was the first monarch who granted royal charters to free cities, if he was not the first to found them. Kings began by granting privileges of freedom to towns, in order to use them in bridling the power of the nobility; but, contrary to human designs, the towns ended by exercising their newly developed rights in restricting the power of both kings and nobility. The old forms of dependencies dissolved, and the breaking up of the system of servitude caused the whole frame of society to be better adjusted than it was ever before. At this time, too, commenced the true nationality of Italy, which was signalized by the rise of a splendid literature in the vernacular tongue, and which, though it was different from that produced by the cotemporary spirit of the North, was equally prophetic of great improvement to the world. One common impulse for the attainment of a higher civilization reigned throughout the western world, and was now approaching the highest type of perfection. At this epoch commenced the ballad poetry, which was the foundation of all the best literature of modern times. Then was written those invaluable chronicles, which have preserved the living picture, the very form and pressure of society as it existed in the early centuries of chivalry and romance. Thus that feudal system, which was introduced into Italy by the Lombard kings, and proved fatal to its institutors, ended by snatching the sceptre from their hands. Democracy[Pg 250] rose against feudalism with the same success with which feudalism had overthrown monarchy, and on the same eastern edge of empire, rose a new tide of yet more ennobling might which swept gloriously westward over the field so providentially prepared. As we ascend the stream of time, successive generations and their achievements vanish like bubbles from the surface; but they nevertheless swell the precious undercurrent of civilization which, with perpetually augmented wealth and momentum, flows onward to its goal.

During this entire cycle, Florence was the great centre around which all elements gathered and were blended in an identity of character and influence. Under the Medici, the first Cosmo, and Lorenzo the Great, this fair city became the central seminary of elegant letters and profound erudition before the culminative excellence of art therein was reached under the auspices of Leo X. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries classical learning was highly esteemed, and a thorough acquaintance with it was an absolute necessity to any one with pretensions to learning. Tuscany soon revelled in a glorious native literature, one as fresh as when it grew on the rich soils of Rome and Greece. Its truths were everywhere received, as Bacon beautifully says, like "the breath and purer spirit of the earliest knowledge floating to us in tones made musical by Grecian flutes." Unlike the Augustan age of literature, the Leoine was not suffocated under the wealth it had plundered. If the knowledge of modern Europe had been otherwise compounded, it would have been neither so permanent nor effectual. Just enough of classic art and literature remained to facilitate and direct the growth of original excellence, and too little to destroy the characteristics of native worth. The materials of a former world were subordinated to a new structure, but both plan and elevation bore the aspect of a mightier spirit and more progressive race.

To the Phœnicians, a nation of merchants, the ancient world was indebted for the invention of letters; and to the Florentines, a city of merchants, the modern world is indebted for the greatest literary improvements. As the commercial republics of Greece were the first to carry to perfection the arts of poetry, sculpture, and painting, the commercial republics of Italy and the Netherlands were the first to promote them at the revival, and to add new[Pg 251] inventions to the ancient heritage. From the remains of Byzantine libraries, and the scriptoria of British and German monasteries, a merchant of Florence collected the long forgotten works of antique writers, and greatly enriched the first library of the West, by importations from Alexandria and Greece. A descendant of that merchant, in the same city, instituted a school for the study of antiquities; and, as the friend of Michael Angelo, was the munificent patron of learning and genius. A son of the latter followed in the same glorious career, and by his exertions in behalf of liberal culture, like Augustus and Pericles, gave his name to a brilliant age.

As Florence was the central city of the age now under review, so Dantè Alighieri was its central literary light. He represented in perfect balance the moral and intellectual faculties then employed, and in him the romantic element reached at once the most distinct and noble development. Born at Florence, A.D. 1265, in harmony with the manifest rule of Providence he appeared at the time and place wherein he could best do his appointed work. The epoch in which he lived followed immediately upon that in which the Swabian minstrelsy began to echo on the northern side of the Alps; and it would seem that he emulated their picturesqueness as he described the moving breeze, the trembling light of the gently moving sea, the bursting of the clouds, the swelling of the rivers, and the entrance into the thick grove of the earthly paradise. Modern poetry began with Dantè, who, in a great measure, perfected the Italian tongue, which was before rude and inharmonious, but by him was fitted for the muses to adopt as their own. In 1302, the political party he had espoused was vanquished, and Dantè was forced into exile. But he continued to prosecute his glorious career until 1321, when he died at Ravenna.

Hiding its infancy amid the darkness of ages, the Italian language became silently matured by the working of the secret people, until the moment arrived for a literature of life to spring full-grown and armed, like Minerva, from the head of its great father, Dantè. He was not, like Homer, the creator of poetry in the simplicity of childhood out of the arms of mother earth; rather, he was like Noah, the father of a second poetical world, fraught with all the treasures of antediluvian wealth, and yet glowing amidst superior[Pg 252] charms of more recent growth. This fact he has himself strikingly portrayed, by representing his awful pilgrimage through other worlds as being made under the guidance of Virgil. The influence of the great epic by Dantè upon Italy has been compared to that which was exerted by the spark of the sun upon the personified clay of Prometheus. And yet his pen was a strong chisel rather than a delicate one; by a few bold strokes giving the outlines of life to the rough marble, but requiring the hand of a finer organization to elaborate the rude unfinished block.

To meet this want, Petrarch was born A.D. 1304. He was gifted with a gentler temper than his great predecessor, and steered his bark with a rare prosperity amidst the perils of a stormy age. Invited to the same courts where Dantè had languished in neglect, Petrarch acted the part of a mediator; and his presence was solicited by opposite factions like that of the blind old Œdipus, produced by turns by his unnatural sons, as a pledge of the justice of their claims in the eyes of the Thebans. Petrarch had seen Dantè at his paternal house, in Arezzo, and the stern features of that solitary genius left an indelible impression among the gorgeous dreams of his young mind. Following the destinies of his parent, and of universal humanity, he went early to the western court at Avignon, where he dissolved his heart in his writings, and anticipated the laurel which was to press heavily on his dazzling but weary brow.

If Dantè and Petrarch are to be regarded as the morning stars of modern literature, it should be noted that the bright luminary of Boccaccio came early into the auspicious group. The latter was born A.D. 1313, at Paris. Petrarch gave purity and elegance to the Italian sonnet, and Boccaccio created the first masterpiece of native prose. These two kindred minds, coming into efficient co-operation at the close of Dantè's tempestuous career, took up the mantle at the moment it fell from the shoulders of the great prophet, and achieved the consummation of his mission. They first met at the court of King Robert in Naples, and thenceforth strengthened a mutual esteem, while they indulged genial tastes in the favorite haunts of their evening walks around Virgil's tomb.

By a rare phenomenon, these three creative and predominant minds were produced in the same country, in the same age, and their grandest works were executed in the same city. Each of[Pg 253] them was so tempered as to adapt the timely triad to widely different and yet equally important purposes. These supreme lights, however, did not shine alone, but each was accompanied by subordinate planets and satellites, which, as they received their effulgence from the supreme luminary, so were they gradually eclipsed, until they disappeared in the distance of age. The three patriarchs of literature in the cycle of Leo X., thus rapidly glanced at, turned the attention of their countrymen from the bewilderments of romance to more substantial worth. Dantè, with the energies of a Titan, threw out great masses of thought; and the lyrical finish of Petrarch, with the garrulous graces of Boccaccio opened other quarries of attractive material. The two last mentioned both died in 1374.

The beginning of the fifteenth century witnessed great ardor for antiquity. A prouder sense of nationality had seized upon the popular heart, and there was a growing ambition to emulate the past and improve the future. Petrarch fired the general enthusiasm for antique monuments, and Rienzi eloquently revived patriotic associations connected therewith. Each leading city became a new Athens, and the revived age could boast its historians, poets, and orators. Naples, Rome, Venice, Bologna, and Florence, vied with each other, not in arms, but in the splendid triumphs of genius. Books were multiplied by numerous expert copyists at Bologna and Milan; while Florence, under the auspices of the Medici, became the great metropolis of original productions. The middle of this century formed the culminating point of classical enthusiasm, and marked an age of great mental enlargement in every department of literature. Hallam, referring to the intellectual pope Nicholas V., in contrast with his famous predecessor Gregory I., who denounced ancient learning, says: "These eminent men, like Michael Angelo's figures of Night and Morning, seem to stand at the two gates of the middle ages, emblems and heralds of the mind's long sleep, and of its awakening."

But the greatest glory of this period was the invention of printing, which will be more particularly noticed under another head. The influence given to the restoration of letters was not suspended by the death of Cosmo de Medici, which occurred in 1464. His wealth and influence over Florence then devolved on his grandson[Pg 254] Lorenzo, who employed his great resources in the most distinguished patronage of literature and art. His intimate personal friend, Luigi Pulci, was a leading poet of the modern school, and published the first edition of his Morgante Maggiore at Venice, in 1481. None of the honor attached to the invention of printing belongs to Italy, but it is to be noted how the practical use of that sublime art began on the eastern edge of the peninsula it was destined to revolutionize. The famous Florentine ecclesiastic Poggio, devoted himself particularly to the collection of choice manuscripts, and his exertions were crowned with great success. Fifty years so employed attested the value of his perseverance and sagacity. Politian also contributed much to the glory of this epoch.

Paul II. bestowed special favor upon his countrymen, the Venetians, and this is supposed to have induced the acute and provident Lorenzo to attempt the establishment of the chief ecclesiastical power, also, in his own family. Giovanni de Medici was early destined to the church, and produced those important effects upon Europe and the world which were so conspicuous in his pontificate. Leo X. became pope in 1513. In his patronage of literature, he was the worthy successor of Nicholas V., and began by placing men of letters in the most honorable stations of his court. The great poets of that century, Ariosto, Sanazzaro, the Tassos, Rucellai, Guarini, and the rest, produced their works during his reign. Under his auspices, the great libraries of the age were immensely enriched, and more than one hundred professors in a single university were restored to their alienated revenues. Through the agency of the apostolical secretary, Beroaldo, the first five books of the Annals of Tacitus were published, which had lately been found in a German monastery. Chigi, a private Roman, gave to the world good editions of Pindar and Theocritus in 1515 and 1516; and, under the direction of Lascaris, Leo created an academy expressly for the study of Greek, in which a press was established, where the sciolists of Homer were printed in 1517.

As an Italian prince, and as a Roman pontiff, Leo X. has been accused of indulging an unprincipled policy and vulgar epicurism. It is affirmed that Ariosto received from him nothing beyond fair promises and a kiss; that his table was usually crowded with base and impudent buffoons, and that he did not hesitate to profane[Pg 255] Petrarch's laurel and the Capitol by a mock coronation of his laughing-stocks, Querno and Baraballo. But, as a contrast to these defects, it should be remembered that he called round his throne Bembo and Sadoleto, and fostered innumerable men of talent with a liberality which can not fail to elicit the praise of posterity. If the pope hunted, and hawked, and caroused, it was in keeping with the universal moral indifference in the East and South, that ominous calm before the tempest which preceded the mighty reformation of every thing not intrinsically a sham. To the sagacious historian it is not strange that musical retainers were magnificently recompensed, one made an archbishop, and another archdeacon; and that parasitical poets like Berni and Molza, were rewarded by Leo, while his great countryman, Machiavelli, was treated with neglect. It is a significant fact that during the fearful crisis when all the remoter nations of Europe stood aghast at the growing influence of Luther, the jocular pontiff and his secularized ministers found genial amusement in witnessing the representation of farces which exposed the hollow mummeries of priestcraft.

During the first half of the sixteenth century, the study of ancient literature was uniformly progressive in Germany, France, and England; during the succeeding fifty years much greater excellence was attained. Thanks to the patronage of Francis I., the University of Paris at this time stood in the front rank of philological pursuits. In England the cause of learning was greatly promoted at the accession of Elizabeth to the throne, when the universities began to revive. Not only was good Latin often heard on the banks of the Isis and the Cam, but the sovereign herself and her erudite professors could address each other in classic Greek. From ancient poets, historians, and orators, the new race of scholars derived the principles not only of equal justice, but of equal privileges, and learned to reverence free republics, to abhor tyranny, and sympathize with a Brutus or Timoleon. The Adages of Erasmus created almost mutinous indignation against great national wrongs, and a later period witnessed still better results for the popular good.

The effect which was produced by the mixture of the two great races of men, the southern and the northern, is seen in the epical writings of the respective nations. The poem of the Cid was to Spain what the Divina Comedia was to Italy. In the fifteenth[Pg 256] century Portuguese literature arose, and, after a brief but beautiful career, expired in the swan-like cry of the Lusiad. Torquato Tasso, the great Italian cotemporary, published his Jerusalem Delivered the year after the death of Camoens.

To the other famous names of Lope de Vega and Calderon, that of Cervantes will ever stand associated with distinguished honor in the annals of Spanish literature. He was born in 1549. While yet young, he was captured by a Barbary corsair, and remained five years and a half in slavery. Maimed and friendless, he returned to Spain, and in 1584, began to publish his influential works. The leading purpose of Cervantes was to exhibit the abuse of the books of chivalry, and to overwhelm with ridicule those romances which are the creations of a diseased imagination, in which attempt he was completely successful. The romances of chivalry ended with Don Quixote; and this was appropriately accomplished at the time when, and in the place where, Columbus was fitted by Providence to reveal that New World which had been kept hid until the time for raising the curtain of a sublimer age. At least one author was now born who believed that "a titled nobility is the most undisputed progeny of barbarism," and that its very existence proves it to be inimical to all the interests of the people. The badges of the former are, idleness, vanity, and luxury; those of the latter are, labor, pride, and necessity. The son of misfortune and wrong, who had been ransomed from vassalage at the expense of a mother's life-toil and the dowry of his sisters, was the fitting instrument to strike the knell of hereditary feudalism, and confront those brazen lords to whom alone Cervantes could do justice.

What Petrarch began in Italy during the fourteenth century was carried on by the fifteenth with unabated activity. The recovery of lost classics and the revival of philology occupied many leading minds. The discovery of an unknown manuscript, says Tiraboschi, was regarded almost as the conquest of a kingdom. Indeed, so zealously did the scholars of this era trim the lamp of ancient sepulchres, that they in a measure overlooked the splendor of their native language. But a keen susceptibility to beauty of form, with the power of expressing it, was manifested to an extraordinary degree at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries. It was an epoch when the fortress erected by a baron,[Pg 257] and the annotation written by a philologist on the margin of his author, were alike characterized by a severe and chaste beauty. Under the liberal and discriminating patronage of Julius II. and Leo X., a vivid appreciation of antique literature, philosophy, and art, became an absorbing passion, and spread in all directions. Referring to the Guicciardini and Machiavelli of that time, Macaulay says: "To collect books and antiques, to found professorships, to patronize men of learning, became almost universal fashions among the great. The spirit of literary research allied itself to that of commercial enterprise; every place to which the merchant princes of Florence extended their gigantic traffic, from the bazaars of the Tigris to the monasteries of the Clyde, was ransacked for medals and manuscripts." A new blood circulated in the veins of Christian nations, and the new inventions which arose created murmurs of revolutions, and foretokened the dawn of a public opinion. The silent subterranean working of the masses engendered the marvelous changes which soon transpired over the whole brightened face of humanity. Whether our attention is fixed on the political or religious history, on the literary progress, the jurisprudence, or the artistic excellence of the age, no century is loftier, richer, or more instructive for modern society than the sixteenth, none more exuberant with life and ennobling advancement. All that has since been perfected in the realm of literature then received much of its primary form and spirit.

From the auspicious hour when the Nibelungen became the Iliad of the North, Germany and France were perpetually progressive. Successive developments of life suffered decay, but no vital principle can ever be annihilated; superannuated forms perish inevitably, but in order only to reproduce a higher type of perpetuated excellence. When inferior nations and tribes disappear after having done the work of precursors, a more useful race is certain immediately to appear, and transmit the torch of divine effulgence which, in the sublime career appointed to be run, had dropped, by superseded hands. There is no death except into a higher life. The last language formed in Europe was the aggregated wealth of all linguistic treasures before accumulated, and is destined eventually to control, if not to absorb every other. All mediævalism blossomed for the West, and the English vernacular was its maturest fruit.

Like the great and distinct periods of history under Pericles and Augustus, a certain adequate and cotemporaneous expression pervaded the whole age of Leo X. Its successive steps were marked by the papal domination of the beginning of the middle ages; the universal feudal system; the period of universities springing up everywhere; the periods of art; the periods of Abelard and scholastic philosophy; the rising of free cities all over Europe; the ardor of maritime discovery and enthusiasm for "cosmography;" the period of monasteries and Protestantism. Each in succession ruled with supreme power, so long as it possessed the chief life. For example, at the needful time, feudalism was a vital organization; and so long as this remained genuine and spontaneous, it was the true and living expression of man's necessities. But when the feudal system was transferred from the field to the court, where the pen of the lawyer supplanted the sword of the knight, and a piece of parchment became more powerful than warlike pennons, the life of feudalism was gone, and nothing remained but a clattering skeleton amid its dead formalities. Systems die, but beneath their surface there is an immortality which can not suffer diminution of any kind, but must eternally evolve. Each system has a separate idea to exemplify, and the grand truth inculcated by all these successive lessons remains, when each petty teacher has disappeared.

Let us briefly recapitulate the historic facts connected with the last and best of literatures, the English. The Anglo-Saxons, originally the fiercest nation of the predatory North, had become an unwarlike nation, and quite degenerate. The venerated relics of their civilization existed, but the soul was nearly gone, and a mental torpidity pervaded the entire country. Canute roused the people for a moment, but they soon sank into stolid indifference again. Then was needed the Norman conquest to shake the whole fabric to its base, and infuse a vigorous spirit through all classes of the community. That mightiest people beyond the channel came over at exactly the right time, and brought all the best continental elements with them. The influence of the Norman conquest on the language of England has been compared to an inundation, which at first submerges the landscape beneath its turbid billows, but which at last subsiding, leaves behind it the germs of fresh[Pg 259] beauty and augmented wealth. The ancestors of this new people had been fierce pirates, but they became the chief revivers of literature, and the grand promoters of the peaceful arts. It is a notable fact, that Lanfranc, their prime leader in this noble enterprise, was a Lombard, and that his people had been the most barbarous of all the Gothic invaders. Yet among them literary studies were first revived in Italy, the most celebrated schools were established, and the most enterprising citizens were formed into the most cultivated states. From them, and their cities, Pisa and Pavia, learning was planted, under Charlemagne, in France, and replanted both there and in England, under Lanfranc, once an obscure schoolmaster at Bec, in Normandy, and after the conquest Archbishop of Canterbury.

The seeds of knowledge, thus timely sown, yielded in due time an abundant harvest. Literary pursuits soon became a source of distinction and preferment. All ranks caught the flame; and on the diffusion of vernacular letters, intelligence no longer dwelt within the cells of a cloister or the walls of a school, but adorned the chamber of the lady, the hall of the baron, and the court of the prince. Intelligence glorified the warrior's iron mail and trophied lance abroad; while at home, domestic solicitudes were assuaged, and gentle virtues ennobled, by the laudable ambition to learn both to read and write. After the twelfth century in England, ignorance became discreditable, the mark of a barbarous origin and a degraded taste. Itinerant minstrels had for a long time been the instruments of poetry, but the offices of composer and musician were now separated. Special attention was given to that form of literature, so popular in the streets and at the festival, in the study, and in the cloister, while its measured syllables were made the vehicle of better strains than those which exhilarated at the banquet or corrupted the populace. As we have above stated, the English language was of the latest formation, and was partially developed in the thirteenth century through some metrical poems. Henry II., who was himself a great proficient in history, encouraged and rewarded its popular writers, who were also fostered by his queen Eleanora, a troubadour by birth. At the accession of Henry III., still brighter rays beamed forth upon the western isle. His reign connected England with Jerusalem, whither the crusading armies still went; with Constantinople, whose exiled emperor sought his support;[Pg 260] with the south of Italy, by the intercourse of himself and his clergy with the pope, and by the crowds of emigrants whom the pontiff poured upon British soil; with the north of Italy, where he sent knights to assist the emperor against Milan; with Armenia, whose friars came for a refuge from the Tartars; with Germany, whose emperor married his sister; with Provence and Savoy, from which both he and his brother had their wives; with Spain, where his son was knighted and wedded; with France, which he visited with much pomp; with its southern regions, Guienne and Poitou, which he retained; and with the countries on the Rhine, where his brother went to obtain the empire.

No language can better express the facts of the case in point, than the following review by Macaulay: "The history of England is emphatically the history of progress. It is the history of a constant movement of the public mind, which produced a constant change in the institutions of a great society. We see that society, at the beginning of the twelfth century, in a state more miserable than the state in which the most degraded nations of the East now are. We see it subjected to the tyranny of a handful of armed foreigners. We see a strong distinction of caste, separating the victorious Norman from the vanquished Saxon. We see the great body of the population in a state of personal slavery. We see the most debasing and cruel superstition exercising boundless dominion over the most elevated and benevolent minds. We see the multitude sunk in brutal ignorance, and the studious few engaged in acquiring what did deserve the name of knowledge. In the course of seven centuries this wretched and degraded race have become the greatest and most highly civilized people that ever the world saw; have spread their dominion over every quarter of the globe; have scattered the seeds of mighty empires and republics over vast continents of which no dim intimation had ever reached Ptolemy or Strabo; have created a maritime power which would annihilate, in a quarter of an hour, the navies of Tyre, Athens, Carthage, Venice, and Genoa, together; have carried the science of healing, the means of locomotion, and correspondence, every mechanical art, every manufacture, every thing that promotes the convenience of life, to a perfection which our ancestors would have thought magical; have produced a literature abounding with works not inferior[Pg 261] to the noblest which Greece has bequeathed to us; have discovered the laws which regulate the motions of the heavenly bodies; have speculated with exquisite subtlety on the operations of the human mind; have been the acknowledged leaders of the human race in the career of human improvement."

The period so eloquently sketched in the above extract extends from the culminating point whence high civilization, in the age of Leo X., descended on the western edge of Europe, and passed the broad Atlantic, to pour all its accumulated beams into the auspicious orient of a New World. As it respects moral force, and originality of genius, neither the age of Pericles, nor that of Augustus, could be compared with the evening glories of that age which was adorned by such names as Chaucer and Spenser, Sidney and Raleigh, Bacon and Milton. These and many others possessed not merely great talents and accomplishments, but vast compass and reach of understanding, minds truly creative and original. They made great and substantial additions to the treasures of general knowledge, and fortified human faculties, while they augmented the facilities for human happiness to an unparalleled extent. Geoffrey Chaucer, born in 1328, was coeval with Wickliffe, with whom it has been said that he studied at Oxford. He saw the reigns of three British kings, had conversed with Petrarch at Padua, was a shining light through a protracted life, and died in the first year of the fifteenth century, "the father of English poetry."

At a later and much brighter epoch, Edmund Spenser, born 1553, shone without a rival. Much of his language has become antiquated, but is yet beautiful in its quaintness, and, like the moss and festooned ivy on some dilapidated castle, covers his antique phrases with romantic and venerable associations. Schlegel regarded the chivalrous poem of Spenser, the Fairy Queen, as presenting the completest view of the spirit of romance which yet lingered in England among the subjects of Elizabeth. He undoubtedly was a perfect master of the picturesque, and in his lyrics breathed the tenderness of the Italian Idyll, redolent of all the perfume of the Troubadours. Chaucer was more like the German poets of the sixteenth century; but Spenser seemed to have imbibed at earlier fountains of inspiration, and gave a final expression to the tender and melodious poesy of the olden time.

John Milton, born 1608, leaned more to the opposite ideal of his native language, and beyond the power of any other writer expressed the full majesty of the old classic element. Spenser was charmingly Teutonic; but Milton was more at home in the Latin part of his mighty vernacular. While each of this glorious trio spoke in a dialect peculiar to himself, they all alike were intense and devoted lovers of nature. Chaucer sparkles with the dew of morning. Spenser lies bathed in the sylvan shade. Milton glows with orient light. One might almost fancy that he had gazed himself blind, and had then been raised to the sky, and there stood and waited, like "blind Orion hungering for the morn." So abundantly had he stored his mind with visions of natural beauty, that, when all without became dark, he was still most rich in his inward treasure, and "ceased not to wander where the muses haunt clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill."

We have reserved another name, the greatest of them all, for the concluding item in this comprehensive sketch of literature during the age of Leo X. The position of the notice we give him is appropriate, since he garnered all anterior wisdom and genius into himself, to be bodied forth in diversified forms of consummate worth. William Shakspeare was born in 1564, twelve years after Walter Raleigh, and thirty-five before Oliver Cromwell. He was twenty-four years old when the first newspaper was published, and should be regarded as the truest exponent of the romantic cycle he came fully to comprehend, exhaust, and terminate.

In a much higher sense than Francis Bacon, William Shakspeare was the historian of humanity, and great prophet of human progress. Bunsen regards his "Histories" as the only modern epos, in its true sense, a poetical relation to the eternal order manifested in national developments. They are the Romanic "Divina Commedia," the Spanish "Cid," and the Germanic "Nibelungen" united and dramatized. A new and sublimer act was about to open on the vast stage of Providence, and dramatic literature was the fitting organ of the epos in an age teeming with energetic life, and ripe for the sublimest realities. The "myriad-minded" artist appeared in his serene sphere, to show how society, as it moves under divine guidance, illustrates moral truths more accurately, completely, and strikingly, than any dissertation could reveal it. In his portraitures[Pg 263] it is difficult to decide which is more remarkable, the fidelity of abstract ideas to nature, or the vivid imaginativeness of conception by which the highest truth is announced. Living greatness and intellectual power coalesce in both imaginary characters and actual scenes, as the consummate style of Leonardo da Vinci, or Michael Angelo resulted from the blending of spiritual feeling with natural forms. He stood like a magician above the world, penetrating at a glance the profoundest depths, mysteries, and perplexities of human nature, and having power at will to summon into open day all the foulest as well as fairest working of human passion. With masterly sagacity, he used the whole world of man, past, present, and to come, instinctively anticipating what he was not permitted actually to behold. Some have daringly intimated that Shakspeare, like Dantè, was a solitary comet which, having traversed the constellation of the ancient firmament, returns to the feet of the Deity, and says to him like the thunder, "Here am I." Not so. Dantè appeared in an age of darkness, comparatively. The compass had then scarcely enabled the mariner to steer through the familiar expanse of the Mediterranean. America and the passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope were yet undiscovered. The feudal system still pressed with all the weight of its darkness upon enslaved Europe. The inventor of gunpowder had not changed the whole system of war, nor had the introduction of printing created a complete metamorphosis in society at large. But when in western England the mother of Shakspeare gave birth to her obscure son, the age of regeneration and reformation had already dawned, that age in which the principal discoveries of modern times were accomplished, the true system of the universe ascertained, the heavens and the earth explored, the sciences cultivated, and the practical arts carried to a pitch of perfection which they had never before attained. Great deeds were done, and great men constituted colonies which repaired to the woods of New England to sow the seeds of a fertile independence, and establish the empire of universal amelioration.

All nature ministers to Shakspeare, as gladly as a mother to her child, while he "glances from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven." Whether he wishes to depict Romeo's love, or Hamlet's philosophy, or Miranda's innocence, or Perdita's simplicity, or Rosalind's[Pg 264] playfulness, or the sports of the Fairies, or Timon's misanthropy, or Macbeth's desolating ambition, or Lear's heart-rending frenzy—he has only to ask, and she vouchsafes every feeling and every passion with which he desires to actuate and invest his inimitable creations.

For six centuries, millions of readers, in and out of the church, had fed on religious romance, which had continually depreciated in merit, when John Bunyan was born, 1628, to gather up every remnant of excellence which had ever been expressed under that type; and having re-issued the essence of it all most divinely refined, he terminated legendary literature forever. With the same providential intent, in the same year that Michael Angelo died, William Shakspeare was born, and having perfected to the last degree every element which had accumulated during the lapsing of thirty centuries, romantic literature ended with the closing of his grave. Mid-way between Shakspeare and Bunyan, Milton lost his eyes; and Poetry, Freedom, and Religion, at the same time lost theirs for a season. But, behold! The splendors which fade along the western sky of the old world already foretoken the rising of a brighter day over the new.

In reviewing the various realms of art in the age of Leo X., we shall first consider the origin and progress of the architecture peculiar to that great stage of human development, and then proceed to notice briefly the sculpture, painting, and other correlative productions. The sources of illustration are so numerous, and the material so abundant, it will be necessary to observe comprehensiveness as far as possible in the exploration of each department.

The facts of history require us to resume the consideration of debased Roman art at its nadir of utter degradation in the fifth century, and thence to follow it as it arises with a new life, transformed into two original types, Gothic and Byzantine, till both blended in the Christian architecture of the thirteenth century, and this in turn perished before the rising influence of the Renaissance. The old Romanesque prevailed from the time of Constantine to that of Justinian, and always remained the molding influence in Teutonic art. The Byzantine style absorbed into itself oriental lightness and beauty, traversed the whole domain of superannuated civilization in the East, and, with all its modifying charms, in due time coalesced with the more rugged and progressive element in the far West.

Justinian ascended the throne of the East, in 527. By him the celebrated architect Anthemius was invited to Constantinople, and Saint Sophia was built. This famous church was so splendid that the emperor is said to have exclaimed on its completion: "Glory be to God, who hath thought me worthy to accomplish so great a work. I have vanquished thee, O Solomon." Then an aërial cupola was first erected, a model of bold design and skillful execution. This was the third edifice on the same spot since the original by Constantine, and combined all the skill, taste, and munificence[Pg 266] of the age. Its columns of granite, porphyry, and green marble, its semi-domes and walls incrusted with precious stones, its various members, admirable by their size and beauty, and all embellished with a rich profusion of jaspers, gems, and costly metals, furnished a rich repast to the curiosity of travelers, and was a magnificent monument of metropolitan pride. Simultaneous with the creation of the Byzantine type, arose the well-defined Romanesque at Ravenna, the seat of the Greek Exarchate. Unlike the old capital of the world, which she now came to rival in importance, Ravenna possessed no ruined temples whose spoils could be used in constructing new buildings. Being obliged to think for themselves and design every detail, the architects introduced a degree of originality of conception and harmony of proportions into their plans and elevations utterly unknown in the Roman examples. Theodoric had been educated at Constantinople, and was far from being insensible to the national advantages derived from science and art. Great care was bestowed on architecture and sculpture, so that under this royal patron all the Italian cities acquired the useful or splendid decorations of churches, aqueducts, baths, and palaces. The death of Theodoric occurred in 526. His mausoleum, now called Santa Maria della Rotunda, as well as the cotemporaneous church of Santa Apollinaris, still in existence at Ravenna, attest an immense stride in advance of the old Roman style. It was upon these constructions that the peculiar external decoration was first applied which became so remarkably developed in its westward course.

Justinian united the whole of Italy to his dominions in 553, and Ravenna thenceforth became the seat of the government of the Greeks. The new basilicas with which the city was speedily adorned introduced the cupola, and employed the block capitals which had been invented at Constantinople, ornamented with foliage in low relief, in imitation of basket work. But before the end of the sixth century, the Lombards came into supreme power, and still more marked improvement supervened in monumental art. As the pious entreaties of his Athenian bride had long before induced Honorius to exert himself in behalf of sacred works, and the daughter of Theodosius, Galla Placidia, a princess greatly afflicted, found consolation in decorating Ravenna with Christian temples; so Theodolinda,[Pg 267] daughter of Garibaldus, Duke of Bavaria, and wife of Agilulfus, the fourth Lombard king, persuaded her husband to abjure his Arian heresies, and to protect the arts. Churches and palaces were multiplied, especially in Pavia, which the Lombard kings chose for their usual abode. The seventh century, and a part of the eighth, was a period of comparative tranquillity, and, under the auspices of this new and active race, the architecture of Italy was greatly improved. The Lombards imported no architects from the North, but availed themselves of the men and means furnished by the conquered country, still retaining the Romanesque form, but investing it internally and externally with a profusion of characteristic ornament. Until the seventh century Christian symbols were admitted into the churches with a sparing hand, but now the greatest license seems to have been given to ornamentation of every sort. Not only does architecture, more than all other material things, co-operate in manifesting the fulfillment of those sacred prophecies, in the deep truth of which is rooted the ever-thriving tree of salvation, but it also bears the clearest trace of national character and pursuits. The Lombards were great hunters, and along their wide façades and around their soaring porticoes they built with constructive sculpture all the wild energy of the daring and tumultuous chase. As a compendious abstract of the picturesque in outline, the impressive in substance, and the exciting in association, architecture exercises the magic of romance, where she emulates the majesty of nature, and portrays her myriad forms; when she unites the regulated precisions of human design, with the bold irregularities of divine creation; or when she presents us the hoary reminiscences of past heroes, whose deeds of good and ill gave radiant light or melancholy shadow to the times in which they lived. No thoughtful spirit can unmoved revert to those sons of barbarians who, as the triumphs of supreme art, caused the castle and cathedral to surmount the natural Goliath, in defiance of the giant mountain; when the huge walls, mellowed by time, even to the very tint of the majestic rock on which they stand, seem of that rock a part, whence lofty towers, festooned by the ivy "garland of eternity," look down upon prosperous towns as they gleam from afar amid patriarchal oaks.

At the commencement of the eighth century, the hopes began[Pg 268] to show much solicitude in behalf of the arts. In that age they gained great temporal advantages, and their revenues enabled them to do immense good for Italy. But the era of Charlemagne, which opened about the middle of the eighth century and continued into the ninth, was one in which a greater number of grand edifices were dedicated to Christianity. Rising to extensive dominion, this extraordinary man did much to restore the arts and promote the cause of universal civilization. Meanwhile the decrepit empire of the East was becoming too feeble to employ her architects and artisans, so that when the auxiliary help was needed it was thence derived to plan and execute the supreme seat of civil and ecclesiastical power beyond the Alps. At Aix-la-Chapelle a new form of art arose, to which the general name of Gothic may be correctly applied, meaning thereby all the styles which were introduced by those Teutonic tribes of barbarians who overwhelmed the Roman empire, and established themselves within its boundaries. Exactly in the ratio this barbarian element prevailed along the course of its westward development, architecture flourished in originality and beauty, the aggregated worth of which was always found at the point remotest from its source. All the western styles were derived from Roman art, but before the tenth century the originals had been forgotten, and a new type appeared wholly independent of the old one. The forms of the pillars, of the piers, and the arches they support, are different as created by Gothic genius. The whole edifice is roofed with intersecting vaults, which have become an integral part of the inner design, while buttresses afford firm support outside.

But we must trace the derivation of a new element which is combined with the Lombard type in the wilds of Germany. In the ninth century, on the designs of a Greek artist, rose the cathedral of Saint Mark, at Venice, the largest Byzantine church in Italy. Saint Anthony of Padua bore this eastern element still nearer its destined goal, and at Pisa it was absorbed into the older and mightier element; but the perfect manner of amalgamation did not obliterate either of the original components. The cathedral at Pisa, whose architect was Buschetto, a Greek, was built in the beginning of the eleventh century, and was completely differenced from the previous basilicas by the addition of transepts, thus assuming the[Pg 269] form of a Latin cross. Just half a century earlier, the beautiful church of Saint Miniato, near Florence, had presented the first coupled piers, and made the first timid attempt at vaulting the nave. But the Pisan progress went much further, by boldly extending the Ravenna apse into a spacious choir beyond the transepts, with well-defined triforium galleries over the pier arches. These are all striking approximations toward consummate art, but we still have a five-aisled basilica with the aisles vaulted, and a flat wooden roof covering the nave. The most observable feature of the exterior is the extravagant display of columns and other members not essential to the construction. Arcades rise over arcades, and orders succeed to orders almost without end. All which in the temples of Athens had been rectangular and symmetrical, in the Byzantine churches, and all under their influence, became curved, dwarfed, and rounded; so that, after the Romans had deprived the Greek architecture of its consistency, the Christian Greeks themselves obliterated every trace of excellence yet spared by the Romans, and made the architecture of their heathen ancestors owe its final annihilation to the same nation to whom it had been indebted for its glorious growth.

But that nothing should be lost to western art, the Byzantine Romanesque was made to sweep most widely over the old world, and enter Europe at the remotest point. "On the wings of Mohammed's spreading creed," says Hope, "wafted from land to land by the boundless conquest of his followers, the architecture of Constantinople, extending one way to the furthest extremities of India, and the other to the utmost outskirts of Spain, prevailed throughout the whole of the regions intervening between the Ganges and the Guadalquiver; in every one of the different tracks into which it was imported, still equally different from the aborigines, or early possessors. Thus, while in none of the various and distant countries, we observe previous to the adoption of Islamism the slightest approach to those inventions, the pride and the stay of architecture—the arch and the cupola; in all of them alike, on the very first settling in them of the Mohammedans, we see these noble features immediately appearing, from the application of Greek skill, in the full maturity of form they had attained among themselves."

Leaving the Saracenic Romanesque to return by Sicily and Spain[Pg 270] into southern France, and thence to ascend the height of mediæval culmination, let us proceed in the grand central track of Teutonic art.

The Rhine is the great channel of modern civilization, and near its banks are the clearest indications of progressive art. The original cathedral at Treves was built by the pious mother of Constantine, and seems, like the cotemporary church at Jerusalem, to have consisted of two distinct edifices, one circular, the other square. These two forms entered into diversified combinations thenceforth, and ever constituted the peculiarity of German architecture. The tenth and eleventh centuries afford many curious specimens which are important in the history of art. Such are the cathedrals of Spire, Worms, Mayence, and others yet extant, and which attest extraordinary solidity and magnificence. The western apse of the cathedral at Mayence is perhaps the only example in Germany where a triapsal arrangement has been attempted with polygonal instead of circular forms. Surely a new type of art is near. At this point, too, we have witnessed enough of progressive spire-growth in Germany to believe that the origin of that aspiring member lies amid the towers which cluster so copiously on the churches by the Rhine, and especially the beautiful group of indigenous art at Cologne.

The Norman Romanesque was produced in no one instance before the year 1050, and before 1150 it was entirely superseded. Indeed, all the great typical examples were executed during the last half of the eleventh century. The arrangements of these are more like the Rhenish basilicas than any others, and yet do they differ from them by many degrees of superiority. They formed the last stage in the progress toward consummate invention; and the western façade of Saint Stephens, at Caen, for example, may be regarded as the prototype of all the Gothic cathedrals which immediately succeeded. All this was produced in the fitting order of time and place. For eight centuries the Northmen continued to press toward lower latitudes, everywhere disseminating their hardy habits, pure ethics, deep sentiments of freedom, and superior impress of art. Lombards redeemed Italy, Goths ennobled Spain, Franks cultivated Gaul, and, at the needful moment, William the Conqueror was made ready to transfer all the glorious accumulation of civilizing elements to Saxon England.

Ecclesiastical architecture especially reflected one pervading dominant sentiment of the Norman mind—perpetuity. They excelled all nations in the use and ornamentation of the circular arch. Centuries before Christ this had existed, and was by the dull Roman subordinated to mechanical necessities, when he would support his stupendous works; but hitherto it had been applied to base purposes only. That line which the sun and stars trace in their course, the holy shape of the majestic vault of heaven, the Teuton found debased to ignoble purposes, and, rescuing it from the fosse, the aqueduct, and the sudarium, he bent it in consecrated granite above his reverent head, a copy of the arch under which his fathers prayed—the sky. And this rugged Christian art which, with the brain and heart of grand Norman prelates, passes into England, is the introduction of a new principle altogether from the florid Byzantine element at the same time approaching from the opposite point. The one is the product of a mind whose dominant faculties were reason and faith; the other projected by a fervid imagination, bearing in its shape internal evidence of its birthplace, the South; beautiful indeed, but earthly in its beauty, and in the effect it produces on the soul, according well with the dreamy habits of the Saracen, but inappropriate for the uses of that religion which "casteth down imaginations."

Thus Lombardy, Germany, and Normandy, took great successive strides in architectural progress, but neither of them attained to Gothic art of the true Christian type, according to the popular designation. There can now be no doubt but that the Pointed style was invented by the Franks. As on the western edge of continental Europe Romanesque architecture was perfected, and then directly passed to England; so in western France, the aspiring Gothic broke into consummate freedom and beauty, and was thence diffused over the world. It was introduced into Germany, Italy, and the remoter regions, north and south, with innumerable modifications, but without a single improvement east of the meridian of its origin. On the contrary, in passing directly westward over the narrow field of England, it took three distinct forms of improved development, and then perished forever.

Down to a late period, the round Gothic style was executed by the Franks, in examples quite insignificant compared with those[Pg 272] produced in Normandy. Even in Paris the great church of St. Germain des Près, the burial-place of the earlier kings, and most splendid edifice of the capital, was not more than fifty feet in width, by two hundred in length, before the rebuilding of its chevet in the pointed style. But in the reign of Louis le Gros, 1108-1136, under whom the monarchy of France began to revive, architecture put on new vigor. The culminating point was reached under the reign of Louis le Jeune, and through the transcendent abilities of the Abbé Suger. He began building the Abbey of St. Denis in the pointed manner, 1144, which was still further elaborated with the erection of the Sante Chapelle by St. Louis, 1244, and which received its consummate finish at the completion of the choir of St. Owen at Rouen, by Mark d'Argent, in 1339. St. Denis, therefore, though certainly not the earliest, must be taken as the typical example of primary Gothic of France and of the world. It terminated the era of transition, and fixed the epoch when the northern pointed style became supreme. In due course arose the beautiful and stupendous works of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, which filled all Europe with the grandest monuments. Thus was completed a perfect cycle of the art, tracing it from its origin back to the place of its birth, Italy, which was also that of its earliest decline, and where it was smothered under Renaissant trash.

In England we may say that there was no ante Norman style whatever; at least all her alleged Saxon remains present nothing which could stand for a moment against a style that might lay claim to the slightest portion of artistic merit. At the beginning of the twelfth century the foreign style had become to a great extent naturalized, and assumed a separate existence. This is well exemplified in what remains of Lanfranc's building at Canterbury, and that of Walkelyn at Winchester. In these, and in the work of Gundulph at Rochester, there is scarcely any difference from the continental Norman except what may be ascribed to the inexperience of the workmen employed. Half a century earlier, the Germans fell under French influence and remained copyists to the end. The English, on the contrary, soon gained sufficient familiarity with the style to enable them to assert their independence, and become inventors of new and original forms of the finest architecture of that or any other age. The pointed arch was introduced[Pg 273] at the rebuilding of the cathedral at Canterbury after the fire of 1174, by the architect William of Sens. But for a long time afterward the innovation was resisted by the English, and even down to the year 1200 the round arch was currently employed in conjunction with the pointed. But it then gave way, and for three centuries subsequently was entirely banished from both sacred and civil architecture.

The first great cathedral built in the new style throughout was Salisbury, begun in 1220 and finished essentially in 1258. When complete, its internal effect must have been extremely beautiful; far more so than that of its cotemporary and great rival at Amiens. Westminster Abbey was commenced twenty-five years later, and is evidently more imitative of the French style. Lincoln was finished about the year 1282, and is a beautiful specimen of the true Edwardian style of perfected English art. These are chiefly of the earliest period, or lancet style. The great storehouse of the second type, or decorated architecture is Exeter cathedral finished in the year 1330. Of the third period, or perpendicular, the nave of Winchester is the source and model of all. It was invented by the archbishop William of Wykeham, who with the vigor and strength of the grandest Norman architecture combined all the elegant symmetry of the purest pointed style. This was consummated in the year 1400. Now what is worthy of special notice is the fact that the three masterpieces of their respective types, the only ones that ever existed, or perhaps ever will, are in the three most western counties of England. From the tenth to the fifteenth century, there was a continuous series of buildings, one succeeding the other in the outgrowth of the same principle, and the last containing not only all the improvements previously introduced, but contributing something new itself toward perfecting a style which occupied the serious attention of all exalted minds, and an immense variety of operatives who carried out with masterly practical skill what their superiors in science designed. Thus the massive Norman pier was gradually lightened into the clustered shaft of elegant Gothic; the low wagon-vault expanded into the fairy roof of tracery, and the small window of primitive churches, became "a transparent wall of gorgeous hues" in the sublimest cathedrals, and, despite shameful neglect or abuse, still remain as the most wonderful miracles of[Pg 274] art. No buildings on earth are more interesting than the cathedrals of Europe, and especially of England, since each one stands the built-up chronicle of national architecture, on which, from crypt to spire, are recorded in significant language, the wonders of inventive genius and constructive-skill.

In tracing the hand of Providence in monumental art, it is important to observe that all original invention in architecture comes from Greece through Rome, and that the coloring thereof is also derived from the East. The Doric and Corinthian orders are the formative molds of all subsequent forms, the one of all Romanesque buildings, Byzantine, Lombard, and Norman; and the other of all Gothic, French, German, and English. Says Ruskin, in his Stones of Venice, "Those old Greeks gave the shaft; Rome gave the arch; the Arabs pointed and foliated the arch. The shaft and arch, the framework and strength of architecture, are from the race of Japhet: the spirituality and sanctity of it from Ishmael, Abraham, and Shem."

With the new style of building, were derived from the Romans the habit of consecrating ground so as entirely to withdraw it from secular purposes; the sprinkling of holy water; the burning of tapers at the altar; offerings to propitiate the Deity; the worship of divers saints and martyrs; and even the insignia and dress of the bishops and priests. Many of the pagan symbols also were adopted in the decoration of the new churches; a different signification being attached to them. For example, the palm-branch of Bacchus, the corn of Ceres, dove of Venus, Diana's stag, Juno's peacock, Jupiter's eagle, Cybele's lion, and Cupids changed into cherubs, were so copied from the ancients, and made emblematic of Christian doctrines. Orientation, or the elevation of a church with particular reference to the cardinal points was never regarded in Italy; but in moving westward the special law was increasingly observed, until arriving in England where every great mediæval front looks full at the setting sun. The eastern style of that age is doubtless related to Greek antiquity, but in the same way as the Latin Christian rhymes of the same period are to be classed with ancient literature. To refer all the wonders of Teutonic art to that primal origin is as unreasonable as it would be to consider the verses of Leoine latinists the source of the highest poetry from Dantè[Pg 275] to Shakspeare. The simple fact is that from Carnac to Winchester there was perpetual development of increasing excellence; each remove being a monument of augmented good, and the last always the best.

We have seen that Christian architecture sprang from the ruins of paganism, and attained the loftiest growth. The mutual dependence of every thing on earth, whether in the primary creations of God, or the secondary creations of man, is strikingly exemplified in this art. Roman architecture was the offspring of Greece, and the parent of the Byzantine, Lombard, and Norman styles; from which again sprung that most magnificent proof of man's power over dull matter, the Pointed system of decorated construction. From first to last there is no gap nor pause in the progress of improvement. Even when fearful signs were seen in the heavens, and Rome, the former centre of civilization, had become a nest of robbers, art was still fostered under the auspices of Charlemagne. Other calamities impended, in the midst of which that mighty monarch passed away, and in the crypt of his famous church at Aix-la-Chapelle, royally robed and crowned, sceptred and enthroned, his good sword Joyeuse by his side, and the Bible on his knees, he was set to await, with the dull stare of a waxen image, the approaching advent of the Judgment Day. Still new principles took root, and the mighty tide of improvement swept onward. As the Tiber more and more murmured the sepulchral sentiment of romance, the Rhine teemed with the thrilling power of its living energy. Hence the thousand echoes of those castellated hills, and sacred associations around secluded vales, which form the diapason of a sublime antiquity. The beacon towers, melodious belfreys, festal halls, and moss-covered shrines, the desolate cloisters, the dungeons, and the very sepulchres repeat to each other, and to the susceptible visitant, the reiterated glories of king and kayser. Architecture is far more expressive of both public and private life than any other art can be. The sight of its dilapidated records reminds us of the God's Truces, of the Crusades, of Feudalism, and of Chivalry, the virtues, crimes, joys, and calamities of long lapsed centuries. Nor can we explore these hoary fabrics without remembering how their vaults resounded long ago with the psalmody and groans of our ancestors, who, during that tremendous[Pg 276] struggle, came to the foot of the altar, begging of God to give them strength to suffer and to hope.

Saracenic art is a highly enriched and magnificent variety of Romanesque, yet fantastic and incongruous, a sort of dead Gothic, presenting the pointed arch and other characteristics of that style, but without one spark of its pervading spirit. These lifeless forms were adopted by the Teutonic architects, and by them endued with life and power. They were the first to grasp the great law that construction and decoration must proceed from the same source, and in a masterly way they exemplified the fundamental principle which they had the sagacity to comprehend.

The Chapel of St. Nazario and St. Celso, erected at Ravenna in the fifth century, contains the only tombs which remain in their places of the whole line of Cæsars, whether oriental or occidental. Thenceforth dates a new monumental art, equally separate from the old world. Out of the arch came the vault, and out of the vault the cupola, that majestic ornament to which every other feature is subordinate, and which is the very life and soul of Byzantine architecture. The inspiration of the Cross produced nobler forms of outline than Ictinus or Callicrates could bestow on their most sumptuous works, when its spreading arms reared aloft the mighty lantern of St. Sophia, preparatory to the still brighter day when above shaft, and architrave, and pediment, should soar the matchless dome of Florence, and the heaven-bound spires of Strasbourg and Salisbury. But another element was requisite to this result, and was contributed by the genius of Lombardy. The campanile, bell-tower, or steeple, owes its origin entirely to Christianity amid western barbarians; as such a member was never attached to an idol-temple, and is forbidden still to the proudest mosques of the false prophet. Moreover, unlike the Saracens who never admitted animal forms into decorative construction, the Lombards copiously used it after every type and form. Saints, founders of churches, and legendary heroes were strangely intermixed with all the strange animals of the natural creation, carved in bas-reliefs on walls, capitals, and wherever, within the edifice or without, a void space was found to receive them. When the soaring nave of the Gothic minster supervened upon preceding art, and absorbed it all, then was superadded all the beautiful varieties of[Pg 277] vegetable life. In the clustered and banded stalks of its lofty pillars, the crisp leaves of its capitals and corbeled cornices, the interlacing arches of its fretted and embossed vaults, and the interminable complexities of its flowing tracery, were seen traits which comported well with the hues that sparkled from roof and chapter, walls and windows, and which recalled no work of man indeed, no rustic hut or savage cavern, but the sublimest temple of natural religion; the aspiring height of the slender pine, the spreading arms of the giant oak, rich with the varied tints of leaf and blossom, soothing as the rustle of balmy breezes, and melodious with the choral songs of ten thousand birds.

Romanesque architecture is the memento of that stage in progressive civilization when the church was yet subordinate to the state; when the civil and spiritual powers came into open collision, the dispute on investitures roused Europe to its very centre, and the battle-cry of Cæsar was lost in the crash of Pontifical thunder. But the aspiring lancets and pinnacles of the thirteenth century commemorate a wider culture and loftier aims. It was not simply a spirit which with one hand poured an unction on the brow of the ruler, and decked both crown and sceptre with the lily and the cross, and with the other girt the bishop and the abbot with ensigns of earthly power, and placed them foremost in the chief councils of the land. But the architecture of that day proclaims the progress of popular education, and is the artistic embodying of the northern spirit, the soul of chivalry and romance, the age of faith, and love, and valor. It is redolent of the lordly prelate and the consecrated knight; of Tancred and Richard grappling with the infidel; of Bayard dying with his eye fixed on his cross-hilted sword; of Wykeham every way a peer beside the throne of Edward, England's mighty king. Then the massy tower was surmounted with lofty turrets, from the midst of which shot up the tapering beauty of the airy spire, bearing the once despised Cross triumphant over every earthly power; while beneath lay the tombs of the great and noble, not with memorials of a fleeting world and signs of hopeless grief, but with the symbols of faith and charity, the hands still clasped in prayer, the eyes still fixed on the altar of God.

But the baneful hour came when a foreign influence and heathen[Pg 278] taste obliterated many of these suggestive charms. The same infection which filled literature with the pedantry of a mythology whose beauty its imitators did not understand, defiled Christian churches with heathen idols, and for the cross, the lily, the holy legend, substituted the ox-scull, naked cupids, and the garland of a pagan sacrifice. Another spirit ruled in the realms of art, and had enthroned the eagle of Jove in the place of the Holy Dove. In Spain, the Netherlands, and in Scotland, there had been executed much clever building, but when the blow fell which destroyed further progress in this department, all excellence existed in English architecture alone. It is significant that not one four-centred arch was produced even so near as Scotland, while the last bloom of monumental art unfolded to perish forever in the frigid extravagance of Tudor Gothic. The budding forth of living architecture was cotemporaneous with one of the grandest augmentations of religious sentiment the world has ever known, and was signalized by the crusades and the organization of the great monastic orders. The first germination of this creative energy appeared about 1050, and chiefly among the Normans of France and England, where it swelled forth with extraordinary power and vividness. While this inspiration lasted, monumental art continued constantly to improve, and reached its highest excellence in the remotest West. After passing from a Herculean infancy to a graceful youth, and through a ripe maturity, a superannuated old age was reached, and it became extinct before the year 1550: so completely dead, that, since then, no architect in Europe has invented a new feature or composed a new beauty in that medium. The finest monuments, and the final goal of Gothic architecture are together illumined at sunset in western England, nearest to that wonder, Stonehenge, which was an antique, probably, long before Pericles ruled or Christ was born.

Florence is the only city of the old world that is said to be destitute of ruins. She is the fair metropolis of modern art; the home of science, rather, which came to displace the old artistic types, and create all things new. Such was her influence in the culminating power of the Renaissance under her great son, Leo X., whose pontificate was cotemporaneous with the radical overthrow of mediæval architecture. The Tuscan capital will best illustrate[Pg 279] the approach and consummation of that result. The church of St. Maria Novella, projected in the year 1280, is a Latin cross, with nave and aisles. Simple and majestic, solid and light, it embraces an ensemble of beauties that makes it the fairest in Florence; and, according to Rica and Fineschi, the most graceful in Italy. This is the edifice which Michael Angelo termed his "gentle spouse," and was, doubtless, the precursor of Brunellesco's architecture. When beheld arrayed in its pomp on festal days, draped in silk and gold, with its altars lighted; or, better still, when contemplated in its severe simplicity, toward evening, when the grand shadows of the pillars cross each other, falling on the opposite walls, and the richly tinted rays stream through its storied windows, coloring every object around, the spectator feels himself exhilarated and ennobled with a thousand celestial thoughts. And be it remembered to the honor of the two Dominican architects, Fra Sisto and Fra Ristaro, that they went not to the outer world for models of such beauty as this; for it was not till 1294 that Arnolfo laid the foundation of St. Croce, and St. Maria del Fiore was not begun till 1298. But the latter building, the cathedral of Florence, is the masterpiece of Italian Gothic, one of the largest and finest churches produced in the middle ages. The nave and smaller domes of the choir were probably completed as they now stand, in the first quarter of the fourteenth century. The great octagon remained uncovered till Brunelleschi commenced the present dome in the year 1420, and finished it before his death, in 1444. The building may, therefore, be considered as essentially cotemporary with the cathedral of Cologne, and is very nearly of the same size. What a contrast in both spirit and form! Perhaps the most typical example of Italian art in its best period, is the tower erected close to the Duomo just referred to, from designs by Giotto, commenced in 1324, and probably finished at the time of his death, two years afterward. It is certainly a very beautiful structure, and worthy of the enthusiastic praise which it has received. The openings are happily graduated, and being covered with ornament from the base to the summit, it has not that naked look so repulsive in many others. The convent of St. Mark, whose history is identified with that of literature, arts, politics, and religion, was founded toward the close of the thirteenth century. Little did the magnificent[Pg 280] Cosimo imagine that he was there preparing an asylum for that terrible Savonarola, who was destined to dispute the dominion of Florence with his posterity. It was in the midst of these buildings that those great minds moved, the regenerators of Europe, "who first broke the universal gloom, sons of the morning."

If the Florentine monuments indicate the revival of science and the consequent debasement of art, the most impressive proof relative to this point is presented in the famous church of St. Peter at Rome. Nothing more pagan in form was ever erected on the seven hills where roamed the primitive she-wolf. Not as the mausoleum of a Christian martyr, but as the stupendous temple of some classic deity, it is doubtless full of surpassing attractions. Nothing was ever done for Leonidas or Camillus, for Regulus or for Julius Cæsar, in comparison with this monument to a humble fisherman. But what stranger to the purpose of its erection would ever think of him in the presence of this gorgeous shrine? Of the magnificent inscriptions raised to the wise and mighty of time, the sublimest must yield to that which encircles the sky-suspended vault of St. Peters. A conqueror of the habitable world once wept at having reached the limits of his sway; for, vast as was his ambition, it conceived of no such trophy as is written around that golden horizon, consigning the keys of heaven to one who ruled the empire of earth. But before that huge inscription had been raised to its pride of place, the last great transition of human society in the age of Leo X. transpired, the most sudden and complete of all revolutions, the change from the middle age to the modern, from the world without printed books to the world with them. St. Peters was coeval with the invention of printing, and the universal revival of science. Before the sacristy was finished, the splendid endeavors of Watt had been crowned with success; and in the interval had occurred the discovery of America and the Reformation. The fall of Catholic domination and Gothic art was coeval with the ending of that mighty cycle of mutation wherein the web of society had been unraveled and rewoven for a yet more auspicious use.

Sculpture was little practiced during the first mediæval centuries, but the church soon gave that art her patronage, and produced innumerable works. Plastic and pictorial art was from the earliest period employed in sacred places for the instruction of the[Pg 281] people and the edification of the faithful. In 433, pope Sixtus dedicated to the "people of God" the Mosaics and sculptures in Santa Maria Maggiore, at Rome. St. John Damascenus, in the eighth century, reasoned earnestly in defense of statuary for religious purposes. "Images speak," exclaims the eloquent apologist; "they are neither mute nor lifeless blocks, like the idols of the pagans. Every figure that meets our gaze in a church relates, as if in words, the humiliation of Christ for his people, the miracles of the mother of God, the deeds and conflicts of the saints. Images open the heart and awake the intellect, and, in a marvelous and indescribable manner, engage us to imitate the persons they represent."

As Catholicism advanced it was subjected to opposing influences, and the faintest shadow that darkened, or the lightest breath that disturbed, the external prosperity or the internal harmony of the church, was immediately reflected by the pencil of the artist and the chisel of the sculptor. Almost every ancient edifice, therefore, becomes to the eye of careful observation a hieroglyphic record of the dogmas believed and the changes which transpired in the course of successive ages. During the centuries intervening between the ninth and seventeenth of our era, numerous cathedrals, parish churches, and private chapels, colleges, abbeys, and priories, teemed with an almost incredible profusion of figures, images, and sacred compositions, carved, sculptured, and engraved, as the medium of devout instruction. Time and violence have done much to deface or destroy these early works, but the western states of Europe, especially France and England, are even now immensely rich in statues and other sculptured works. The majority of the French cathedrals are illustrated with a vast variety of "Mirrors" in stone; but the most complete is that which adorns the masterpiece at Chartres, which has no less than eighteen hundred and fourteen statues on the exterior alone. The sculptures here open with the creation of the world, to illustrate which thirty-six tableaux and seventy-five statues are employed, beginning with the moment when God leaves his repose to create the heavens and the earth, and is continued to that in which Adam and Eve, having been guilty of disobedience, are driven from Paradise, to pass the remainder of their lives in tears and in labor. It is the genesis of organic and inorganic nature, of living creatures and reasoning beings; that in which the[Pg 282] biblical cosmogony is developed, and which leads to that terrible event, the fearful malediction pronounced upon man by his God. From the Natural the sculptor passed to the Moral Mirror, and showed how that man has a heart to be softened, a mind to be enlightened, and a body to be preserved. Thence arise the four orders of virtues, the theological, political, domestic, and personal; all placed in opposition to their contrary vices, as light is to darkness. Theological and political virtues, the influence of which is external, and suitable for the public arena, are placed without; domestic and personal virtues, which affect the individual and his family, are made to retire within, where they find shelter in stillness and comparative obscurity. Man's career is then continued from the creation to the last judgment, just as the sun pursues his course from east to west, and the remaining statues are employed to exhibit the history of the world, from the period of Adam and Eve down to the end of time. The inspired sculptor has, indeed, by the aid of the Prophets and of the Apocalypse, divined the future fate of man, long after his earthly existence should have terminated. This is the fourth and last division, completing what was called in the language of the middle ages, the "Mirror of the Universe." The intellectual framework of this stone Encyclopædia contained an entire poem, in the first canto of which we see reflected the image of nature; in the second, that of science; that of the moral sense in the third; of man in the fourth; and in the aggregate, the entire world.

In those days, the state of society was such as to allow little vent to the innermost thoughts of the finely endowed, and the pent-up mind was glad to expend a vast amount of thought and labor upon works which mechanical skill eventually came to supersede. Before the press could do the same work more effectually, the sculptor used a building as a book on which to announce in powerful language his own peculiar disposition, hopes, sentiments, and experience. The apparently grotesque carvings sometimes met with in the better period of sculptural art, are indubitably intended to illustrate fables, legends, romances, as well as individual creeds. But in the sixteenth century, a moral and political revolution spread widely in all countries, and led to a marked change in sculpture as in every other intellectual pursuit. Manual dexterity became[Pg 283] nearly perfect, and the capability of molding stone like wax, combined with the rapid unfolding of bold and novel ideas, induced a passionate love of fantastic ornament so peculiar to a vicious Renaissance style. Thus, while the figure sculpture of France and England still possessed a very peculiar and severe character, eminently ideal, in Italy, under the Pisani, plastic art grew to be dramatic and picturesque, the conventionalities of the antique were revived, and with the study of abstract beauty, came the loss of much freshness and individuality.

In the age when the republic of Florence bid one of her architects "build the greatest church in the world," all the fine arts rose simultaneously, and advanced with gigantic steps. Architecture and sculpture led the van, and had their chief seat in Tuscany, under the disciples of Nicholas of Pisa. Rienzi and Petrarch had been as diligent in the collection of gems and medals as in their search after classical manuscripts, and their example was not lost upon their successors. Poggio, Cosmo de Medici, and other illustrious private men gave origin to princely museums. The gallery of statues and other antiquities belonging to Lorenzo de Medici, and the academy annexed to it, constituted the great school in which, with many others, the genius of young Michael Angelo was formed. Berfoldo, the Florentine sculptor, an aged and experienced master, who had studied under Donatello, was the custodian of the Medician garden, and gave lessons to all the youthful cultivators of art. Poets hymned the praises of each splendid creation, and thus stimulated the most enthusiastic rivalry. Pindarus and Tirteus sang the glories of the Greeks, and why should not the bards of Florence enkindle in these young bosoms the love of a similar glory? It was a grand spectacle to behold the flower of Italian genius assembled, where chisel and hammer made the marble ring, and the emulative canvas glowed with most fascinating tints. Thus was this garden a lyceum for the philosopher, an arcadia for the poet, and an academy for the artist; and no quality that it could either elicit or impart was foreign to the mighty mind of Michael Angelo. He was the truest exponent of the fifteenth century, and should be regarded as the chief agent in substituting modern for mediæval art. He founded modern Italy immediately on ancient ruins, and did much to efface the memory of the middle[Pg 284] ages. Marble was to Michael Angelo what the Italian language was to the greatest of Florentine writers; and with a mind as vast and free as that of Dantè, of whom he was the warmest admirer, he simultaneously illustrated supreme ability in all the liberal arts.

While a new life impelled art in Germany, France, and the Netherlands, during the eleventh century, the appreciation of sculpture had already begun in Italy; and, at the end of the succeeding century, it had reached the lowest point of ignorance. But in the thirteenth century occurred the incident which was the occasion of a favorable reaction. Among the multitude of ancient marbles brought home from the East by the Pisan fleet at the time of rebuilding the cathedral of Pisa, was a bas-relief representing two subjects taken from the story of Phædra and Hippolytus. Being used as a decoration in the front of that noble building, young Nicholas observed, admired, and emulated its artistic worth. His successful endeavors led to a complete revolution in sculpture. In the fourteenth century, Andrew of Pisa continued the work of his predecessors, and was aided in keeping the art in an elevated path by Orgagna, and the brothers Agostino and Agnolo of Siena. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, under Donatello, and Ghiberti, sculpture had again attained a high degree of perfection. Other eminent proficients united with these great leaders, and carried forward the auspicious development into Germany where the artistic centre of sculpture, in the sixteenth century was fixed at Nuremberg, the residence of Adam Kraft, Peter Vischer, and his sons, Veit Stoss, and the great Albert Durer. Before the close of this century, however, the Italian renaissance became universally diffused in Germany, France, and Flanders, and superseded whatever of originality the native artists had until then preserved. Thenceforth, throughout the whole domain of the mediæval age, arabesques, festoons of flowers and fruit, branches, animals, and human figures, arranged in the most fantastic manner, took the place of all high art, and the excellence of sculpture was at an end. During the whole of the sixteenth century, and a great part of the seventeenth, from Michael Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci to the death of Salvator Rosa, the fine arts underwent an irresistible and humiliating decline.

Bronze casting early attained high excellence at Florence, and[Pg 285] further north-west. The gates cast by Ghiberti, for the church of S. Giovanni, are perhaps the finest that ever came from human hands; and those of the cathedral of Pisa are excelled by none save these, which Michael Angelo pronounced to be fit for the portal of Heaven. In Mosaics and Gem engraving, also, the Italians greatly excelled previous to the seventeenth century, so fatal to the arts, literature, and morals of that fated land. All the beauties of Christian art faded away one after the other, and that same century witnessed the apostacy of painting, as well as sculpture, which, after having abjured its high and holy office of civil and religious instructress, sought to derive its inspirations from the Pagan Olympus.

Mediæval Italy exulted in art generally, and especially in painting; but it was of a type utterly unlike that which the ancients produced. The Greeks loved art because it enabled them to embody the images which were inspired by direct intercourse with earth's fairest forms, and they used it simply as the minister of nature, and of beauty. But the Italians were imbued with more celestial sympathies, and employed beauty and nature chiefly as the vehicles of spiritual sentiment and exalted aspirations. In the fifth century pictorial art was gradually Romanized in the hands of early Christianity, and became transformed as it was transmitted toward the West. Mount Athos and Constantinople, were, for many centuries, the great sources of artistic activity, which imparted to painting a peculiar style. Long after originality in literature had ceased in the East, and national life was there unknown, the creation of pictures faltered not, but they were dry and heavy, like the immobile Byzantine government, and served only to preserve the elements of noble art, while Christianity itself was laying the foundations for the future unity of Europe among the progressive races. Down to the tenth century, art was absolutely controlled by this frigid conventionalism, but great improvements supervened as soon as an appreciative race had been prepared.

As the effete world beyond the Adriatic expired, the republic of Venice arose and inherited all that the superseded orient had preserved. In point of art, down to the thirteenth century, she may be considered almost exclusively a Byzantine colony, inasmuch as her painters adhered entirely to the hereditary models. But as[Pg 286] Byzantium had condemned all the higher forms of plastic art, Venice could derive no assistance from that source, and, consequently, her sculpture bore an entirely new phase. The Venetian mosaics, especially, we may regard as the most legible record of the great transition and new creation which at this era transpired. As early as the year 882, large works in this compound style, in a church at Murano, represented Christ with the Virgin, between saints and archangels. With incomparably greater originality and force is this new type represented in the church of St. Mark, founded A.D. 976, the earliest mural pictures of which date back at least to the eleventh, perhaps even to the tenth century.

Mediæval painting perfected itself in the same way as ancient sculpture. The imperfect but severe and characteristic representations of primitive art became types, which later ages were slow to alter; they were copied and recopied until a great revolution in popular thought broke the fetters of conventional control. Such, in the olden times, was the victory over the Persians, the triumph of Greek independence; in the middle ages it was the struggle between the secular and sacred powers. As Æschylus and Phidias mark that epoch in the Periclean age, so Dantè and Giotto, with the Rhenish masters, form, in this respect, the great symbols of the age of Leo X. With them pure religious feeling is the most pervading impulse, and a sense of divinity habitually directs their hands; but the perception of the latter was more comprehensive, and rising above the narrow horizon of their predecessors, they soared beyond the periphery of actual life, and embraced the infinite. All leading spirits, like Dantè and Giotto, stood before the world, and, with the power of their genius, surveyed the whole extent of what was required by their age, religiously and politically. They were inspired by the belief which they glorified, and participated in benevolent struggles, not more by their writings than by their paintings. They extended the boundaries of the realm of art; its representations became richer and broader; the composition was rendered dramatical, the drawing and coloring natural; and a loftier development was occasioned by the discovery of monuments of the old civilization, which had been buried and forgotten for centuries. Art-elements which had before existed in a mummified state, now fell like over-ripe fruit; but not before the soil of[Pg 287] the western world was sufficiently fitted to receive the precious seed.

After architecture, miniature drawing alone sustained the chief honor of art through a long course of centuries; and, without it, the history of painting could not be written. Born in the disastrous days of barbaric irruptions, miniature grew up within the shadow of the cloister, and contained within itself the germs of all the magnificence which the pencil of Italy finally produced. Enamored of solitude and contemplative life, the graphic industry of monks employed the darkest period of human history in preserving the precious fragments of the classics, while it adorned itself with the charms of liturgical poetry, and the wealth of biblical truth. Usually the same individual was at once a chronicler of pious legends, a transcriber of antique manuscripts, and a miniaturist, and his glowing lines were not more significant than the little pictures which gemmed the page. Above each vignette he was wont to wreathe a crown of flowers, that his written words might find an echo in the graces of his pencil; and the latter was a better interpreter of the author's heart than the barbarous idioms then spoken. The Idyl, the Eclogue, and the Epic, called forth all the power and graces of this refined art; and if Allighieri, in the Divina Commedia, records with honor the two great fathers of Italian painting, Cimabue and Giotto, he has not omitted the two most celebrated miniaturists of his age, Oderigi da Gubbio, and Franco of Bologna. This association of extremes was a proper one, since the ideas of large compositions lay inclosed in the smallest illuminations, like unfolded flowers, each shrined in its delicate bud.

Glass-painting sprang into existence simultaneously with miniature in the dark ages; and these inseparable companions were subjected to the same vicissitudes, and shared one common fate. The former was cultivated in Italy as early as the eighth century, as may be seen in the treatise on this subject and mosaic, published by Muratori; also in the work of the monk Theophilus, who flourished in the ninth century. Like miniature, it constituted the delight of the cloister for many an age, during which the cultivators of these twin-born arts produced many glorious monuments of their genius, when both species closed their career east of the Alps with Fra Eustachio of Florence. Perugino, Ghiberti, Donatello, and other[Pg 288] artists of the highest order, frequently furnished designs at a later period; but in preparing and coloring glass, the Italians were greatly excelled by more western races. The fifteenth century was the most luminous period of the art; in that which succeeded, it reached its perfection on the Atlantic shore and died.

Mediæval painting, properly so called, emerged from the Byzantine types in the thirteenth century. The superstitious rigor of symbolism was then escaped, and the infant genius of true art attained the earliest movements of creative power. This is shown in the Madonna of Duccio, at Siena, dated A.D., 1220, and which is the oldest existing picture, or movable work, by an Italian artist. Next in date, and superior as art, is the Madonna by Cimabue, in the Novella at Florence. But even this seems rather a petrified type of womanhood, and could hardly be regarded as the flaming morning-star of a day about to spread from the bay of Naples to the borders of the Rhine, bright with the splendors of Giotto, Perugino, Raphael, Fra Beato, Leonardo da Vinci, and the sweet masters of the German school. It is not our purpose to note particularly the character and career of individual painters, but to remind our readers of the great and wonderful law of progress, in this as in every other respect. For example, while the two leading universities of Bologna and Paris arose to feed the lamp of science, art, following the general movement, and in the same direction, elevated itself to greater dignity of development and conception. Poesy lisped with the Troubadours, but they were sent to prepare the way for the manly utterance of the great Allighieri; and painting, associating itself with the bards, did not give Giotto to the world till Dantè was prepared to sing the three kingdoms of the second life. From the first etchings on the walls of catacombs, and the primitive symbols of faith depicted on martyr-urns, actual advancement had not ceased: but a still more auspicious hour now dawned when forms of beauty appeared which rivaled the productions of Greece and Rome, excelling the ancients by the sublimity of those holy sentiments transfused from heaven into the heart and intellect of its cultivators.

Giovanni, of the noble family of Cimabue, was born in the year 1240, and on account of the great improvement which he wrought in his art, is looked upon, perhaps too exclusively, as the founder[Pg 289] of modern painting. He was the disciple of a Greek mosaic painter at Florence, and worthily reproduced the excellence he was born to perpetuate.

Giotto, the son of Bondone, was born near Florence in the year 1276. It is said that he was a shepherd boy, and was discovered drawing a sheep upon a slab of stone by Cimabue, who took him home and instructed him in painting. In him the graphic art was associated with the ecstasy of a contemplative mind, and became a powerful and animated language. He did not astound or flatter the senses by the strength of tints, or the violent contrast of lights and shadows; but like his great successor, Angelico, in the urbanity and variety of lines, in the profiling of countenances, and in the ingenuous movement of the figure, he portrayed that harmony which pervades all creation, and which reveals itself most divinely in the gentle companion of man.

Amid the rugged Apennines about Umbria there was reared a simple and solitary school of painting in the fifteenth century, which gloried in sublime inspirations, and cultivated external beauty only to show the splendor of its conceptions. Such were Fabriano, Credi, Perugino, Pinturricchio, and Raphael who came down to Florence to mature their capacities and ennoble their art, in competition with the great leaders of the Tuscan school, Giotto Memmi, Gaddi, Spinello, Pietro Cavallini, and the rest. These are the men who first burst the trammels of dryness, meagreness and servile imitation; who first introduced a free, bold, and flowing outline, coupled with examples of dignified character, energetic action, and concentrated expression; invented chiaroscuro and grouping, and at the point of culmination imparted to their works a majesty unrivaled in the history of pictorial art. That was a memorable epoch truly, and for the imitative arts one of superlative glory. For while the people were struggling between tyranny and liberty; while philosophy was engaged in its deliriums about judicial astrology, and the civil code was cruel and oppressive, painting gradually approached that sovereign excellence to which the genius of Leonardo and Raphael were destined to exalt it; till, with the rapidity that signalized its ascent, it began to sink into decay and ruin.

It would seem that oil-painting was practiced in Giotto's time;[Pg 290] but it came not into general use until about 1410, when this superior medium of art was either invented or revived by the Flemish artist, John Van Eyck, of Brughes. The place of this invention is significant, and still more the fact that ever since the progress of art and the perfection of color in Europe has neared that vicinity.

Next to the revival of ancient learning, and the progress of science, the age of Leo X. was indebted to the perfection of painting for its glory. It sprang from an inspiration as special, bore a character equally definite, and yet is invested with an excellence as absolute as that of Greek sculpture. It was a spiritual plant of the most delicate texture, the life of which may be defined as to its limits with the greatest precision. Our countryman, unfortunately now lost to literature, science, and art, Horace Binney Wallace, presents the facts in the following summary form: "The first bud broke through the hard rind of conventionality about the year 1220, and the scene of its first growth may be fixed at Siena; and by the year 1320 the germination of the whole trunk was decisively advanced. Cimabue and Giotto had spread examples of Art over all Italy. In the next century, till 1470, all the branches and sprays that the frame was to exhibit were grown; the leafage was luxuriantly full, and the buds of the flowers were formed, Memmi, the Gaddis, the Orgagnas, the Lippis, Massaccio, and, more than all, as relates to spiritual development, Fra Beato had lived and wrought. About 1470, the peerless blossom of Perfection began to expand, and continued open for seventy years, the brightest period of its glow being between 1500 and 1535. Its life declined and expired almost immediately. After 1570 nothing of original or progressive vitality was produced in Italy. Fra Bartolomeo had died in 1517; Leonardo in 1519; Raphael in 1520; Coreggio in 1534; Michael Angelo, at a great age, in 1563; Giorgione had died in 1511; John Bellini in 1516; Titian survived till 1576, at the age of 99; and Veronese died in 1588. The complete exhaustion of the vital force of Art, in the production of the great painters who were all living in 1500, is a noticeable fact. With the exception of the after-growth of the Bolognese school—of whom Dominicheno, Guido, and Guercino, alone are worth notice—which flourished between 1600 and 1660,[Pg 291] nothing in the manner of the previous days, but false and feeble imitations appeared."

Great artists went westward often to execute masterpieces for the most appreciative and powerful patrons in the age of Leo, as before in the times of Augustus and Pericles, but progress in refinement called them eastward never. When the arts were in their highest vigor in Italy, they were wooed to the banks of the Seine and the Thames, by that true lover, Francis I., of France, and by the monied might of England. The richest art treasures on earth have ever since accumulated in the retreats where choice collections then were first commenced, as we shall have occasion more fully to state when we come to sketch the age now transpiring. For ten centuries the vast and progressive populace of continental Europe had no other representative than the Church; it was then that Art achieved its greatness under the fostering care of Catholicism, when the Church belonged to the People, and they were comparatively free. But when Religion sank into bigotry, and Art, instead of addressing the popular heart, was compelled to minister to the narrow demands of private patrons, she passed beyond seas, and awaited fairer auspices in the midst of a freer race.

Exactly at the era when the great European race was dismembered, the Latin tongue was disused. This had formerly been the universal tie between dissimilar tribes, and when it was sundered by such men as Dantè, who rose to stamp the seal of their genius upon the idiom of the common people, science soared sublimely amid the new growth of national languages, and became the supreme and most universally uniting bond. When Italy had gradually become nationalized as one Italy, Spain as one Spain, Germany as one Germany, France as one France, and Britain as one Great Britain; and when that still mightier process of civilization, the Reformation, had supervened, ecclesiastical union was destroyed, and then it was that enlarged invention came to the rescue and supplied the conservative influence which was most in demand. Increased ardor in the pursuit of knowledge led to wider and more frequent intercommunications, both mental and physical, while these in turn were encouraged and protected by the improved polity of aspiring states. A new voice even more cosmopolitic than cotemporaneous creeds broke upon the roused and exulting peoples saying, "One is your master, Thought, and all ye are brethren!" Sciences lead most directly, and with greatest efficiency to general views; and, above all, natural law, that science which treats of inherent and universal rights, arose and was cultivated with propitious zeal. The dawn was begun, and the noon was not far off when in central Europe a great proficient in universal history could say: "The barriers are broken, which severed states and nations in hostile egotism. One cosmopolitic bond unites at present all thinking minds, and all the light of this century may now freely fall upon a new Galileo or Erasmus."

From the sixth to the fourteenth century the science of government, as laid down by Justinian, was illustrated by the labors and comments of numerous celebrated jurisconsults. The Byzantine legislation yielded on two essential points to the influence of Christianity. The institution of marriage, which in the Code and Pandects was only directed by motives of policy, assumed, in 911, a legal religious character; and domestic slavery disappeared gradually, to be replaced by serfdom. A charter was even granted to the serfs by the emperor Emanuel Comnenus in 1143. Irnerius, at the beginning of the twelfth century, opened the first law-school in his native city, Bologna, and thenceforth that science absorbed republican intellects, and led to a clearer defining of civil rights. A passion for this study possessed even the gentler sex; as in the case of Novella Andrea da Bologna, who was competent to fill the professor's chair, during her father's absence, and delivered eloquent lectures on arid law. Sybil-like, she took care to screen her lovely face behind a curtain, "lest her beauty should turn those giddy young heads she was appointed to edify and enlighten." Modeled after this pattern, law-schools spread widely, and the study of the Lombard and Tuscan municipal constitutions eventually roused the European communities to break the bonds of feudalism. The principle of personal and political freedom so indelibly rooted in each individual consciousness respecting the equal rights of the whole human race, is by no means the discovery of recent times. At the darkest hour of the middle period of history this idea of "humanity" in no mean degree existed and began to act slowly but continuously in realizing a vast brotherhood in the midst of our race, a unit impelled by the purpose of attaining one particular object, namely, the free development of all the latent powers of man, and the full enjoyment of all his rights.

In this department, as in all the rest, Florence was the seat of supreme mental power during the age of Leo X.; she fostered the genius which spread widely in beauty and might. In the fifteenth century, an ancient and authentic copy of the Justinian constitutions was captured at Pisa, and given by Lorenzo de Medici to the custody of Politiano, the most distinguished mediæval professor of legal science. He corrected numerous manuscripts, supervised the publication of repeated editions, and prepared the way for all the great[Pg 294] improvements which, in his profession, have since been made. Politiano and Lorenzo, as they together took daily exercise on horseback, were wont to converse on their morning studies, and this was characteristic of the intellectual life of that age and city. The vivifying light which began to pour on a hemisphere was especially concentrated on the Tuscan capital, and all the sciences simultaneously awoke from torpor under the invigorating beams. Like a sheltered garden in the opening of spring, Florence re-echoed with the earliest sounds of returning energy in every walk of scientific invention. The absurdities of astrology were exposed, and legitimate deduction was substituted in the place of conjecture and fraud. Antonio Squarcialupi excelled all his predecessors in music, and Francesco Berlinghieri greatly facilitated the study of geography. Lorenzo de Medici himself gave especial attention to the science of medicine, and caused the most eminent professors to prosecute their researches under the auspices of his name and bounty. Paolo Toscanelli erected his celebrated Gnomen near the Platonic academy; and Lorenzo da Volpaja constructed for his princely namesake a clock, or piece of mechanism, which not only marked the hours of the day, but the motions of the sun and of the planets, the eclipses, the signs of the zodiac, and the whole revolutions of the heavens.

The study of scientific progress requires us again to notice the wonderful use which Providence makes of the three original elements of post-diluvian humanity in the execution of infinite designs. The Arabians were a Shemitic race, raised into power in near neighborhood to the heritage of Ham, and were the contributors of numerous mental stores which were happily adapted yet further to augment the superiority of Japhet. These children of Ishmael existed at a gloomy period, and performed a most important work. They drew from the last living sources of Grecian wisdom, and directed numerous new tributaries into the great central current of civilization.

Arabia is the most westerly of the three peninsulas of southern Asia, a position remarkably favorable to political influence and commercial enterprise. The Mohammedans were an energetic and intelligent people, whose ancestors led a nomadic life for more than a thousand years; but from the middle of the ninth century they[Pg 295] rose rapidly in the appreciation and extension of ennobling science. The same race who, two centuries before, had fearfully ravaged the great conservatory of learning at Alexandria, themselves became the most ardent admirers of the muses, and were unequaled proficients in the very studies they had previously, in their bigoted fury, so nearly annihilated. They garnered Greek manuscripts with the greatest assiduity, and became sufficiently masters of their import, to set a proper estimate on these valuable relics of ancient knowledge.

To the Arabian mathematicians, we are indebted for most valuable improvements in arithmetic, if not in fact for its invention. They also transmitted to Europe the knowledge of algebra; and rendered still more important service to geometrical science, by preserving many works of the ancients, which, but for them, had been inevitably lost. The elements of Euclid, with other valuable treatises, were all transmitted to posterity by their means. The Arabian mathematicians of the middle ages were the first to apply to trigonometry the method of calculation which is now generally adopted. Astronomy, optics, and mechanics were cultivated with no less success; and to the Arabs especially must be accredited the origin of chemistry, that science which has been productive of so many invaluable results. This gave them a better acquaintance with nature than the Greeks or the Romans ever possessed, and was applied by them most usefully to all the necessary arts of life. "Alchemy" is an Arabic term, denoting a knowledge of the substance or composition of a thing. The transmutation of common metals into gold and silver, and the discovery of a universal medicine, were futile pursuits; but they led to the method of preparing alcohol, aqua-fortis, volatile alkali, vitriolic acid, and many other chemical compounds, which might have remained much longer unknown but for the persevering labors and patient experiments of the mediæval alchemists.

History records many laudable efforts on the part of the Arabians in cultivating the natural sciences. Abou-al-Ryan-Byrouny, who died in the year 941, traveled forty years for the purpose of studying mineralogy; and his treatise on the knowledge of precious stones, is a rich collection of facts and observations. Aben-al-Beïthar, who devoted himself with equal zeal to the study of botany,[Pg 296] traversed all the mountains and plains of Europe, in search of plants. He afterward explored the burning wastes of Africa, for the purpose of describing such vegetables as can support the fervid heat of that climate; and finally passed into the remote countries of Asia. The animals, vegetables, and fossils common to the three great portions of earth then known, underwent his personal inspection; and he returned to his native West loaded with the spoils of the South and East.

Nor were the arts cultivated with less success, or less enriched by the progress of natural philosophy. A great number of inventions which, at the present day, add to the comforts of life, are due to the Arabians. Paper is an Arabic production. It had long, indeed, been made from silk in China, but Joseph Amrou carried the process of paper-making to his native city, Mecca,A. D. 649, and caused cotton to be employed in the manufacture of it first in the year 706. Gunpowder was known to the Arabians at least a century before it appeared in European history; and the compass also was known to them in the eleventh century. From the ninth to the fourteenth century, a brilliant light was spread by literature and science over the vast countries which had submitted to the yoke of Islamism. But the boundless regions where that power once reigned, and still continues supreme, are at present dead to the interests of science. Deserts of burning sand now drift where once stood their academies, libraries, and universities; while savage corsairs spread terror over the seas, once smiling with commerce, science, and art. Throughout that immense territory, more than twice as large as Europe, which was formerly subjected to the power of Islamism, and enriched by its skill, nothing in our day is found but ignorance, slavery, debauchery and death.

Herein we have a striking illustration of the wonder-working of Providence. At a time when the nations of Europe were sunk in comparative barbarism, the Arabians were the depositaries of science and learning; when the Christian states were in infancy, the fair flower of Islamism was in full bloom. Nevertheless, the sap of the Mohammedan civilization was void of that vitality and of those principles which alone insure eternal progress, therefore was it requisite that the whole system should be transferred and exhausted on a more productive field, in order to secure the desired end.

The Arabians were the aggressive conservators of talent rather than the productive agents of genius; and it must be confessed that they neither had the presentiment, nor have been direct harbingers of any of the great inventions which have placed modern society so far above the ancients. They greatly aggregated and improved the details of knowledge, but discovered none of the fundamental solutions which have totally changed the scientific world. At the needful moment, a new system came suddenly into existence, and spread rapidly from the Indus to the Tagus, under the victorious crescent. Apparently indigenous in every clime, its monuments arose in India, along the northern coast of Africa, and among the Moors in Spain. At Bagdad and Cairo, Jerusalem and Cordova, Arabian taste and skill flourished in all their magnificence. It is said that no nation of Asia, Africa, or Europe, either ancient or modern, has possessed a code of rural regulations more wise, just, and perfect, than that of the Arabians in Spain; nor has any nation ever been elevated by the wisdom of its laws, the intelligence, activity, and industry of its inhabitants, to a higher pitch of agricultural prosperity. Agriculture was studied by them with that perfect knowledge of the climate, the soil, and the growth of plants and animals, which can alone reduce empirical experience into a science. Nor were the arts cultivated with less success, or less enriched by the progress of natural philosophy. What remains of so much glory? Probably not ten persons living are in a situation to take advantage of the manuscript treasures which are inclosed in the library of the Escurial. Of the prodigious literary riches of the Arabians, what still exist are in the hands of their enemies, in the convents of the monks, or in the royal collections of the West. The instant they had brought forward all the wealth of the East, and planted it where by a fruitful amalgamation great and wide benefits could be produced, then Charles Martel, the hammer, heading the progressive progeny of Japhet, broke down the might of Shem, and repelled his offspring forever toward the sombre domain and fortunes of Ham.

In this connection, we should consider the use which Providence made of Feudalism, that great military organization of the middle ages. It pre-eminently conduced to greater centralization and unity among civilizing powers. After having destroyed the majesty and[Pg 298] influence of the Germanic and imperial royalty which Pepin and Charlemagne had revived over the ruins of the Roman world, it rapidly declined and gave place ultimately to popular liberty. "Feudality," says Guizot, "has been a first step out of barbarism—the passage from barbarism to civilization: the most marked character of barbarism is the independence of the individual—the predominance of individualism; in this state every man acts as he pleases, at his own risk and peril. The ascendancy of the individual will and the struggle of individual forces, such is the great fact of barbarian society. This fact was limited and opposed by the establishment of the feudal system of government. The influence alone of territorial and hereditary property rendered the individual will more fixed and less ordered; barbarism ceased to be wandering; and was followed by a first step, a surpassing step toward civilization."

Feudalism engendered new institutions, and they entered deeply into the spirit of progress. Such were, for example, the Court of Peers and the Establishments of St. Louis, wherein the first trial was made toward a uniform legislation for the whole nation. The Crusades form also a conspicuous feature in the political activity of the Japhetic nations during the middle ages. The great movement that induced western Europe to rush to the East had, by no means, the expected results; yet its consequences became numerous and beneficial. Oppressing Shem was repulsed in a new direction, and great wealth of science was attained through his avaricious and violent hands. Thus the turbulent energy of the military classes, which threatened the progress of civilization, was exhausted in a distant land; and at the same time the different races of Europe were made to know each other better, and to banish all mental hostility, by uniting in one uniform devotion to a lofty design. Another great consequence of the Crusades was the change of territorial property, the sale of the estates of the nobles, and their division among a great number of smaller proprietors. Hence the feudal aristocracy was weakened, and the lower orders arose with acquired immunities, ennobled by the spirit of independence, and protected by municipal laws.

To excel in arms, not in arts, was the ambition of the crusading knights; and if they gazed for a while with stupid amazement[Pg 299] upon the classic treasures of the East, it was only to calculate the vastness of their booty, and to collect force for the campaign. Blind frenzy often characterized the instruments, but infinite wisdom was in the purpose which governed them. The Crusades contributed to the stability of governments, the organization of institutions, the cultivation of arts, the emancipation of thought, and the enlargement of the various realms of science. Had they not accomplished the needful preparation, under the guidance of Providence, the influx of literature into Europe consequent upon the fall of Constantinople would have been worse than in vain. It was, therefore, wisely ordained that these romantic expeditions should not be occasions for the acquisition of knowledge which would transcend the capacities of its agents; but of preparatory changes fitted to facilitate the adaptation and profitable application of eastern elements, when, on the vast expanse of the West, the full time should arrive for them to be completely introduced. The Crusades tended to confirm and extend pre-existing impressions; to import rather than to originate knowledge. For any considerable proficiency in literature or art, unknown to pilgrims in the East, we search in vain previous to the fifteenth century; but, as we have seen, their importations of scientific elements were neither few nor small. If the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were the age of the Crusades, the following two were not less the age of improvement growing out of the conflicts in Palestine. They were perpetuated as the popular watchword of chivalry and theme of romance, till Tasso embodied the thrilling annals in his immortal poem, which even in his age ceased not to glow in the common mind. Nor was the fourteenth century in the least a vacuum between the Crusades and the revival of literature and science; it was but slightly productive in original material, but its spirit was permeating, and formed a necessary link between cause and effect, be the connection however remote. Such is the golden thread which extends through all the web of passing events, leading on to the accomplishment of one grand design. In like manner, minstrels formed an integrant part of the Crusade retinue, by whose happy interposition a more than imaginary union was formed between martial exploits and poetical conceptions. Thenceforth the recollection of those enthusiastic adventures summoned up a train of highly romantic associations,[Pg 300] by which the ideal world was greatly enlarged and peopled with new orders of captivating creatures, capable of an endless series of fruitful suggestions. Furthermore, the occupation of the eastern empire was productive of much advantage to the mental culture of the West. Persecuted scholars sought refuge and employment beyond the Alps, where they repaid the hospitality they received with such wisdom as they possessed.

The Saracenic conquests in Spain brought in vast stores of oriental knowledge, and frequent intercourse with that land, and with Palestine, for devotional or commercial purposes, tended greatly to increase the treasure, and a taste for its enjoyment. But Arabian literature was a forced plant in Europe, and was as transient in its bloom as it was unnatural in its maturity. Some traces of a more substantial cultivation, however, were yet extant within the walls of Bagdad, and thence the crusaders secured whatever could be advantageously employed. But the fire of inventive genius, expressed in literary and scientific research, which once characterized the Arabians, had passed away; the seeds of preliminary culture had been sown, and their mission ended with the predestined work of their hands. The arts and sciences of the Arabians were as unique as their authors; too practical to be elegant, and too fanciful for ordinary use. To their skill in medicine, and the exactness of arithmetic, they added the vagueness of the talisman and horoscope. Astronomy was lost in astrology, chemistry in alchymy, and medicine in empiricism. But amid the darkness of their errors dwelt gleams of scientific light superior to any the world had yet seen. The principal utility lay in the fact that these dim intimations prompted western Europe to break through habitual associations in matters of taste and knowledge, and rendered her the instrument of her own intellectual resuscitation, by exciting an ardor in mental pursuits hitherto unknown.

The crusades happily exhausted the military spirit of Europe, and prepared the way for advancement in the arts of peace. This done, the decline of the feudal system was hastened by the necessity of meeting the enormous expenses thereby incurred. Many baronial estates were consequently sold, and thus by degrees were abolished those impediments which had long been adverse to all the varied forms of culture by which the afflictions of man are mitigated, or[Pg 301] his toils abridged. The great evil which then required to be abolished had given strength to a greater good that was to succeed; the commerce which was mainly created to carry supplies to the crusaders, was ready, on the decline of martial renown, to go still further in search of a new world, or to hold mercantile speculations with the remotest regions of the old. Consequent upon the facilities and refinements of navigation, followed all those arts of utility and convenience by which the productions of nature are applied or improved. The arts of weaving and dyeing, the perfection of paper and the press, as well as gunpowder and the compass, were the results of quickened industry and enlarged commerce. All great civilizing powers then attained a simultaneous and distinct culmination over a new field and under brighter auspices, when each department of progressive pursuit, the commercial, the literary, and the military, was furnished, at the fall of the feudal system, with its own peculiar instrument of invincible conquest.

Bearing in mind that Charles Martel, Peter the Hermit, Richard of the Lion Heart, and John Sobieski, with their mighty co-agents in the great preparatory work above described, all arose on the western edge of the field and age we are now exploring, let us proceed briefly to notice the still grander developments which followed thereupon.

The westward track on high was determined by the early astronomers of Egypt. Thales, the father of Greek astronomy, made great advances upon the speculations he derived from the Egyptians, and expounded them in his own country. A scholar of his was the first person who pointed out the obliquity of the circle in which the sun moves among the stars, and thus "opened the gate of nature." Certainly he who had a clear view of that path in the celestial sphere, made that first step which led to all the rest. But when Greek science fell with Ptolemy, there was apparently no further advance till the rise of Copernicus. During this interval of thirteen hundred and fifty years, as before stated, the principal cultivators of astronomical science were the Arabians, who won their attainments from the Greeks whom they conquered, and from whom the conquerors of western Europe again received back their treasure when the love of science and the capacity for its use had been sufficiently awakened in their minds. In mechanics, also, no marked advancement[Pg 302] was made from Archimedes till the time of Galileo and Stevinus. The same was true of hydrostatics, the fundamental problems of which were solved by the same great teacher, whose principles remained unpursued till the age of Leo X. began to give perfection to the true Archimedean form of science. As early as Euclid, mathematicians drew their conclusions respecting light and vision by the aid of geometry; as, for instance, the convergence of rays which fall on a concave speculum. But, down to a late period, the learned maintained that seeing is exercised by rays proceeding from the eye, not to it; so little was the real truth of optical science understood. In this respect, as in most others, it was attempted to explain the kind of causation in which scientific action originates, rather than to define the laws by which the process is controlled.

In the darkest period of human history, astronomy was the Ararat of human reason; but it became especially the support and rallying point of the scientific world, when intellect at large was astir to investigate the new wonders which rose to view with the effulgent noon of the middle age. Alphonso, king of Castile, in the year 1252, corrected the astronomical tables of Ptolemy; and Copernicus, of Thorn, revived the true solar system, about 1530. Tycho Brahe and Longomontanus brought forward opposing systems, but which were soon rejected. Kepler, soon after, gave the first analysis of planetary motions, and discovered those laws on which rests the theory of universal gravitation. Galileo advocated the Copernican system; and by the aid of one of the first telescopes, discovered the satellites of Jupiter. Hygens discovered Saturn's ring, and fourth satellite; and four others were soon after noticed by Cassini. Thus was the great secret of the sidereal universe read, its movements comprehended, and the glories thereof proclaimed, while emancipated and sublimated thought, from the loftiest throne of observation began forever to soar aloft.

As a ray of light became the conductor of mind upward into infinite space, so a bit of gray stone projected the invisible bridge which spans from continent to continent, and makes the path over trackless oceans plain as a broad highway. The properties of this wonderful mineral were not unknown to the ancients, who, Pliny says, gave the name "Magnet" to the rock near Magnesia, in Asia[Pg 303] Minor; and the poet Hesiod also makes use of the term "magnet stone." The compass was employed twelve hundred and fifty years before the time of Ptolemy, in the construction of the magnetic carriage of the emperor Tsing-wang; but the Greeks and Romans were completely ignorant of the needle's pointing toward the north, and never used it for the purpose of navigation. Before the third crusade, the knowledge of the use of the compass for land purposes had been obtained from the East, and by the year 1269 it was common in Europe. But as the time approached when God would advance, by mightier strides than before, the work of civilization, he discovered the nations one to another, through the agency of a tiny instrument, then first made to vibrate on the broadest sublunary element, and the throne of grandest power. The discovery of the polarity of the magnet, and the birth of scientific navigation resulting therefrom, was as simple as it was providential. Some curious persons were amusing themselves by making swim in a basin of water a loadstone suspended on a piece of cork. When left at liberty, they observed it point to the north. The discovery of that fact soon changed the aspect of the whole world. This invention, which is claimed by the Neapolitans to have been made by one of their citizens about the year 1302, and by the Venetians as having been introduced by them from the East, about 1260, led to the discovery of the New World by Columbus in 1492. When the mariner's compass was needed, it was produced, and from the most western port of the Old World, mind shot outward forever! Like the relation between the earth's axis and the auspicious star which attracts the eye of the wanderer, and shows the North in the densest wilderness or on the widest waste, so from eternity the magnetic influence had reference to the business of navigation, and the true application of this arrived at the destined moment, when, in connection with correlative events, in like manner prepared, it would produce the greatest good. After eastern talent had proved the form of earth, western genius discovered the vastness of oceanic wealth. The Pillars of Hercules were passed by the great adventurers at sea in the fifteenth century, and trophies were won richer by far than ever graced the triumphs of an Alexander on shore. The works of creation were doubled, and every kingdom forced its treasures upon man's intellect, along with the strongest[Pg 304] inducements to improve recent sciences as well as ancient literatures, for the widest and most beneficent practical ends.

The style of working with Providence is, to attain some grand result, compatibly with ten thousand remote and subordinate interests. One yet higher and more comprehensive instrumentality was requisite to garner all the past, ennoble the present, and enrich the future, and at the fitting moment for its appearance and use, the press stood revealed.

Though the Chinese never carried the art of writing to its legitimate development in the creation of a perfect phonetic alphabet, they yet preceded all other nations in the discovery of a mode of rapidly multiplying writings by means of printing, which was first practiced by Fung-taou as early as four centuries before its invention in Europe. Beyond that first step the old East never advanced; there each page of a book is still printed from an entire block cut for the occasion, having no idea of the new western system of movable types. What astrology was to astronomy, alchemy to chemistry, and the search for the universal panacea to the system of scientific medicine, the crude process of block-printing was to the perfected press. Engraved wooden plates were re-invented by Coster, at Harlaem, as early as 1430; but the great invention of typography is accredited to Guttenberg, who was assisted by Schoeffer and Faust. This occurred in 1440; and stereotype printing, from cast metallic plates, is due to Vander-Mey, of Holland, who first matured it about 1690.

The time had come when men were required to comprehend the ancients, in order to go beyond them; and at the needful crisis, printing was given to disseminate all precious originals throughout the world, in copies innumerable. Had the gift been bestowed at an earlier period, it would have been disregarded or forgotten, from the want of materials on which to be employed; and had it been much longer postponed, it is probable that many works of the highest order, and most desirable to be multiplied, would have been totally lost. Coincident with this most conservative invention, was the destruction of the Roman empire in the East. In the year 1453, Constantinople was captured by the Turks, and the encouragement which had been shown to literature and science at Florence, induced many learned Greeks to seek shelter and employment[Pg 305] in that city. Thus, the progressive races were favored with multiplied facilities for gathering and diffusing those floods of scientific illumination vouchsafed to deliver from the fantasies that had hitherto peopled the world—from the prejudices that had held the human mind in thrall. When Guttenberg raised the first proof-sheet from movable types, the Mosaic record—"God said, let there be light, and light was"—flashed upon earth and heaven with unprecedented glory, and that light of intellect must shoot outward, upward, and abroad forever! It was not a lucky accident, but the golden fruit of omniscient design, an invention made with a perfect consciousness of its power and object, to congregate once isolated inquirers and teachers beneath one temple, wherein divine aspirations might unite and crown with success all the scattered and divided efforts for extending the empire of love and science over the whole civilized earth.

On the banks of the same river Rhine, where printing first attained a practical use in the hands of a soldier, the discovery of gunpowder was made by a priest. Its properties were obscurely known long before the crusades, but are said to have been first traced in their real nature by Berthold Schwartz, and were made known in 1336, ten years before cannon appeared in the field of Crecy. Small arms were unknown until nearly two centuries afterward, and were first used by the Spaniards, about the year 1521. Fortified with this new power, Cortez, with a handful of soldiers, was able to conquer the natives of Mexico, the most civilized and powerful of all the nations then on this western continent. From the hour when the blundering monk was blown up by his own experiment, gross physical strength was surrendered to expert military science; and gunpowder has increasingly exalted intellect in the conduct of war, not less than in the triumphs of peace.

The history of civilization is written in the triumphs which are won by scientific invention over the physical laws of nature, and over the mental infirmities of inferior human tribes. These multiply at points in space, and periods of time, most happily adapted to promote the progress and welfare of mankind. The manufacture of glass windows, chimneys, clocks, paper, the mariner's compass, fire-arms, watches, and saw-mills, with the process of printing with movable types, and the use of the telescope, comprise nearly all the[Pg 306] inventions of importance which were made during the lapse of twelve centuries; all the best of which appeared near the close of the mediæval period, and were not a little indebted to information obtained from Mohammedans through the crusades. In the gradual development of human destiny occur flourishing periods, when numerous men of genius are clustered together with mutual dependence, and in a narrow space. For instance, Tycho, the founder of the new measuring system of astronomy, Kepler, Galileo, and Lord Bacon of Verulam, were cotemporaries; and all of them, except the first, lived to see the works of Descartes and Fermat. The true celestial system was discovered by Copernicus in the same year in which Columbus died, fourteen years after the grandest mundane discovery was made. The sudden appearance and disappearance of three new stars which occurred in 1572, 1600, and 1604, excited the wonder of vast assemblies of people, all over Europe, while humble artizans, in an obscure corner thereof, were constructing an instrument which should at once calm their fears and excite the most absorbing astonishment. The telescope was discovered in Holland, in 1608, and two years after the immortal Florentine astronomer began to shine prominently above all other leaders of sublime science. Galileo was the Huss of mediæval progress, if it be not better to call him the Columbus. The day of predestined freedom rose over his cradle, and his life-struggle struck the hour. His hand kindled brighter lamps in the great temple of knowledge, and, sublime priest of true evangelism as he was, it was fitting that his place and mission were so central, when he held aloft supremest light. We love to read the history of his mighty spirit, and contemplate the serene old man, blinded by gazing at stars, bereaved of his pious daughter, dragged to the dungeon of the Inquisition, and there visited by the future secretary of the English Commonwealth. In his own great maxim, that "we can not teach truth to another, we can only help him to find it," is contained the germ of all true wisdom, and the foundation of those future inductions which were to underlie a new age and revolutionize the world.

Sir Isaac Newton was born the same year Galileo died; and while we do not forget that Florence was the great centre of science, as of literature and art during the age of Leo X., let us glance more[Pg 307] particularly at this point to the results which so constantly tended toward the western extreme.

We have already alluded to many of the developments which illuminated the night of ignorance, broke the yoke of superstition, gave to doubt a salutary force, and redoubled the acute delights of scientific investigation. The wonders of remote hemispheres were simultaneously unfolded, when Columbus and Vasco de Gama, at one stroke, overthrew the old geological and geographical systems. Before the close of the sixteenth century few of the mysteries of nature were left unvailed, and all that remained for posterity was the work of enlarged classification, and the perfection of each separate science. The progress made was, in fact, immense. As the botanic gardens, at that time planted in the new Italian universities, were fragrant with a thousand exotics, unknown to antiquity, so the softest fabrics, and most delicious fruits, recalled to memory the concurrent events of Providence, which for a long time made Venice and Genoa the emporia of mediæval traffic. Every luxury of the old world, which commerce converted into a comfort for the new, is a memento of the discoveries which guided navigation in the remotest seas, and carried European adventurers so far as to make the treasures of the entire globe our own. The science of political economy was also the offspring of that increased commercial activity which has so much affected the character of nations as to render new combinations of philosophy necessary for their direction. We only need allude to the fact that the free cities of Italy were compelled to yield the leadership in commerce to freer Holland, and that the sceptre of the seas was finally won by England; and that the first published theory of political economy was given to the world in Raleigh's essay, which Quesnoy long after attempted in vain to refute.

Agriculture was greatly improved in England under the early civilizers of the Anglo-Norman race. Immediately after the conquest, many thousand husbandmen, from the fertile plains of Flanders and Normandy, obtained farms, and employed the same methods of cultivation which had proved so successful in their native country. The ecclesiastics rivaled the secular ranks in this noble work. It was so much the custom of the monks to assist in open fields, especially at seed-time, the hay season, and harvest, that the[Pg 308] famous á Becket, even after he was Archbishop of Canterbury, used to sally out with the inmates of the convents, and take part with them in all rural occupations. It was decreed by the General Council of Lateran, that "all presbyters, clerks, monks, converts, pilgrims, and peasants, when they are engaged in the labors of husbandry, shall, together with the cattle in their plows, and the seed which they carry into the field, enjoy perfect security; and that all who molest and interrupt them, if they do not desist when they have been admonished, shall be excommunicated." Nearly all the finest garden-lands in England were redeemed from the worst natural condition by the sagacious and industrious Benedictine religionists. The science they applied in cathedral building is wonderful to the wisest engineers of our own age, and their taste in landscape-gardening has ever been the best in the world. Their ruined abbeys stand in the loveliest positions, and all their great churches, and colleges, unlike the continental, are encompassed by trees, and exquisitely decorated grounds. Ingulfus, abbot of Croyland, supplies an early and characteristic instance of this general disposition. Richard de Rules, director of Deeping, he tells us, being fond of agriculture, obtained permission to inclose a large portion of marsh, for the purpose of separate pasture, excluding the Welland by a strong dike, upon which he erected a town, and rendered those stagnant fens a garden of Eden. Others followed their example, and divided the marshes among them; when some converting them to tillage, some reserving them for meadow, others leaving them in pasture, found a rich soil for every purpose.

Evelyn records how four kinds of grapes were early brought from Italy, with a choice species of white figs, and were naturalized in his vapory clime. The learned Linacre first brought the damask-rose from the south; and, at the same time, the royal fruit gardens were enriched with plums of three different kinds. Edward Grindal, afterward primate at Canterbury, returning from exile, translated thither the medicinal plant of the tamarisk. The first oranges were grown by the Carew family, in Surrey; and the cherry orchards of Kent were commenced about Sittingbourne. British commerce brought the currant-bush from the island of Zante, and lettuce from Cos. Cherries came from Cerasuntis, in Pontus; the peach, from Persia; the chestnut from Castagna, a town of Magnesia;[Pg 309] and the damson plum from Damascus. Lucullus, after the war with Mithridates, introduced cherries from Pontus into Italy, where they were rapidly propagated, and, twenty-six years afterward, Pliny relates, the cherry-tree passed over into Britain. Thus a victory gained by a Roman consul over a remote antagonist, with whom it would seem that the western isle could not have the remotest interest, was the real cause of her being ultimately enriched. Such is the law of providential dealing, and such are the means and the path it pursues. In 1609, Shakspeare planted his celebrated mulberry-tree, a production before almost unknown. Since that epoch, vast treasures of literature, art, and science have accumulated on that soil, but few new germs have originated there.

Nearly all the roots of England's maturest science run back into the deepest mediæval night. A worthy associate with Thomas Aquinas, Albert the Great, and Michael Scot, was the celebrated Roger Bacon, a native of Somersetshire, who flourished in the thirteenth century. This Franciscan monk seems to have been a "Phœnix of intellects" in the fundamental education of the English race, "an old and new library of all that was good in science." He greatly established and extended the natural sciences, by means of mathematics, and the production of phenomena in the way of experiments. To him especially credit is due, that the influence which he exercised upon the mode of treating natural studies, was more beneficial and of more lasting effect than the discoveries themselves which have been attributed to him. Says Humboldt, "He roused himself to independent thought, and strongly blamed the blind trust in the authority of the schools: yet he was so far from neglecting to search into Grecian antiquity, that he prizes the study of comparative philology, the application of mathematics, and the 'Scientia Experimentalis,' to which he devotes a particular section in his great work. One of the popes, Clement IV., defended and patronized him; but two others, Nicholas II. and IV., accused him of magic, and cast him into prison, and thus he experienced the reverses of fortune which have been felt by great men of all times. He was acquainted with the Optics of Ptolemæus and the Almagest. As he always calls Hipparchus 'Abraxis,' like the Arabs, we may conclude that he had only made use of a Latin translation of the Arabic work. Besides Bacon's chemical investigations respecting[Pg 310] combustible and explosive mixtures, his theoretical optical works upon Perspective, and the position of the focus in a concave mirror, are the most important."

It is interesting to contemplate this thoughtful recluse prosecuting lofty studies in his solitary cell at Oxford. Around him was rising that greatest of western universities, scarcely one college of which, according to its historian, Doctor Ingram, can be considered a royal foundation. Great commoners, architects of their own fortunes, like the butcher's son, Wolsey, and the poor stone-mason, William of Wykcham, reared the amplest halls, and educated the mightiest minds. In the front rank of these great benefactors of science stood Roger Bacon, greatest of his own age, and projector of nearly all that followed. His writings contain many curious facts and judicious observations. From the following statement it would appear that he anticipated his brother monk on the continent in the discovery of gunpowder: "From saltpetre and other ingredients," he says, "we are able to form a fire which will burn to any distance." And again, alluding to its effects, "a small portion of matter, about the size of the thumb, properly disposed, will make a tremendous sound and coruscation, by which cities and armies might be destroyed." One of his biographers ascribes to him a mechanical contrivance which prepared the way for the important invention of the air-pump. In his own words, we have the following anticipations of nearly all the grand inventions which have more recently changed the condition and aspect of the scientific world: "I will mention," he says, "things which may be done without the help of magic, such as indeed magic is unable and incapable of performing; for a vessel may be so constructed as to make more way with one man in her, than another vessel well manned. It is possible to make a chariot which, without any assistance of animals, shall move with the irresistible force which is ascribed to those scythed chariots in which the ancients fought. It is possible to make instruments for flying, so that a man sitting in the middle thereof, and steering with a kind of rudder, may manage what is contrived to answer the end of wings, so as to divide and pass through the air. It is no less possible to make a machine of a very small size, and yet capable of raising or sinking the greatest weights, which may be of infinite use on certain occasions,[Pg 311] for by the help of such an instrument not above three inches high, or less, a man may be able to deliver himself and his companions out of prison, and he and his companions may descend at pleasure. Yea, instruments may be fabricated by which one man shall draw a thousand men to him by force and against their will, as also machines which will enable men to walk without danger at the bottom of seas and rivers."

The above possibilities, as they were suggested in the thirteenth century, have already in good part been realized, justifying the prophecies of a man who was before his age, but on the course of its progress. He beheld the drifting of the great seas of humanity, and knew not how far they might roll, but he was conscious that forward they must go. He was the Savonarola of his land and age, the martyr of science, who possessed his soul in patience, uttered his word, and waited, knowing that his despised sentence would one day be esteemed as of the finest gold. Mr. Brande observes, that one of his principal works "breathes sentiments which would do honor to the most refined periods of science, and in which many of the advantages likely to be derived from the mode of investigation insisted upon by his great successor (Chancellor Bacon) are anticipated." This remark might have been still more prospective, for the celebrated French experimentalist, Homberg, availing himself of some hints of chemical combinations suggested by Roger Bacon, at a much later period, made some important discoveries in that science.

As soon as printing was perfected on the banks of the Rhine, it was brought to the banks of the Thames, and, in 1474, the first press in England was erected by Caxton in Westminster Abbey. Thus the higher process supervenes upon the inferior which prepared the way, and supersedes the sources of its own origin and support. In the ancient Scriptorium of the Abbey, where all literature had been transcribed, and all science then extant found refuge till more auspicious times, was carried on an art which was the embodiment of anterior thought, and the guaranty of a future culture infinitely intensified and enlarged. As early as 1480, books were printed at St. Albans; and in 1525, there was a translation of Bœthius printed in the monastery of Tavistock, by Thomas Richards, monk of the same monastery. That the intercourse of Caxton[Pg 312] with the Abbot of Westminster was on a familiar footing we learn from his own statement, in 1490: "My Lord Abbott of Westminster did shew to me late certain evidences written in old English, for to reduce it to our English now used."

To receive the contributions of the past and reduce them to more efficient use in the present and for the future, is the mission of every agent of Providence like Caxton, Roger Bacon, or that gifted son of St. Albans whose dust lies buried near the venerable Abbey, where the second press of old England was set at work within the church, while he thought and wrote without. Francis Bacon was the complement of Aristotle. Both were adapted to their respective ages, and were requisite to each other. Had not the great Greek speculated, the greater Englishman would never have made his demonstrations. The first developed the general form of all reasoning, and the second made a specific application of this to the phenomena of matter. But the deductive mode is only one of the phases of dialectics; and the Baconians of the present day are much in the same position with regard to moral science, that the Aristotelians were in with respect to matter science. A third method was necessitated by the superior worth of the second, and the nations at large await the man to come who shall exhaust the whole doctrine of method, and this will doubtless be consummated in the same direction which scientific excellence has hitherto pursued.

The era of the subversion of the western empire, A.D. 476, presents a point from which a step forward, and a change for the better in human affairs, was distinctly marked. It was one from which we may most advantageously survey the field of political and moral philosophy.

The exterminating swords of barbarian conquerors left scarcely a vestige of former systems behind them. A deluge of new influences prevailed, and the moral aspect of earth was transformed. Men came upon a broader stage, amid more expanding scenes, and were soon acting a new character under impulses and in situations before unknown. Standing on this elevation, we see that old things have passed away, and all things have become new; mental pursuits in general have assumed an augmented interest, and especially is philosophy improved in its influence, accelerated in its progress, and enlarged in its extent. As the gorgeous but unsatisfactory pictures of oriental mysticism gave place to the fervor and fluctuations of more intellectual destinies in Greece—gleams of grandeur and wide tracks of gloom—and as this in turn fell before the gradual rise, broad dominion, and fatal decline of mighty Rome, so the latter sank in darkness, but the night of its tomb was soon seen to rest on a horizon of immortal day, which eventually rose to the zenith with augmented splendor. The Hyrcinian forest teemed with nascent states, and islands which the empress of the seven hills had known only to despise, assumed an imposing attitude to produce a language and dictate laws over realms wider than Rome ever knew.

Greek and Roman philosophy comprised the free efforts of reason to acquire a knowledge of first principles and the laws of nature,[Pg 314] without a clear consciousness of the method most conducive to such attainments. The philosophy of the middle ages endeavored to attain the same end, but under the influence of a principle superior to itself, derived from revelation. In the course of transitional progress, it fell into a spirit exclusively dialectic, whence it emerged through fresh and independent exertions toward the discovery of fundamental principles. Thenceforth a combination of all human knowledge, in a more complete and systematic form, has tended with unfaltering success to explore, found, and define the principles of philosophy as a science. This, like every other element of cotemporaneous civilization, had its successive periods of origin, foundation, and development, stretching over a wide space, of which the twelfth century formed the middle line. Previous to that epoch, the various elements were disengaging themselves, and entering into a higher, as well as more practical amalgamation, which was destined rapidly to achieve the widest possible good.

The early fathers of the Greek church went deeply into the current of oriental speculation, and they are worthy of special research, since so many golden grains of philosophy may be picked up in that sacred stream. It has already been shown, that by a range of imaginative reasoning, which soared far above the world of sense and outward experience, Plato sought a return to the supreme Godhead, infinitely exalted above all nature, deriving his chief proofs from immediate intuition and primeval revelation, or profound internal reminiscence. This fundamental tenet of the prior existence of the human soul was closely allied to the Indian doctrine of the metempsychosis, and, regarded in a literal sense, must be equally rejected by true Christian philosophy. But if we are to consider this Platonic notion of reminiscence under a more spiritual view, as the resuscitation of the consciousness of the divine image implanted in our souls, or the soul's perception of that image, this theory would then coincide with evangelical doctrine, and we ought not to wonder that this Platonic mode of thinking became the first great philosophy of revelation which was fashioned and promulgated in a mediæval form. It was most adapted to captivate the profoundest Christian thinkers, and pour a sweet solace into their aspiring hearts; hence, the prevalency of this system in the schools, until the end of the twelfth, and the beginning of the thirteenth[Pg 315] century. Many leading minds even believed that they discovered in it the types of their own religious views. The symbolical fancies of Timæus respecting physical phenomena, were taken up with spirit, and erroneous ideas respecting the laws of creation long prevailed, although the mathematicians of Alexandria had demonstrated their fallacies. Nevertheless, under various forms, the echo of Platonism was propagated from Augustin to Alcuin, far into the middle ages.

The philosophy of Aristotle was based upon ample and substantial logic, and from the beginning was a wonderful organum, admirably adapted to the uses of scientific truth. His perspicacious, piercing, and comprehensive intellect reduced all the historical and philosophic principles of preceding ages and of his own time, to the exactest system, and for twenty centuries he remained the master-guide. Considered merely as an effort of unassisted reason, the ethics of Aristotle have an extraordinary interest; but as a scientific introduction to divine revelation, and in all important moral questions, the Stagyrite is far from being so valuable a guide as Plato. It was an ominous gift to western Europe, when the works of Aristotle were brought from the East, translated into Arabic, and thence turned again into Latin almost as obscure. The Christian philosophers belonging to the first period of the middle ages, such as Bernard and Abelard of France, Anselm, and Scotus Erigena, the cotemporary of Alfred of England, were incomparably more luminous and forcible than the schoolmen of succeeding times, being much more free from idle logic and empty subtleties. Apparently, it would have been much better if the powerful emperors and potentates who patronized science had brought away with them, from the Latin empire at Constantinople, those philological treasures which there abounded, instead of fostering a universal and irresistible rage for the most metaphysical of authors, and whom it was quite impossible for them to comprehend. But the strange proceeding was overruled for the greatest benefit. The whole foundation of the scholastic philosophy was doubtless thoroughly false, and inflicted great injury, not only on theology, but on the whole range of mediæval thought. But when the evil became most formidable, a mighty service was rendered to mankind, when acute and sagacious men like Thomas Aquinas, endowed[Pg 316] with exalted philosophical talents, adopted the old Aristotelian rationalism, and founded thereon a system in which they attempted to reconcile philosophy with faith, and thus avert from their age the dangerous consequences of false dialectics. This, however, was no true reconciliation, and the rationalism of the middle age afterward broke into a violent collision with the divine doctrines to which it had been unnaturally allied. But before this extreme was arrived at, the resuscitation of a nobler rationalism began, and gradually obtained the mastery over leading minds, producing a radical change in the whole spirit of literature and science. Philosophy passed through a very important renovation, and its profoundest votaries began to set themselves wholly free from the authority of Aristotle in his own department, and proceeded to the unfettered investigation of the deepest and most solemn problems. Their main purpose, indeed, was, as one of them declared, to compare the tenets of former teachers with the original handwriting of God, the world and nature.

The now almost forgotten contest between the Realists and Nominalists of the middle ages, exercised a decided influence upon the final establishment of the experimental sciences. These were the two philosophic schools which labored respectively to bridge the apparently impassable "gap between thought and actual existence, and the relations between the mind which discerns, and the objects which are discerned." According to Humboldt, "The Nominalists, who only admitted a subjective existence to belong to general ideas in the imagination of man, after many oscillations, ultimately in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries became the victorious party. From that great aversion to mere abstractions, they first arrived at the necessity of experience, and of increasing the physical basis of knowledge. This direction of their ideas had, at any rate, a secondary influence upon empirical natural science; but even while the views of the Realists still prevailed, the acquaintance with the Arabian literature had diffused a love for Nature's works, in happy contrast with the study of theology, which otherwise absorbed every thing. Thus we see, that in the different periods of the Middle Ages, to which we have been perhaps accustomed to attribute too great a unity of character, in very different courses, namely, in the ideal and the experimental way, the great work of distant[Pg 317] discoveries, and the possibility of their being of avail in the extension of the general ideas of the earth, were gradually advanced."

The Arabians cultivated philosophy with characteristic ardor, and founded upon it the fame of many ingenious and erudite men. Al-Farabi, in Transoxiana, died in 950. It is affirmed that he spoke seventy languages, wrote upon all the sciences, and collected them into an encyclopædia. Al-Gazeli of Thous, who submitted religion to the test of philosophy, died in 1111. Avicenna, from the vicinity of Chyraz, who died in 1037, was a profound philosopher, as well as a celebrated physician. Averrhoes of Cordova, was the most erudite commentator on the works of Aristotle, and died in 1198. The system of the great Macedonian metaphysician was well fitted to the mathematical genius of the Arabians, and they worshiped him as a sort of divinity. According to their belief, all philosophy was to be found in his writings, and they explained every problem according to his arbitrary rules. In the preceding chapter, we have seen with what success the Arabians cultivated all the sciences; and let us here add that, while of all their studies, philosophy was the one in particular which penetrated most rapidly into the West, and had the greatest influence in the schools of Europe, it was the one, in fact, the progress of which was the least real. The ardent sons of Shem were more ingenious than profound, more abstract than practical, and attached themselves rather to the subtleties of fancy than to the substantial ideas of reason. They possessed many qualities which enabled them to dazzle, but few attributes of a character adapted to instruct. More enthusiastic than enterprising, they were willing to place themselves under the supreme dictation of another, rather than to feed their own minds at the original sources of knowledge. They gathered up much that had been produced by their superiors in the East, and brought it forward as the nourishment of still nobler races destined to succeed them; but they produced little that was native to themselves, especially in the realm of philosophy, and now exert absolutely no influence on western mind.

The human spirit was not less active and indomitable in the middle age than at earlier periods; and although it was placed under the severest religious restrictions, it still sought to render to itself an account of its speculative belief. The more methodical[Pg 318] system of instruction which originated in the cloisters, and ascended thence to the universities, gave rise to diversified sects, whose impassioned conflicts occasioned increased liberty of disquisition. For a long time the scholastic philosophy was exercised in a circle it did not itself trace, and which it dared not pass; but meanwhile it was approaching emancipation, and grew finally into a bolder strength and traversed broader realms. Still it was not thought in that exact form and absolute freedom which should characterize philosophy, and the pedantic system therefore ended with the age it was created to serve.

The scholasticism which was so marked a peculiarity of the age of Leo X., was the labor of intellect in the service of faith, and we know its starting point, its progress, and its end. It arose with the new society of that formative era, and arrived at perfect dominion after having been delivered from all the ruins of the ancient civilization, when the soil of Europe had become more firm and capable of receiving the foundations upon which a nobler and broader social compact might arise. Charlemagne, who with one hand arrested the Saracens in the South, and with the other resisted the barbarians of the North, became the type and leader of western civilization in the dawn of the third great period; and, succeeded by Charles the Bald and Alfred the Great, carefully fanned the sparks of ancient culture, in order to rekindle the flame of progressive science. It was he who first opened the schools, and originated scholasticism. As the Mysteries of olden times had been the primary source of Greek philosophy, so the convents of the eighth century were the cradle of the ethical systems we still possess and desire to improve.

Scholasticism commenced in the absolute submission of philosophy to theology, advanced to the separation of these two spheres of mental exercise, and culminated in the entire independence of thought. The first epoch comprised, with the inspired Scriptures, the Christian fathers generally, and especially those of the Latin church, of whom Augustine was the chief. The little knowledge in this department that had escaped barbarism was then principally contained in the meagre writings of Boethius, born in 470, and senator of Theodoric; of Capella, born at Madaura, in Africa, about 474; of Mamert, at Vienna, who died in the year 477; of[Pg 319] Cassiodorus, who flourished in the first half of the sixth century; of the Venerable Bede, who opened the chief sources of British civilization at the end of the seventh century; and of that other Anglo-Saxon, Alcuin, born at York, 726, and whom Charlemagne placed on the heights of mediæval culture, at the head of the regeneration of mind at large. John Scot, or Johannes Scotus Erigena, as he was called because an Irishman, lived long at the court of Charles the Bald, and afterward returned to England at the invitation of Alfred the Great, to teach at Oxford, where he died in 886, expressed the great text of his cotemporaries which they all labored to expound and exemplify: "There are not two studies, one of philosophy, and the other of religion; true philosophy is true religion, and true religion is true philosophy."

Anselm, born in Piedmont in 1034, Prior of Bec in Normandy, and, at the time of his death, Archbishop of Canterbury, was the true metaphysician of this epoch. He was called the second Saint Augustine, and his writings achieved a remarkable progress. To him is accredited the argument, which draws from the idea alone of an absolute maximum of greatness, of beauty, and of goodness, the demonstration of the existence of its object, which can be only God. This was doubtless inspired by the genius of Christian idealism, and was so effectively elaborated by Saint Anselm that it is supposed to have extended its influence even down to Leibnitz and Descartes.

Another beautiful classic spirit, who struggled and triumphed in the midst of mediæval gloom was Abelard. Born near Nantes, in 1079, and having acquired all the strength that could be furnished by provincial knowledge, he went to Paris, where from a pupil he soon became a rival of the most renowned masters, and thenceforth for a long time in dialectics ruled supreme. He attracted such multitudes of scholars from all parts of Europe, that, as himself said, the hotels were neither sufficient to contain them, nor the ground to nourish them. He moved the church and the state, eclipsed Roscellinus and Champeaux, having Arnold of Brescia among his friendly disciples, and a powerful adversary in the great Bernard. We are told that this "Bossuet of the twelfth century" was handsome, was a poet, and musician. He wrote songs which amused the refined, gave lectures which absorbed the profound, and[Pg 320] both as canon and professor, was regarded with the most absolute devotion by that noble creature, Heloise, who loved like Theresa the saint. As a hero who was active to reform abuses and wise to enlighten barbarism, the chief of an advancing school, and the martyr of exalted opinions, Abelard was indeed an extraordinary personage.

Nominalism and Realism found a new competitor on the philosophic stage when the advanced and victorious system of Conceptualism was established by Abelard. Of this school, John of Salisbury was an enlightened and polished disciple. To him and his co-laborer in the same faith and age, Peter Lombard, succeeded the three great masters who represented the succeeding epoch. Albert the Great, born in Suabia, was by turns professor at Cologne and Paris. In 1260 he was bishop of Ratisbon, but soon withdrew from that post to devote himself exclusively to his philosophical pursuits at Cologne, where he died in 1280. Thomas Aquinas was of a rich and illustrious family, who wished to give him a good position in the world. But he declined all secular honors, and became a Dominican, that he might devote himself entirely to philosophy. He is said to have been an incomparable teacher, and was called the Angel of the School. His birth occurred near Naples, in 1225; he studied under Albert, both at Cologne and Paris, died in 1274, and was canonized in 1323. He was not so scientific as his master, nor so mystical as his compatriot, Bonaventura. He could not dream of modern equality; but, as a Christian philosopher he recommended humanity toward the persecuted, and exemplified the high morality he taught. The English Duns Scotus, born at Dunston, in Northumberland, according to others at Duns, in Ireland, near 1275, possessed a mind of uncommon firmness and powerful action. Physics and mathematics were his forte, while more spiritual themes won the preference and exercised the skill of Albert and Thomas. Cotemporaries named the first the seraphic Doctor, and the second the angelic Doctor, but the third was characterized by another epithet more descriptive of his genius, namely, the subtile, Doctor subtilis.

Roger Bacon, born in 1214, and whose great scientific capacities were alluded to in the preceding chapter, was a man who stood alone in the thirteenth century on account of his linguistic skill[Pg 321] and attainments in philosophy. The poor persecuted Franciscan was three centuries in advance of his age, but, despite all difficulties, he did much to promote a movement of mental independence which, soon after his death made itself rapidly manifest. The separation of philosophy from theology began to be perfected, and the destruction of scholasticism was thus secured. Roscelin, a canon of Compiègne, did not a little toward the attainment of this end, but much more was accomplished by an English pupil of Duns Scotus, at the commencement of the fourteenth century. He was named John Occam, born in the county of Surrey, and is often called simply Occam. He was a successful teacher at Paris, under Philip le Bel, at the epoch when the political powers strove to emancipate themselves from the ecclesiastical power. The monk sided with the sovereign, and wrote against the pretensions of pope Boniface VIII. Afterward he said to the emperor Louis of Bavaria, "Defend me with the sword, and I will defend you with the pen," and in like manner resisted pope John XXII. A man so bold in politics could not have been timid in philosophy, and his persevering courage procured him the name of Doctor invincibilis. The spirit of independence was everywhere aroused under the auspices of Occam, so that the old schools were quickened, and new masters were produced. Walter Burleigh flourished about 1337, and wrote commentaries on Aristotle, Porphyry, etc., while professor at Paris and Oxford. He was author of the first history of philosophy written in the middle age. Marsile of Inghen, founder of the university of Heidelberg, died in 1394. Thomas of Strasburg, author of a Commentary on The Master of Sentences, died in 1357. Thomas of Bradwardin, Archbishop of Canterbury, was not only a mathematician of uncommon power, but a great proficient in the more literary departments of high philosophy. He died in 1439.

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, after the heated conflicts between nominalism and realism, another species of philosophy, mysticism, separated itself from all other systems, acquired consciousness of itself, exposed its own theory, and by its own name was called. Near the close of his life, Petrarch abandoned literary pursuits, in order to devote himself to contemplative philosophy, was a mystic in belief, and died in 1374. Most of the remarkable[Pg 322] men of this epoch were disciples of the same transcendental faith. Such were John Tauler, the celebrated preacher at Cologne, and the still more illustrious author of the "Imitation of Jesus Christ." Whether that work belongs to Gerson, or to Thomas à Kempis, it may be regarded as the most perfect reflection of philosophy in those foreboding times, when the thoughtful, oppressed with doubt, aspired after relief through reliance on the mercy of God. Scholasticism ceased at the beginning of the fifteenth century, and was succeeded by mysticism, which continued till the opening of the seventeenth century, when modern philosophy, properly so called, began, and is now molding a grander philosophic age. The mystical polemics which brought all learning to a low ebb at the epoch of the decline of ancient literature, long lurked faintly among the cloisters, by the dim lamp of dreaming solitaries, to whom true science was an unfathomable ocean, of which they vainly strove to sound the depths, while their only object should have been to sail across it. But their dogmatical fixedness was overruled for good, since all the great elements of speculative thought were thus conserved, and progressive philosophy, nevertheless, like its type and hero, through night and tempest westward took its course.

The interior of the cathedral at Florence, so imposing from its dim light and great extent, is full of that local interest which connects itself with a mausoleum of greatness and museum of art. Upon the north wall is a portrait of Dantè, and behind the choir is an unfinished Pieta by Michael Angelo, whose fervid and impatient genius designed so much more than it could possibly execute. Under the crowning glory of the dome, that masterpiece and model of renaissant architecture, lie the remains of Giotto and Brunelleschi, in spots marked by commemorative busts; and the same honor is paid to the remains of Facino, the great restorer of the Platonic philosophy. It was this erudite scholar who, at the revival of learning, procured the printing of Plato, performed the same service for the illustrious leaders of the later school, and illustrated his edition of the great master with many commentaries, in which he showed himself an equal adept in the mysteries of Plotinus and Porphyry, as in the sense of Plato. In order to give additional zest to the study of Platonism, Lorenzo and his friends formed the intention of renewing, with extraordinary pomp, the solemn annual feasts to the memory[Pg 323] of the great philosopher, which had been celebrated from the time of his death to that of his disciples, Plotinus and Porphyrius, but had been discontinued for twelve hundred years. The day fixed on for this purpose was the 7th of November, the supposed anniversary of both the birth and death of Plato. Francesco Bandini, eminent for rank and learning, was fixed on by Lorenzo to preside over this ceremony at Florence. On the same day another party met at Lorenzo's villa at Careggi, where he presided in person. The new academy of Platonists, in the fifteenth century, embraced a large number of the most eminent men, the greatest part of whom were natives of Florence, a fact that may give us some idea of the surprising attention which was then paid to philosophy, as well as to art, science, and literary pursuits. In this respect, the birthplace of Leo X., and the great mental centre of his age stands unrivaled; a species of praise as indisputable as it is well-deserved.

We have seen that the capacious mind of Aristotle absorbed the whole existing philosophy of his age, and that it was reproduced, digested, and transmitted, in a form still preserved, and of which the spirit early penetrated into the inmost recesses of mediæval mind. Translated in the fifth century into Syriac, and thence into Arabic, four hundred years later, his writings furnished the Mohammedan conquerors of the East with the germs of science which they bore so opportunely to the West, and thus extended the empire of an exacter philosophy from Bagdad to Cordova, from Egypt to Britain's occidental shore.

Platonism took deep root in Germany, and was the favorite of the ablest philosophers; and whether the mystic Reuchlin, or the mathematical Leibnitz, or the recondite Kant, elaborated their respective theories, they equally acknowledged the great Greek master to be the one model of their admiration. Sydenham, Spens, and Taylor, translated him in the bosom of the English race; and among the British admirers of Plato, besides the cabalists Gale and More, and the eloquent pupil of the Alexandrian school, Cudworth, were many of the ablest philosophers and poets. Not to anticipate the new age, on the border of which shone the Platonic minds of Milton and Gray, we allude to Berkeley, whose enthusiastic esteem is well known, and to Bacon, who never speaks of the political or[Pg 324] moral works of Plato without marked respect. The mighty architects of the age to come, best understood the worth of those foundations on which they built, and with a noble sadness sometimes bemoaned the obscurity which progress necessarily throws upon the superseded past.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, philosophy appeared to have but one home, Italy; but in the seventeenth century, all Europe became the field of its culture, and the richest fruits were ripened by the setting sun. At earlier periods, inventive mind had scarcely any means of expression, save a single language, and that a dead one; but in the seventeenth century the Latin became the exception, and philosophy began to use national tongues, which it enriched and reformed. At the moment a new world was opened to the sublimest advance, philosophy admitted to its service only living languages, full of the future, and which placed it in direct communication with the masses. Thus it accumulated its resources, concentrated its influence, and pressed forward in its majestic career, promising soon to become an independent, universal, and popular power.

For the right examination of the divine dealings in the ancient world, heaven has vouchsafed an unerring guide. The predictions of the inspired writers, and especially the prophecies of Daniel, furnish a key to all the remarkable events which authentic history records. The fact of fatal revolutions, and both the names and leading traits of their predestined agents, are declared with a boldness which ought to confound the skeptic whom it fails to convince.

While Rome was already trembling under the power of decay, Judea witnessed the fulfillment of those great designs in aid of which that empire was permitted to gain universal mastery, and, in the words of one of her own Cæsars, recorded by Tacitus, to arrive at such a satiety of glory as made her willing to give peace to the world. Thus, when Christianity was to be produced, all was made ready for her advent, and the appropriate field was cleared. Rome expiring amid her ruins, gave birth to the Catholic hierarchy as the last effort of her grandeur, the uses and abuses of which were not less subordinated to the progressive welfare of mankind. The history of religion is the pedestal of all history, and is the supreme manifestation of God's supervision of humanity. This light illumines all the rest, and most clearly shows that, because Providence takes no retrograde steps, human progress never recoils, nor lacks agents adapted to its beneficent advance. The great chain of heavenly purpose can not be broken, however violent the assaults of earth. Great revolutions may seem to be suddenly unfolded: but in fact they were conceived and nurtured in the womb of society long before they emerged to the light of day. A review of religion in the age of Leo X. will most strongly impress us with this truth; and while we are obliged to abridge the statement of[Pg 326] pertinent facts, we will hope not to be superficial in the elucidation of their governing principles. A palimpsest manuscript perhaps has had its original hymn to Apollo expunged, to admit a mediæval legend, but it was only that a supervening age might profit by the mutilated treasures so providentially preserved.

Under the domination of ancient Rome an unnoticed grain of seed fell in the Rheingau, and resulted in all the vineyards which have since enriched that prolific land. At the dawn of modern society, Christianity, that eagle from the throne of God, flying with the sun, deposited among the rocks of the Rhine an egg which contained the germ of more spiritual fruitfulness. Many Christians died the death of martyrs in those western wilds, and their ashes thrown to the winds, became the seed-corn of a new world. Innumerable heroes arose who were actuated by a profound faith—not of abstract reason, but of deep sentiment; the secret and source of an inspiration not to be cast aside, but which filled the soul, absorbed its faculties, and formed the chief aim of its existence. From the fifth century, Europe became a perpetually enlarged field for Christianity, but not its boundary. It was necessary that the divine power which underlies modern civilization, and which was given to transform the world, should go forth from the darkness and impediments of the middle ages, in order to develop itself, and produce the grander fruits it was destined to mature. That period has been characterized as the chrysalis of the new world. The first portion was marked by universal night and deadly sleep followed by a crystallized formalism of corporations in which soon appeared those grand beginnings of national regeneration which Christ came to occasion and complete. If the development of the divine purpose seemed to stop in the fourth century, when Christianity became the religion of the Roman empire, it was because that, at the time national existence became extinct in the East, the new Japhetic race of the West was to be trained to moral responsibility, and thus to national independence also, in religion.

In every epoch of the world, religion is the foundation and formative principle of all; it is this which generates the general faith, molds its manners, and fosters its institutions. The age we are now considering opened under auspices the most forbidding, and yet not unfavorable to the culture of exalted moral excellence. Destruction[Pg 327] had invaded the world-wide empire of that city which arrogated to itself the epithet eternal; and even those great ecclesiastical establishments, the fruit of much martyr-blood, and of the devout labors of the primitive fathers, were swept away by the overwhelming torrent. "But," Neander says, "while the pagans hopelessly mourned at the grave of earthly glory, and, filled with despair, beheld all the forms of ancient culture dashed in pieces by the hands of barbarians, devout Christians held fast to the anchor of believing hope, which raised them above all that was changeable, and gave them a firm stand-point in the midst of the destroying waters. They knew that, though heaven and earth might pass away, the words of the Lord could not pass away;" and these words were to them, even when surrounded by death, an inexhaustible source of life. The existing ecclesiastical forms, as far as they were connected with the constitution of the Roman empire, necessarily perished in the universal breaking-up of society; but the essence of the church, as of Christianity, could not be touched by any destructive power, and at this period of the world's decrepitude and exhaustion showed itself more evidently to be the unchangeable vital principle of a new creation. In this time of invading destruction, a Christian father (probably Leo the Great, before he was a bishop) thus wrote: "Even the weapons by which the world is destroyed, subserve the operations of Christian grace. How many, who in the quiet of peace had delayed their baptism, were impelled to it by the fear of imminent danger! How many sluggish and lukewarm souls are roused by sudden and threatening alarm, on whom peaceful exhortation had produced no effect! Many sons of the church who had been brought into captivity, make their masters subject to the gospel, and become teachers of the Christian faith to those to whom the chances of war have subjected them. Others of the barbarians, who had entered the ranks of the Roman auxiliaries, have learned in Christian countries what they could not learn in their native land, and returned to their homes instructed in Christianity. Thus nothing can prevent divine grace from fulfilling its designs, whatever they may be; so that conflict leads to unity, wounds are changed into restoratives, and that which threatened danger to the church is destined to promote its increase."

The bishops of Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople and Rome, at an early period took precedence over the others, and received the title of patriarchs, which the eastern metropolitans still retain. The name of pope, from the Greek pappas, father, was once common to all the bishops, and is still given to the Greek priests in Russia. The term was not monopolized by the bishop of Rome, till the time of Gregory VII., in 1073, when he claimed, as the successor of St. Peter, the primacy over all others, and was sustained in this by the provincial councils. At length, however, difficulties arose, which led pope Felix II. to excommunicate the patriarchs of Constantinople and Alexandria; and thus the Eastern or Greek Church was separated from the Western or Roman, though both assumed to be universal. But it was the western church only that advanced in the career of improved civilization. The monastic system, under which monks and nuns secluded themselves, was introduced by Anthony, in Egypt, and, in connection with papal celibacy, soon spread throughout Christendom. The use of images in worship, commenced in the sixth century, in the East; and though condemned at Constantinople in 754, it afterward prevailed, both there and in all the West. Meanwhile the gospel had been preached, in France, about A.D. 290; in Ireland, about 470; and in England, by the monk Augustin, who died about 608.

In the midst of the great and universal ruins of the old Roman empire, the church alone remained upright, and became the corner stone of the new edifice. Civilization passed under her direction to the other side of the Alps, where it established a new centre of unity and brotherhood, around which a vast circle soon extended itself, and embraced all Europe in the same range of improvement. A common faith united all the members of that society of the middle ages, and from the day of its conversion, each nation dated its entrance upon the path of progress. From the fifth to the sixteenth century, the notions, sentiments, and manners of European society were essentially theological. Every great question that was started, whether philosophical, political, or historical, was considered in a religious point of view. Notwithstanding all the evils, errors, and abuses which may have crept into the Roman church, it must be acknowledged that her influence upon popular progress and culture was beneficial; that she assisted in the development of the general[Pg 329] mind rather than its compression, in its extension, rather than its confinement.

The uses of early Catholicism are well stated by Macaulay, as follows: "Whatever reproach may, at a later period, have been justly thrown on the indolence and luxury of religious orders, it was surely good that, in an age of ignorance and violence, there should be quiet cloisters and gardens, in which the arts of peace could be safely cultivated, in which gentle and contemplative natures could find an asylum, in which one brother could employ himself in transcribing the Æneid of Virgil, and another in meditating the Analytics of Aristotle; in which he who had a genius for art might illuminate a martyrology or carve a crucifix, and in which he who had a turn for natural philosophy might make experiments on the properties of plants and minerals. Had not such retreats been scattered here and there among the huts of a miserable peasantry and the castles of a ferocious aristocracy. European society would have consisted merely of beasts of burden and of beasts of prey. The church has many times been compared by divines to that ark of which we read in the Book of Genesis; but never was the resemblance more perfect than during that evil time when she alone rode, amid darkness and tempest, on the deluge beneath which all the great works of ancient power and wisdom lay entombed, bearing within her that feeble germ from which a second and more glorious civilization was to spring." Elsewhere the same eloquent writer suggests that, what the Olympian chariot race and the Pythian oracle were to all the Greek cities, from Trebizond to Marseilles, Rome and her bishops were to all Christians of the Latin communion, from Calabria to the Hebrides. This elicited sentiments of enlarged benevolence, and caused races separated from each other by seas and mountains, to acknowledge a fraternal tie, and a common code of public law. A regular communication was opened between the western islands and that part of Europe in which the traces of ancient power and policy were yet discernible. "Many noble monuments which have since been destroyed or defaced, still retained their pristine magnificence; and travelers, to whom Livy and Sallust were unintelligible, might gain from the Roman aqueducts and temples some faint notion of Roman history. The dome of Agrippa still glittering with bronze;[Pg 330] the mausoleum of Adrian, not yet deprived of its columns and statues; the Flavian amphitheatre, not yet degraded into a quarry, told to the Mercian or Northumbrian pilgrims some part of the story of that great civilized world which had passed away. The islanders returned, with awe deeply impressed on their half-opened minds, and told the wondering inhabitants of the hovels of London and York that, near to the grave of Saint Peter, a mighty race, now extinct, had piled up buildings which would never be dissolved till the judgment day. Learning followed in the train of Christianity. The poetry and eloquence of the Augustan age were assiduously studied in the Anglo-Saxon monasteries. The names of Bede, of Alcuin, and of John surnamed Erigena, were justly celebrated throughout Europe. Such was the state of this country when, in the ninth century, began the last great descent of the northern barbarians."

Prominent in the early scenes of that great act in the drama of human history which appropriately is characterized by the name of a pope, stood Gregory, the first of the name, who, from the year 590 to 604, occupied the sacred seat. God, to whom all his works are known from eternity, raised up this instrument so well fitted to guide the church in the West, in the midst of numerous and fearful storms. Up to his fortieth year he had filled an important civil office; and afterward in the calm consecration of monastic life he acquired the power and stability of extraordinary self-control. Depreciating literary critics have charged that Gregory expelled from Rome the mathematical studies; that he burned the Palatine library, first collected by Augustus Cæsar; that himself despised classical learning, which he forbade others to pursue; and that he destroyed many profane monuments of art, with which the city had been embellished. But the appellation of Great, by which he is commonly distinguished, attests the opinion which was entertained of his general character, and doubtless was in good part deserved.

It chanced that certain Anglo-Saxons, being exposed for sale in the slave-market of Rome, attracted the attention of the mighty pope just named. He at once resolved that Christianity should be preached to the nation to which these beautiful captives belonged, and never perhaps was a resolution adopted whence more important results ensued. Augustin, attended by forty Italian assistants,[Pg 331] planted the doctrines of the Holy See among the Germanic Britons at Canterbury, and thence spread their influence through all the ranks of our pagan ancestors. It was not long before intelligent converts transplanted their sentiments to the continent, and filled the whole empire of the Franks with their creed. Boniface, the apostle of the Germans, was an Anglo-Saxon, whose great influence was exerted to perfect and extend civilization among the German tribes of the West. While other realms were sinking together into one common ruin, and the world seemed about to become the prey of the Moslem, the house of Pepin of Heristal, afterward called the Carlovingian, arose to blend regal with papal resistance, by which means the first effectual resistance was offered to the Mohammedan conquerors.

Christianity was scornfully trampled on by southern infidels and northern barbarians, but her invulnerable spirit was subdued by neither. Like her founders, she was seemingly conquered for a time, but in apparent defeat, death gave her positive victory. Bending her heavenly form to the tempest, she paused meekly till its utmost fury had passed, and then raised her captivating countenance to woo the savage foes who held her captive. Awe-struck, they reverently removed her chains, adored at her shrine, and swore fidelity to her cause. Refined into enthusiasm, they turned their energies toward more useful channels, and the subsequent history of chivalry and the crusades recorded its mighty results. Divine truth came not to avenge, but to console; it did not promise peace on earth, but retribution in heaven, and was not so ambitious to break the chains of the slave, as to share them with him. If the church could not destroy feudalism, she created chivalry; to quench the thirst for battles, she invented processions and masses. To the victims of injustice, she opened the asylum of the sanctuary; for blasted hopes and exposed honor, she proffered the silence of cloisters; and against imperial ambition, she wielded the thunders of the Vatican. Through a long and gloomy period, popery and the monasteries doubtless preserved the social system from utter ruin; and it is to be regretted that no sooner had the new system triumphed, than the seeds of corruption appeared. We dwell with most interest upon the period when the brilliant ardor of western valor breathed a new life into the contemplative and[Pg 332] ascetic virtues of eastern Christianity; when the red cross shone on the breast-plate of European warriors, and their lance was couched in a holy war. It was then that the militant church developed, if she did not perfect, that spirit which the soothing influence of religious love would substitute for the violated empire of the law, and for the laxity of social disorder—the spirit of chivalry. Hence arose that noble school of loyalty and truth, of devotion and gallantry, of humanity and liberality, which was the right arm of Christianity in her sacred mission of peace and righteousness. Thus it was that, unable for a long period to disarm the ferocity of those warlike ages, religion directed it to a nobler end, and by inscrutable ways, transformed it into one of its most efficacious instruments.

It was on the shores of Palestine that the different orders of knighthood were first established, in which military ardor was combined with religious enthusiasm, and graduated distinctions in the ranks of chivalry became the rewards of distinguished deeds. The power of these incentives was unparalleled in human history. They gave the first check to the brilliant success of Saracenic arms, and secured to an earl of Boulogne the crown of Jerusalem. Men of all tempers and most diversified dispositions imbibed motives for their ambition at a common source, which simultaneously fed the lion energy of Richard, the calmer fortitude of Edward, and the more enlightened mind of St. Louis.

The same blending of secular and sacred zeal, which had animated the crusaders to defend unprotected pilgrims in the East, incited them to promote improvement in the West, and educated them for the task. While absent, their ideas had been enlarged by an acquaintance with Roman jurisprudence, which still ruled in the eastern empire. They had witnessed with astonished admiration the excellence attained by several of the Italian states, through the agencies of commerce and manufactures; and on their return, they were not only sensible of the imperfect administration of justice under the feudal rule, but also of the need of an improved productive system. The crusades were beneficial, because they occasioned a revolution in the intellectual state of Europe by introducing a preparatory change of feelings and habits which no other agency could produce. The great good they conferred was none the less[Pg 333] valuable for being mediate and progressive. No radical change in the condition of man, thus wrought, has ever transpired without resulting in the most salutary effects upon the character of all his intellectual operations. Doubtless, the crusades were not so much a cause of actual knowledge, introduced directly under their influence, as of those aroused faculties and improved habits by which both the useful and elegant arts were greatly promoted. No single event, however startling, and no one age, however prolific of suggestions, could effectually have restored the mental energies of the West after so many centuries of brutal ignorance, but the successive crusades did all to this end, and as successfully, that could be achieved. The twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries teemed with the direct and multifarious results.

As the noble grandeur of Olympus, the fertile plains of Thessaly, the gloomy recesses of the rock-crowned Pytho, and a thousand co-operative causes tended to swell the romantic harmony of legendary song in ancient Greece, giving a favorite deity to each particular province; while the great emigration to the coast of Asia Minor enhanced the copiousness of their religious rites, by engrafting on their legend much of the frenzied excitement of the Asiatic race, so Europe in the middle ages had its patron saints, and around the altar of supreme worship were concentrated the reminiscences of every preceding age and clime. According to Colonel Tod's statement of oriental customs, the martial Rajpoots are not strangers to armorial bearings, now so indiscriminately used in the West. The great banner of Mewar exhibits a golden sun on a crimson field, those of the chiefs bear a dagger. Amber displays the five-colored flag. The lion rampant on an argent field, is extinct with the state of Chanderi. In Europe, these customs were not introduced till the period of the crusades, and were copied from the Saracens, while the use of them among the remote eastern tribes can be traced to a period anterior to the war of Troy. Every royal house had its palladium, which was frequently borne to battle at the saddle-bow of the prince.

From Pliny's letters to Trajan, and from other sources, we learn that ancient idolaters were in the habit of so consecrating spots and buildings destined for religious purposes, as forever to withdraw them from secular uses. Ere they began their accustomed rites,[Pg 334] they sprinkled the place and the assistants with lustral water, which from the priest's hands was supposed to have conferred peculiar sanctity. The Romans burned frankincense, and other perfumes, in honor of their gods; and celebrated, at the entrance into the winter solstice, a festival to the goddess Strenna. The return of spring was celebrated with garlands, and the dance around a tall May-pole; and with kindred solemnities they entered into the summer solstice, with which they began the year. The Christians adopted similar consecrations with a like design. Hence the use of holy water, the practice of burning lamps and candles on altars and at tombs, together with incense burned in honor of the saints. Christmas, and the festival of St. John, correspond with the pagan rites they displaced, while the presents common to one, and the bonfires which illuminate the other, are mementoes of their origin. The idolatrous priestesses, who were vowed to perpetual virginity, were reproduced in the mediæval church, as soon as the Christian ranks were ample enough to spare certain members for that purpose, both male and female. In fact, the very tunic of the priest, the lituus of the augur, and cap of the flamin of pagan antiquity, were preserved in the dalmatic, the mitre, the staff, and the crosier of Christian bishops. Still more important similarities crept in, and a supposed virgin became the object of enthusiastic worship in the age of Leo X., as in the foregoing ages of Augustus and Pericles. Among the Asiatic Greeks, Diana was supreme; with the European Greeks and Romans, Minerva was first; and Catholicism at length found its highest love in Mary, the immaculate Mother of God. True, "Christianity had conquered Paganism, but Paganism had infected Christianity. * * * The rites of the Pantheon had passed into her worship, the subtilties of the Academy into her creed." This was evident from the symbols which were freely adopted from the Romans in the decoration of the new churches. The typical use of the cross was, of course, entirely original; but the vine and palm-branch of Bacchus, the corn of Ceres, Venus's dove, Diana's stag, Juno's peacock, Jupiter's eagle, Cybele's lion, and Cupids changed into cherubs, were all copied from the pagans, and made emblematic of Christian doctrines.

Such were the facts of the case, when the kingdom of Catholicism had come with power, and was seated on a throne, not according[Pg 335] to this world, yet possessing a larger territory, and exercising a higher dominion, than had ever been given to sword or sceptre.

How wonderful is Providence in perpetually eliciting light and progress from the East! Charlemagne gave the popedom its supremacy beyond the Alps, A.D. 800; and before the close of that century, a small body of spiritual Christians, near the Euphrates, were persecuted for combining the adoption of the Scriptures as their sole guide with the most resolute refusal to bow down to images. The emperor Constantine, who sympathized with their views, caused them to pass into Europe. Those Paulicians were the original reformers, the remnant of Judah, who came forth by royal command, to rebuild the temple of the faith, and restore the walls of their desecrated Jerusalem. Under the various names of Bulgarians, Cathari, Waldenses, and Albigenses, those exiles were the first founders of Protestantism. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries were the zenith of Catholic supremacy, yet at that period Germany gave a fatal blow to the temporal power of the popedom. The emperor Henry IV., in the twelfth century, had begun the quarrel, on the right of investing bishops, the first effects of which were to drive Gregory VII. into exile, where this mighty pontiff died. From the close of the thirteenth century the papal sovereignty over Europe sank rapidly, and was almost annihilated by the schism of Avignon. Subsequently, it regained a portion of former power, but the empire of Innocent and Boniface was ended forever.

The church educated disciples to see her faults, and supplied them with weapons as well as occasions for attack. There were reformers long before the "Reformation," like Arnold in Brescia, Waldo in France, John Huss at Constance, and Wickliff in England.

Every manuscript transcribed from the classics, and every Bible set free from the moles and the bats; every improvement in law, science, and art, together with each progressive invention, from the mariner's compass to the monk's gunpowder, was the forerunner and guaranty of even greater light and freedom than the reform of the sixteenth century saw realized.

The alleged infallibility and unchangeableness of the Roman church is necessarily self-destructive; since all systems, civil or ecclesiastical,[Pg 336] which are incapable of advancing with the tide of general improvement, must be swept away by its progress. Tenets and customs framed for times of barbarous ignorance, could not withstand the test of improved civilization and knowledge. It is said that the shadow is nowhere so dark as immediately under the lamp; and when the true light of Heaven is obscured, the vessel that bears it casts the darkest shade. When theology takes the place of piety, and dead creeds are substituted for living virtues, it should not occasion surprise if the symbols of religion are deified, and all other power is lost. The wisdom that is from above is not a formal confession, but a progressive principle imbued with vital truth; and when the church forgot the life, the truth vanished from the symbol, leaving the defunct relics of unspiritual knowledge. But this was not always so. Through long centuries of darkness and toil, religious teachers filled a real office, a thing not of silks and drawing-rooms, but of the translation of the Scriptures, preaching the gospel, and appearing at the martyr's stake when requisite. Then a bishop was a real genuine pastor, who had a flock and fed it; he was a leader of men, and lived up to the growing wants of mankind. In due time, the perversion of this office wrought its own cure. By engendering grievances, it generated complaints, which occasioned inquiries; and thus not only were certain unfounded claims discovered, but a radical change in the whole system was effected. It was felt that the ministers of the gospel, styling themselves the vicars of Christ, had too long been undoing his work. It was alleged that they withdrew his books, counterfeited his words, made their own opinion a law, enforcing it by fire and sword; that they intruded themselves into the secrets of the heart, and laid conscience asleep. They monopolized the eternal clemency, and set a price for the ransom of the soul, even beyond the limits of repentance; and reached the climax of perverseness when they sat in the Vatican, the rivals of kings in wealth and power, if not in crime.

It was at this crisis in mediæval religion, that, early in the sixteenth century, the Augustin monk Luther visited Rome to strengthen his faith, where he found incredulity seated on the tomb of the apostle Peter, and paganism revived in the chief seat of religious power. Julius II., with a helmet on his head, dreamed only[Pg 337] of battles; and the cardinals, ciceroneans in their language, were transformed into poets, diplomatists, and warriors. Leo X. succeeded, and by becoming a prince still more in the style of other princes, he ceased to be the representative of the Christian republic. But he soon heard from afar a clamor springing up beyond the Alps, and arising among barbarians. "A quarrel between monks," said Leo. Pericles despised the barbarians of Macedon, and perished. Augustus despised the barbarians of Scythia, and perished. Leo X. despised the barbarians of Germany, and while the young mind of that western world was in revolt, the glory of the popedom paled before the flames at Wittemberg, in which, amid shouting students, the propositions of Tetzel were burned.

We believe that the reformation must have taken place, and nearly at the same time and place, though neither a Tetzel nor a Luther had ever lived. The great correlatives which finally resulted in that outbreak and forward movement, were very far from being accidents; they were most providential and necessary phenomena in the course of the social development of civilized mankind. Luther was the mere cock-crowing of a day, for the advent of which innumerable heroes before him had labored and longed. The emancipation and enlargement of that age had a more powerful cause than either some casual incident, exasperated personal interests, or unmingled views of religious improvement. It was a new and vast struggle of the human mind to achieve its destiny; a new-born purpose to think and judge for itself, freely and independently, of facts and opinions which, until then, were imposed upon Europe by the coercion of unquestioned authority. It was the great primary insurrection of the popular heart and will against absolute spiritual power, and was chiefly brought about by the church itself. What is most to be regretted is, that the work then done was so incomplete, and that the perfection of that reformation has been so long delayed.

During all this brightening period, Florence remained the chief city whose beauty and power were coveted alike by Bourbons and the Medici. Leo X. loved her fondly; and the revolt of his native city was more painful to Clement VII. than even the downfall of Rome. And how eagerly did Paul III. seek to obtain footing in Florence! With a proud self-reliance young Duke Cosmo wrote: "The pope[Pg 338] who has succeeded in so many undertakings, has now no wish more eager than that of doing something in Florence as well; he would fain estrange this city from the emperor, but this is a hope that he shall carry with him into his grave." Yes, truly, many such like dukes, emperors, and popes, buried their petty jealousies and ambitions in loathsome clay, but the great and glorious God overruled all their schemings, and rendered them instrumental in urging forward the tide of improvement more broadly and swiftly to its goal. If Columbus, in opposition to the counsel of Martin Alonzo Pinzon, had continued to sail in a westerly direction, he would have fallen into the warm Gulf Stream, which would probably have borne him to Florida, and thence to Cape Hatteras and Virginia. That would have introduced a Catholic and Spanish population upon the soil of republican North America, instead of the English and Protestant colonists which were its more auspicious germs. The same infinite hand winnowed away the old European chaff through needful tempests, and wonderfully fitted the seed-wheat with which to sow this vast domain of untainted soil.

We have before alluded to the mission of Augustin, when, having come thousands of miles over Alps and sea to debarbarize our degraded ancestors, he landed on the eastern coast of England, and began a most successful career by baptizing Ethelbert, king of Kent, into the Christian faith. This was the first unarmed invasion of the British shore, yet a bannered host. A company of black-robed recluses from the ruins of the Cœlian hill, undertook the conquest of the remotest western isles then known, and marched bravely to the task, bearing before them, as Venerable Bede records, the image of our Redeemer, and his saving cross. Those same Benedictine brethren, with their successors, were the authors of nearly every thing great and good which was afterwards produced from Canterbury to Killarney, and from Iona's solitary retreat to the more magnificent shrines which glorified the rugged western coasts, and reflected with augmented charms the last beams of the setting sun. The literature, art, science, philosophy, and religion of England would now have but little to show, had it not been for the protracted and noble toil of the great religious orders, Franciscans and Dominicans, but especially those greatest of benefactors, the learned and industrious disciples of the earlier Benedict.

Tread through the ruined cloisters of Furness, or Fountains, or Tintern, and think not that when devotees retired from the strife, the passion, the whirl of the Maelstrom of life, the sounds of ambition and trade never penetrated hither. Alas, within these sacred inclosures passion and pomp reigned violently as in the nearest neighborhood to the throne, what day one brother rose to the cellararius, or a more talented aspirant was exalted to the abbacy. Memory coined her chronicles, and fancy wove her dreams then as now. The bustle of preparation preceded the expected knight, or baron, or prince who honored the monastery with his presence, and when the Lord Abbot returned from visiting the national parliament. Neither monotony nor dullness prevailed while the monks literally, as well as in a mental and religious sense, transformed the wilderness and noxious fens of England into a healthful and productive garden.

Thus redeemed and cultivated, of all portions of the eastern hemisphere England is the country of constitutional rights and religious freedom. It would seem as if that insulated corner of the world had been created and placed there as a nursery on purpose to receive from the mainland plants the most select to be eventually transferred to a yet more propitious soil. To this end conduced all the movements of the different nations which successively occupied that hardy territory. The conquest of the Normans, and the state of the country at the period of this conquest, about the middle of the eleventh century, together with the great events which succeeded it, conspired with an efficacy constantly increased to mature the colonists who were commissioned to plant in a new world the elements of liberty which had fortified and rocked their own cradle in the most vigorous clime. As in literature, art, science, and philosophy, so especially in religion does the great principle of independency run back most remotely with the English race. The best things that existed on the continent at the culmination of mediæval excellence were carried across the channel bodily by the Normans, and first among these was the disposition and power to resist papal domination. Guizot states that the pope had given his approval to William's enterprise, and had excommunicated Harold. Nevertheless, William boldly repulsed the pretensions of Gregory VII., and forbade his subjects to recognize any one as pope[Pg 340] until he had done so himself. The canons of every council were to be submitted to him for his sanction or rejection. No bull or letter of the pope might be published without the permission of the king. He protected his ministers and barons against excommunication. He subjected the clergy to feudal military service. And finally, during his reign, the ecclesiastical and civil courts, which had previously been commingled in the county courts, were separated. Thus, while in Italy and France the Roman populations possessed no institutions at all, in England Saxon institutions were never stifled by Norman institutions, but, associated with them, enlarged their scope, and liberated their action. All over the continent barbarism, feudalism, and absolute power held successful sway, derived either from Roman or ecclesiastical ideas; but in England, absolute power was never able to obtain a footing; oppression, temporal and spiritual, was frequently practiced in fact, but it was never established by law.

As the early Benedictines laid at the foot of the cross all the noble and graceful gifts which had been bestowed on them, not seeking popular applause, so the greatest of their successors, by the same Providence, were made subservient to the work of progress in general, and of religious improvement in particular. The lamp of divine truth was not suffered to be extinguished even in the darkest times. From the earliest, and through the deepest corruptions of Christianity, God has never left himself without a succession of witnesses. For example, Vigilantius, in the sixth century, vehemently remonstrated against relics, the invocation of saints, lighted candles in churches, celibacy, pilgrimages, prayers for the dead, and all the doubtful innovations which had crept into the church. Claudius, of Turin, called the first Protestant reformer, in the ninth century bore a noble testimony to the truth. Arnold of Brescia, Henry of Lausanne, and Peter of Brughes, successfully raised their voices against growing corruptions, and pleaded for reform. But freest, mightiest, and most salutary was the voice of England on this behalf. Thomas Bradwardine, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Greathead, the learned and fearless Bishop of Lincoln, and the noble Fitzrulf, Archbishop of Armagh, in the thirteenth century, caused their powerful lights to shine from the earliest and most exalted points. Still these were but the lesser lights, the casual out-breakings[Pg 341] of pent-up fires, precursors of the approaching morning and brilliant day.

But it was in that same western sky that the auspicious star arose, and Wickliff appeared. Thenceforth men became yet more guilty of thinking out of the beaten track, of questioning the arrogant claims of the priesthood, and of not only publishing to the world the living oracles of God, but also of teaching the people their right and duty to read them. The Scriptures were for the first time translated into English by the pastor at Lutterworth, and by his agency, mainly, was a foundation laid for the reform of Christendom. No sooner was this chief luminary violently eclipsed in England, than it began to shine with redoubled splendor on the continent, and the darkness which had so long gathered over the religious world was scattered. Queen Ann, the wife of Richard II., a native of Bohemia, having embraced the doctrines of Wickliff, caused the books of the reformer to be circulated in her paternal land. Huss and Jerome of Prague, by this means caught the fire of the English reformer, raised the banner of religious progress, and ceased not, till their lamp was extinguished in the blood of martyrdom, to devote their great learning and influence in defense of obscured truth. From the ashes of these sacrifices rose a light which shone throughout all Germany; and, like the flames which kindled on Latimer and Ridley, at that great source of the Lutheran reformation, Oxford, lighted a candle which, under the blessing of God, could never go out. A spirit of inquiry was roused not only in schools and universities, but among the nobility, and in the minds of the common people, not to be repressed. The foretokenings of rising day which resounded in Alpine glens, and along the valleys of Piedmont and Languedoc, long before broke from Lollard dungeons, and were echoed by the Huguenots. The same gracious God who, through the darkest centuries, kept alive the fire of true religion in the East, by means of the Nestorians, and in due time kindled it afresh in the hearts of the Waldenses of the West, from age to age, and from place to place, fitted a thousand minds for the accomplishment of his purposes. Councils, emperors, kings, philosophers, poets, the church herself, all in their turn contributed their influence, and hastened the result. It was written in the decrees of Heaven that the Bible should be the weapon by[Pg 342] which the principalities and powers of sin should be overcome, the strongholds of the adversary demolished, and from their high places in the sanctuary the unclean birds should be dislodged. But the regenerator of the living temple, destined to rebuild the sacred altar, and restore its fine gold, must first be set free from the blinding bondage of dead languages. Therefore arose the towering genius of Reuchlin, the teacher of the great Melancthon, and the masterly mind of Erasmus, the one to give Europe a translation of the Old Testament, and the other of the New; while both, with worthy compeers and successors, employed their profound and varied talents in defense of invincible truth. All the springs of intellectual action which were so palpably at work in the sixteenth century, are clearly traceable to the thirteenth, when the energies of the great West were elicited, and independent thought was first born. The German reformation was a necessary consequence of what preceded. Internal fires had long been burning, and the heaving earth must soon give them vent. Infinite wisdom saw that the grand eruption had better transpire in central Europe, and it is evident that the time had come for it to take place somewhere. Had not Luther led, it must ere long have been conducted by some other hand.

And here we should especially observe that Leo X., though in the management of general affairs a man of consummate skill, prompt, adroit, and energetic; yet, in reference to the storm arising beyond the Alps, seemed bereft of his accustomed policy, while they were endued with uncommon sagacity who were undermining his throne, and plucking from his crown its richest gems. The cardinals, his advisory council, appeared, in the language of Scripture, to have lost their hands, and were strangely blind; but Leo himself was most like the son of Balak, whose common sight was darkened, as much as the eyes of his mind were open, who, when he stood upon the commanding height, foresaw the advent of the Messiah, and foreknew the countless hosts of the spiritual Israel, yet pushed against the armed angel of the Lord more stupidly than the ass he bestrode.

When the reformation of the sixteenth century broke out, Catholicism, like Tithonus of the fable, had reached the last stage of decrepitude, without being permitted to die. The work of resuscitation[Pg 343] was greatly needed, and might have been much more thoroughly done. Religion, while she exults in every recent auxiliary to her cause, and is especially grateful for each searching trial that may have purged her holy flame, can not with ingratitude forget the papal domination which kept it burning through long centuries of obscurest gloom. The agency of Luther was a notable episode in progressive history, but nothing about it was either isolated or accidental. The aim of divine interference is clearly discernible through it all, and the means employed were as strongly marked, as they were manifestly fitted for the parts they performed. A regular system of conserving causes prepared for the crisis, by which, and in the results thus accruing, the sovereign design was sublimely exposed. As soon as the desired end had been accomplished, the whole system began to dissolve, and a new cycle succeeded, which was also in turn to have its end.

It was neither Romanism, nor Germanism, that was destined to mold the sacred institutions of a new world, not even the more republican Frenchism elaborated by the frigid dialectician at Geneva; but the gospel of Jesus, with all its blessed freedom, completely disenthralled from priestly dictation and arbitrary creeds. English independency was the true spark struck from the Eternal Rock; and when, like the post-diluvian altar of Noah, it burned on the heights of America's eastern coast, it was manifestly the will of Providence that with augmented might it should sweep westward to enlighten and redeem the world.

"Antiquity deserveth that reverence that men should make a stand thereupon, and discover what is the best way; but when the discovery is well taken, then to make progression."—Lord Bacon.

"The faith in the perpetual progression of human nature toward perfection—will, in some shape, always be the creed of virtue."—Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

"The Lutheran clergy have exhibited this spirit of priestcraft under their consistorial polity, and the Calvinist under their presbyterian form of government, as much as the Oriental, Roman, and Anglican bishops; it was manifested as much at Wittemberg, Geneva, and Dort, as at Jerusalem, Rome, and Canterbury."—Christian Charles Josias Bunsen.

"Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ."—Ephesians iv. 13.

The glory of the vegetable world is realized in the aloe, as from the single stately blossom which a century has matured it diffuses the balm and beauty of consummate life. And such seems to be the destiny of nations, to pour forth the accumulation of their ruling qualities, and then disappear. Greece blossomed, and Pericles was her central flower, proud, elegant, and voluptuous, "the Corinthian capital of society." Rome towered in a trunk of glory, and Augustus was revealed, grand and ambitious, bearing the imperial nest on high. Mediæval Europe blossomed around the garden of the Medici, and Leo X. would have been lost in the multitude of concomitant glories, literary, artistic, and chivalrous, had he not been supreme by virtue of both nature and office, even while the twin-flowers adorned opposite borders of the mighty field, Godfrey the captor of Rome and king of Jerusalem, and Richard of the lion-heart, smiting for England with the hammer hand. The old world having exhibited the preliminary exponents of an unbounded design, America produced a specimen bearing a superiority of majesty and duration of bloom commensurate with the protracted period of its growth, and the more glorious intention of its use.

Every successive epoch of civilization, with the correlative ideas on which it was founded, and from which it derived its peculiar aspect, after maintaining its ground with graduated lustre and[Pg 348] utility, has arrived at its inevitable period of decline and dissolution. But in ceasing, apparently, to grow and to imbue society with its beneficial influence, in exchanging an erect attitude for a prostrate one, no vital principle has undergone an entire extinction, so as actually to disappear, and leave no trace of its reproductive benefits. A portion of its vitality forever survives in the monuments which attest the reign of the power to which they owe their existence; and these are not only sufficient to prolong and sanctify its memory, but are in turn themselves the sources of yet ampler and nobler influence. For example, the Teutonic spirit, so long disciplined in Arctic regions, at the fall of the Roman empire was infused into degenerate races, and for eight centuries continued to press toward lower latitudes, everywhere disseminating hardy habits, pure ethics, and the deep sentiments of freedom. Italy received the Lombards; Spain, the Goths; Gaul, the Franks; while Britain in due time fell to the vigorous Saxons, and Norman superiority finally added the accumulated wealth of all. Diagonal forces are the strongest, and while human progress has from the first moved westward only, the great redeeming and ennobling power has always descended from the North. The skill that tames the war-horse, the courage that rules the wave, and the energy, honor, and perseverance best adapted to beautify a barbarous continent, germinated on the field of Hastings, and were transplanted hither at the moment of most auspicious growth.

From Pericles to Augustus, there was a rapid transition through Alexander, armed tyranny. From Augustus to Leo X. a protracted depreciation extended from the Apostles through monks and crusaders, armed superstition. From Leo to Washington transpired the great preliminary age of scientific discovery through the agency of Galileo, Columbus, and Guttenberg, heaven's luminary, ocean's guide, and earth's fulcrum of all power, the press, armed invention. From Washington onward, literature, art, science, philosophy, and religion, perfectly revived and divinely harmonized, will constitute armed freedom. The close of the mediæval period left universal intellect in revolt. The western rim of the old world was all on fire, and through the flooding light let us now scan the new realms beyond.

When the fourteenth century expired, there was no healthful[Pg 349] political organization extant, but in the fifteenth all Europe entered upon a grand system of centralization, as if expecting one general commonwealth. The sixteenth century was one of direct preparation; and the seventeenth, above all other epochs, was characterized by the establishment and extension of colonial empire. Preparatory to this, the choicest elements were driven into England by persecution, with the shuttle and the loom, the graver and the press. Drakes and Raleighs scattered armadas, and for the first time in human history, the great mass of the common people stood revealed. Settlements were made about the year 1606 by the French in Nova Scotia, and in 1608 in Canada. Cape Breton, and Placentia in Newfoundland, afterward attracted their attention, and a disastrous effort was made to gain a foothold in Florida. But voluntary emigration from France never existed, nor is it the fitting character to be perpetuated unmixed. Ambitious of wielding the sword, and not the spade, that martial people allied themselves with savages, and endeavored to seize on the whole vast territory north and west of the Ohio and Mississippi. Providence however, had in reserve a better element, destined to combine the whole continent in one great republic, while France has at present no prosperous colony in the eastern hemisphere, and scarcely a foot of ground upon the coveted western world.

It was on the eastern coast, and in English colonies alone, that the great foundations of the seventeenth century were laid. In 1607, the Cavalier element was planted at Jamestown, Virginia; and in 1620, the Roundheads landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts. But these are antagonists by nature. A little descendant of the one genus can not meet an equally diminutive specimen of the other without the imminent and instantaneous peril of a very small fight. But there is vis inertia enough in a Dutchman to regulate any thing; and therefore, in 1624, the island of Manhattan was bought of the Indians for twenty-four dollars. At that time, Holland was the greatest of maritime nations, and so God chose them appropriately to plant the city which is already the commercial metropolis of our continent, and which eventually may rank supreme on the globe. Other colonies followed, till the sifted wheat of the old world was sown all along the nearest coast of the new. Three years after the Puritans landed in Massachusetts, other Pilgrim[Pg 350] Fathers settled in New Hampshire, and Swedes united with Finlanders in procuring a tract of land near the falls of the Delaware. In 1633 the old feudal elements were colonized in Maryland, under the auspices of Lord Baltimore; and in 1635 Roger Williams moved from Massachusetts to found Rhode Island, unfurled the banner of civil and religious liberty in his city of Providence, and left "What-Cheer Rock" as the first goel of westward progress in America. At the revocation of the edict of Nantes, the best element of French society was persecuted in the Huguenots, and these fled to the wilds yet remoter from the original colonies. North Carolina was settled in 1628, and South Carolina in 1669. New Jersey, in 1664, opened an asylum to the Germans whom the sword of Louis XIV. drove from the Palatinate; and in 1682 the persecuted Quakers, embodying the peaceful element of English history, came to possess themselves and the fruits of their quiet industry beneath the oaks of Pennsylvania. If we glance beyond this great century of colonization, we see Georgia planted by General Oglethrope in 1733, which fact, in common with all the preceding, reminds us of the wonderful care manifested by the God of nations in selecting the primary germs of a new civilization, and in giving them their relative positions on the border of a predestined and immense domain. The birth of many pioneer Washingtons necessitated the services of one transcendent hero clearly authenticated as the chosen lieutenant of the Almighty. Liberty's great battle was fought and won. Soon the area of freedom became too narrow, and the danger of internal strife too great. The third President of the United States buys Louisiana. Why then? Because, on the Hudson, the steamboat is at the same time put afloat. The rightful possession of those great western waters gives us more available inland navigation than can elsewhere be found on the entire globe. The grand instrument of progress, therefore, like all other needful agencies, appears in the fitting time and place. The middle of the nineteenth century arrives, and great danger again threatens; when lo! far in the West rings out the cry, "Gold! gold!" Why then, and there? Because Americans, in general, and New Englanders, in particular, will go to the mouth of the cannon, or dare yet more fearful terrors, at any time for a dollar, and free States are speedily planted on the Pacific. It is no[Pg 351] longer pertinent for a little Northerner or a little Southerner to talk about dividing this Union; great Westerners spring to their feet in predominating millions, crying, "No, you shall not divide!" Simultaneously with the discovery of California, the keel of the first successful steamship was laid in New York, not to run to Havre or Liverpool, but to New Orleans—the first link in a stupendous chain of commerce, destined soon to carry and bring the choicest treasures of earth. The trade winds of God blow westward. The west end of nearly every great city in Europe and America is the growing end. Soon a guide-board, standing east of "Pilgrim Rock," will point over a great inland thoroughfare, saying, "To the Pacific direct;" and west of San Francisco, its counterpart will read, "To the Atlantic direct," while on each hand countless myriads will ennoble their toil with intelligence, and build the sublimest monuments of power with faculties the most free. As the rude archaic sculptures of Silenus were gradually refined into the perfected glories of the Parthenon, so all the vitalities successively developed and superseded through sixty centuries will become resuscitated and harmonized on this American continent.

From this general view let us descend to particular details, that we may enumerate sufficient facts to justify the conclusion just stated. The federal union of twelve cities in Etruria into one state, none of which possessed an absolute superiority over the other, and whose affairs were regulated by deputies from each city, and not by a king or any hereditary officer, constituted the most interesting institution of antiquity. Derived from Asia, and exclusively Pelasgic, it was the first form of republicanism that appeared in the history of the world, the masterly element which, infused into the constitution of the states of Greece, and afterward of Rome, gave rise to that political freedom which was the parent of all their greatness, and which has ever since grown increasingly favorable to the development of peaceful arts and social amelioration. Fortified and refined by the discipline of sixty centuries, the diversified elements of consummate power and progress were auspiciously blended in the thirteen original colonies of the United States. Every event down to the seventeenth century, especially in England, had contributed to render the fathers of our republic most happily adapted to their predestined work. During the seven centuries[Pg 352] which preceded this great era, our wretched and degraded ancestors became the most highly civilized people the world had ever seen. Macaulay says, "They have spread their dominion over every quarter of the globe—have scattered the seeds of mighty empires and republics over vast continents of which no dim intimation had ever reached Ptolemy or Strabo—have created a maritime power which would annihilate, in a quarter of an hour, the navies of Tyre, Athens, Carthage, Venice, and Genoa together—have carried the science of healing, the means of locomotion and correspondence, every mechanical art, every manufacture, every thing that promotes the convenience of life, to a perfection which our ancestors would have thought magical—have produced a literature abounding with works not inferior to the noblest which Greece has bequeathed to us—have discovered the laws which regulate the motions of the heavenly bodies—have speculated with exquisite subtlety on the operations of the human mind—have been the acknowledged leaders of the human race in the career of political improvement. The history of England is the history of this great change in the moral, intellectual, and physical state of the inhabitants of our own island. There is much amusing and instructive episodical matter; but this is the main action. To us, we will own, nothing is so interesting and delightful as to contemplate the steps by which the England of the Domesday Book—the England of the Curfew and the Forest Laws—the England of crusaders, monks, schoolmen, astrologers, serfs, outlaws—became the England which we know and love—the classic ground of liberty and philosophy, the school of all knowledge, the mart of all trade. The charter of Henry Beauclerc—the Great Charter—the first assembling of the House of Commons—the extinction of personal slavery—the separation from the See of Rome—the Petition of Right—the Habeas Corpus Act—the Revolution—the establishment of the liberty of unlicensed printing—the abolition of religious disabilities—the reform of the representative system—all these seem to us to be the successive stages of one great revolution; nor can we comprehend any one of these memorable events unless we look at it in connection with those which preceded, and with those which followed it. Each of those great and ever-memorable struggles—Saxon against Norman—Vilain against Lord—Protestant against[Pg 353] Papist—Roundhead against Cavalier—Dissenter against Churchman—Manchester against Old Sarum, was, in its own order and season, a struggle on the result of which were staked the dearest interests of the human race; and every man who in the contest which, in his time, divided our country, distinguished himself on the right side, is entitled to our gratitude and respect."

After the above summary, we need not stop to portray the steady progress made in the parent land toward efficient colonization through the agency of such men as Clarendon, Capel, and Falkland, Hampden and Hollis, Ireton, Lambert, and Cromwell, Ludlow, Harrington, and Milton. As soon as the English Commonwealth became the central point of European civilization, the focus where all the noblest powers of humanity concentrated themselves in a prodigious activity, the third continent began to be the luminous side of our planet, the full-grown flower of the terrestrial globe. Thenceforth North America became to all nations the land of the future. The fertility of its soil, and the favorableness of its position, the grandeur of its forms and the extent of its spaces, seem to have prepared it to become the abode of the vastest and most powerful association of men that ever existed. If the order of nature is a foreshadowing of that which is to be, certainly the physical aspects of this western world, as well as the historical facts which connect it with the East, are sublime intimations of the will of Providence. The germinal institutions so evolved and localized were new, like the soil whereon they were planted. The selectest specimens of whole peoples, clustered in homogeneous groups, took root and increased with a rapidity which soon enabled their adopted America to take her position face to face with Europe, not as a dependent minor, but as a full-aged daughter, independent and an equal, a fought-for and acknowledged right. The centre of the civilized world had again been removed to a remoter point in the West, and all the mental splendor of the East was brought over to illuminate the immense realms then first redeemed from barbarism both north and south.

From the rude early dialects of India arose the majestic Sanscrit, the copious and redundant mother of all oriental tongues. The Greek was the purest current from that remote source, and was simplified in its westward flow; and the Latin is a still more recently[Pg 354] simplified dialect of the Greek. The vernaculars of all modern nations are directly connected with the last mentioned sources, and have still further simplified the original principles. Of linguistic progress the English is a striking example, and may be placed at the head of all the languages of the world, as the most simple. It is the most recently perfected, and at the moment when its vigor was the greatest, and its wealth the most copious, the highest mental abilities coalesced with the noblest political principles and emigrated to America. Our colonial literature began at a period of the highest illumination, and was not unworthy of its foster-fathers Shakspeare and Spenser, Coke and Hooker, Hampden and Sydney, Bacon and Milton. In culminating excellence, Anglo-Saxon literature was transferred to this land in a body, at once; and never was a conception of greater magnitude or evolving more fertilizing effects, started in the vast arena of human progress. That era gave to history a soul and significance, by connecting it with the supreme Deity who anew gathered the divine breath that had swept over the ruins of empires, and with tornado energy dashed down the barriers in the way of man. The colonial period was signalized by a series of pitched battles between the progressive spirit of the seventeenth century and the old feudal ideas, which all the deadly blows of the preceding age had not sufficed to eradicate, and which then threatened to resume their former sway and predominance. Then came the revolution of seventy-six, a yet more potent preliminary to the great struggle destined to throw off the mountains of oppression which still crush the hearts of nations. The morning of this new day was radiant with a numerous galaxy of magnificent intellects. The ages of Pericles, Augustus, and Leo X. were consummated in the epoch of Cromwell, and all was but the vestibule direct to the grander age of Washington. Simultaneous with the advent of the latter, mighty leaders arose who were the personifications and ready agents of whatever appeared necessary to be thought, said, or done. Many of these perished in the struggle, but not their work; from necessitated ruin sprang superior grandeurs, and the general progress paused not needlessly to bemoan its heroes in their individual graves. When the time arrived for old limbs to descend, that new sap might more freely rise and circulate to renew national life and rejuvenate ideas,[Pg 355] many colonists in the wilds of America, like Tell amid the glaciers of Switzerland were ready to exclaim, Perish my name, if need be, but let Freedom live! Nor did they doubt the final issue, but devoutly believed that great revolutions, however involved their apparent orbits, like the stars, march in fixed cycles which perpetually tend to the perfection of the common weal. As great and good thoughts, the best gold of earth, are least destroyed when most dispersed, so colonial literature aimed perpetually to equalize all good and hinder none. Public spirit then was an exalted moral virtue, the direct reverse of selfishness, its end being the noblest to which our faculties are capable of aspiring, the welfare of the whole human race. No people ever possessed this in richer abundance than the first writers among our colonists, and the fruits thereof were increasingly conspicuous during their efforts to lay the foundations of that vast temple of liberty they came to rear. Each little community of patriots were almost equally expert with the axe, the sword, and the pen, possessing a brave fortitude which could emulate the magnanimity of the Roman senate, who, though stunned by an unexpected and overwhelming blow, had the spirit to go forth to meet the unfortunate Varro and thank him, because he still had hopes of his country. Not a few of our literary pioneers exemplified the patriotic energy of the individual, who, when Hannibal was encamped at the gates of Rome, went into the market-place, and bought, "at no cheap rate," the ground on which the conqueror's tent was standing. Such especially was the spirit of him who was wiser than the prudent Fabius, greater and better than the great and good Aristides, the unprecedented hero who gave his name to the happy age in which we live.

From 1578 to 1704, under Elizabeth, James the First, Charles the First, the Long Parliament, Cromwell, Charles the Second, James the Second, William the Third, and Queen Anne, the charters of several of the colonies were in succession recognized, contested, restrained or enlarged, lost and regained, which long-continued struggle vigorously exercised and matured all the leading minds. From this and other kindred literary causes resulted the master spirits who achieved national independence and founded the republic. Among these stood Franklin, Adams, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, Jay, Henry, Mason, Greene, Knox, Morris, Pinckney,[Pg 356] Clinton, Trumbull, and Rutledge. Perhaps the world never saw a national convention wherein the average of mental power rose higher than in the one which held its first session in Philadelphia, on the 14th of May, 1787, with Washington in the chair. Between that date and the 17th of September following, the Constitution of the United States was formed; and on the 30th of April, 1789, at the very moment when the Constituent Assembly was commencing its session in Paris, the first President of the republic took his oath.

The original cultivators of our virgin soil not only set out with a complete body of ancestral literature, and examples of the highest cultivation derived from anterior nations, but they diligently improved upon what they had received. It was necessary that the first published documents should partake largely of politics; but the mental strength and elaborate excellence of these resolute endeavors excited the wonder and admiration of the chief veterans of the world. In these writings they saw clearly defined and fully inaugurated the glorious age of universal amelioration. It began in the general revolt of the Dutch in Holland, about 1576, resulting in the Republic of the Seven United Provinces; was continued by the edict of Nantes, in 1589, passed by Henry IV. of France; and, in the old world, culminated, through the agency of the Long Parliament of 1641 and 1642, in the English revolution of 1688. Starting at the goal where all previous eras of reform paused in a grand consummation, the American revolution, which dates from 1775, has moved irresistibly forward with a liberating and ennobling influence often seen and felt beyond its own immediate sphere. The French revolution of 1798, which overturned religious and political feudalism on the continent, and the revolutions of the Spanish American provinces in the year 1810, together with the revolutions of 1830 and 1848, which so materially modified the remains of despotism in France, Germany, Prussia, Italy, and Austria, are but offshoots of this great central tree of freedom whose continually-spreading might and beauty shall ultimately protect and refresh the human race.

The first great contributors to our national literature had the ambition and ability to catch the departed spirit of obsolete forms and embody it in new and nobler shapes. In the place of superseded[Pg 357] institutions, they substituted such original ones as would mold, vitalize, and impel the existing mass of plastic character, and thus do for the passing and prospective age what the old in their day did for the past. Evil from its nature is akin to death, but all goodness is immortal; and it is the latter which Providence mercifully accumulates along the path of progress, the precious inheritance bequeathed to us by the heroes of humanity, to ameliorate the condition of survivors, and inspire eternal hope. It is fated that freedom can never be asserted without desperate literary strife, nor be fully established until it is cemented in patriotic blood; that it can only be won and perpetuated by those who feel in their own energies the means of asserting it against all odds, and will obtain the invaluable boon at any rate. The emancipation and elevation of the American colonies into a republic was in heroical letters as well as arms the great primary monument of our land. The pages not less than the speeches of great leaders were successive flashes of divine eloquence, such as never before shone over the vanguard of mankind. We can not wonder that comrades in purpose and pursuit gathered in closer admiration, and were thrilled under the power of their lofty genius. They might incur martyrdom, but never sank in despair; nor has a drop of such blood been wasted, since blood ransomed the earth.

The Mayflower brought no pre-eminently distinguished man, but what was better, a written constitution which defined and fortified the united greatness of confederated fellow pioneers. The Pilgrim Fathers, equally exalted by the oneness of their purpose, stood on a sublime level which the cumulative labors of six thousand years had cast up; a social grandeur which was best represented by that cluster of kindred institutions, the family, school, and church, they came thereon to plant. When these elements had been extended westward to the remotest available point, and were liberalized by an expansion over the widest diameter, the freest pen expressed the most perfect equality, indicating a yet loftier terrace which it will probably require a long period fully to reach. At that time a fresh cluster of great men had risen so far in advance of the common mass, that it was only a minority who at first dared to adopt the views of more enlightened minds; and even in the assembly of illustrious prophets themselves, it was only by a majority of one, at[Pg 358] first, that the Declaration of Independence was carried. But unlike the old barons at Runnymede, our republican champions could all sign their full names to the new Magna Charta, and were ready, at the greatest hazards, to authenticate the birth and prerogatives of Young America. Never was so mighty an instrument executed by so youthful hands. Of the fifty-five signers, eight had passed fifty years, but were under sixty; twenty-two had reached forty; seventeen were thirty, and two were but twenty-seven years old. Had there been fewer young men at that eventful crisis, it is probable that Jefferson's daring patriotism would have been repudiated, and his sagacious purchase of Louisiana, with all the literary and commercial facilities consequent thereupon, together with all the preliminary advancement toward that great centre of national domain, would have been disastrously postponed.

But, no! Thanks to an overruling Providence, the seasons, agents, and instrumentalities appropriately appear and ultimately conduce to the one great end, beneficent amelioration perpetually increased. All great minds are thus rendered cotemporaneous, and are naturalized among us in the highest sense. Machiavelli, Montesquieu, and Bacon, Molière, Cervantes, and Shakspeare, touch the springs of emotion and sway mental energies on the banks of the Hudson, the Ohio, or the Missouri, as on the banks of the Guadalquiver, the Seine, or the Avon. National literature is no longer limited to its fatherland, whether a contracted island or fragmentary continent, but spreads in a language more comprehensive than that of ancient Greece or Rome, and exhibits full development on the immensity of an entire hemisphere. Mutual pledges are rapidly increased between all literary producers, and their reciprocal labors promise soon to establish a grand brotherhood cast in the mighty mold of the largest liberty, and combined to realize the divine conception which rose in the majestic mind of Milton, of "that lasting fame and perpetuity of praise which God and good men have consented shall be the reward of those whose published labors advanced the good of mankind."

The Puritan colonies were from the beginning pre-eminent in the cause of education. In 1636, steps were taken toward the foundation of a college at Newtown, since called Cambridge, in honor of the English university. Two years later, this purpose was[Pg 359] confirmed by the bequest of John Harvard, who gave the new institution a sum of money and a valuable library. The first printing-press in America was set up in Harvard, in the President's house, in 1639. The literary and moral training of all children and youth was regarded as most important, and Massachusetts, as early as 1647, required by law that every township which had fifty householders should have a school-house and employ a teacher, and such as had one thousand freeholders should have a grammar-school. From that time forward the subject of education has received increasing attention, especially in the new western States. Michigan has a public fund for this purpose which yields $30,000 annually, a sum fully equal to that of the oldest commonwealth; and the like fund in Wisconsin yields more than three times that amount, per annum. The last States that are organized begin with the highest improvements extant in the first, and thus carry forward this supreme agent of civilization in advance of all the rest. Since the opening of the present century, colleges in New England have been increased from seven to fourteen; in the Middle States, from six to twenty-two; in the Southern States, from nine to thirty-seven; and in the Western States, from three to forty-seven.

The first newspaper in this country was the "Boston News-Letter," commenced in 1704; followed by the "Boston Gazette," in 1719, and the "American Weekly Mercury," at Philadelphia, in the same year. The "New York Gazette" first appeared in 1725. A half century later, there were but thirty-seven public journals in all the colonies, and these were regarded favorably by both low and high, with a few exceptions. Governor Berkley, of Virginia, in 1675, said: "I thank God that we have no free schools nor printing-presses, and I hope that we shall not have any for a hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libeled governments. God keep us from both!" Lord Effingham, of the same colony, in 1683, was ordered "to allow no person to use a printing-press on any occasion whatever."

We need not attempt to estimate how immense is the periodical literature of the United States at present, embracing the newspapers, and the monthly and quarterly magazines and reviews. There is no department of art in our country in which greater progress[Pg 360] has been made during the last thirty years than in that of printing; and while the entire number of copies struck off, annually, must be many millions, much the larger proportion is produced for, if not by, the free West.

The first original books in America were written in New England, and there the chief seat of literary influence has heretofore remained. But it is easy to perceive that a great change has already taken place; and yet easier is it to predict that when, instead of aping foreign models, we come to have a literature really national, its perfection, like all its best materials, will be found in the great West. A magnificent field for intellect, in all its inventive and constructive shapes, is manifestly opening in nearer proximity to the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific shore. As material treasures, long buried, are now from that remote quarter sent forth to enrich the world, so will an infinitely more useful superabundance of intellect be poured thence by and by to enlighten and redeem the effete continents beyond.

The East has always guarded the literary elements of a productive age, while the appropriate field of their culture was preparing, and then has yielded the contracted measure of seed to be scattered and gathered in harvests of immensely augmented worth. A literature which expresses our native peculiarities, and adequately represents American character and deeds, does not yet exist, and this is as much an occasion for gratitude, as it is easy to be explained. Our primary mission was to realize the idea of a perfect Commonwealth which had stirred the greatest minds of every age from Plato to Roger Williams. All history has been but the record of human strivings after a better, higher, and more perfect social state, the inauguration of the age of reason and righteousness in the true sense of those much abused words. Therefore an original political literature, harmonious with the new position which progressive humanity had assumed away from arbitrary conventionalities, was to be our first success; and, to the wondering admiration of all Europe, that has already been achieved. Starting from great and genuine principles, laid down by Milton, Hampden, and Sidney, our fathers erected a governmental model the most perfect on earth. That, however, was no provincial creation, but the first grand national monument, which fortunately through successive generations,[Pg 361] claimed the best energies of all leading minds. Nothing but a direct struggle for freedom of person and thought could emancipate the common intellect from feudal associations, hereditary errors, and crippling conventionalities. That triumph attained, and the prolific descendants of the victors amalgamated in yet more ardent endeavors on a broader and more tranquil arena, its correlative, the creation of a national fabric purely literary, may be confidently anticipated. This, too, will not be an aggregate of ancient provincialisms, but an original homogeneous mass of American, continental mind, enriched from a thousand genuine sources of local sentiments. The newest States are in thought the freest and most original, which will cause the whole country to individualize itself more and more. The gigantic movement of independent intellect toward the West every hour deepens the contrast between itself and the petty insipidities it leaves behind. The East has, indeed, given the key-note to most of our popular thinking, but the West has invariably furnished the chief chorus, and spontaneously extemporized every variation whose brilliant originality has elicited thrilling applause. New England has been most prolific of authors, but the best of them write away from the narrow hearth of their nativity, or on foreign themes. Books are beginning to be imbued with a national spirit, as characteristic as are our institutions; and the world will probably not have to wait long, before the purely literary productions of America will be assigned a place equally exalted with the masterpieces of our political science.

The best histories of European literatures, and the sweetest legendary songs, echoing the reminiscences of the faded past, have been recently produced in Massachusetts. It was appropriate that the most attractive portraiture of Columbus and his Companions should be given to the world from the "Sunny Side" of the Hudson; and the gifted historian of our Republic could hardly write with adequate breadth and force except under the expansive influence of this mighty metropolis. But how will the poet sing, the critic discriminate, and the annalist indite, when centuries shall have developed the resources of a hemisphere, and gathered a galaxy of its brightest luminaries in central skies to pour their combined effulgence from sea to sea and from pole to pole!

Of course, literary excellence is as yet but very imperfectly[Pg 362] attained in the West, but all present auspices are clearly indicative of prospective worth. As in volcanic eruptions, the deepest and firmest strata shoot to the apex of the fiery cone, so in self-impelled emigrations the best material goes first and farthest. The greater the remove, the more disenthralled the mind, and the more copious of observation, as well as profounder the depths of reflection, which will have been brought into view by the transit. All past literatures contributed to lay a deep and broad foundation for our own; and every historic incident of public life with us, more than in any other nation, is closely related to the essential nature and social improvement of mankind. Literary excellence has never moved eastward a furlong since thought began. On the contrary, the course of mental exaltation and aggrandizement is in exactly the opposite direction. Every body instinctively says "down East" and "out West," since it is felt to be a universal rule that only in moving in the latter direction is the largest liberty enjoyed. Years ago we defined a westerner as being "a Yankee expanded, a New Englander enlarged;" and it is ultimately from that stock, refined and ennobled, through the inspiration of the majestic West, that our best national literature will originate.

The literal invasion of savage forests, which is indispensable to the expansion of our republican domain, has given a designation to another great element of popular education peculiar to our land. The stump, not less than the steam engine, has become the means of disseminating knowledge, and of breaking down the influence of both local dictation and caucus caballing. It is as true as it may appear strange, that American eloquence has thus become most analogous to Athenian, and the orator is made the successful rival even of the press. Not a little of moral sublimity is presented by a great Presidential canvass, and it is difficult to estimate the amount of valuable information on such occasions diffused. The best talents of the country traverse the whole nation, even the most inaccessible regions, like Peter the Hermit, that they may everywhere arouse the public mind, excite and feed its power of thought. On such occasions the remark of Lord Brougham is always verified, that the speaker who lowers his composition in order to accommodate himself to the habits and tastes of the multitude, will find that he commits a grievous mistake. Our promiscuous assemblies[Pg 363] are highly intelligent, and, on account of the interest they take in public affairs, they are the most susceptible of improvement. They most relish the logical statement of profound principles which they are sagacious to comprehend, and zealous to re-discuss. It is in this way that Bunkum speeches sent to millions of readers, and innumerable lectures delivered nightly on all sorts of subjects to throngs in country and town, are made doubly profitable in the habits of reading and reasoning which they elicit and confirm. Nothing in the past will compare with the prodigious excitement which precedes popular elections in America, and the general calm which immediately follows. It is a sublime process of universal education, the best adapted to perfect and perpetuate the free institutions in the bosom of which it had its birth. Having inquired into the origin of representative government, Montesquieu declared that "this noble system was first found in the woods of Germany." It has ever improved in exact proportion as it has removed from its original source, and the masses last gathered to its embrace seem to be most rapidly and thoroughly transformed by its worth. Enlightened and heroical, they repudiate the aristocratic system, according to which a person is born to a position of sovereignty merely because he has been born into a privileged class; and firmly cling to the democratic rule, wherein an individual is born to a position of sovereignty by the simple fact that he is born human. Of all earth's institutions, the American Republic stands supreme, as being the first open university of this doctrine; and we have the best reasons to believe that mankind, without exception, will yet become its happy and honored alumni.

George Berkeley and Roger Williams were both educated at Christ Church College, Oxford. How great is the contrast between the traditional conservatism of mediæval universities as they exist in old England at the present day, and the literary spirit so free and progressive in young America. The greatest boast of the former is that they remain just where Wykeham, Waynfleet, and Wolsey left them, and that they have neither advanced nor changed the system of education since they were founded. We have before alluded to the fact, that it was the zeal of commoners and not the munificence of kings which almost wholly created both universities; and when those great institutions, designed for the general[Pg 364] good, were perverted into the hot-beds of regal pride and aristocratic exclusiveness, their chief power was at an end. Oxford and Cambridge were influential on the popular mind only so far as they were the exponents and promoters of its intelligence. Since they have declined further to co-operate in this, they possess little value save as venerable monuments of the past, retreats wherein the great pioneers of the age of Washington were trained. In addition to Berkeley and Williams, they fostered the republican spirit of Milton, the illustrious bard and patriot who chanted the high praises of liberty in his Defenses of the People of England, in his Apology for the Liberty of the Press, and in his Causes of the Reformation in England. How glorious to behold him emerging from "those dark ages wherein the huge overshadowing train of error had almost swept all the stars out of the firmament of the church;" warning his countrymen "that unless their liberty be of a kind such as arms can neither procure nor take away, which alone is the fruit of piety, justice, temperance, and unadulterated virtue; they may only be seen to pass through the fire to perish in the smoke;" pleading for "a book as containing a progeny of life in it, active as that soul whose progeny it is, and preserving as in a vial the purest extraction of the living intellect which bred it;" reminding his countrymen "that they might as well almost kill a man as kill a good book, because who kills a man, kills a reasonable creature, God's image, but who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God as it were in the eye." Of a kindred spirit was Algernon Sidney to whom we owe those great and eloquent Discourses which our fathers studied as the first complete definition and exegesis of the nature and duties of government; so full of brave and noble sentences, forever setting the indignant foot on the divine rights of kings; and asserting that "He that oppugns the public liberty overthrows his own, and is guilty of the most brutish of all follies, while he arrogates to himself that which he denies to all men," and maintaining throughout the essential monarchy of the people. In due time followed the magnificent Burke, amid whose stormy invectives against the excesses of freedom, are many rich and profound truths. Nor less useful to the cause of literary and political progress was his great rival, the critic, jurist, and reformer, Mackintosh, who prophesied the downfall of spiritual[Pg 365] power before the close of the nineteenth century, and was always the jealous defender of popular rights.

Cotemporaneous with these latter heroes in literature, and extending with enhanced splendor of inspiration and effects to our own day, what a magnificent series of mental producers has this republic reared and enjoyed! It is prophetic of a yet loftier and more glorious improvement, that when ennobling truths have once been announced, they can never be thrown back into obscurity or indifference; but must spread through the world, to become a portion of the intellectual atmosphere of nations, and give tone and temper to all rising minds. Great thinkers are chosen to lead the world forward, until, not for possessions but virtues, not for his trappings but for himself, man is respected, and the rights of a common humanity are everywhere enjoyed.

We believe that the destiny of humanity is accomplished, not by revolving in a circle, but by a spiral ascent, and that a free literature is its brightest precursor and accompaniment. Mental liberty must be regarded as an operative cause the most powerful in the redemption of every suffering class. Its champions, though they perish, are the world's martyrs. Hearts everywhere beat quicker when their names are mentioned, the scenes of their heroism are perpetually hallowed, and their memory becomes a universal religion. When the Bastile fell, the source of their beneficent might was remembered by the victors, who sent the huge key to Mount Vernon. We may be assured that when all nations shall have been regenerated through governments which shall exist by and for the people—when liberty shall have so far brought dignity of character and excellence in literature, as to lead the masses to ask. "Where are the powers which wrought this great and glorious change?" Heaven and earth shall reply, "Among those powers—yea, foremost in its energetic and comprehensive efficacy was the inspired pen, not less than the victorious sword, of the American Revolution."

The main stream of the historic nations, with their progressive literature, has always flowed toward the north-west. The original start of this world-wide migration was long anterior to the times when the soil of Europe was trodden by Greeks, Romans, Sclavonians, Germans, or Celts. But however remote was the first impulse,[Pg 366] the irresistible spell has only deepened with its advancement, and in our day sends the same Japhetic tribes to settle on western prairies, or explore the regions of gold beyond. Intestine wars, which constituted the chief barrier to general progress, are most commonly excited by difference of races. But under our national banner all active elements, even the most opposite, are gathering and becoming rapidly fused into each other, so as to form one homogeneous and luminous whole. Civilization is contagious, and of all sovereigns Liberty is most pacific toward her admirers. Identity of language is a mighty auxiliary to elevating equality, and the subjugation of this continent to the sway of our native literature will present the most magnificent trophy that ever signalized the triumph of civilization. That this will eventually be accomplished by literary Americans, whose sphere of thought will be as central as it will be both elevated and comprehensive, ought not for a moment to be doubted. Thus far we have produced only a border literature, narrow as the place of its birth, and frigid like the clime. But when an adequate field shall have been cleared near the centre of our domain, wherein intellect may extend an unfettered grasp, and leisure is attained for elaborate composition, remote from foreign models and independent of petty criticism, then the world will see realized a literature commensurate with the vastness of the western republic, and rich enough to endow all her children with more than eastern wealth.

Coincident with the planting of the last English colony in America, Leibnitz came forward at Berlin with his comparative philosophy of language, and was the first successful classifier of the tongues then known. The next step of advancement in this fundamental path of literature was taken in England, in 1751, by John Harris, who, in his "Hermes," laid the foundation of grammatical philosophy on the largest scale. It is a significant fact that the third prominent step in the same direction should be taken by an American, whose great national work on the Indian tribes was, on the 3d of March, 1847, authorized by Congress to be published, by special act. Not to anticipate our review of science in this age, we may simply remark that another national publication, that of Squier on the ancient monuments in the Mississippi valley, has excited the most lively interest throughout the archæological world,[Pg 367] and recently won its richest medal. In reference to the above-mentioned work by Doctor Schoolcraft, Doctor Bunsen says: "In 1850, the first volume of that gigantic work appeared, and now a third volume, printed in 1853, has been transmitted to me by the liberality of that government. It may fairly be said that, by this great national and Christian undertaking, which realizes the aspirations of President Jefferson, and carries out to their full extent the labors and efforts of a Secretary of State, the Honorable Albert Gallatin, the government of the United States has done more for the antiquities and language of a foreign race than any European government has hitherto done for the language of their ancestors."

In the mental, not less than in the material world, this one rule universally obtains, that, the higher the nature, and the more important the influence of a given effect, the more deliberate is its march toward perfectibility and development. If our literature is yet as youthful as it has been slow, it has at least furnished abundant indications that a great original career has actually begun, and under auspices which promise the most brilliant success. Both in men and animals a mixture of races differing from each other, but not too far differenced, is a circumstance which tends most to the improvement of the species; and in the history of letters, all that is greatest and best has been accomplished by the most mixed races of mankind. Diversified currents of free thought, as gigantic as the rivers which reflect our central mountains, and irrigate the immensity of their intervales, are pouring from the Atlantic toward the Pacific shores. On their way, they will mingle and blend in an amalgam deeper, broader, and richer than the preceding world ever saw. As of old, the elegance of the Asiatic will be sustained by the vigor of the Dorian, while each lends the other that quality without which neither could well succeed, but by which multifarious co-operation, an aggregate of consummate worth will be attained.

With reference to a worthy national literature, we are drifting in a right direction; and whatever others may fear in consequence of quitting antiquated channels and familiar scenes, we have good reasons for indulging in sanguine hope. All past experience suggests the expansion of our westward chart, and promises the richest discoveries the bolder we venture forth. No nation can be debased[Pg 368] through an excess of wealth, luxury, and power, so long as a harmony is maintained between its institutions and the progress of untrammeled opinion. Political life, as well as moral, is but a series of regenerations; and that nation which has longest braved the severest storms, where the winds are comparatively free, has grown stronger in the tumult than in the calm, and now possesses the greatest energy of youth in those who are most rebellious against antique wrongs. We began with this juvenile energy, and are maturing its best strength on the fruits of all anterior struggles. Former heroes, in their blind madness, may have pulled down the temple of ancient civilization on their shoulders, and buried themselves beneath its ruins; but there is a resurrection vouchsafed to all immortal life, and its mightiest manifestations of every type are renewed on our shores. If this continent has longest lain fallow, it is that the resuscitated energies of redeemed humanity may produce their mightiest fruits thereon.

Wonderful works, produced in distant regions and at various times, reduplicate their latent productiveness as they proceed from age to age, creating an interminable progeny of ideas, and attesting the vitality of genius evermore. This is the true transmigrator, traversing all eras, and maintaining a prolific life amid every variety of vicissitude, kindred to the Great Intelligence, by whose mandate respecting human destinies, as in material things, all concomitants may be changed, but nothing of utility is to be destroyed. What would have been the present moral condition of the world if the Hebrew poetry had never been translated; if the revival of the study of the Greek literature had never taken place; if Raphael and Michael Angelo had never been born; if Dantè, Petrarch, Boccacio, Chaucer, Shakspeare, Calderon, Lord Bacon, and Milton had never existed; if no monuments of ancient art had been handed down to us; and if the poetry of the ancient religion had been extinguished with its belief? But by the intervention of these and other like excitements, the human mind has been awakened to the inventions of modern science, and the creation of recent literatures, which transcend in actual worth all the masterpieces of ancient times. Hereby is the continuity of society, its progress and civilization secured. Many a noble head and heart are dust, but every ennobling thought emanating thence, however long ago, is now[Pg 369] alive, and will forever be. Each drop blends with that great wave of progress, the movement of the entire ocean of mind, which is commensurate with the magnitude of the mass to be moved. In due time, the final result of almighty love will be joyfully realized. All noble growths are gradual, and that beneficent power which is destined to become superior over every other, moves with a slowness the most sublime in controlling subordinate ministrations to human weal. Divine logic will not be less conclusive on account of the multitude of its cumulative data, or the deliberateness of its deductions therefrom. As Guizot suggests, Providence moves through time as the gods of Homer through space—it takes a step, and ages have rolled away!

History ever tends to authenticate the fact that there is a general civilization of the whole human race, and a destiny to be accomplished through a prescribed course, in which each nation transmits to its successors the wealth of every superseded age, thus contributing to an aggregated store which is to be perpetually augmented for the common good. This is the noblest as well as most interesting view to be taken of progressive humanity, as it comprehends every other, and furnishes the only true interpretation. In regard to depth of feeling and diversity of ideas, modern literature is infinitely more profound and affluent than that of the ancients. It may not be more perfect in form, but it greatly excels in practicalness, and moral worth. It is in this variety of elements, and the sublime identity of purpose manifested in their constant struggle, that the essential superiority of our civilization consists. The proof of this has been presented in all the vast assemblage of facts which human annals have preserved. These connect causes with their effects, thus constituting events which, when they are once consummated, form the immortal portion of history, and are to be studied as the soul of the past, the groundwork of present improvement, and a secure guaranty of still greater excellence in the future. A yearning after generalization, as the basis of improved literary and spiritual progress, is the noblest and most powerful of all our intellectual desires; and it is a very great privilege to be born in an age and country where this aspiration may with the most rational zeal be indulged.

Literature is not only associated legitimately with all that is[Pg 370] great and dignified in the manifestations of human power, but, in our age, it also assumes the most solemn if not the most sublime of characters. Some are bold to teach, like Fichte, that there is a Divine Idea pervading the visible universe, which visible universe is but its symbol and personification, animated by the principle of vitality. To discern and grasp this, to live wholly in it, is the privilege and vocation of virtue, knowledge, freedom; and the end, therefore, of all intellectual efforts in every age. Literary men are the interpreters of this latent enigma, a perpetual priesthood, standing forth, generation after generation, as the dispensers and living types of God's everlasting wisdom, commissioned to make it manifest, to reveal and embody it by successive fragments in their works. Each age, by its inherent tendencies, is different from every other age, and demands a different manifestation of the eternal purpose. Hence every laborer in the vineyard of letters must be thoroughly imbued with the spirit of his age if he would be permanently useful; while he who is not thus inspired, soon becomes a mere groper in the dark, both benighted and impotent. This view explains the true civilizing principle of literature, and expands it so as to embrace all things human and divine. It is not only the expression of society, but also its very life and soul, and may either be a powerful instrument for creation and regeneration, or a fatal one for destruction. There is a reciprocal influence between an age and the books it engenders, as there is between the lettered spirit and its living use. The heroic grandeur of Greece inspired Homer; but it was from Homer that its civilization sprang. The first epic then garnered into itself all antecedent history, and opened a channel wherein succeeding generations might inherit all that bygone efforts and innovations had produced. Great and revered models of subsequent nations have since been grafted upon the original stock of literary worth, from which must surely result both prose and poetical monuments of a comprehensive unity and force commensurate with the age reserved for their transcendent excellence.

As we best prepare a people for a high Christianity by beginning to preach to it at once, so we can not otherwise fit nations to enjoy liberty than by directly inculcating among them its worth, through the medium of a free literature; and it is certain that of[Pg 371] all nations belonging to the progressive family, Americans are best prepared for this mission, since they have most desired and insisted upon it since the birth of the republic. As the Greeks were more fitted for the fine arts than the Romans, and the latter were mightier in arms than the Mediævals whom Providence sent forth as the missionaries of a renewed advancement, when the restoration of learning prepared the way for still greater achievements, so is it the manifest destiny of the age of Washington to diffuse in wider and deeper profusion the most humanizing blessings, and thus to conduct instrumentally to that perfection of civilization for which earth and man were designed.

In considering the condition and prospects of art in the present age, let us, as heretofore, glance at the several departments of architecture, sculpture, and painting, consecutively, according to their natural order and relative merits.

Archæology is at present achieving for prospective art just what geology is contributing to the progress of natural science. Crumbling relics and fossil impressions are everywhere exhumed, classified and published for the purpose of ascertaining our true relation to historical art and progressive civilization. From this source more copious materials are derived, and a surer as well as better means than language affords for solving the greatest of social problems, since there is more authentic history built into the walls of the Egyptian temples, or those of Greece, or the cathedrals of the mediæval West, than exists in all the chronicles that ever were written. The successive masterpieces of monumental art are unaltered cotemporary records which, in the age of Washington, are becoming easily read, and most lucidly translated into the universal language of mankind. The buildings and subordinate artistic productions of each historic people tell their own tale, and can never be entirely falsified by time or the blunders of copyists; but remain as left by their originators, with the undying impress of their aspirations, or their vagaries, stamped in characters of adamant.

Alexander, the great transition-servitor of Providence in the earlier ages of progress, had been prompted to visit the temples of Ammon, by the tradition that they had been visited by his ancestor, Perseus, in his expedition against Medusa, and Hercules, after the victory of Busiris. Differently inspired, but for the same final end, the great Corsican, born out of Europe, and eager to impel the car[Pg 373] of empire even beyond his native island-home, signalized his destiny when he reached the same meeting-place of the obsolete and progressive nations, exclaiming, "Soldiers! from the summit of yonder pyramids forty centuries behold you." The pilgrim, the crusader, and the Hadgi, had successively brought back from those remote regions some degree of that veneration which is connected with hazards undergone from religious impulses. But with his savans round him, and all France quickened by an impulse from America into a higher life, Napoleon's campaign in the land of Ham, first in the history of our race, was the glorious conquest of arts as well as of arms. The Pyramids, like the shrines of Ammon, were temples; and they had been the immemorial centre of art and science. The secrets of all the natural knowledge, the high historic memories, and the mystic rites, of the ancient land of wisdom, seemed to be there still, hidden in those profound treasuries of rock, which neither time, conquest, nor curiosity, had been able to penetrate. But what was then accomplished deserves especial regard and gratitude. Connoisseurs of recondite skill and acute discrimination, led by their sagacious champion, penetrated to the profoundest chamber, wherein, some three thousand years before, some Pharaoh had been interred, and thence gleaned the richest store of antique memorials to be preserved and interpreted in other climes. The only army on earth who could endure the fatigues of such an enterprise were employed to collect the needed materials of advancing civilization; and then another providential act, equally significant, bore those treasures to London and not to Paris. All the oldest and most enduring worth is rapidly concentrating in the youngest and most progressive race. When we come to speak of sculptural art, and of its relation to the amelioration of universal mind, we shall more particularly refer to the wonderful manner in which "the Rosetta stone" came into English hands.

Under the same roof which protects the Egyptian antiquities in the British Museum, are the Elgin Marbles, those glorious fragments of Athens and the Parthenon. Their greatness of manner is far more imposing than any mere bulk and extent; and more original skill and science, more artistic talent is displayed in those mutilated models alone, than in all other classical remains extant. Subsequent creations are the branches only, but the Parthenon is[Pg 374] the root from which their broad and beautiful characteristics are undoubtedly derived. It is indeed strange that, although the architecture of Rome sprung from that of Greece, and all modern styles were derived, through Rome, from the same source, never until our day was discovered the most striking peculiarity of Grecian design. It was reserved for an English architect, Mr. F.C. Penrose, to demonstrate the mathematical and optical principles on which, apparently, the whole art was founded. The Parthenon taught him the brilliant truth that there is not a straight line in the building; and there is good reason to believe that such is the rule with respect to other important Greek structures. Mathematical curves, accurately calculated, were made to correct the disagreeable effect which a perfect straight line has to a practiced eye; but the delicate taste which thus carried classicalism to the highest pitch of refinement, remained in abeyance until the dawn of an age in which monumental art will first revive all previous excellences, and then excel what it supersedes.

Not only has this age opened with an unprecedented acquaintance with Egyptian art treasures, and a more accurate knowledge of the architectural monuments of Greece, but we also enjoy the advantage of other great external aids, such as the excavation of the buried cities skirting Vesuvius, and the unexpectedly rich discovery of Etruscan tombs. As the fitting concomitant of these startling revelations, the great mind of Winckleman was prepared to give a luminous interpretation thereof; and correlative attempts were made by other masters to treat art historically and philosophically in the presence of innumerable pupils zealous in antiquarian research. Referring to the destruction of Herculaneum and Pompeii, Goethe remarks: "Many a calamity has befallen the world ere now, yet none like this, replete with instruction and delight for remote generations." No graphic power can convey to a stranger an adequate idea of the affluence of objects intensely interesting connected with these cities so long buried, and recently disinterred. Successive streets of plebeian homes, but pillared and sculptured as if they were the abodes of patricians, intersecting the radiant confusion of theatres and temples, imbue the visitor with that blended sense of beauty defying decay, of hoary antiquity, and of thrilling domestic incident, which can be felt only amid the solemn[Pg 375] stillness of the excavated city. The baptism of fire here became, in the highest degree conservative. It filled up with its train the gap of eighteen centuries, and has made "the trivial fond records" which the prints of hurried footsteps and trembling figures imply, immortal in the marl which hardened over them, and has left them as touching as if they told the fate of some ancient friends. Here we have the ancients as they lived, with many of their houses adorned with the wonderful efforts of Greek genius, skillfully copied by Roman art. We look at them, astonished and enraptured at the gorgeous pomp, and at the luxurious richness of which the East has ever been so proud. The superb collection of varied art which has so recently been rescued from the ruined city, opens to our age a new school of study, and most strikingly exemplifies the progressive changes which befell art from Pericles to Augustus, from eastern Greece to western Italy.

Still more startling are the developments recently made at Nineveh. Like a second Pompeii, it has revealed the secrets of the inner life of a people, the scene of whose existence had long been forgotten. One of the fairest and most celebrated cities of the earth, and the capital of a mighty empire, its very site was for centuries unknown, and its name had become a by-word among nations. Buried beneath the ruins of its own greatness, the sun no longer shone on its colossal walls, its palaces and its temples. The wandering Arab and the enlightened European, alike ignorant of the treasures beneath their feet, rode over the plain beneath which lay buried the pride of Asshur and all the glories of the magnificent Semiramis. That which Jonah describes as "an exceeding great city of three days' journey," and Diodorus Siculus tells us was sixty miles in circuit; that which had once been the centre of civilization, and the scene of the utmost barbaric splendor, had sunk in awful silence and desolation. The change in the general aspect of the region, and the total disappearance of the mighty metropolis and its records, were perfectly appalling, until one English scholar wandered there to discover the strange monuments, and another fitting co-operative, Rawlinson, was raised up to read them. No one appears to have explored the ruins of Nineveh from about six hundred years before Christ, when it was taken by Cyaxares, to the day when Layard displayed its subterranean mysteries to a wondering[Pg 376] world. During this long lapse of centuries, empires had risen and been swept away, and two new creeds, Christianity and Mohammedanism, had spread over the earth, when slowly and sublimely rising from their colossal tomb, came forth the winged forms of fearful majesty, and were borne to the remote West on the bosom of that mightier civilization behind which they had lingered so long.

The best specimens of original art in every successive monumental style are thus collected in London, and form the finest illustration of consecutive development; but at the same time old England is the least original in her new buildings. The greatest wonder in the three kingdoms at the present day is a monster of talent, and not a model of genius, a huge inclosure of iron and glass, without a single new molding or other feature of recent invention. But what deserves particular notice is the fact, that within that vast non-architectural structure is the finest, and probably the first, chronological exemplification of all the great national styles of preceding times. Like most modern buildings, these specimen-forms are executed in unsubstantial materials, disguised so as to represent precious and praiseworthy works. The Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Alhambra, Mediæval, Renaissance, Pompeian, and Nineveh courts, show at a glance what affluence of architectural invention in past ages existed in the East, and how debased became all attempts in this department of art in western Europe before American colonization began. It would seem as if heaven designed that nothing of marked character should be imported to interfere with early tendencies toward originality in this new artistic sphere, and that afterward all select reminiscences of the old world should be wafted toward us as fast as indigenous taste and power might arise to require their support and assimilate their worth.

The Virginia colony transferred with but little change the degraded cruciform type of sacred architecture common to the mother church of that day, and which decayed utterly with her enforced spiritual dominion. The primitive churches, such as those at Jamestown, Hampton, and Petersburg, are the most picturesque and complete ruins in the United States. The Puritans, on the contrary, built in a manner astutely original, and their rectangular ugliness remaineth unto this day. The early buildings of New England, and in the Middle States, both civic and sacred, unsymmetrical and[Pg 377] uncouth as they may appear, have yet an air of originality and strength which will greatly tend to perpetuate the characteristic hardihood of their origin. Greek and Roman temples in small, and miniature cathedrals of mediæval design, executed in heterogeneous materials and with excruciating anomalies, are springing up in every ambitious town. But the most of these are insipid, hollow, and contemptible shams, compared with the plain and truthful, though unartistic edifices which our earnest fathers built. As soon as the passion for paltry imitation shall have exhausted its inanity, we shall see a rugged germ of originality spring from that stock, which will grow into a worthy type of American monumental art.

Several indications already justify this hope. In the first place, in all the great works which require the blending of inventive genius with constructive skill, and which are made flexile as well as firm in their adaptation to novel emergencies and the most available use, our countrymen have no superiors on earth. Our engineering works and national fabrics of every sort are confessedly unexcelled. Structures of popular taste and public utility, such as stores, banks, hotels, and ships, are universally acknowledged to be the finest extant. When our people in general, and architects in particular, shall have given equal thought and zeal to the perfection of religious art suited to our climate and customs, still greater success will doubtless be attained.

It is well known that the Greeks invented the most beautiful order of architecture, called Corinthian, at the period of Periclean decline. The exquisite little memorial of Lysicrates was their only perfected specimen, the proportions of which were never enlarged in the clime of their first bloom. A corrupted Roman modification has often been repeated, but not till the age of Washington, and nearly on the very spot where Liberty first proclaimed her complete emancipation, did an architect conceive the purpose of recasting those perfectly beautiful outlines on a colossal scale. Since Pericles and his age perished, earth has seen no fairer fabric, both as to its material form and artistic soul, than Girard college presents. Compare the Madeleine of Paris, and St. George's Hall at Liverpool, two cotemporaneous masterpieces, nearest to the same order, and most lauded by their respective nations, if you would estimate the actual progress we have made in monumental art. There is more[Pg 378] pure Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian architecture executed in marble and now adorning Philadelphia alone, than can be found in Paris and London combined, or in any other three cities of either France or England.

The new House of Parliament now building in Westminster has already cost an enormous sum, and is profusely decorated on the interior and exterior with a great variety of graphic and sculptured art. But one familiar with the palatial and ecclesiastical architecture of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, will search in vain for the first original feature in the whole conglomerated pile. We, too, are building a new Capitol, and how do the two edifices compare as to intrinsic monumental worth? All nations wove native vegetation into their mural and columnar creations down to the middle of the fifteenth century of the Christian era, when all architectural invention manifestly ceased. Thenceforth shields of arms, sheets of armor, and shreds of fiddles or yet emptier fantasies usurped the entablature, darkened casements, and cumbered over-burdened shafts. Hence in the palace of Lords and Commons on the border of the Thames, if amid ten thousand vestiges of feudal fierceness and heraldic insignia, we look for structural adornments fashioned after a leaf, or flower, or tuft of foliage peculiar to the England of to-day, not one can be found. But when the original home of our national legislation was restored near the Potomac, the chief colonnade was surmounted by a new cap, bearing in graceful curve and foliation the clustered wealth of our primitive staple, corn. Since then other indications of native resources have been added; and the architect who is now serving his country and the cause of progressive art so well, boldly lays our entire domain of vegetable glories under contribution to enhance the beauty and characterize the purpose of his marble halls. When completed according to the present design, American architecture, sculpture, and painting, will therein coalesce in consummate excellence to signalize an advance in native art commensurate with the immensity of our republican domains.

Another favorable symptom among us is, that the people themselves, and leading minds in particular, are becoming more inspired with a taste for noble art. This is indispensable to the production of great and worthy national monuments. Had Pericles, and[Pg 379] Augustus, and Leo X. not been as familiar with the principles and usefulness of art as any of those that were around them, and had not the artists of their day not been gentlemen in feeling and accomplishments, the monumental arts of their respective ages would never have risen to the elevation with which they are marked. As soon as our countrymen are once thoroughly convinced of the direction in which the true future of the arts lies, the grandest victory will already have been more than half gained. They will then become thoroughly convinced how utterly unworthy of this country and age were the arts both of the ancient Pagans and those of the middle ages; and producers will not help feeling the degradation inherent in their present servile copying. Men of a higher class of intellect, emancipated from hereditary conventionalism, will devote a more earnest search after excellence, and will find it in the greatest purity and profusion, not where it has so long been sought, but in some new and loftier sphere, where the virgin ore is still concealed in its original matrix. This, however, is not to be rapidly attained. To accomplish any thing really great requires centuries of years and myriads of progressive steps. Unartistic millionaires will cease to inhabit absurd houses, or worship in sham temples, as soon as the mass of the people who long since rebelled against tyrannical and absurd laws, shall come to be as appreciative of architectural improvement as they are sagacious and patriotic to promote popular rights. No longer content to fill new States with dried specimens of old civilizations, a generation is about to appear who will cease erecting edifices which are mere monuments of servile ignorance, and will assure posterity that they dared to think for themselves, and had an art of their own. Not one source of pure and lofty inspiration ever existed which does not now exist; on the contrary, many are now extant which former ages had no suspicion of, and it is painful to see them unused for the noble purposes they were given to promote, substituted as they are by mockeries and absurdities which degrade the office of art, and lead the public to suppose that it is an empty bauble, fit only to pander to the grossest sensuality.

True art is not a thing merely to be copied and bartered at such and such a price, but to be studied with affectionate disinterestedness, with reference to the future creation of new styles and higher[Pg 380] classes of beauty, and anterior to the sixteenth century artists wrought constantly upon this principle. Then architecture and its correlative arts were cultivated with a single motive and for only one purpose, that of producing the best possible building with the best possible materials that could be commanded, and without ever looking back on preceding works, except to learn how to avoid their defects and excel their beauties. It was an earnest progressive struggle toward perfection, which, after the stormy period requisite to the founding of our free institutions, we must resume and complete in the more tranquil realm of ennobling art. First learning all that has been done, we are to start from that highest point to surpass it; this has been the process executed by all progressive races, and hence their success. Well might Greece exult in the result of her great battle for freedom; well might each separate state pride itself on the share it had borne in the common struggle, and well might she tax monumental art to give the loftiest expression to her triumphant joy. Kindled with a deep and universal enthusiasm, art was then the reflex of victory, as it is now its noblest monument, and such may it increasingly become in America!

Sculpture, the severest of artistic creations, has already achieved a grand success in our western world. Early success and present proficiency guaranty future excellence of the highest order in this department of the liberal arts. Horatio Greenough of Boston was the first of our countrymen who won a wide reputation in sculpture, and has left works which justify the exalted encomiums he so zealously earned. Hiram Powers soon followed in this serene sphere of genius, and having journeyed unknown from the bosom of the Green Mountains to the "Queen City of the West," he began an artistic career on the banks of the Ohio which has since for many years brightened the fairest glories that gleam in the mirror of the Arno. Clevenger, that noble and magnificent son of the West, was quickened into a generous emulation by Powers, as the latter had been fostered by the kindness of Greenough, and soon the three were harmoniously working together in Florence. Two prime luminaries have been withdrawn from that brilliant constellation to shine in a brighter firmament, but others of not less promise have been added to the sublunary galaxy in rapid succession, so that our sculpturesque school is now second to none extant.

The State which gave birth to our oldest living sculptor abounds more copiously in fine marble than Italy itself; and the statuary, as well as the architect, will yet derive thence the material of his grandest works. The far West is equally rich in the components of bronze, and the more precious metals. At the moment of the present writing, a native artist is erecting in the centre of this city an equestrian statue of Washington of colossal size, which was cast in Massachusetts with a completeness and perfection, it is said, unattainable at any foundry in Europe. It was fitting that the first great leader in this department of national renown should execute his masterpieces for the republic and its metropolis, and that his worthy successors should now be adorning the capitals of the remotest parent colonies with masterly memorials in both marble and bronze. Patriotic hearts can not but be thrilled in observing how in every section of our country spacious studios are devoted to high art, whence busts, portrait-statues, and original groups are elicited by constantly-increased patronage, to adorn private mansions and ennoble the popular taste. Clevenger, when an humble apprentice to a stone-mason in Cincinnati, made his first attempt at sculpture by the light of a midnight moon over the bas-relief of a tombstone; and the first full-length monumental figure cut for "Mount Auburn" was executed by an adventurer in Boston, whom we first knew as a poor country blacksmith, but who is now an eminent and wealthy sculptor. The old world has no cemeteries which in natural beauty and adaptedness to artificial adornment can compare with our own, and these rural cities of the dead will soon become grand repositories of living art. Already is this foreshadowed at Greenwood, around the granite pedestal whereon the yet more enduring majesty of De Witt Clinton looks abroad on the fleeting grandeurs of earth, ocean, and sky. Niches and arcades are opened in all public buildings of recent erection, and good sculpture is rapidly becoming an exquisite delight to the American mind.

So long as the aim of the sculptor is only to advance step by step toward the ideal of perfect beauty, no age can ever excel that of Pericles. The limited powers of mortals are incapable of advancing further in that direction than paganism attained in giving to corporeal charms a material expression. But the age of Washington[Pg 382] is called to embody intellectual beauty, invested with such feelings as the highest class of Christian development will admit of, and this will enable the modern artist to reach a far higher point of excellence than has yet been attained. The same subsidiary vehicle must be employed to convey a more exalted class of expression, but a nobler aim is opened to the consecrated aspirant, and superlative excellence in sculpture must be the result. Of their kind, the Apollo Belvidere and the Venus de' Medici will ever stand without rivals; but they do not belong to the highest class of art, for the Venus has no more mind than the Greeks usually ascribed to women; and the Apollo, though the noblest animal ever created, is no more in the realm of intellect than "a young Mohawk." Sculpture is not always to remain only an unmeaning transcript of an extinct system of art, but must advance beyond the expression of mere corporeal beauty. What is now most wanted for this, as for all kindred arts, is the power of expressing the loftiest order of intellect, blended with the most refined sensibility which either the heart of sculptured genius can conceive or its hand execute. We believe that capacities adequate to the accomplishment of this consummate end will yet be developed in America, and are convinced that their happy exercise will lead to triumphs of art higher than ever the Grecians, in their hour of most magnificent exaltation, dreamed of. The fine arts of the ancients were only necessary results of their general system, and of the objects they sought through every channel and in every thought; as our ships and engines are not things apart from our commerce or manufactures, but only great facts resulting from them as exponents the most exact. But in due time Americans will elaborate beauty out of the practical arts as earnestly as they now look for profit in them, and then will the world witness the coalescence of the human and divine in sculptured worth the most complete.

Painting was the first fine art cultivated in America, and has never ceased to advance. When George Berkeley came to this country with the benevolent purpose of opening a university for the education of the aborigines, he included the arts of design in his system of education. No founder of schools in the old world ever thought of that. Berkeley had traveled in Italy with a Scotch artist, John Smybert, and chose him to be professor of architecture,[Pg 383] drawing, and painting in his projected institution. There is at Yale College a large picture which represents Berkeley and some of his family, together with the artist himself, on their first landing in America, which is supposed to be the first picture of more than a single figure ever painted on our shores.

Berkeley's general scheme was abandoned from necessity, but Smybert settled in Boston, where he married and died. The latter event occurred in 1751, when his pupil, Copley, was but thirteen years old. Trumbull retired from the army, and resumed painting in Boston, in 1777, surrounded by Copley's works, and in the room which had been built for Smybert. Thus was the path of progress opened and increasingly glorified, the greatest of New England colorists, Allston, having first caught the reflection of Vandyke in Smybert. All the best portraits which remain of eminent divines and magistrates of the eastern States and New York, who lived between 1725 and 1751, are from the pencil of this founder of pictorial art in America.

In his "History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States," William Dunlap commemorates more than four hundred and thirty painters who have contributed to the establishment of an American school of art. It is really wonderful that so much artistic merit should have been matured in the midst of difficulties incident to the civilization of a barbarous continent. But Sir Walter Scott, in recommending a work of American genius to Maria Edgeworth, sagaciously accounted for the phenomenon by saying, "That people once possessed of a three-legged stool, soon contrive to make an easy-chair." In allusion to this anecdote, our first great sculptor, Greenough, remarks, "Humble as the phrase is, we here perceive an expectation on his part, that the energies now exercised in laying the foundations of a mighty empire, would, in due time, rear the stately columns of civilization, and crown the edifice with the entablature of letters and of arts. Remembering that one leg of the American stool was planted in Maine, a second in Florida, and the third at the base of the Rocky Mountains, he could scarce expect that the chair would become an easy one in half a century. It is true, that before the Declaration of Independence, Copley had in Boston formed a style of portrait which filled Sir Joshua Reynolds with astonishment; and that West, breaking[Pg 384] through the bar of Quaker prohibition, and conquering the prejudice against a provincial aspirant, had taken a high rank in the highest walk of art in London. Stuart, Trumbull, Allston, Morse, Leslie, and Newton, followed in quick succession, while Vanderlyn won golden opinions at Rome, and bore away high honors at Paris. So far were the citizens of the republic from showing a want of capacity for art, that we may safely affirm the bent of their genius was rather peculiarly in that direction, since the first burins of Europe were employed in the service of the American pencil before Irving had written, and while Cooper was yet a child. That England, with these facts before her, should have accused us of obtuseness in regard to art, and that we should have pleaded guilty to the charge, furnishes the strongest proof of her disposition to underrate our intellectual powers, and of our own ultra docility and want of self-reliance."

No Walhalla can be made to start suddenly from a republican soil; but we firmly believe that our free institutions are more favorable to a natural, healthful growth of art, than any hot-bed culture under the auspices of aristocrats or kings. Monuments, statues, and pictures which represent what the people love and wish for are rapidly multiplied, and this popular appreciation of high art needs only to be guided by salutary examples to become mighty and prolific beyond any preceding age.

No country ever existed where the development and growth of an artist was more free, healthful, and happy, than it is in these United States. Independence of character is essential to all eminent success, and that is here necessitated by every law of life. Like Alexander, when he embarked for Asia; Cæsar, when he leaped the Rubicon; Phidias, when he adorned the Parthenon; Michael Angelo, when he painted the Capella Sistina; Raphael, when he entered the Vatican; Napoleon, when he invaded Italy; and Columbus, when he sailed for America; the aspirant after exalted art-excellence in our land, must depend mainly on his own genius, and find in that his best patron and reward.

The whole world of ancient art is moving toward this great western theatre of its finest and sublimest development. The continental cities contain a few magnificent collections, but the artistic wealth stored in the many private mansions of the British islands[Pg 385] transcends all eastern lands. Waagen's four large volumes are not sufficient to enumerate the "Art Treasures in Great Britain." These are more secluded than the public galleries of Rome, Naples, Florence, and Paris, but they are not inferior in respect to particular specimens, and are vastly more diversified in general interest. On English soil we may study the graphic, as well as sculptural and monumental history of all authentic eras, with the assurance that as the mental worth we contemplate is removed, it will probably advance still further west. Not a great sale of literary or artistic collections occurs in Europe, when a strong competition is not ventured upon by Americans. We believe that this country will yet possess the chief treasures of England, as that mighty nation has heretofore gathered to herself the choicest productions of anterior times. Giotto's portrait of Dantè in the Chapel of the Palazzo del Podesta, at Florence, was rescued from under a thick coat of whitewash by our countryman, R.H. Wilde; and the young university at Rochester, N.Y., bought the superb library of Neander entire. Restore and reform is the standing order of the day. Palaces are emptied of useless princes and unproductive aristocrats, in order that remains of antiquity and paragons of beauty may find refuge therein, under the protection of the populace who crowd with reverent enthusiasm to their contemplation. Thus are the common people becoming the true conservators of ancient worth, and the most liberal promoters of modern improvement. At this moment the manufacturers in western England buy more fine pictures, and lend a wiser as well as richer support to art than all the personal patronage in the realm beside, the sovereign included.

Every new enactment of the hereditary few is a fresh concession to the popular demand for free access to whatever is beautiful or sublime. Since Charles I., each great institution, the British Museum for example, has been indebted to a private individual for its origin. The common heart therein reads an impressive commentary on all progress, and is ennobled in its joy. Egypt, Assyria, Greece, ancient Rome, and modern Italy, disinterred and intelligently arranged, pass under the simultaneous view of the masses, and every expression of tint, form, and spirit becomes a fresh element of knowledge, a lever by which is set in motion a vast fabric of creative wonder. Thus the sciences and arts unite in a delightful[Pg 386] combination for the good of humanity, and nothing gives so much lustre to a nation as their perfection.

The cultivation of the fine arts greatly contributes to the respect, character, and dignity of every government by which they have been encouraged, and are intimately connected with every thing valuable in national influence. In contemplating the permanent glory to which so small a republic as Athens rose, by the genius and energy of her citizens, exerted in this direction, it is impossible to overlook how transient the memory and fame of extended empires and mighty conquerors are, compared with those who have rendered inconsiderable states eminent, and who have immortalized their own names by these pursuits. Free governments alone afford a soil suitable to the production of native talent, to the full maturing of the human mind, and to the growth of every species of excellence. Therefore no country can be better adapted than our own to afford a final abode for the best specimens of the old world as models to the new, that by these we may first learn to emulate, and ultimately be enabled to excel them.

We are yet a young people, engrossed with all the distracting cares and toils incident to the primary subjugation of a virgin continent. And yet, perhaps nowhere else are the masses more eager to enjoy beautiful art. Private collections are rapidly multiplying, numerous exhibitions are profusely visited, and public monuments are munificently sustained. At a late meeting of the Royal Academy in London, at which the ministers were present, the premier, Lord Aberdeen, said that "as a fact full of hope he remarked that for several years the public, in the appreciation of art, had outstripped the government and the parliament itself." But in the United States the masses, who in this age are everywhere rising in intelligent supremacy, most directly control the resources of their respective States; and we may soon expect to see diversified types of American art produced which will be commensurate with the matchless charms of our climate, the varied richness of our raw materials, and the grandeur of our national domain.

The best writers on art that ever lived are now enriching our language with the most splendid contributions to a new and nobler order of æsthetical criticism. Not only are such works appreciated with great avidity by the common mind of our land, but the[Pg 387] numerous art-students from America, whose studios are leading attractions in every foreign metropolis, receive the newest light with least prejudice, and profit by progressive principles with most triumphant success.

The more occidental the stage of human development, and the later the period of its existence, the more scope and capital there will be for the exercise of genius. The last national picture executed for the Rotunda at Washington was by a native artist born beyond the Ohio; and the moving panorama, the most original and instructive, if not the most refined species of art belonging to this age in all the world, was invented by an American, amid the wild splendors of the upper Mississippi. In regions yet beyond, Jubal with the chorded shell, and Tubal-Cain, smelting metals and refining pigments for the use of man, will direct those who congregate in cities, and turn the discoveries of reason, with the embellishments of art to the widest and most ennobling public good. We have every reason to believe that as our nationality shall require an artistic expression, local genius will never be wanting to give it an adequate expression; and that the sublime productions of the West will ultimately be appealed to as the finest test of the supreme rank we shall come to hold among the nations of earth.

The swallow travels, and the bee builds now, as these creatures of instinct traveled and built in the days of Moses and Job; but the capabilities and acquisitions of rational man are all progressive, not only, as an individual from infancy to age, but as a species from the beginning to the end of time. This is shown, by every art which man has invented, and in every science he has employed. Let us proceed to open up more specifically this illustrative department of our general theme, and consider the threefold advantages, political, mechanical, and educational which the age of Washington permits us to enjoy.

The science of government as practiced in this country, is undoubtedly constructed on the loftiest principles of common sense, and constitutes the best model and most salutary protection to each subordinate department of productive thought. Here, the division of labor has been carried to the greatest extent, not only in the deliberative but in the executive departments; and progress is steadily pursued, without attempting to anticipate results either by springing forward after crude theories, or backward in attempts to copy extinct forms. Our view of liberty differs essentially from that held by the ancients. By the latter citizenship was regarded as the highest phase of humanity, and man, as a political being, could rise no higher than to membership in a state; therefore it was that Aristotle affirmed the state to be before the individual. But with us the state, and consequently the citizenship only affords the means of obtaining still higher objects, the fullest possible development of human faculties both in this world and in that which is to come.

The science of freedom, which is destined to spread its irresistible empire over this continent, started its primary germ in the bosom[Pg 389] of our antipodes. Long before the words people, law, equality, independence, and equitable legislation had found a place in refined languages, republicanism glowed in the mind of Moses, and was partially embodied in the Hebrew commonwealth. The safeguard of all races as they were propagated, and the ennobler of all thoughts as they were colonized, this blessing of blessings has ever migrated with advancing humanity from age to age, till at length a fitting field has been attained for its fullest and most fruitful development.

Heeren well observes that Greece may be considered as "a sample paper of free commonwealths." But even that renowned land never saw her people enjoy their just rights; nor was such an exalted privilege realized by the nations of continental Europe, until the great principle of popular consent was recognized as the foundation of righteous authority. The crusades broke down feudalism, and elective monarchies grew increasingly representative of the popular will, up to the transition period, when James II. was hurled from his tyrannical throne, and William of Orange became the people's king. All the best political science of the old world went with the latter, from the comparatively free Netherlands, to ameliorate England, and foster her colonies in America. The essence of the great revolution of 1688 was eminently pacific and progressive, occasioning no sacking of towns nor shedding of blood. According to Macaulay, it announced that the strife between the popular element and the despotic element in the government, which had lasted so long, and been so prolific in seditions, rebellions, plots, battles, sieges, impeachments, proscriptions, and judicial murders, was at an end; and that the former, having at length fairly triumphed over the latter, was thenceforth to be permitted freely to develop itself, and become predominant in the English polity.

In tracing kindred paths of human progress, we have constantly had occasion to note how the affairs of all consecutive ages, though produced immediately by the voluntary agency of diversified actors, have, nevertheless, been controlled by the divine counsel, and contributed to execute the perfected unity of the divine plan. How great and manifold were the purposes which Providence comprehended in the discovery of America, and the peculiar colonies planted on its shores, we need not attempt to portray. But it is[Pg 390] impossible to doubt that prominent among these were improvements in the science of government, the evolution of new theories of civil polity, and a grander application of such principles as had already been made known.

As a new world was about to be civilized, and required the highest measure of free intelligence, Bacon, Harrington, Sidney, Milton, Locke, Grotius, Puffendorf, and Montesquieu, arose to pour successive shafts of light upon the new but sombre skies. Parental injustice and colonial strife for a while darkened earth and heaven; but in due time the sun of American freedom ascended with auspicious splendor, when the mists of prejudice were dispersed, and the fresh revelations of a new political science appeared like some glorious landscape amid clear shining after rain. All the brightest beamings of antecedent light fell concentrated in that ray which illumined the cabin of the Mayflower, and kindled the fairest beacon of freedom on the eastern extremity of our continent. It was an effulgence given to be thenceforth diffused westward evermore, often buffeted, indeed, by adverse elements, but never impeded in its predominating progress, and much less diminished or obscured.

Before the pilgrim fathers disembarked, on the 11th of November, 1620, off Cape Cod, they drew up and subscribed a formal social compact, from which is the following extract: "We, whose names are under-written * * * * do, by these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God, and of one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic, * * * * and by virtue hereof, to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony; unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. In witness whereof we have hereunder subscribed our names." To this remarkable document were appended the names of all the male adults on board the ship; the whole number of both sexes being a hundred and one, who took possession of a desert island, where day now first dawns on the sublimest republic of earth.

According to an eastern fable, the world is a harp. Its strings are earth, air, fire, flood, life, death, and wind. At certain intervals, an angel, flying through the heavens, strikes the harp. Its vibrations[Pg 391] are those mighty issues of good and evil, the great epochs which mark the destiny of our race. In allusion to this, E.C. Wines remarks: "The mystic harp was touched when the pilgrims set foot on Plymouth Rock. Its quivering strings discoursed their most eloquent music. The burden of the notes was, human freedom; human brotherhood; human rights; the sovereignty of the people; the supremacy of law over will; the divine right of man to govern himself. The strain is still prolonged in vibrations of ever-widening circuit. That was an era of eras. Its influence, vitalized by the American Union, is fast becoming paramount throughout the civilized world. Europe feels it at this very moment to her utmost extremities, in every sense, in every fibre, in every pulsation of her convulsed and struggling energies.

"The great birth of that era is practical liberty; liberty based on the principles of the Gospel; liberty fashioned into symmetry and beauty and strength by the molding power of Christianity; liberty which 'places sovereignty in the hands of the people, and then sends them to the Bible, that they may learn how to wear the crown.' And what a birth! Already is the infant grown into a giant. Liberty, as it exists among us, that is, secured by constitutional guaranties, impregnated with Gospel principles, and freed from alliance with royalty, has raised this country from colonial bondage and insignificance to the rank of a leading power among the governments of earth.

"The union of these States under one government, effected by our national Constitution, has given to America a career unparalleled, in all the annals of time, for rapidity and brilliancy. Her three millions of people have swelled, in little more than half a century, to twenty-five millions. Her one million square miles have expanded into nearly four millions. Her thirteen States have grown into thirty-one. Her navigation and commerce rival those of the oldest and most commercial nations. Her keels vex all waters. Her maritime means and maritime power are seen on all seas and oceans, lakes and rivers. Her inventive genius has given to the world the two greatest achievements of human ingenuity, in the steamboat and the electric telegraph. Two thousand steamers ply her waters; twenty thousand miles of magnetic wires form a net-work over her soil. The growth of her cities is more like[Pg 392] magic than reality. New York has doubled its population in ten years. The man is yet living who felled the first tree, and reared the first log-cabin, on the site of Cincinnati. Now that city contains one hundred and fifty thousand souls. It is larger than the ancient and venerable city of Bristol, in England."

Thus the founders of our national compact have proved themselves the unsurpassed adepts in political science. They unquestionably belonged to that select number, of whom Bolingbroke said that it has pleased the author of nature to mingle them, from time to time, at distant intervals, among the societies of men, to maintain the moral system of the universe at an elevated point. Nor shall we find less variety of profound invention, or less popular advantages derived from practical applications in the realm of American mechanical science, than in the primary one of civic excellence just considered.

The labors of cotemporaries generally are in harmony with the epoch; and in America especially do they all tend to promote that ultimate destiny which promises to be much better as well as greater than the past sufferings, commotions, and hopes of mankind. The westering career of inventive genius reminds one of Milton's hero marching through the dark abyss to discover fairer realms beyond. Though assailed by feelings of discouragement, and fantastic apparitions rise before him, still he persistingly rises from the dark depths, to set his foot on the gigantic bridge that leads from gloom to brightness, and sees at length the pendant new world hanging in a golden chain, fast by the empyreal heaven, "with opal towers and battlements adorned of living sapphire."

Modern science has produced a splendid mass of evidence as to the growing power and capacity of the human mind; of its independence, freedom, and ability to direct its own movements; of resisting the influences of external agents, of inquiring after original truths, and acting according to its own ideas of propriety, justice, or duty. As by the use of armed vision, and other mechanical aids, the modern scholar can extend his intellectual view to things, laws, and results beyond the most distant conceptions of uncultivated mind, so will like means bring into near neighborhood nations and continents heretofore the most remote.

The mechanical inventor stands prominent among the chief heroes[Pg 393] and benefactors of every productive people, and especially is this true of the mightiest in our day, the English race. Their bloodless conflict with, and conquest over, the forces of nature, transcend in importance all the glitter of ancestral fame, and the proud spoils of foreign wars. Nothing in ancient annals is comparable to the prodigious feats of human industry and skill which have been witnessed since the age of Washington began. Not to go east of our own immediate ancestors, it is interesting to see how the old haunts of power are now but the abandoned monuments of progress, the means of which are mostly mechanics, all the chief seats of whose influence have migrated to the West. Canterbury, Lincoln, Salisbury, and Winchester, have remained almost stationary ever since the United States were organized; while Leeds, Paisley, and Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester, and Liverpool have become the comprehensive centres of the most productive and beneficent life. The growth of the latter town has corresponded with our own great commercial metropolis; which, like it, is truly a city of the young and auspicious age. Sitting there upon a rock, overlooking the Atlantic, and enriched with the merchandise of many nations, the modern Tyre of the old world, whose rugged Lancastrian dignity comports well with the majesty of universal commerce, relies for her principal support on her rival New York.

Previous to the eighteenth century, great ingenuity and fertility of invention was manifested in theoretical representations of mechanical principles and complicated machines. But in all that relates to efficient construction and adaptation to practical use, a total absence of scientific insight was manifested. The puny engines might act very well in the form of models, if not set to work out something in good earnest, but otherwise they were sure to knock themselves to pieces in a very short time. On the contrary, this century is distinguished in nothing more than by the potent simplicity and prolific benefits to which all its great mechanical inventions are reduced. The hundred eyes of Argus, and the hundred hands of Briareus are at once laid under contribution to the widest good in the simultaneous action of all their most concentrated powers. Inventive genius, divinely guided, is fast altering the face of earth, and converting the elements of nature, together[Pg 394] with her laws, into instruments and artificial powers, wherewith to augment the fruitfulness of human industry, and the products of cultivated soils. Labor-saving machinery increases the yield of agricultural science, facilitates transportation, and enriches commerce through the varied wealth it affords for exchange. The steam-engine, spinning-jenny, and power-loom, consume neither food nor clothing, while they accomplish more labor than millions of weary human hands. How wonderfully does mechanical science augment the products of industry, multiply the comforts and diminish the diseases of life, developing the resources, and increasing the capital, intelligence, and power of a nation!

With the exception of a few islands in hot climates, agriculture never did flourish in any country where the mechanic arts were not flourishing. Nearly all the grains, vegetables, and plants, as well as fruits, which afford support to our spreading population, and replenish the marts of trade, once grew spontaneously in eastern climes, whence they were transplanted to constitute the advantage and reward of western agriculture. As soon as the pioneer of a new region acquires sufficient knowledge of the mechanic arts, and learns to construct tools adapted to the cultivation of earth, he is able to convert its products into the means of comfort, and the staples of commerce. One discovery leads to another yet more prolific of good, and every improvement in mechanical science not only multiplies the enjoyments of rational man, but contributes to promote his health, increase his longevity, and augments the products of every realm of nature, in quantity, quality, and value. Agriculture is therefore dependent upon mechanical science, not only for its origin, but also for every step of its progress in the sublime march of invincible civilization. Agriculture has less direct influence upon the wealth and power of a nation than commerce, but it is most conservative of the highest national weal. Minds engaged in the latter pursuit are more active and acute, more inclined to seek after new discoveries and such inventions as most favor zealous enterprise; hence, nearly all great material improvements have been made by the mechanical, manufacturing, and commercial classes. Their minds are fuller of schemes and projects, often ill-digested; and they have more energy, but less stability of character, usually, than agriculturists. They are more daring, but[Pg 395] less safe; their operations, unlike the salutary effects of bucolic toil, frequently partaking of the character of gambling speculations.

Most of our colonies were planted by commercial companies, and primarily depended on commercial gain for their chief support. But as our national resources and dangers have multiplied, very fortunately the conservative power of the rural populations has proportionately increased; so that at the present moment of peril, the mighty palladium of our Republic lies along the magnificent expanse of our western agriculture.

The propulsive energies and ennobling tendencies of this age and nation consist mainly in its mechanical, mining, and manufacturing industry, as the main feeders and conservators of its commerce. These lead to mental activity and independence, enterprise and inventions which contribute to the largest measure of productive results, and most ameliorate the various conditions of life. Had we long been limited to the narrow area of the original thirteen colonies, the preponderance of the commercial spirit would probably have ruined us; but happily the maritime coast around the little East, extended as it may appear, is vastly exceeded by the widening dominions of agriculture opened in the great West, whose inexhaustible richness guaranties the perpetuity of our union and the supplies of our food. Thither millions are escaping from the old world, painfully recollecting how many small homes they have seen demolished, to make way for the exclusive parks and aristocratic mansions wherein they could find neither sympathy nor support. But on the virgin soil where rugged emigrants build their cabins of content, the sense of property becomes the truest of magicians; it is to them the consciousness of power, and the feeling of value in self-relying effort. Arthur Young well said, "Give a man nine years' lease of a garden, and he will turn it into a desert; give a man entire possession of a rock and he will turn it into a garden." The vast basin of the Mississippi will soon become the paradise of republicanism, the chief fountain of ameliorating civilization, and the central granary of the world.

The first canal that was opened in the United States extended from Boston to the river Merrimac. The "Great Western" soon after was undertaken, and now the finest canals in the country connect the Hudson with the grand series of inland seas, and thence[Pg 396] extend beyond the Ohio. The first railroad was also constructed at the eastern extremity of our republic, and was the beginning of a continuous thoroughfare of rock and iron which at this time extends due west a greater length, and with more abundant profit, than can elsewhere be found on earth. The first steamboat was built in this city, and made her trial trip between the focal-point of universal maritime navigation and the predestined line of the grandest inland travel direct from east to west. As canal, railroad, and steamboat were wanted, they were produced, exactly in the places and exigences best fitted to give them the widest and most salutary use. Neither Fulton nor Clinton dreamed of what gigantic results they were the incipient agents. Even Jefferson, who as unconsciously served the hidden purposes of Providence in the purchase of Louisiana, when told of the proposed artery of commerce which now winds like a thread of silver through this imperial Commonwealth, said that "it was a very fine project, and might be executed a hundred years hence." A hundred years hence! What will science have done for our nation before that period shall have transpired?

The advanced races are always the goers, while the less advanced are the stayers at home. Therefore the improvement of locomotion is one of the first essentials in the progression of mankind, to clog which is not merely a crime against the individual, but against humanity itself. Man, aided by the facilities which mechanical engineering has provided, is armed with the powers of nature; he has vanquished his opponent, and enlisted her forces in his service. Matter is no longer an impediment to oppose him, but the arsenal from which he draws his mightiest weapons and richest stores. Coal and water become concentrated forces, whose powers he may develop and control for the extension and improvement of his terrestrial dominion. One single steam-engine constructed by mechanical science, is of more real importance than all the powers of Rome, and a single printing-press than all the arts of Greece. They are more than mere instruments, they are prodigious powers, placed at human disposal. They are products of reason; and just as that highest mental attribute learns to see further and further into the processes of nature, so does man by such means acquire new power for extracting welfare from the earth. When Humboldt[Pg 397] would enumerate only a few of the instruments whose invention characterizes this great epoch in the history of civilization, he names "the telescope, and its long-delayed connection with instruments of measurement; the compound microscope, which furnishes us with the means of tracing the conditions of the process of development of organs, which Aristotle gracefully designates as the formative activity of the source of being; the compass, and the different contrivances invented for measuring terrestrial magnetism; the use of the pendulum as a measure of time; the barometer; hygrometric and electrometric apparatuses; and the polariscope, in its application to the phenomena of colored polarization in the light of the stars, or in luminous regions of the atmosphere." Chemistry instructs us as to what and whence the metals are; and from the grossest dregs elicits flaming gas, that great moralizer of modern cities, more powerful than an armed police. Mechanics and chemistry furnish us with an endless variety of substances, in combinations infinitely diversified, all tending to give man more power, leisure, and comfort; to make him, in fact, freer, and more elevated in his position on the globe. Instead of being the slave of physical nature, science renders man its master, as the Creator intended him to be when he gave him an earthly dominion.

An immense amelioration has taken place in the condition of modern society. Man has extended the limits of his life, has intelligently constructed circumstances less fatal to his organism, and has vastly diminished his liability to dissolution; in fact, he has, to a certain extent, beaten the evils of the physiological world, exactly as he has vanquished the difficulties of the mechanical world. Better dwellings, clothing, and food; more abundant supplies of water and pure air, and prompt treatment under acute disease; inoculation and vaccination; the improvement of prisons and workhouses, and a more rational mode of treating the human frame both individual and collective, has secured to civilized man a longer tenancy and happier use of terrestrial existence. Thus, the sciences not only lead to an amended order of action, but also to a condition amended and improved as well. And we confidently believe that the very same kind of improvements that have followed the mathematical and physical sciences will supervene upon social science, and achieve in the world of progressive man far greater and more[Pg 398] beneficent wonders than have yet been achieved in the world of subordinate matter.

Civilization was born on the banks of the great rivers of the East, and its grandeurs were first accumulated round the Mediterranean, under the sway of Greece and Rome. The mediæval age enabled European nations to develop their ultimate energies on the border of the Atlantic, and, with ships vastly superior to the triremes of antiquity, to take possession of the immense expanse of oceanic billows. Coincident with the establishment of great commercial exchanges in this new world, that masterly monument of mechanical science, the Eddystone lighthouse arose on the line of all progress, and guided the old powers and inert capital of Europe to improved enlargement and use in America. The great currents of the sea and trade-winds of heaven move westward alike and evermore. Science daily adds new capacities and momentum in aid of transportation. Young as we are as a nation, our boats, yachts, clippers, and steamships are the first in the world. The child of the East has become a man in the West, where oriental toys have expanded into colossal instruments proportioned to the occasions and efficiency of their requisite use. But no inventor is taken captive by his inventions here, however potent they may be. Every improvement lessens the impress of local character, and prevents a separation of the nation into distinct peoples. Petty cliques and transient conflicts may sometimes occur; but deep in the popular heart the great social country engrosses the profoundest regard, and entirely preponderates over the geographical country.

The finest bricks are made on the western shore of Lake Michigan; and the best materials for the manufacture of flint glass abound in Minnesota. Lead and copper of great purity and in astonishing abundance attract and reward industry beyond the grandest of inland seas; and silver mixed with gold in fabulous profusion draws enterprise over the diameter of earth to explore nature's great storehouse along the Pacific shores. But better and more permanently profitable for man than all else of mundane wealth, are the more substantial treasures which are buried with inexhaustible richness on the terra firma route, pre-ordained for ameliorated humanity to pursue from east to west. Coal and iron constitute the chief motor and metor of all physical improvement.[Pg 399] Like freedom, superior intelligence, and exalted moral worth, they are the special gifts of God to those who speak the English language, and will be found most copious in those remote regions where republicans are destined to be most free.

As the prominent inventions of a people are the best exponents of their peculiar genius, and the clearest prophecies of prospective triumphs, so does the energy of their educational zeal indicate the measure and immediateness of their success. The successive departments of political and mechanical science we have severally considered above; let us now give more particular attention to the science of education as exemplified in our land.

All human progress, political, intellectual, and moral, is inseparable from material progression, by virtue of the close interconnection which characterizes the natural course of social phenomena. But the educational element must form the principal band of the scientific sheaf, from its various relations, both of subordination and of direction to all the rest. It is in this way that the homogeneous co-ordination of legitimate sciences proceeds to the fullest development, and for the widest ulterior influence on human destiny. The filiation and adaptation of all great discoveries for the popular good, affords a fine subject for grateful contemplation, and is the most exhilarating guaranty to the loftiest hopes. The general intellect, under the auspices of American freedom, now, and for the first time, is entering upon the age of ameliorating science. It is an advent to be hailed with chastened joy, and to be guarded by vigilant expectation. In comparative anatomy it is well known that a Cuvier may determine, from a single joint, tooth, or other fragment of an animal, whose species had never entered human eye or imagination, not only its general configuration, size, family, and grade in the series of organic beings, but also its physiological constitution, its manners, its food, its climatic habitation, whether in the geography or the chronology of the globe. Even so equal knowledge of the analogous laws of symmetry and mutual dependence in the social system, eventually attainable, and to be applied to extant usages or disinterred relics, will enable its possessor, by a single specimen, accurately to fix the entire condition of the corresponding people on the scale of civilization. Tried by this criterion, what monuments of national mind may we not anticipate for the future, while we[Pg 400] contemplate the results already attained by our brief but glorious past. As the greater Newton succeeded the great Kepler, and was in turn followed by La Place, who explained the physical counterpart of his predecessor's theory by the law of gravitation imperfectly understood by its own discoverer, so do we believe that the inductive method re-established by Francis Bacon will be consummated in our central clime, amid greatly increased splendors, by the mental manhood of the twentieth century.

The great prophet of science to whom we have just referred, lived mostly in the future, and in his last will he left "his name and memory to foreign nations and to the next ages." He had crossed the Atlantic, whose storms men had penetrated for ages without perceiving the fair omens of progress, but in the confidence of his prophetic intuition he gave the name of Good Hope to the headland he had reached; as Magellan, when he beheld the boundless expanse of waters in another direction, called it the Pacific. The seeds which Bacon sowed have here sprung up, and are growing to a mighty tree, and the thoughts of millions come to lodge in its branches. Those branches spread "so broad and long, that in the ground the bended twigs took root, and daughters grew about the mother tree, a pillared shade high overarched, and echoing walks between;" walks where Literature may hang her wreaths upon the massy stems, and Art may adorn that Religion, of which Science erects the hundred-aisled temple. The preparation made for the present age, and the high anticipations entertained by the last and wisest of its precursors, is set forth as follows near the close of his Advancement of Learning: "Being now at some pause, looking back into that I have past through, this writing seemeth to me, as far as a man can judge of his own work, not much better than that noise or sound which musicians make while they are tuning their instruments; which is nothing pleasant to hear, yet is a cause why the music is sweeter afterward: so have I been content to tune the instruments of the muses, that they may play who have better hands. And surely, when I set before me the condition of these times, in which Learning hath made her third visitation or circuit, in all the qualities thereof—as the excellency and vivacity of the wits of this age—the noble helps and lights which we have by the travails of ancient writers—the art of printing,[Pg 401] which communicateth books to men of all fortunes—the openness of the world by navigation, which hath disclosed multitudes of experiments and a mass of natural history—the leisure wherewith these times abound, not employing men so generally in civil business, as the states of Greece did in respect of their popularity, and the state of Rome in respect of the greatness of her monarchy, the present disposition of these times to peace, and the inseparable propriety of time, which is ever more and more to disclose truth—I can not but be raised to this persuasion, that this third period of time will far surpass that of the Grecian and Roman learning."

In 1647 the Plymouth colony of Massachusetts passed an Act "that every township of fifty householders should appoint a person to teach all the children to read and write, and that every township of one hundred families should support a grammar-school."

In the following year (1648) the Legislative Assembly of the colony of Connecticut, passed a statute in relation to education of very nearly the same purport as that passed in Massachusetts. The Puritans of New England entertained the same opinion as the Presbyterians of Scotland, that education is necessary to the performance of religious duty; and the former seem to have borrowed their ideas and system of education substantially from the latter. This was the foundation of the system of common-school education, which was adopted in the State of New York in the early part of the nineteenth century, and has been more recently adopted in nearly all the free States. While no effort has been made to give the whole population of England a common-school education, and Parliament persists in discouraging such an undertaking, our newest western States even exceed New England in their educational zeal.

The first college in America was founded on the eastern edge of Plymouth colony, and has been succeeded by a series of rivals stretching due west, so rapidly and widely multiplied in numbers and patronage, that now the new States possess richer advantages for learning than the old. A self-educated seaman, born in the same region of rock and ice, was the first to translate and publish with emendations the profoundest mathematical works of modern times; and now there are successful aspirants after like distinction, whose towers of science stand reflected on the banks of the Ohio,[Pg 402] casting their shadows still onward before the ascending sun. It was fitting that the most learned President of the United States should travel from Pilgrim Rock to the "Mount Adams" of westward empire, whereon he laid the corner stone of the only Observatory extant, which is sustained by popular subscription, and rendered renowned by private enterprise. In that "Queen City," which seems like a thing of yesterday, not only has the pendulum of Galileo been made to measure the diameter of a single planet, but one of the most valuable inventions of this age, the astronomical clock, there first beat in its sublime reckoning of the universe. A printer born in Boston, was armed by Providence with paper and twine through which to draw harmless lightnings from the skies; and a painter in New York, under the same heavenly guidance, and at the fitting time, charged the celestial messenger with a kindred burden of human intelligence, and dispatched it first from the capitol of our Union to instruct and ameliorate mankind. Coincident with the latter discovery, mechanical science in this great metropolis perfected a still more imperial civilizer, the steam power-press; and now not an element of nature expands, not a conquest of science is matured, and not an inspiration of genius fulmines in the gloom of penury, or around the pinnacles of power, that the press does not gather all the aggregated excellence in subordination to its use, to enhance the benefactions of ennobling intelligence upon which it subsists. In Boston, ether was first applied to ameliorate the dreaded pain of surgical steel, to mitigate the bitterest physical pangs, and rob Death himself of half his spiritual terrors. In Cincinnati, the steam fire engine has just been added to other mighty conservative agents. As the general alarm aggravates midnight terrors, and the gains of a toilsome life are threatened by the remorseless conflagration, glaring in lofty defiance to ordinary resistance, a tiny match kindles the ardor of invincible union between diverse elements in united opposition, and agitated crowds are soon awed into admiring silence, as the mighty flames are speedily drowned. One of our citizens has recently mapped the ocean of international commerce with all its old currents of power sagaciously discriminated, and newly traced as the best channels of safety. Another, venturing where no predecessor had ever been has just returned from the regions of perpetual ice, to win the[Pg 403] grateful applause of Christendom for the material wonders he discovered and the beneficent spirit he displayed. A clergyman of this city, for his researches in Palestine, was the first of four Americans who, within the last fifteen years, have been decorated with the golden medals of foreign honors; one of whom, on account of his explorations in the opposite direction, whither tends the greatest public good, has just been nominated to the highest secular dignity possible on earth.

The restless and insatiable activity of Americans in scientific research and moral heroism, was finely personated by Ulysses of old. Sick of Ithaca, Argos, Telemachus, and Penelope even, the old and indomitable mariner-king panted for untried dangers and undiscovered lands. His purpose was "to sail beyond the sunset, and the baths of all the western stars, until he died." Thus actuated, man is lifted to a higher platform of observation whence he may read the book of gemmed pictures illuminating his nights, and revealed to fill his soul with an inspiration more grand and inspiriting than any terrestrial object can communicate. It is the legitimate and appropriate sequence of the new revelations of modern science, and is designed more and more to render the master of earth free of the universe. In his heavenly Father's house are many mansions, and these with all their expansive marvels are unfolded in salutary enlargedness, in order that their predestined possessor through a corresponding education in their presence, may expand his spirit till it shall become approximatively unbounded in a creation without bounds. The telescope, the compass, the press, the locomotive, and the telegraph, have in succession, and with vastly increased degrees of power, infused into the heart of humanity a sense of freedom, and in that influence their chief benefaction consists. Each new province annexed to the magnificent domain of present knowledge points more clearly to still richer provinces beyond; and on the remotest border of all, human immortality and infinite progress are most legibly inscribed. "Forward" and "forever" are exhortations not only vocal in the music of the spheres, but are repeated to the adventurer by the remotest billows, and quicken the passion for profounder investigation in the darkest depths.

The regulator of the steam-engine was invented in Massachusetts, where also originated most of the superior cotton and woolen[Pg 404] machinery now generally employed. The locomotive was there entirely re-cast, and immensely improved. When the perfected "iron horse" thence advanced, surmounted by that indigenous embodiment of democratic huzzas, the steam whistle, "Young America" was just beginning to go ahead. When in the laboratory of the University in this city, the sun-picture was first invented, simultaneously with the labors of Daguerre, the same promising youth was favored with a glance of what he is yet to be. And when that first telegraphic message, "What hath God wrought!" was let fly with the lucid freedom of lightning, Young America, standing on the summit of six thousand years, and born to renovate the race whose final destiny he represents, had then, indeed, begun to talk.

A comprehensive view of political, mechanical, and educational science in our country will teach us that the mightiest minds are more and more compelled to serve the masses; and that the most enormous outlay of capital in either ponderous or exquisite producing agents, is all in favor of the undistinguished populace, and not for the special advantage of a select few. The most subtle and refined machinery, for example, is not applied to the most delicate and elegant kind of work, such as gold and silver, jewels and embroidery. These luxuries are mainly executed by hand, while the most expensive machinery is brought into play where operations on the commonest materials are to be performed, because these are executed on the widest scale. Such is especially the case when coarse and ordinary wares are manufactured for the many. This is why such a vast and astonishing variety of artificial power is used in our country and age. The machine with its million fingers works for millions of purchasers, while in lands less free, where magnificence and beggary stand side by side, tens of thousands work for one. There Art and Science labor for princely aristocrats only; here, the great mass of the people are their chosen and most munificent patrons.

All great workers, and the improvements they originate, find their legitimate use only in the enunciation of great truths for the popular good. Thus it is that the relation of men to each other and to the whole world is progressively changed, and that always in the direction of increased equality. The universal mind receives simultaneously[Pg 405] the impression of each new idea; it imprints itself upon domestic institutions, infuses itself into literature, reconstructs political formulas, and in some measure both impels and controls the religious life. It has lately been proved that the whole earth is a magnet, and all mental achievements in our day tend to render the domain of American civilization one immense university of science. At each remove toward western freedom, progressive man has shown his mastery by compelling all the elements to help create and grace his triumphs. The waters turned from their courses to move his mills; the sportive zephyrs and angry winds imprisoned in his sails; the flying vapor taken captive to whirl his myriad of spindles, or send the "Iron Missionary" tramp, tramp over the earth, splash, splash across the sea; the soft light he makes ministrant to the dearest joys, depicting by it the portrait of tenderest love; and the latent flame which sings along the wires by lines of railway; all alike and together prophesy of mightier and better things to come.

Facilities of knowledge are the auspicious means of transfusing into the soul those ideas which are the tools vouchsafed to shape the destiny of our race. The dynasty of a new thought is much more glorious than the pedigree of old kings; and the future of free America will infinitely transcend in worth and well-doing all the arbitrary dignities and adventitious splendors gone by.

The machinery of production in America is already greater than that of England. Our twenty-three millions of citizens produce a larger amount of valuable staples, while they build twice as many houses; make twice as many roads; apply three times more labor in the improvement of land; build four times as many school-houses and churches; and print ten times as many newspapers. We have laid the foundation of a pyramid whose base is a million of square miles, studded all over with innumerable little communities, each one of which occupies space sufficient for a large one, with its academy, or its college, its journals, bookstores, and libraries, all aiding to give to the superstructure a magnificence proportioned to the breadth and stability of its base. Among the more western States, not less than in the eastern, there is universal activity and intelligence. It is safe to repeat that the commonwealths recently organized have more and better printing-presses, and consume[Pg 406] more well-read paper; that they have more commodious school-houses, and more scholars in them; more churches, and more devout Christians in them; more well-selected libraries, and more thoughtful readers in them, than any other nation on earth.

What our future may become, our brief past will best suggest. We know that however high we may ascend the course of history, we see, not in each or any particular people, but in the human family as a whole, an uninterrupted endeavor to enlarge the boundaries of knowledge always progressive; so that, from the obscurity of earliest time, we arrive step by step to modern science, more certain, more extended, and more prolific, in practical results than was ever known in preceding ages. This progress is proved by the sovereignty which man has successively acquired over nature, subordinating to his will her most energetic forces, and compelling them to accomplish the highest ends in the surest manner. We see what the earth, transformed in an immense portion of its best surface, has become under his hand. He subdues the billows, traverses seas, and his invincible thought, aspiring to still sublimer empire, makes his necessities to be served by the stars which vainly flee in the deserts of space.

From the survey which has been taken above of the spreading of ameliorating empire in the great West, it is evident that its central throne must soon rest on the granite heights beyond the great lakes, near the sources of the mighty Mississippi. Thither the free and brave millions are fast gathering, whose noble progeny will people the entire continent, and bless the world. The denizens of those wealthy regions, and the patriots of those happy times, will be both intelligent and brave beyond precedent, in conserving the republican institutions they have received to perfect and perpetuate. The sentiment of the great man of the extreme East, will be best appreciated, and most sublimely exemplified, in proportion as it sweeps with the sun from the horizon of its origin, and, from the loftiest Rocky Mountains, resounds simultaneously from ocean to ocean, the profoundest sentiment of undivided peoples, "Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable!"

Human history is a perpetual exodus, and its promised land has ever been in the West. Bondage to escape, seas to cross, miracles to witness, conquests to win, a wilderness to traverse, and a Goshen to attain, institutions to create, and all the seeds of a newer and nobler civilization to propagate, ever has been, is now, and evermore will be, the destiny and recompense of our race.

Greece collected the materials of ideas for the work of universal civilization, Rome consolidated a heterogeneous mass from every department of thought, and our Teutonic ancestors put all anterior results into generalized systems, preparatory to the ultimate perfection of civilized society on this continent and throughout the world. We are perfecting the last republic possible in space, ending the girdle of the globe we were created to redeem. As remote as is our comprehensive sphere from the beginning of historic development, we are indissolubly linked to the one divinely identical purpose. Our Union constitutes the final member of an association truly majestic and holy, the design of which is to elevate all classes and conditions of men to the utmost heights of wisdom and worth.

The nations are not destined to find a precarious calm in their degradation. They can never be subjugated by force, even should their volitions be chained for a season, while their sentiments are enervated in the service of the licentious. The great law of human progress will not long permit its apathetic subjects to be passive and mute spectators, impelled, like a vile horde, from one power to another. Revolutions will multiply, and, at the same time, become less and less calamitous, until all subjects shall become citizens, no longer excluded from political equality and moral improvement. No enterprise shall then be interdicted to adequate skill, and no[Pg 408] arbitrary action impede the pursuit of honorable gain. The popular currency of opinion, law, and affection, must eventually be coined, and circulated in mutual confidence, and bear a premium in every land. Progress in human society is necessitated by its primary constitution. The social union of men, and their habitual communication with each other, produces a certain advancement of sentiments, ideas, and reasonings, which can not be suspended. This constitutes the march of civilization, and the perpetual order of the day is—forward! It leads us, necessarily, to successive epochs, sometimes peaceable and virtuous, and sometimes criminal and agitated, sometimes glorious, and at others, opprobrious; and, according as Providence casts us into one condition or the other, we gather the happiness or the suffering attached to the age in which we live. On that our tastes, opinions, and habitual impressions, in a great measure depend. Transient events may modify this law, but no finite power can wrest from society its varied progress. In this course of human development, the accompanying circumstances which most nearly assume the form of an exception are themselves so enchained as most strongly to corroborate the general rule. Taken as a whole, the race of Adam, enlightened or benighted, pursues a determined route, and accomplishes a prescribed progress, as do the stars. Now clear, and anon obscure, at one time slow, and at another rapid their apparent flight, nothing arrests the inevitable career, nor prevents the accumulative good. Letters shine, science advances, the arts are perfected, and splendors on every side are multiplied; then arrives the moment when the opinions generally adopted, and the prevailing disposition of all leading spirits are in conflict with existing institutions. The crash of revolution resounds, and governments are overthrown; forms of religion become obsolete, customs change, disorder reigns, and prolonged suffering prostrates the people. At length the tempest exhausts itself, and calm is restored. The necessity of repose renders the populace docile for a season, and they lose the fiery zeal which at first characterized their newly conquered opinions. A new order of things becomes established upon a higher platform, in the tranquil enjoyment of which the happy inheritors forget the sorrows of their fathers. Then begins a newer, if not a sadder advance, which leads popular ideas again into conflict with existing[Pg 409] institutions, whose overthrow results in yet wider catastrophes. It is thus that civilization, by vicissitudes of repose and agitation, more or less contiguous and saddening, conducts the nations to consummate perfection.

Contempt toward mankind, doubt as to their virtues, and despondency with respect to their ultimate fortunes, recur but too often in the historians of philosophy. But it is more noble and more truthful never to despair respecting human weal, since it is only in the light of hope that we can trace a route for virtue and honor, in which an impulse may be given and a reward found for the brave, virtuous, and good. At the moment mediocrity complains of deepest gloom, genius is wont to perceive and proclaim the advent of ascending day, the fresh dawn of which rapidly develops the germs of all that is requisite to create a new world and invest it with transcendant charms. The decemvirs augmented their tyranny over Rome, until a particular event rendered the weight insupportable, and it was cast down. The British parliament despaired of rendering the nation happy under the domineering Stuarts, and the dynasty was changed. The American colonies found themselves oppressed by an arbitrary tax, and declared themselves independent. Through a similar course of opinions, the sufferers in common arrived at a stage where the existing order of things needed to be overthrown. Fresh ardor and new activities seized upon and impelled all spirits; each one was impatient under a common wrong, and ready to enter the battle for common rights. At such a crisis is manifested the maturity of a thousand remote but cumulative circumstances which bear in their bosom a salutary principle as mighty to soothe as to excite the pangs of its birth. It comes with an additional proof that the chain of national enthrallment is not unending or insufferable, but that the crimes of revolutions will decrease in proportion as their exciting cause is removed. Such was the series of struggles through which Greece bloomed in consummate beauty; such was the convulsion which conducted Rome from crude republicanism to imperial grandeur, across the field of outrageous proscriptions and civil wars; and such was the long commotion which the Europe of our day experienced in the establishment of reform: a bloody period which marked the passage from effete and oppressive institutions to the new order of things.

In the year 1800, Lucien Bonaparte remarked, "We are standing amid the grave of old and beside the cradle of new institutions." It was indeed true that the dawn of the nineteenth century beheld the world invested with a contrast the most striking and strange; night and storm, day and calm, were clearly separated. Even Asiatic immobility was broken up; and Egypt, the cradle of civilization, was rocked from side to side in the tempests of northern ambition. All the old powers of Europe were alarmed and exhausted by disorders without a parallel since the Roman empire sank in fragments beneath the crash of barbaric arms. The New World alone, happily isolated from the convulsed parent states by a wide expanse of waters, was permitted to develop in peace its primary elements of personal worth and national greatness. The sudden summons of death had just removed him who was so justly designated the "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen;" but sublimely through the universal gloom occasioned by such a bereavement, the sun of intelligence and philosophic freedom rose clear and unchangeable above the tomb of Washington.

Throughout the whole range of progressive philosophy, it will be found that there exists a constant and necessary harmony between cotemporary needs and knowledge. Each successive age produces its appropriate agents who in their own persons both resume the past and enlarge the future, by making a clearance in their sublime field, so as to reconstruct a broader and more brilliant system of ideas. The philosophy of the middle ages was distinguished for submission to authority other than that of reason, the overthrow of which vassalage it was reserved for the seventeenth century to inaugurate. In the eighteenth century, the sentiment of humanity was developed, consentaneously with mental independence, and thus a great step forward was taken in the philosophy of history and the history of philosophy. A sounder and more luminous psychology was originated which enabled thinkers guided thereby to render to themselves a reasonable account of what passes in self-consciousness, which is the visible scene of the soul. The Cartesian revolution came to illuminate the chaos of scholasticism, and Brucker led the mighty host of mental liberators who forever prevented philosophy from re-entering the mediæval age. From east to west the ameliorating progress arose and spread with constantly-increased[Pg 411] power and profit. As early as 1725, Vico, at Naples, demonstrated that the organic development of great transitional epochs, so manifest in the connected history of our race, contains proof of the divine supervision, and a higher manifestation of order, justice, and continuous advancement among men, than any argument à priori can supply. Herder fortified this idea with a still more comprehensive grasp of intellect and illustration, which constituted him the founder of the philosophy of history. He took man as he is, the microcosm of the universe, and, by a higher philosophy, did much to escape the sensualism and shallowness of the eighteenth century. From the Romanic negativeness which prevailed till the opening of our age, Herder and his successors advanced into Teutonic positiveness, and began that order of reconstructive philosophy which now so happily prevails. Shem, with all his obsolete traditions, was superseded, and the universalized fabric of Japhetic thought arose to confer a greater good. France powerfully co-operated in the ameliorating endeavors of that mighty crusade of which Montesquieu was a patriarch and Condorcet a martyr. Leibnitz believed in the law of progress in all the concerns of life. The present, he asserted, was born of the past, and is pregnant of the future. The vision of general peace he regarded as a practical idea, and anticipated a universal language, from which eventually every trace of linguistic confusion would disappear, and the union of all hearts be consummated in the blending of harmonious speech. Descartes had entertained like views, and these earlier prophets of a lofty destiny were worthily succeeded by Pascal, who wrote as follows: "By a special prerogative of the human race, not only each man advances day by day in the sciences, but all men together make a continual progress, as the universe grows old; because the same thing happens in the succession of men which takes place in the different ages of an individual. So that the succession of men, in the cause of so many ages, may be regarded as one man, who lives always, and who learns continually. From this we see with what injustice we respect antiquity in philosophers; for, since old age is the period most distant from infancy, who does not see that the old age of this universal man must not be sought in the times nearest his birth, but in those which are the most remote. They, whom we entitle[Pg 412] Ancients, were indeed new in all things, and properly formed the infancy of mankind; and since to their knowledge we have joined the experience of the ages which have followed them, it is in ourselves that is to be found that antiquity which we revere in others."

England is constitutionally negative in philosophy, and was especially so during the desolate eighteenth century, while her best minds were driven westward over ocean to flame back from afar. But even then, so predominant was the idea of progress in the greatest promoter of philosophic "Learning," that "The Advancement" thereof was the spontaneous title given to his greatest work. Bacon was also author of the saying that "Antiquity was the youth of the world;" a maxim afterward cordially adopted and learnedly illustrated by Dr. Price, the friend and correspondent of Turgot. To adopt imagery like that used by the great founder of the inductive method, if we hear little else than a dissonant screeching of multitudinous noises now, which only blend in the distance into a roar like that of the raging sea, it behooves us to hold fast to the assurance that this is the necessary process whereby the instruments are to be tuned for the heavenly concert. Chaos is undergoing a perpetual curtailment of his empire, and eventually must be cast out of the intellectual, moral, and spiritual world, as entirely as out of the material.

The epoch of Anglo colonization in America was one of philosophical transition in Europe. Antiquated systems were decomposed in the old world, and another order, as auspicious as it was youthful, was constructed in the new. Such was the use which Providence made of that Cerberus of rationalism, Voltaire, whose school brought the doctrine of Spinoza, Hobbes, and Bayle to a stop at deism, on the ruins of the prevailing religious system. The materialism of Locke easily degenerated into the dogmas of Helvetius, according to whom there is no mind extant, for matter is every thing, and who proved to the satisfaction of his age that selfishness, vanity, and gross enjoyments are the only true guides and rational ends of enlightened men; in fact, the only realities of human life. Thus, the way was fully prepared for the congenial spirit of Diderot boldly to proclaim the wish—"that the last king might be burned on a funeral pile, composed of the body of the last priest."

Despairing of free thought and wholesome progress on the ancient fields of human development, the most aspiring minds and hearts of the philosophic world followed the mild splendors of the retiring sun, and laid their visions of a better destiny in the wilderness of America. Among those whose fond expectations were thither turned, even down to our own day, were Rousseau, Bernardin de St. Pierre, and Chateaubriand. But a greater and better philosopher than they, though equally imaginative, at an earlier period, came personally to our stormiest coast, and thereon planted the first elements of a lofty culture. George Berkeley left rich worldly emoluments on the western extremity of the old world, and voluntarily bore the quintessence of all its dialectical skill to enrich the eastern extremity of the new. From that day to this, the region of the primary fountain has ever remained the chief source of philosophical worth. Francis Wayland yet lives a near neighbor to Berkeley's retreat in Rhode Island, and is not remoter from "the minute philosopher" in time than in his ethical system; but it was reserved for our great countryman to give America and the world a fitting climax to all preceding disquisitions in "Moral Science." Modern writers have differed much concerning the foundation or obligation of virtue. Hobbes placed it in political enactment; Mandeville, in the love of praise; Dr. Clarke, in the fitness of things; Adam Smith, in sympathy for our race; Grotius and Puffendorf, in the duty of improvement; Hume and Paley, in personal utility; while Hutcheson, Cudworth, Butler, Reid, Stuart, and others, derive it from a moral sense or natural impulse to do right, implanted by the Creator. Repeated editions of the Moral Philosophy based on conscience, and other kindred works, first used in Brown University, and now adopted as hand-books in many educational establishments in this and other lands, attest the high estimation in which the last and best expression of progressive philosophy is held.

Nothing goes back—every thing advances. Philosophy gained in passing from Asia into Greece, from Athens to Rome, and thence through the middle ages to modern times. The advancement made during the past sixty years abundantly indicates that the grand goal which Berkeley descried from afar, by a Pisgah-view on the border of the land he himself was not permitted to penetrate,[Pg 414] will yet be triumphantly attained. Born of yesterday on our soil, an immense future lies before the career of philosophic thought toward the unbounded West; where, next to religion, the most exalted sphere is reserved for the indefinite expansion of her ameliorating spirit. It is the destiny of this mighty moral agent to make the tour of the world, in following the physical movements of lands and peoples, correspondent with the governing epochs we have described. Having arrived at this ultimate centre of earth's fermentation and fruitfulness, philosophy, with all subordinate elements of civilization, will prosecute the last stage of her journey, and return upon the mountains whence she originally descended, permitted at last to contemplate thence a world redeemed.

But, in perfecting the grand restoration of society, let us first of all be convinced that time is the primary instrument to be employed, and that successive generations must pass before the nations are fully prepared. Every thing under the sway of Providence is developed through a progressive movement, which is continued and regular; a law whose application is universal, and never subject to a failure. No violence can for an instant hasten the growth of a blade of grass, much less can force accelerate the march of society. The impossible of to-day may become possible to-morrow; but the movement must be natural, and then will the greatest speed, as well as most enduring safety, be found in the deepest and broadest current. It is the manifest will of God that mankind should be concentrated in one uniform march of progression, found only and evermore in the development of that liberty which is essential to all human beings. The common mind may not be the axe which hews the throne down to a block, but it is the handle without which the axe is of little use. Before common rights come to be a common possession, the people may be yet more persecuted and tormented, but they will never be conquered. Every great cause triumphs only at the expense of grand sacrifices. The highest liberty exacts the noblest martyrs, who descend into the dungeon, or expire on the cross, but their agony is transformed into balm for universal wounds, and their death brings life to the nations at large.

In all lands, and all epochs, the privileged classes, jealous of the advantages they possess, constitute themselves into a permanent[Pg 415] war against the mass of the people whom they are ambitious to disinherit and oppress. Almost every page of history furnishes an example. Greece was not free from the curse; and at Rome, it was exemplified in the conflict between the plebeian and patrician classes. In mediæval times, the partially enfranchised communities struggled against feudal arrogance; and in our own day it is reproduced in the antagonisms which characterize the struggles of the conservative and progressive parties. The agents of evil love darkness and resist light. They can with comparative ease deprive men of their rights, if they can but prevent their knowing them. They must be degraded intellectually, in order to be kept in social degradation; hence tyranny always brutalizes its victims as much as possible, that they may with impunity be treated as brutes. When force is allowed to begin the oppression, ignorance is the best auxiliary by which it is perpetuated. Among the many things which render despotism detestable is the absolute opposition it of necessity wages against human nature and its predestined perfection; in which resistance it is obliged to repel light, augment gloom, and fight incessantly against truth, against goodness, against God. The primordial law of humanity is perpetually to know more, love more, and concur with a constantly increased efficiency in the universal realization of the progressively divine plan.

As civilized society is the daughter of knowledge and freedom, nothing can be respected, which does not harmonize with this double source of her mission. It is not upon force that we subsist, but by a superiority produced through veneration, and that obedience which is the spontaneous submission of one will to another. It is the mutual action of mind identical in purpose. When the Spartans proposed in their hearts to die for the salvation of Greece, they inscribed this appeal on the rocky pass at Thermopylæ:—"Traveler, go tell the Lacedemonians that we fell here in obedience to their sacred laws." This was not the submission peculiar to a few heroes, but was demanded for the salvation of a whole people; it was the voice of a whole people, living as well as dead, and there was not a soul in the republic which would not have responded to the soul of the three hundred.

As bishop Butler suggested, nations may get mad as well as individuals, but in their wildest frenzy they usually produce works and[Pg 416] speak words superior to any thing attained by their predecessors. The most authentic and binding record asserts that "God hath made of one blood all nations who dwell upon the face of the earth;" and the obdurate who dare not or will not believe this truth may find it verified when all their gushing veins mingle in a common retribution. The great Father never formed the limbs of his children to be chafed with fetters, nor their faculties to wither in gloom. Action that is enforced regardless of freedom, is like the relation of a brute to the fierce rider upon his back, or the tingle of a lash to the skin of a slave. For all such, the lowliest as well as the loftiest, was vouchsafed the intellectual sun which illumines every man who comes into the world. It will never descend beneath the horizon, neither can any clouds long obscure it, but augment its effulgence rather. In the accumulated heritage which each generation gathers from its precursors, nothing is accepted that has not life. For this reason, the progress of society is continual, however slow sometimes; and this progress, which comprises all the conquests made by man through the principal branches of ameliorating civilization, is in fact a succession of triumphs over ignorance, and will end not merely in the gain of a battle but in the complete success of the war.

Revolutions are the sudden explosions of slowly aggregated facts, often brought about by some particular occasion, but seldom or never premeditated by any one man, system, or party. They result from a general and spontaneous feeling that liberty is not less necessary to the moral, than to the political, perfection of a people.

Hence the prodigious shock that was given to the world, when the colossus of American independence, rending from his limbs the chains imposed by monarchical power, stood erect in the full possession of inalienable rights, and went forth to emancipate mankind. As heterogeneous metals dissolve and amalgamate anew in the white heat of a furnace, so under the burning breath of colonial eloquence all the settlements of the Atlantic coast blended in the aspirations of one spirit, and contended for civil and religious freedom as a common boon. The great hero whose name it is one of the numerous glories of the present age to bear, was the visible destiny of his day, and invincible in his genius, like the new ideas of which he was the champion.

Washington established firmly and forever that principle of representation, which is the political glory of the Teutonic race; and which was destined, under the brilliant skies of this newly discovered continent, to create and control a republican confederacy, outrunning all preceding empires, and, unlike them, not founded in the subjection of particular classes, but on the enjoyment of equal and universal rights. The structure of nature, and the conquests of truth together indicate the direction and accelerated surety with which this sublime purpose is becoming realized. All the historic lands of antiquity, massed in a huge group of continents, barely extend through similar climatic zones; while America alone traverses every clime of earth, abounds in every variety of natural phenomena, and is most profuse in all sorts of valuable productions. The plains of the Amazon and of the Mississippi, compared with those of Siberia and Sahara, show the natural contrast and indicate the divine design. God has made the southern extremities of the two hemispheres little, pointed, and barren, while they grow broader toward the north, and teem most abundantly with material and mental wealth in the west.

As we have shown in respect to the occidental advancement of other civilizing elements, it was appropriate that the first fountain of philosophic wisdom among us should be opened in the oriental metropolis of New England, and that all modifying theories for a while should thence be derived. That wise people, like their fathers, until recently seemed content with the metaphysics of the sensations, and were accustomed to assume for fundamental principles, as a primary basis, truths obtained only through the judgment, by means of the observation of external phenomena. But philosophers have happily receded from that narrow view, and are beginning to perceive that this species of insight never ascends to the supreme order of truth necessary and absolute. They are in fact only conclusions deduced from sensation, and are capable of being or not being, according as the exterior objects are presented under one aspect or another. But the generic and immutable principles of freedom, art, science, and morals, in no sense find their source in the deductions drawn from external objects and attributes; they rest entirely on those primitive and necessary ideas which form part of the soul, and originate anterior to all reflection or comparison.[Pg 418] This more spiritual philosophy spreads luminously with expanding day, and promises to be perfected near the meridian of high noon. As communications become facile, rapid, and extensive among men, isolated causes decrease in influence and philosophic truths are rapidly fortified. Individual action is less perceived, while the masses swell and rise in importance. Opinions, like the sea, become clear and constant in proportion to their depth and free action. In no age or condition has human nature ever disinherited the faculties originally given for justice, veracity, beauty, humanity and religion; it never acts legitimately without cultivating these, by repelling the passions and obstacles opposed to their growth.

The number of original thinkers constantly increases, and it is this progress which mortifies presumption, while it justifies hope. Philosophy does not dampen literary enthusiasm, nor clip the wings of divine art, but follows in their flight, and measures both their object and powers. It is the history of this mastership in the realms of intellect which affords the light by which alone we can know and comprehend all other histories; while its generalization contains not merely the most important truths, but all that can be strictly called truth. War may sometimes be inevitable, and is not to be regarded as the greatest evil, since it conduces to that succession of ideas which ministers to the perfection of human nature. Each victorious age endures for a time, and then passes away, to give place to a mightier and a better; but humanity is superior to all epochs, outlives all, and is benefited by them. That society is already fatally sick which, instead of anticipating in the future an improved succession of the present, only fears its destruction. Under the direction of Providence, great revolutions are more and better than the mere shifting of scenery on a stage; not only do they give an electric shock to the spectators, and quicken their intellectual energies for the hour, but they also effect substantial good by creating an enduring change. But fortunately the chief battles of our age are moral rather than martial. A spiritual music prevails over the wildest tempests, crying Peace. Reason carries a white flag which she will plant on the central mountains of America, and bid it wave on free breezes as the banner and blessing of the world.

Popular education renders a people morally incapable of adopting[Pg 419] any other than republican institutions. The qualities which belong to high culture, and which may be dangerous when confined to a few, are of unspeakable advantage when dispersed among the many. Demagogues are disarmed, when constituents are enlightened. The tendency, in every thing connected with the knowledge or interests of man in our country and age, is to derive light from every quarter, in one consistent and comprehensive scheme of thought. The literature and philosophy of the age now transpiring superabound in vast materials for progress, accumulated in all past time, and which render it probable that we are on the eve of an intellectual transition, similar to that of the seventeenth century, but on a vastly higher and broader scale. Never was there a combination of all human knowledge in a more complete and systematic form; nor has any preceding epoch been so remarkable for the manner in which it has contributed to investigate, define, and establish the principles of philosophy as a science. And it is our joy that the "finality" is not yet reached. Every to-day announces some new victory, which is the sure forerunner of a better achievement to-morrow. It was once said to the great Napoleon, "Sire, your son must be brought up with the utmost care, in order to be able to replace you." "Replace me!" he replied: "I could not replace myself; I am the child of circumstances." He felt that the power lent him was for a given purpose, up to an hour which he could neither hasten nor retard, and that when his mission was accomplished it could never be repeated. When a social transformation has become necessary, vitality abandons the superseded and transports itself into a new vehicle of progress, augmenting and fortifying that which is already a felt need, and openly demanded by the enlarged wants of a more advanced age. A higher sagacity requires then that we disregard the inferior offshoots of a past growth, and apply ourselves only to second the perfect development of that indestructible germ whose true worth is seen only in its matured fruit. To restrain the future by the past, is to mingle death with life; it is to violate all the laws of nature, and consequently to create social misery just so far as mankind are thus diverted from their legitimate career. If we transpose the order of Providence a moment, and place the highest perfection in antiquity the most remote, or allow that a greater good lies behind the[Pg 420] present hour, all philosophical laws are instantly inverted, and we can arrive at nothing but chaos to support a supposition so absurd.

When Camillus besieged the city of Falerii, a schoolmaster offered to betray the children of the people into his hands, and secure for him the conquest of the city; and the magnanimous Roman caused the miscreant to be scourged to his dwelling by the children he sought to betray. Thank God, that is the spirit of our own Great West! Earth never bore such mighty billows of patriotic intelligence as are now bounding from the Atlantic to the Pacific shores. It is on this immense area, and with enhanced glories near the now wilder regions, that the grandest humanitary work of philosophic amelioration under heaven will be performed. The hardy pioneer, free as the air he breathes, and fervid as the flames he kindles to enlarge and render fruitful the precincts of a happy home, feels that a vast difference exists between himself and irrational creatures. The progress of a brute, purely individual and limited within fixed bounds, never extends to its species, they being immutably stationary; while the human race, like the individual, perfects itself by a continuous development. In this august privilege man has opened before him a career as vast as the duration of time, and beyond that is presented the fullness of that great end he was created to attain. Whenever human society arrives at a condition wherein it can not perfect its progress, it must dissolve, in order to renew and establish a fresh and firm foundation which no longer reposes on the past. But no dissolution between the earlier members of our confederacy is possible in the presence of the great conservative energies latent in the newer States. Their numerical preponderance is one guaranty of national perpetuity, but their superior love of untrammeled thought is the greatest and best. It is in the far West that mental heroes will arise, who, from a comprehensive analysis of history, will elaborate the thread which is needful to conduct us through the labyrinth of revolutions, systems, and schools. Borne on the wings of divine inspiration, they will hover above all the peculiarities of eras or sects, to comprise in one all harmonizing generalization, not the actual merely, but the possible also, and the manifestly designed, which embraces in one vast idea, God, man, the universe, and universal amelioration.

We have said above that time is the first great requisite in executing the high behests of humanity. Let it here be added that the intervention of civil power, or arbitrary constraint in any form, so far from expediting human improvement, will retard it indefinitely. No reform is real and enduring, save as it is the fruit of profound persuasion. It works a change, not in the relations of things, but in the conditions of intelligence. Above the ruins of obsolete civilization, then, let us elevate the sacred flambeau of immortal truth so high, that it may shine upon all eyes, and diffuse its effulgence through the mists of error everywhere, to reclaim wanderers from their deceptive paths. This noble and pacific conquest through the agency of divine philosophy, will, step by step, cause all nations to assume the places assigned them by the Creator, in the most perfect of cities, under the most perfect laws. The exalted enterprise, committed by Jehovah to those of his people who possess the richest harvest of his gifts, accumulated for our use in the instrumental salvation of our race, will gather from the extremes of vassalage and ignorance a sublime unity, at once the source and perfection of that wisest freedom which is realized in the liberty of the children of God.

Every emancipation that is reasonable, and therefore enduring, implies the previous acquisition of mental illumination and moral force sufficient to render their possessor competent to enter the society of the free. If this condition is neglected from personal considerations, and with fanatical intent, the premature enterprise will end in the destruction of its presumptuous leaders as its first victims. It is the fable of Orpheus or Prometheus unhappily realized. The general law of right is eternal and unchangeable; the particular claim to the benefit thereof must be admitted as soon as there is a capacity for its exercise. All laws, customs, and institutions which array themselves against the genius of progressive improvement are fatal to the people whose material energies they petrify, and whose spiritual aspirations they destroy. Whatever in man becomes actually stationary, begins that instant to decay, and the charnel-house presents the only recommendation such conservatism can claim. Races and nations so circumstanced speedily resemble those cities of the desert whose dusty ruins serve only as the frightful lair of vermin the most ferocious and abject. It is a great[Pg 422] waste of cotton and sweet gums to embalm the dead on this side the globe; we had much better spend those and other like commodities in promoting the welfare of the living. It is equally useless to resist the flow of waters, the budding of trees, and the growth of plants in unfolding spring; in the name of winter to protest against the fecundity of nature, while the sun is ascending, and moist zephyrs re-open in her bosom all the sources of life.

The immense work of universal regeneration through the agency of righteousness and love has already commenced, and must proceed. Until its complete triumph, there will be no repose, because until that consummation, humanity can not cease to suffer. But the inevitable day hastens on, when the people will have but one will and one action, as they are actuated by one interest only, and its dawn will be the advent of universal joy. Let us not fear, but labor with cheerful courage, since for the attainment of an end so magnificent, no exhausting toil should be denied. What better employment for the few days allotted us on earth? If sometimes we suffer lassitude in our repeated endeavors, let us raise our eyes with our hearts, and contemplate at once the omnipotent decree which insures final success, and the ennobled generations who hail their benefactors from afar. After long ages of servitude, be certain that the people will arise, brave and powerful to sweep away the contracted boundaries within which they have been so long packed, and will demand all those rights which have been wrested from them by iniquitous laws. Then will open a new era to abused humanity, when God will recognize and bless the noblest of his creatures, man, for he will then have entered upon the way which from eternity had been assigned. Equality and liberty, become for the people a sacred dogma forever affirmed in the common reason and conscience, will then effectively realize itself in the comprehensive social organizations and philosophical perfection it will spontaneously create.

Sacred literature constitutes the most vivid testimony one can consult respecting the course of the human mind, its phases, progress, eclipses and illuminations; the influence of moral systems, national governments, and popular customs; the character of diversified races, the knowledge of the past, and the hope of the future.

The sensibility of pagan antiquity was more powerfully impressed with the perfectibility latent in creation than their intellect had the ability to discriminate, or their conscience to realize. At the best transition periods of literary and scientific excellence, in the conclaves of their divinities, they represented each god holding some musical instrument, thus denoting the exquisite and eternal harmony which pervades the universe. But true religion is not the mere enthusiasm of science which worships a great natural law, as one adores an element frozen into a vast ice-idol; it is rectified intelligence beholding the almighty Father, palpable in the glorious creation as it beams all around, and sanctified affection especially exercised in devotion to the incarnated, atoning, and interceding Son, through the power and grace of the eternal Spirit. Montesquieu, in his Soul of Law, has noticed the fact, that Christianity, in fitting us for the felicity of the next life, creates the chief happiness of this. Such exalted fruits are produced by divine redemption wherever its influence is diffused. For instance, despite the grandeur of the empire and the viciousness of the climate, it prevented the establishment of despotism in Ethiopia, and bore into the midst of Africa the legislation and refinements of Europe. Instead of such destruction as was wrought by Timour and Gengis Kan, while they devastated the cities and tribes of Asia, or the perpetual massacres executed by the chiefs of Greece and Rome, the victories of the[Pg 424] Cross leave to conquered nations such grand donations as life, liberty, law, refinement, and a religion which injures none but blesses all. Heavenly truth teaches man his duties by unfolding to him his destiny. It does not leave him unaided in secular academies, frigid universities, and pagan gymnasia, to vegetate in a brutal ferocity a hundred times more venomous than the savage state. Pure religion civilizes its subjects by nourishing them with truth, as well as with bread; it ennobles them by aggrandizing the intellect and renovating the heart, thus imparting to the feeblest pupil formed in her school, more lofty and substantial philosophy than can be possessed by the most erudite worldly sage. Its process is of another sort, and directed to different ends than those contemplated by materialists who undertake to perfect the education of a people through evolutions rather than by instructions, placing in their hands a mute stone to facilitate the increase of transient physical force, instead of inculcating those high lessons which to the soul give eternal life.

The salvation of the social world depends upon personal and popular allegiance to Christ, from whom mankind, as a depraved race, are spiritually and politically detached. It is necessary by all means, that public institutions should be constructed on Christian principles, under that divine guidance which, blending things temporal with things celestial, leads both to a common centre and explains how coincident are authority and obedience, while it subordinates force to reason, to righteousness, and the knowledge of infallible truth. Until this end is attained, there can be neither peace nor content; for if the legislator, deceived in his design, establishes a principle different from that which is produced from the nature of things, the state will not cease to be agitated until it is either destroyed or changed, and invincible justice reclaims her original empire. When the use of human faculties is controlled, but not confined, by the doctrines of Christianity which contain all truth, by the precepts and counsels which nourish every virtue, it tends incessantly toward the development of that intelligence and those sentiments which constitute moral perfection. It is thus that the heavenly influence acts without interruption upon popular literatures, arts, sciences, philosophies, laws; and this unfolding of native capacities, which is never long arrested, forms the true progress[Pg 425] of those civilizing powers in their potent relation to Christian nations. If the divine preservative is withdrawn from a people, they immediately sink into barbarism, and one everywhere finds profoundly marked the traces of that true light which once shined, though the candlestick be now removed. If primitive faith is allowed to become adulterated, vague opinions will arise from the bosom of doubt and indifference, like the sterile clouds which float in a wintry sky, till night deepens and all is obscured.

Herein is a great difference which distinguished the Christian religion from all anterior systems. In pagan antiquity, the master could, without internal trouble, possess his slave; princes claimed to belong to a divine race, and the patrician felt that he and his plebeian neighbor were born far apart. This was revolted against more than complained of, as the benighted were actuated by natural indignation rather than by conscientious reason. But, under the gospel, within the oppressor, as in the oppressed, a heavenly voice evermore proclaimed the eternal fact that all are equal before God, and that justice is a boon and bond for all. Despite this ennobling principle, this sanctification of the human conscience, however, the advancement of mankind remained subordinate to the same rules. It was ever requisite that successive emancipations should be preceded by an adequate development of intelligence, and a corresponding elevation of moral sentiment. Freedom is a calamitous conquest to one not fitted to enjoy it. But under the instruction of the gospel, and by virtue of its power, the slave, the imbecile, the mendicant, and alien, become equals and brothers in common with the master and citizen, however unbounded may be his wealth and extensive his power. It is the second moral creation of humanity. The natural conscience thereby receives, as incontestable axioms, laws and obligations which in all preceding experience it never discovered in itself. It is meant by this that the application of these laws may become both easy and certain. The office of the Gospel is not to found a state or impart a code. It is addressed to man, whom it leaves in the exercise of free will. The light which each one brings upon earth, by the celestial message becomes more brilliant and divine; but it is, and ever must be, more or less obscured by ignorance and perverted by passion. Absolute fraternity and immaculate charity we should not expect to become the law of the state; they would[Pg 426] then cease to be virtues. Our duty and perfection consist in causing them to control and diminish our imperfections. But in proportion as the spirit of the gospel is comprehensively exemplified, and obedience to its requirements is complete, earth, purified from disorder, becomes the image of heaven, and is the sojourn of peace, innocence, and holy joy. The true happiness of man and the healthful tranquillity of states can be established and preserved only by the sacred worship of that religion which, in the energetic language of Tertullian, is "a second royalty." The same principle which places order in society by creating social power, gives order to the family by constituting domestic power. The two powers resemble each other, because the family is society on a small scale; they are unequal, since society at large is a grand family wherein all individuals are a homogeneous aggregate. But both alike emanate from the power of God from whose authority alone all fraternity is derived (Eph. iii. 14, 15). In the same manner, then, as the paternal government is identical with social power in the family, social power is the paternal government of general society: it is herein that we may find a reason for the immortality of power, and perceive why it is that the religion of Jesus Christ, being the container and communicator of all excellence, is the wisest and most beneficent civilizer on earth. Jurists and statesmen are beginning to acknowledge that all legitimate legislation comes from God, the Father of all just law, and that our multifarious libraries of conflicting and impotent statutes, born only of man, resemble a vast hospital of infant foundlings. A piece of inscribed paper, called a constitution, can never long exist and be of value, save as it is the exponent of intelligence, sound morality, and spiritual religion, together with the matured capacity of self-government based on these.

The word "democracy" was invented two thousand years ago, but for many centuries the thing itself did not actually exist. It was in the country of the greatest of great men, and, at the opening of the most auspicious of the progressive ages, the country and age of Washington, that real practical equality was established, and that mainly by the power of reformed religion. A power was then inaugurated higher and better than that which ruled when the Greek Plato, Phrygian Æsop, and Roman Epictetus, were bought and sold as slaves. Preceding nations and religions were[Pg 427] in due time excelled, and the mighty successor, in ascending the new throne of imperial equality, incorporated into herself all the most enduring and salutary attributes which could be derived from past civilizations, upon which a better progress, under these brighter skies, has so happily supervened.

For the preparation of a race for such a destiny as is here enjoyed, it was necessary that they should at the outset burst those chains of political and ecclesiastical despotism, which priestcraft had forged and fastened around the human soul; and how nobly did the first colonists perform this duty! Bruce and Wallace at the head of the Covenanters, in Scotland; Cromwell and Milton, Hampden and the Puritans, in England; Washington and the war of American independence constituted one continued struggle for civil and religious liberty. Those fierce and fiery furnaces through which this selectest race fearlessly passed, were intended to purify and qualify them for the work of the latter days; and the result is, that at this moment they are emancipated, and ready to continue the functions of their Heaven-appointed office. The Bacons, Hookers, Miltons, Souths, Baxters, Howes, Taylors, and Owens, of the mother country, contributed the full aggregate of their best wisdom to enrich the commencement of our theology, and are not wanting in worthy representatives and improved disciples among us at the present day. Without losing their depth, our age greatly excels theirs in breadth; and if the few are less erudite, the masses are infinitely more enlightened. Diffusion, expansion, universality, is the great principle of American knowledge; and it is this which distinguishes us above all other lands.

Locke is sometimes represented as the first who asserted the doctrines of religious freedom; but several preceding authors had expressed substantially the same views. Such in particular were Sir Thomas More in his Utopia; some of the earlier Independents, or Brownists; the incomparable Cudworth; Jeremy Taylor in his Liberty of Prophesying, published in 1647; Dr. John Owen in a piece on Toleration, annexed to his Discourse before Parliament the day after the execution of Charles the First; and Milton in his Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes. But these left the work very incomplete. The mediæval period had been a progress, but it became an impediment not easily displaced on the stage of[Pg 428] its last and most formidable advancement. The English revolution was the grand event which terminated the seventeenth century, that heir of all foregoing epochs, and which superseded them with a divine commission to finish their imperfect endeavors. The two revolutions which arose in its bosom to close the historical career of the middle age, were only partial and incomplete. Both movements, the political and the religious, were local and, therefore, limited, because their principle lacked generality. But the American revolution opportunely broke forth to universalize the ameliorating germs which anterior institutions had conserved, so that their unchecked growth, and boundless propagation, became possible everywhere. The age of Leo X. then succumbed, and the age of Washington became the dawn of supreme freedom for the best good of universal man.

The prophet Ezekiel prefaces his predictions with a striking delineation of human progress under divine guidance. A whirlwind and a cloud appear in the north, illumined with a brightness as of fire, out of which appears the likeness of four living creatures; each has four faces, four wings, and hands under their wings; and the faces are severally like those of a man, of a lion, of an ox, and an eagle. Their wings are raised and joined one to another, and when they moved it was "straight forward," and they turn not as they go. By the side of these was a sphere, composed of a "wheel within a wheel," which also had four faces, was connected with the living creatures, and moved in perfect harmony with them; was full of eyes, and its operations, though endlessly diversified, were harmonious in action, and one in purpose, for all were guided by one great, controlling Agent. The wheels had a perpetually onward movement, and so immense were they in circumference, that their "height was dreadful." And such is the providence of God, a scheme for executing destinies high as heaven, and enduring as eternity, vast in conception, sublime in results, and, like their Author, omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent. Another apt and beautiful emblem of the same sovereign disposal closes the sacred writings. As mediatorial King, the Lord Jesus Christ unrolls the mysterious scroll, radiant with the eternal purposes of Jehovah, the controlling of all events, and the overruling of vicissitudes and revolutions of human affairs. As Matthew was symbolized[Pg 429] by the man, Mark by the lion, and Luke by the ox, so he who was most intimate with the earthly presence of the Messiah, and who was elected to portray the final unfolding of the mighty redemption, bore the eagle as indicative of his inspiration, and the foretokener of final supremacy. That bird of power has lighted on the banner of our Union, and with it will sail with supreme dominion in the highest azure, till all glorious predictions are fulfilled.

Observe in what a remarkable manner the whole of North America was transferred into Protestant hands. New England early became an object of desire with France, and nothing seemed more probable at one time than that she would be the sole possessor thereof. Bancroft records how, in 1605, De Mont "explored and claimed for France the rivers, the coasts, and bays of New England. But the decree had gone out that the beast of Rome should never pollute this land of promise, and it could not be revoked. The hostile savages first prevented their settlement; yet they yield not their purpose. Thrice in the following year was the attempt renewed, and twice were they driven back by adverse winds, and the third time wrecked at sea. Again did Pourtrincourt attempt the same enterprise, but was, in like manner, compelled to abandon the project. It was not so written. This was the land of promise which God would give to the people of his own choice. Hither he would transplant the 'vine' which he had brought out of Egypt. Here it should take root, and send out its boughs into the sea, and its branches unto the river." At a still later period, a French armament of forty ships of war sailed from Chebucto, in Nova Scotia, for the purpose of destroying the nursery of that Puritanism which was destined to pervade this New World. News of the attempt occasioned a day of fasting and prayer to be observed in all the churches. While Mr. Prince was officiating in Old South Church, Boston, on this occasion, and praying most fervently that the dreaded calamity might be averted, a sudden gust of wind arose (the day till then had been perfectly clear) so violently as to cause the clattering of the windows. That was the waft of a tempest at sea, in which the greater part of the French fleet was wrecked. The duke and his principal general committed suicide, many of the subordinates died with disease, and thousands were[Pg 430] drowned. A small remnant returned to France utterly confounded, and the enterprise of resisting Providence in this direction was abandoned forever. Malignity was rebuked, as the heathen had previously been driven out. A pestilence raged just before the arrival of the pilgrims, which swept off vast numbers of the Indians, and the newly arrived pioneers of universal cultivation were preserved from absolute starvation by the very corn which savages had buried for their winter's provisions. Moreover, it should be here remarked that Lord Lenox and the Marquis of Buckingham were not permitted to succeed in establishing the colony which they attempted at New Plymouth. The hierarchy of England, as well as that of Rome, were foiled before the Independents had arrived, to whom the Court of Heaven had given the chief sway over this mighty empire of the prospective church. The historian of those times well observes: "Had New England been colonized immediately on the discovery of the American continent, the old English institutions would have been planted under the powerful influence of the Roman Catholic religion. Had the settlement been made under Elizabeth, it would have been before the activity of the popular mind in religion had conducted to a corresponding activity of mind in politics. The Pilgrims were Englishmen, Protestants, exiles for religion, men disciplined by misfortune, cultivated by opportunities of extensive observation, equal in rank as in right, and bound by no code but that which was imposed by religion, or might be created by the public will. America opened as a field of adventure just at the time when mind began to assume its independence, and religion its vitality."

For three centuries, the selectest materials were preparing for their prepared work. From Wyckliffe proceeded a succession of dauntless advocates for the emancipation of the human mind from the power of despotism. The principles proclaimed by Luther and fortified by Calvin, were adopted from Huss and Jerome, the pupils of the great original hero of Oxford and Lutterworth. But as the "Morning Star of the Reformation" arose in western England, so did the full day dawn from a still remoter horizon, and Puritanism in eastern America was the Reformation reformed. The sifted wheat of the old world sowed the prepared soil of the new, whereon the best portion of the best nation then extant, came to realize the[Pg 431] fond expectation of Columbus, concerning the continent he discovered, when, actuated by the spirit of prophecy, his adventures westward were urged mainly "by the hopes he cherished of extending here the kingdom of Christ." Independency was supreme from the beginning in Massachusetts, and the revolution hastened the spread of democracy in religion, as in politics, throughout American society. In those commonwealths where the aristocratic principle was still strong, as in Virginia, it was boldly assailed and completely subdued. Entails disappeared, and the church lost its official rank in the state. Men everywhere began to feel that they must not longer be Jews of the ancient bondage to law, but Christians under the new dispensation of grace; not apostles of the past, but prophets of the future.

All the great theologians of the American church have originated near where the first spiritual colony was planted, and have constantly spread their influence toward the West. In this department of high thought, as in every other professional walk, Europe often republishes original masterpieces from America, many of which are acknowledged to be the best ever produced. From New England, too, has emanated every form of "liberal" doctrine, which has modified primitive sternness, and tended, perhaps, to develop more fully the wealth of that gospel which is full of grace and truth. Thus the seeds which Christianity has sown during eighteen centuries are successively springing up; liberty to the enthralled, human amity, divine mercy, and equality to all. Its end is to spiritualize man, to animate all races toward the highest attainments, and cause the will of God to be done on earth as it is in heaven. In her mighty advance into the great heart of our land, Religion recognizes and authenticates the right of human souls to outstep the limits of the visible world, and to become regenerate and refreshed in the ideal of eternity.

The immense immigration to our republic at the present time, is filling another notable page in the providential history of America. Had such infloodings of aliens occurred at any former period of our history, they would probably have ruined us. This heterogeneous mass now amounts to half a million annually, and would have been sufficient to crush our free institutions in their incipient state. But what might overflow a sapling, may only refresh the growth and[Pg 432] mature the strength of a sturdy oak. The power of assimilation has happily become more potent than the influence of the most copious immigration. It was to this end that the facilities for oceanic transit were restricted, till the consequences of the greatest enlargement would not render their use unsafe. How profoundly should we admire that divine wisdom which has so graciously cast the lines of our heritage, and measured out to us the responsibilities thereof! Millions of the papal world are wafted to our shores, to be enlightened, elevated, Christianized, and taught the prerogatives of freemen, to say nothing of the three millions of instruments placed in our hands by unrighteous bondage, to "sharpen, polish, and prepare for the subjugation of another continent to the Prince of Peace."

From Adam to Augustus transpired the great process of preparation, incarnation, and elementary diffusion of divine truth. While Japhet was proceeding to people more than half the globe, his progeny, Greeks, Romans, and English, successively advanced with accumulative efficiency to redeem the degenerate descendants of Shem. At length the predestined father of all ennobling civilization, in the persons of his selected children, took possession of the continent of America, and is now executing his most consummate work. To give the latest, and therefore the best, Japhetic elements a fair opportunity for undisturbed development here, God caused the preceding stock in western Europe to turn its commercial ambition toward the East, where England now wields the sceptre over two hundred millions of the Shemitic race. Simultaneously with the growth of that gigantic secular power in British India, a few sons of New England, mighty in faith, conceived a still grander enterprise, and modern missions bore the blessed gospel to the most ancient and benighted lands. Young Japhet Christianized in republican America, and marching with irresistible progress westward to join senior members of the civilizing household from the opposite point, according to Gen. ix. 27, "shall enlarge himself, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem," taking Ham by the way.

It is not the aim of the Christian religion to stifle the germs of individuality in man, but rather to disenthrall them from the crushing burdens with which they are overlaid by the lusts of the flesh and the vanities of life; as was at the first exemplified in the strongly[Pg 433] marked character of Peter and James, John and Paul. Individuals so freed and fortified ever constitute the chief agents of wise amelioration, and are the foremost heroes of comprehensive reforms. They are the powerful living preachers and inspiring writers who are full of the spirit of their own age, and yearn to subordinate it to the reign of Christ. They are ready often to accept of changes, and are always able to transform them into progress. Says the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews, "That which has become antiquated and decrepid with age, is nigh to its final disappearance." Then let us not cling to the dotage which belongs to the superstitions of superannuated nations, but press onward to achieve, without pause or encumbrance, our own more exalted and ennobling destiny.

The uniform migration assigned to human progress, and the region of its fondest aspirations, have always been in one direction. The Egyptians styled their paradise the land, and their god Osiris, the lord of the "West." The Atalantis, or "happy isles" of the Greeks were situated in the western ocean. To the west lay, likewise, "the land of spirits" of all our American savages. In fine, the great tree of humanity, vouchsafed to overshadow the whole earth, was made by the Divine Husbandman to germinate and send up its strong trunk in the ancient land of Asia. Grafted with a noble stalk, it shot forth new branches, and unfolded fairer blossoms in Europe; the best strength and sweetest odor of which seem destined soon to appear in America, embodied in its latest and richest fruit. Every thing here is happily arranged for the full accomplishment of the gracious designs of Providence for the triumph of the true, the just, and the good; so that if Christians are but faithful to this destination, the whole world will soon appear as a sublime concert of nations, blending their voices into a lofty harmony in the Creator's praise.

The introduction of "the voluntary system" into national religion, was a primary fruit of the American revolution. The scheme was entirely new, and grew out of the great movement westward, and Providence-wise, in the person and principles of Roger Williams. The Catholic church, which had been mainly instrumental in building up our modern civilization, became corrupt in consequence of the absolute supremacy which it attained. To prevent[Pg 434] the like corruption from vitiating Christianity in this new land of her sojourn, the best mode was to accord equality to all her disciples, and no evil has resulted from the experiment. The support given to religion in the United States is larger than in any European state, except Great Britain; the professors of religion here are nearly as numerous as the electors, and public morality is certainly as well preserved as in any other part of the world. The ecclesiastical hierarchy of England costs as much as all the states of continental Europe put together, and contributes least to the promotion of vital religion among either people or clergy. About forty millions of dollars are paid annually to the church establishment, of which enormous sum not half a million is received by the four thousand two hundred and fifty-four poor curates, who do nearly all the professional work as deputies, dependent upon the absent state bishop, or neighboring aristocrat. This abominable system of pluralities has naturally introduced immorality and licentiousness among a large proportion of the upper clerical ranks. The mere form of religion is substituted in the place of spiritual power, and may be said to constitute the system of modern indulgences, by which men purchase for themselves a subterfuge from reproach. In America, the people claim the interposition of their state governments, in securing the freest secular education, while they deny the right or the utility of interfering in any degree with religion. But by the rulers of England the law is entirely reversed; they claim a strict superintendence of religious interests by government, and are only willing to leave every other department of instruction to the voluntary and unassisted efforts of individuals. Fears are sometimes entertained lest the great numbers of Catholic and other immigrants should exercise an inimical influence upon our resident population. But we should remember that the institutions indigenous to the United States are the most vigorous protest against both religious and political superstition, and by their own uncoerced influence will most effectively transform into their own likeness all comers thereunto. Maryland was settled with Catholics, yet it is certain that American Protestantism has exerted a much more powerful influence upon them than foreign Catholicism. The most conservative and zealous adherents to our civil and religious polity, especially in the great new States, are those whose alien parents recently[Pg 435] landed on our free shores. We have convinced ourselves, and will yet teach the world, that the policy of government consists in permitting the utmost latitude of thought, and the fullest liberty of conscience.

Christianity did not take full possession of civil society in mediæval times, till the old races had been refreshed by the mixture of new men. Before then, says Troplong, it had "rather negotiated and transacted with the world than ruled with dominion." The new amalgam now forming under the mild splendor of western skies, will aggregate within itself the best results of all anterior religious discipline, and be made to superabound with original glories through newly added spiritual worth. Papacy may yet remain for a season, as a reminiscence of incipient culture, and the waymark of that power and progress which a fuller unfolding of Christianity will certainly surpass, as she proceeds to the ulterior accomplishment of her all-embracing mission. There will be no more pontiffs, when each child of humanity has become a renovated citizen, divinely anointed and equipped for the functions of acceptable worship. The great atonement, or sin-offering of mankind, was consummated by Christ, in his own personal sacrifice; and the great thank-offering of mankind became possible through Christ, by means of the Spirit. Henceforth there can be no more human priesthood or typical sacrifice between God and man, for the Mediator, the High Priest, is himself the God Man. The mediatorial act of reconciled humanity consists simply in unencumbered faith; trust in the love of God revealed to the individual believer in Jesus Christ by the Spirit, promised on that condition, and relying upon that Spirit to renew his own heart, and the world. It is thus that one is made to feel that the Christian religion is capable of an infinite expansion. God, man, mankind, are the three great factors which divine grace opens up in individual consciousness, utterly distinct from external conventionalisms, the harmonious completeness of which will yet realize the fullness of heavenly blessings on earth. In the beginning of this dispensation, a supernatural impulse prompted one hundred and twenty believers, men and women, natives and foreigners, assembled at Jerusalem, with Pentecostal fervor to burst forth in praise of God, not in the use of ritual formularies, nor in the extinct sacred language, but in the living tongues[Pg 436] of multifarious nations, which had then become the organs of an inward divine life and adoration common to all. But even that glorious outburst of spiritual freedom was local, and is yet to be infinitely more gloriously universalized. Then will our holy religion be seen in its wholeness, at once historical and ideal, human and divine; capable equally of individual and general application, and to be gratefully admired as well for its perpetual progress, as in its final triumphs.

The Lutheran reformation was the dissolution of popery, which constructed the church on false principles, rather than the restoration of the church constructed on true principles. The system superseded at the end of the Leoine age, had achieved the civilization of mankind, but true Christianization it was not competent to attain. Milton felt this when he wrote as follows: "Truth, indeed, once came into the world with her divine Master, and was a perfect shape most glorious to look on, but when he ascended, and his apostles after him were laid asleep, then straight arose a wicked race of deceivers, who, as that story goes of the Egyptian Typhon, with his conspirators, how they dealt with the good Osiris, took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds. From that time, ever since, the sad friends of Truth—such as durst appear—imitating the careful search that Isis made for the mangled body of Osiris, went up and down, gathering up limb by limb still as they could find them. We have not yet found them all, lords and commons, nor ever shall do till her Master's second coming. He shall bring together every joint and member, and shall mold them into an immortal feature of loveliness and perfection." Coincident with this cheering prophecy, and in the region where it was uttered, arose the Moravian brethren, with their disciples John Wesley and George Whitfield, to teach the despairing world and the dissolute or impotent churches, what real Christianity is, and to show reflecting Christians how little true power exists in national establishments and their crippled machinery. Whitfield, like the embodiment of seraphic zeal, fulmined from the interior of Oxford to the outer borders of our young republic, and having poured all the worth of his spirit into the fountain of religious life in America, gave his body to our soil, and now sleeps near Pilgrim Rock. Wesleyism[Pg 437] did much to regenerate the effete theology under whose ponderous impotency it originated, but is now fast losing its power by an increased assimilation to the surrounding curse of universal formalism. In the eastern portion of our own land, too, where her first foothold was gained, and the grandest conquests in fervid simplicity were secured, that communion is losing strength, we fear; but in the great West, the billows of heavenly fire augment as they advance, and millions of beautiful, as well as fruitful plants will hereafter spring, in consequence of the yet wider and freer spreadings of the celestial flames. Glory be to God, a westward fusion of races has begun, an assimilation of nations is in progress; all arbitrary frontiers are giving way; distances diminish; provincialisms disappear; sects and forms of worships are brought into contact, and are modified by every advantage flowing from salutary emulation, while they regard each other on a closer view with less animosity or reserve. Partisans whose views are short, and whose minds are narrow, may look with regret upon the disappearance of the differences which characterize absolute social systems. But fear not, men and brethren, we are spectators of a delightful and auspicious exhibition. Let nationalities disappear, and in their stead leave mankind free in the presence of their heavenly Father! They have tried long enough to form themselves into ameliorating leagues, and friendly alliances, under the sway of legislative force; the best alliance is that of the family, the equally free and unitedly loving family of Christ.

The heart of young America is not altogether in the past, but like the youth of all progressive peoples, it fondly anticipates a millennium to come. There is much new spiritual wine springing on our soil, and no wise husbandman will attempt to conserve it in old bottles. In the age which now is, has appeared an increased degree of independence and self-help, a growing opinion that man should select his own credo, construct his own opinions, pay no great deference to ancient usages, nor venerate any thing save honorable worth. This doctrine set in with the Sermon on the Mount, and no party or power on earth can arrest its universal adoption. We envy not the formalisms of that worship which vaunts itself amidst cathedral ostentation, where the organ and choir perform their mountebank mouthings over ashes, bones, and dead marble;[Pg 438] gorgeous edifices, comparatively empty, which give back the sounds of weekly mummery, while hundreds of thousands live unrecked of, and die uncared for.

We want no chief priests to lounge in the senate, robed in purple and fine linen, faring sumptuously every day, and ambitious of laying their presumptuous hands on the advancing ark of truth only to retard it. The men of sacred functions whom our age and country demand, are those who hail the spirit of the times with joy, as the expanding soul of humanity, with its lightnings striking down the throne of tyranny and the altar of priestcraft. In fertilizing co-operation they waken arts and sciences, and bid them advance to bless the people, by erecting homes of comfort and culture amid prairies where the panther roamed, or on heights where the eagle propagated his glorious strength. With sanctified indignation they repel the arrogant claims of antique bigotry, and cease not revising the laws of property, the creeds of religion, the rights of the citizen; making the whole land a temple, a university, a lecture-room, a congress. Originating opinions, they render them free and prevalent as the national atmosphere; canceling the indentures of hereditary governors and teachers, popularizing all languages, with the richest treasures of each, exploring every ocean and cave, analyzing all substances, ransacking all libraries, they tend always and in every thing to discover and apply whatever is conducive to the health, comfort, and freedom of man. These are not rapid and speculative theorists, but the practical and beneficent workers for God and man. Passing amid the agitated and destitute crowds, they recognize in them the mighty woof of humanity, and teach each brother to throw his shuttle across the loom of time, and with fraternal delight weave the needful robe. A terrific power is indeed sleeping or waking in the vast multitudes now gathering in the West, and that which of all things is most requisite there and everywhere, is a high and pure moral education. Give them that under the eye, and for the glory, of that Father who overlooks the world, and with cheerful congratulations we may greet the changes which wait upon each revolving year, and walk unperturbed in presence of the sublime destinies of this mighty Union. When Columbus sailed toward the new and boundless world, while mutiny was in the vessel, and round him spread the[Pg 439] wild and threatening billows, muttering despair, we are told that flowers, weeds, and stray leaves, floated near the ship, and resting on the mast-head came birds of the most beautiful and gorgeous plumage, and as the sun gleamed on their variegated wings, they seemed like the angels of hope beckoning across the watery waste. So to us in the midst of occasional tempests, and selfish cliques, appear the intimations of the promised land, fruitful of all good, to which we are hastening; and we only need to remind one another of these pleasant omens, which are too full of the promised triumph to allow the spirit of the Cape to either depress or destroy.

The education of "the Brigham girl," deaf, dumb, and blind, was a characteristic achievement of New England enterprise. The "Maine Law," and other kindred efforts for the prevention as well as cure of evils incident to fallen human nature, are worthy of the cause they serve, and honor that merciful God by whom they are inspired. The "Ragged School" has also traversed new shores of philanthropy and transformed the "Old Brewery" into the school-house of intelligence, and the temple of religion. In rooms where the master formerly taught young proficients how adroitly to pick pockets, and precocious lusts rioted in the most loathsome orgies, orphanage now practices the lessons of honorable industry, and rescued penitents bow in virtuous prayer. By hundreds the heirs of misfortune and involuntary victims of vice are gathered from the purlieus of our great eastern cities, in the bosom of judicious piety, and are instinctively borne to the far West as the asylum which affords a home for the protection and healthful exercise of each faculty and limb, be it young or old, feeble or strong. In the East we have heard much of the refinement of the college, and are glad, on a much broader and brighter scale, to see spreading the refinement of the cottage. The schoolmaster of the masses is the great minister for whom the mightiest generations wait. With increased effulgence they will arise to reflect and augment the brightness they have received; and, as in the Grecian race of old, they will cast onward the torch from one to another, till spiritual gloom and vassalage shall no more be found. Over all our vast western domain the rays of commingled truth and righteousness will eventually fall, like blessed flakes of beautiful light, penetrating, subduing, transforming into the image of Christ. The spirit[Pg 440] of Christianity is vital and mighty, because it is the spirit of eternity, constituting that wholeness and heartiness which the world most needs. Without measure, the spirit of man will yet receive liberty, intelligence, religion, health; and to this end the old forms in which the word and Spirit of God have been immured and enshrined, as they move westward, will become increasingly unclasped, so that permanent power, free from the transient robe and chain, may go forth as the apostle of peace and herald of good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people.

On the 14th of August, 1837, a statue to the memory of Guttenberg, the inventor of printing, was opened to the public at Mayence. High mass was performed by the bishop, and the first printed Bible was displayed. What a suggestive incident! Amid the imposing pageantries of Romanism, wherein popular worship is conducted in an unknown tongue, and by which the revelation of God is in great part kept a sealed book, that first printed copy was displayed, the germ of millions of Bibles which have spread the light of Christianity throughout the habitable globe. The two most influential eras of all authentic history stand most intimately connected with a more fundamental view of this incident—the diffusion of the Scriptures. The Septuagint version followed, and arose out of, the culmination of the Periclean age; and the formation of modern Bible Societies, was cotemporaneous with the inauguration of Washington. The former coincided with the perfection of the Greek language, then about to pervade the entire East, through the agency of Alexander; and the latter arose simultaneously with English supremacy in both hemispheres. All that is in the Bible will yet be in the world, realized by and for progressive amelioration, and every omen indicates that the ultimate fullness of knowledge and righteousness will be attained by mankind through the medium of our mother tongue. The free criticism of the sacred writings during the last fifty years has done infinitely more to advance than to prevent the understanding of the divine substance of them, not only in the New Testament, but also in the Old. The dead rationalism of the eighteenth century bore its own corpse to the grave, except where it has been preserved as a mummy in state churches, and cherished as a dead household god by effete hierarchies. But Christianity is the religion of the Spirit, and "the[Pg 441] Spirit is Truth." Life only proceeds from life, and a corpse is none the more potent when wrapped in brilliant drapery. The pool of Bethesda imparted its healing properties only when the waters were moved. Earnest searching of the Scriptures, and repeated trials at a more perfect rendering of their saving import can result in nothing but good. Where life is, there is also spirit, a liberty which is enhanced and controlled by the mightiest spiritual life; but where life is not, there must be death, and by nothing can vitality be produced. Timid and slavish fears may still protest against improved criticism, and against this, as to all other religious progress, oppose that Medusa-head called the danger of rationalistic interpretation. But it is too late in the dawn of blessed experience and expectation to suffer ourselves to be petrified. As the free personal sacrifice of Christ offered once for all, was the central event of universal history, so is the full and free unfolding of his word, under the broad and unobscured sky-light of his Spirit, the central source of all sanctifying truth.

The great religious movement of our age is breaking up deeper and deeper strata each succeeding year, and the upturning of a still profounder and broader stratum is yet to come. Never before was the future apprehended with such excited desire and hope as by the present generation, for they most generally feel that a more radical regeneration is possible which shall contain within itself the fundamental element of a newer, better, and more durable social order. Not that in these United States we are in danger of relapsing into a Priest Church, or of becoming consolidated into a State Church, but that it is our peculiar mission, under God, to organize the People's Church, with Christ for our only legislator, teacher and judge. We believe that this divine Master would have no successor of Caiaphas to lord it over his flock, and no successor of Pontius Pilate or Tiberius, whether professedly in or out of the discipleship. He, our sympathizing friend, and merciful God, will have all men come to the knowledge of the truth, and then he will himself come again without sin unto salvation. If tyrants will not surrender their chains, and bigots refuse to modify their creeds in timely preparation for that final advent, the gigantic and flaming characters written on heaven and earth, as foretokens of approaching fulfillment, may nevertheless remain, that the obdurate may read[Pg 442] them in the glare of retribution, if they refuse to recognize their warning through the light of reason.

The heavenly ladder is revealed to weary humanity, even while slumbering heavily at its feet on pillows of stone. But the hour is near when with refreshed wakefulness, the blessing of triumphant deliverance so long wrestled for will be obtained. A new civilization has already been born, in which all the treasures of literature, art, science, philosophy and religion, the richest heritage from antecedent mind, will here blend in highest purity, to enjoy progress amid constantly decreased impediments, and display ultimate splendors without a spot. Charity will have fully combined with enthusiasm, and that hope which is the attribute of republics, and which finds its legitimate fortune wholly vested in the advance of its conscious mission, will be most divinely realized in the universal sovereignty of unadulterated faith. We are to remember, however, that the moral progress of our planet is slow. But in this particular it only resembles the general economy of the whole natural world, wherein the law evidently obtains that, the higher the value and the more important the nature of a given product, the slower is its march toward perfect development. Not a few sad features at present mark the general view. What boundless wastes of land are there without a temple or a school, the region of the inaccessible jungle and tangled woodland, haunted by savage beasts, and by nearly as savage men. What millions enter the pagodas of cruelty and lust, and shrink from the blaze that glitters along the marble, with strange emotions, or transfix themselves in the agonizing postures which cruel devotion or blank superstition requires. Coming to so-called civilized lands, what thousands lie confined in cells, where despots incarcerate the brave, who wait for the relief afforded by death, and leave behind them, with the memory of their sufferings, a gleam to lighten posterity. What thousands, slaves of cupidity, drive on the unheeding hour, and pray from the wretched cottage and the famished heart, "How long, oh Lord, how long?" What millions of lonely hunters pursue their way across the prairie and over the mountain, clothed in the savage skin, with the weapons of war in their hand for a defense. But all this only attests the youthfulness of our civilization, and affords the highest encouragement[Pg 443] to our hope. The predestined and perpetual amelioration can not fail. Our sun, and system over which he presides, is so moving from his present position in space, that earth will one day be surrounded by skies whose nightly brilliancy shall infinitely transcend our present firmament; and though countless ages will pass away before the event fully transpires, yet, by an inevitable law, it must come.

Nations speaking the English language seem to be the appointed propagators of that Christian civilization upon which the future destinies of mankind depend, and which, once spread and rooted, will be everlasting. No other people have yet reached the degree of intelligence, liberty, reason, and power requisite to the exalted mission. Anglo-Americans have already attained the highest point of excellence possible to imperfect progress, and prove their great advance by the accurate test of superior invention. Thus occupying the head of modern culture, they are an exemplar to all nations, and the vanguard of humanity in its onward course. The deliberate but sure aggression of constitutional liberty and moral improvement will inevitably work out their beneficent consequences here and everywhere. The symptoms of tranquil progress and established freedom multiply and become more evident every day. There is good reason to believe that leading minds in every calling increasingly appreciate the blessings connected with the highest improvement, aware that the grandeur and permanency of a nation depend wholly on a social state founded on true religion, on a just and humane organization of industry, under the auspices of rational freedom.

The great movement, in which all Christian people more or less participate, and will henceforth participate to a much greater extent, has its origin in causes over which man has no power. It proceeds from Jehovah, who has willed that society at large should advance perpetually toward a goal, not indeed to be actually attained on earth, but which may be constantly approximated. Happy for us that our destiny has for its indestructible principle that primary and fundamental law by virtue of which humanity always tends to fortify its energies and perfect its growth; so that, in proportion as intelligence is exalted by Christianity, the juvenile man expands and develops himself into all the maturity of age. What is true[Pg 444] of the individual is true also of the community in general; it is required to traverse all the phases and successive conditions of life, in order to arrive in the unity of faith and knowledge of the Son of God, to the state of perfected humanity (Eph. iv. 13), at that grand era which the apostle termed the age of the fullness of Christ; and which, consummated through sublunary discipline as far as is possible, will reinstate us in the possession of those primitive rights and sacred liberties under the favor of which we shall realize that regenerated nature which the divine Saviour came to produce.

We have no occasion to despair of Providence. Having found God abundant in goodness and mercy as it respects all that has preceded us, we may expect that he will be found yet more manifest in what is to follow. To use the expression of a great German poet, in judgment and heart, "We are citizens of the time to come!" Firmly believing in the wise disposal of all events by the great and only Sovereign, the faith of confiding Christians survives the despair of the boldest secular heroes, knowing that the stream as it passes only goes nearer to the sea. The astronomer loses no confidence in a star at the time of an eclipse. The destiny of man is often determined by the very passions which seem designed to reverse it. Augustine went to Milan, intending to teach rhetoric, but it was to be converted by Ambrose, and thus to verify the saying of Anselm, that we are led "through vanity to truth." But let us not forget that neither the holiness nor heroism of former times will avail us and our posterity, if a lofty spirit, dignity, and innocence be not transmitted; that vain and worthless will be self-applause, and the most abundant material prosperity, if the grace of that Being is forfeited, who can pull down the mighty, confound the proud, and in the balance of unerring justice determine the fame and destiny of nations.

The leaven may seem lost in the lump for a while, but it will come at length in full force to the outer edge, and will be all the mightier for the purification it has wrought within. The profounder the renovation, the more protracted the time required. Truth stereotyped in blood lasts longer, and is more impressively read than when published by any other means. Fire burns brighter and wider when all the winds are let loose upon it. If kindled by[Pg 445] oppression, the ashes of martyrs will sow the whole earth for a Cadmean harvest of indomitable heroes.

When the tongues of emancipating, and not destroying, flames sat in splendid freedom upon the brows of primitive Christians, they were equally crowned with a part of the sovereignty conquered by the great Deliverer, and spake with power because they respired spontaneously the free and vital air given to regenerate our fallen race. Such will be the condition of the church in the end, as it was in the beginning. The perfection of the social order depends upon the perfection of spiritual adoration. A well organized society, based upon and imbued with true religion, is the most beautiful temple that can be elevated to the supreme Deity. Liberty, Law, Peace, these three words were engraved upon the entrance to the chief shrine at Delphi; they will yet be written along the entire circumference of our globe; and radiate with the glory of Christ from pole to equator, and from equator to pole.

Notes on Central America; particularly the States of Honduras and San Salvador: their Geography, Topography, Climate, Population, Resources, Productions, &c., &c., and the proposed Interoceanic Railway. By E.G. Squier, formerly Chargé d'Affaires of the United States to the Republics of Central America. With Original Maps and Illustrations. 8vo, Muslin, $2 00.

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Most persons know that the Council of Trent was a product of the Reformation, but comparatively few, we suspect, know much about its history. Those who wish to know (and it is a matter worth knowing) will find ample means of information in this volume. * * * He (the author) is clear in statement, subtle and consecutive in his logic, and steers as far from dullness as from sourness.—Perthshire Advertiser.

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This is a record of recent travel in various parts of Mexico, including full statistical details, historical reminiscences and legends, and descriptions of society, manners, and scenery. A large portion is devoted to the influence of the Catholic Church, and relates many piquant narratives in illustration of the subject. The author writes in a lively, graphic, and, sometimes, humorous style. He gives a great deal of valuable information, and his travels can not fail to find numerous readers and prove a most popular volume.

Mornings among the Jesuits at Rome. Being Notes of Conversations held with certain Jesuits on the Subject of Religion in the City of Rome. By Rev. M. Hobart Seymour, M.A. 12mo, Muslin, 75 cents.

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When the Texans threw off the Mexican yoke and entered into our National Confederacy, no portion of her people felt the change more keenly than her Romish priesthood, and especially the Jesuits. Their counter and insidious duties of social and domestic life is the moral of this story. The lady who wrote it has studied the Romish argument, and has managed it with effect. It is not a book of the "Maria Monk" stamp; it is a successful refutation and exposure, in popular form, of some of the worst points of the Romish system.—Church Review.

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Or, Social and Religious Customs in France. By Eugene de Courcillon. 12mo, Muslin, 75 cents.

The autobiography of a young French peasant who was trained for the Church. Its specific purpose is to give an account of the social and rural life and superstitions of the peasants of Normandy, and to show the relations existing between them and their priests. The author also describes, in a very interesting manner, the routine and customs of the French ecclesiastical seminaries.

"Le Curé Manqué is a curious work, for its pictures of French peasant manners, its account of village priests, and its quiet but bitter satire on the selfishness of the Romanist country clergy, and the ignorance in which they leave their flocks. The filling up of the story shows remarkable skill, for the easy natural way in which it carries out the author's intention of exhibiting "social and religious customs" in provincial France.—London Spectator.

The strange state of society, with its French and Papal habits which it portrays, will set new facts before the mind of even-traveled readers.—Presbyterian Banner.

Le Curé Manqué (the Unfinished Priest) is a title which very accurately conveys an idea of what the book is. It lets the public behind the scenes in a remarkable manner, and is one of the most readable books of the season.—N.Y. Daily Times.

A most agreeable and entertaining narrative, opening to most American readers novel, strange, and (many of them) charming scenes. Though the Church may be a loser (which is doubtful, however), the world has certainly been a gainer by his apostacy from his sacred calling.—Savannah Journal.

The exposition of the Romish ceremonials, and of the subjecture of the masses of the French people to priestcraft are peculiarly interesting. We quote, "How a mass may be said for a pig, and refused for a Protestant."—N.Y. Commercial Advertiser.

Each Number of the Magazine will contain 144 octavo pages, in double columns, each year thus comprising nearly two thousand pages of the choicest Miscellaneous Literature of the day. Every number will contain numerous Pictorial Illustrations, accurate Plates of the Fashions, a copious Chronicle of Current Events, and impartial Notices of the important Books of the Month. The Volumes commence with the Numbers for June and December; but Subscriptions may commence with any number.

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The Publishers will supply Specimen Numbers gratuitously to Agents and Postmasters, and will make liberal arrangements with them for circulating the Magazine. They will also supply Clubs, of two persons at Five Dollars a year, or five persons at Ten Dollars. Clergymen supplied at Two Dollars a year. Numbers from the commencement can now be supplied.

The Magazine weighs over seven and not over eight ounces. The Postage upon each Number, which must be paid quarterly in advance, is Three Cents.

The Publishers would give notice that they have no Agents for whose contracts they are responsible. Those ordering the Magazine from Agents or Dealers must look to them for the supply of the Work.

Each month it gladdens us and our household, to say nothing of the neighbors who enjoy it with us. Twenty-five cents buys it—the cheapest, richest, and most lasting luxury for the money that we know. Three dollars secures it for one year: and what three dollars ever went so far? Put the same amount in clothes, eating, drinking, furniture, and how much of a substantial thing is obtained? If ideas, facts, and sentiments, have a monetary value—above all, if the humor that refreshes, the pleasantries that bring a gentle smile, and brighten the passage of a truth to your brain, and the happy combination of the real and the imaginative, without which no one can live a life above the animal, are to be put in the scale opposite to dollars and cents, then you may be certain, that if Harper were three or four times as dear, it would amply repay its price. It is a Magazine proper, with the idea and purpose of a Magazine—not a book, not a scientific periodical, nor yet a supplier of light gossip and chatty anecdotes—but a Magazine that takes every form of interesting, dignified, and attractive literature in its grasp.—Southern Times.

Its success was rapid, and has continued till the monthly issue has reached the unprecedented number of 150,000. The volumes bound constitute of themselves a library of miscellaneous reading, such as can not be found in the same compass in any other publication that has come under our notice. The contents of the Magazine are as "various as the mind of man." In the immense amount of matter which it contains, it would be strange, indeed, if there was not something to gratify every taste. The articles illustrating the natural history and resources of our country are enough to entitle the Magazine to a place in every family where there are children to be taught to love their native land. The Editor's Table presents every month an elaborately prepared essay on some topic intimately connected with our politics, our morals, or our patriotism, while the Easy Chair and the Drawer of the same responsible personage—doubtless a plural unit—display gems of wit, humor, and fancy, in any quantity to suit the temper of any reader.—Boston Courier.

A Monthly Series of Narratives, Biographies, and Tales, for the Instruction and Entertainment of the Young. By Jacob Abbott. Embellished with numerous and beautiful Engravings.

Terms.—Each Number of "Harper's Story Books" will contain 160 pages in small quarto form, very beautifully illustrated, and printed on superfine calendered paper.

The Series may be obtained of Booksellers, Periodical Agents, and Postmasters, or from the Publishers, at Three Dollars a year, or Twenty-five Cents a Number in Paper, or Forty Cents a Number bound in Cloth gilt. Subscriptions may commence with any Number. The Postage upon "Harper's Story Books," which must be paid quarterly in advance, is Two Cents. "Harper's Magazine" and "Harper's Story Books" will be sent to one Address, for one year, for Five Dollars.

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Vol. I. Contains the first three Numbers, "Bruno," "Willie," and "Strait Gate."—Vol. II. "The Little Louvre," "Prank," and "Emma."—Vol. III. "Virginia," "Timboo and Joliba," and "Timboo and Fanny."—Vol. IV. "The Harper Establishment," "Franklin," and "The Studio."

They are the best children's books ever published. They wisely avoid the introduction or discussion of religious topics, yet are such as Christian parents may unhesitatingly place in their children's hands. The price is marvelously low. Twenty-five cents a number makes it about six pages of print and two excellent engravings for each cent of the money. The engravings alone, without a line of letter-press, would be cheap at the price. One good thing these Story Books will certainly accomplish: henceforth inferior authorship and used-up, worn out illustrations can not be palmed off on children. They have samples here of what is best for them, and they are shrewd enough not to put up with any thing of lower quality.—N.Y. Daily Times.

We have heard so many fathers and mothers who recognize the pleasant duty of guiding the minds of their children in the paths of knowledge at home, speak in terms of the highest commendation of this series of books for children, that we feel a desire to see them universally read among children. They constitute the finest series of books for the young that we have seen.—Louisville Courier.

Who is better qualified than Jacob Abbott to prepare such a work? He always seems to have an intuitive perception of just what children want—just what will take with them, and so serve as the medium of conveying instruction in the pleasantest form. He has begun this new series admirably, and we almost envy the relish with which our children will read it. Now for a suggestion to parents: instead of buying your boy some trumpery toy, give him a year's subscription to this charming monthly. It will cost you three dollars, indeed; but its excellent moral hints and influence, its useful and entertaining knowledge, are worth all that, and much more. If you think you can not afford it for one child, take it for your children's home circle, and let one read it aloud to the others. You'll never regret it.—Christian Inquirer.

Or, Sketches of all Distinguished Women from the Creation to the Present Time. Arranged in Four Eras. With Selections from Female Writers of each Era. By Mrs. Sarah Josepha Hale. Illustrated with 230 engraved Portraits. Second Edition, revised and enlarged. Royal 8vo, Muslin, $3 50; Sheep, $4 00; Half Calf, $4 25.

"Many years have been devoted to the preparation of this comprehensive work, which contains complete and accurate sketches of the most distinguished women in all ages, and, in extent and thoroughness, far surpasses every previous biographical collection with a similar aim. Mrs. Hale has ransacked the treasures of history for information in regard to the eminent women whom it commemorates; few, if any, important names are omitted in her volumes, while the living celebrities of the day are portrayed with justness and delicacy. The picture of woman's life, as it has been developed from the times of the earliest traditions to the present date, is here displayed in vivid and impressive colors, and with a living sympathy which could only flow from a feminine pen. A judicious selection from the writings of women who have obtained distinction in the walks of literature is presented, affording an opportunity for comparing the noblest productions of the female mind, and embracing many exquisite gems of fancy and feeling. The biographies are illustrated by a series of highly-finished engravings, which form a gallery of portraits of curious interest to the amateur, as well as of great historical value.

This massive volume furnishes an historical portrait gallery, in which each age of this world had its appropriate representatives. Mrs. Hale has succeeded admirably in her biographical sketches.—Philadelphia Presbyterian.

"Woman's Record" is, indeed, a noble study and noble history. The sketches are all carefully and even elegantly written.—Philadelphia Evening Bulletin.

What lady, who takes a pride in her sex, would not desire to have this volume on her centre-table? and what husband, lover, or brother would leave such a wish ungratified.—Washington Republic.

This superb monument of Mrs. Hale's indefatigable devotion to her sex is illustrated by 230 portraits, engraved in that style of excellence that has deservedly placed Lossing at the head of his profession.—Philadelphia Saturday Courier.

We are pleased with the plan of the "Record," and with the manner in which that plan is carried into execution. The book is a valuable and permanent contribution to literature.—New Orleans Baptist Chronicle.

This work merits the warmest commendation.—Sun.

This is a large and beautiful book, and covers the ground marked out by the title more fully and satisfactorily than any other work extant. It is a most valuable work.—Southern Ladies' Companion.

Here we have placed before us a book that would do credit to any author or compiler that ever lived, and, to the astonishment of some, produced by the head, heart, and hand of a woman.—N.Y. Daily Times.

This is a very curious and very interesting work—a Biographical Dictionary of all Distinguished Females—a work, we believe, quite unique in the history of literature. We have only to say that the work will be found both instructive, amusing, and generally impartial.—London Ladies' Messenger.

The comprehensiveness of the work renders it a valuable addition to the library.—London Ladies' Companion.

A Female Biographical Dictionary, which this volume really is, will often be consulted as an authority; and the great extent of Mrs. Hale's information as to the distinguished women of modern times, supplies us with a number of facts which we knew not where to procure elsewhere. It is clearly and simply written.—London Guardian?.

Of the Revolution; or, Illustrations, by Pen and Pencil, of the History, Biography, Scenery, Relics, and Traditions of the War for Independence. 2 vols. Royal 8vo, Muslin, $8 00; Sheep, $9 00; Half Calf, $10 00; Full Morocco, $15 00.

A new and carefully revised edition of this magnificent work is just completed in two imperial octavo volumes of equal size, containing 1500 pages and 1100 engravings. As the plan, scope, and beauty of the work were originally developed, eminent literary men, and the leading presses of the United States and Great Britain, pronounced it one of the most valuable historical productions ever issued.

The preparation of this work occupied the author more than four years, during which he traveled nearly ten thousand miles in order to visit the prominent scenes of revolutionary history, gather up local traditions, and explore records and histories. In the use of his pencil he was governed by the determination to withhold nothing of importance or interest. Being himself both artist and writer, he has been able to combine the materials he had collected in both departments into a work possessing perfect unity of purpose and execution.

The object of the author in arranging his plan was to reproduce the history of the American Revolution in such an attractive manner, as to entice the youth of his country to read the wonderful story, study its philosophy and teachings, and to become familiar with the founders of our Republic and the value of their labors. In this he has been eminently successful; for the young read the pages of the "'Field-Book" with the same avidity as those of a romance; while the abundant stores of information, and the careful manner in which it has been arranged and set forth, render it no less attractive to the general reader and the ripe scholar of more mature years.

Explanatory notes are profusely given upon every page in the volume, and also a brief biographical sketch of every man distinguished in the events of the Revolution, the history of whose life is known.

A Supplement of forty pages contains a history of the Naval Operations of the Revolution; of the Diplomacy; of the Confederation and Federal Constitution; the Prisons and Prison Ships of New York; Lives of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, and other matters of curious interest to the historical student.

A new and very elaborate analytical index has been prepared, to which we call special attention. It embraces eighty-five closely printed pages, and possesses rare value for every student of our revolutionary history. It is in itself a complete synopsis of the history and biography of that period, and will be found exceedingly useful for reference by every reader.

As a whole, the work contains all the essential facts of the early history of our Republic, which are scattered through scores of volumes often inaccessible to the great mass of readers. The illustrations make the whole subject of the American Revolution so clear to the reader that, on rising from its perusal, he feels thoroughly acquainted, not only with the history, but with every important locality made memorable by the events of the war for Independence, and it forms a complete Guide-Book to the tourist seeking for fields consecrated by patriotism, which lie scattered over our broad land. Nothing has been spared to make it complete, reliable, and eminently useful to all classes of citizens. Upward of THIRTY-FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS were expended in the publication of the first edition. The exquisite wood-cuts, engraved under the immediate supervision of the author, from his own drawings, in the highest style of the art, required the greatest care in printing. To this end the efforts of the publishers have been directed, and we take great pleasure in presenting these volumes as the best specimen of typography ever issued from the American press.

The publication of the work having been commenced in numbers before its preparation was completed, the volumes of the first edition were made quite unequal in size. That defect has been remedied, and the work is now presented in two volumes of equal size, containing about 780 pages each.

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PART FIRST.
AGE OF PERICLES.
Chapter I.—	Literature	21
II.—	Art	48
III.—	Science	71
IV.—	Philosophy	81
V.—	Religion	92
PART SECOND.
AGE OF AUGUSTUS.
Chapter I.—	Literature	121
II.—	Art	154
III.—	Science	176
IV.—	Philosophy	193
V.—	Religion	208
PART THIRD.
AGE OF LEO X.
Chapter I.—	Literature	231
II.—	Art	265
III.—	Science	292
IV.—	Philosophy	313
V.—	Religion	325
PART FOURTH.
AGE OF WASHINGTON.
Chapter I.—	Literature	347
II.—	Art	372
III.—	Science	388
IV.—	Philosophy	407
V.—	Religion	423

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Westward empire

WESTWARD EMPIRE;

INTRODUCTION.

CONTENTS.

PROLOGUE OF MOTTOES.

PART FIRST.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

AUGUSTUS;

PROLOGUE OF MOTTOES.

PART SECOND.

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

PROLOGUE OF MOTTOES.

PART THIRD.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

WASHINGTON;

PROLOGUE OF MOTTOES.

PART FOURTH.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

A LIST OF NEW BOOKS,

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE