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Title: Westward empire
        or, the great drama of human progress

Author: Elias Lyman Magoon

Release date: August 15, 2024 [eBook #74262]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Harper & Brothers

Credits: Peter Becker, Graeme Mackreth and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WESTWARD EMPIRE ***






  WESTWARD EMPIRE;

  OR,

  The Great Drama of Human Progress.


  BY

  E.L. MAGOON,

  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."

  GEORGE BERKELEY.


  NEW YORK:

  HARPER & BROTHERS,

  329 TO 335 PEARL STREET.

  1856.




  Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856, by
  HARPER AND BROTHERS,
  In the Clerk's Office for the Southern District of New York.




  TO CITIZENS

  WHO TRUST IN PROVIDENCE,

  MEN WHO ARE TRUE TO HUMANITY,

  AND PATRIOTS

  ALWAYS HOPEFUL OF THE REPUBLIC,

  THIS WORK

  IS FRATERNALLY INSCRIBED.




INTRODUCTION.


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.

  ELM.

 NEW YORK, July 4th, 1856.




CONTENTS.


  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




  PERICLES;

  OR,

  THE AGE OF ARTISTIC BEAUTY.




PROLOGUE OF MOTTOES.


"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.

"Whatever is necessary exists."--De Maistre.

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




PART FIRST.

PERICLES.--AGE OF ARTISTIC BEAUTY.




CHAPTER I.

LITERATURE.


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 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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
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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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.




CHAPTER II.

ART.


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, 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 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 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
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 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 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 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 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; 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 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 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, 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 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 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,
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, 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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.




CHAPTER III

SCIENCE.


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 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 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
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 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. 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 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 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.




CHAPTER IV.

PHILOSOPHY.


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 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 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,
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 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
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 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 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. 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 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.




CHAPTER V.

RELIGION.


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
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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
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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.




AUGUSTUS;

OR,

THE AGE OF MARTIAL FORCE.




PROLOGUE OF MOTTOES.


"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.




PART SECOND.

AUGUSTUS.--AGE OF MARTIAL FORCE.




CHAPTER I

LITERATURE.


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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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; 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.




CHAPTER II.

ART.


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 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 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 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
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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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
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
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. 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 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 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 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 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.




CHAPTER III.

SCIENCE.


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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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
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 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, 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
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 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 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
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. 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.




CHAPTER IV.

PHILOSOPHY.


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 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 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 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, 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 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, "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 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 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 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 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
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. 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, 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.




CHAPTER V.

RELIGION.


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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.




LEO X.:

OR,

THE AGE OF SCIENTIFIC INVENTION.




PROLOGUE OF MOTTOES.


"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.


"Stand up: I myself also am a man."--Acts x. 26.




PART THIRD.

LEO X.--AGE OF SCIENTIFIC INVENTION.




CHAPTER I.

LITERATURE.


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 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 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 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. 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 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
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 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 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 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 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
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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
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; 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 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 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 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.




CHAPTER II.

ART.


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 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, 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 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 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
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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; 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, 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.




CHAPTER III.

SCIENCE.


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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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
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 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
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 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; 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 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,
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 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.




CHAPTER IV.

PHILOSOPHY.


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,
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 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
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.




CHAPTER V.

RELIGION.


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 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
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 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; 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, 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.




WASHINGTON;

OR,

THE AGE OF UNIVERSAL AMELIORATION.




PROLOGUE OF MOTTOES.


"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.




PART FOURTH.

WASHINGTON.--AGE OF UNIVERSAL AMELIORATION.




CHAPTER I.

LITERATURE.


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 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 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
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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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
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 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 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 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,
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 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
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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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.




CHAPTER II.

ART.


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 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 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
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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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.




CHAPTER III.

SCIENCE.


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
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 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
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 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 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 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
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 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 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 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. 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 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, 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, 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 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 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
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 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!"




CHAPTER IV.

PHILOSOPHY.


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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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.




CHAPTER V.

RELIGION.


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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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
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 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 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 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 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;
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.


THE END.




A LIST OF NEW BOOKS,

PUBLISHED BY

HARPER & BROTHERS.


Squier's Central America.

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.


Napoleon at St. Helena;

Or, Interesting Anecdotes and Remarkable Conversations of the Emperor
during the Five and a Half Years of his Captivity. Collected from the
Memorials of Las Casas, O'Meara, Montholon, Antommarchi, and others. By
John S.C. Abbott. With Illustrations. 8vo, Muslin, $2 50.


Helps's Spanish Conquest.

The Spanish Conquest in America, and its Relation to the History of
Slavery, and to the Government of Colonies. By Arthur Helps. Large
12mo, Muslin. (_In press._)


Loomis's Arithmetic.

A Treatise on Arithmetic, Theoretical and Practical. By Elias Loomis,
LL.D. 12mo, Sheep.


Barton's Grammar.

An Outline of the General Principles of Grammar. With a Brief
Exposition of the Chief Idiomatic Peculiarities of the English
Language. To which Questions have been added. Edited and Enlarged by
the Rev. J. Graeff Barton, A.M., Professor of the English Language and
Literature in the New York Free Academy. 16mo, Muslin, 37-1/2 cents.


Ewbank's Brazil.

Life in Brazil; or, a Journal of a Visit to the Land of the Cocoa
and the Palm. With an Appendix, containing Illustrations of Ancient
South American Arts, in Recently Discovered Implements and Products of
Domestic Industry, and Works in Stone, Pottery, Gold, Silver, Bronze,
&c. By Thomas Ewbank. With over 100 Illustrations. 8vo, Muslin, $2 00.


Mexico and its Religion;

Or, Incidents of Travel in that Country during Parts of the Years
1851-52-53-54, with Historical Notices of Events connected with Places
Visited. By Robert A. Wilson. With Illustrations. 12mo, Muslin, $1 00.


Parisian Sights

and French Principles, seen through American Spectacles. By James
Jackson Jarves. Second Series. With Illustrations. 12mo, Muslin, $1 00.


Italian Sights

and Papal Principles, seen through American Spectacles. By James
Jackson Jarves. With Illustrations. 12mo, Muslin, $1 00.


Art-Hints.

Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting. By James Jackson Jarves. 12mo,
Muslin, $1 25.


Christian Theism:

The Testimony of Reason and Revelation to the Existence of the Supreme
Being. By Robert Anchor Thompson, M.A. (The First Burnett Prize of
$9000 was awarded to this Treatise.) 12mo, Muslin, $1 25.


A Child's History of the United States.

By John Bonner. 2 vols. 16mo, Muslin, $1 00. (Uniform with Dickens's
"Child's History of England.")


Lily.

A Novel. By the Author of "The Busy Moments of an Idle Woman." 12mo,
Muslin, $1 00.


James's Old Dominion.

The Old Dominion; or, the Southampton Massacre. By G.P. R. James, Esq.
8vo, Paper, 50 cents.


Miss Bunkley's Book.

The Testimony of an Escaped Novice from the Sisterhood of St. Joseph,
Emmettsburg, Maryland, the Mother-House of the Sisters of Charity in
the United States. By Josephine M. Bunkley. 12mo, Muslin, $1 00.


Learning to Talk;

Or, Entertaining and Instructive Lessons in the Use of Language. By
Jacob Abbott. Illustrated with 170 Engravings. Small 4to, Muslin, 50
cents.


BUNGENER'S COUNCIL OF TRENT.

 History of the Council of Trent. From the French of L.F. Bungener,
 Author of "The Priest and the Huguenot." Edited, from the Second
 English Edition, by John M'Clintock, D.D. 12mo, Muslin, $1 00.

 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._

 It is all that a history should be--perspicuous in language,
 discriminating in detail, dignified and philosophical in manner,
 candid and faithful in the narration of facts, and bears evident
 traces of extensive reading and enlarged information.--_Caledonian
 Mercury._

 This history is invaluable.--_Christian Advocate._

 Characterized by clearness, truthfulness, and vigor in the narrative,
 acuteness and terseness in the reasoning, and a spirit of Christian
 fidelity and charity.--_Watchman._

 The work before us is undoubtedly one of the very best that has
 appeared on the subject. The writer has abundant materials, and has
 used them with fidelity, impartiality, and talent. His brilliant style
 radiates in every department of the work.--_Philadelphia Evening
 Bulletin._

 A work of permanent interest, which should be well understood by the
 ministry of our church and country.--_Christian Observer._

 It is adapted for popular reading; while, as a true portraiture
 of men and things in the Council, it is invaluable to the
 theologian.--_Christian Intelligencer._


MEXICO AND ITS RELIGION;

 Or, Incidents of Travel in that Country during Parts of the Years
 1851-52-53-54, with Historical Notices of Events connected with Places
 Visited. By Robert A. Wilson. With Illustrations. 12mo, Muslin, $1 00.

 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.


SEYMOUR'S JESUITS.

 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.


INEZ,

A Tale of the Alamo. 12mo, Muslin, 75 cents.

We have to recommend the book to pious parents and guardians as written
under the influence of the strictest Protestant principles; and to
introduce it to young ladies in general, as containing some very nice
"love," seasoned pleasantly with just enough fighting to make the whole
story agreeable.--_Leader._

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._

A most inviting story, the interest of which is sustained throughout
its narrative of stirring events and deep passions.--_Mobile
Register._

The descriptions of scenes of carnage, and the alarms and excitements
of war are graphic, while the polemics are not so spun out as to
be tedious. The portraiture of the Jesuit padre is any thing but
flattering to the Catholic priesthood, while her dissertations
upon the doctrines, traditions, practices, and superstitious
follies of the Holy Mother Church prove her to be no respecter of
its claims to infallibility, and no admirer of the disciples of
Loyola.--_Constitutionalist and Republic, Ga._

We have read this work with the liveliest pleasure, and we venture
to assert, that no one can take it up without going through with
it.--_Richmond Whig._


LE CURÉ MANQUÉ;

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._


HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

 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.

 Terms.--The Magazine may be obtained of Booksellers, Periodical
 Agents, or from the Publishers, at Three Dollars a year, or
 Twenty-five Cents a Number. The Semi-Annual Volumes, as completed,
 neatly bound in Cloth, are sold at Two Dollars each, and Muslin Covers
 are furnished to those who wish to have their back Numbers uniformly
 bound, at Twenty-five Cents each. Eleven Volumes are now ready, bound.

 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._


HARPER'S STORY BOOKS.

 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_.

The Quarterly Volumes, as completed, neatly bound in Cloth gilt, are
sold at One Dollar each, and Muslin Covers are furnished to those who
wish to have their back Numbers uniformly bound, at Twenty-five Cents
each.

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._


WOMAN'S RECORD;

 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?._


LOSSING'S PICTORIAL FIELD-BOOK

 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.
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