ing work of this description is Voltaire's "Essai sur les Mœurs et l'esprit des Nations." This was the model which Robertson followed. The defect of Voltaire is, that when he comes to a strange or barbarous custom, he ridicules rather than describes. In one of his satirical sallies, he said of Montesquieu's immortal work, that it was "l'Esprit sur les Lois." Montesquieu might have replied, had he seen the "Essai sur les Mœurs,” that it was "l'ironie sur l'histoire." Irony, when perfect, like Voltaire's, conveys a lively pleasure to the mind; but it is not to be compared with that profitable pleasure which is afforded by a well-digested, complete, and picturesque narrative, such as that given by Cardinal de Retz in his "Memoires,” when he depicts the dread which came over himself and Turenne, when, as they were returning from the country at daybreak, they saw, in the distance, three hundred Capuchins advancing to bathe in the Seine. In the obscurity, they took the monks for a legion of devils coming to carry them off. This amusing example, the necessity of too much abridging which I regret, shows that a well-told narrative fixes itself in the memory, while an ironical sally amuses for a moment and is no longer remembered. Such is the effect often produced by Voltaire in "l'Essai sur les Mours." M. Villemain very ably criticised Robertson. That historian, who is still admired in France, adopted, in his "History of Charles V." the singular idea of throwing every thing interesting, every thing picturesque, every thing calculated to engrave an historical trait in the mind, into the Notes at the end of his work. "Robertson," he said, "was so deficient in imagination, that, though far from wishing it, he is sometimes guilty of infidelity. For example, he describes Luther as perfectly cool and tranquil on receiving the Bull fulminated against him by Leo X. But, unless the reader be quite childish, it is natural that he should ask, how it is possible that a man who so powerfully agitated his contemporaries could be so calm and reasonable. Such a phenomenon would be greater, more extraordinary, than the Reformation itself. The fact is, and could not otherwise be, that Luther was one of the most violent of men. His fiery writings are examples of theological fury and popular fury. Luther was Rabelais in the pulpit, but Rabelais overflowing with hatred and violence. Instead of writing cool remarks on the Pope's Bull, as Robertson pretends, he replied to it by a pamphlet, which he entitled, "Against the execrable Bull of Antichrist.' It is clear, M. Villemain observed, that to write like Robertson is to mislead the reader -to falsify history, but probably without intending it. Here M. Villemain compared the cold narrative given by Robertson, of the last moments of the interesting Mary Stuart, with the unpretending page left by Brantome, who was merely a man of the world. Brantome's page is picturesque and true, and almost sublime because it is true; while the laboriously polished narrative of Robertson is, at bottom, a mere fiction. And why is this? Because Brantome wrote with the feeling and the simplicity of his age; while Robertson was merely a citizen of Edinburgh, who had become learned by poring over the works of old authors, but he wanted that turn of mind which was necessary to enable him to see events as they really happened. Now, what is history but the art of representing events as they actually took place? Robertson's defects are in some measure the same as those of M. de Sismondi, who is labouring at Geneva on a history of the French, eight volumes of which are published. M. de Sismondi's defect is, that his characters appear natives of Geneva, so greatly are they imbued with political rationalism. Now, the rude warriors, of which Clovis was the chief, had very few notions of the balance of power, the laws of nations, or the laws of war, which ought only to sanction that mischief which is inevitable. They thought only of fine horses and well-tempered swords, like those made by Henry Smith in "The Fair Maid of Perth." Their only policy consisted in securing the esteem of their general, Clovis, by rendering themselves useful to him. This political rationalism, this academical colouring, is also observable in M. Guizot's history of the last Stuarts. But it is a defect which is infinitely more pardonable in the writer who retraces the age of the Puritans, which was a very reasoning, if not a very reasonable age. Though you, Sir, may have but little idea of the wise policy from which a French writer who wishes to make his way never departs, you must be aware that M. Villemain has not pointed out with sufficient clearness the circumstances which, in spite of the puffing of the journals, oppose the success of the otherwise estimable histories of MM. Sismondi and Guizot. Taking thus the prudent view of the question, it may be said that M. Villemain's lectures on the history of Literature are very entertaining, and even very useful, though the author has in an eminent degree the defect for which he reproaches Robertson. M. Villemain has not sufficient imagination to form a just conception of the heroic spirits of the fifteenth century, those naturally gifted but ignorant men, who were utterly regardless of what their neighbours might think of them. The empire of decorum, which holds so important a place in modern minds, was a thing utterly unknown to a Du Guesclin, a Talbot, and the other great men of the middle ages. Their greatest cruelties were in reality much less odious than they appear to us, now when drawing-room habits have heightened our susceptibility. Perhaps, Sir, I ought to apologize for having entered into so long an analysis of one of M. Villemain's lectures. But the courses of Villemain, Guizot, and Cousin engage the interest of all Paris. Guizot and Cousin have obtained permission to recommence their courses only since the fall of M. de Villele and the disgrace of the Jesuits. M. Cousin professes a philosophy which he renders entirely obscure, and which consists of ideas in the style of Kant and Plato. A little journal, entitled "The Figaro," has just given an amusing dialogue between the absolute and the contingent, two words of very frequent occurrence in the lectures of M. Cousin. This little dialogue has been found so diverting that it is pronounced worthy of Voltaire. M. Raisson, the author of a clever satire entitled "The Civil Code, or the Art of being well received in the World," has just published a romance entitled " Mary Stuart," which is much praised. "La Jaquerie," by the author of Clara Gazul, is another very popular production. ON A GIFT OF FLOWERS. La memoria de los bienes perdidos NAY, twine the blossoms and fill the bowl, M. T. LETTERS TO THE STUDENTS OF GLASGOW. BY T. CAMPBELL. LETTER VII. IN following the sketch of ancient Italy which I have been endeavouring to trace to you, we come next to its VIth province, Picenum, which lying along the Adriatic, between the rivers sis and Matrinus and the Apennines on the west, corresponds on the modern map to the territories of Ancona, Macerata, and Ascoli. This region appears in its ancient history like an inn that often changed its occupants. The Aborigines had yielded to the Tyrrheni, who left here written characters similar to the Etruscan: the Liburni, the first voyagers of the Adriatic, had made settlements on the coast: the Sabines, guided by Picus, had invaded those invaders: the Gallic Senones had burst thus far into the South of Italy and the Syracusans had founded Ancona before the Romans invaded Picenum. This people submitted to Rome in the year of the city 485. From their population of 360,000 free souls, a portion was dragged to colonize other places, and the remainder, under the title of Allies, continued vassals of the Romans until the Social War, when Picenum figured among the Italians in their struggle with Rome. The most pleasingly remarkable place in this quarter of Italy is Ancona, founded 2400 years ago by Sicilian patriots who had fled from the tyranny of Dionysius. It still continues to be, next to Venice, the most populous and trading city on the Adriatic. Of old it was famed for its temple of Venus; and its scenery sheltered by a semicircular hill, and open only to the breezes of the west, is said still to deserve the mythological compliment. The inhabitants of its whole territory are also remarked as finer in form and complexion than all other Italians. In spite of their mixed population, it is attested that the Picentes were chiefly descended from the Sabines, one of whose kings after his decease guided his people into Picenum in the august form of a woodpecker. How childishly credulous the ancients appear to have been! But the modern world has also had its turn for the marvellous. At Loretto, in this very region, is still shown the house of the Virgin Mary, brought hither by angels from Nazareth in the year 1294, together with a camblet gown that she wore, and the crockery-ware that was used by her family. Absurd as this legend was, it made Loretto the Delphi of modern Europe. The treasures there deposited were so consecrated by religious awe, that the Turks trembled to invade them, and the shrine was annually visited by 2000 pilgrims. VII. Proceeding on the map southward from Ancona, in the direction of Rome and through the north of Naples, we come to the Seventh division of ancient Italy, comprising the Sabini, qui, Marsi, Peligni, Vestini and Marrucini. The country of the Sabines still retains its name, and their ancient character has the glory of proverbial honesty and virtue. The places of the other tribes are in modern Abruzzo. There lay the Marsians who pretended to skill in charming serpents, and to magic cures for their bites; and to this day, the jugglers who amuse the people of Rome and Naples by handling those reptiles, come out of the same territory. Of all those tribes, the Sabines, who were apparently a branch of the Umbri, may be considered as the ancestors. A pure and indigenous August, 1828.-VOL. XXIII. NO. XCII. H race, they broke out from a corner of the Abruzzo across the Apennines, and spread their colonies pretty widely over Italy. On the left bank of the Tiber they dwelt in the time of the Roman kings, intermingled with the Latins, and even on two of the Roman bills. But as the tide of their conquests poured to the South, the old Sabines on the Tiber became insignificant, and were easily merged in the flood of Roman power. At the western nook of the Sabine territory, we come to the immortal City herself. But I shall postpone the consideration of Rome till we have run over her remaining Italian provinces. The IXth Roman province, according to the division which I have observed, was Latium. To that name, however, a twofold meaning was applied. By Latium Antiquum, the Romans understood a stripe of coast from the Tiber's mouth to Terracina; having the Anio, or Teverone, on its northern, and Mount Algidus on its eastern frontier : so that it included neither the Hernici to the east, whose confederacy of little republics came down to the shores of the Sacco, and whose rocks, bedewed with rivulets, are commemorated by Virgil; nor the potent Volscians, to the south-east, on the Liris or Garigliano; nor the Aurunci, whose Cacuban wine is praised by Horace and Martial with the faithful jollity of true poets, and whose domain, commencing from a range of hills to the south of the Volsci, extended, in long but narrow stripes, to the Tyrrhene sea-coast, where it continued from Terracina to Sinuessa. But when the Romans had conquered those States, they were added, though not originally Latin, to Novum Latium, the limits of which were advanced to the Vulturnus; so that it stretched into what is now the Neapolitan Terra di Lavoro. I shall purposely waive the intricate subject of Latian antiquities; which is, in many respects, as dull as it is dark. There is no saying, to be sure, how many important points in history may remotely depend on questions apparently crabbed and useless; and this may be the case with many disputes among antiquaries about nations who to us are but a string of names. But of direct amusement, there is certainly not much to be found in discussions about the Siculi, and Casci, and Opicans, and Ausonians. The truth of their genealogies is apt to remind one of the horse on the Highland Moor, that was very hard to catch, and when caught not worth riding. Still there is a rational object of curiosity in the history of the Latin tongue; and hopeless as I am to clear a subject which the most learned have left obscure, I may mention one historical tradition, that seems more probably than any other to account for the Grecian elements of the language. That something more than Greek entered into the roots of Latinity is a point known to be undisputed. The want of the Article is a circumstance in Latin which distinguishes it from almost every other civilized speech, which betrays a mixture of barbarous pedigree, and which forms a bar of bastardy in its relationship with Greek. On that circumstance, however, history throws no such light as may guide us to guess with any confidence what particular barbarian speech was the unarticled ancestress of Latin. For the Greek idioms of Latin many authors have referred to the Etruscans; but Niebuhr declares that unbiassed investigation had convinced him of the Etruscan bearing just as little affinity to Greek and Latin as to the Oscan. From what other source, then, was the Græcism of this language derived? The Pelasgi in Italy appear insufficient to account for it; for though the Pelasgi easily melted into Greeks, the Hellenes alone were, strictly speaking, the Grecian people, and the Pelasgic speech, though it bore an affinity to the Hellenic, was pronounced by Herodotus to be radically different. It remains, then, to search among ancient traditions for the one that most feasibly brings Greeks into Latium. Now Enotrus's Arcadian colony is universally given up as fabulous, and the story of Evander, as Mannert justly remarks, would only help us to a handful of men, who, if they had been Hellenes, as they were Pelasgians, could not have spread Greek over all Latium. As little could Æneas and his Trojans solve the difficulty if we could believe in their arrival. But Aristotle expressly gives it for an historical fact, that a fleet of Achæans, on their return from Troy, were driven by storms beyond Cape Malea to the open sea, that at last they reached the portion of the Opican coast which bore the name of Latium, and that the Trojan women who were their captives, fearing slavery if they returned to Greece, set fire to the ships and kept their captors in the settlement. The Latins, from their earliest appearance in Roman history, are described as forming a confederation of commonwealths, each of which had the right of governing itself, and of maintaining peace or war independently, except in circumstances where the universal safety was concerned. The leading state, though unquestionably not the foundress of the rest, was Alba Longa, until Rome, from seeking security, proceeded to grasp at dominion, and under the star of her ascendency, Alba was levelled to the dust by Tullus Hostilius. The dependency of the Latin states was farther consolidated by Tarquin the Proud. The part which the Latins took in attempting to restore that tyrant, exposed them severely to the swords of the Romans. About a century and half later, their bold demand to have a consul in Rome chosen out of their own nation, led to another rupture with their now irresistible enemy. At that time, the rights of Roman citizenship had been granted to only a few of their cities, but at a later period the Gracchi sought to level all distinctions between the Latins and Romans. The Social War ensued, after which the Senate granted Roman rights to such of the Latian cities as had not sided with the confederates. Even of those towns, however, many were robbed of their privileges by Sylla, and it was not till the close of the Republic, that Latium shared in the immunities of the Quirites. No part of Italy excepting Rome can bring more interesting associations to the lover of antiquity than Latium. Its villas were the retreats of the most illustrious Romans, and we may picture to ourselves Scipio and Lælius amusing themselves with the shells on its shores, or Cicero declaiming amidst the groves of his Tusculum. Here, too, is the Alban mountain, now Monte Cavo, where all the cities of the Latin name assembled to hold their fairs and their festivals; and where the gods of the Eneid, like those of the Iliad on Mount Ida, survey the armies, the cities, camp, and movements of war. The neighbourhood, indeed, is the theatre of the latter half of Virgil's poem-it has the scene where Nisus and Euryalus fell, and the woods that first echoed to the horn of Alecto. Here was also Antium, where the Apollo of Belvedere was dug up to a resurrection of unconscious immortality. |