BEGAN WITH PHILOSOPHY.

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The same character and the same national institutions that led them to adopt the Greek philosophy instead of their poetry, restrained them from the imitation of their theatrical excesses. As their free government was strictly aristocratical, it could never permit its legitimate chiefs to be held up to mockery on the stage, as the democratical licence of the Athenians held up the pretenders to their favour. But, independently of this, the severer dignity of the Roman character, and the deeper respect and prouder affection they entertained for all that exalted the glory of their country, would at all events have interdicted such indecorous and humiliating exhibitions. The comedy of Aristophanes never could have been tolerated at Rome; and though Plautus and Terence were allowed to imitate, or rather to translate, the more inoffensive dramas of a later age, it is remarkable, that they seldom ventured to subject even to that mitigated and more general ridicule any one invested with the dignity of a Roman citizen. The manners represented are almost entirely Greek manners; and the ridiculous parts are almost without any exception assigned to foreigners, and to persons of a servile condition. Women were, from the beginning, of more account in the estimation of the Romans than of the Greeks-though their province was still strictly domestic, and did not extend to what, in modern times, is denominated society. With all the severity of their character, the Romans had much more real tenderness than the Greeks, though they repressed its external indications, as among those marks of weakness which were unbecoming men intrusted with the interests and the honour of their country. Madame de Staël has drawn a pretty picture of the parting of Brutus and Portia ; and contrasted it, as a specimen of national character, with the Grecian group of Pericles pleading for Aspasia. The general observation, we are persuaded, is just; but the examples are not quite fairly chosen. Brutus is a little too good for an average of Roman virtue. If she had chosen Mark Antony, or Lepidus, the contrast would have been less brilliant. The self-control which

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their principles required of them-the law which they had imposed on themselves, to have no indulgence for suffering in themselves or in others, excluded tragedy from the range of their literature. Pity was never to be recognized by a Roman, but when it came in the shape of a noble clemency to a vanquished foe ; — and wailings and complaints were never to disgust the ears of men, who knew how to act and to suffer in tranquillity. The very frequency of suicide in Rome, belonged to this characteristic. There was no other alternative, but to endure firmly, or to die ;-nor were importunate lamentations to be endured from one who was free to quit life whenever he could not bear it without murmuring.

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What has been said relates to the literature of republican Rome. The usurpation of Augustus gave a new character to her genius; and brought it back to those poetical studies with which most other nations have begun. The cause of this, too, is obvious. While liberty survived, the study of philosophy and oratory and history was but as an instrument in the hands of a liberal and patriotic ambition, and naturally attracted the attention of all whose talents entitled them to aspire to the first dignities of the state. After an absolute government was established, those high prizes were taken out of the lottery of life; and the primitive uses of those noble instruments expired. There was longer any safe or worthy end to be gained, by influencing the conduct, or fixing the principles of men. But it was still permitted to seek their applause by ministering to their delight; and talent and ambition, when excluded from the nobler career of political activity, naturally sought for a humbler harvest of glory in the cultivation of poetry, and the arts of imagination. The poetry of the Romans, however, derived this advantage from the lateness of its origin, that it was enriched by all that knowledge of the human heart, and those habits of reflection, which had been generated by the previous study of philosophy. There is uniformly more thought, therefore, and more development, both of reason and of moral feeling, in the poets of the Augustan

LITERATURE OF THE LATER EMPIRE.

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age, than in any of their Greek predecessors; and though repressed in a good degree by the remains of their national austerity, there is also a great deal more tenderness of affection. In spite of the pathos of some scenes in Euripides, and the melancholy passion of some fragments of Simonides and Sappho, there is nothing at all like the fourth book of Virgil, the Alcmene, and Baucis and Philemon of Ovid, and some of the elegies of Tibullus, in the whole range of Greek literature. The memory of their departed freedom, too, conspired to give an air of sadness to much of the Roman poetry, and their feeling of the lateness of the age in which they were born. The Greeks thought only of the presentand the future; but the Romans had begun already to live in the past, and to make pensive reflections on the faded glory of mankind. The historians of this classic age, though they have more of a moral character than those of Greece, are still but superficial teachers of wisdom. Their narration is more animated, and more pleasingly dramatised, by the orations with which it is interspersed;-but they have neither the profound reflection of Tacitus, nor the power of explaining great events by general causes, which distinguishes the writers of modern times.

The atrocious tyranny that darkened the earlier ages of the empire, gave rise to the third school of Roman literature. The sufferings to which men were subjected, turned their thoughts inwards on their own hearts; and that philosophy which had first been courted as the handmaid of a generous ambition, was now sought as a shelter and consolation in misery. The maxims of the Stoics were again revived, -not, indeed, to stimulate to noble exertion, but to harden against misfortune. Their lofty lessons of virtue were again repeated — but with a bitter accent of despair and reproach; and that indulgence, or indifference towards vice, which had characterised the first philosophers, was now converted, by the terrible experience of its evils, into vehement and gloomy invective. Seneca, Tacitus, Epictetus, all fall under this description; and the same spirit is discernible

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in Juvenal and Lucan. Much more profound views of human nature, and a far greater moral sensibility characterise this age,-and show that even the unspeakable degradation to which the abuse of power had then sunk the mistress of the world, could not arrest altogether that intellectual progress which gathers its treasures from all the varieties of human fortune. Quintilian and the two Plinys afford further evidence of this progress; for they are, in point of thought and accuracy, and profound sense, conspicuously superior to any writers upon similar subjects in the days of Augustus. Poetry and the fine arts languished, indeed, under the rigours of this blasting despotism;-and it is honourable, on the whole, to the memory of their former greatness, that so few Roman poets should have sullied their pens by any traces of adulation towards the monsters who then sat in the place of power.

We pass over Madame de Staël's view of the middle ages, and of the manner in which the mixture of the northern and southern races ameliorated the intellect and the morality of both. One great cause of their mutual improvement, however, she truly states to have been the general prevalence of Christianity; which, by the abolition of domestic slavery, removed the chief cause, both of the corruption and the ferocity of ancient manners. By investing the conjugal union, too, with a sacred character of equality, it at once redressed the long injustice to which the female sex had been subjected, and blessed and gladdened private life with a new progeny of joys, and a new fund of knowledge of the most interesting description. Upon a subject of this kind, we naturally expect a woman to express herself with peculiar animation; and Madame de Staël has done it ample justice in the following, and in other pas

sages.

"C'est donc alors que les femmes commencèrent à être de moitié dans l'association humaine. C'est alors aussi que l'on connut véritablement le bonheur domestique. Trop de puissance déprave la bonté, altère toutes les jouissances de la délicatesse; les vertus et les sentimens ne peuvent résister d'une part à l'exercice du pouvoir, de l'autre à l'habitude de la crainte. La félicité de l'homme s'accrut de toute

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l'indépendance qu'obtint l'objet de sa tendresse ; il put se croire aimé ; un être libre le choisit ; un être libre obéit à ses désirs. Les apperçus de l'esprit, les nuances senties par le cœur se multiplièrent avec les idées et les impressions de ces ames nouvelles, qui s'essayoient à l'existence morale, après avoir long-temps langui dans la vie. Les femmes n'ont point composé d'ouvrages véritablement supérieurs; mais elles n'en ont pas moins éminemment servi les progrès de la littérature, par la foule de pensées qu'ont inspirées aux hommes les relations entretenues avec ces êtres mobiles et délicats. Tous les rapports se sont doublés, pour ainsi dire, depuis que les objets ont été considérés sous un point de vue tout-à-fait nouveau. La confiance d'un lien intime

en a plus appris sur la nature morale, que tous les traités et tous les systêmes qui peignoient l'homme tel qu'il se montre à l'homme, et non tel qu'il est réellement."-pp. 197, 198.

"Les femmes ont découvert dans les caractères une foule de nuances, que le besoin de dominer ou la crainte d'être asservies leur a fait appercevoir: elles ont fourni au talent dramatique de nouveaux secrets pour émouvoir. Tous les sentimens auxquels il leur est permis de se livrer, la crainte de la mort, le regret de la vie, le dévouement sans bornes, l'indignation sans mesure, enrichissent la littérature d'expressions nouvelles. De-là vient que les moralistes modernes ont en général beaucoup plus de finesse et de sagacité dans la connoissance des hommes, que les moralistes de l'antiquité. Quiconque, chez les anciens, ne pouvoit atteindre à la renommée, n'avoit aucun motif de développement. Depuis qu'on est deux dans la vie domestique, les communications de l'esprit et l'exercice de la morale existent toujours, au moins dans un petit cercle; les enfans sont devenus plus chers à leur parens, par la tendresse réciproque qui forme le lien conjugal; et toutes les affections ont pris l'empreinte de cette divine alliance de l'amour et de l'amitié, de l'estime et de l'attrait, de la confiance méritée et de la séduction involontaire.

"Un âge aride, que la gloire et la vertu pouvoient honorer, mais que ne devoit plus être ranimé par les émotions du cœur, la vieillesse s'est enrichie de toutes les pensées de la mélancolie; il lui a été donné de se ressouvenir, de regretter, d'aimer encore ce quelle avoit aimé. Les affections morales, unies, dès la jeunesse, aux passions brûlantes, peuvent se prolonger par de nobles traces jusqu'à la fin de l'existence, et laisser voir encore le même tableau sous la crêpe funêbre du temps.

"Une sensibilité rêveuse et profonde est un des plus grands charmes de quelques ouvrages modernes ; et ce sont les femmes qui, ne connoissant de la vie que la faculté d'aimer, ont fait passer la douceur de leurs impressions dans le style de quelques écrivains. En lisant les livres composés depuis la renaissance des lettres, l'on pourroit marquer à chaque page, qu'elles sont les idées qu'on n'avoit pas, avant qu'on eût accordé aux femmes une sorte d'égalité civile. La générosité, la valeur, l'humanité, ont pris à quelques égards une acception différente. Toutes les vertus des anciens étoient fondées sur l'amour de la patrie; les femmes exercent leurs qualités d'une manière indépendante. La pitié pour la foiblesse, la sympathie pour le malheur, une élévation d'ame, sans autre but que la jouissance même de cette élé