borrowed from that of Greece; for nothing is ever invented, where borrowing will serve the purpose; but it was marked, with several distinctions, to which alone it is now necessary to attend. In the first place and this is very remarkable-theRomans, contrary to the custom of all other nations, began their career of letters with philosophy; and the cause of this peculiarity is very characteristic of the nation. They had subsisted longer, and effeeted more without literature, than any other people on record. They had become a great state, wisely constituted and skilfully administered, long before any one of their citizens had ever appeared as an author. The love of their country was the passion of each individual-the greatness of the Roman name the object of their pride and enthusiasm. Studies which had no reference to political objects, therefore, could find no favour in their eyes; and it was from their subserviency to popular and senatorial oratory, and the aid which they promised to afford in the management of factions and national concerns, that they were first led to listen to the lessons of the Greek philosophers. Nothing else could have induced Cato to enter upon such a study at an advanced period of life. Though the Romans borrowed their philosophy from the Greeks, however, they made much more use of it than their masters. They carried into their practice much of what the others contented themselves with setting down in their books; and thus came to attain much more precise notions of practical duty, than could ever be invented by mere discoursers. The philosophical writings of Cicero, though occasionally incumbered with the subtleties of his Athenian preceptors, contain a much more complete code of morality than is to be found in all the volumes of the Greeks-though it may be doubted, whether his political information and acuteness can be compared with that of Aristotle. It was the philosophy of the Stoics that gained the hearts of the Romans; for it was that which fell in with their national habits and dispositions. Mad. de Staël has remarked upon this subject with great liveliness and sagacity.

Les opinions stoïciennes étoient le point d'honneur des Romains = une vertu dominante soutient toutes les associations politiques, indépendamment du principe de leur gouvernement; c'est-à-dire qu'entre toutes les qualités, on en préfère une, sans laquelle toutes les autres ne sont rien, et qui suffit seule à faire pardonner l'absence de toutes. Cette qualité est le lien de patrie, le caractère distinctif des citoyens d'un même pays. Chez les Lacédémoniens, c'étoit le mepris de la douleur physique; chez les Athéniens, la distinction des talens; chez les Romains, la puissance de l'ame sur elle-méme; chez les Francais, l'éclat de la valeur; et telle étoit l'importance qu'un Romain mettoit à l'exercice d'un empire absolu sur tout son

être, que, scul avec lui-même, le stoïcien s'avouoit à peine les affec tions qu'il étoit ordonné de surmonter.

Si un homme d'honneur étoit susceptible de quelque crainte, il la repousseroit avec tant d'énergie, qu'il n'auroit jamais l'occasion ni là volonté de l'observer dans son propre cœur. Il en étoit de même, parmi les philosophes Romains, des sentimens tumultueux de peine ou de colère, d'envie ou de regret: ils trouvoient efféminés tous les mouvemens involontaires; et rougissant de les éprouver, ils ne s'attachoient point à les connoître ni dans eux-mêmes, ni dans les autres. L'étude du cœur humain n'étoit pour eux que celle de la' force ou de la foiblesse. Toujours ambitieux de réputation, ils ne s'abandonnoient point à leur propre caractère; ils ne montroient jaLes Romains n'étoient point mais qu'une nature commandée. 'hypocrites; mais ils se formoient au-dedans d'eux-mêmes pour l'ostentation. Le caractère Romain étoit un modèle auquel tous les grands hommes adaptoient leur nature particulière; et les écrivains moralistes présentoient toujours le même exemple.' p. 145, 146.

As

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. the government was strictly aristocratical, it could never permit its legitimate chiefs to be held up to mockery on the stage, as the democratical license 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 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, those marks of weakness which were unbecoming men as among entrusted with the interests and the honour of their country. Mad. 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 groupe 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 their principles required of them-the law which they had imposed on themselves, to feel 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 might quit life whenever he could not bear it without murmuring.

What has been said relates to the literature of Republican Rome. The usurpation of Augustus gave a quite different 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 no 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 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 present and 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 eharacter 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 inward 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 characterized 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 in Juvenal and Lucan.. Much more profound views of human. nature, and a far greater moral sensibility characterize 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 inteelletual 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 at in the place of power

4

We pass over Mad. 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 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 antient 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 Mad. de Staël has done it ample justice in the following, and in other passages.

'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 felicité de l'homme s'accrut de toute 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 desirs. 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 progres de la littérature, par la foule de pensées qu'ont inspirées aux hommes les relations entretenues avec ces êtres mobiles et delicats. 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.' p. 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