philosophers, that Rome ever knew; and many of these were of the highest rank in their respective professions. But in Rome, as in Greece, with liberty fell literature, not indeed at once, for she rose and fell frequently rising weaker, and falling heavier each time; but from the hour when Augustus assumed the purple, he put chains upon the Muses, - golden ones indeed, and sparkling with gems, but still they were chains, chains that bound the soul. Adorned and degraded with these, they were compelled to walk in his train - beautiful captives, smiling like infants, and singing like syrens, but sick at heart, pining in thought as they followed the triumphal car of the enslaver of their country; at whose wheels Roman freedom, Roman virtue, Roman glory, were dragged in the dust; and never, never again stood upright, and strong, and fearless as before.

Thenceforward literature and philosophy visibly declined; slowly at first, but with accelerating tendency towards final extinction; so that from the close of the reign of Trajan down to the fourth century of the Christian era, when the poet Claudian flourished, who, with all his faults, was worthy of a better age, - there is not a solitary monument of Roman genius to rank with the master-pieces of the fifty years which either preceded or followed the usurpation of supreme power by Augustus. There are, however, various useful and interesting productions amidst this decay of learning, which throw light upon the public events and private manners of the intervening period of intestine turbulence and

barbarian aggression, by which the pride and power of Rome were gradually shaken, dilapidated, overthrown, and finally broken to pieces on the banks of the Tyber, never to be reinstated.

Literature during the Middle Ages.

For nearly ten centuries succeeding, the literature both of Greece and Rome was of a character so heterogeneous, that this epithet alone will be sufficient to designate it,—the necessary brevity of the present review not allowing us to waste another word upon it in reference to antiquity. Meanwhile, revolution after revolution changed the condition of the people that inhabited the provinces of the western empire from the death of Constantine the Great. The Goths, Vandals, Huns, with numberless and nameless tribes of barbarians, emigrating in mass, like mountains undermined, and sliding from their base; or forests on morasses, slowly ruptured, and engulphing their own growth as well as inundating the adjacent plains, from Scythia, Sarmatia, Siberia, and the inexhaustible regions of Tartary, overran Germany, Gaul, Italy, and Spain; out of whose partitions of the spoil of Europe gradually arose its modern empires, kingdoms, and commonwealths. From the stern and summary principles of equity among these rude people, grafted upon the Roman institutes embodied by Justinian, sprang the laws and policy of Christian nations at this day. In Britain itself we owe more of the rights and freedom we enjoy, to those hordes, which have been held up to indigna

unto the choice vine; he washed his garments in wine, and his clothes with the blood of grapes.

"His eyes shall be red with wine, and his teeth white with milk."

The whole of this imagery might be engraven in hieroglyphics; but not one of the sister arts alone can do it justice, for it combines the excellencies of all three, picture to the eye, music to the ear, poetry to the mind.

C

Early Eloquence:

The death of Jacob brings us to the year 2315 from the creation, and consequently includes the earliest era in profane history, of which any authentic records remain concerning those celebrated nations of antiquity, among whom arts and sciences flourished while Greece and Italy were yet unpeopled or unknown. It has been intimated that verse was antecedent to prose in the progress of literature. It is true, that in the book of Genesis, many conversations are given; and in various instances, no doubt, the very words employed by the speakers have been preserved; but none of these having been artificially constructed for the purpose of identifying and perpetuating the sentiments with the phraseology, they come not under that definition of literature which has been assumed in this Essay; in fact, they are themselves integral portions of a literary work; namely, the first book of Moses, which belongs to a later period. Undoubtedly traditions of what had been said, as well as what had been done, by patriarchs

tion as the ravagers and destroyers of every thing great, and good, and glorious, in government and literature, during that revolutionary struggle, which compelled the Romans to withdraw their legions and their colonists from our remote island, and reduced the enfeebled natives to call in the aid of the Saxons to repel the inroads of the Picts and Scots; - we owe more to these vilified savages than to their illustrious victims, whose fate has so often excited the compassion of historians, poets, moralists, and declaimers of every class. Yet it must be acknowledged, after all, that the Romans, from their degeneracy, were worthy of no better a fate; -nay, they were so irrecoverably corrupt and emasculate, that the infusion of purer blood from the full fountains of the north, had become requisite to restore human nature itself in the south of Europe to health, vigour, and temperance,-the true standard both of mental and bodily enjoyment and perfection.

The fate of the eastern empire was longer held in suspense: it stood a thousand years on its new base, at the point where Europe and Asia meet on the opposite shores of the Hellespont; but it fell, in the sequel, after many a long and furious struggle against the encroachments of the Saracens and the Turks. Nothing in history is more extraordinary than the sudden rise, the rapid progress, and the amazing extension of the empire of the former. In less than a hundred and fifty years the Saracen arms had conquered all the western, southern, and eastern provinces of the Roman world, including Spain, Barbary, Libya, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Asia-Minor, and the