DR. ARNOLD'S HISTORY OF ROME.

THE second volume of this admirable work embraces the period from the retirement of the Gauls, after the sack and destruction of the city under BRENNUS, to the end of the first Punk: war. It con- tains, therefore, the continual contests of Rome with its neighbours, till after many checks and various fluctuations of fortune, the whole of Italy acknowledged the Roman sway : it narrates the civil strug- gles between: patricians and plebeians until the absolute powers of the rich creditor over his debtor were abrogated ; the two orders placed on a civil and religious equality, and the republican consti- tution assumed its final form : it also traces the first connexion of the Italian people with those foreign states they were soon to subjugate—as in their embassies to ALEXANDER and Egypt, their contests with PYRRHUS, SO formidable outland, and with Carthage predominant on the sea. At convenient pauses in the narrative a survey is taken of the contemporary state of the ancient world, more especially of Greece and Carthage; Dr. ARNOLD'S work not merely furnishing a history of Rome, but in some sense a sketch of uni- versal history. Starting with the dawn of authentic annals, and gradually pro- ceeding, but with frequent gaps, through public records brief and dry, or the exaggerations of mendacious heraldry, till the all but contemporary pen of POLYBIES begins to cast a steady light upon Roman history, Dr. Aarann has discontinued the pleasant old legendary tales, told in " an antiquated style," which gave such a delightful relief to the former volume. In other respects the mode of composition is the same. The civil narrative is kept pretty well distinct from the military, and where it relates to the growth of the Roman constitution, to the condition of the people, or the deduced manners and character of the age, entirely so. But as a whole, the volume is perhaps inferior in attraction to its prede- cessor; not from any thlling-off in the author's ability, for that is as conspicuous as before ; not altogether from that law which operating equally in books, as iii life or nature, forbids fixity and ordains a falling backwards when any thing ceases to advance ; but from a cause which the author has half anticipated, when be con- jectures that some may think "this volume written tit too great length." Although many of the filets it treats of were recorded in ancient archives, yet they were recorded meagrely, and very many have either perished, or have come down to us imperfectly narrated. Hence, Dr. ARNom) was restrained from implicitly following his authorities, as in his legendary stories, and some- times he had no authorities to follow. Upon the scale adopted, he was of necessity driven to piece out his narrative by disquisition, or conjecture, and he has fallen too much into Ninunua's mode. In the civil or political history this is not greatly felt—an intellectual contest admits of an intellectual examination, especially where the wellbeing of a class, or the character of a people is concerned. But breadth and rapidity are essential to the narrative of action. Who but feels the muster-rolls of forces, and the technical details of modern military writers, describing what they saw, but as dead incumbrances upon the march of the narrative ? How much drier, then, must be disquisitional accounts of petty wars or dubious battles above two thousand years ago, when the poetical characteristics are rejected ; the true particulars which could have imparted interest were never preserved, and no doubt remains as to the eventual result, since we know the Romans did conquer Italy. If the LIVY like narrative is abandoned, the better mode of treat- ing remote and questionable events is to state the conflicting testimony and the most probable results broadly in the text, and the details in an appendix for the curious.

Besides the innate advantage which civil history possesses, it has

another in Dr. ARNOLD'S hands. The historian deduces maxims of profound truth or lessons of universal application from the poli- tical contests at Rome—first between a narrow aristocracy and the wealthy and respectable middle classes, many as rich and as ancient as the patricians who looked down upon them ; second, between the mass of people and the newly-privileged class who joined with the old. Here, for example is an eloquent picture of the

NATIONAL SUFFERINGS UNDER BAD INSTITUTIONS.

It has been well said that long periods of general suffering make far less im- pression on our minds, than the short sharp struggle in which a few distin- guished individuals perish; not that we over-estimate the horror and the guilt of times of open bloodshedding, but we are much too patient atilt: greater misery and greater sin of periods of quiet legalized oppression—of that most deadly of all evils, when law, and even religion herself, are false to their divine origin and purpose, and their voice is no longer the voice of God, but of his enemy. In such cases the evil derives advantage, in a manner, from the very amount of its own enormity. No Ten can record, no volume can contain the details of the daily and hourly sufferings of a whole people, endured without intermission, through the whole life of man, from the cradle to the grave. The mind itself can scarcely comprehend the wide range of the mischief: how constant poverty and insult, long endured as the natural portion of a degraded caste, hear with them to the sufferers something yet worse than pain, whether of the body or the feelings ; how they dull the understanding and poison the morals ; how ignorance and ill-treatment combined are the parents of universal suspicion ; how from oppression is produced habitual cowardice, breaking out when occa- sion offers into merciless cruelty; how slaves become naturally liars; how they, whose condition denies them all noble enjoyments, and to whom looking for- ward is only despair, plunge themselves with a brute's recklessness into the lowest sensual pleasures ; how the domestic circle itself, the last st---a7---'10ea,,,, - human virtue, becomes at length corrupted, and in the place of nature -4: tion and parental care, there is to be seen only selfishness and unkindnes1,711' no other anxiety on the part of' the parents for their children, than thats'fis; may, by fraud or by violence, prey in their turn upon that society which have found their bitterest enemy. Evils like these, long working in the hem' of a nation, render their own cure impossible : a revolution may executeja,- ment on one generation, and that perhaps the very one which was beginakt4 see and to repent of its inherited sins ; but it cannot restore life to the monis, dead ; and its ill success, as if in this line of evils no curse should he wane,: is pleaded by other oppressors as a defence of their own iniquity, and a reit; for perpetuating it for ever. The ophnons of Dr. Arixoen, it may be divined, are those of what would formerly have been called an Old Whig, but are now . we suppose, distinctive of Moderate Conservatism. The mufti character of the man, and the elevated line of his studies, lime, however, raised him beyond mere party notions, and enable bile to perceive truths a faction never thinks of. See his sketch of the " great and hardest problem " which politics has to solve— a question of general interest at all times, and very important to British politicians who see an inch beyond their nose; for v,.110 can tell how soon its consideration may be somewhat rudely forced upon us ? "The moderate patricians, the new nobility of the COMM0118 and the massof the old plebeians, were now closely linked together ; and their union gave that energy to the Roman councils and arms, winch marks in so eminent a manner the middle of the fifth century. But as these elements had tended more and more towards each other, so they parted off on either side from other elements, with which, at an earlier period, they had been respectively connected. The moderate patricians stood aloof from the high or more violent party, wlio still dreamt of recovering the old aseendancy.of their order; whilst a new popular party, though as yet very inconside.rable pourer or influence, was grout-ins distinct from the old plebeians, regarding them with envy, and regarded by La in turn with feelings of dislike and suspicion. " This is the progress of all popular parties, from the necessity of the use. As the ruling boil), in the earliest state of society is extremely exclusive, the popular party then comprises what Sieyes would call the nation minus a prin. leged individual or a very small privileged eluss. Each, MMUS of this patty satisfies the wishes of a portion of its members, and thus makes them for the future its enemies. And a repetition of this process would at last place the anti-popular party in that same position which was at first occupied by their adversaries; they would, in their turn, become the nation, Mill11S a very small excluded class a class, in fact, excluded by nothing but their own ignorance or profligacy. 1."Iii3 would be the natural perfection of a state, but unhappily this as yet has never been attained to ; the process has gone on healthfully in its first stages, satisfying successively all those vhose exclusion was wholly mina- tural, that is, who were excluded by distinctions purely arbitrary, or over- balanced by many more points of resemblance and fitness for political power. But when it reaches those who differ really from the governing body, as 111 the case of the rich and the poor, then convulsion and decline have mostly followed. The work of smoothing down these real differences is so difficult, that it has rarely or never been attempted ; the excluding party strengthened by all those who were once excluded, is now extremely powerful, and its power is moral as well as physical ; the excluded or popular party, no longer a nation contending against a caste, but it muck more than a worthless faction contending against It ration, are conscious of a wrong done to them, and are malts tered by this feeling; but being unable to carry their point, and from their very inability to obtain a share of the benefits of society, becoming more and more morally unfit to enjoy them, their triumph and their continued exclu- sion are alike deplorable. Their triumph is but the triumph of slaves broke loose, full of brute ignorance and wicke1:1es: ; their continued exclusion is a perpetual cancer, wasting away the nation's life ; and it is a moral evil, more- over, because it involves injustice. The great and hardest problem of political wisdom is to prevent any part of society from becoming so socially degraded by poverty, that their political enfranchisement becomes dangerous, or even mischievous."

A notice of a history of Rome would be incomplete without some sketches inure directly characteristic of the subject. We will there- fore take a Ilnv quotations of a miscellaneous kind.

A ROMAN AMIIASSADOR.

The Romans immediately sent an embassy to Tarentmn to demand satisfac- tion for all these outrages. L. Post(' loins was the principal ambassador ; and the instant that he and his colleagues 1;111,10(1, they were beset by a disorderly crowd, who ridiculed their foreign dress, the white toga wrapped round the body like a plaid, with its broad scoria border. At last they were admitted into the theatre, where the people were as-send:IA ; butt it was again a time of festival, and the Tarentines were more disposed to coarse buffoonery and riot than to serious counsel. When rostuntius spoke to them in Greek, the assembly broke out into laughter at his pronouneiation, and at any mistnkes in his lan- guage ; but the Roman delivered his commission unmoved, gravely and simply, as though he had not so much as observed the insults offered to him. At last a worthless drunkard of known profligacy came up to the Roman ambassador, and purposely threw dirt in the most offensive manner upon his white toga. Postumius said, " We accept the omen ; ye sIndl give us even more than we ask of yell ;" and held up the sullied toga before the multitude, to show them the ottir3t,e which he had received. But bursts of laughter pealed from every part of the theatre, and scurril songs, and geAtires, and clapping of hands, were the only answer returned to him. Laugh on," said the Roman, "laugh on a bile ye may ; ye shall weep long enough hervafter, and the stain nut this toga shall be washed out in your blood." The anilial.,aders left Tarentum, and Postundus cam-dully kept his toga unwashed, that the Senate might witness with their own eyes- the insult offered to the Roman name.

or..n ROME: mem CENTURY.

The city itself was still confined within the walls of Servius Tullius. The Capitol and the Quirinal Hills thrilled its northern limit, and looked down im- mediately on the open space of the Campus Martins, now covered with the greatest part of the building3 of modern Rome. Art or caprice had not yet effaced the natural features of the ground, by cutting down bills and filling up vallies, nor had the mere lapse of time as yet raised the soil by continued accu- mulations to a height far above its original level. The hills, with their bare rocky sides, and covered in many parts with sacred grovss, the remains of their prituteval woods, rose distinctly and boldly from the A-allies between them ; on their summits were the principal temples and the houses of the noblest families; beneath were the narrow streets and lofty houses, roofed only with wood, of the more populous quarters of the city, and in the midst, reaching from the Capi- toline Hill to the Palatine, lay the comitium and the Roman thrum.

OLD ROMANS OF TI1E rerTil CENTURY.

The members of the country tribes, of those at least which had been created within the. last century, lived on their lands, and probably only went up to Rome to vote at the elections, or when any law of great national importance was proposed, and there was a powerful party opposed to its enactment.

They were also obliged to appear on the Capitol on the day fixed by the Consuls for the inlistment of soldiers for the legions. Law business might also call them up to Rome occasionally ; and the Roman games, or any other great festival, would no doubt draw them thither in great numbers. With these exce they ptions, and when were n i

not serving n the legions, they lived on their small properties in the country; then- business was agriculture, their recreations were country sports, and their social pleasures were found in the meetings of their neighbours at seasons of festival; and at these times there would be dancing, music, and often some pantomimic acting, or some rude attempts at dramatic dialogue, one of the simplest and most universal amusements of the human mind. This was enough to satisfy all their intellectual cravings ; of the beauty of painting,

sculpture, or architecture—of the charms of eloquence and of the highest poetry—of the deep interest which can be excited by inquiry isle the causes of all the wonders around us and within us—of sonic a the highest and most indispensable enjoyments of an Athenian's nature, the agri- cultural Romans of the fifth century had no notion whatsoever.

In noticing Dr. ARNOLD'S volume, we have confined ourselves to general remarks, because it is only by the general character that the standing of works of this character will eventually be decided. Anv one who sets himself to "see hairs and pores," to " examine bitly bit," would no doubt find oversights and mistakes; and there are some errors we might enumerate, were it worth while. But taken as it stands, it must be considered as the greatest contribu- tion to English historical literature which has appeared since thimoN; and it should be borne in mind, that the period of the succeeding volumes will be characterized by more ample particulars, and be more pregnant with interest and instruction.