BOOKS.

ELIOT'S LIBERTY OP ANCIENT NATIONS.* Ir we leave out of account such original and single-subject histories as Sallust's Cetiline Conspiracy and Clarendon's Rebellion, there are three modes of writing history. One where the facts are scattered and practi- cally inaccessible to all but scholars, so that the story is new to the gene- eral public ; as was the case with Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon on their first appearance. A second, where the story is repeated with the object of giving prominence to some particular view or question ; of which Lin- gard's is a ready instance' though special histories—as Hallam's Con- stitution—may fall under this head. A third is, where new conclusions are sought to be deduced from well-known facts. Of this class Niebuhr's great work is the most illustrious example although it also may be said to be sui generis, since the author's profound scholarship enabled him to bring together a vast number of hitherto disregarded and seemingly unimportant facts, while his sagacity detected the truths they contained. Mr. Eliot's survey of ancient history rather falls into the third class ; though it is also sui generis too, and in rather a peculiar way. Mr. Eliot has adopted some not very novel truths and applied them to ancient history as if they were discoveries, or at least he has examined the con- dition of antiquity by their light. It is one proposition of our author, that "liberty is nowhere to be understood or judged according merely to the government over any people, but rather and chiefly according to the capacity and cultivation of the people themselves under their government " : an axiom which looks very like the truism that laws are of no avail with- out manners; or the fact which the last thirty years have pretty well im- pressed upon the world, that free constitutions are of no advantage where the people are not adapted for freedom. He has also ideas of liberty and of ancient history so common as to be the frequent topics of sermons and moral or social treatises by divines : for example, that true freedom must be rightfully or virtuously exercised ; that man's unassisted reason can- not rise to a true idea of the Deity, for which he must depend upon reve- lation; that man was designed to work out his own advancement so far as his own efforts could go, in order to prepare the world for the Advent; that the beat and most glorious states and societies of antiquity wanted a full and perfect freedom, which can only be attained under the Christian dispensation ; that "Providence was as watchful over the period of anti- quity as over our own" ; and that the "plummet of a Christian is necessary to fathom the truths of history." In a continuous series of works the author intends to record the annals of the civilized world upon these prin- ciples of composition, down to a period at least beyond the Reformation, and to stretch his conception if not.his narrative towards a liberty "not of Rome or of America" but of Christianity. The commonplace charac- ter of these and similar ideas is sometimes disguised by rhetoriel, and abructimes made to loom grandly by a hazy obscurity of expression- " omne ignotitni pro magnifico."

In his narrative review of the history of antiquity, Mr. Eliot does not aim at new facts or new discoveries. His object is to bring the charac- ters of leading men and the character and constitution of national societies to the testa he has laid down for liberty, and in some sense to Scriptural revelation. Had this been fully done, Mr. Eliot would have written a history of human progress in conformity to the Divine will ; but he does not impress his theory continually on the reader, if indeed it is sufficiently present to his own mind. With a turn for description, for drawing cha- racters and for historical disquisition, he tells the story of ancient history, as well as tests the constitutional and social spirit of nations according to the facts at his disposal. He examines ancient India from the religious books which modern Oriental scholarship has laid open to European readers, and intermingles his account of Brahmism with a not very pellu- cid commentary on different castes; the sum of the whole seeming to be, that there was no liberty in India, the inferior castes being superstitious slaves to the Brahmins, and the Brahmins not being able to use their liberty or power through their corrupt ideas of God. The summary of Egyptian history is somewhat more complete than that of India, from the greater plenty of materials ; it deals with facts and the names of men, as well as with religious opinions and the divisions of society ; but its actual conclusion touching the liberty of that ancient nation are more jejune than that upon India. It amounts to little more than this — that Christian liberty was not to be found in Egypt. There is a more distinct principle deduced from the review of Persian history—that the Persians were freer than the Indians or Egyptians, because they were ruled by a king, not a priesthood. But is this a true conclusion ? The original stock, the Persians in their own region, were probably a free people, though physical geography had as much to do with their freedom as monarchy. It may be a question, however, whe- ther the subjects of Persia were better off under the despotism of the Great King than under the priestly but legal rule of India or Egypt. The survey of Phoenician "ships, colonies, and commerce," leads to the conclusion that the Phoenicians were the first free people of antiquity; but they were debased by a corrupting religion. "The Greeks" are con- sidered at greater length, on account of their important influence on the world, as well as of the greater stock of materials at the writer's dis- posal. Many striking sketches of persons and actions, many judicious and occasionally some new reflections, are struck out as to their intellect, tastes, government, and state of society ; but the pith of the view as regards their liberty is contained in the following passage.

" In Greece we have arrived at one of these happier periods, not as when manna dropped, or when the still small voice was heard but when humanity, without being actually purified in heart, was lightened of Y the burdens under which its body and mind had both been benumbed. India, Egypt, and Persia have been like lands depeopled, in which the only materials for history are the governments, and the powers which the governments suffered or forced their subjects to exert. Society, in its substance as well as its form, has had no possible existence; and a The Liberty of Rome; a History. With an Historical Account of the Liberty or Ancient RaUons. By Samuel Eliot. In two volumes. Published by Bentley. vainly would one attempt to retrace the vestiges of habits and feelings which have been long obliterated. But in Greece the world of human beings expands into a society of living, acting, and hoping men, amongst whom government sinks to secondary place in history, and even laws become unimportant except in their ins. mediate connexion with the minds and the deeds of those by whom, and as we can say at last, for whom they were framed."

The corruption and consequent decline of the Jews are exhibited Upon the oft-reiterated opinion that it was a necessary part of the Divine economy to prepare tbr the new dispensation. The history of the Jews, however, is rapidly dismissed. A rather heterodox doctrine is broached at starting. " Other glimpses of Omnipresence are," says Mr. Eliot, "to us at least, as clearly revealed amongst the most ancient nations and in the farthest lands ; and it is necessary in the outset to deny that the Jewish people was the only one in antiquity whom God visited, or that its temperament, its composition, and its destiny, were so utterly distinct from those of universal humanity, as to make it, on its own account, the holy nation concerning which Moses was informed at Sinai." The his- tory of Rome is narrated at great length, and indeed fills three-fontths of the work. It contains a more elaborate examination of the laws,

constitution, and condition of society, than in the cate of Greece, and a fuller narrative of events which throw light upon such matters ; battles, merely as battles, being passed by. The acquisition and loss of the liberty of Rome is fully described ; but the subject is briefly dismissed as regards the moral or religious characteristics. We are told that "liberty under the Roman laws attained to a greater stature that in any other heathen state,"—which, looking to Athens, may be doubted; but that it was stunted through its narrowness, and from a deficient perception of right and wrong.

"The institutions of ancient Rome secured to all the citizens whom they ac- knowledged the amplest freedom in that age possible; yet freedom failed amongst

them for want of higher powers in its possessors than those of conquerors and rulers; while the institutions by which this liberty had been provided were bowed and broken by its courses of blood and despotism. The few, like the Gracchi and Cicero, whom it educated to greater aspirations, were not allowed to spread the learning they acquired amongst men, much less to exercise the benevolence they had received from their Creator.

"The wants of the Romans are as evident as their errors. They not only lacked the powers, but the first necessities of humanity. To be free, they needed to be conscious of their weakness as individuals, and, morally speaking, as a ca-

tion; a consciousness which never came to the nation, and only to its individual members in the day of their utter downfall. Even had they been sooner humbled,

a law of right and wrong would still have failed them; though in order to be free, singly or collectively, they required liberation from the vice and fortification is the virtue of the world. This law, however, was never theirs; it neither rose

with their early institutions nor arrived with their later philosophy, except in

part; and the part even which they did obtain was lost before the beginning of the Empire. Without this knowledge of right and wrong, there can be no true

power; and without power, again, there can be no real exercise of liberty. There

is a holiness of freedom yet to be attained in doing whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are

pure,.whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever -things are of good report '; and'so doing them, that the glory of God, which religion commands, may be fulfilled by man through liberty."

Considered as fulfilling the avowed object of Mr. Eliot, the book is hardly successful ; for his two volumes contain very little more than we have embodied in this notice. Neither in the earlier history does he make much use of his starting principle by applying it in his examina- tion; so that his review of the five earlier nations of antiquity has not much interest. The Greek and Roman story is better and more attract- ive; owing in part to its higher interest and fuller materials, but in part, we think, to Mr. Eliot's nature. Although he starts with the idea of writing a philosophical history, Mr. Eliot has by no means a philoso- phical mind. He cannot from many facts or various opinions deduce a sound principle, nor does be always express his deductions in very lucid diction. His genius is rhetorical, with more of liking for the imaginative than the severe. From a fact or two he will draw a picture, probable if not proved; from a law or an incident lie will suggest the general state of society ; his style of narration is full and rapid; he is rather happy in character-painting ; and, by not confining himself to the pre- sentation of a continuous narrative, he is able to select the more striking persons, events and Mich); for themes. In the pictures or suggestions that these furnil the value of the work consists. The reader of this notice may gain the pith of Mr. Eliot's coherent view of the characteristics and progress of ancient nation,: as a philosophical guide through the earlier

or later periods he cannot be safely trusted ; but his sketches of Greek and Roman story are impressive by their force and animation ; and his

remarks will often suggest new ideas of ancient life and manners to the reader, even when the particular conclusion which the writer draws may not be in itself well-founded. The book is not a complete history, or a complete survey of history, but it is a valuable contribution to histo- rical literature.

The rest of our extracts will illustrate some features of the author's composition. The following is part of a striking picture of the natural state of the site of Rome.

"Not so far from the Western coast of Italy as to be land-locked against the intercourse and the enterprise whose paths are on the sea, nor yet so near as to

be exposed to the perils and the piracies with which the waters swarmed in early

times, there rose a group of seven hills, by which the river Tibur flowed, switt and winding, to the Mediterranean. The hills were neither large nor lofty, but,

as they stood, covered with rank and rugged vegetation, and flanked with rocks on some sides steep as precipices, the security of their situation must often have attracted the herdsman harassed by losses, or the rover weary of forays. Below and between them lay some scanty patches of more level ground, of which a large

portion was primitively unfit either for habitation or for cultivation, partly on ac- count of its own swampy character and partly because the adjoining nver would

often pour over it in inundation. The more untenable the lower ground, the more

defensible was the higher; and so much were the hills separated from one another by the natural moats at their bases that each might have been originally occupied

by a different band, with comparatively little danger to the least numerous or the worst fortified. It was inevitable, however, that as the trees which grew like walls upon the hills were felled, and as the huts crept downward when the narrow

summit was overcharged with dwellings, the various settlements, exposed to 000 another's sight and trespassing on one another's possessions, would be united by

consent or conquest into a single city. •

" The neighbouring territory was as peculiar in its nature as that of the hills. it would be unsafe to describe it as if it were the Campagna of the modern city, from which the waste of centuries has stricken the verdure that once nestled= on the earth, as well as the foliage that waved and rustled through the air. But die forms which the earth wore, and the hues with which the air was beautified, are still the same—at least in general appearance—as in ancient days. The un- dulations of the ground on either side the seven hills were precisely such as would attract a warlike or a migratory people to build their cabins where they would have a field to furnish them with food, at the same time that they found a cliff or A ravine to use in their fortifications. All around were spread the colonies of strangers and the villages of natives or of early settlers, neither so close to each other as to create any positive want of land or means, nor, on the contrary, so far removed as to obviate the necessity of quarrel and warfare between races to whom the sword was intrusted rather than the ploughshare."

The opinions of the wise men of Greece on the characteristics of good government are not new, but they are compactly brought together; and are curious as showing the necessary narrowness of those early times in their views upon the question of the rights of men and the duties of the state.

" Thales was esteemed the first of the seven sages, men of activity as much as of wisdom, whose contemporaneous renown is perhaps the most illustrious monu- ment of the fervent age in which they had their lives. An account remains of a conversation between them, in which each expressed his opinion concerning the best constitution of a free state. Salon spoke first, saying he admired the repub- lic in which they who beheld a wrong committed were as eager for its punish- ment as they who actually suffered from the crime. Bias of Priene declared he was most satisfied where all men feared the laws as they would dread a tyrant. Thales preferred the state in which there was neither too great opulence nor too great poverty. A stranger, Anacharsis, gave the praise to that people amongst whom vice had the lowest and virtue the highest place. Cleobulns of Lindus es- teemed that nation most advanced which feared censure more than any law. Fifteens of hlitylene thought the good government to be that under which good men only were in authority. Chilon of Lacedmmon said that laws were most and public speakers least heard in his model of a commonwealth. Last of all was the opinion of Periander of Corinth, that the soundest state was that nearest to aristocracy: but Periander was one of the tyrants yet remaining. In hearing these judgments upon a cause of so great interest, we seem to obtain the full measure of the knowledge which the Greeks possessed concerning liberty."

A trait which gives character to the book, though not exactly carry- ing out the purpose of the author, is the moral and religious ideas which animate him. He sees, indeed, that to try a heathen by a Christian test is not a fair proceeding ; nor does he bring his persons exactly to this trial. But a high religious tone mostly pervades his book, and induces him to pass a graver, not to say a severer judgment upon men and their times, than is generally found in historians. This is his sketch of the in- fluence of Pericles upon his age.

"He stands in histories laurelled for the work of other men, by which he had the sagacity and the power, after he once declared himself, to profit; but the in- heritance he left in the place of that he had received was of a people who would never be free again, as they had been, though they might be a refined, a sensitive, and, compared with almost any other ancient standard than their own, an ad- mirable nation. It must be confessed as plainly, that many of the evils he be- queathed he had himself inherited from former generations. The acknowledg- ment of slavery—the exclusion of strangers, and even natives, from political rights—the system of extraordinary dependence on the rich in respect to contri- butions, and on the poorsln respect to political authority—tbe preponderance of orators and generals amongst the magistrates—the inferiority of women—the prevalence of licentiousness in all sorts of habits, and of scepticism in all kinds of opinions—were not to be charged against Pericles or any other individual in the history of Athens or of Greece. One error at least there was to avoid, into which lie, with all his statesmanship, plunged headlong. At his suggestion, a Jaw was passed disfranchising some five thousand citizens for want of Athenian descent on both the paternal and the maternal sides; by which the number of those in full possession of citizenship was reduced to fourteen thousand and forty only, in the midst of slaves, residents, and a continually growing multitude of every occupation and degree. It may be added, for the sake of explaining, not only the operation of the law, but the character of its author's power, that when his house had been stricken with disease Which spared neither son of his lawful nuptial, a child he had by Aspasia was admitted to the franchise as his successor. The immediate legacy of Pericles to his countrymen was the Peloponnesian war. He may not possibly have provoked, but he did not prevent, the hostilities from which the freedom of Greece must be said to date its ruin."