THE FALL OF ROME.* as a great writer has indicated,
all history should be conceived as "a gradually unfolding web, in which every fresh part that comes to view is a prolongation of the part previously unrolled," if, to continue the quotation, "the facts of each generation [should be), looked upon as one complex phenomenon, caused by those of the generation pre- ceding, and causing in its turn those of the next in order,"—to trace the succession of social phenomena to its remotest antecedent, to find the filiation of the events, the opinions, and the sentiments which characterize an existing generation, and to discover the "won- drous mother age" of which the present is, so to speak, a de- scendant, must be the proper aim of historical philosophy.Even those who are unwilling to accept the sequential principle in its full extent, are quite disposed to give it a qudified recognition. Among
• The Fall of Rome, and the Rise of the New Nationalities, &c. By John G. Sheppard H. C. L Sometime fellow of Wadharn College, Oxford, and Head Master of Kidder- minster School. Published by lloutledge, Warne, and Routledge. those who recognize, partially at least, this interdependence of the successive periods of humanity is Dr. John Sheppard, the author of a very able compendium, which has for its subject the Fall of Rome, and the Rise of the New Nationalities. In his view there is a close connexion between ancient and modern history : following Amedee Thierry, he regards the origin of modern Europe as logically associated with the dissolution of the Roman. Empire of the West ; nor does he hesitate to adopt the language of the French historian, when the latter characterizes this connexion as one of cause and effect.
It is, however, precisely of this period that the majority of even well-educated persons are most ignorant. " Who really knows it ?" is the question which the French author already mentioned puts to us, in a volume which shows that he has studied it more deeply than most men—the Beals de l'Histoire Romaine. Dr. Sheppard, however, is certainly one of the few who are entitled to say that they know it, or know something of it ; for in the entire details and complications of such a remote and bewildered 'period, with the old life dying out, and the new life springing up, with its heathenism, gnosticism, and Christianity; its conflicts of Huns, Vandals, Goths, Avers, and other wild races, none can hope to be thoroughly instructed.
Dr. Sheppard accordingly does not pretend to have an exhaustive knowledge of this period, or even to have written a learned and pro- found book. To furnish an humble contribution to the better-under- standing of this transitional age is the object of his compendious his- tory of The Fall of Rome. This task he has cleverly executed, con- scientiously and honestly executed. He has react and thought for himself, and if he frequently places before tus the views of Guizot, Gibbon, Hallam, Kingsby, and Maurice, if is that he has adopted them from a conviction of their validity, not that he accepts them blindly and servilely. Often, indeed, he controverts the positions of writers with whom he is generally agreed, and whose genius he. admires. He has read and examined original authorities for himself, seeing with his own eyes, and judging with his own judgment. In particular he has consulted the works of Ammianus Marcellinus, Jor- nandes, Procopius, Claudian, Prudentius, and Sidonius Apollinaris, (Cahn Boffins, the Gallo-Roman Bishop of Clermont), whose power of observation and descriptive skill have been recognized by the great historian of the "Decline and Fall." Our general approval, however, of Dr. Sheppard's vigorous and thoughtful narrative must not be considered as implying an entire acceptance of his views. We should be inclined, for instance, to differ from him in his decision on. the much controverted question as to the limits of ancient, media3val, and modern history, if he really means that such limits cannot be generally determined, though we thoroughly agtee with him, that no, mathematically exact line of demarcation can be drawn, and that no precise chronological distinction, grounded on one particular fact or event—as the fall of Constantinople—will satisfy the needful condi- tions of such a division. Again, refusing to admit, if we rightly un- derstand him, the possibility of determining these leading historical limits, Dr. Sheppard maintains that the inauguration of the feudal system took place about the year 584, though he hesitates to accept the Lombard convention as its origin and earliest type, considering it rather as a necessary .consequence of the act of Alhoin, who, in his turn, in all probability imitated the policy pursued by Longinus the Esarch. While fairly satisfied that feudalism was immediately pre- cipitated by the invasions of the fifth century-, we are disposed to regard it as the natural though less obvious result of the entire situa- tion of the Roman Empire, which, after a long career of conquest, was compelled to substitute the defensive for the offensive system.. In accordance with this view is the remark of Gibbon, when, speaking of the methods adopted by the emperors to provide a regular an adequate supply of volunteers, he observes that the condition on. which lands were granted to the veterans whose valour entitled them to the reward, contains the first rudiments of the feudal tenures, re- ferring to the exaction of hereditary military service, enforced by severe penalties, such as loss of honour, loss of fortune, and even loss of life.
But to quit the field of controversial or negative criticism. Dr. Sheppard, joining the reactionary party that assails the opinions of Robertson, who acknowledges almost exclusively a Teutonic or na- tional parentage of modern society, commences his historical essay by showing from the Roman language, the Roman law, the Municipal. system, the Imperial idea, the arts of war and agriculture, and national manners and customs, that there is a spontaneous continuity between the era of the Oman and the nineteenth century. This is a position_ that we can accept without reservation. The passages relating to the distinction between the two civilisations of the empire—the Greek and Roman—to the motives which actuated Constantine in his transfer of the seat of empire, and the sketch of the social corruption of Rome, which follow the statement of the subject of the work, are writtea with care, intelligence, and general accuracy. All pictures, however,. of society, may exercise a misleading influence when they are com- posed of scattered intimations, and so aggregated into imposing and more or less ideal wholes. How far this is the ease, in Dr. Sheppard's vivid description of the strange characters engendered by the era— the Emperor; the Senator; the Informer; the Poisoner; the Client;
the Fortune Hunter; the Parasite' the Gladiator, and the Slave—we will not attempt to determine. Our author appears to agree with Michelet that slavery caused the fall of the Roman Empire. We can- not undertake to settle this question here. Perhaps the one great assignable cause was, as Mr. Mill says, misgovernment in the form of over-taxation; but this over-taxation, as Dr. Sheppard seems to think, may have been the consequence of an increasing slave prcdetariat,. Which was again the consequence of the boundless consumption of human life in foreign and civil wars, combined with the non-adapt-
ability of the Roman veterans to agricultural life and occupations. However this be„ the Roman world came finally into fatal collision with the barbarian world, the direct instrument of its destruction.
The general character of this barbarian world is clearly and vividly portrayed by our author in the chapter which treats of the various races of which it was made up. Ethnological science, he thinks, points to the great Armenian tableland as the first dwelling-place of the survivors of the Flood, and to the plateau of Iran as a second lobal origin of the human race. From this latter :primitive habitat of mankind, proceeded the first western wave of immigration, the Celtic, followed probably by the ancestors of the present Slavonian tribes, the second great wave of Asiatic immigration ; the third and final Iranian incursion into Europe being that of the so.called Teutonic tribes. Of the tribes of Turanian stock that appeared in succession from behind the Ural mountains and the Caspian Sea, on the frontiers of the falling empire, the Hints may serve as the ethnological type. The earlier invasions by the Celts, Cimbri, and Teutons; the general irruption of the barbarians in 376; and the successive appearance in rtaly of Attila, Alaric, and Genserie, with their Huns, Goths, and Vandals; and the ultimate conquest of the empire by Odoacer, son of Edecon, a minister of Attila's, and chief of the Heruli, are described forcibly and succinctly in the ensuing portion of Dr. Sheppard's work. Avoiding further comment on this part of the disquisition, we will only point out that Odoacer, though virtually the king of Italy, never wore the insignia of royalty, and is designated in contemporary writers, King of the Heruli, Turcilingi, &c., never King of Italy. Stich, at least, is the assertion of Am6die Tluerry. The chapters on the Franks and the papacy, on Charlemagne, Spain, Arabia, and Mohammed, are full of interesting matter, and con- tain sound and valuable generalisations. Our author has a certain sympathy with great men, but he is not blind to their defects, and while he dwells on the bright side of the picture which lie calls up, he never refuses to acknowledge that there is a dark side. Thus, without assigning to Mohammed the place of master-architect in the vast system which bears his name, he maintains that to adopt such well-worn phrases as the "Arabian Impostor," the "artful prophet of Mecca," &c., is to offer no adequate estimate of the founder of Islamism. In the same way, while admitting that the ecclesiastical pretensions of a later period may reasonably suppose to emanate from the policy of Charlemagne, he asserts his claim to be regarded as a eiviliser and educator compelled, by his position, to seek both men and means in the Christian Church. We will give a portion of his defence of the policy of this great emperor of the Middle Ages :
" In the Church alone were to be found the instruments and the materials for education. The Church had a monopoly of all the knowledge which the age i
possessed, in science, in art, in philosophy, n history, and, above all, in religion. The Church alone had the opportunity, and the authority to appeal to those i deep-seated sentiments in the heart of man, which tell him, even n his pro- foundest degradation, that he is an heir of immortality. The cycle of the seven sciences, as they were called, were the only intellectual accomplishments of the time ; and with these the clergy alone were conversant. It was natural, there- fore, that Charlemagne should have looked to ecclesiastics for the furtherance of his projects for social improvement; it is natural that he should have gathered them around him, and encouraged them when they came ; it is natural that his educational schemes should have taken the shape of cathedral and conventual schools. Our own Saxon Aknin ; Marbros, his contemporary, a disciple of the venerable Beds; Peter of Pisa; Panlinns of Aquitaine; and Clement, an Irishman, were among the most illustrious of that brilliant assemblage, who formed them- selves into a society called the 'School of the Palace,' and received their royal master within their ranks as a student of grammar, rhetoric, music, and astro- nomy."
The concluding chapters on the Church, first in its relation to the Old society and then in its relation to the New, are valuable for their collection of facts and illustrations, and attest the comprehen- sive and consistent character of the author's mind. We do not always accept his opinions or coincide in his conclusions, but we give a general though not unqualified adhesion to his thoughtful and animated estimate of the historical phenomena which he has under- taken to describe. As the Papacy question is one of the topics of the day, we will condense Dr. Sheppard's cursory r6sum6 of the con- curring causes which gave temporary success to the Papal theory of Church government, subjoining his final comment on the subject. The ewes, then, which present themselves most vividly to his mind, may be catalogued thus : 1. Rome had been the political, and it was, therefore,- almost of necessity that she became the religious centre of the world. 2. Men's minds had been familiarized with Rome as the seat of Monarchical and absolute power, resting in a person who was the supreme Visible Head of the Society, the foun- tain of law, honour, rewards, and punishments; and to this position the Church succeeded, " WIten she adopted the statistical and geo- graphical arrangements of the empire as the platform for her own organisation.' 3. This position necessitated the conception of the Church as a dominant authority with a visible head, "which should be to metropolitans, bishops, and clergy, what the temporal Ctesar had been to the officers of provinces, dioceses, and parishes, with the empire—in fact, the Roman patriarch. 4. The traditions of Christian Rome, as the legendary burial-place of St. Paul and St. Peter, the city of confessors and conquerors, "appealed not less effectually to the sympathies of the faithful, than her faded glories of earlier days." 5. Rome was, moreover, a centre for business' of legal and administrative transactions, and the focus of genius, talent, and intellectual capacity generally. 6. The personal character of the great men that led and governed society, of Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, Leo, and Gregory, who either moulded the charactet of the Papacy, or completed the work which remained to be done. 7. The favourable circumstances which accompanied its external rela- tions with other powers, ecclesiastical or temporal, such as the ex-
tirpation of Jerusalem, the natural centre of Christian unity, from the family of nations by the Roman sword, and the remoteness and suppression by the Saracens of the rival patriarchates of Antioch and Alexandria, Constantinople only remaining to oppose and check the absorbing power of the Roman See. Having stated thus clearly, and as we think correctly, some of the principal causes of the development of Papal supremacy, and re- corded the impression produced on his mind by a consideration of the circumstances which attended its origin and growth, Dr. Shep- pard offers this opinion as the result of his inquiry :
"It is unreasonable to deny the fact of a positive precedence attaching to the See of Rome from a very early period; and again it is unreasonable to deny that the power which grew out of this precedence was of immense value to Christen- dom, because, in the stormy times accompanying its birth, it offered a central point of union to the young nationalities which had accepted the faith, and proved itself an efficient instrument to reorganise and conciliate the dislocated relations of a society which the passing away of an old and the coming of a new order of things had broken up. But on the other hand, it is surely as unreason- able blindly to take the logical leap from a practical precedence to an absolute. supremacy; or to assume that such a precedence, however jest, reasonable, and useful in its generation, necessarily implies its own permanence, or the inalienable- right attaching to a Divine appointment. . . . Like Feudality, like Chivalry, like the Crusading spirit, like the forms of Mediteval Life, like the Fanaticism of the Covenant, the temporal power of the Papacy has had a great work to do upon the earth, which it cannot continue to do, if only for the reason that it has been done."
We have but to remark that Dr. Sheppard has rendered his com- pendious history of The Fall of Rome more valuable and available, by placing at its close a chronological appendix, and an index of con- tents. To those who are anxious to obtain the means of a summary appreciation of the destruction of the ancient scrciety of Pagan Europe, and the rise of the New Nationalities (an expressive, but perhaps not unexceptionable phrase), we recommend the work before us, as admirably calculated to supply the data for their historical and philo- sophical estimate.
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