BULWE It ' S ATHENS.

THE IWO volumes before us are but an instalment of the work, which, it is thought, will be completed in four. The purpose of the author is not only to narrate the history of Athens, to paint her social life, and to describe and criticise her literature and philosophy, but also to resolve events into their causes, and trace characters up to the circumstances which produced them, so as, at last, to give an " unprejudiced and intelligible explanation of the " rise and fall of Athens.' To pronounce a deliberate judgment upon such an undertaking, it of course would be necessary to have the whole work before us, and to have subjected it to a much more searching scrutiny than is possible in the limited time which has elapsed since we received it. Reserving, if needful and conve- nient, (for the subject is better adapted to a quarterly classical journal that) a weekly newspaper,) a general view of Mr. }lemma in conjunction with Athens, we shall at present confine ourselves to a statement of' the subjects anti a description of the character of the first two volumes.

The work opens with the eternal Pelasgians—the earliest or supposedst a sliest inhabitants of Greece ; and comes down in his- tory to the death of PeRici.Es, in literature to the old Athenian comedy and the tragedies of SOPHOCLES. The greater east of the first volume is disquisitiotial ; embracing a very readable but rather vague account of the Pelasgians; a conjectural investiga- tion as to the native or foreign origin of Grecian civilization, with a decision in favour of the latter; and a brilliant but fanciful— a inimical rather than historical—picture of the heroic age, and a sketch of the exploits and " legislative influence" of TnEsEus and his successors. Removed from the category if the doubtful by its nature, though not by Mr. BULWER'S treatment, is the lite- rature of Greece prior to the age of SosoN, the works of Homen and Heston, and we may say the fiagments of the lyrists. The arts and philosophy of the same period are properly disquisitional —a topic fur conjecture rather than positive narrati.m.

The second book opens with the history, character, and legisla- tion of SOLON ; from which time the narrative deals with the noblest, the most stirring, nnd the most familiar events and per- sons of Athenian history. The usurped dominion of PisisTR tsars —the tyranny of his sons, with the death of HIPPARCHUS, and the expulsion of H IPPIAS—the first Persian war, terminating in the battle of Marathon—the characters, incidents, and exploits of the Persian invasion—the policy of THEM ISTOCLES and its effects upon Athens—the career of Ci MON —the change of Athenian man- ners consequent upon Asiatic wealth and advancing civilization, and the rise and government of PiaticsEs—occupy one hundred and thirty of the most important years that History has yet seen, if we estimate the brilliancy of the events, the greatness of the agents, and the influence of the results. The same period was fruitful toe in literature. Tragedy was born, and reached its ma- turity under iESCHYL US and Snenoci•Rs; narrative history was produced in youthful fulness by HERonoTes; ANANAGORAS and his pupil ARCHELAUS may be said to have founded Athenian phi- losophy; its most illustrious offipring, SOCRATES, and its most pernicious, the Sophists, bad each started into life; and the bitter reviler of both, ARIsToen Axes, was engaged in studying them, though reserving the fruits of his observation to a later day. In the arrangement of his materials, Mr. BULWER is sometimes necessarily led into the general history of Greece; as in the narra- tive of the Persian preparations for the invasion. At other times, tempted by their striking nature, he introduces subjects that have no connexion wills Athens ; as the battle of Thertnopylto. In point of manner, the work may be characterized as brilliantly rhetorical, frequently rising to eloquence, as frequently dashed

with theatrical finery and claptrap; displaying some passages that

would afford to a grammarian capital examples or a vici:ais style, and some idioms that are not English, yet flashy and striking consi- dered as a whole. As a piece of entertaining composition, we in- cline to rate Athens next to GOLDSMITH'S Greece, though falling short of the exquisite ease and elegant strength by which GOLD. SMITH maintains such a delightful mixture of grace and dignity in his historical narration. In time more philosophical, antiquarian, and political views, Mr. BULWER excels his predecessor by living

after him, and being thus enabled to profit by the labours of inter-

vening writers. In distinctness, and in those characteristic touches which paint the manners of the people, he is inferior to Mr. THIRLWALL, as well as in the depth and justness of has reflec- tions; thought he sometimes makes a hit in the way of a thought. The matter of an historical work is of necessity resolved into

two parts ; one relating to the correctness with which particular Wiens are narrated, the other to the truth of the conclusions 'which are drawn from the actions themselves. To pass a full judgment upon these points—the most trying criterion of a philo- sophieal historian—would involve an investigation pretty nearly as elaborate as would suffice to write a history itself. Limiting any weight attending our opinion to the time and means we have bad of forming it, we must say that we have small faith in Mr. Butavest as a reliable narrator or a sound expositor. He wants the patient investigation, the piercing acumen, the calm, judicial, logical intellect, and perhaps the comprehensive mind, necessary to success. He seems to trouble himself less abuut what is exactly true, than what is striking, and to sacrifice precision of fact or correctness of induction to a brilliant period.

As one specimen of the style of Athens, we will take the death of PAIN NI AS, (though an event connected rather with Spartan his- tory): because it is also narrated fully by Mr. Tin RLWALL, and affords an easy opportunity of comparison between the two writers; because both moderns have chiefly f .1lowed CORNELIUS NEPOS, whose narrative will enable the curious to observe the manner in which each of these historians reflects his original ; and because it furnishes an example of the way in which Mr. BULWER has deviated from his authority without any conceivable reason unless for the sake of a fancied effect. PAUSANIAS, it will be re- membered, commanded the Greeks at Platrea, but had attracted odium through his pride, and was suspected of plotting with the King of Persia.

Entering into somewhat of the desperate and revengeful ambition that, tinder It similar constitution, animated Marino Either°, Parealnias sought, by means of the enslaved multitude, to deliver himself from the thraldom of the oligarchy, which held prince and slave alike in subjection. Ile tampered with the helots, and secretly promised them the rights and liberties of citizens of Sparta, if they would cooperate with his projects, and revolt at his command. Slaves are never without traitors; and the Ephors learnt the premeditated revolutions front helots themselves. Still, blow and wary, those subtle and haughty magistrates suspended the blow ; it was not without the fullest proof that a royal Spartan was to be condemned on the word of helots: they con- tinued their vigilance—they obtained the proof they required. . Argirms, a Spartan, with whom Pausanias had once formed the vicious con- flexion common to the Doric tribes, and who was deep in his confidence, was intrusted by the Regent with letters to Artahazus. Argilius called to mind that none, intrusted with a similar mission, had ever returned. Ile brokeopen the seals, and read what his fears foreboded, that, on his arrival at the Satrap's court, the silence of the messenger was to be purchased by his death. He car- ried the packet to the Ephors. That dark and plotting council were resolved yet more entirely to entangle their guilty victim, and out of his own mouth to extract his secret ; they therefore ordered Arent') to take refuge as a suppliant in the sanctuary of the Temple of Neptune on Mount Tomseus. Within the sacred confines was contrived a cell, which, by a double partition, admitted souse of the Ephors, who, there concealed, might witness all that passed. Intelligence was soon brought to Pausanias, that, instead of proceeding to Artabazils, hia confidant had taken refuge as a suppliant in the Temple of Nep- tune. Alarmed and anxious, the Regent hastened to the sanctuary. Argilius informed him that he had read the letters, and reproached hint bitterly with his treason to himself. Pausanias, confounded and overcome by the perils which surrounded hint, confessed his guilt, spoke unreservedly of the contents of the letter, implored the pardon of Argilius, and promised him safety and wealth if he wou'(i leave the sanctuary and proceed on the mission.

The Ephors, from their hiding-place, heard all.

On the departure of Pausanias from the sanctuary, his doom was fixed. But amongst the more public causes of the previous delay of justice, we must in- clude the friendship of some of the Ephors, which Pausanias had won or ;m- ewed. It was the moment fixed for his arrest. Pausanias in the streets was alone and on foot. He beheld the Ephors approaching him. A signal from one warned him of his danger. He turned—he fled. The Temple of Minerva Chaleitecus at hand proffered a sanctuary : he gained the sacred confines, anti entered a small house hard by the temple. The Ephors, the officers, the crowd, pursued ; they surrounded the refuge, from which it was impious to drag the criminal. Resolved on his death, they removed the roof, blocked up the en- trances, (and, if we may credit the anecdote, that violating human—was charac- teristic of Spartan—nature, his mother, a crone of great age,' suggested the means of punishment, by placing with her own hand a stone at the threshold,) and, setting a guard around, left the conqueror of Mardonitts to die of famine. When he was at his last gasp, unwilling to profane the sanctuary by his actual death, they bore him out into the open air, which he only breathed to expire.

Struck by the application, by an elegant classic, of the epithet crone to an illustrious Spartan, and that Spartan the mother of 'PAUSANIAS, we turned to the reference; and found that in one parenthesis there are three misstatements. No derogatory epithet, or indeed epithet of any kind, is applied to the mother ; she is not stated to have" suggested" the means of punishment, (which if even " in primis" could have borne such a construction, would have been contradicted by the context, which attributes the order to the Ephors,) but to have been "among the first" to bear a stone to the entrance of the temple ; and, so far from" Spartan and human nature" being necessary to raise or clear up the doubt of the story, NEPOs himself gives it not as a recorded but as a reported facet Nor is there any excuse for this looseness, either in the obscurity or the difficulty of the passage ; and Mr. THIRLWALL had truly rendered it—" The aged mother of the criminal is said to have been among the foremost to lay a stone at the doorway, for the purpose of immuring her son." With one more extract, as a specimen of eloquence on a sub- ject where imagination may be allowed more justly to expatiate, we take our present leave of the two first volumes of Athens.

TIIE HEROIC AGE.

As one who has been journeying through the darki begins at length to per• ceive the night breaking away in mist and shadow, so that the filrins of things. yet uncertain and undefined, assume an exaggerated and gigantic outline, half

• Nep. in V. rans.

inciter to tempore matrem Pausanire vixisse : eanique jam magno nate, pat.

quarts de seelere thu eoniperit, itt minds ad filioin cloud...adorn, lapidem ad introitum zedis attulisse."

$ Milton, Hist. of Eng., book i. lost amidst the clouds, so now, through the obscurity of fable, we descry shi dim and mighty outline of the heroic age. The careful and sceptical Time, dides has left us, in the commencement of his immortal history, a masterly pjr, trainwe of the manners of those times in which individual prowess elevates the possessor to the rank of a demigod ; times of unsettled law and indistinct ems.

remind us of the. trot; of adventure—of excitement ; of .daring qualities and lofty crime. We recognize in the picture features familiar to the North : the toying warriors and the pirate kings who scoured the seas, descended upon unguarded coasts, and deemed the exercise of plunder a profession of honour, exploits of the Scandinavian Her-Kongr, and the boding banners of the Dane. The seas of Greece tempted to piratical adventures : their numerous isles, thei; winding hays and woodclael shores, proffered ample enterprise to .the bold-- ample booty to the rapacious: the voyages were short for the inexperienced, the refuges numerous for the defeated. In early ages valour is the true virtue. it dignities the pursuits in which it is engaged ; and the profession of a pirate was long deemed as honourable in the :liguain as amongst the bola revers of the Scandinavian race. It' the coast was thus exposed to constant incursion aos alarm, neither weie the interior recesses of the country inore protected from the violence of marauders. The various tribes that passed into Greece, to colonize or conquer, dislodged from their settlements many of the inhabitants, who, retreating lip the country, maintained themselves by plunder or avenged themselves by outrage. The many crags and mountains, the caverns and the woods, which diversify the beautiful land of Greece, afforded their natural fortresses to these barbarous horde. The chief who had committed a murder, or aspired unsuccessfully to an unsteady throne, betook himself, with his friends, to some convenient fastness, made a descent on the 2.111 rounding sit, lages, and bore off the women or the herds, as lust or want excited to the enter- prise. No home was safe, no journey free from peril ; and the Greeks passes their lives in armour. Thus, gradually, the profession and system of robbery spread itself throughout Greece, until the evil became insufferable—until the public ()pillion of all the states and tribes, in which society had established laws, was inlisted against the freehooter—until it grew an object of ambition to rid the neighbout hood of a scourge; and the success of time attempt made the glory of the adventurer. Then naturally arose the race of heroes; men who volunteered to seek the robber in his build; and, by the gratitude of a later age, the courage of the knight-errant was rewarded with the sanctity (If the demi- god. At that time, too, internal circumstances in the different states—whether from the predominance of, or the resistance to, the warlike Hellenes—lnad gradually conspired to raise a military and fierce aristocracy ab(we the rest of the population ; and as arms became the instruments of renown and power, se the wildest feats would lead to the most extended fame.

The woods and mountains of Greece were not then cleared of the fint rude aborigioals of nature ; wild beasts lurked within its caverns, wolves

ahounded everywhere, herds of wild bulls, the large horns of which Herodotus names with admiration, were common ; and even the lion himself, so late as the invasion of Xerxes, was found in wide districts from the Thracian Abdera to

the Acarnanian Anhehms. Thus, the feats of the early heroes appear to have

been mainly directed against the freebooter or the wild beast ; and atnong the

triumphs of Hercules are recorded the extermination of the Lydian robbers, the death of Cams, and the conquest of the lion of Nemea and the board Erymauthus.