SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.

Ilieroar.

History of Rome. By Thomas Arnold, D.D., late Regius Professor of Modern His- tory in the University of Oxford. &c. Sm. Vol. III. From the end of the First to the end of the Second Punic War Fellows. Ficriorr,

Lord Dame of °Boland; a Novel. By Elizabeth M. Stewart. lu three volumes.

Tasvma, Newby. A Summer at Port Phillip. By the Honourable Robert Hondas Murray.

Marsoamoov, Tate, Edinburgh. Observations on Days of Unusual Magnetic Disturbance, made at the British Colo- nial Observatories, under the Departments of the Ordnance and Admiralty. Primped by the British Government, under the Superintendence of Lieut.-Col. Edward Sabine, of the Royal Artillery. Part I. 1840-41 Longman and Co.

DR. ARNOLD'S HISTORY OF ROME.

Ma. HARE, the translator of NIEBUHR, and the editor of this posthumous volume of Dr. ARNOLD'S History, gives amongst the reasons for the long-delayed publication, the following interesting account.

"The manuscript which was put into my hands was singularly clear and correct ; one might have thought, at first sight, that it was fit for going to the press immediately. But it proved that the author's practice was not to note his references at the time he was composing his narrative; he used to keep them to be added afterwards. Hence, the only notes under the text which were found in the manuscript are the first nine to the first chapter, and that in the Basque numerals in p. 393. 1 conceive that, after having impregnated his mind with the liveliest conception he could gain of the events he was about to record, from a comparison of the accounts given by the ancient writers, he was unwilling to interrupt the flow of the narrative by pausing to examine the details of the documents, and so reserved all specific remarks on their contents until the work was revised after its completion. Else such a practice would seem to entail a considerable addition of trouble. But it was also the practice of another friend of mine, who has enriched our literature with the best of all histories of Greece; and I have been informed that it was Niebuhr's practice also, only that Niebuhr's memory was so prodigious, be would often insert his references, with the number of the book and chapter, and at times with the words of the original, without feeling any need of verifying them. "Owing to this cause, the work became considerably more arduous than I had anticipated; at least for one whose studies during the last ten years had lain in totally different regions, and who could only find an hour or two now and then, often at long intervals, to employ on it."

We conjecture, however, that in adding his references it was the practice of Dr. ARNOLD to revise his composition ; for there seems to us traces of those imperfections that can only be re- moved by repeated touches. At the same time, we think this want of the last finish renders the work more racy, and exhibits the character of the author more distinctly, than in his previous vo- lumes. The man seems to be more visible, and more directly in communion with the reader. In every history, as in every other work, the qualities of the writer must be displayed ; but in HUAIE, GIBIlt5N, MILL, and even in ROBERTSON though to a less degree, the author comes before the reader less as a man than as an intelligence. His genius is reflected in his style and method of treatment : he may often express his own opinions, and sometimes directly address the reader ; but it is as an historian—the mind, not the man, is presented. In this volume of Dr. ARNOLD'S History of Rome, the man is before us, not egotistically, but heartily. His warm and genial nature rejoices at any act of virtue or heroism, and rises in arms against the tyranny of rulers ; his humanity de- nounces the atrocities of ancient warfare ; he carries the reader over the ground of the campaign, as if he were his scholar and companion, (we learn from his editor that he had "a singular geographical eye," which took the same delight in a good map as lovers of painting in a picture) ; he makes him acquainted with his own difficulties in trying to follow the loose geographical descrip- tions of the ancient historians, and to settle the confusion and discrepancies of the narratives as they have come down to us ; Whilst pervading all, is a primitive, almost a homely simplicity and manliness of character, which indicate that Dr. ARNOLD'S successful attempt to narrate the "legends and stories of the first three centuries of Rome in a more antiquated style," was not so much imitative as native to the character of the man. There is an Homeric roughness and vigour about him, as if he were a legendary poet pouring out the knowledge he had gathered, rather than a common historian arranging the results of his "research." Yet, not- withstanding this unaffected simplicity of the heart, there is nothing approaching credulity or weakness in the head. The acumen of the critic is applied to a searching investigation of every statement in his authorities, the judgment of the philosopher to a true appreciation of the character and conductoi men. Thus, the personal leanings of the writer, like those probably of most other persons, are in favour of HANNIBAL; around whose memory misfortune has cast a halo, which covers his unjustifiable com- mencement of the war and all its subsequent miseries. But this individual liking is not allowed an influence in the following masterly estimate of the belligerents and the rationale of the results.

HANNIBAL AND ROME.

Twice in history has there been witnessed the struggle of the highest indi- vidual genius against the resources and institutions of a great nation; and in both cases the nation has been victorious. For seventeen years Hannibal strove against Rome; for sixteen years Napoleon Buonaparte strove against England: the efforts of the first ended in Zama, those of the second in Waterloo.

True it is, as Polybiue has mid, that Hannibal was supported by the zealous exertions of Carthage ; and the strength of the opposition to his policy has been very possibly exaggerated by the Roman writers. But the zeal of his country in the contest, as Polybius himself remarks in another place, was itself the work of his family. Never did great men more show themselves the living spirit of a nation than Hamilcar, and Hasdrubal, and Hannibal, during a period of nearly fifty years, approved themselves to be to Carthage. It is not then merely through our ignorance of the internal state of Carthage that Hannibal Stands so prominent in all our conceptions of the second Punic war : he was

really its moving and directing power ; and the energy of his country was bura light reflected from his own. History therefore gathers itself into his single person: in that vast tempest, which from North and South, from the West and the East, broke upon Italy, we see nothing but HannibaL

But if Hannibal's genius may be likened to the Homeric god, who in his hatred of the Trojans rises from the deep to rally the fainting Greeks and to lead them against the enemy, so the calm courage with which Hector met his more than human adversary in his country's cause, is no unworthy image of the unyielding magnanimity displayed by the aristocracy of Rome. As Han- nibal utterly eclipses Carthage, so, on the contrary, Fabius, Marceline, Clau- dius Nero, even Scipio himself, are as nothing when compared to the spirit, and wisdom, and power of Rome. The Senate, which voted its thanks to its poli- tical enemy Varro, after his disastrous defeat, "because he had not despaired of the Commonwealth," and which disdained either to solicit, or to reprove, or to threaten, or in any way to notice the twelve colonies which had refused their accustomed supplies of men for the army, is far more to be honoured than the conqueror of Zama. This we should the more carefully bear in mind, because our tendency is to admire individual greatness far more than national ; and as no single Roman will bear comparison with Hannibal, we are apt to murmur at the event of the contest, and to think that the victory was awarded to the least worthy of the combatants. On the contrary, never was the wisdom of God's providence more manifest than in the issue of the struggle between Rome and Carthage. It was clearly for the good of mankind that Hannibal should be conquered : his triumph would have stopped the progress of the world. For great men can only act permanently by forming great nations; and no one man, even though it were Hannibal himself, can in one generation effect such a work. But where the nation has been merely enkindled for a while by a great man's spirit, the light passes away with him who communicated it ; and the nation, when he is gone, is like a dead body, to which magic power had for a moment given an unnatural life ; when the charm has ceased, the body is cold and stiff as before. He who grieves over the battle of Zama, should carry on his thoughts to a period thirty years later, when Hannibal must in the course of nature have been dead, and consider how the isolated Phoinician city of Carthage was fitted to receive and to consolidate the civilization of Greece, or by its laws and institutions to bind together barbarians of every race and language into an organized empire, and prepare them for becoming, when that empire was dissolved, the free members of the commonwealth of Christian Europe.

The period embraced in this posthumous volume extends from

the end of the first to the end of the second Punic war ; though the new history closes with the defeat and death of HASDRUBAL, and the career of Scrrio in Spain. Two or three more chapters would have been required to complete the subject upon its present scale : as the best substitute, Dr. ARNOLD'S account of the last years of the war and the subsequent career of HANNIBAL is added from his life of HANNIBAL, written in 1823 for the Encyclopedia Metropolitana. It is intended to reprint from the same publication the history of Rome from the end of the second Punic war to the death of AUGUSTUS, so as to complete the author's history of the republic— for the rule of a single man was scarcely established even de facto till the accession of THIERMS.

The treatment of the present differs from both the previous

volumes. Either from the greater fulness of the authorities, or, as we incline to think, from the author's design being unfinished by his most untimely death, there is little intermingling of disquisition with narrative : the story proceeds uninterruptedly from the open- ing to the close, except where the untrustiness of the authorities calls for remark. Whether there is not too much minuteness in the account of the later campaigns of HANNIBAL, may perhaps be a question, looking merely to effects : but if the main objects of historical composition are, to reconcile discrepancies, and set aside falsehoods even though recorded, so as to present a true account of facts, and to enforce the instruction deducible from them, then Dr. ARNOLD'S account of the second Punic war may almost stand alone among later histories. Something of the lecturer pointing out the moral, or of the critic investigating con- flicting statements, may undoubtedly predominate, and the scho- lastic patriarch may be too much mixed up with the historian : but these are only defects of form. Fuller knowledge accompanies the fuller account, and the peculiarities of the narrator bring out peculiarities in the subject. Even these remarks only apply to the campaigns which were undistinguished by any important event, but occupied by HANNIBAL in ravaging the country, and by the Romans in dogging his steps at a secure distance. Wherever the event is great and the original accounts are intelligible, Dr. ARNOLD'S narrative may vie with that of our greatest historians. In the larger exploits of HartwinAL, every thing is wondrously clear ; we see the main operations as distinctly as he himself con- ceived them ; and where the authorities are loose or confused, Dr. ARNOLD adopts the judicious course of first telling their story as best he may, and then giving his own conception.

The passage of a river in the presence of an enemy is, accord-

ing to NAPOLEON, one of the most delicate and riskful operations of war. The first exploit of HANNIBAL after leaving Spain was to cross the Rhone with the Gauls in front of him; and to cross it not only without loss, but with the total rout of the enemy, and their complete destruction as an army. The account affords a good example at once of the general and his historian.

HANNIBAL'S PASSAGE OF THE RHONE.

We must understand that Hannibal kept his army as far away from the sea

as possible, in order to conceal his movements from the Romans: therefore he came upon the Rhone, not on the line of the later Roman road from Spain to Italy, which crossed the river at Tarasco, between Avignon and Arles, but at a point much higher up, above its confluence with the Durance, and nearly half-way, if we can trust Polybine reckoning, from the sea to its confluence with the Isere. Here he obtained from the natives on the right bank, by pay. ing a fixed price, all their boats and vessels of every description with which they were accustomed to traffic down the river : they allowed him slept:, cut timber for the construction of others; and thus in two days he was pro- vided with the means of transporting his army. But finding that the Gauls were assembled on the Eastern hank to oppose his passage, he sent off a detach- ment of his army by night with native guides, to ascend the right bank, for about two-and-twenty miles, and there to cross as they could, where there was no enemy to stop them. The woods which then lined the river supplied this

detachment with the means of constructing barks and rafts enough for the passage ; they took advantage of one of the many islands in this part of the Rhone, to cross where the stream was divided ; and thus they all reached the left bank in safety. There they took up a strong position ; probably one of those strange masses of rock which rise here and there with steep cliffy sides, like islands, out of the vast plain, and rested for four-and-twenty hours after their exertions in the march and the passage of the river.

Hannibal allowed eight-and-forty hours to pass from the time when the de- tachment left his camp ; and then, on the morning of the fifth day after his arrival on the Rhone, he made his preparations for the passage of his main army. The mighty stream of the river, fed by the snows of the high Alps, is swelled rather than diminished by the heats of summer; so that, although the season was that when the Southern rivers are generally at their lowest, it was rolling the vast mass of its waters along with a startling fulness and rapidity. The heaviest vessels were therefore placed on the left, highest up the stream, to form something of a breakwater for the smaller craft crossing below; the small boats held the flower of the light-armed foot, while the cavalry were in the larger vessels, most of the horses being towed astern swimming, and a single soldier bolding three or four together by their bridles. Every thing was ready, and the Gauls on the opposite side had poured out of their camp, and lined the bank in scattered groups at the most accessible points, thinking that their tank of stopping the enemy's landing would be easily accomplished. At length Hannibal's eye observed a column of smoke rising on the further shore, above or on the right of the barbarians. This was the concerted signal which assured him of the arrival of his detachment ; and he instantly ordered his men to embark, and to push across with all possible speed. They pulled two' rously against the rapid stream, cheering each other to the work ; while behind them were their friends, cheering them also from the bank; and before them were the Gauls, singing their war-songs, and calling them to come on with tones and gestures of defiance. But on a sudden a mass of fire was seen on the rear of the barbarians ; the Gauls on the bank looked behind, and began to turn away from the river ; and presently the bright arms and white linen coats of the African and Spanish soldiers appeared above the bank, breaking in upon the disorderly line of the Gauls. Hannibal himself, who was with the party crossing the river, leaped on shore among the first, and forming his men as fast as they landed, led them instantly to the charge. But the Gauls, con- fused and bewildered, made little resistance ; they fled in utter rout ; whilst Hannibal, not losing a moment, sent back his vessels and boats for a fresh de- tachment of his army; and before night his whole force, with the exception of his elephants, was safely established on the Eastern side of the Rhone.

As a specimen of Dr. ARNOLD'S narration of civil events, we take the filling up of the vacancies in the Senate, created by the slaughters of Camue and the other victories of HANNIBAL; one of the greatest exercises of authority over a state ever intrusted to a single man, and by far the most nobly fulfilled.

THE DICTATOR B. FABIUS BUTE°.

During the interval from active warfare afforded by the winter, the Romans took measures for filling up the numerous vacancies, which the lapse of five years, and so many disastrous battles, had made in the numbers of the Senate. The natural course would have been to elect Censors, to whom the duty of making out the roll of the Senate properly belonged ; but the vacancies were so many, and the Censor's power in admitting new citizens and degrading old ones was so enormous, that the Senate feared, it seems, to trust to the result of an ordinary election ; and resolved that the Censor's business should be per- formed by the oldest man, in point of standing, of all those who had already been Censors, and that he should be appointed Dictator for this especial duty, although there was one Dictator already for the conduct of the war. The person thus selected was M. Fabius Buteo, who had been Censor six-and-twenty years before, at the end of the first Punic war, and who had more recently been the thief of the embassy sent to declare war on Carthage after the destrection of Saguntum. That his appointment might want no legal formality, C. Varna, the only surviving Consul, was sent for home from Apulia to nominate him ; the Senate intending to detain Varro in Rome till he should have presided at the comitia for the election of the next year's magistrates. The nomination, as usual, took place at midnight ; and on the following morning M. Fabius appeared in the forum with his four-and-twenty lictors, and ascended the rostra to address the people. Invested with absolute power for six months, and especially charged with no less a task than the formation, at his discretion, of that great council which possessed the supreme government of the Common- wealth, the noble old man neither shrunk weakly from so heavy a burden, nor ambitiously abused so vast an authority. He told the people that he would not strike off the name of a single senator from the list of the Senate, and that, in filling up the vacancies, he would proceed by a defined rule ; that he would first add all those who had held curule offices within the last five years without having been admitted as yet into the Senate; that in the second place he would take all who within the same period had been tribunes, wallas, or iptestors; and thirdly, all those who could show in their houses spoils won in battle from an enemy, or who had received the wreath of oak for saving the life of a citizen in battle. In this manner, one hundred and seventy-seven new senators were placed OR the roll ; the new members thus forming a large majority of the whole number of the Senate, which amounted only to three hundred. This being done forthwith, the Dictator, as be stood in the rostra, resigned his office, dismissed his lictors, and went down into the forum a private man. There he purposely lingered amidst the crowd, lest the people should leave their business to follow him home : but their admiration was not cooled by this delay, and when be withdrew at the usual hour the whole people attended him to his house.

The general cause of HANNIBAL'S failure has been unfolded by Dr. ARNOLD in a passage already quoted: it was the struggle of an individual genius against a nation, and the indomitable will pos- sessed by the people enabled the nation to triumph at last; which, besides the instance of NAPOLEON and Great Britain, has been seen upon a smaller scale in Venetian and Dutch history. In a military sense, Dr. ARNOLD attributes the failure to HANNIBAL'S want of artillery. He was compelled to leave the fortified places through- out the country in the bands of the enemy, as he could only hope to carry them by blockade. "When Cannse had taught the Ro- mans to avoid pitched battles in the open field," says Dr. ARNOLD, " the war became necessarily a series of sieges; where Hannibars strongest arm, his cavalry, could render little service, while his infantry was in quality not more than equal to the enemy, and his artillery was decidedly inferior" : and the historian is induced to think that HANNIBAL should have striven to supply the deficiency. Yet, when we consider the number of places to be carried, the superior advantages possessed by the besieged under the ancient system of warfare, the risks a besieging army must always run with an enemy, as was the case with the Romans, numerically superior in the field, and the loss of life at which every resolutely-defended place must be gotten possession of, (for the machinery of ancient war could scarcely operate beyond the outer walls, so that every garrison must be stormed,) we may perhaps conclude that artillery would have been useless—that the army, recruited from a distance, must have been destroyed before the towns of Latium proper had been carried, even could it have been fed while the sieges were prosecuted. The principle indicated by Dr. ARNOLD'S criticism is no doubt sound—that no country can be conquered which is full of strong positions, whether fortresses or fastnesses, if the defenders will hold them to the last, and either "do or die." HANNIBAL failed, not from want of artillery, or he would doubtless have procured it, but because success under the circumstances was impossible, when the allied towns, contrary to his expectations, remained faithful to the Romans. A similar principle, as we indicated in our notice of the WELLINGTON Despatches, was illustrated in Spain; though the Spaniards, according to the Duke, were not altogether like ancient Romans, and NAPOLEON had more available means of men and materiel, even to the last, than HAtsisrnAL ever possessed.