stitute their character by classical and historic allusions, are peculiarly English and Elizabethan. Some of those very expressions that have been laughed at are such as Sir Thomas North would have delighted to use. But many of those peculiarities which form a charm in his ballads, when the theme is England or English, turn into defects when the theme is an antique foreign legend. The costume, in one case-the Armada, for instance-is perfect; in the other it is incongruous and incorrect; and the rattle of the metre assorts ill enough with our notions of the stern, grave, iron men of Rome, and the measure of the Lays that would make a welcome pulsation on their ear. Strings of names, when the men are shadows, and the places, for the most part no better, and when they are even not so have yet no power on our hearts, are, however, sounding they may be, things of little, indeed, no interest; but how different it is when all their proper names are big with associations stretching through the realms of history, and the actual and visible present. The force of this will be observed when we quote a stirring passage in Macaulay's Armada:

Right sharp and quick the bells all night rang out from
Bristol town,
And ere the day three hundred horse had met on Clif-
ton Down;

The sentinel on Whitehall Gate looked forth into the night,

And saw o'erhanging Richmond Hill the streak of blood

red light. Then bugle's note and cannon's roar the death-like silence broke,

And with one start, and with one cry, the royal city woke.

At once on all her statety gates arose the answering fires; At once the wild alarm clashed from all her reeling spires; From all the batteries of the Tower pealed loud the voice of fear;

And all the thousand masts of Thames sent back a louder cheer;

And from the farthest wards was heard the rush of hurrying feet,

And the broad streams of flags and pikes dashed down

each roaring street;

This grand muster-roll of places is to an Englishman what Homer's catalogue of the ships must have been to an ancient Greek. All have their associations personal or historic. But the shadowy names of Latin and Etruscan towns and villages, whose very site is doubtful, speak in no sort to the feelings of any living man. The hurraing, too, in this Armada, and the Battle of Ivry, is appropriate enough—

"We have fought with our swords, hurrah!" but there is too much of the Cossack in putting it, as in the "Lay of Capys," so prominently and so frequently forward in a Roman triumph, 'Hennis d'orgeuil, O mon coursier fidèle,

66

Et foule aux pieds les peuples et les rois."

It will be readily perceived, too, from the quotations we have made, how constantly Macaulay repeats the nervous phrases and fine images which shew so grandly in his first ballads. The description of the "start and bound," with which "the royal city woke," is deserving of the highest praise. Nothing can be more picturesque than the line,

"And the broad stream of flags and pikes dashed down each roaring street."

No man is more conscious of this than Mr. Macaulay, but he displays it to a degree which wears the air of poverty of invention, or of pridefulness. Homer, in the rich excess of his poetical imagery and illustration in pictorial words, may with a placid triumph be permitted to repeat again the same passages, as though

they had been done to expound and portray such and such a subject, and could not be surpassed even by their creator. The poet saw that they were good. When, however, he reproduces them, it is in the entirety of their outward form, to suit the like matter to that whereon they had been before employed. Macaulay, on the contrary, uses the essence, but throws a thin disguise over the form. Thus, above, we have the roaring streets;" and in the Lays we have the "shouting streets," "the bellowing forum," "the roaring gate," and so on. We have the thousand masts of Thames," and "Byrsa's thousand masts." We have "loudly and more loudly," and "plainly and more plainly," and "nearer and more near," as constantly recurring in the Lays as the hurrahs of the Ballads. In short, there is a vast deal of reproduction of that which was originally good for the once in the place in which it appeared, but which, when called into use again and again, stamps the writer with mannerism, or something worse. In the "Battle of the Lake Regillus" there are many fine passages, though it is, upon the whole, something heavier than the other two to which we have alluded. The following description of a horse running away after the death of his rider is fine, though evidently suggested by-

"Blood-shot his eyes: his nostril spread, The loose rein dangling on his head; Housings and saddle bloody red,

Lord Marmion's steed rushed by."

Still we repeat the description is good, though Macaulay seems to have some odd notions of horsemanship; for he talks with great fervour of men riding at the topmost pace with slack rein and bloody spur. We suspect a canter on the highroad has been the highest speed with which he was ever personally acquainted, and that he is not conscious of the absolute nccessity of keeping a horse together when he is going the pace:—

"Fast, fast, with heels wild spurning,
The dark grey charger fled;

He burst through ranks of fighting men,
He sprang o'er heaps of dead.

His bridle far outstreaming,

His flanks all blood and foam,

He sought the southern mountains,-
The mountains of his home.

The pass was steep and rugged;

The wolves they howled and whined;
But he ran like a whirlwind up the pass,
And left the wolves behind.
Through many a startled hamlet

Thundered his flying feet:

He rushed through the gate of Tusculum,
He rushed up the long white street.
He rushed by tower and temple,

And paused not from his race

Till he stood before his master's door
In the stately market-place.
And straightway round him gathered
A pale and trembling crowd,

And when they knew him, cries of rage
Broke forth, and wailing loud;

And women rent their tresses

For their great prince's fall;
And old men girt on their old swords
And went to man the wall."

We now pass on to the character of those Lays, and propose, in the first instance, to compare them with what those lost Lays were of which Mr. Macaulay has treated. We prefer Dr. Arnold's account, however, of the probable literature of ancient Rome, and shall quote it accordingly:-

"The end of the reign of the last king of Rome falls less than twenty years before the battle of Marathon. The age of the Greek heroic poetry was long since past; the evils of the iron age, of that imperfect civilisation, when legal oppression had succeeded to the mere violence of the planderer and the conqueror, had been bewailed by Hesiod three centuries earlier; Theoginis had mourned over the sinking importance of noble birth and the growing influence of riches; the old aristocracies had been overthrown by single tyrants, and these again had everywhere yielded to the power of aristocracies under a mitigated form, which, in some instances, admitted a mixture of popular freedom. Alcæus and Sappho had been dead for more than half a century; Simonides was in the vigour of life; and prose history had already been attempted by Hecatæus of Miletus. Of the works of these last, indeed, only fragments have descended to us; but their entire writings, together with those of many other early poets, scattered up and down through a period of more than 200 years, existed till the general wreck of ancient literature, and furnished abundant monuments of the vigour of the Greek mind, long before the period when history began faithfully to record particular events. But of the Roman mind under the kings, Cicero knew no more than we do. He had seen no works of that

period, whether of historians or of poets; he had

never heard the name of a single individual whose genius had made it famous, and had preserved its memory together with his own. A certain number of laws ascribed to the kings, and preserved, whether on tables of wood or brass in the Capitol, or in the collection of the jurist Papirices, were almost the sole monuments which could illustrate the spirit of the early ages of the Roman people. But even those, to judge from the few extracts with which we are acquainted, must have been modernised in their language; for the Latin of a law ascribed to Servius Tullius is perfectly intelligible, and not more ancient in its forms than that of the fifth century of Rome, whereas the few genuine monuments of the earliest times, the hymns of the Salii and of the brotherhood of husbandry, Fratres Arvales, required to be interpreted to the Romans of Cicero's time like a foreign lan guage; and of the hymn of the Fratres Arvales we can ourselves judge, for it has been accidentally preserved to our days, and the meaning of nearly half of it is only to be guessed at. This agrees with what Polybius says of the language of the treaty between Rome and Carthage, concluded in the first year of the commonwealth; it was so unlike the Latin of his own time, the end of the sixth and beginning of the seventh century of Rome, that even those who understood it best found some things in it which, with their best

attention, they could scarcely explain. Thus, although verses were undoubtedly made and sung in the times of the kings, at funerals and at feasts, in commemoration of the worthy deeds of the noblest of the Romans; and although some of the actual stories of the kings may, perhaps, have come down from this source, yet it does not appear that they were ever written, and thus they were altered from one generation to another, nor can

any one tell at what time they attained to their

present shape. Traces of a period, much later than that of the kings, may be discerned in them; and I see no reason to differ from the opinion of Niebuhr, who thinks that as we now have them they

are not earlier than the restoration of the city after the invasion of the Gauls. If this be so, there

rests a veil not to be removed, not only on the particular history of the early Romans, but on that which we should much more desire to know, and which, in the case of Greece, stands forth in such full light, the nature and power of their genius; what they thought, what they hated and what they loved. Yet although the legends of the early Roman story are neither historical nor yet coeval with the subjects which they celebrate, still their fame is so great, and their beauty and interest so surpassing, that it would be unpardonable to sacrifice them altogether to the spirit of inquiry and of fact, and to exclude them from the place which they have so long held in Roman history. Nor shall I complain of readers, if they pass over with indifference these attempts of mine to put together the meagre fragments of our knowledge, and to present them with an outline of the times of the kings, at once incomplete and without spirit; while they read with interest the immortal story of the fall of Tarquinus, and the wars with Porsenna and the Latins, as it has been handed down to us in the rich colouring of the old heroic Lays of Rome."

All this is very beautifully expressed by Arnold. Would to God, that with his great in

Of a

dustry, and fine appreciation of the value of evidence he had been spared to complete the work he commenced! We are deeply indebted to him for marshalling some fine dreams, all of the olden time, and ushering them to our notice through the gate of horn. But, after all, to what does it come? They are still dreamsthin dreams. All that we really know of ancient Rome, with the exception of one public document preserved by Polybius, is comprised in a very few words written by Tacitus,-"Urbem Romam à principio reges habuere." certainty, we know no more, than that the kings of Rome had a large and wide ascendancy, and that by the results of a popular convulsion, followed by a civil war, the whole frame of the empire was as completely broken to pieces as by striking out with your fist you might shiver a globe of glass. History presents no example of so utter a destruction of every thing pertaining to a people, in every possible respect, as that which followed upon the Etruscan invasion, first; and, secondly, the crashing conquest of Rome by the Gauls. All before that date is mere, mere fable; and it is not indigenous, as Mr. Macaulay seems to think. But, probably, we will take up the subject at another time, making Mr. Macaulay's fancies the theme for writing in good earnest about ancient Rome.

But terminating thus abruptly for the present, let us not be misunderstood. No man has a higher appreciation than the writer of the above article of Macaulay's enthusiasm and genius, or a more buoyant delight in his nervous versification His Ballads long ago, when we first saw them, we got by heart at a burst; and it is no small portion of his Lays which recurs to us at idle moments, to make unbidden music in our ears, and usurp our memory. From the very depths of our heart, Macaulay, we cheer you on your lofty way.

engagement as principal editor of the Journal des Savans,' and in 1819 was attached to the Collège de France as professor of history. It was not long afterwards that he was elected a

spoke on several occasions, and always voted with the liberal party.

After the revolution of 1830, Daunou had several marks of favour from the men in power. In August of the same year he received the superintendence of the archives of the kingdom, and several honourable distinctions, including that of the peerage, were conferred upon him. Daunou enjoyed a high reputation among French men of letters, yet the works that he has left behind him are neither numerous nor very generally known. Among the most successful of his writings may be named, Analyse des Opinions Diverses sur l'Origine de l'Imprimerie published in 1802; Essai sur les Garanties Individuelles, of which a third edition appeared in 1821 and Essai Historique sur la Puissance Temporelle des Papes, et sur l'Abus qu'ils ont fait de leur Ministère Spirituelle, a work in two volumes, of which a fourth edition was printed in 1828.

The work now before us consists of a condensation of the lectures delivered by Daunou, as Professor of History, at the Collège de France, from 1819 till 1830. A large portion of the work had been carefully revised by the author, and the first volume was already in type, when death surprised him about a year ago. The remainder was left by him in the form of detached lectures and as he had in his last illness expressed a decided wish, that whatever of his writings might be printed after his death, should be given to the public in the exact form in which he left them, his literary executors have felt it their duty to comply with so solemn an injunction. The first part appears, therefore, with the corrections of the author, and is divided into books and chapters; the second is divided into lectures, and would, no doubt, have undergone a severe revision had the author's life been prolonged for a year or two. The corrected portion comprises the whole of the first, and about one-half of the second volume; the rest fills the latter half of the second volume, and will, we presume, occupy the whole of the succeeding volumes which have yet to appear. The subject of historical study is divided by our author into three parts: the examination of facts, the classification of facts, and the exposition of facts. The first of these he again subdivides into two books, of which the first lays down the rules of historical criticism, while the second enlarges on the utility of history. Under historical criticism we are particularly to understand the art of examining the historical value of ancient traditions and monuments; and the comparative trustworthiness of different writers, in proportion as they were themselves spectators of the events they relate, or were likely to have received their information from pure or questionable sources.

Every history not written till a century and a half after the events to be related had occurred, is at once classed by Daunou among traditions. Thus the whole of the Roman history down to the war against Pyrrhus, is mere tradition; and in reading it, the student is warned to make allowance for the credulity, ignorance, and imagination of the people among

history, according to our author's view, all is tradition that precedes the time of Herodotus; and the annals of the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Medes, and the Persians, are all similarly classed. The traditional period again is preceded by what Daunou calls the mythological period, in which it is impossible for the historian, unless by the aid of Revelation, to distinguish fact from fable; and the mythological is preceded by the antediluvian period, respecting which our only knowledge is derived from Holy Writ. The historical period, properly so called, commences only with the year 776 before the Christian era, and gives way in its turn to the traditional period, in proportion as the several provinces of the Roman empire are overrun by the barbarians.

In judging of profane traditional history, Daunou rejects at once as fabulous every fact contrary to the known laws of physical nature; and he receives as extremely improbable all historical narratives relative to the same period, and accompanied by an unusual concourse of marvellous occurrences; but where there is nothing improbable about a fact handed down by tradition, or where that which is natural and probable may easily be separated from that which is marvellous or fabulous, a traditional event may often acquire an all but unquestionable authority. Lycurgus, for instance, is known to us only by tradition, and gross fictions have been interwoven into his history, by his credulous and imaginative countrymen; yet no historian thinks of questioning the fact that there did exist such a man as Lycurgus, and that he did give laws to the Spartans. The existence of Homer and Hesiod again is mere matter of tradition, and we have only traditional authority for the fact that the works attributed to them were really written by them; yet those who have declared their doubts as to the existence of Homer, and have gone so far as to question the paternity of the Iliad and Odyssey, have become, in our author's opinion, just objects of derision to every sane scholar. Many other occurrences, resting only on tradition, are, nevertheless, reasonably placed in history, as unquestioned, if not as unquestionable, facts. Among these may, for instance, be mentioned, the expulsion of the Tarquins from Rome, and the establishment of the consulate; the two first Messenian wars: the philosophical labours of Thales and Pytha goras; the laws of Solon; the usurpation of Pisistratus; the conquests of Cyrus and Cambyses; and the commencement of the war between the Persians and the Greeks. For all these facts we have no authority but popular tradition, and each of them is handed down to us with a mul titude of fabulous details, which the judicious critic is bound to reject: still the main facts cannot be called into question without overstepping the bounds of a reasonable scepticism.

Our author next examines the value of historical monuments, among which he includes the productions of the painter, the statuary, the archi tect, and the mechanician. He then passes on to the subject of medals and inscriptions, the historical value of which he seems, strangely enough, not disposed to estimate very highly.

The whole of the first volume is occupied by the subject of Historical Criticism. The second volume contains the second book, on the Utility of History, to which Daunou gives, naturally enough, an extensive signification. The second great division, the Classification of Facts, commences about the middle of the second volume, and will, we presume, be continued in the third. In the classification of facts are included the sciences of geography and chronology.

The third great division, the Exposition of Facts, is of so comprehensive a nature, that it is difficult for any one not in the secret to

guess the extent to which the work may eventually be carried. The two volumes now before us, therefore, may be looked on as a portion only of the introductory matter, and it would be hazardous to pronounce an opinion on the probable ultimate value of the whole work. There cannot, however, be a doubt, that it will be the work on which will mainly depend the rank which Daunou is to hold in the estimation of posterity; and, it is but the natural partiality of his editor, M. Taillandier, to believe with him, that the composition will one day take a place among the highest productions of French literature.