and though remaining in name a democracy, was concentrated into a dictatorship of the leading man of the State. Thucydides was not the man to believe that great spirits rose, as it were, by some specific levity out of the waves of circumstances, but rather that they were heavensent to battle with them, and guide the bark of human destinies through them. He did not as yet even surmise that eminent men were the mere unfathered offspring of the times in which they lived, but he thought rather that they descended from somewhere, possibly from heaven, in order, by divine appointment, to leave their impress on their times, commissioned to originate, direct, and convey to their completion the great revolutions in human affairs. As a proof of this, we may adduce his manifest sympathy with the character of Nicias, in which, while commiserating the vacillation and physical rather than moral weakness, he cannot withhold his tribute of admiration from the childlike simplicity and God-fearing honesty of the man; in fact, he constitutes himself his advocate at the bar of posterity. We never, in sober seriousness, intended to call Thucydides cold-he is only undemonstrative; and when considered in relation to some philosophic historians of our day, he appears to have much more in common with the Father of History than with them. Having thus endeavoured to obviate to the best of our ability any misconception that might arise from the position we assigned to Thucydides as compared with Herodotus, we are glad that Mr Rawlinson, by the publication of his book, has furnished us with an excuse for returning to Herodotus himself.

The possibility of the publication at the present time of three or four elaborate and abundantly illustrated thick octavo volumes, embodying a complete translation of the great work of the Father of History, with dissertations and appendices in which the discoveries of modern times have been largely utilised, is of itself, without considering the merits of the work, a sufficient evidence of an important, and to us very grateful fact, that amidst all the triumphs of

natural science, and in spite of the progress of physical discovery, the classic ancients still continue to occupy very high ground in public estimation: nay more, we may conjecture something yet more cheering, even that, as science advances, a new light is beaming from it upon literature; that they will ultimately be found, not as they were imagined, in the young self-conceit of the last generation, antagonistic, and one destructive of the other, but mutually iliustrative and corroborative, so that literature, instead of falling into decrepitude by the side of science, may hope, by new strength derived from her, to keep pace with her advances as far as it may be her destiny to go. It is certainly very remarkable that the same period which witnessed the passage of the first telegraphic message between England and America and the launch of the "Leviathan," should have been ready to welcome two elaborate works, written entirely with the object of illustrating and glorifying two of the patriarchs of the Greek intellectual world, Homer and Herodotus-one the production of an actively-employed university teacher, the other still more marvellous as the offspring of the mind of one of the busiest of English statesmen in this busy and highly practical time. The appearance of either Gladstone's Homer or Rawlinson's Herodotus singly would be remarkable now; taken together, they furnish conclusive evidence of the deep reverence for ancient lore still existing, and even on the increase, in the higher class of English minds; and go far to allay any fears that the timid might have entertained for the future fate of such studies in this country. It is true that the lovers of literature and the lovers of science still form, as of old, two independent and apparently antagonistic classes, and most educated men love to range themselves under the one or the other banner; but the present simultaneity of scientific and literary activity is undeniable. Nay more, it appears as if a bridge were in process of formation, by which the great gulf hitherto fixed between the two classes would cease to exist for them respectively,

by which they might communicate with each other, and pass from one side to the other at will. Literature is becoming scientific, and science literary in that branch of ethnology called Comparative Philology. The investigation of the meaning of words, which anciently appeared a science so futile as to excite the scorn and ridicule of the really scientific, and occasioned Voltaire's remark that philology was a science where consonants go for very little and vowels for nothing at all, in consequence of the enlargement of the area when the data for induction are presented, is assuming an aspect of exactness by which the science of language may one day be able to take its place by the side of chemistry or geology, capable of indefinite extension, and with that extension growing every day more complete and incontrovertible verification. The great discovery made in comparatively modern times, in consequence principally of increased knowledge of the ancient languages of India and Persia, that Greek and Latin, with their numerous Romanic offspring, and the Celtic, Teutonic, and Sclavonic languages, are to be considered not as independent, and necessarily more ancient than the others, but as diverging branches of one great primeval Arian stock, is fast producing its fruits in the obliteration of the artificial distinctions between living and dead languages, and in assimilating the thoughts of all ages by throwing increased light on the meanings of the ancient writers. This discovery, due, we believe, originally to the labours of the students of Germany, has recently been enthusiastically carried out, and its results naturalised among us, by the labours of such men as Dr Donaldson of Cambridge, and Dr Max Müller, now of Oxford. Of the fruits of their labours, intelligent men, of tastes more purely literary, such as Mr Gladstone and Mr Rawlinson, are only too happy to avail themselves; with what success we may easily judge from the most cursory glance at the work which forms the subject of this review. But not only have they derived valuable assistance from the comparative philologist, but they possess another great ally in

one of the noblest classes of men which our age produces the class of scientific travellers, who are, in fact, the real heroes of the century. Mr Rawlinson is especially happy in his having been able to avail himself of the researches of his brother Sir H. Rawlinson, whose indefatigable perseverance and signal success in deciphering the cuneiform records of the East have gained him a worldwide reputation. He has also found a most able coadjutor in Sir Gardner Wilkinson. To these eminent men he acknowledges his obligations in the Preface:—

"The share which these writers have

taken in the work is very insufficiently represented by the attachment of their initials to the notes and essays actually contributed by them. Sir Henry Rawlinson especially has exercised a general supervision over the Oriental portion of the comment; and although he is of course not to be regarded as responsible for any statements but those to which his initials are affixed, he has, in fact, lent his aid throughout in all that concerns the geography, ethnography, and history of the Eastern nations. It was the promise of this assistance which alone emboldened the editor to undertake a work of such pretension as the full illustration from the best sources, ancient and modern, of so discursive a writer as Herodotus. It will be, he feels, the advantage derived from the

free bestowal of the assistance which will lend to the work itself its principal and most permanent interest."

But to the existence of what conditions, we may ask ourselves, is it mainly due that the publication of so careful and elaborate a work in illustration of an author so old and well-known as Herodotus is possible in these days, and not only possible, but undertaken with every prospect of popular success? They may, we think, be looked for in a changed state of the public feeling with regard to the importance of the ancient classics. A short time ago there was a danger that these venerable instructors of our youth would fall into disrepute and ultimate neglect, through the increased zeal with which the more practical and more immediately remunerative departments of knowledge were pursued. This danger was at its height in the

palmy days of the London University and Penny Magazine, when the spring-tide of democracy had gained its highest level, and those who loved the Old and the Past expected every moment to see the last landmarks of the State disappear in the advancing flood. Fortunately for us all, there was a reflux at that point; the tide has ebbed and flowed since then more than once, but never since attained such portentous volume; and since the affairs of 1848, public opinion on political matters has remained, on the whole, tolerably quiescent. If the movement goes on still, as some think, it has lost its devastating character. The old classics can never again be expected by their votaries to engross to themselves nearly the whole educational curriculum, but they have been of late years slowly and surely regaining their place of honour, to the few who pursue special studies, as furnishing the grandest and safest foundation of manly thought; to the many who are not profound students, the best substratum of mental cultivation for the practical life. Well has it been observed by Mr Paley, in the preface to his edition of Propertius,

cess.

"Should the classical languages eventually become unpopular, or neglected and disregarded as not being worth the long years of labour they require, a great change must inevitably come over our character as a literary nation. It will probably be discovered, when too late, that neither history, nor poetry, nor modern European languages, can be prosecuted with equal advantage or sucNeither fine taste, nor ready reasoning, nor fluency and accuracy of style, will be attained with the same certainty in any other way. Eloquence will be less frequent, manners and social habits less polished, conversational powers less brilliant, a comprehension of grammatical principles (and how many consequences does this involve?) less acute. Nor is it probable that, as a general discipline of the intellect, any more efficient substitute for the classical languages will be found."

Assuming, on the whole, that the danger of the classics falling into abeyance or desuetude has lately been diminished, we should be inclined to refer this favourable change, in the

first place, as we have before observed, to the new aspect which comparative philology has assumed as one of the exacter sciences, both of the languages, pre-eminently called classical, having peculiar and transcendant merits as vehicles of human thought; in the second place, to a growing sense of their importance, as the groundwork of that political education of the free citizen-subject which has made our far-famed constitution the glory of friends and the envy of enemies, from the numerous and influential classes which it rears, determined at all hazards to preserve it in its integrity, and diverging into parties only according to the views they take as to the best method of that preservation. It is undeniable that in these curious times a few eccentric scholars, embittered perhaps by personal chagrins, or from

a

morbid craving for distinction, have put themselves forward as the avowed champions of despotism; but we do not think a single example can be found of a man, in his sound senses, who is a practical ultra-democrat and a real classical scholar at the same time. Mr Grote may be quoted as an instance to the contrary. But his democratic complexion is of the closet, not of the platform. Although an Athenian democrat, he is nota British demagogue; and we much question whether he would work as hard for the posthumous fame of Mr Bright, if he happened to survive him, as he has done for the rehabilitation of Cleon. Why is this, but that in the great writers of antiquity we find a picture of a civilisation in many respects more like our own than that of any intermediate age? We find the same problems discussed, and worked out in practice; we see the same hopes formed by the same enthusiasm, and rendered nugatory by the same selfishness; we see that though a state of political freedom is that most favourable to the exhibition of every kind of national and individual energy, it has a danger peculiarly its own, resulting from the very delicacy of the balance in which it consists the danger of liberty passing into license, license to anarchy, and anarchy throwing itself finally into the arms of despotism.

It is impossible for any northern man, imbued at birth with the traditions of freedom from remotest antiquity, not to feel his contentment with his position immensely strengthened by acquaintance with the glorious authors of the palmy days of Athens and the rest of Greece, and at the same time not to be warned as to the precarious nature of it, by the observation of events so like those which take place, or are liable to take place, in our own day.

In this point of view, the Greek -classics are far more powerful in the effect on the mind than the Roman. Rome was never free in the same sense that the republics of Greece were, or if she was at any time, it was when she was still too barbarous to produce a world-wide literature. Her golden age, as we see it, is an age of golden fetters. Its name, Augustan, denotes that its literature was modified by the shadow of imperialism. This may have been an advantage to us moderns, for in the vigour of original thought it was hardly possible for the Roman mind to surpass the Greek, while it has left behind perennial models of composition moulded with the most exquisite taste, and displaying the minutest finish. We would not say that an age of repression is without its uses as regards literature. One of the most beautiful objects in nature is the wild vine ramping over the rocks of Southern Italy, and one scarcely less so is the same plant in a state of careless cultivation, trailing over the trellises of Tuscany, or married to the elms and willows of Lombardy; but when we want to produce good wine for the foreign market, we must cut it down to the stature of a bean-stalk, and keep it constantly pruned of all its wilful ness of growth. A system of political repression, as pursued in Germany, has endued German speculation on recondite subjects with wonderful fertility. The same thing seems now likely to take place, if the present system continues, in France. French literature will be tamed and shorn of its strength, but become perfect as regards the forms of composition, and concern itself minutely with sub

jects which it would have neglected had it been left to its natural bent and direction. Valuable, in the educational sense we have indicated, as are all the writers of the fifth century B.C. whose works have reached us, none has left behind him a treasure so copious, so precious, so instructive, and at the same time so entertaining, as Herodotus. He is the Homer of prose. He could not be Homer's contemporary, as prose is later than poetry in its birth; but he represents the most poetical age in Greece in which prose was possible. While the age of Homer is the age of antique chivalry, and represents that of Chaucer in England, the age of Herodotus represents the Elizabethan with us. At that age,

if we must fix on one in particular, the national spirit, properly so called, was at its highest, and the flame of patriotism at its hottest and brightest, alike in Greece and in England. The monster expeditions of Xerxes and that of the Spanish Armada resembled each other both as to magnitude of preparation and as to their threatened effects upon civilisation. The success of either invasion might have thrown the world back for centuries, perhaps for ever, for in either case the threatened country was the chief if not the sole guardian of the Vestal fire of freedom. Had Athens not made so glorious a stand, first at Marathon, afterwards at Salamis, putting to the blush in the hour of trial, in spite of the episode of Thermopylæ, the courage and patriotism of the more pretentious Lacedæmon, European Greece, with all her intellectual splendours, would have been virtually extinguished-reduced, like her colonies on the scaboard of Asia Minor, to dependencies of Persia, every attribute of nationality but name and language utterly quenched. She would have been of no more account to us now than Turkish Greece at our day will be to future generations. Nay, for all we know, we ourselves might have remained painted savages to this very day, ignorantly bartering tin for trinkets with Phonician adventurers. For no nation since the world began has shown the same miraculous originality of invention as the ancient Greeks. Greek

civilisation alone rendered Roman civilisation possible; and Roman culture, spreading like oil upon the waves of barbarism which flowed in upon the Empire from the north, produced the condition under which our present state of religious, moral, and intellectual knowledge sprang up. All believers in sacred lore easily recognise the mission of the Hebrews, and how essential it was to the welfare of future ages that a nation, however wrong-headed and stiff-necked, should be divinely protected in its integrity, in order to hand down the doctrine of the unity of the Godhead; but all are not able to recognise that of the Greeks as so obviously divine, and to see how essential the protection of Greek civilisation and independence was to prepare a soil for the reception of Christianity. Much more appropriate, indeed, if we consider the question calmly, is Cromwell's epithet of a "crowning mercy to the battle of Salamis than to Worcester fight. The sense in which the words were used of the latter inconsiderable action were narrow and sectarian, but in the former case it would be most emphatically catholic. Nothing can be more appalling to the reader, who does not know what is to come, than the terror of the Greeks generally, and even the Athenians, in the face of the flood of Persian arms, one little State succumbing after another, universal demoralisation, divided councils in the crisis of action, the Athenians themselves losing heart, Athens abandoned and burnt, and existing only on board her navy and in the little island of Salamis-the destinies of all future ages embarked on that narrow sea, packed in that little fleet-the only light of civilisation trembling and flickering, as it were, to sudden extinction-all that was worth caring for in the ancient world depending on the success of a stratagem of Themistocles! And what a hairbreadth escape the world had in that hour! Greece was brought to bay and compelled to fight it out only because flight was possible no longer. The whole narrative has the effect on the reader who throws himself into its spirit, that an unexpected

eclipse of the sun must have on some ignorant nation; slowly and surely the disc is darkened, and the gloom and perplexity increase till the moment of complete obscuration: at that point of time when all seems lost, a band of light appears on the other side, which gradually broadens and brightens into perfect day, and with the restoration of light a great weight is raised from the universal heart. Very similar were the circumstances of the struggle of which Salamis was the turning-point, and those of the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the grand exceptions to the parallel being the courage with which the little monarchy of the North was ready to dare everything in the face of hope, the national unanimity and patriotism, as contrasted with the temporising pusillanimity, tergiversation, and self-seeking of the Greek republics, Athens herself, perhaps, furnishing the only honourable exception to the gravest part of those charges. To all appearance the success of the Spaniard involved the utter destruction of civil and religious liberty in the world, as completely as the success of the Persian involved the annihilation of ancient civilisation. If the political existence of Great Britain in the present day were overwhelmed by a despotic crusade, liberty would still live in the British race beyond the seas, and America and Australasia might one day come, in the power of their joint armaments, to rescue the mother country from her degradation. The catastrophe would be private, or at most European, not common to the world at large and therefore irremediable. But if the Armada had conquered us, liberty would have gone out in the world. It was not our own right arm, though strong, that helped us in that strait, but the "wind of God."

"Gott der Allmachtige blies Und die Armada flog zu allen Winden."

This historical parallelism gives especial interest to us as Britons in Herodotus's narrative of the defeat of the Persian invasion, and a personal love for his whole work, of which that defeat was the burden as plainly as the wrath of Achilles was the burden of the Iliad, such as no other