Greek, to relish or to reason upon. For the executed upon the image. In a more civilized same reason we never can be aware of the ful-age this statue was exposed to an actual operaness of some of the finest passages of Shakspeare ("To be or not to be," for instance), from the habit of having them hammered into us at eight years old, as an exercise, not of mind but of memory: so that when we are old enough to enjoy them, the taste is gone, and the appetite palled. In some parts of the Continent young persons are taught from more common authors, and do not read the best classics till their maturity. I certainly do not speak on this point from any pique or aversion towards the place of my education. I was not a slow, though an idle boy; and I believe no one could, or can be more attached to Harrow than I have always been, and with reason;-a part of the time passed there was the happiest of my life; and my preceptor (the Rev. Dr. Joseph Drury) was the best and worthiest friend I ever possessed, whose warnings I have remembered but too well-though too late-when I have erred, and whose counsels I have but followed when I have done well or wisely. If ever this impefect record of my feelings towards him should reach his eyes, let it remind him of one who never thinks of him but with gratitude and veneration-of one who would more gladly boast of having been his pupil, if, by more closely following his injunctions, he could reflect any honour upon his instructor. The trebly hundred triumphs ! [p. 46. St. 82. Orosius gives three hundred and twenty for the number of triumphs. He is followed by Panvinius; aud Panvinius by Gibbon and the modern writers.

Oh thou, whose chariot roll'd on Fortune's wheel. [p. 46. St. 83. Certainly were it not for these two traits in the life of Sylla, alluded to in this stanza, we should regard him as a monster unredeemed by any admirable quality. The atonement of his voluntary resignation of empire may perhaps be accepted by us, as it seems to have satisfied the Romans, who if they had not respected must have destroyed him. There could be no mean, no division of opinion; they must have all thought, like Eucrates, that what had appeared ambition was a love of glory, and that what had been mistaken for pride was a real grandeur of soul. *)

And laid him with the earth's preceding clay. [p. 46. St. 86. On the third of September Cromwell gained the victory of Dunbar; a year afterwards he obtained his crowning mercy" of Worcester; and a few years after, on the same day, which he had ever esteemed the most fortunate for him, died.

And thou, dread statue! yet existent in
The austerest form of naked majesty.

[p. 46. St. 87. The projected division of the Spada Pompey has already been recorded by the historian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Mr. Gibbon found it in the memorials of Flaminius Vacca, and it may be added to his mention of it that Pope Julius III. gave the contending owners five hundred crowns for the statue; and presented it to Cardinal Capo di Ferro, who had prevented the judgment of Solomon from being

*) "Seigneur, vous changez toutes mes idées de la façon dont je vous vois agir. Je croyais que vous aviez de l'ambition, mais aucun amour pour la gloire: je voyais bien que votre àme était haute; mais je ne soupçonnais pas qu'elle fût grande." MONTESQUIEU, Dial. de Sylla et d'Eucrate.

tion: for the French, who acted the Brutus of Voltaire in the Coliseum, resolved that their Cæsar should fall at the base of that Pompey, which was supposed to have been sprinkled with the blood of the original dictator. The nine foot hero was therefore removed to the Arena of the amphitheatre, and to facilitate its transport suffered the temporary amputation of its right arm. The republican tragedians had to plead that the arm was a restoration: but their accusers do not believe that the integrity of the statue would have protected it. The love of finding every coincidence has discovered the true Cæsarean ichor in a stain near the right knee; but colder criticism has rejected not only the blood but the portrait, and assigned the globe of power rather to the first of the emperors than to the last of the republican masters of Rome. Winkelmann is loth to allow an heroic statue of a Roman citizen, but the Grimani Agrippa, a cotemporary almost, is heroic; and naked Roman figures were only very rare, not absolutely forbidden. The face accords much better with the "hominem integrum et castum et gravem," than with any of the busts of Augustus, and is too stern for him who was beautiful, says Suetonius, at all periods of his life. The pretended likeness to Alexander the Great cannot be discerned, but the traits resemble the medal of Pompey. The objectionable globe may not have been an ill applied flattery to him who found Asia Minor the boundary, and left it the centre of the Roman empire. It seems that Winkelmann has made a mistake in thinking that no proof of the identity of this statue, with that which received the bloody sacrifice, can be derived from the spot where it was discovered. Flaminius Vacca says sotto una cantina, and this cantina is known to have been in the Vicolo de' Leutari near the Cancellaria, a position corresponding exactly to that of the Janus before the basilica of Pompey's theatre, to which Augustus transferred the statue after the curia was either burnt or taken down. Part of the Pompeian shade, *) the portico, existed in the beginning of the XVth century, and the atrium was still called Satrum. So says Blondus. At all events, so imposing is the stern majesty of the statue, and so memorable is the story, that the play of the imagination leaves no room for the exercise of the judgment, and the fiction, if a fiction it is, operates on the spectator with an effect not less powerful than truth.

And thou, the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome! [p. 46. St. 88.

Ancient Rome, like modern Sienna, abounded most probably with images of the foster-mother of her founder; but there were two she-wolves of whom history makes particular mention. One / of these, of brass in ancient work, was seen by Dionysius at the temple of Romulus under the Palatine, and is universally believed to be that mentioned by the Latin historian, as having been made from the money collected by a fine on usurers, and as standing under the Ruminal figtree. **) The other was that which Cicero ***)

*) "Tu modo Pompeia lenta spatiare sub umbra." OVID de Arte Amandi. **) Ad ficum Ruminalem simulacra infantium conditorum urbis sub uberibus lupa posuerunt. LIV. x. 69. This was in the year U. C. 455, or 457.

***) "Tum statua Nattæ, tum simulacra Deorum, Romulusque et Remus cum altrice bellua vi fulminis icti conciderunt." De Divinat. 11. 20. "Tactus est ille etiam qui hanc urbem condidit Romulus, quem inauratum in Capitolio parvum atque lactantem, uberibus lupinis inhiantem fuisse meministis." In Catilin. 111. 8.

nus, in saying that it was at the Ficus Ruminalis by the Comitium, is only talking of its ancient position as recorded by Pliny; and even if he had been remarking where it was found, would not have alluded to the church of St. Theodore, but to a very different place, near which it was then thought the Ficus Ruminalis had been, and also the Comitium; that is, the three-columns by the church of Santa Maria Liberatrice, at the corner of the Palatine looking on the Forum.

66

What from this barren being do we reap? Our senses narrow, and our reason frail. [p. 47. St. 93. Omnes pene veteres, qui nihil cognosci, nihil percipi, nihil sciri posse dixerunt; angustos sensus; imbecillos animos; brevia cur ricula vita; in profundo veritatem demersam; opinionibus et institutis omnia teneri: nihil veritati relinqui: deinceps omnia tenebris circumfusa esse dixerunt." ") The eighteen hundred years which have elapsed since Cicero wrote this, have It is, in fact, a mere conjecture where the not removed any of the imperfections of humanity: Image was actually dug up, and perhaps, on the and the complaints of the ancient philosophers whole, the marks of the gilding, and of the light-may, without injustice or affectation, be transcribed ning, are a better argument in favour of its in a poem written yesterday. being the Ciceronian wolf than any that can be adduced for the contrary opinion. At any rate, It is reasonably selected in the text of the poem as one of the most interesting relics of the ancient city, and is certainly the figure, if not the very animal to which Virgil alludes in his beautiful verses.

There is a stern round tower of other days.
[p. 47. St. 99.
Alluding to the tomb of Cecilia Metella, called
Capo di Bove, in the Appian Way.

-Prophetic of the doom "Geminos huic ubera circum Heaven gives its favourites-early death. [p. 48. St. 102. Ludere pendentes pueros et lambere matrem Impavidos: illam teriti cervice reflexam *Ον οἱ θεοὶ Φιλοῦσιν ἀποθνήσκει νέος Mulcere alternos, et fingere corpora lingua." Τὸ γὰρ θανεῖν οὐκ αἰσχρὸν ἀλλ ̓ αἰσχρῶς θανεῖν. BRUNK, Peta Gnomici, p. 231. -For the Roman's mind Was modell'd in a less terrestrial mould. [p. 46. St. 90. Behold the Imperial Mount! [p. 48. St. 107. The Palatine is one mass of ruins, particularly It is possible to be a very great man and to on the side towards the Circus Maximus. The be still very inferior to Julius Cæsar, the most complete character, so Lord Bacon thought, of very soil is formed of crumbled brick - work. all antiquity. Nature seems incapable of such Nothing has been told, nothing can be told, to extraordinary combinations as composed his ver- satisfy the belief of any but a Roman antiquary. satile capacity, which was the wonder even of the There is the moral of all human_tales; Romans themselves. The first general-the only 'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past, triumphant politician — inferior to none in eloFirst Freedom, and then Glory. quence-comparable to any in the attainments of wisdom, in an age made up of the greatest commanders, statesmen, orators and philosophers that ever appeared in the world-an author who composed a perfect specimen of military annals in his travelling-carriage-at one time in a controversy with Cato, at another writing a treatise on punning, and collecting a set of good sayingsfighting) and making love at the same moment, and willing to abandon both his empire and his mistress for a sight of the Fountains of the Nile. Such did Julins Cæsar appear to his cotemporaries and to those of the subsequent ages, who were the most inclined to deplore and execrate his fatal genius.

But we must not be so much dazzled with his surpassing glory or with his magnanimous, his amiable qualities, as to forget the decision of his impartial countrymen:

HE WAS JUSTLY SLAIN. **)

*) In his tenth book, Lucan shows him sprinkled with the blood of Pharsalia in the arms of Cleopatra:

Sanguine Thessalicæ cladis perfusus adulter Admisit Venerem curis, et miscnit armis. After feasting with his mistress, he sits up all night to converse with the Egyptian sages, and tells Achoreus, Spes sit mihi certa videndi Niliacos fontes, bellum civile relinquam.

Sic velut in tuta securi pace trahebant
Noctis iter medium.

Immediately afterwards, he is fighting again and defending every position.

Sed adest defensor ubique
Cæsar et hos aditus gladiis, hos ignibus arcet.
Cæca nocte carinis

Insiluit Cæsar semper feliciter usns
Præcipiti cursu bellorum et tempore rapto.
**) Jure casus existimetur, says Suetonins
after a fair estimation of his character, and
making use of a phrase which was a formula

[p. 48. St. 108. The author of the Life of Cicero, speaking of the opinion entertained of Britain by that orator and his cotemporary Romans, has the following eloquent passage: "From their railleries of this kind, on the barbarity and misery of our island, one cannot help reflecting on the surprising fate and revolutions of kingdoms, how Rome, once the mistress of the world, the seat of arts, empire and glory, now lies sunk in sloth, ignorance and poverty, enslaved to the most cruel as well as to the most contemptible of tyrants, superstition and religious imposture: while this remote country, anciently the jest and contempt of the polite Romans, is become the happy seat of liberty, plenty, and letters; flourishing in all the arts and refinements of civil life; yet running perhaps the same course which Rome itself had run before it, from virtuous industry to wealth; from wealth to luxury; from luxury to an impatience of discipline, and corruption of morals: till by a total degeneracy and loss of virtue, being grown ripe for destruction, it falls a prey at last to some hardy oppressor, and, with the loss of liberty, losing every thing that is valuable, sinks gradually again into its original barbarism.“

-And apostolic statues climb To crush the imperial urn, whose ashes slept sublime. [p. 48. St. 110. The column of Trajan is surmounted by St. Peter; that of Aurelius by St. Paul.

Still we Trajan's name adore. [p. 49. St. 111. Trajan was proverbially the best of the Roman princes: **) and it would be easier to find a so

in Livy's time. "Melium jure cæsum pronun-
tiavit, etiam si regni crimine insons fuerit."
*) Academ. I. 13.

**) Hujus tantum memoriæ delatum est, ut, nsque ad nostram ætatem non aliter in Senatu principibus acclamatur, nisi, FELICION AUGUSTO MELIOR TRAJANO. Butr. VIII. 5.

vereign uniting exactly the opposite characteristics, than one possessed of all the happy qualities ascribed to this emperor. "When he mounted the throne," says the historian Dion, "he was strong in body, he was vigorous in mind; age had impaired none of his faculties; he was altogether free from envy and from detraction; he honoured all the good and he advanced them; and on this account they could not be the object of his fear, or of his hate; he never listened to informers; he gave not way to his anger; he abstained equally from unfair exactions and unjust punishments; he had rather be loved as a man than honoured as a sovereign; he was affable with his people, respectful to the senate, and universally beloved by both; he inspired none with dread but the enemies of his country."

Rienzi, last of Romans! [p. 49. St. 114. The name and exploits of Rienzi must be familiar to the reader of Gibbon.

Egeria! sweet creation of some heart Which found no mortal resting-place so fair As thine ideal breast. Ip. 49. St. 115. The respectable authority of Flaminius Vacca would incline us to believe in the claims of the Egerian grotto. He assures us that he saw an inscription in the pavement, stating that the fountain was that of Egeria dedicated to the nymphs. The inscription is not there at this day but Montfaucon quotes two lines) of Ovid from a stone in the Villa Giustiniani, which he seems to think had been brought from the same grotto.

This grotto and valley were formerly frequented in summer, and particularly the first Sunday in May, by the modern Romans, who attached a salubrious quality to the fountain which trickles from an orifice at the bottom of the vault, and, overflowing the little pools, creeps down the matted grass into the brook below. The brook is the Ŏvidian Almo, whose name and qualities are lost in the modern Aquataccio. The valley itself is called Valle di Caffarelli, from the dukes of that name who made over their fountain to the Pallavicini, with sixty rubbia of adjoining land. There can be little doubt that this long dell is the Egerian valley of Juvenal, and the pausingplace of Umbricius, notwithstanding the generality of his commentators have supposed the descent of the satirist and his friend to have been into the Arician grove, where the nymph met Hippolitus, and where she was more peculiarly worshipped.

The step from the Porta Capena to the Alban hill, fifteen miles distant, would be too considerable, unless we were to believe in the wild conjecture of Vossius, who makes that gate travel from its present station, where he pretends it was during the reign of the Kings, as far as the Arician grove, and then makes it recede to its old site with the shrinking city. The tufo, or pumice, which the poet prefers to marble, is the substance composing the bank in which the grotto is sunk.

The modern topographers find in the grotto the statue of the nymph and nine niches for the Muses, and a late traveller has discovered that the cave is restored to that simplicity which the poet regretted had been exchanged for injudicious ornament. But the headless statue is palpably rather a male than a nymph, and has none

*) In villa Justiniana exstat ingens lapis quadratus solidus in quo sculpta hæc duo Ovidii carmina sunt:

Egeria est quæ præbet aquas dea grata Camœnis.
Illa Numæ conjux consiliumque fuit.

Qui lapis videtur ex eodem Egeriæ fonte, aut
ejas vicinia isthac comportatus.

of the attributes ascribed to it at present visible. The nine Muses could hardly have stood in six niches; and Juvenal certainly does not allude to any individual cave.) Nothing can be collected from the satirist but that somewhere near the Porta Capena was a spot in which it was supposed Numa held nightly consultations with his nymph, and where there was a grove and a sacred fountain, and fanes once consecrated to the Muses; and that from this spot there was a descent into the valley of Egeria, where were several artificial caves. It is clear that the statues of the Muses made no part of the decoration which the satirist thought misplaced in these caves; for he expressly assigns other fanes (delubra) to these divinities above the valley, and moreover tells us, that they had been ejected to make room for the Jews. In fact, the little temple, now called that of Bacchus, was formerly thought to belong to the Muses, and Nardini places them in a poplar-grove, which was in his time above the valley.

It is probable, from the inscription and position, that the cave now shown may be one of the "artificial caverns," of which, indeed, there is another a little way higher up the valley, under a tuft of alder bushes: but a single grotto of Egeria is a mere modern invention, grafted upon the application of the epithet Egerian to these nymphea in general, and which might send us to look for the haunts of Numa upon the banks of the Thames.

Our English Juvenal was not seduced into mistranslation by his acquaintance with Pope: he carefully preserves the correct plural

Thence slowly winding down the vale we view The Egerian grots; oh, how unlike the true! The valley abounds with springs, and over these springs, which the Muses might haunt from their neighbouring groves, Egeria presided: hence she was said to supply them with water; and she was the nymph of the grottos through which the fountains were taught to flow.

The whole of the monuments in the vicinity of the Egerian valley have received names at will, which have been changed at will. Venuti owns he can see no traces of the temples of Jove, Saturn, Juno, Venus, and Diana," which Nardini found, or hoped to find. The mutatorium of Caracalla's circus, the temple of Honour and Virtue, the temple of Bacchus, and above all, the temple of the god Rediculus, are the antiquaries' despair.

The circus of Caracalla depends on a medal of that emperor cited by Fulvius Ursinus, of which the reverse shows a circus, supposed, however, by some to represent the Circus Maximus. It gives a very good idea of that place of exercise. The soil has been but little raised, if we may judge from the small cellular structure at the end of the Spina, which was probably the chapel of the god Consus. This cell is half beneath the soil, as it must have been in the circus itself, for Dionysius could not be persuaded to believe that this divinity was the Roman Neptune, because his altar was underground.

1

Yet let us ponder boldly. (p. 50. St. 127. "At all events," says the author of the Academical Questions, "I trust, whatever may be the fate of my own speculations, that philosophy will regain that estimation which it ought to i possess. The free and philosophic spirit of our nation has been the theme of admiration to the world. This was the proud distinction of Englishmen, and the luminous source of all their glory. Shall we then forget the manly and dignified sentiments of our ancestors, to prate in the language of the mother or the nurse about our good old prejudices? This is not the way to defend the cause of truth. It was not thus that our fathers maintained it in the brilliant periods of our history. Prejudice may be trusted to guard the outworks for a short space of time while reason slumbers in the citadel: but if the latter sink into a lethargy, the former will quickly erect a standard for herself. Philosophy, wisdom, and liberty, support each other; he who will not reason, is a bigot; he who cannot, is a fool; and he who dares not, is a slave."

I see before me the Gladiator lie. [p. 52. St. 140. Whether the wonderful statue which suggested this image be a laquearian gladiator, which in spite of Winkelmann's criticism has been stoutly maintained, or whether it be a Greek herald, as that great antiquary positively asserted *) or whether it is to be thought a Spartan or barbarian shield-bearer, according to the opinion of his Italian editor, it must assuredly seem copy of that masterpiece of Ctesilaus which represented "a wounded man dying, who perfectly expressed what there remained of life in him." **) Mountfaucon and Maffei thought it the identical statue; but that statue was of bronze. The gladiator was once in the villa Ludovisi, and was bought by Clement XII. The arm is an entire restoration of Michael Angelo.

α

-He, their sire, Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday. [p. 52. St. 141. Gladiators were of two kinds, compelled and voluntary; and were supplied from several con--Great Nemesis!ditions; from slaves sold for that purpose; from Here, where the ancient paid thee homage long. culprits; from barbarian captives either taken [p. 51. St. 132. in war, and, after being led in triumph, set We read in Suetonius that Augustus, from a apart for the games, or those seized and conwarning received in a dream, counterfeited, once demned as rebels; also from free citizens, some a year, the beggar, sitting before the gate of fighting for hire (auctorati), others from a his palace with his hand hollowed and stretched depraved ambition: at last even knights and =out for charity.) A statue formerly in the Villa senators were exhibited, a disgrace of which the Borghese, and which should be now at Paris, first tyrant was naturally the first inventor. ***) represents the Emperor in that posture of sup-In the end, dwarfs, and even women, fought; an plication. The object of this self-degradation enormity prohibited by Severus. Of these the was the appeasement of Nemesis, the perpetual most to be pitied undoubtedly were the barbaattendant on good fortune, of whose power the rian captives; and to this species a Christian Roman conquerors were also reminded by cer- writer) justly applies the epithet "innocent," tain symbols attached to their cars of triumph. to distinguish them from the professional glaThe symbols were the whip and the crotalo, diators. Aurelian and Claudius supplied great which were discovered in the Nemesis of the numbers of these unfortunate victims; the one Vatican. The attitude of beggary made the above after his triumph, and the other on the pretext statue pass for that of Belisarius: and until the of a rebellion. No war, says Lipsius, was ever criticism of Winkelmann had rectified the mis- so destructive to the human race as these sports. take, one fiction was called in to support another. In spite of the laws of Constantine and Constans, It was the same fear of the sudden termination gladiatorial shows survived the old established of prosperity that made Amasis king of Egypt religion more than seventy years; but they warn his friend Polycrates of Samos, that the owed their final extinction to the courage of a gods loved those whose lives were chequered Christian. In the year 404, on the kalends of with good and evil fortunes. Nemesis was sup- January, they were exhibiting the shows in the posed to lie in wait particularly for the prudent: Flavian amphitheatre before the usual immense that is, for those whose caution rendered them concourse of people. Almachius or Telemachus, accessible only to mere accidents: and her first an eastern monk, who had travelled to Rome altar was raised on the banks of the Phrygian intent on his holy purpose, rushed into the midst Esepus by Adrastus, probably the prince of that of the area, and endeavoured to separate the name who killed the son of Cræsus by mistake. combatants. The prætor Alypius, a person inHence the goddess was called Adrastea. credibly attached to these games, gave instant orders to the gladiators to slay him; and Telemachus gained the crown of martyrdom, and the title of saint, which surely has never either before or since been awarded for a more noble exploit. Honorius immediately abolished the shows, which were never afterwards revived.

The Roman Nemesis was sacred and august; there was a temple to her in the Palatine under the name of Rhamnusia: so great indeed was the propensity of the ancients to trust to the revolution of events, and to believe in the divinity of Fortune, that in the same Palatine there was a temple to the Fortune of the day. This is the last superstition which retains its hold over the human heart, and, from concentrating in one object the credulity so natural to man, has always appeared strongest in those unembarrassed by other articles of belief. The antiquaries have supposed this goddess to be synonimous with fortune and with fate: but it was in her vindictive quality that she was worshipped under the name of Nemesis.

*) Either Polifontes, herald of Laius, killed by Edipus; or Cepreas, herald of Eurithens, killed by the Athenians when he endeavoured to drag the Heraclidæ from the altar of Mercy, and in whose honour they instituted annual games, continued to the time of Hadrian; or Anthemocritus, the Athenian herald, killed by the Megarenses, who never recovered the impiety.

**) Vulneratum deficientem fecit in quo possit intelligi quantum restat animæ. PLIN. Nat. Hist. XXXIV. 8.

***) Julius Cæsar, who rose by the fall of the aristocracy, brought Furius Leptinus and A. Calenus upon the arena.

+) Tertullian, "certe quidem et innocentes gladiatores in ladum veniunt, ut voluptatis publice hostia fiant.“