the same time from good sense and propriety. The name of poet was almost forgotten; that of orator was usurped by the sophists. A cloud of critics, of compilers, of commentators, darkened the face of learning, and the decline of genius was soon followed by the corruption of taste.'

Seventeen years after the death of the younger Antonine, Severus was acknowleged emperor of the Roman world. By gratitude, by misguided policy, by seeming necessity, Severus was induced to relax the nerves of discipline. The vanity of his soldiers was flattered with the honor of wearing gold rings; their ease indulged in the permission of living with their wives in the idleness of quarters. He increased their pay beyond the example of former times, and taught them to expect, and soon to claim, extraordinary donatives on every public occasion of danger or festivity. Elated by success, enervated by luxury, and raised above the level of subjects by their dangerous privileges, they soon became incapable of military fatigue, oppressive to the country, and impatient of a just subordination.-Posterity, who experienced the fatal effects of his maxims and example, justly considered' Severus as the principal author of the decline of the Roman empire.'

In delineating the administration of Caracalla, the son of Severus, the historian says, the successive augmentations of the pay of the soldiers ruined the empire, for with the soldier's pay their numbers too were increased.As long as Rome and Italy were respected as the center of government, a national spirit was preserved by the ancient, and insensibly imbibed by the adopted, citizens. The principal commands of the army were filled by men, who had received a liberal education, were well instructed in the advantages of laws and letters, and who had risen, by equal steps, through the regular succession of civil and military honors. To their influence and example we may partly ascribe the modest obedience of the legions during the two first centuries of the imperial history. But, when the last enclosure of the Roman constitution was trampled down by

Caracalla, the rougher trade of arms was abandoned to the peasants and barbarians of the frontiers, who knew no country but their camp, no science but that of war, no civil laws, and scarcely those of military discipline. With bloody hands, savage manners, and desperate resolutions, they sometimes guarded, but much oftener subverted, the throne of the emperors.'

The last three hundred years,' says Mr. Gibbon, he is speaking of the year 248, had been consumed in apparent prosperity and internal decline. The nation of soldiers, magistrates, and legislators, who composed the thirtyfive tribes of the Roman people, was dissolved into the common mass of mankind, and confounded with the millions of servile provincials, who had received the name, without adopting the spirit, of Romans.-To the undiscerning eye of the vulgar, Philip appeared a monarch no less powerful than Hadrian or Augustus had formerly been. The form was still the same, but the animating health and vigor were fled. The industry of the people was discouraged and exhausted by a long series of oppression. The discipline of the legions, which alone; after the extinction of every other virtue, had propped the greatness of the state, was corrupted by the ambition, or relaxed by the weakness, of the emperors. The strength of the frontiers, which had always consisted in arms rather than in fortifications, was insensibly undermined; and the fairest provinces were left exposed to the rapaciousness or ambition of the Barbarians, who soon discovered the decline of the Roman empire.'

Such was the state of the empire in the year 248, when the great secular games were solemnized by Philip. But far worse was the situation into which it was plunged immediately subsequent to that year. From this celebration. of the secular games, says Mr. Gibbon, to the death of the emperor Gallienus, there elapsed twenty years of shame and misfortune. During that calamitous period, every instant of time was marked, every province of the Roman world was afflicted, by barbarous invaders and military

tyrants, and the ruined empire seemed to approach the last and fatal moment of its dissolution.' The distracted reign of Gallienus produced no less than nineteen pretenders to the throne. The election of these precarious emperors, their power and their death, were equally destructive to their subjects and adherents. The price of their fatal elevation was instantly discharged to the troops, by an immense donative, drawn from the bowels of the exhausted people. However virtuous was their character, however pure their intentions, they found themselves reduced to the hard necessity of supporting their usurpations by frequent acts of rapine and cruelty. When they fell, they involved armies and provinces in their fall.' The bravest usurpers also were compelled by the perplexity of their situation, to conclude ignominious treaties with the common enemy, to purchase with oppressive tributes the neutrality or services of the Barbarians, and to introduce hostile and independent nations into the heart of the Roman monarchy.'

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It is almost unnecessary to add,' says Mr. Gibbon, speaking of a somewhat later period, of the æra of the abdication of Dioclesian, that the civil distractions of the empire, the licence of the soldiers, the inroads of the Barbarians, and the progress of despotism, had proved very unfavorable to genius and even to learning. The succession of Illyrian princes restored the empire, without restoring the sciences.-The voice of poetry was silent. History was reduced to dry and confused abridgments, alike destitute of amusement and instruction. A languid and affected eloquence was still retained in the pay and service of the emperors, who encouraged not any arts, except those which contributed to the gratification of their pride, or the defence of their power.'

That the fine arts were in a fallen state during the reign of Dioclesian, and at the elevation of Constantine, the following observations will prove. Mr. Gibbon, speaking of the magnificent palace of the former of those princes, says,

6

we are informed, by a recent and very judicious traveller", 'that the awful ruins of Spalatro are not less expressive of the decline of the arts, than of the greatness of the Roman empire, in the time of Dioclesian.' And the triumphal arch of Constantine, raised on account of the victory which he gained over Maxentius in the year 312, still remains a melancholy proof of the decline of the arts, and a singular testimony of the meanest vanity. As it was not possible to find in the capital of the empire a sculptor, who was capable of adorning that public monument; the arch of Trajan, without any respect either for his memory or for the rules of propriety, was stripped of its most elegant figures.The new ornaments, which it was necessary to introduce between the vacancies of ancient sculpture, are executed in the rudest and most unskilful manner.'

There is also another cause, not yet alluded to, but perhaps deserving of notice, which discouraged the pursuit of knowlege, and promoted the destruction of books. About the beginning of the second century,' says Dr. Enfield, 'astrologers, Chaldeans, and other diviners, disgraced the profession of philosophy by assuming the title of mathematicians. By this name they were commonly known, and this signification of the term was in general use for several centuries. In the Justinian code we find a chapter under this title. De Maleficis et Mathematicis, “On Sorcerers and Mathematicians :” and one book of the Thedosian code prescribes the banishment of mathematicians out of Rome, and all the Roman cities, and the burning of their books. Impostors, who passed under this appellation, rendered themselves exceedingly obnoxious to princes and statesmen by the influence whitch their arts gave them over the minds of the vulgar; and it was thought necessary, for the safety of the state, to subject them to rigorous penalties"."

91 The abate Fortis (Viaggio in Dalmazia).

92 Decl. and Fall of the Rom. Emp. 8vo. vol. 1. p. 90, 198, 203, 221, 268, 313, 84, 445, 449, 451; vol. II. p. 181, 234.

93 Hist. of Philosophy, vol. II. p. 328.

Those frivolous studies, and those perplexing inquiries, in which such multitudes engaged during the fourth and so many succeeding centuries, have been falsely attributed to the genius of Christianity and to the New Testament. But it holds out no encouragement to the prosecution of such questions. Accordingly they may fairly be attributed to that decline of learning, and that prevalence of false taste, which have, in a considerable degree, been accounted for in the preceding extracts; and a very large proportion of those fruitless disputations and intricate subtelties, which occasioned so great a waste of time and intellect, did immediately result from the fashionable treatises on logic and metaphysics, and particularly from the perusal of Plato and Aristotle, and the numerous commentators written upon them in the Greek, the Latin, and the Arabic tongues. As theologians were almost the only persons who applied to letters, of course it was from theology that many of their speculations were derived. To have prevented this, a perpetual miracle must, indeed, have been exerted; and, if Christianity had not existed, an infinite number of idle disquisitions would have been deduced from the writings, whatever they might be, in which the reigning religion was deposited.

It was not to the religion of Jesus that the fondness for obstruse speculations owed its growth. It was the fault of the times. It operated upon men of every sentiment. For some time antecedent to the establishment of Christianity, it was carried to a greater height in the schools of the philosophers than among the fathers of the church. The declining age of learning and of mankind is marked,' says Mr. Gibbon (he is speaking of the period which preceded the abdication of Dioclesian), by the rise and rapid progress of the new Platonicians. The school of Alexandria silenced

94 The Musulmans,' says Volney, enemerate seventy-two sects: but I read, while I resided among them, a work which gave an account of more than eighty.' Volney's Ruins; or a Survey of the Revolutions of Em‐ pires, p. 343.