the best commentary on his excellent code of laws is to be found in his reply to one who asked him if he had given the Athenians the best of laws: "The best," said he "that they are capable of receiving." By the operation of these laws, and by the prudent administration of his distinguished successors, Athens far surpassed the other States of Greece, in all the elements of civilization, and in every thing which constitutes the true greatness and glory of a people.Always taking the lead in every honorable enterprise to protect the liberties of Greece, and extending without stint, a munificent hand in giving encouragement to every kind of learning and every art, Athens deserved the fond appellation given her, by her poets and historians who warmed at the very mention of her name-"The Epitome of Greece," "The Greece of Greece." Athens continued to progress in all the elements of national prosperity, till the age of Pericles, when she attained the highest summit of her greatness, and then came the period of her decline. A distinguished historian has justly remarked, "that the great difficulty in human institutions, is to ward off the approach of numbness and decay." But the seeds of dissolution were thickly sown early in the progress of Athenian history. Clisthenes struck a fatal blow at the permanence of the institutions of his country, by the change in the constitution, which resulted from the abolition by him, of the old division of the Athenians into four tribes, and his re-division into ten; which change levelled the distinctions of ranks, and produced the state of things which ended in a turbulent and wild democracy. The results did not become fully apparent until after the termination of the splendid administration of Pericles. There is no form of government, which exhibits for a time, such a concentration of energy, by applying every individual, and every species of property to the service of the state, as a frantic democracy, like that of Athens after the innovations of Clisthenes, and that of France after the execution of Louis XVI. Success, however, is necessary to keep alive this energy. A series of reverses produces apathy; and after many fruitless experiments to improve their condition, the people take refuge from themselves in a military despotism. When Athens submitted to the rising fortunes of Macedon, she had already been prepared for servitude. The progress of civilization among the Romans is more instructive, than among any of the nations which preceded them, and the history of the successive steps by which they formed the constitution of their Republic, is more difficult than that of any people of antiquity who have left traces of their existence behind them. The narrow limits of an article like this forbid us to enter fully into the subject, and to show in what manner that singular, but really efficient constitution was formed; which seemed less the result of design, than accident and the necessities of the times. He will be greatly mistaken, who expects to find that the Romans lived under the same form of government, which was instituted at the first permanent settlement of the city of Rome, or even after the expulsion of their kings, and that which existed at the termination of their Republic. No two governments could well be more unlike than those which Rome presented at the two periods we have mentioned. The Roman nobles, when they threw off the power of the king, at the formation of their Republic-like the English Barons, of 1215, who wrested the great Charter from King John-accomplished a revolution in the name of the people, but really for themselves, at the termination of the Republic were found possessing but a small share of that power which they had engrossed and abused. During that progress, every feature, every power, every institution had changed: changed too by the most terrible political convulsions which brought into exercise the fiercest passions of human nature. It is in this aspect that the history of Rome, becomes so interesting and so useful. The slow but steady progress of the Roman plebs to a participation in the privileges of a government, under which he lived, and had borne most of the hardships-the perseverance, the energy, the indominable courage with which he pursued his object through difficulties the most insurmountablethrough dangers the most appalling-have afforded to all subsequent times, a deep and instructive lesson. One by one, the Roman plebs wrested his rights, not without contest-not without blood-from the patrician. Fearful were the struggles of the two classes for the tribuneship, (the one to gain the office, the other to prevent that formidable power being placed in the hands of their opponents) *—for "Of all the rights which were wrested by the popular party from the patricians, none were more formidable than those which were gained by the successive en the division of the public lands*-the intermarriage of ranks the right of the plebeian to the consulship, and the other offices of the State, and to the veto of the assemblies of the people on the acts of the Senate. Yet were all these important rights and privileges successively gained by the plebeians through long years of suffering and deadly contention. But they were gained, and the Roman constitution was complete. Dreadful as were the evils which resulted from this strife between the classes, they were not unattended with real and important advantages. To this may be attributed the firmness and intrepidity of the Roman plebeian, and the characteristic vigor of mind of the Roman patrician-qualities in her people which enabled Rome to conquer the world, and to fix the impress of her character and civilization wherever her arms extended. And it was always her wise and generous policy to convert the colonist into the citizen. This last was a peculiar feature in Roman civilization, and deserves attention. When Greece established colonies, "the old population was mostly exterminated, or if permitted to survive, were reduced into bondage." The colonies made settlement if they could, without the protection and fostering care of the parent state, and then set up for themselves. Not so with Rome. In the earliest times, "the Roman colonies were miniature likenesses of the Roman people." The old inhabitants were not ejected, but were allowed to form the great body of the rustic commonalty, nor was the whole mass of landed property seized upon by the new comers. Over these colonies Rome always exercised a supremacy, and as has been well observed, like sons croachments of the tribunitian power: and of all those, the law of Volero Publilius, allowing the assembly of the plebeians to meet and determine on the affairs of the Commonwealth, provided the laws were brought forward by the tribunes, was the most dreaded by the wiser part of the patricians. "The legal recognition of the tribune's right," says Niebuhr, "to speak daily before the whole people on the general affairs of the State, as they had hitherto done on those of their own order, was, under the circumstances of the times, far more than the granting the freedom of the press is now."-Niebuhr's History of Rome, vol. II. p. 163. *It has remained almost to our own times, to do justice to the noble, patriotic and self-sacrificing efforts of the Gracchi, to restore the law of Spurius Cassius, in relation to the public lands. Ferguson clearly mistakes the law, in supposing that the law of Licinius so limited estates, that no citizen should engross above 500 jugera.-Hist. Rom. Rep. p. 27. And Niebuhr remarks that Machiavel and Montesquieu fell into the same error. It is to Heyne's Essay, he says, that he owed this truth, who, in a Programma, written in 1793, "pointed out that the laws of the tribunes related simply and solely to the public domain."-Niebuhr's History of Rome, Vol. II. p. 99. in a Roman family after they had grown to maturity, continued unalterably subjected to the parent state. "By this," as Machiavel has remarked, "was the empire of Rome consolidated, the decay of population checked, and the unity of the nation and of the language diffused."* Rome, though inferior to Greece in the production of art, followed, nevertheless, closely in its footsteps. But it is in the works of internal improvements-in the roads, bridges, and aqueducts, that we behold the originality and magnificence of Roman genius. To the extension of the empire of the Romans, we owe, perhaps, not only their own treasures in learning and science, but the preservation and perpetuation of those of Greece. But Rome at length became the prey of faction, and took refuge, as all turbulent democracies must do, in a military despotism. It has been left to modern times to discover the only mode, in a representative form, by which the people may govern themselves. It becomes then an aristocracy in its best form-with its primitive meaning—and without the evils which have always before accompanied and destroyed that form of government. The masses will commonly select the best among them for the depositories of their power, and as their agents, at short and fixed periods, are obliged to return to the people to account for the manner in which they have discharged the trust, the danger is obviated thereby of perpetuating power and the reduction and consequent wearing out of a fixed aristocracy. Cæsar finished what Marius and Sylla had begun: under his successors Rome soon felt the withering influence of despotism, "and instead of the foaming torrent, the silent lake reflected back the image of idleness and servitude." The limits of the empire began to recede, and the barbarian to close around the declining greatness of Rome. An attempt was made to transplant the seat of power from the city of Rome to Byzantium, with the hope of restoring the ancient vigor and supremacy of that great empire. But in vain. With the loss of liberty had declined the public virtue which had given life and spirit to the departed glories of the Roman Republic, and Constantinople, after a protracted but feeble existence of eleven centuries, submitted too, to the barbarian. *Niebuhr's History of Rome, vol. II. p. 35. "The Niobe of nations; there she stands, Whose holy dust was scattered long ago; Of their heroic dwellers; dost thou flow Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness? Rise with thy yellow waves and mantle her distress!" Shortly after the end of the Roman Republic, an event occurred of the greatest magnitude in itself, and which was destined to produce, apart from its higher and holier influences, the most important results in the civilization of mankind. We allude to the advent of the Messiah and the influence of the doctrines of Christianity. The sincere believer in those truths, has much reason to admire and adore the dispensations of Providence, which reserved for a time, when mankind was first prepared for it, the promulgation of a faith, which addressed itself not to the senses, but to the understanding. At no time anterior to the precise period when it occurred, was the world prepared for the reception and dissemination of the religion of Jesus Christ. Greece, though far advanced in civilization, and though ready to receive, was not a nation to propagate such doctrines. It was reserved for a period when Rome extended her dominion. over the greater portion of the known world, and with her dominion, her language, and the influence of her manners. We hold it to be evident, and susceptible of the fullest proof, that civilization must precede Christianity—that you must civilize men before you can christianize them. When the Emperor Constantine embraced Christianity, he was followed by a great majority of his subjects, and in a short time the religion of Christ was co-extensive with his vast empire. But when the political power of Rome declinedwhen the barbarian encroached upon its ancient limits, in the same manner Christianity was supplanted by some new faith, and gave place in Antioch, Alexandria, Carthage, and even in Constantinople itself, those famous seats of the dignitaries of the Christian Church, to the power and faith of the false prophet. In the west also, civilization and Christianity disappeared wherever the barbarian extended his conquests, who having no religion of his own, in process of time, by the aid of what scattered elements of civilization |