Come, now; one song more, and we shall close our summer-days' songs. Shut the window, for the night is darkening down, and the air is somewhat chill after the warm day and the close evening. Yes, it is night; and night, too, has her charms. Call her not dull and gloomy; she is social and joyous, and loves to look with her dark, starry eyes on true hearts and jocund spirits, turning the darkness into light, and making the silence ring with sweet sounds. And so let us sing her praises. Give the four best voices you have, Anthony, and let every one be ready to aid in the chorus: O LOVELY NIGHT. 1. O lovely Night! thou hast a solemn lustre, When o'er thy brow bright stars serenely cluster, O lovely Night! O lovely Night! But if the clouds sweep over II. O lovely Night! thou hast a voice more holy When through thy depths the waves are murmuring slowly, O lovely Night! O lovely Night! But if, nor waves nor breezes Make minstrelsy to-night, Ne'er fear, we'll find, to please us, Some strains of rare delight; With sweet accord of voices, We'll wake the muse divine, Till every heart rejoices And now, Anthony, see your friends out, like a discreet host, for 'tis getting late. There, now - that's a good fellow-go to your bed; and while I am lulled to rest by the sweet babbling of water, or the plaintive notes of the woodpigeons, you can lie awake to enjoy those delectable noises which regale civilians-the melodious voices of some vinous young gentlemen, the rattling of a jaunting-car down Sackville-street from a concert at the Rotundo, or the stern, solemn, measured clank of the policeman's iron-shod heel upon the echoing flagway. So, good night! and God bless you! Ever yours, To Anthony Poplar, Esq. JONATHAN FREKE SLINGSBY. HEROES, ANCIENT AND MODERN.-NO. V. BELISARIUS AND MARLBOROUGH. "How wretched Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favours! THE annals of advancing Rome are rich in bright names, illustrious characters, and glowing actions. Examples of public heroism and private virtue which have descended to pos. terity, as ennobling human nature, and to excite emulation. But as the manly vigour of the republic subsides into the helpless decrepitude of the monarchy; as the stately tree totters to its fall, the branches wither, and the exhausted stem ceases to put forth perennial life. During the century of doubtful struggle between independence and extinction, which marked the rapid decay of the Western Empire, the glories of the Scipios, the Marii, the Catos, the Pompeys, and the Cæsars, are faintly represented by the semi-barbarian Stilicho, and the patrician Etius - men alike distinguished by lofty ambition, daring valour, and approved skill in the command of armies, though wavering and questionable on the higher points of loyalty and true patriotism. Pollentia and Chalons attest their claims to rank in the first class of successful generals. The conquerors of Alaric and Attila invest expiring Rome with a shadow of her early greatness. The still heavier records of Byzantine decline, for more than a thousand years, present a barren waste, relieved and fertilised by only a single Belisarius. The praises of Stilicho, have warmed the muse of Claudian with the fire of Virgil, and the eulogy of Belisarius has inspired his secretary, Procopius, with the energetic diction of Thucydides. We speak of the annals and not the scandalous anecdotes in which he afterwards libelled the hero he had exalted into a demigod. As an historical authority, Procopius may be safely followed. He describes events, in which he participated, and without any appearance of studied exaggeration, or undue partiality. Gibbon, who delivered no hasty opinions, says of him, "his facts are collected from the actual experience and free conver sation of a soldier, a statesman, and a traveller; his style continually aspires, and often attains to the merit of strength and elegance; his reflections, more especially in his speeches, which he too frequently inserts, contain a rich fund of political knowledge; and the historian, excited by the generous ambition of pleasing and instructing future ages, appears to disdain the prejudices of the people, and the flattery of courts." That Procopius should prefor his immediate commander, his personal friend and patron, with whom he lived and served, to the Emperor whom he never approached except with the crouching humility of a slave, is equally natural and just. In his pages, the weak, inconsistent Justinian shows to disadvantage when contrasted with the superior qualities and more commanding genius of his faithful officer and subject. But the sovereign deserved the censure more than the flat tery, by which, in the six books of the "Imperial Edifices," the severe reflections of the "History," and the cutting satire of the Anecdotes," were sought to be balanced or obliterated. Procopius was read, believed, and admired by his contemporaries. For many centuries his works were lost. "The History of the Gothic War" was first published in 1470, in a Latin version by Leonard Aretin, who palmed it upon the world as his own original composition. The discovery of other manuscripts unveiled the fraud, and exposed the impostor to the ignominy he courted and deserved. Literary piracy, and piracy on the high seas, are crimes equal in moral turpitude, and deserve to be included in the same penal statute. A complete edition of Procopius, in the original Greek, appeared in Paris in 1663, but he has never become sufficiently popular to call for an English translation, and is seldom taken from the shelf, except as a reference on some forgotten or disputed point connected with the times of which he wrote. The present age is one of restless activity in science and speculation. Great discoveries are being hourly made; great events appear hurrying to their fulfilment, on which every one forms his own theory, and writes a pamphlet. The future excites more interest than the past; but it is wise to look back as well as forward, if we wish to draw profit from recorded lessons, and to assist inquiry by the aid of experience. An accurate critic, Sir William Temple, enumerates seven great warriors who deserved and might have worn a crown, but whose disinterested ambition rejected the dazzling temptation. His list comprises-Belisarius, Etius, Hunniades, Gonzalo of Cordova, Scanderbeg, Alexander Farnese Duke of Parma, and the Great Prince of Orange. To these might be added three more - Scipio, Washington, and Wellington-who extend the number, while they dignify the fellowship. The character of Belisarius excites the greater admiration, inasmuch as he lived in a degenerate age, when public principle was extinct, patriotism had passed into a tradition, loyalty was an expedient pretext, and the name of Roman had become a mockery, a hissing scorn, and a by-word among nations. Yet he was ever pure amid the corrupt; chaste with the dissolute; brave, though surrounded by recreants; constant in danger; steadfast in allegiance; uninfluenced by selfish feelings; unchanged by ingratitude; preferring to serve, when he was invited to seize the reins of empire; and content with the station of first subject, in preference to that of despotic sovereign. In this noble portrait, the searching eye of truth can detect but one prominent blemish, a solitary weakness; the same which clouded the vir. tues of Marcus Aurelius-implicit confidence in a wife, whose abandoned licentiousness was apparent to all the world, and disbelieved by her husband alone. Faustina and Antonina present shameless examples of conjugal infidelity, indulged equally without fear of detection, or any scruple of moral restraint. Theodora, the chosen partner of Justinian, completes, with these two, a congenial group; lovely in person as the Graces, or the three rival goddesses who contended on Mount Ida for the prize of beauty; but foul and fascinating in heart and influence as Stheno, Euryale, or Medusa. Religion was profaned to sanctify or Faustina received shroud their vices. divine honours during her life, decreed by the dotage of her husband and the obsequious servility of the senate. Antonina and Theodora thought to purchase the pardon and prayers of the church, by founding monasteries, convents, and Magdalen asylums; alternately assuming the parts of demireps and devotees, as inordinate passion prompted, or the terrors of approaching death appalled. It is painful and humiliating to reflect on the depravity invested with power, by which millions have been scourged, and the minds of mighty men have been held in submissive thraldom. The patient incredulity of Belisarius under domestic wrongs, transparent to the humblest menials in his palace; his unflinching loyalty to an ungrateful master, ever jealous, without cause or pretext; these anomalies in a character nearly perfect, excite in equal proportion our astonishment and admiration, until we are forced to acknowledge, with Gibbon, that he either sinks below or soars above the estimate by which ordinary humanity is to be judged. The reign of Justinian forms an important epoch in the decline of the Roman Empire-a resting point in the march of time, replete with memorable events and lofty undertakings. The victorious campaigns of Belisarius restored the fairest provinces of the West. The abolition of the consulship extinguished the last symbolic vestige of ancient freedom; the nominal and only surviving prerogative of the people which interfered with the absolute sway of the monarch. The suppression of the schools of philosophy at Athens, rooted out the sect of Platonists, the last disciples of expiring Paganism. During the erection of the new cathedral of St. Sophia, to replace the edifice of Constantine, destroyed for a second time by fire during the recent sedition of the "Nika," the piety of the Emperor induced him to mingle with the workmen, survey their daily progress, and stimulate them to rapid exertion by extraordinary rewards. Within six years from its foundation, the stately temple rose in all its light and graceful architecture, dedicated to the glory of the Redeemer, and the spread of his Gospel. Twentyfive other churches were built in Constantinople alone, in honour of the Virgin and the saints. Stupendous fortifications in all the frontier towns concealed the actual weakness of the empire, while they conveyed the external aspect of impregnable strength. Commerce and luxury received an important impetus in the home manufacture of silk, hitherto confined to the Persian market, at exorbitant prices, but now established in the capital and European provinces, by the importation of the silk-worm from China, concealed in a hollow cane to deceive the jealousy of the natives. But the greatest triumph of Justinian, and the most imperishable monument of his fame, is the celebrated code of laws which has survived his other labours, and has become the model for civil jurisprudence in every country of civilized Europe, England alone except ed. The code was long supposed to be lost. A copy had been brought by a merchant from Constantinople to the little city of Amalfi, a seaport of Naples, on the Gulf of Salerno, but not used there, as they had adopted that of Theodosius. When the Pisans took and pillaged Amalfi,* in the twelfth century, they found and carried away the Pandects of Justinian, which were destined to as many travels and changes of residence as the Casa Santa of Loretto, or the coffins of St. Patrick and St. Cuthbert. When the Florentines took Pisa in 1406, the Pandects were removed to the capital of Tuscany, elevated to the dignity of sacred relics, bound in purple, and exhibited with reverence to curious travellers (duly qualified) by the monks and magistrates, bareheaded and with lighted tapers. The Emperor Lotharius, when they arrived in Lombardy, caused them to be revised and arranged by Irnerius, and to be taught in all the schools throughout his dominions. They were afterwards reduced to their present form of codices and digests, by Accur sius, a celebrated legal scholiast.† The conquests of Justinian are forgotten; their political importance has been swept away with the extinction of his empire; his palaces and fortifications have long crumbled into dust; the Christian church of St. Sophia is converted into a Turkish mosque; but the code, the Pandects, and the Institutes remain. They will endure while the external world exists in its present form, and the name of the imperial legislator is inscribed on a fair and lasting monument. an The reign of Justinian, to a cursory reader, appears to be a revival of the golden age, when all was contentment, prosperity and happiness A closer investigation shows the picture in ar other light, and with very opposite features. The nations under his control, were oppressed by incessant taxes, monopolies, and other grinding expedients of wasteful or avaricious ty ranny. They submitted sullenly to an iron despotism they were unable to throw off, and were forced to express public exultation for triumphs from which they derived no advantage. In every department of the state there was corruption, dishonesty, peculation, embezzlement and plunder the rich trampling on the poor, the wealth of one accumulated by the ruin of a thousand. Neither was the wrath of heaven without palpable demonstration. Famine and pestilence weighed heavily on the land, decimated the population, and produced a decrease of the human species, which has never been replaced, in some of the fairest countries of the globe. During the late destroying sweep of the Asiatic cholera, we were struck with terror, when two or three hundred deaths were recorded daily for two or three weeks, in some of the most thickly inhabited cities of western Europe. When the plague burst forth in the fifteenth year of the reign of Justinian, for three months, five, and at length ten thousand persons died each day at Constantinople; while many cities of the East were left at the mercy of the beasts of prey; and in several of the richest districts of Italy, the harvest and the vintage withered on the ground for want of hands to gather them in. And how were the mass of those occupied who escaped the deadly visitation, which languished and revived periodically for more than half a century? In humility, in prayer, in penitence? — in humble supplication to the offended Amalfi is entitled to double honour. First, as having been the safe sheltering place of the lost Pandects; and again, as being the native spot of Flavio Gioia, who invented the mariner's compass in 1302. The Majorcans claim this latter discovery, but without evidence, for their eccentric countryman Raymond Lulli. The variation of the needle was ascertained by Columbus in 1492. † See "Swinburne's Travels in the Two Sicilies." Gibbon, "Decline and Fall," ch. xliv. Deity?-in systematic temperance and strenuous efforts to discover a resisting antidote ? No; they laughed, and revelled, and drank, and gambled, and intrigued, and blasphemed, as usual. War succeeded war; sedition followed sedition; and all the evil passions of man's nature appeared to gain strength from the surrounding terrors which should have checked or extinguished them. In those ages there were neither sanatory restrictions nor qua rantine laws, and the cleanliness of modern habits was unpractised even among the highest classes. The mortality arising from pestilence alone, in the Roman dominions, during a single reign of thirty-eight years, has been computed vaguely and somewhat poetically, by a credible writer,* as amounting to several myriads of myriads in reasonable interpretation, one hundred millions. The ingenious fiction of Marmontel, derived originally from a fable of the twelfth century, in the "Chiliads" of Tzetzes, has long taught us to believe that the illustrious general of Justinian was deprived of his eyes, and reduced in old age to beggary. As children we have wept over his wrongs, and wished to revenge them. The tale has served for a leading illustration in all treatises on the vicissitudes of fortune, the fickle nature of popularity, and the ingratitude of princes. Lord Mahon believes it,§ in opposition to other modern historians, and tries to establish his view by argument and evidence, but neither, in our humble opinion, sufficient for the purpose. We are much consoled by the conclusion, that the whole has no foundation in truth. That Belisarius was ill-treated by a heartless sovereign, who owed to him his life and empire, is as certain as that Ætius was slain by the cowardly hand of Valentinian, and that the Admiral Coligny was murdered through the treachery of Charles IX. He was falsely accused of joining in a conspiracy against the life of Justinian; disgraced, imprisoned, and heavily "Procopius, Anecdot.," c. 18. amerced; restored to freedom and honour with a broken heart; but his person was unprofaned, and he died in his own palace. The massive ruins of that palace, still bearing his name, are shown to this day, as among the most interesting antiquities of Constantinople. The story loses in moral application, in sympathetic excitement, and in painful interest; but the memory of the hero gains in dignity, and preserves the halo of respect with which heroes require to be surrounded. Cato falling on his sword at Utica; Cæsar, slaughtered in the senate house; Brutus and Cassius dying on the field of Phillippi, are more in keeping than Hannibal flying from court to court a pensioner on sufferance; or Bajazet exhibited in an iron cage. In spite of reason and philosophy, it is as difficult as unpleasant, to associate the lofty image of the conqueror of many kingdoms, the victor of a hundred battles, the restorer of his country's power and glory, with the squalid attributes of an old blind street mendicant, led by a boy, with a dog, and a hat or a bowl, howling forth the professional cry of " Give a penny to Belisarius the general." That he should stand at the gates of the convent of Laurus to beg his bread is much less likely than that he should knock at those gates to claim admission and sanctuary, while his wife Antonina was still able, from the wreck of their fortunes, to pay his entrance fee. The legend, as it stands, would embellish Fox's "Book of Martyrs," in which the persevering and accurate Professor Jamieson detected three thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine fallacies in one night, and declared that he certainly would have made up the four thousand, only he fell asleep. Some authorities claim for Belisarius the advantages of noble blood, and the inheritance of a patrimonial fortune. The general silence of Procopius on these points, and one or two indirect passages, favour the opinion, but preponderating testimony places his † Μυριάδας μυριάδων μυρίας. John Tzetzes, a learned Greek poet and critic, famed for his prodigious memory, of which miraculous anecdotes are told, almost equal to those recorded of Magliabecchi of Florence. § "Life of Belisarius," 1828-See Preface and Postscript. A statue in the Louvre, formerly in the collection of Prince Borghese at Rome, represents Augustus propitiating Nemesis. The attitude of Leggary made this statue pass for Belisarius, until the criticism of Winkelman rectified the mistake: as Lord Byron observes, "One fiction was called in to support auother." |