At the beginning of the war, the Carthaginians were masters of the sea, and possessed a well-furnished treasury, which enabled them to enlist a large number of mercenaries. Those hired forces, however, were no match for the citizen-soldiers of Rome, inured to war and led on by men of incorruptible integrity; at the end of twenty-three years, both parties were exhausted by the struggle; but the Carthaginians were glad to sign a treaty of peace, which proved how little they felt themselves equal to contend with such enemies; they agreed to evacuate Sicily and its dependencies, make no war on Hiero or his allies, release all Roman prisoners without ransom, and to pay 3200 talents to Rome within ten years.

These successes are to be attributed to the excel lence of the Roman constitution, which had now gained its perfection; out of an exclusive aristocracy, a moderate democracy had gradually been developed, in which all classes exercised their proper influence, with the power to counterbalance each other; while that of her great rival was now on the decline; the practise of fighting her battles with mercenary soldiers led to a crisis which nearly involved the state in utter destruction; from which it was rescued for a time, but doomed soon to succumb under the power of a state composed of such superior material.

Similar to Venice in its institutions, the power of Carthage was not stable, although its commerce and consequent wealth enabled it to maintain powerful armaments; its first foreign conquest was Sardinia, and the renown of its fleets induced Darius to send an em. bassy, requesting assistance to subdue Greece; intent. upon gaining possession of Sicily, the Carthaginian se

nate refused to engage in so distant a war, but their first attempt upon this fertile and desirable land was defeated, and their whole force destroyed or taken prisoners. Herodotus says, that the battle of Himera happened on the same day as that of Salamis; the fields of Sicily were fatal alike to Athens and Carthage, and led to their subjugation to Lacedæmon and Rome.

Of the early history of Carthage during more than three centuries, we know little or nothing, except that it became a great commercial and maritime state. What we do know of its institutions is derived chiefly from a chapter in Aristotle's politics, in which he speaks of its government as one of the best constituted in his time, having not, up to that period, been subject to popular commotions or exposed to the attempts of tyranny. If Aristotle's work on Constitutions were not lost we should, probably, have a much fuller account of the Carthaginian government and social state.

This indefatigable writer had collected nearly one hundred and sixty different constitutions, Grecian and barbarian, containing all the different stages, from tyranny to democracy-and of oligarchy and monarchy; his object was to establish an experimental philosophy, to collect facts and to draw inferences, to support precepts by examples.

All the sages of Greece endeavoured to train up the youth destined to fill the high offices of the state in the principles of good government, as the most efficient mode of contributing to the welfare of their respective provinces, looking forward to see their country consolidated in the firm alliance of all its different portions, and by this means to carry the

glory of their common native land to the highest pitch.

There was not an officer of the ten thousand Greeks, who marched through the great monarchy of Persia, despite of a hostile population, who did not perceive that they could conquer it, if their armies were united under a chief in whom they could place implicit dependence. Jason, of Pheræ in Thessaly, hoped to raise himself to supreme power in Greece, and accomplish this object; his plans were taken up by Philip of Macedon, who, when his son was born, wrote to Aristotle, saying, that he did not so much rejoice in having a son, as that he was born in his time; and Lord Bacon said, whenever he thought of him, it was not as Alexander the Great, but as Aristotle's scholar.

The master could engraft the love of science on the passion of military renown; but the tamer of Bucephalus did not think so much of the vast commerce Tyre possessed, as the means its consequent wealth afforded of procuring the sinews of war; his wrath against Jerusalem was turned aside, when the high priest of Judæa recognised in him the future. conqueror of Persia; he listened not to the magi of Babylon, nor the gymnosophists of India, but wept when there were no more worlds to conquer; and fixed the situation for his tomb in sight of the everlasting pyramids.

The Egyptian priest derided the display of Grecian lore exhibited by Plato, and evaded the inquiries of Herodotus; like the Chinese, who boiled or baked the seeds he gave to the European, to destroy their germinating principle, the source of the knowledge communicated was poisoned in the terms of the ex

planation. The stupendous monuments of his country have failed to immortalise their founders, whose laws, names and institutions have passed away; but the writings of the great lawgiver of the Hebrews, transcribed on the most perishable material, have been handed down to the present generation, through a period of more than three thousand years, those words which Moses in Deuteronomy addresses to the children of Israel, the Bible now proclaims to all the world; it shows them the good and the evil, and sets before them life and death.

The book of Joshua tells of the renown of the great city of Sidon-the ledgers of the merchant-princes of Tyre are only extant in the chapters of Ezekiel-and the name of the great monarch of Persia, the rebuilder of Jerusalem, is to be found in the pages of Daniel; whilst the predictions of Isaiah of the fall of the mighty city of Babylon, that evident type of idolatry, and the advent of the Regenerator of the human race, though faintly shadowed forth in the leaves of the Sibyl of Cuma, could not be grafted on the lessons of Egeria.

Rome, saved from Cataline, lost its freedom under Augustus; nor could the Book of Truth, introduced on the testimony of Josephus, and aided by the virtues of Titus and the Antonines, prevent the decline of patriotism, and check the rampant spirit of vice and villany. The mild spirit of the gospel, from the persevering vigour of St. Paul, had penetrated the palace of the Cæsars, but could not reclaim a corrupt aristocracy. Cicero's services would have earned for him the unmixed good-will of their ancestors, had it not been for the vanity and presumption his successes had engendered. When exiled (as might have been

expected, from one whose mind had been so extravagantly elated), he gave himself up to despondency; and so completely lost the control of his feelings and his conduct, that he abused his best friends, spoke of them as enemies in disguise, and sacrificed all pretensions to the character of a philosopher. This he

acknowledges in some of his writings-but justifies the account he gives of himself in other parts, by saying, that he wished to pourtray what the orator and philosopher should be; although human nature was fallible, and required a stronger support than all the books he had read or his freedmen had read to him, could furnish.

Scipio Africanus, that distinguished hero and patriot, always carried about with him the Cyropædia of Xenophon, to study the character there drawn of Cyrus; not that he was the faultless person there represented, but an absolute monarch, who holds his authority for life, is there made to possess all the virtues requisite in the chief magistrate of a republic, whose power is but temporary, and who, when he lays it down, retires to the rank of a private citizen.

And this Cicero points out to his brother Quintus, who held authority over the large and wealthy province of Asia, as a pattern also to himself, and proposes to him another example in Caius Octavius, the father of Augustus, who ruled the neighbouring province of Macedonia, and the fame of whose good government was the subject of conversation in Rome, and redounded to the honour of his family.

"It is really glorious," says Cyrus, "to fight in defence of liberty; but if a nation, after it is reduced to submission, should attempt to rise in rebellion against the conquerors, how should it be treated?"