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democracy; the one tending to an oligarchy, the other to lawless despotism.

Bulwer remarks: "As in despotisms, a coarse and sensual luxury, once established, rots away the vigor and manhood of a conquering people, so in this intellectual people (the Athenians) it was the luxury of the intellect which gradually enervated the great spirit of the victor race of Marathon and Salamis, and called up generations of eloquent talkers and philosophical dreamers from the earlier age of active freemen, restless adventurers, and hardy warriors. The spirit of poetry, or the pampered indulgence of certain faculties to the prejudice of others, produced in a whole people what it never fails to produce in the individual: it unfitted them-just as they grew up into manhood exposed to severer struggles than their youth had undergone for the stern and practical demands of life; and suffered the love of the Beautiful to subjugate or soften away the common knowledge of the Useful. Genius itself became a disease, and Poetry assisted towards the euthanasia of the Athenians."

The fundamental essentials to the security of a free State, are religion, virtue, and intelligence in its individual citizens. This is the palladium of her strength, and the augury of her greatness and glory. These three great weapons of our strength will form the surest bulwark of our defence against the evils which may menace our national security, arising from the incessant influx of foreign immigration and foreign political influence. Before the vestal purity and celestial light of virtue, the shades of ignorance, superstition, infidelity, and crime will flee away. With the true light of Divine revelation for our guide, and the ample experiences of the past for our instruction, we may, and we assuredly ought to present to the world, not a mere problematical experiment, but an accredited and actual illustration of the great fact of a mighty nation of self-governed freemen-a spectacle "grander, vaster, and more majestic than any thing ancient statesmen ever dreamed of." Is such a brilliant immortality to be conferred upon these United States?

With the lapse of centuries, the lustre of Grecian intellect has

lost none of its splendor. It still towers in Olympian grandeur over all the boasted achievements of intervening ages. Her proud trophies have defied the assaults of time; and, whether in sculpture, eloquence, or in song-in inilitary prowess, heroic virtue, or in her love of liberty-her name has ever been a watchword on the earth. Not only was Greece the home of the graces, but it was here that Freedom first erected her mountain-throne. It was the triumph of mind that gave the pre-eminent glory to Greece; and Greece was the glory of the earth. What a galaxy of great men she gave to the world-Pericles, Epaminondas, Socrates, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Homer, Plato, and Alexander-Titans among the race! What a wealth of learning have they bequeathed to mankind! Classic Greece was the great academy of science and song-our storehouse of philosophy, ethics, poetry, sculpture, æsthetics, and architecture, as well as civilization and refinement. She was the first of the nations of antiquity to assert the supremacy of intellectual empire. It is not surprising, therefore, that her very name should have become talismanic, and that her sages, philosophers, and poets should still be regarded as our models, and their wisdom deemed oracular. Poetry still recognizes her great high priest in Homer, Philosophy her Socrates, History her Thucydides, Eloquence her Demosthenes, Art her Phidias, Justice her Aristides, and Heroism her Leonidas. While, therefore, we do homage to Attic models in art, poetry, ethics, and philosophy, shall we neglect the warning which her political errors and immoralities suggest?

THE FALL OF ROME.

'Alas! the lofty city! and alas!

The trebly hundred triumphs."
CHILDE HAROLD.

THE seven-hilled city of the Cæsars-once the capital of the world,--the most potent and the most opulent of the nations of antiquity, with her august pageants, her gorgeous temples, her triumphal arches, her Coliseum, her Forum, and all her colossal achievements in arts and arms, is numbered with the past. All that remains of her eminent glory, is a splendid ruin-a mighty and majestic shrine, attracting pilgrim feet from all parts of the earth. Her towering greatness, with her almost superhuman virtues and crimes, lives only on the scroll of history-a sublime illustration of human power and human weakness. Of all the voices of the past, Rome's eventful story is the most marvellous, the most memorable, and the most eloquent.

"Rome! thine imperial brow

Never shall rise.

What hast thou left thee now?

Thou hast thy skies!
Thou hast the sunset's glow,

Rome! for thy dower-
Flashing, tall cypress bow,
Temple and tower!"

The history of Rome exhibits a strange compound of conflicting elements of human character. It abounds with instances of the generous and the heroic, the cruel and the base,—the patriotic and the perfidious. Hers were the extremes of wealth and poverty—of

ignorance and learning. Rome was the scene of the direst calamities and the most brilliant triumphs. At one time devastated by a fearful plague, which continued for more than two years, destroying, in a single day, some two thousand human beings; at another, the city was in great part consumed by fire, kindled by lightning,—while these calamities were followed by famine. The history of her government is, for the most part, one of despotic cruelty, strategy, and crime-most of her rulers being corrupt and treacherous; yet were there among them men of heroic and noble virtue.

The topography of Rome may be thus briefly described: Situate on the bank of the Tiber (about seventeen miles from the sea, and near its junction with the Arno), the city was built on seven hills, or insulated heights, divided by little valleys. These hills are the Capitoline, Palatine, Coelius, and Aventine. The others (Quirinal, Viminal, and Esquiline) are promontories, jutting out towards the Tiber. The Capitoline being so precipitous that it formed a natural fortress, it became the citadel of Rome.

A reference to the map of Italy will best exhibit its physical geography. It will be seen that, like Greece, Italy is made up of numerous valleys, pent up between high hills, each forming a country and political community to itself. There is the Apennine range, stretching from the southern extremity of the Alps across Italy, to the edge of the Adriatic, thus separating Italy proper from Cisalpine Gaul. Between them and the Alpine semicircle which forms the northern boundary, is inclosed a wide plain, open only on the east to the sea. One great river flows through its whole extent, being fed, from the north and south, by numberless streams. Of course, this well-watered plain was filled with flourishing cities, and often contended for by successive invaders. The geographical features of Italy proper strikingly accord with its political divisions. "It is not one simple ridge of mountains, leaving a broad belt of level country on either side, but, as it were, a backbone, thickly set with diverging spines of unequal length, running out from the main ridge, some parallel to the backbone itself; in which latter case, the interval be

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tween their base and the Mediterranean has been broken up by volcanic agency; e. g., Vesuvius, and the Alban Hills, ten miles from Rome." We thus perceive the force of the remark of Napoleon, that Rome was the spot best suited to be the capital of its empire. The early history of Rome, like that of Athens, is based upon tradition, made up in part of poetic fiction. The line of demarcation between what is mythical and purely historic truth, it is difficult to determine. This is, however, less essential to our purpose, since we have to do with the later times of the Republic. During the first two centuries or more subsequent to its foundation, the city of Rome was under the rule of governors, or kings, of limited power and prerogatives. Its constitution originally somewhat resembled that of England about the times of the three first Edwards. The governing body consisted of the three classes or tribes, divided into thirty curiæ, ten in each tribe. Their assembly was called Comitia Curiata. Besides this general body of citizens, there was a select council, called the Senate, originally comprised of one hundred chief men of the Ramnes. After the union of the Sabines, one hundred of the Titienses were admitted; and though the Luceres always had votes in the general Comitia, yet they had no representatives in the Senate till the time of Tarquinius Priscus, who added a third hundred, called Patres Minarum Gentium. The reign of this monarch is the Etruscan period of Roman history. The buildings above and under ground, the religion, the games then introduced, have all of them an Etruscan stamp. The next king, the sixth, was Servius Tullius, who belonged neither to a royal nor patrician family, and who promoted Latin and Grecian customs. He revised the constitution, having brought together, in some degree, the Populus and the Plebs, and made all of them vote according to their property, in classes and centuries. The last king was Tarquinius Superbus, who, with his family, was banished; and with him ended the monarchy, having lasted, according to the legends, two hundred and twenty-five years. Then followed the establishment of the Republic, at the head of which were two

*Arnold.

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