Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

it, and pours forth, from a full urn, a copious and continued stream of varied elegance. He directs the judgment, by passing over slight things in a slight manner, and dwelling only on the prominent parts of his subject, though he has been accused of some important omissions. He keeps the attention always alive, by exhibiting passions as well as actions; and, what best indicates the hand of a master, we hang suspended on the event of his narrative, as if it were a fiction, of which the catastrophe is in the power of the writer, rather than a real history, with whose termination we are already acquainted. He is admirable no less for his humanity than his patriotism; and he is one of the few historians, who have marked the broad line of discrimination between true and false glory, not erecting pomps, triumphs, and victories, into essentials of real greatness. He teaches patience under censure, inculcates a contempt of vulgar acclamation, and of all praise which is not fairly earned. One valuable superiority, which Livy possesses over his competitors, is, that, in describing vice and vicious characters, he scrupulously contrives to excite an abhorrence of both; and his relations never leave, on the mind of the reader, a propensity to the crime, or a partiality for the criminal whom he has been describing. A defect, in this acuteness of moral feeling, has been highly pernicious to the youthful reader; and this too common admixture of impure description, even when the honest design has been to expose vice, has sensibly tainted the wholesomeness of historic composition.

Independently of those beautiful, though sometimes redundant speeches, which Livy puts into the mouths of his heroes, his eloquent and finished answers to ambassadors furnish a species of rhetoric peculiarly applicable to a royal education.

It has been regretted by some of the critics, that

Livy, after enriching his own work by the most copious plagiarisms from his great precursor, Polybius, commends him, in a way so frigid, as almost to amount to censure. He does not, it is true, go the length of Voltaire in his treatment of Shakspeare, who first pillages, and then abuses him. The Frenchman, indeed, who spoils what he steals, acts upon the old known principle of his country highwaymen, who always murder where they rob.

If it be thought that we have too warmly recommended heathen authors, let it be remembered that, in the hands of every enlightened preceptor, as was eminently the case with Fenelon, pagans almost become Christian teachers by the manner in which they will be explained, elucidated, purified; and not only will the corruptions of paganism be converted into instruction, by being contrasted with the opposite Christian graces, but the Christian system will be advantageously shewn to be almost equally at variance with many pagan virtues, as with all its vices.

If there were no other evidence of the value of pagan historians, the profound attention which they prove the ancients to have paid to the education of youth, would alone suffice to give them considerable weight in the eyes of every judge of sound institutions. Their regard to youthful modesty, the inculcation of obedience and reserve, the exercises of self-denial, exacted from children of the highest rank, put to shame-I will not say Christians, but many of the nominal professors of Christianity. Levity, idleness, disregard of the laws, contempt of established systems and national institutions, met with a severer reprobation in the pagan youth, than is always found among those, in our day, who yet do not openly renounce the character of Chris

tians.

Far be it from us, however, to take our morals

from so miserably defective a standard as pagan history affords. For, though philosophy had given some admirable rules for maintaining the outworks of virtue, Christianity is the only religion which ever pretended to expel vice from the heart. The best qualities of paganism want the best motives. Some of the overgrown Roman virtues, also, though they would have been valuable in their just measure and degree, and in a due symmetry and proportion with other virtues, yet, by their excess, helped to produce those evils which afterwards ruined Rome; while a perfect system of morals, like the Christian, would have prevented those evils. Their patriotism was oppression to the rest of the world, Their virtue was not so much sullied by pride, as founded in it; and their justice was tinctured with a savageness which bears little resemblance to the justice which is taught by Christianity.

These two simple precepts of our religion, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself;" these two principles, kept in due exercise, would, like the two powers which govern the natural world, keep the intellectual and spiritual world in order; would restrain, impel, unite, and govern it.

In considering the ancient philosophy, how does the fine gold become dim, before the sober lustre of that Divine legislator, whose kingdom, indeed, was not of this world, but who has taught "kings of the earth, princes, and all people," those maxims and principles which cast into shade all the false splendours" of the antique world!" Christianity has furnished the only true practical comment on that grand position of the admirable author of the sublime, that nothing is great, the contempt of which is great. For, how can triumphs, honours, riches, power, conquest, fame, be considered as of

intrinsic value by a Christian, the very essence of whose religion consists in being crucified to the world; the very aim and end of whose religion lies in a superiority to all greatness which is to have an end with this life; the very nature and genius of whose religion tends to prove, that eternal life is the only adequate measure of the happiness, and immortal glory the only adequate object of the ambition, of a Christian?

CHAPTER XI.

English History.-Mr. Hume.

BUT the royal pupil is not to wander always in the wide field of universal history. The extent is so vast, and the time for travelling over it so short, that after being sufficiently possessed of that general view of mankind which the history of the world exhibits, it seems reasonable to concentrate her studies, and to direct her attention to certain great leading points, and especially to those objects with which she has a natural and more immediate connexion. The history of modern Europe abounds. with such objects. In Robertson's luminous view of the state of Europe, the progress of society is traced with just arrangement and philosophical precision. His admirable histories of Charles V. and of Mary Queen of Scots, separate from their great independent merit, will be read with singular advantage in connexion with the contemporary reigns of English history. In the writings of Sully and Clarendon may be seen how, for a long time, the passions of kings were contradicted, and often controlled, by the wisdom of their ministers; sovereigns who were not insensible to praise, nor averse from

flattery, yet submitting, though sometimes with a very ill grace, to receive services rather than adulation ministers who consulted the good rather than the humour of their princes; who promoted their interests, instead of gratifying their vices, and who preferred their fame to their favour.

MR. HUME.

Hume is incomparably the most informing, as well as the most elegant, of all the writers of English history. His narrative is full, well arranged, and beautifully perspicuous. Yet, he is an author who must be read with extreme caution on a political, but especially on a religious account. Though, on occasions where he may be trusted because his peculiar principles do not interfere, his political reflections are usually just, sometimes profound. His account of the origin of the Gothic government is full of interest and information. He marks, with exact precision, the progress and decay of the feudal manners, when law and order began to prevail, and our constitution assumed something like a shape. His finely painted characters of Alfred and Elizabeth should be engraved on the heart of every sovereign. His political prejudices do not strikingly appear till the establishment of the house of Stuart, nor his religious antipathies till about the distant dawn of the Reformation under Henry V. From that period to its full establishment, he is perhaps more dangerous, because less ostensibly daring, than some other infidel historians. It is a serpent under a bed of roses. He does not (in his history at least) so much ridicule religion himself, as invite others to ridicule it. There is in his manner a sedateness which imposes, in his scepticism a sly gravity, which puts the reader more off his guard than the vehemence of censure, or the levity of wit; for we are always less disposed

« AnteriorContinuar »