her triumphs. Men just, and wise, and virtuous, and kind, in the relations of private life, went forth as the willing servants of her ambitious greatness; and, in the midst of her longcontinued victory, felt their spirits elated and sustained by love of that country which knew no law but the desire of still-spreading dominion. Their justice and their wisdom lay prostrate under the delusive imagination of a sacred right in that country to command their obedience-under the belief that the gods befriended, and fate had decreed her greatness. They bowed down, in the worship of their souls, before that majestic greatness which was to overshadow land after land; and knew of no right violated, and no duty left undone, while keeping their allegiance, they obeyed her fierce mandates to subdue or to destroy. One image was in their souls: Rome, great and glorious, fulfilling her conquering destinies. To that they devoted their unprized life. In that they were content to find their perpetual fame. In that they accomplished the law of their severe and arduous virtue. When we remember what men they were whom that high and "palmy state" sent forth to execute her triumphs, our mind is filled with wonder, in contemplating the lofty character of their invincible souls; when we consider in what service they grew to their lofty stature, our wonder is augmented; but it may cease, if we consider the power which imagination may hold over the whole spirit of a magnanimous and mighty people; and when we consider what was that awful idea of their country, which held bound, as under a spell, the imagination of the whole Roman race. Their great poet has, indeed, admirably expressed the conception of this neverforgotten principle of Roman minds, this ruling purpose and belief of their spirits through all time, when he has led the founder of the line into the shades, and there his father, the old Anchises, shows him the future heroes of his race, the spirits of the unborn warriors of Rome, and, prophetically describing their fame, he breaks out at last into an inspired exclamation which might seem as directing, with oracular power and preternatural command, the spirit of their deeds through their victorious career of ages to come. "Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento. Hæ tibi erunt artes; pacisque imponere morem, Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos." This conception of the City of Mars, as of a power endowed for conquest and dominion, seems to have been perpetually present to the imagination of those great spirits, and to have transformed the virtue of their heroic patriotism, into the service of a gigantic and unprincipled ambition. Perhaps the "Prophecy of Capys" is the loftiest Lay of the Four. The child of Mars, and foster-son of the she-wolf, is wonderfully well exhibited throughout in his hereditary qualities; and grandly in the Triumph, where the exultation breaks through, that all this gold and silver is sub servient to the Roman steel-all the skill and craft of refinement and ingenuity must obey the voice of Roman valour. There are many such things scattered up and down Horace's Odes; but we can scarcely remember any that are more spirited, more racy, or more characteristic, than these Lays; and perhaps the nobility of the early Roman character is as fondly admired and fitly appreciated by an English freeman, as by a courtier of the reign of Augustus. "Thine, Roman, is the pilum: Roman, the sword is thine, The even trench, the bristling mound, The legion's order'd line; And thine the wheels of triumph, Which, with their laurell'd train, Move slowly up the shouting streets To Jove's eternal fane. "Beneath thy yoke the Volscian Shall quake thy rods to see; "The Gaul shall come against thee To the raven and the kite. "The Greek shall come against thee, The conqueror of the East. Beside him stalks to battle The huge earth-shaking beast, The beast on whom the castle With all its guards doth stand, The beast who hath between his eyes "The ranks of false Tarentum On the fat and the eyes Of the huge earth-shaking beast. "Hurrah! for the good weapons That keep the War-god's land. Hurrah! for Rome's stout pilum In a stout Roman hand. Hurrah! for Rome's short broadsword, That through the thiek array Of levelled spears and serried shields Hews deep its gory way. "Hurrah! for the great triumph Is not the gown wash'd white? "Hurrah! for the great triumph Torn from the pheasant's wings, The goblets rough with gold, The many-colour'd tablets bright With loves and wars of old, The stone that breathes and struggles, The brass that seems to speak ;Such cunning they who dwell on high Have given unto the Greek. "Hurrah! for Manius Curius, And twine the third green crown; L "Blest and thrice blest the Roman "Then where, o'er two bright havens, Of dark-red colonnades; Shelter'd from waves and blasts, Bristles the dusky forest Of Byrsa's thousand masts; Where fur-clad hunters wander Amidst the Northern ice; Where through the sand of morning-land The camel bears the spice; Where Atlas flings his shadow Far o'er the Western foam, Shall be great fear on all who hear The mighty name of Rome." It is a great merit of these poems, that they are free from ambition or exaggeration. Nothing seems over. done-no tawdry piece of finery disfigures the simplicity of the plan that has been chosen. They seem to have been framed with great artistical skill -with much self-denial, and abstinence from any thing incongruousand with a very successful imitation of the effects intended to be represented. Yet every here and there images of beauty, and expressions of feeling, are thrown out that are wholly independent of Rome or the Romans, and that appeal to the widest sensibilities of the human heart. In point of homeliness of thought and language, there is often a boldness which none but a man conscious of great powers of writing would have ventured to show. In these rare qualities, "The Lays of Ancient Rome" resemble Lockhart's " Spanish Ballads," which must have been often ringing in Macaulay's ears, since first he caught their inspiring music more than twenty years ago-when, "like a burnished fly in pride of May," he bounced through the open windows of " Knight's Quarterly Magazine." Two such volumes all a summer's day you may seek without finding among the works! of "our Young Poets." People do not call Lockhart and Macaulay poets at all for both have acquired an inveterate habit of writing prose in preference to verse, and first-rate prose too; but then the genius of the one man is as different as may be from that of the other-agreeing, however, in this, that each exhibits bone and muscle sufficient, if equitably distributed among ten " Young Poets," to set them up among the "rural villages" as strong men, who might even occasionally exhibit in booths as giants. INDEX TO VOL. LII. ABEKEN'S Cicero, strictures on, 4, 6. Affghanistan and India, review of the Albigenses, Crusade against the, 534. Dickens's, review of, 783. Schiller. Christian Pilgrim, a Poem, by Edmund Cicero, 1-importance of his era, ib.- Colonies and Colonization, Merivale on, Colonization of Cabool, proposed scheme Barbarossa of Algiers, Career of, 184. El Empecinado, 75. Breadth and Depth, from Schiller, 455. Caleb Stukely, Part V. Home Revisited, Carnival, Recollections of the, 405. Cassandra, from the German of Schiller, 573. Chap. II. 595-Chap. III. 600. Dithyramb, from Schiller, 581. Duel, the, an incident of the Carlist war, Early Reading, Recollections of, a Psy- El Empecinado, passages in the career Employer and the Employed, the, 642. Europe, Alison's History of, during the Evening, from the German of Schiller, 296. Fêtes and Diversions among the Basques, Feudalism, Reign of, in France, 531. Foreign Trade, 462. Forum of Women, from Schiller, 761. France, Michelet's History of, Part I. Fridolin; or, the Message to the Forge, Funerals, 87. Girandola, the, 408. Glove, the, a tale, from Schiller, 287. Greece, present state of, 120. Greek Revolution, an adventure during Hero and Leander, a ballad from Schiller, History of Europe during the French Re- History of France, Michelet's, Part I. 386. Homer's Hymns, translations of by the Honours, from the German of Schiller, 453. Hope, from the German of Schiller, 452. 284. Income Tax Act, defence of the, 146. Indian's Death Song, the, from Schiller, Italy, Sketches of, Part V. Verona, 159- Jesuits at Rome, the, 404. 453. Khonds, manners and habits of the, 177. Knights of St John, the, from Schiller, Landor, Walter Savage, Imaginary Con- Lay of the League, a, 640. Lay of the Mountains, the, from Schiller, Lays of Ancient Rome, by T. B. Macau- Light and Colour, from Schiller, 453- ing the Hospitals, 85-Funerals, 87- London, the Stranger in, a Tale, 740. Macbeth, Critique on, 368. Maiden from Afar, the, from Schiller, 581. Maiden's Lament, the, from Schiller, 447. 565. Mantua, 164. |