the influence of the labours of Voss on the whole German nation will be so great, that other nations will feel and acknowledge it.'—pp. 73-75.

Niebuhr's range of knowledge was extraordinary even in a German. He understood all the languages of Europe, he had not even neglected those of the Sclavonic stock, though he did not profess to speak the latter. Of one Sclavonic dialect he gives this remarkable opinion:

'I think the old Sclavonic language, as spoken in Servia, is the most perfect of the living European languages: it has quite the honesty and power of the German language, and a philosophical grammar. The Russians used to laugh at me when they found me studying the Sclavonic languages; so little are they yet a nation as not to love their vernacular tongue.'-p. 114.

His memory was his most surprising intellectual faculty. In this, as M. Lieber justly observes, he resembled Gibbon :

:

• Without a strong memory I never should have been able to write my History, for extracts and notes would not have been sufficient; they would again have formed an inaccessible mass, had I not possessed the index in my mind.'—p. 47.

[When I had just returned from Greece, and described certain spots to him, he would ask for by-ways, remains of wells, paths over high ridges, or other minute details, as if he had been there. As many of the objects for which he asked exist still, and I had seeņ them, I was amazed at his accurate knowledge.]

* Oh, said he, I never forget anything I once have seen, read, or heard.'-p. 94.

Yet with all his vast and cumbrous learning Niebuhr was a cheerful, light-hearted man. At Naples, he delighted in Policinello; and witnessed the long-drawn absorption of macaroni, by that comical worthy Scaramouch, with the greatest glee. M. Lieber, who, although he loves to dabble a little in treasons and conspiracies, has not much of Cassius' vein, observes, that he was a good man, and therefore open to mirth.'

M. Niebuhr's political views, which we should have supposed, from a careful study of his writings, at least sufficiently popular, did not accord with the wild liberalism of his admirer. 'He must be classed with those who look back rather than forward.' In fact, Niebuhr was much inclined to look around him with patriotic gratitude-he saw the beneficial effects arising every day from the parental administration of the Prussian government, and, like a wise man, would receive all the blessings of social order, of peace, of happiness, and intellectual cultivation, even from a despotic hand. Much longer experience in mankind, in mankind at the present day, had taught him to mistrust the clamorous de

magogues, whose highest visions of public liberty continually converge towards their own political power. His heart was with the people, but he disliked modern political principles.' One or two of his political aphorisms appear to us to be marked with true wisdom :

"Whoever has power abuses it; every page of history proves the fact:-individual, body, the people, it is all the same; power is abused; and yet some one or some body must have it. The great problem seems to be to vest it in such a manner that as little mischief can be done as possible. But to effect this, something very different is necessary from merely clipping the wings of power. Injudicious restraint of power leads to as many evil consequences as unlimited power.'— pp. 82, 83.

'Only those who do not know anything of history, or have never observed and studied republics now in existence, can have for a mo. ment the idea that France can become a republic. There is not one of the many necessary materials for building a republic in France. It is utterly impossible; yet there are some crazy brains who wish for a French republic in good faith; many of those who pretend to believe in it know much better.'-pp. 94, 95.

'A constitutional monarchy cannot get along without a considerable influence in the popular branch of the representatives.'-p. 131.

There is not much to be found, nor indeed much to be expected, concerning the religious opinions of Niebuhr in these conversations. What there is appears calm, rational, and tolerant. Niebuhr, on one occasion, alluded to the attacks which had been made against him on this point. The conversation passed to Wolff's Homeric theory. This work, it appears, had been assailed as indicating a spirit of scepticism, which might be applied to writings of higher importance. M. Lieber, by the way, does not seem aware how far German theology has proceeded on substituting 'a number of Mosaic writers for the one deliverer of the Hebrews.' M. Lieber expressed his feelings of bitter disappointment when he was first instructed in Wolff's theory. Niebuhr's answer was in the following words :

'Well, said Mr. Niebuhr, and you know that he was very furiously attacked by some philologists as a barbarian, destroying one of the finest images we had of antiquity. I understand what you felt perfectly well. I felt the same; but truth remains truth, and certainly you would not wish me to withhold results at which I believe I have properly arrived. It appeared to many much more delightful to imagine a separate deity guarding every tree, every flower to be sacred to another god, than to believe in one God ruling over all and every thing should they have rejected him because this belief destroyed the dreams of their childhood? Nothing in this world is easier than to enlist a common and popular prejudice against a man. Be

always

always extremely careful whenever you hear a universal cry against a man for having stated something in religious or scientific matters. As for the fear of criticism, it only shows weakness. I never yet have found a man who feels perfectly secure in his belief, that shuns inquiry into the Bible.'-pp. 106, 107.

On this passage we shall leave the reader to form his own judgment; we would express, however, by the way, our own confidence, that paradoxical opinions, whether in taste or religion, however ingenious or brilliant, will not permanently retain their empire in an inquiring nation like the Germans. We have entered our dissent, we think, on strong and legitimate grounds of reasoning, from Wolff's theory; and we are glad to find a strong reaction in Germany itself on our side of the question. The works of Nitsch (Meletemata de Vita Homeri) are strongly opposed to the Wolffian hypothesis; and a recent very elaborate History of Grecian Poetry, by Dr. Olrici, maintains the old orthodox Homeric faith.

We must, however, extract one more passage on the more delicate and important subject which we are upon. It appears equally candid, rational, and Christian. The conversation turned upon the indulgences of the Church of Rome:

'You know, observed M. Niebuhr, that these indulgences, often granted at once for several thousand years, extend to purgatory, and if you do not stand in need of the whole, you may pass the balance to the favour of whomsoever you see fit. It is these things which make so many Italians atheists. They cannot swallow this, and therefore throw away everything else with it. Matters stand very ill in many Catholic countries on account of these extravagances. In South America hardly any people but women go to mass. And yet a truly pious and devout heart finds its way through all the mazes to God. There are many persons who leave these matters undecided, as every man is obliged to do in numerous cases in life, when, without giving his positive and well-considered assent, he nevertheless does not feel called upon to reform. And not a few of these are among the highest clergy, the popes themselves. But this is not what I wanted to say: I mean, there are some persons who devoutly believe every jot even of these things, and whose hearts nevertheless are pure as snow. There was an old Franciscan formerly here who used to visit us frequently; he is now bishop of Corfu. I believe him as good and truly religious a man as I have ever known,-abounding with the milk of human kindness; and yet he believed in every doctrine and observance of the Roman Church, in all her intolerant mandates against us, and, I have not the slightest doubt, in all the miracles and whatever else his order believes of St. Francis. His natural religious constitution was too strong: I can imagine a saint under his serene image. Marcus was quite little at the time I knew this old man; and

the

the child would often take the cord of the venerable Franciscan, and pull it, as if to play horse with him. I was sometimes afraid it might embarrass him, as being in his eyes somewhat a profanation; but he always smiled with the greatest kindness upon the child. He, I am sure, would not have wished all heretics lost for ever; nor does he probably believe they will be, or feel so; yet he may try to force it upon his mind as an article of his faith. Religion is so ethereal a thing, that as soon as you bring it down to articles of faith, aiming at the consistency which we expect in all other matters, we are led to consequences, some of which one or other cannot make part of his positive and living belief. There are hard things in the articles of the English church, in Calvinism, in the symbolic books (of the Lutherans); but God is wiser than all, and his power reaches hearts everywhere.'-p. 152-155.

It remains to consider Niebuhr in that character which gives dignity and importance to these incidental circumstances of his life, as the historian of Rome. It cannot, however, be expected that we should enter, at present, into any detailed examination, or pass a deliberate judgment on his great work. No writer, we have said, ever so completely concentrated his studies, vast and extensive as they were, on one work, as Niebuhr. Most of his smaller publications converge, as it were, to the history of Rome. The discovery of the Institutes of Caius, at Verona,-the republication of the fragments of classical authors, edited by Maio,most of his papers in the Berlin Transactions, and in the philological journals, bear upon questions connected with Roman History. If God will only grant me a life so long that I may end where Gibbon begins, it is all I pray for.' This sentence, addressed to M. Lieber, forcibly defines the one engrossing object of his literary ambition. Our readers are probably aware how entirely these noble schemes were frustrated. We have only three volumes, containing the dubious and unsatisfactory history of early Rome, down to the last quarter of the fifth century. That this great fragment is a most wonderful work, we need only cite the suffrages of learned men throughout Europe. There can be no doubt that it will remain a lasting record of the vast research, the ingenuity, the sagacity, the fearless destructive energy, the creative genius of the author. It is impossible to read, or rather to study, the work, without admiration, astonishment, and conviction. But when we close it, when our minds are released from the spell of the enchanter, importunate doubts will arise; we cannot but think that, in the reconstruction, at least, of the demolished edifice of old Roman history, much is arbitrary and unsatisfactory. Niebuhr's unrivalled power of combining the most remote facts, collected by microscopic acuteness, from the most remote quarters, and framing

them

them into a consistent and harmonious theory, always commands the attention, and in general captivates the assent; but there is one inextinguishable suspicion which haunts the mind, when it meditates more calmly upon the subject, the improbability that the whole course of ancient Roman history should thus have gone wrong; and that errors which vitiate the whole plan of their history should not only pervade the works of Dionysius and Livy, but that they should be set right by a German of the nineteenth century. That the imaginative mind of the former, and the Greek prejudices of the latter, should have perverted and misled their judgment, is most probable; that their histories of the early periods of Rome are full of romance and fiction, not less so; the difficulty consists not in rejecting as uncertain or apocryphal their system, but in accepting, as of greater authority, that of Niebuhr. Yet when we contemplate again and again the beautiful simplicity of Niebuhr's hypothesis of the Roman and Sabine town, each on its adverse hill, the relations with Etruria, the origin of the Plebs, the ager publicus, the poetical character of much of the earlier annals, it is difficult not to surrender ourselves again in implicit faith to our bold guide over the quaking morass of Roman antiquity. If we might venture to predict, we should incline to the opinion, that some of Niebuhr's discoveries will retain their place in Roman history; others will be rejected, or silently dismissed; if, indeed, Roman history shall ever resume a consistent and authoritative form,-if the ancients and moderns are hereafter to be harmonized by some felicitous haud, which may command the general assent, and perfect the received and popular work on the history of the republic.

For, in truth, this must, sooner or later, be done. It is (as we have elsewhere said) a complete misnomer to call the collections of dissertations, which fill the volumes of Niebuhr, extraordinary as they are, by the name of history. In many places the narrative is altogether omitted,-in some it assumes an abstruse

We were amused by stumbling upon an anticipation of Niebuhr, as to one doubtful point, the existence of the national ballad poetry of the Romans. If we recollect right, he supposes these poems sometimes to have been sung on such great festive occasions as triumphs, and so thought the author of Hudibras: