affliction which he has been forced to add to the fatal impulse of the original character, show, more strongly than any thing else, the radical difference between the ancient and the modern conception of the passion.

the Chorus;-but the herocs themselves act always by the order of the Gods. Accordingly, the authors of the most atrocious actions are seldom represented in the Greek tragedies as properly guilty, but only as piacular;-and The Political institutions of Greece had also their general moral is rather, that the Gods a remarkable effect on their literature; and are omnipotent, than that crimes should give nothing can show this so strongly as the strik-rise to punishment and detestation. ing contrast between Athens and Spartaplaced under the same sky-with the same language and religion-and yet so opposite in their government and in their literary pursuits. The ruling passion of the Athenians was that of amusement; for, though the emulation of glory was more lively among them than among any other people, it was still subordinate to their rapturous admiration of successful talent. Their law of ostracism is a proof, how much they were afraid of their own propensity to idolize. They could not ast themselves in the presence of one who had become too popular. This propensity also has had a sensible effect upon their poetry; and it should never be forgotten, that it was not composed to be read and studied and criticized in the solitude of the closet, like the works that have been produced since the invention of printing; but to be recited to music, before multitudes assembled at feasts and high solemnities, where every thing favoured the kindling and diffusion of that enthusiasm, of which the history now seems to us so incredible.

There is a separate chapter on the Greek drama-which is full of brilliant and original observations; though we have already anticipated the substance of many of them. The great basis of its peculiarity, was the constant interposition of the Gods. Almost all the violent passions are represented as the irresistible inspirations of a superior power; almost all their extraordinary actions as the fulfilment of an oracle-the accomplishment of an unrelenting destiny. This probably added to the awfulness and terror of the representation, in an audience which believed implicitly in the reality of those dispensations. But it has impaired their dramatic excellence, by dispensing them too much from the necessity of preparing their catastrophes by a gradation of natural events, the exact delineation of character,-and the touching representation of those preparatory struggles which precede a resolution of horror. Orestes kills his mother, and Electra encourages him to the deed,-without the least indication, in either, of that poignant remorse which afterwards avenges the parricide. No modern dramatist could possibly have omitted so important and natural a part of the exhibition;but the explanation of it is found at once in the ruling superstition of the age. Apollo had commanded the murder-and Orestes could not hesitate to obey. When it is committed, the Furies are commissioned to pursue him; and the audience shudders with reverential awe at the torments they inflict on their victim. Human sentiments, and human motives, have but little to do in bringing about these catastrophes. They are sometimes suggested by

A great part of the effect of these represen tations must have depended on the exclusive nationality of their subjects, and the extreme nationality of their auditors; though it is a striking remark of Madame de Staël, that the Greeks, after all, were more national than republican,-and were never actuated with that profound hatred and scorn of tyranny which afterwards exalted the Roman character. Almost all their tragic subjects, accordingly, are taken from the misfortunes of kings;—of kings descended from the Gods, and upon whose genealogy the nation still continued to pride itself. The fate of the Tarquins could never have been regarded at Rome as a worthy occasion either of pity or horror. Republican sentiments are occasionally introduced into the Greek Choruses; though we cannot agree with Madame de Staël in considering these musical bodies as intended to represent the people.

It is in their comedy, that the defects of the Greek literature are most conspicuous. The world was then too young to supply its materials. Society had not existed long enough, either to develop the finer shades of character in real life, or to generate the talent of observing, generalizing, and representing them. The national genius, and the form of government, led them to delight in detraction and popular abuse; for though they admired and applauded their great men, they had not in their hearts any great respect for them; and the degradation or seclusion in which they kept their women, took away almost all interest or elegance from the intercourse of private life, and reduced its scenes of gaiety to those of coarse debauch, or broad and humourous derision. The extreme coarseness and vulgarity of Aristophanes, is apt to excite our wonder, when we first consider him as the contemporary of Euripides, and Socrates, and Platobut the truth is, that the Athenians, after all, were but an ordinary populace as to moral delicacy and social refinement. Enthusiasm, and especially the enthusiasm of superstition and nationality, is as much a passion of the vulgar, as a delight in ribaldry and low buffoonery. The one was gratified by their tragedy;-and the comedy of Aristophanes was exactly calculated to give delight to the other. In the end, however, their love of buffoonery and detraction unfortunately proved too strong for their nationality. When Philip was at their gates, all the eloquence of Demosthenes could not rouse them from their theatrical dissipations. The great danger which they always apprehended to their liberties, was from the excessive power and popularity of one of their own great men; and, by a singular fatality, they perished, from a profligate indifference and insensibility to the charms of patriotism and greatness.

In philosophy, Madame de Staël does not of letters with philosophy; and the cause of rank the Greeks very high. The greater part this peculiarity is very characteristic of the of them, indeed, were orators and poets, nation. They had subsisted longer, and efrather than profound thinkers, or exact in- fected more, without literature, than any other quirers. They discoursed rhetorically upon people on record. They had become a great vague and abstract ideas; and, up to the time state, wisely constituted and skilfully adminof Aristotle, proceeded upon the radical error istered, long before any one of their citizens of substituting hypothesis for observation. had ever appeared as an author. The love That eminent person first showed the use and of their country was the passion of each indithe necessity of analysis; and did infinitely vidual-the greatness of the Roman name the more for posterity than all the mystics that object of their pride and enthusiasm. Studies went before him. As their states were small, which had no reference to political objects, and their domestic life inelegant, men seem therefore, could find no favour in their eyes; to have been considered almost exclusively and it was from their subserviency to popular in their relations to the public. There is, and senatorial oratory, and the aid which they accordingly, a noble air of patriotism and de- promised to afford in the management of facvotedness to the common weal in all the mo- tions and national concerns, that they were rality of the ancients; and though Socrates first led to listen to the lessons of the Greek set the example of fixing the principles of philosophers Nothing else could have invirtue for private life, the ethics of Plato, and duced Cato to enter upon such a study at such Xenophon, and Zeno, and most of the other an advanced period of life. Though the Rophilosophers, are little else than treatises of mans borrowed their philosophy from the political duties. In modern times, from the Greeks, however, they made much more use prevalence of monarchical government, and of it than their masters. They carried into the great extent of societies, men are very their practice much of what the others congenerally loosened from their relations with tented themselves with setting down in their the public, and are but too much engrossed books; and thus came to attain much more with their private interests and affections. precise notions of practical duty, than could This may be venial, when they merely forget ever be invented by mere discoursers. The the state, by which they are forgotten; but philosophical writings of Cicero, though init is base and fatal, when they are guided by cumbered with the subtleties of his Athenthose interests in the few public functions they ian preceptors, contain a much more complete have still to perform. After all, the morality code of morality than is to be found in all the of the Greeks was very clumsy and imperfect. volumes of the Greeks-though it may be In political science, the variety of their govern- doubted, whether his political information and ments, and the perpetual play of war and nego-acuteness can be compared with that of Aristiation, had made them more expert. Their totle. It was the philosophy of the Stoics, historians narrate with spirit and simplicity; and this is their merit. They make scarcely any reflections; and are marvellously indifferent as to vice or virtue. They record the most atrocious and most heroic actions-the most disgusting crimes and most exemplary generosity with the same tranquil accuracy with which they would describe the succession of storms and sunshine. Thucydides is somewhat of a higher pitch; but the immense difference between him and Tacitus proves, better perhaps than any general reasoning, the progress which had been made in the interim in the powers of reflection and observation; and how near the Greeks, with all their boasted attainments, should be placed to the intellectual infancy of the species. In all their productions, indeed, the fewness of their ideas is remarkable; and their most impressive writings may be compared to the music of certain rude nations, which produces the most astonishing effects by the combination of not more than four or five simple notes.

Madame de Staël now proceeds to the Romans-who will not detain us by any means so long. Their literature was confessedly borrowed from that of Greece; for little is ever invented, where borrowing will serve the purpose: But it was marked with several distinctions, to which alone it is now necessary to attend. In the first place--and this is very remarkable the Romans, contrary to the custom of all other nations, began their career

however, that gained the hearts of the Romans; for it was that which fell in with their national habits and dispositions.

The same character and the same national institutions that led them to adopt the Greek philosophy instead of their poetry, restrained them from the imitation of their theatrical excesses. As their free government was strictly aristocratical, it could never permit its legitimate chiefs to be held up to mockery on the stage, as the democratical licence of the Athenians held up the pretenders to their favour. But, independently of this, the severer dignity of the Roman character, and the deeper respect and prouder affection they entertained for all that exalted the glory of their country, would at all events have interdicted such indecorous and humiliating exhibitions. The comedy of Aristophanes never could have been tolerated at Rome; and though Plautus and Terence were allowed to imitate, or rather to translate, the more inoffensive dramas of a later age, it is remarkable, that they seldom ventured to subject even to that mitigated and more general ridicule any one invested with the dignity of a Roman citizen. The manners represented are almost entirely Greek manners; and the ridiculous parts are almost without any exception assigned to foreigners, and to persons of a servile condition. Women were, from the beginning, of more account in the estimation of the Romans than of the Greeks though their province was still strict

ly domestic, and did not extend to what, in repressed in a good degree by the remains of modern times, is denominated society. With their national austerity, there is also a great all the severity of their character, the Romans deal more tenderness of affection. In spite had much more real tenderness than the of the pathos of some scenes in Euripides, Greeks, though they repressed its external and the melancholy passion of some fragindications, as among those marks of weak-ments of Simonides and Sappho, there is noness which were unbecoming men intrusted with the interests and the honour of their country. Madame de Staël has drawn a pretty picture of the parting of Brutus and Portia; and contrasted it, as a specimen of national character, with the Grecian group of Pericles pleading for Aspasia. The general observation, we are persuaded, is just; but the examples are not quite fairly chosen. Brutus is a little too good for an average of Roman virtue. If she had chosen Mark Antony, or Lepidus, the contrast would have been less brilliant. The self-control which their principles required of them-the law which they had imposed on themselves, to have no indulgence for suffering in themselves or in others, excluded tragedy from the range of their literature. Pity was never to be recognized by a Roman, but when it came in the shape of a noble clemency to a vanquished foe;—and wailings and complaints were never to disgust the ears of men, who knew how to act and to suffer in tranquillity. The very frequency of suicide in Rome, belonged to this characteristic. There was no other alternative, but to endure firmly, or to die-nor were importunate lamentations to be endured from one who was free to quit life whenever he could not bear it without murmuring.

thing at all like the fourth book of Virgil, the Alcmene, and Baucis and Philemon of Óvid, and some of the elegies of Tibullus, in the whole range of Greek literature. The memory of their departed freedom, too, conspired to give an air of sadness to much of the Roman poetry, and their feeling of the lateness of the age in which they were born. The Greeks thought only of the present and the future; but the Romans had begun already to live in the past, and to make pensive reflections on the faded glory of mankind. The historians of this classic age, though they have more of a moral character than those of Greece, are still but superficial teachers of wisdom. Their narration is more animated, and more pleasingly dramatised, by the orations with which it is interspersed;-but they have neither the profound reflection of Tacitus, nor the power of explaining great events by general causes, which distinguishes the writers of modem times.

The atrocious tyranny that darkened the earlier ages of the empire, gave rise to the third school of Roman literature. The sufferings to which men were subjected, turned their thoughts inward on their own hearts; and that philosophy which had first been courted as the handmaid of a generous ambition, was now sought as a shelter and consolation in misery. The maxims of the Stoics were again revived,-not, indeed, to stimulate to noble exertion, but to harden against misfortune. Their lofty lessons of virtue were again repeated-but with a bitter accent of despair and reproach; and that indulgence, or indifference towards vice, which had characterised the first philosophers, was now con

What has been said relates to the literature of republican Rome. The usurpation of Augustus gave a new character to her genius; and brought it back to those poetical studies with which most other nations have begun. The cause of this, too, is obvious. While liberty survived, the study of philosophy and oratory and history was but as an instrument in the hands of a liberal and patriotic ambi-verted, by the terrible experience of its evils, tion, and naturally attracted the attention of all whose talents entitled them to aspire to the first dignities of the state. After an absolute government was established, those high prizes were taken out of the lottery of life; and the primitive uses of those noble instruments expired. There was no longer any safe or worthy end to be gained, by influencing the conduct, or fixing the principles of men. But it was still permitted to seek their applause by ministering to their delight; and talent and ambition, when excluded from the nobler career of political activity, naturally sought for a humbler harvest of glory in the cultivation of poetry, and the arts of imagination. The poetry of the Romans, however, derived this advantage from the lateness of its origin, that it was enriched by all that knowledge of the human heart, and those habits of reflection, which had been generated by the previous study of philosophy. There is uniformly more thought, therefore, and more development, both of reason and of moral feeling, in the poets of the Augustan age, than in any of their Greek predecessors; and though

into vehement and gloomy invective. Seneca, Tacitus, Epictetus, all fall under this description; and the same spirit is discernible in Juvenal and Lucan. Much more profound views of human nature, and a far greater moral sensibility characterise this age, and show that even the unspeakable degradation to which the abuse of power had then sunk the mistress of the world, could not arrest altogether that intellectual progress which gathers its treasures from all the varieties of human fortune. Quintilian and the two Plinys afford further evidence of this progress; for they are, in point of thought and accuracy, and profound sense, conspicuously superior to any writers upon similar subjects in the days of Augustus. Poetry and the fine arts languished, indeed, under the rigours of this blasting despotism;-and it is honourable, on the whole, to the memory of their former greatness, that so few Roman poets should have sullied their pens by any traces of adulation towards the monsters who then sat in the place of power.

We pass over Madame de Staël's view of

the middle ages, and of the manner in which | la fin de l'existence, et laisser voir encore le même

the mixture of the northern and southern races tableau sous le crêpe funebre du temps. ameliorated the intellect and the morality of plus grands charmes de quelques ouvrages mo. Une sensibilité rêveuse et profonde est un des both. One great cause of their mutual im- dernes; et ce sont les femmes qui, ne connoissant provement, however, she truly states to have de la vie que la faculté d'aimer, ont fait passer la been the general prevalence of Christianity; douceur de leurs impressions dans le style de quel. which, by the abolition of domestic slavery, ques écrivains. En lisant les livres composés de. removed the chief cause, both of the corrup- puis la renaissance des lettres, l'on pourroit martion and the ferocity of ancient manners. By quer à chaque page, qu'elles sont les idées qu'on investing the conjugal union, too, with a sacred n'avoit pas, avant qu'on eût accordé aux femmes une sorte d'égalité civile. La générosité, la valeur, character of equality, it at once redressed the l'humanité, ont pris à quelques égards une acceplong injustice to which the female sex had tion différente. Toutes les vertus des anciens been subjected, and blessed and gladdened étoient fondées sur l'amour de la patrie; les femmes private life with a new progeny of joys, and a La pitié pour la foiblesse, la sympathie pour le mal. exercent leurs qualités d'une manière indépendante. new fund of knowledge of the most interest-heur, une élévation d'ame, sans autre but que la ing description. Upon a subject of this kind, jouissance même de cette élévation, sont beaucoup we naturally expect a woman to express her- plus dans leur nature que les vertus politiques. Les self with peculiar animation; and Madame modernes, influencés par les femmes, ont facilede Staël has done it ample justice in the fol- ment cédé aux liens de la philanthropie; et l'esprit lowing, and in other passages. est devenue plus philosophiquement libre, en se livrant moins à l'empire des associations exclusives." pp. 212-215.

It is principally to this cause that she ascribes the improved morality of modern times. The improvement of their intellect she refers more generally to the accumulation of knowledge, and the experience of which they have had the benefit. Instead of the eager spirit of emulation, and the unweighed and rash enthusiasm which kindled the genius of antiquity into a sort of youthful or instinctive animation, we have a spirit of deep reflection, and a feeling of mingled melancholy and philanthropy, inspired by a more intimate knowledge of the sufferings, the affections, and the frailties of human nature. There is a certain touching and pathetic tone, therefore, diffused over almost all modern writings of the higher order; and in the art of agitating the soul, and moving the gentler affections of the heart, there is nothing in all antiquity that can be considered as belonging to the same class with the writings of Bossuet or Rousseau-many passages in the English poets-and some few in those

"C'est donc alors que les femmes commencèrent à être de moitié dans l'association humaine. C'est alors aussi que l'on connut véritablement le bonheur domestique. Trop de puissance déprave la bonté, altère toutes les jouissances de la délicatesse; les vertus et les sentimens ne peuvent résister d'une part à l'exercice du pouvoir, de l'autre à l'habitude de la crainte. La félicité de l'homme s'accrut de toute l'indépendance qu'obtint l'objet de sa ten dresse; il put se croire aimé; un être libre le choisit; un être libre obéit à ses desirs. Les apperçus de l'esprit, les nuances senties par le cœur se multiplièrent avec les idées et les impressions de ces ames nouvelles, qui s'essayoient à l'existence morale, après avoir long-temps langui dans la vie. Les femmes n'ont point composé d'ouvrages véritablement supérieurs; mais elles n'en ont pas moins éminemment servi les progres de la littérature, par la foule de pensées qu'ont inspirées aux hommes les relations entretenues avec ces êtres mobiles et delicats. Tous les rapports se sont doublés, pour ainsi dire, depuis que les objets ont été considérés sous un point de vue tout-à-fait nouveau. La confiance d'un lien intime en a plus appris sur la nature morale, que tous les traités et tous les systêmes qui peignoient l'homme tel qu'il se montre à l'homme, et non tel qu'il est réellement,”—pp. 197, 198. "Les femmes ont découvert dans les caractères une foule de nuances, que le besoin de dominer ou la crainte d'être asservies leur a fait appercevoir: of Germany. The sciences, of course, have elles ont fourni au talent dramatique de nouveaux made prodigious advances; for in these nothsecrets pour émouvoir. Tous les sentimens aux-ing once gained can be lost,-and the mere quels il leur est permis de se livrer, la crainte de la elapse of ages supposes a vast accumulation. mort, le regret de la vie, le dévouement sans In morals, the progress has been greatest in bornes, l'indignation sans mesure, enrichissent la the private virtues-in the sacred regard for littérature d'expressions nouvelles. De-là vient que les moralistes modernes ont en général beau- life-in compassion, sympathy, and beneficoup plus de finesse et de sagacité dans la connois- cence. Nothing, indeed, can illustrate the sance des hommes, que les moralistes de l'antiquité. difference of the two systems more strikingly, Quiconque, chez les anciens, ne pouvoit atteindre à than the opposite views they take of the rela renommée, n'avoit aucun motif de développe-lation of parent and child. Filial obedience ment. Depuis qu'on est deux dans la vie domestique, les communications de l'esprit et l'exercice de la morale existent toujours, au moins dans un petit cercle; les enfans sont devenus plus chers à leur parens, par la tendresse réciproque qui forme le lien conjugal; et toutes les affections ont pris l'empreinte de cette divine alliance de l'amour et de l'amitié, de l'estime et de l'attrait, de la confiance méritée et de la séduction involontaire.

"Un âge aride, que la gloire et la vertu pouvoient honorer, mais qui ne devoit plus être ranimé par les émotions du cœur, la vieillesse s'est enrichie de toutes les pensées de la mélancolie; il lui a été donné de se ressouvenir, de regretter, d'aimer encore ce qu'elle avoit aimé. Les affections morales, unies, dès la jeunesse, aux passions brilantes, peuvent se prolonger par de nobles traces jusqu'à

and submission was enjoined by the ancient code with a rigour from which reason and justice equally revolt. According to our present notions, parental love is a duty of at least mutual obligation; and as nature has placed the power of showing kindness almost exclusively in the hands of the father, it seems but reasonable that the exercise of it should at last be enjoined as a duty.

Madame de Stael begins her review of modern literature with that of Italy. It was there that the manuscripts-the monuments

the works of art of the imperial nation, were lost;-and it was there, of course, that