a systematic form, the outlines of a course of lectures, or of a comprehensive treatise upon the elements and the progress of the civil law, with references, under each particular head of doctrine or history, to the writers by whom it has been most ably treated, as well as to the whole body of collateral and subsidiary literature. (Apparatus Litterarius.) The extent of reading, thus displayed, is prodigious-the volumes of "forgotten teachers,' still studied by a learned Jurisconsult, are innumerable-and in a science condemned by Mr. Hallam to such speedy oblivion, it is quite inconceivable what a monstrous brood of this vain wisdom and false, and what is worse, (if he is right,) most perishable philosophy, has been brought forth, of late, as if in spite of his prediction, by an incessantly teeming press.

The truth is that, at no former period was there ever more ardor and activity displayed in the study of the civil law on the continent of Europe, than at this very time.* A revival in it took place some forty or fifty years ago, when a new and healthier taste for the unique, in art and literature, began to be diffused. It was just then that Hugo first rose into reputation as a professor. The editor of this posthumous edition of Haubold's outlines, in his preface, speaks of it as a return of the age of Cujas. It is even more than that. The great jurisconsults of the present day to equal zeal add more knowledge, that is, more exact and available knowledge, a penetration more refined and distinguishing, and, above all, views of the constitution of society, and of the principles, the spirit, and the influence of legislation, incomparably more profound, comprehensive, and practical. Criticism awoke about the middle of the seventeenth century, yet Bentley was long without a rival-and Niebuhr considers the sagacity of Perizonius, as thrown away upon an age entirely unworthy of it. The example and the lessons of Heyne and Voss have filled Germany with philologists, who have carried into every department of thought and knowledge, but especially those with which historical criticism has any connection, the spirit and the habits of enlightened, searching, and philosophical inquiry. Some of these writers are really great men. Many of their opinions conjectural at best-may, in the progress of science, be qualified or refuted, but their general views are characterized by too much comprehensiveness and wisdom, are too agreeable to the analogies of society and human nature in all ages, to pass away with the fashions of a day.

At the head of these (absit invidia) stands Niebuhr, who, we acknowledge, is, with us, an object of most profound homage. *Cooper. Lettres sur la Chancellerie d'Angleterre, &c. p. 480. (Ed. Bruxelles, 1830.)

+ Eichhorn, Deutsche Staats and Rechts Geschichte, Einleitung, p. 27. Professor Otto of Leipsic.

Römische Geschichte, Vorrede, VIII. (Edit. 1833.)

We have studied his work, as he asks that it shall be studied, and as he professes to have written it, conscientiously, and with perfect freedom from all prejudice; and the result is that, even in the rare cases in which we do not share his conviction, we. feel the force of his reasoning, and admire the depth and soberness of his views. To call him the first of philologists is to do him but very inadequate justice. No such mind was ever produced by a mere scholastic education. Uniting the qualities of Bentley to those of Montesquieu-when Montesquieu is not sacrificing his wisdom to his wit-but, with the additional advantages which both would have derived from the unspeakably instructive experience of the last sixty years, his pages challenge, and will reward, the meditation of the philosophic publicist. We ascribe to him the honor of having brought about a revolution-for it was nothing less-in the history of public law. He was, we believe, the first to lay his hand upon that key of the Past-the effect of races upon the revolutions of society, and the character of governments-of which Thierry has since made so striking an application in his History of the Norman Conquest, and his Letters on the History of France. It is not for his doubts, as some seem to think, but for his discoveries, that he is entitled to the thanks and admiration of the learned-not for what he has done to discredit the magnificent romance of Livy, (for the barren scepticism of Beaufort was equal to that,) but for what only such a combination, as has scarcely ever been seen in any single individual, of immense erudition, unwearied industry, and incessant vigilance of research, with matchless critical sagacity, could have enabled him to accomplish, towards explaining what was obscure, reconciling what was contradictory, completing what was defective, and correcting-often out of his own mouth-what was mistaken, or misstated, in Dionysius of Halicarnassus. His examination of this writer, for the most part the only witness we have to vouch for the antiquities of Rome, is a master-piece of its kind, and rivals the highest acumen and address of the bar. He sees intuitively when his author tells the truth, as sometimes happens, without knowing it, or knows the truth without telling it. He has an infallible instinct, in divining what is half revealed in a corrupt text, or in making an intelligible and consistent whole. out of fragments separately dark, or not apparently related to one another. His conjectural emendations and reasonings à priori, always cautious, are rendered sure by his habitually patient and comprehensive inductions, and the immense command of analogy and illustration with which his various knowledge supplies him. Enabled by such means to anticipate what the truth ought to be, he detects it in the most blundering or perverted statement, turns to account every casual and distant hint, VOL. 1.-64

and attaches to words uttered in one sense by the writer, a meaning entirely different from his own, yet more probable in itself, and serving, perhaps, to clear up parts of his narrative, otherwise incongruous or unintelligible. It is not, we repeat it, the negative but the positive part of his work that entitles it to its great reputation. It is a mighty creation, or if we may borrow a thought from an old writer, it is more, it is raising the dead. Niebuhr, himself, compares the task of the philologist in this restoration, or anamorphosis of the history of the past, to that of the naturalist gathering and putting together the fossil bones of a lost species of animal. It is thus that he has rebuilt, with fragments picked up here and there where they lay scattered about, as by a tempest, over the whole surface of ancient literature, the sacerdotal and patrician City of the Kings, in its old Cyclopean strength and massiveness, and the awful forms of Tuscan mystery and superstition. It is thus that you are made to see the Eternal City, already with her triple crown-not mystical-of gentes-three privileged tribes of various origin, greater and lesser-incorporated successively into one people, and constituting, in legal contemplation before the legislation of Servius Tullius, the whole people-while the noble plebs, the city of Ancus Martius, the people of the Aventine, never equalled by any other but the commons of England, excluded from the rights of citizenship, is, for centuries together, fighting its way, like the Saxons under their Norman lords, into the pale of the constitution, and a full participation in its benefits. Never was more laborious and patient learning tasked to supply materials for the conception of genius, and the conclusions of philosophy, and never were such materials wrought by the hand of genius and philosophy into a more solid and stately fabric.

If Niebuhr had done nothing but rebuild the ancient city, and reveal, for the first time, to the light of history-of that history of the life and forms of a community which may so long precede, as he well remarks, all knowledge of individuals-the "buried majesty" of Rome, he had rendered an immense service. The Kings lived with honor in the traditions of the republic; each of them was the personification of some commanding or venerable attribute; war, religion, legislation, conquest, heroic virtues, sometimes heroic crimes, were ascribed to them in the popular legends. Servius Tullius, especially, identified with a revolution so favorable to the classes lying under political disabilities, as to produce, by its very excess, a reaction, followed by two centuries of perpetual struggle and contention to overcome it-made a great figure in their Romancero. To write the history of this period

* R. G. B. III. 135.

+ See the almost demagogical harangue put into his mouth by Dionysius, 1. IV. c. 8. [Cf. Cujacii Observat. 1. III. c. 2.]

was to explain that of the following, as on the contrary, the history of the following period confirms, by conformity, Niebuhr's views of this. His theory accounts for the phenomena, and is the only one that will do so. For two centuries and a half the people lived under the influence and the discipline of a patriarchal and limited monarchy, or Archonship: the national character was formed,-the great outlines of the constitution were traced, the spirit of the laws, and, no doubt, most of their particular provisions, as they were afterwards recorded in the XII Tables, were developed and settled,-in short, the future destinies of Rome may be said to have been already decided at the expulsion of the Tarquins. The Kings had governed strenuously; they had waged many and successful wars; and their grandeur is still attested by works unrivalled, even by those of the Cæsars. Nothing could be more justly the subject of regret, than the absence of all clear historical light (and satisfactory, though but conjectural) on so interesting and critical a period of Roman annals. The childhood and youth of the heroic city, like those of Mahomet, were hidden from our view, and lost to the purposes of instruction, and nothing but what was fabulous and distorted was known of her, until she sprang forth from behind this veil of myths, full-grown and ready armed for the fulfilment of her great mission, the conquest, the civilization, and, ultimately, the conversion of the world. By his account of the three different races which form this people, and especially of the connection with Tuscany-of the corporate existence, and exclusive privileges of the gentes, under a senate made up of their chiefs, and a president elected for life (the King)-of the somewhat undefined, but certainly intimate and controlling relation of the patron to his clients, retainers of the patricians to be carefully distinguished from the plebs-of the peculiar characteristics of that plebs, the whole infantry of the legion, led by the Sicinii and the Icilii, men as noble as the Claudii or the Quinctii, who denied them, through constitutional disabilities, the fruits of their valorof the neri, the ager publicus, the usury laws, and the influence, so inconceivably important, of the Augur and the Pontiff, the auspices and the calendar,t we have problem after problem of Roman history and legislation, solved in the most natural and satisfactory manner. Freed from the shallow and delusive common-places of monarchy and republic, of aristocracy and democracy, of positive legislation, and governments arbitrarily adopted-ideas and language of what was called the philosophy of the

Dionys. III. 67. [The Capitol. Tac. Hist. 3. 72.|

See the speech of App. Claudius against opening the consulship to the Plebs, on the single ground that they had no auspices. Liv. VI. 41.

The coincidence of our own opinions on the subject of Niebuhr's services with those of such a writer as Schlosser, not a little confirms our conviction of their justness. See his admirable Geschichte der Alten Welt, Th. II. abth. I. C. 2. pp. 253, and especially 281, note f. (edit. Frankfort, 1828).

eighteenth century, indiscriminately and absurdly applied to the institutions of all others--we now see the mixed constitution of Rome rationally, that is to say, historically accounted for. We see it, like that of England, under circumstances strikingly similar, developing itself through perpetual (though not, as in the case of England, bloody) conflicts, and successive compromises, between different, yet kindred, nations,* inhabiting the same territory, without being members of the same commonwealththe minority in possession of the state continually yielding something to their determined, persevering, multiplying, and yet singularly potent and moderate adversaries, until they are melted into one body politic and one people. These struggles were a discipline that fashioned both parties to stern virtues, and an excitement that stimulated them to heroic exertion. They were struggles for law and justice-for constitutional privilege on the one side, and for natural rights on the other. In such a school, the great legislators and conquerors of the world might well be trained, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus has not failed to embellish his account of contests so fruitful of good, with discussions of public law, in orations imputed to the great names of those times, profound and elaborate enough to satisfy a Greek, a phi losopher, and a rhetorician of the age of Augustus.

It is not, therefore, to be wondered at, that Hugo, among the advantages which he mentions as calculated to animate the zeal of the civilian in the present times, should give a decided prominency to Niebuhr's history.+ But the other helps to a more accurate knowledge of the Roman law, than it was possible to acquire a century ago, are neither few nor inconsiderable. Niebuhr himself seems to regard it as a sort of special providence for the success of philology in this age, that, just as a new spirit of inquiry had been awakened, the discovery of Cicero's republic, and of the real Gaius, should have occurred to excite and to aid it in its enterprises. But here, as in so many other analogous cases, it is difficult to say whether this discovery stands in the relation of cause or effect to the zeal which it furnishes so opportunely with a powerful instrument. It is now very well settled that the Florentine copy of the Pandects had nothing to do with the revival of the study of the Roman law, however effective it was in promoting its progress; but, on the contrary, nothing seems to us more probable than that the revival of that study was the means of bringing to light and preserving this solitary and precious manuscript. It is not at all surprising that a new school of philology, pronouncing the knowledge of Antiquity still in its

*Tà vn is the very expression of Dionysius, X. 60. Speaking of the prohibition of mixed marriages in the two last Tables of the Decemvirs.

+ P. 55. Yet Hugo seems to us, more than once in the course of this work, to "hint a fault, and, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer," when he speaks of Niebuhr's ideas as more approved by jurisconsults than by historians. p. 56.