COPYISTS OF ANTIQUITY. 38 35 affording not only a language, but sentiments and ideas borrowed from the ancient world*-in Legislation, as modelling the Visigoth in the likeness of the Theodosian law + -selecting from the Pandects of Justinian to frame the Etablissemens of St. Louis-diverting even the jurists of the empire from their native Teutonic fountains, and rearing upon a classic foundation the three great codes of modern Europe, the Landrecht of Prussia, the Gezetzbuch of Austria, and the Code Napoleon of revolutionary France. § Societies and individuals have indifferently partaken of this tendency. Italian Republics of the fifteenth century, though mistaken as to their models, did their best to produce facsimiles of the municipal glories of consular Rome.|| Lorenzo de Medici emulated Pericles. Charles XII. copied Alexander. Clarendon, describing the commotions in which he was himself an actor, derived his motto, style, and the spirit of his narrative from Thucydides. So also the relics of Greek art inspired its Italian revival. The recovery of Greek literature gave an Aristotelian frame-work to the subtleties of the schoolmen-an Alexandrine garb to Mirandola and Ficinus; T and respectively in forms of expression or in modes of thought examples to the Renaissance and an impulse to the Reformation.** Throughout all modern history the fruits of a prior civilisation are perceptible in this forced recurrence to its formulas or spirit. And especially in our own age, of which a philosophical estimate of history is the distinguish * "Nous avons en nous je ne sais combien d'idées, de sentimens antiques dont nous ne nous rendrons pas compte." Michelet, Discours d'ouverture prononcé à la Faculté des Lettres, 1834. + Hallam's Middle Ages, vol. ii., p. 473. Ibid. vol. ii., p. 475. § See Savigny's Vocation of our age for Legislation, translated by A. Hayward, p. 74 to 99, 102, 114. See History philosophically illustrated by Dr. Miller vol. i., p. 15, and references. Also Sismondi, Hist. de Répub. Italiennes, tom. x., chap. 75. Earlier than this we discover the same tendency; Hallam's Middle Ages, vol. i., 258, chap. iii., Part I. Italy; internal government of the cities. For an account of this celebrated Idealist School of the transition period of Modern Philosophy, see Cousin, Cours de l'Histoire de la Philosophie, tom. 1, lect. 10, p. 346, &c. ** Guizot's Hist. de la Civ. en Europe, lect. 12. ing feature, are the facilities of comparison which the ancient world suggests, applied most effectively to political education. It is for us that History reveals the laws of social progress-that it is a means to anticipate and combat anarchical tendencies-to raise our educational standard* -to recall the true principles of Colonisation +-to correct low theories of state by referring us to the political experience of antiquity-that, from serving incidentally as a theme for school-boys, it has become emphatically a school for our statesmen. The historical presence of an elder development, reminding us of the defects and eccentricities of its descendant, is a pledge, as it were, of its safer advancement. As the leaders of a second crusade were enabled to avoid many of the graver errors committed in the first, the track of our forerunners in the march of civilisation has helped materially to guide our footsteps, since no Lethe interposed to destroy their traces, and wash away our rich heritage in their experience. In other words, their history has supplied a culture by means of examples, warnings, encouragements, which has moulded the richer elements we possess to a more certain, abundant, and varied harvest. And yet we may hesitate to boast of this advantage, if the chief difference of modern from ancient development is *See, for instance, the repeated references to Plato and Athenian education in such books as Mr. Maurice's Lectures on Education, lect. i. Also Milton's Tract addressed to "Master Samuel Hartlib." "On these principles alone have the foundations of successful colonies been laid. Neither Phoenician, nor Greek, nor Roman, nor Spaniard, no, nor our own great forefathers, when they laid the foundation of an European Society on the continent, and in the islands of the Western World, ever dreamed of colonising with one class of society by itself, and that the most helpless for shifting by itself. The foremost men of the ancient republics led forth their colonies; each expedition was in itself an epitome of the society which it left; the solemn rites of religion blessed its departure from its home; and it bore with it the images of its country's gods, to link it for ever by a common worship to its ancient home. Extract from the speech of Charles Buller, M. P., delivered in the House of Commons, April 6, 1843. The Political Experience of the Ancients in its bearing upon Modern Times. By Hugh Seymour Tremenheere, &c. the greater profusion and variety of its fruit; while, like the latter, it contains the seeds of decay, and must measure its duration with the things that perish. Have our Revolutions, in fact, no other end than the production of Equality upon a scale more imposing than those of antiquity, and must the modern, like the ancient world, when this is accomplished, revert in patience to a like extinction, only bequeathing the memory of loftier hopes, and claiming the meed of more solemn obsequies? Such, indeed, has been the opinion of many who have taken cognisance of this question. The doom of a necessary extinction, which some have conceived of as circumscribing the energies of individual life, has been held by others to press heavily upon the capacities of nations. In the history of a single state, it has been said, you may read the history of all. In perfect isolation they work out the same problem-springing from the same original-tracking the same development-tending sooner or later to the same end. In the certainty of the doom which awaits them, as soon as they have run through their allotted cycle, the superiority of any one age to another is impugned, and the last is thus as distant as the first from that permanence of some one state or system, in which alone the final conditions of progress can be realised. This is the theory of Plato and Polybius, of Vico and Machiavel. Especially it is the belief of those who have traced the fortunes or fate of Rome. In the opinion of the Historian of the Republic,* "the return of states to weakness and obscurity is unavoidable.” The Historian of the Empire† perceives in the whole world one continued round, "valour, greatness, discord, degeneracy, decline." Yet in vain we seek a solution of the question from those who either regarded a portion of history, or, with too limited a provision of actual facts, feebly essayed to comprehend the whole, if history in the ear of a deeper philosophy Fergusson. + Gibbon. To these perhaps may be added the modern Fatalist School of French Historians-Messrs. Thiers, Mignet, &c. proclaim beyond question its proofs of advancement. That civilisation should have its distinctive record, is a demonstration of its independent existence and growth.* That it should be possible to write a universal History in the place of a collective biography, so to speak, of nations, is evidence of some relation common to them all, which we recognise as their bearing upon the destiny of man. If then this progress hitherto be a fact, discovered by science and now traceable in history, what may not be the incomparably grander issues of modern revolutions, which as they are a later, so they may be the last step† to render that progress free from serious obstruction? In our case they may finally perpetuate the system which in antiquity they violently convulsed and destroyed. That may be the passage to stability now, which was then the road to decadence and death. To test this assumption let us seek again the source of difference in the elements which enter either civilisation. It has been already remarked, and is indeed obvious, that the ancient world was not in this respect as comprehensive as the modern. The same elements of race and religion which are incorporated in the latter had no place or account in the former. If they were essential to human progress (and who at this day can doubt it?) antiquity could not be reconciled to that progress, from failing to satisfy its preliminary conditions. Antiquity might boast the genius of Civilisation— the force which tends to centralise and unite discordant materials into a harmonious whole, but the materials submitted to its agency were limited, and therefore the unity attained was imperfect. The vigour of the civilising spirit was its bane. In proportion to the intensity of its unifying force it excluded the more rigorously foreign ingredients, and *From the time of Herder, who was the first to recognise clearly the fact of a progress, Civilisation has had its successive historians, of whom in Europe, as in France, Monsieur Guizot, till recently, was pre-eminent. + See conclusion of Introd. Lecture by Dr. Arnold. Lects. on Modern History. NO NEW BARBARIAN ELEMENT. 39 hence the cause and necessity of its dissolution. Philosophy pronounces its fate to have been inevitable. It dissolved to embrace a larger circumference-to seek the higher unity of a wider diversity.* Having elaborated and perfected its partial truth, antiquity retired, to permit this truth to enter and be included in a higher combination. Does the necessity, then, exist of a like destruction to generate another more transcendant birth? Assuredly, if in the store of God's providence there exist a principle necessary, yet neglected, and which may not be fused peacefully with existing elements, this civilisation will so pass away. Yet whence, if we may ask it without presumption, can this newer element proceed? Excluded from the only religion which invites proselytes and at the same time repulses all idea of a change, in the form of an Advent-a new Dispensation, it is vainly repugnant to His scheme who is at once the 'Author and Finisher of our faith.' As strikingly it detracts from the prerogative of race— from that high moral and mental stature which is still, under heaven, the mark of the Teuton. As a Christian colonist he anticipates no strife-no doubtful Trans-Rhenane conflict now. His civilisation needs not its Dara or Edessat-the wall of its Adrian or its Antoninus. Resistless it advancesto the African Desert-to the Polar Sea-piercing the defiles of Central Asia-surging to the foot of the rocky mountains, encompassing the shores and islands of the Pacific. There may be other clouds upon the opening vista, but the worldwide aspect of retiring darkness assures the modern that no second Attila shall lead the tribes of the Barbarian outer world to make spoil of his inheritance.‡ * Ritter's History of Philosophy, vol. i., p. 174. For an account of the fortifications of Justinian against Barbarian incursions, see Gibbon, vol. chap. ix. V.. "The Roman Colonies along the banks of the Rhine and the Danube looked out on the country beyond those rivers as we look up at the stars, and actually see with our eyes a world of which we know nothing. The Romans knew that there was a vast portion of earth which they did not know; how vast it might be was a part of its mysteries. But to us all is explored imagination can hope for no new Atlantic island to realise the |