In the later volumes we have an equally interesting and copious account of the career of Epaminondas-the Washington of Greece; the struggles of Demosthenes against Philip; and the success of Timolecu. The historian's fullness of detail and the ethical interest he imparts to his work, with the associations connected with the heroic events he relates, and the great names that have

Gone glittering through the dream of things that were,

render the whole the most noble and affecting record in the history of humanity. From the epoch of Alexander the Great, Mr. Grote dates not only the extinction of Grecian political freedom and selfaction, but also the decay of productive genius, and the debasement of that consummate literary and rhetorical excellence which the fourth century before Christ had seen exhibited in Plato and Demosthenes.' There was, however, one branch of intellectual energy which continued to flourish, comparatively little impaired under the preponderance of the Macedonian sword -the spirit of speculation and philosophy, and to this subject Mr. Grote proposed to devote a separate work. Hs History was completed in 1856, the author being then in his sixty-second year. In 1866 appeared Plato and the other Companions of Sokrates,' three volumes, a work which fully sustained the author's fame.

Mr. Grote was of German ancestry. His grandfather, the first of the family that settled in England, established the banking-house that still bears the name of Grote as one of the founders, and the historian was for some time employed in the bank. He sat in parliament as one of the representatives of the city of London from 1832 till 1841, and was known as a Radical Reformer and supporter of vote by ballot. His annual motion in favour of the ballot was always prefaced by a good argumentative speech, and he wrote one or two political pamphlets and essays in the Reviews. Sydney Smith sarcastically said: Mr. Grote is a very worthy, honest, and able man; and if the world were a chess-board, would be an important politician.' Mr. Grote died June 18, 1871, aged seventy-seven. A memoir of the historian has been published by his widow.

Character of Dion.

Apart from wealth and high position, the personal character of Dion was in itself marked and prominent He was of an energetic temper, great bravery and very considerable mental capacities. Though his nature was haughty and disdainful towards individuals, yet as to political communion. his ambition was by no means purely self-seeking and egoistic. like that of the elder Dionysius. Animated with vehement love of power. he was at the same time penetrated with that sense of regulated polity and submission of individual will to fixed laws, which floated in the atmosphere of Grecian talk and literature, and stood so high in Grecian morality. He was, moreover, capable of acting with enthusiasm, and braving every hazard in prosecution of his own convictions.

Born about the year 408 B C.. Dion was twenty-one years of age in 387 B.C., when the elder Dionysius, having dismantled Rhegium and subdued Kroton, attained the maximum of his dominion, as master of the Sicilian and Italian Greeks. Standing

high in the favour of his brother-in-law Dionysius, Dion doubtless took part in the wars whereby this large dominion had been acquired; as well as in the life of indul gence and luxury which prevailed generally among wealthy Greeks in Sicily and Italy, and which to the Athenian Plato appeared alike surprising and repulsive. That great philosopher visited Italy and Sicily about 387 B.C. He was in acquaintance and fellowship with the school of philosophers called Pythagoreans; the rem nant of the Pythagorean brotherhood, who had once exercised so powerful a political influence over the cities of those regions, and who still enjoyed considerable reputation, even after complete political downfall, through individual ability and rank of the members, combined with habits of recluse study, mysticism, and attachment among themselves.

With these Pythagoreans Dion also, a young man of open mind and ardent aspirations, was naturally thrown into communication by the proceedings of the elder Dionysius in Italy. Through them he came into intercourse with Plato, whose conversation made an epoch in his life.

The mystic turn of imagination, the sententious brevity, and the mathematical researches of the Pythagoreans, produced doubtless an imposing effect upon Dion; just as Lysis, a member of that brotherhood had acquired the attachment and influenced the sentiments of Epaminondas at Thebes. But Plato's power of working upon the minds of young men was far more impressive and irresistible. He possessed a large range of practical experience, a mastery of political and social topics, and a charm of eloquence, to which the Pythagoreans were strangers. The stirring effects of the Socratic talk, as well as of the democratical atmosphere in which Plato had been brought up. had developed all the communicative aptitude of his mind; and great as that aptitude appears in his ren aiting dialogus. there is ground for believing that it was far greater in his conversation. Brought up as Dion had been at the court of Dionysius-accustomed to see around him only slavish deference and luxurious enjoyment-unused to open speech or large philosophical discussion-he found in Plato a new man exhibited, and a new world opened before him.

He

As the stimulus from the teacher was here put forth with consummate efficacy, so the predisposition of the learner enabled it to take full effect. Dion became an altered man both in public sentiment and in it dividual behaviour. He recollected that, twenty years before, his country. Syracuse had been as free as Athens. learned to abhor the iniquity of the despotism by which her liberty had been overthrown, and by which subsequently the liberties of so many other Greeks in Italy and Sicily had been trodden down also. He was made to remark that Sicily had been half barbarised through the foreign mercenaries imported as the despots' instruments. He conceived the sublime idea or dream of rectifying all this accumulation of wrong and suffering. It was his first wish to cleanse Syracuse from the blot of slavery, and to clothe her anew in the brightness and dignity of freedom.. yet not with the view of restoring the popular government as it had stood prior to the usurpation. but of establishing an improved constitutional polity, originated by himself, with laws which should not only secure individual rights. but also educate and moralise the citizens. The function which he imagined to himself, and which the conversation of Plato suggested, was not that of a despot like Dionysius, but that of a despotic legislator like Lycur us, taking advantage of a momentary omnipotence, conferred upon him by grateful citizens in a state of public confusion, to originate a good system, which when once put in motion, would keep itself alive by fashioning the minds of the citizens to its own intrinsic excellence After having thus both liberated and reformed Syracuse, Dion promised to himself that he would employ Syracusan force, not in annihilating, but in recreating, other free Hellenic communities throughout the island expelling from thence all the barbarians-both the imported mercenaries and the Carthaginians.

MR. GEORGE FINLAY, an English merchant at Athens, wrote seve ral works concise, but philosophical in spirit, and containing original views and information-relative to the history of Greece. His first was Greece under the Romans.' (1845); History of the Byzantine Empire,' from 716 to 1057 (1853), and continued to 1453 A.D., (1854); Mediæval Greece and Trebizond' to 1461; and the History

of Greece under the Othoman and Venetian Domination,' from 1453 to 1-21 (1856). Mr. Finlay died in 1875, the last survivor of the small band of enthusiasts who went out to Greece to join Lord Byron and the Philhellenes. He acted for some years as correspondent of the 'Times' in Athens.

Vicissitudes of Nations.

The vicissitudes which the great masses of the nations of the earth have undergone in past ages have hitherto received very little attention from historians, who have adorned their pages with the records of kings, and the personal exploits of princes and great men, or attached their narrative to the fortunes of the dominant classes. without noticing the fate of the people. History, however, continually repeats the lesson that power, numbers, and the highest civilisation of an aristocracy, are, even when united, insufficient to insure national prosperity, and establish the powers of the rulers on so firm and permanent a basis as shall guarantee the dominant class from annihilation. On the other hand, it teaches us that conquered tribes, destitute of all these advantages, may continue to perpetuate their existence in misery and contempt. It is that portion only of mankind which eats bread raised from the soil by the sweat of its brow, that can form the basis of a permanent national exEstence. The history of the Romans and of the Jews illustrates these facts. Yet even the cultivation of the soil cannot always insure a race from destruction, 'for mutability is nature's bane.' The Thracian race has disappeared. The great Celtic race has dwindled away, and seems hastening to complete absorption in the Anglo-Saxon. The Hellenic race, whose colonies extended from Marseille to Bactria, and from the Cimmerian Bosphorus to the coast of Cyrenaica, has become extinct in many countries where it once formed the bulk of the population, as in Magna Græcia and Sicily. On the other hand, mixed races have arisen, and, like the Albanians and Vallachians, have intruded themselves into the ancient seats of the Hellenes. But these revolutions and changes in the population of the globe imply no degradation of mankind, as some writers appear to think, for the Romans and English afford examples that mixed races may attain as high a degree of p ysical power and mental superiority as has ever been reached by races of the purest blood in ancient or modern times.

A different view of the Homeric question from that entertained by Mr. Grote, and also of some portions of Athenian history, has been taken by WILLIAM MURE, Esq., of Caldwell, (1799-1860), in his able work, A Critical History of the Language and Literature of Ancient Greece,' four volumes, 1850-53. Colonel Mure had travelled in Greece; and in the Journal,' of his tour-published in 1842-had entered into the Homeric controversy, especially with regard to the supposed localities of the 'Odyssey,' and had adduced several illustrations of the poems from his observation and studies. A sound scholar, and chiefly occupied on Greek literature and history for a period of twenty years, he brought to his 'Critical History' a degree of knowledge perhaps not excelled by that of Mr. Grote, but tinctured by political opinions directly opposite to those of his brother Hellenist. His examination of the Iliad' and ' Odyssey' occupies a considerable portion of his 'History,' and the general conclusion at which he arrives is, that each poem was originally composed, in its substantial integrity, as we now possess it. We give one short specimen of Colonel Mure's analysis.

The Unity of the Homeric Poems.

It is probable that, like most other great painters of human nature, Homer was indebted to previous tradition for the original sketches of his principal heroes. These sketches, however, could have been little more than outlines, which, as worked

up into the finished portraits of the Iliad' and 'Odyssey,' must rank as his own genuine productions. In every branch of imitative art, this faculty of representing to the life the moral phenomena of our nature, in their varied phases of virtue, vice, weakness, or eccentricity, is the highest and rarest attribute of genius, and rarest of all as exercised by Homer through the medium of dramatic action, where the characters are never formally described, but made to develop themselves by their own language and conduct. It is this, among his many great qualities, which chiefly raises Homer above all other poets of his own class; nor, with the single exception. perhaps, of the great English dramatist, has any poet ever produced so numerous and spirited a variety of original characters, of different ages, ranks, and sexes. Still more peculiar to himself than their va iety, is the unity of thought, feeling, and expression, often of minute phraseology, with which they are individually sustained, and yet without an appearance of effort on the part of their author. Each describes himself spontaneously when brought on the scene, just as the automata of Vulcan in the 'Odyssey,' though indebted to the divine artist for the mechanism on which they move, appear to perform their functions by their own unaided powers. That any two or more poets should simultaneously have conceived such a character as Achilles, is next to impossible. Still less credible is it, that the different parts of the Iliad,' where the hero successively appears as the saine sublime ideal being under the influence of the same combination of virtues, failings, and passions-thinking, speaking, acting, and suffering, according to the same single type of heroic grandeur-can b. the prodnetion of more than a single mind. Such evidene is, perhaps, even stronger in the case of the less prominent actors, in so far as it is less possible that different artists should simultaneously agree in their portraits of mere subordinate incidental personages, than of heroes whose renown may have rendered their characters a species of public property Two poets of the Elizabethan age might, without any concert, have harmonised to a great extent in their portrait of Henry V.; but that the corre spondence should have extended to the imaginary companions of his youth-the Falstaffs, Pistols, Bardolphs, Quickleys-were incredible. But the nicest shades of peculiarity in the inferior actors of the Iliad' and 'Odyssey,' are conceived and maintained in the same spirit of distinction as in Achilles or Hector.

Colonel Mure's work was left incomplete. His fourth volume enters on the attic period of Greek literature-the great era of the drama and the perfection of Greek prose-from the usurpation of Pisistratus at Athens, 560 B.C., to the death of Alexander the Great, 323 B.C. He gives an account of the origin and early history of Greek prose composition, and an elaborate biographical and critical study of Herodotus, reserving for future volumes the later Greek prose authors and Attic poets. A fifth volume was published, and at the time of his death he was engaged on a sixth, devoted to the Attic drama. Colonel Mure derived his title from being com.mander of the Renfrewshire Militia. His family had long been settled in the counties of Ayr and Renfrew, and he himself was born at the patrimonial property of Caldwell in Ayrshire. He was an excellent coun try gentleman as well as accomplished scholar and antiquary.

Another and more distinguished votary of Greek literature is the RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P., who, in 1858, published 'Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age,' three volumes. Mr. Glad stone does not enter into any detailed criticism of the 'Iliad' or 'Odys sey; he deals with the geography, history, and chronology of the poems, maintaining the credibility of Homer as the delineator of an age, and finding also fragments of revealed religion in his system of mythology. He traces the notion of a Logos in Minerva, the Deliv erer in Apollo, the Virgin in Latona, and even the rainbow of the

Old Testament in Iris; while the principle of Evil acting by deceit, he conceives to be represented in the Homeric Atè. This certainly appears to be fanciful, though supported by Mr. Gladstone's remarkable subtlety of intellect and variety of illustration. One volume of the work is devoted to Olympus, and another to establish Homer's right to be considered the father of political science. In supporting his different hypothesis, we need not say that Mr. Gladstone evinces great ingenuity and a refined critical taste. His work is indeed a cyclopædia of Homeric illustration and classic lore.

The World of Homer a World of His Own.

The Greek mind, which became one of the main factors of the civilised life of Christendom, cannot be fully comprehended without the study of Homer, and is nowhere so vividly or so sincerely exhibited as in his works. He has a world of his own, into which, upon his strong wing, he carries us. There we find ourselves amidst a system of ideas, feelings, and actions different from what are to be found anywhere else, and forming a new and distinct standard of humanity. Many among them seem as if they were then shortly about to be buried under a mass of ruins, in order that they might subsequently reappear, bright and fresh for application, among later generations of men. Others of them almost carry us back to the early morning of our race, the hours of its greater simplicity and purity, and more free intercourse with God. In much that this Homeric world exhibits, we see the taint of sin at work, but far, as yet, from its perfect work and its ripeness; it stands between Paradise and the vices of later heathenism, far from both, from the latter as well as the former, and if among all earthly knowledge the knowledge of man be that which we should chiefly court, and if to be genuine it should be founded upon experience, how is it possible to overvalue this primitive representative of the human race in a form complete, distinct, and separate with its own religion, ethics, policy, history, arts, manners, fresh and true to the standard of its nature, like the form of an infant from the hand of the Creator, yet mature, full and finished, in its own sense, after its own laws, like some master-piece of the sculptor's art.

We may notice here a work now completed, A History of the Literature of Ancient Greece,' by K. O. MULLER, continued after the author's death by J. W. DONALDSON, D.D., three volumes, 1858. Dr. Donaldson's portion of the work embraces the period from the foundation of the Socratic schools to the taking of Constantinople by the Turks. The work is altogether a valuable one-concise without being dry or meagre. A History of Greece, mainly based upon that of Dr. Thirlwall,' by DR. L. SCHMITZ, principal of the International College, London (1851), is well adapted for educational pur poses: it comes down to the destruction of Corinth, 146 P. c. Dr. Schmitz is author of a popular History of Rome' (1847), and a • Manual of Ancient History' to the overthrow of the Western Empire, 476 A.D. He has also translated Niebuhr's Lectures. Few foreigners have acquired such a mastery of the English language as Dr. Schmitz.

EARL STANHOPE.

PHILIP HENRY, EARL STANHOPE, when Lord Mahon, commenced a History of England from the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle (1713-1783). The first volume appeared in 1836, and