olive-trees; or filled with epigrams on the favorite, Mamurra, whom he hated so heartily. Petrarch's epistles from Vaucluse would not vary much, bating the gossip about popes and prelates, from Catullus's correspondence from Sirmio. There is little in his eulogy on Sirmio which is deep or contemplative, or even expressive of a genuine local attachment. The Gospel seems, in some measure, to have drawn the earth and her children closer together, and made us understand her meanings better.

The contrast between Latin and Greek literature is both curious and interesting. The most obvious difference is, that the Greek literature is so much more allied to life than the Roman; and we should scarcely have expected this beforehand. It would not have been surprising if the Romans had been without literature altogether; but it seems strange that a people, whose character was throughout so astonishingly practical, should have a literature utterly disengaged from their habits of life and principles of action. Whereas the whole of Greek literature is one extensive proof of the real, practical character of the human imagination; its wildest sublimities have a domestic beauty and a suitableness. Let a man take up some idle summer his old schoolbooks (and a profitable and pleasant summer he will spend), and ponder once more over the metrical Catullus, the plaintive Tibullus, and the erudite Propertius let him live once more among the scenes of the Aulularia, Curculio, and Trinummus, amid

manners which, even more than the plot and language, are translations from the Greek; let him beguile himself with the fluent tenderness and elegant despondency of Ovid's artificial mind, or contemplate the cold polish of the harmonious antiquarian, Virgil, or shelter himself in the Sylvæ of the gentle Neapolitan improvisatore, or lay down Lucretius, with the astonished confession that there may be beauty and nobility even where there is no faith. Throughout the whole of this course one thought cannot fail to pursue him :-How unpractical all this is! How little it has to do with Roman life and manners! How little influence must it have had, for how little influence has the Roman temper had upon it! The conclusion is, that the most unreal literature in the world is the literature of the most real people. If we look at Roman architecture, there is the same majestic practical character which we admire in the Romans. It almost startles us. It is the very temper of Rome, sculptured in massive grandeur: be it a road, an aqueduct, an arch, an amphitheatre, an excavated sewer, a monstrous mole, Rome is written all over it; and whether it be in Arabia or Scotland, on the shores of the Euxine or at the foot of Mount Atlas, it is recognized for Roman work. Or again, if we regard the theatre and other elegant amusements of Greek civilization, how quickly they droop, like unsuitable exotics, when transplanted into Roman ground. Rome's practical character is stamped upon the horrid amusements of

her people, the death-struggle, the roaring wild beasts, the gory arena. Let us follow, for instance, the Emperor Claudius to the Lacus Fucinus. It is one mighty theatre: the terraces of the Abruzzo are covered with eager and delighted spectators. Claudius himself, with the bloody Agrippina, the young Nero, and the infamous favorite Narcissus, is seated at the awful show. There are slaves and criminals to the number of nineteen thousand. They are divided off into two fleets to fight against each other on the lake. As they defile past the emperor, they cry, "Hail! O emperor! The dying salute thee." The emperor returns the salutation in such a way that the poor wretches believe they are pardoned, and break forth into a frantic tumult of rejoicing, for they love life like other men, and have red blood in their bodies, and each of them a soul as immortal as thine, O Claudius. But, pardon? Are all these spectators on the shelving slopes of the lake-girdling Abruzzo to be disappointed? The emperor descends to the brink, and explains the mistake, and bids the pretorians goad the reluctant victims on board the ships, and nineteen thousand immortal beings, for whom Christ had died some twenty years before, murdered each other in a mock battle, for the pleasure of the Roman emperor and people 2. Could any but Romans have endured such gigantic excitements without insanity following? It

'See Spalding's Italy, vol. i. 366.

was but a development of that practical character which we observe in them, and which is given them in prophecy. They were a race lifted above the ordinary level of humanity, drawn beyond the circle of its common vices and its common virtues, to work a purpose for God, and be, like the obedient monster of the magician, the houshold slave of God's Church.

Yet with all this, the distinguishing feature of their literature is, that it is unpractical; not wrought out of the heart of the people, and therefore, like unreal epochs of our own literature, refusing to work itself down into the popular heart. One cause of this, though not the deepest, may be found in the circumstances of the Augustan age, which includes so large a portion of the best Roman literature. The whole nation stood in a false position, and that too with regard to politics, in which their practical life most consisted. An utter and ignoble despotism lived in all the splendid forms of the old republic, and the imperator walked as much at ease in the antique vestments of a jealous democracy, as though they had been the loose flowing robes of an Asiatic king. Thus government, law, oratory, the public offices, the police arrangements, and the debates in the senate, said one thing and meant another. Every thing in Roman life, down to the idioms of conversation, was falsified. Falshood was the characteristic of the epoch; and consequently it would, with a forcible consistency, be represented in the literature

of the times. There are, however, exceptions to this generally unreal nature of Roman literature. The satires of Horace, a species of composition very original, and in no way resembling the works usually called satires, are of a very practical character, and essentially Roman; and there are vestiges of a practical turn of mind in some of the odes; while the Æneid, which we should have thought could hardly escape being practical, as a national, patriotic epic, has scarcely one real line in it. In later days Juvenal, like all satirists of contemporary manners, was practical; and, above all, the terrible, fierce regrets of the youthful Lucan were highly practical and Roman and therefore, with all its glaring faults, the Pharsalia lays a stronger hold upon us than most Latin poems. On the sweep of its rough, nervous, tumultuous metre, as on an angry eagle's flight, we are borne, in spite of ourselves, over many a rugged place and broken interval and coarse stumbling-block. For all things about it are practical. The gods are Latian, not Greek; Delphi is represented as dumb. But the wild world of spirits sympathizes, in a native manner, with the throes of Roman liberty: Sylla's shade roams over the Campus Martius, and by the flowing Anio the ghost of Marius rends the sepulchre, and appears in the trouble of Rome's last agonies. These, however, are exceptions to a general rule, and only bring out more strongly the characteristic unpractical nature of Latin literature. Indeed, the utter divorce of lite