you will find that in this, as in many other things, "distance lends enchantment to the view." Even when Rome had reached the Augustan age, an age of dazzling prosperity and refinement, her literature was restricted within a narrow range. In philosophy, properly so called, whether mental or moral, her writers are comparatively shallow and obscure. In physics, her knowledge was so contracted and meagre as even to surprise us. In political science and the great principles which ascertain civil rights, and should regulate civil governments, she knew little, and practised still less. Liberty with her, was too much of an enchanting sound, without a definite meaning; and under the cover of its name, the most exorbitant wrongs were often both committed and vindicated.

The remark has been so often made as to render it very familiar, that the branches of learning in which Rome can be said to be most conspicuous are History, Poetry and Rhetoric. But her historians are greatly wanting in that which gives its greatest value to the history of nations. They may give us a smooth, clear, beautiful narrative of common events, woven together, it is true, with a rhe

torical skill, which but few modern historians have equalled. But however polished the style of the historian, if he simply tells us, that a great battle has been fought, with vast slaughter, and issued in the subjugation of one party to the dominion of another; or that a conquering nation has added province to province in her widening empire, until she claims to be mistress of the world; the instruction to be gained from his writings is comparatively meagre and scanty. The world is nothing the wiser or better from its knowledge of the simple fact, whether Cæsar conquers Pompey, or Pompey should be victorious over Cæsar at the battle of Pharsalia; whether it be Antony or Brutus, that prevails at Philippi. If history would deserve to be called by the high name of philosophy teaching by example, if she would furnish records of the past, pregnant with instruction for the future; she must unfold the dependence of events on their true causes, she must trace and point out the origin and nature of the various delusions which have involved nations in misery and ruin; and must designate with plainness and precision, the great sources of public prosperity and happiness. How little of this

do we find in Sallust, Livy, or Tacitus, compared with the better historians of modern times!

In Poetry and Rhetoric, Rome has a more acknowledged pre-eminence. Her Virgil, and her Cicero, will always stand on a high pedestal while poets and orators are held in renown. But both Rhetoric and Poetry are designed, more to give refinement and polish to what is already known, than to enlarge the bounds of useful knowledge; and the most fond admirers of what formed the glory of the Augustan age, must admit, that throughout the whole range of Roman Literature, it was rather in the entertaining and polite branches of learning, than in the more useful and important, that she acquired her chief distinction.

The same is in a great measure true concerning their teachers, the Greeks; for the progress of the pupil will always reflect the scholarship of the master. It is in fact the spirit of Greece that breathes in the historians, poets, and orators of Rome, perhaps mellowed and refined by age and experience. And even when you turn to those branches of science and art in which Greece stands comparatively alone; to her architecture and sculp

ture as displayed in her temples and her statuary, which remain to this day models of taste for all generations; even here, you again meet the great distinction of intellect among the ancients. As a wise observer has said, "their strength was expended on the surface, not the nature of things; their skill lay in polishing, not in analyzing. They hewed and chiseled the stone into the graceful statue, or the lofty column; but of what the material was composed, what were the laws of its formation, or to what various purposes of human power and comfort it might be applied, they neither understood nor inquired."

But here comes another inquiry, too seldom raised. Was Greece indebted for her distinction in Letters and the Arts to no foreign source? And if so, to what nation or people can we trace her obligations? Rome borrowed largely from her. Did she also borrow from some other nation that flourished before her? The opinion prevailed for a long time, that Greece derived her most valuable knowledge from Ancient Egypt. But more thorough and recent researches lead to a different conclusion. Although Egypt must be conceded to

have been among the earliest of the nations celebrated in history for wisdom and greatness, she has been allowed to have credit for both extent and antiquity of knowledge which she does not deserve. She flourished at a period so remote and so buried in obscurity, that fable has been allowed too often to pass for fact, when writers have been describing her attainments in knowledge and power. But there are records to show what she was, that are now becoming disinterred from the sands that have been heaped on them for scores of generations. The huge ruins of her chief cities, and the figures and inscriptions on the pillars and walls of her temples are monuments, showing what was her standard in taste, and her progress in art during the days of her Pharaohs. And they prove, that if she was ever entitled to be called "The Cradle of Science," it must have been when Science, owing to the feebleness of infancy, required the use of a cradle. But when Science had outgrown the appendages of bewildering and tottering infancy, and had reached matured form and strength, Egypt was neither her guardian or her home. Many of Egypt's works of art, for which an antiquity has