* truthfulness, and that is something. It is, discovering what allowances of this sort are proved abundantly. Sometimes he reports needed. things which he could not have understood, It will be seen that we are not concerned such as the fact which surprised him, that to deny the charge itself. It is true, though Neco's Phoenician sailors found the sun on not to the extent which some have stated, their right hand in the course of their voy- that while we are reading his writings we age round Africa (iv. 42); and at other are forced to see things with his eyes, that times, things which he plainly did not under- is, under the precise aspect, moral, religious, stand, such as the punning threat of Croesus, dramatic, or poetical, in which they presentbased upon the ancient name of Lampsacus ed themselves to his own mind or fancy as (vi. 37), and perhaps the Argive oracle he wrote. This is indeed a necessary conwhich, as others thought, received its true dition of a disposition so open, combined explanation from the Legend of the bravery with a character so strongly individualized. of Telesilla (vi. 77). This, we repeat, is If he resembles Homer in the clearness of something, though of course not all. Next, the stream of narrative,-the exquisite acas no reporter can take down mere flying curacy with which it reflects all images that rumours with precisely the same literal fall athwart its bosom, there is yet this dif accuracy with which (to qualify further our ference, that the water, though clear, is not former analogy) he might copy the inscrip- so colourless, and that the impressions, tion on the rock, it is always necessary, though correct in form, receive some tinges when dealing with such reports, to allow for the characteristics and principles of the person to whom we are indebted for them. In the case of Herodotus, his perfect simplicity places the whole man so distinctly before us, that we can have no difficulty in * Even in what has been charged against him as "a spirit of exaggeration" or "hyperbole," Colonel Mure (p. 399) is willing to allow that there was no "wilful falsification." But on some of the instances of this fault which are alleged by Colonel Mure, he could be more directly defended. Let us take one from the account of the expedition of Xerxes :— "Even poetical agency," says Colonel Mure," is called in to add to the general effect. The army on its march through Thrace is assailed by lions (vii. 125); an animal never assuredly indigenous in that region; and the creatures alluded to, if not altogether fictitious, may safely be classed as some species of mountain lynx or wild cat, which the legend had magnified into lions for the occasion" (p. 402). It is not said that the lions attacked "the army," but only the camels, and that by night. But to let that pass; surely Colonel Mure's contradiction is far too peremptory. The deliberate statement of Herodotus (126) on the precise limits within which lions were then seen in Europe, is corroborated by the equally clear assertions of Aristotle (H. A. p. 579, b., and p. 606, b., ed. Berol.), who is followed by Pliny (H. N. viii. 17, fin.), and of Pausanias (vi. 5, sect. 3); it is incidentally confirmed by the mere existence of such legends as that of the Nemean lion and the maid Cyrene, implying the belief in a still wider European extension of the animal in earlier times it is supported by monuments; by the perfect familiarity which the oldest Greek poets shew with the lion's habits and nature; and especially by the coins of Acanthus, on the route where Xerxes passed, which bear a lion springing on a bull. We are also told by zoologists, that the lion must have formerly existed in many parts of the world which it has now completely abandoned; and that there is no reason why it may not at one time have been found on the European side of the Black Sea. If these considerations are not sufficient to establish the probability of Herodotus's statement, they should at all events protect it from so unqualified a condemnation. † Compare Thirlwall, ii. 263, with Muller, Dor. i. 197; Grote, iv. 433. from the foreign hues, which the medium of * By M. Keble, of honest Izaak Walton. The chief of the colouring influences in Herodotus were unquestionably of a moral and religious character. See Mr. Grote's remarks on the analysis of Hoffmeister, v. 15. We may add a logical error,-the disposition to generalize so strongly, as not unfrequently to present mere inferences almost in the form of facts; a remark which applies especially to his geographical and physical theories, e. g., to his comparison between the Nile and Danube, or such passages as iii. 104. In other instances, his dramatic turn plainly led him to ascribe to his speakers what they might have said, when he could possess no knowledge whatever of what they really did say. Perhaps there are some cases in which individuals are thus credited with gnomic sayings, which were really the common property of the whole nation. We will not say that the language which he puts into the mouth of Solon (i. 32) is of this description; even Aristotle quotes it under Solon's name (Eth, Nicom. i. 10); but a comparison of the closing words of Hdt. i. 5, at any rate proves that Herodotus himself contributed the form, in which the old saying of Solon is embodied. We may add that the use of commonplaces did not offend his sense of historical precision. Such is the very curious series set forth by Colonel Mure, pp. 406-408; in i. 152, iii. 134, v. 73, and v. 105. Another series is the commonplace of appealing to the poverty or wealth of countries or their inhabitants, as a check or incitement to ambition. See i. 71 (the poverty of the Persians before their conquest of Lydia, consistent with ix. 122, but at variance with what is said of the Medes, in i. 126, and with i. 207); and v. 49 (the riches of the East contrasted with the poverty of Greece; consistent with vii. 102, but not with vii. 5). But in all these peculiarities, there is really nothing which an intelligent reader would not at once observe and allow for. tion, if one may call it so, by which [Herod. | sometimes, as in the marked case of the otus] was led unconsciously to communicate rock sculpture near Nymphi,* from the dismore or less of his own tone and character covery and more minute examination of the to all whom he undertook to represent. But this is like his custom of putting long speeches into their mouths we see at once that it is his way, and it deceives no one." : Thirdly. We are now in a position to form a fair estimate of the chief sources from which he drew his narratives, and therefore to make the necessary allowances on that ground also. We can see, for instauce, how often Hellenic views have influenced his stories of Oriental incident, as clearly as critics have always seen, how often the local pride of his informants has given birth to what he received as genuine Egyptian history. We know that we must re gard his writings as the legacy of one, who had roamed over many lands in gathering those multifarious stores, provided, as it seems, with no language but his native tongue, with no previous experiences to guard him against error, with no clear canons of criticism to discriminate between legend and history, between the local tale that had grown up to account for some strange name or monument, and the true tradition which treasured up the memories of the past. But in all these cases, we must simply adjust our statements by our fuller knowledge. We must regard him as a good reporter, not of certain histories, but of the views which certain classes of men, with whom he came in contact, had been led, by one cause or another, to form of history. The report, as a record of contemporary opinion, has only changed its relation, not lost its value. That in some few cases we could have spared the detail of palpable impostures which were practised upon him, does not detract from the general worth of so large a body of contemporary evidence, drawn up by so highly gifted a reporter, on almost all branches of earlier belief, as well as on the widespread effects of recent change. Again, there is another consideration, which, while it implies an acknowledgment of his imperfections, furnishes at once an explanation of their existence and a disproof of their prejudicial influence, namely, the recollection that we have gained a far more complete command even over his own materials than it was ever possible for him to exercise. This is partly due to the mere length of time for which we have had them in hand; the closer scrutiny to which we can subject them, the vast mass of illustration, from monuments, as well as from parallel narratives in other ancient writers, which has been accumulated round them, very figures which he himself described; but especially from the establishment of a system of chronology, which enables us to fix and define what he found wholly unsettled and uncertain. This must indeed have been one of his main difficulties; the entire absence of definite landmarks, such as have long ere now been planted all along the main highways of history. To Herodotus the whole ground on which he had to build was shifting; or, to change the metaphor, we may say that he resembled a shipwrecked sailor who has to construct his raft, while he and all his timbers with him are floating together on the wave. The same remark might be applied with still more effect to his deficiencies in geographical science. But we must pause, with this additional remark, that though some of his contemporaries knew some things far better than he did,— though others, like Thucydides, possessed a totally different kind of historical faculty, yet these circumstances are no bar to his especial praise on his own peculiar ground. Thucydides, for instance, could reflect and analyze where Herodotus could only inquire and record. But let each man be satisfied to be what God made him, and to do the work for which he seems to have been designed, without complaining because he was not cast in a different mould, with power to do some different work. Finally In Herodotus, beyond most authors, it is essential, as we have already suggested, to distinguish between the matter and form. The form of his writings is his own. The materials were as diversified as the scenes he passed through in his wandering life. To comprehend their true nature and relations, we must divest ourselves of every notion suggested by the clearer view which modern knowledge gives the traveller, as well as the greater critical and revising care which modern literary habits exact from the writer. Deducting what we will for the causes which have been enumerated, there will remain, even in his material, all the value we have claimed for it: it is still a mass of contemporary opinion, to which all antiquity can furnish no complete parallel. But on the other side he commands far nobler commendation. Standing earliest, though far from greatest, in the line of real historians, the first, apparently, to combine grace of style and skill in composition with the more solid purposes of prose narration, that skill and that grace * See Classical Museum, i. 82, 231-236. form the foundation of his highest praise. [cy, behind the apparently untroubled screen Over the materials of his narrative, he ex- of natural sequence. ercised, as we allow, a feebler influence. It Now let the question be disembarrassed is not often given to one man to work out a of any appeal to views of the unseen world double reformation. It is praise enough which Herodotus (and a great many Christhat he achieved the one improvement, and tians with him) would reject on principle; foresaw the distant promise of the other and we shall find it easy to specify the exthat he first clothed the muse of history in act nature and mischief of his errors. A a garb of graceful beauty, and anticipated, heathen who was deeply impressed with the though very faintly and imperfectly, the belief in higher powers, and their present scrutiny to which maturer criticism would agency, would plainly be most perplexed subject the elements of historic truth. by these two wants: the want of any auWe must take a similar view of the other thenticated teaching on the nature of the point we mentioned-the "credulity" and Creator, and the want of any scientific ex"superstition" of Herodotus. It is not position of the laws which he has impressed sufficient to say, on one side, that Herodo- upon creation. To such an one, two voices tus must be excused because he was a Hea- in which God speaks to us were silent: the then; nor, on the other side, that he must voice of written revelation, and the voice in be condemned because many Heathens were which he permits advancing science to proless credulous. We must draw clearer dis-pound some explanations of the method of tinctions than this before we try him. No his work. Of the Creator, that heathen could doubt many then, as many now, shook off know but little more than that "we are also the weight of any faith in powers higher his offspring,”—a truth which he often read than the laws of nature; some, like the in inverted characters, when he reasoned "Graius homo" of Lucretius, fronting the back from man to God. Of science he knew dread face of superstition with a firm de- too little to have any just conception of the fiance; others simply closing their eyes true march of natural sequence any just against all evidence of an unseen world, and views on the precise character of that uniforcing all their thoughts into the common formity which pervades the ordinances of grooves of human life. In so far as Hero- heaven and earth. Still less, then, could dotus differed from these, he was nearer the he form any clear notion of the mode in truth than they were, though he made mis- which Providence works harmoniously with takes from which they were protected by Law, in the moral government under which the obvious principle, that if a man seeks we live. no signs of God's presence at all, he will at This account does not pledge us to any any rate be sure to find no wrong signs. A one of the special instances by which Herosimilar division might obviously be made dotus manifests his belief in that moral goamong ourselves, on such a doctrine, for in-vernment. All that we say is, they are the stance, as that of special Providence, which imperfect expressions of profound eternal some repudiate, some ignore, and some be- truth. We cannot acknowledge the comlieve. Now, such a Heathen as Herodotus pleteness or even the fairness of any account may fairly claim to be compared with the of them, which fails to draw out this disthird of these classes, rather than with the tinction in the strongest and the broadest first or second. Much of what the wisest form. For one thing is peculiarly manifest who believe that doctrine would assert, throughout the writings of Herodotus. The might seem folly to those who deny it, and wonders which he recounts are all treated superstition to those who neglect it. We as signs of this great principle, the sovercan imagine, for instance, that very different eignty of some superior power, be it Fate accounts of a visitation of pestilence would or Deity or God. They are not fragments be given by a "Positive " "Philosopher, by of a wretched fetish worship, or marks of a mere Statesman, and by a Christian Phi- any grovelling confusion between the Crealosopher, such as (to mention only one name) tor and the meanest of his works. The funthe late Dr. Chalmers. And the Positive damental belief is, that something divine is Philosopher would be perplexed, unless he always present among men, and that marexplained it as a professional peculiarity, to vels are the signs of its presence: that know why so intelligent a Divine should there is some close connexion between sin shew so much anxiety to keep clear and bright the doctrines of God's present agen We refer particularly to his Discourse "on the consistency between the efficacy of Prayer and the uniformity of Nature." and sorrow: that vengeance belongs more truly to God than to man: that arrogance is a direct offence against heaven: that God can make known his will, through some miraculous agency, to his creatures upon earth. But that Herodotus, having no authentic de claration of God's ways, should constantly 17. Die Apocryphen. Von Dr. RUDOLPH mistake the signs of his appearings, seems a STIER. Braunschweig, 1853. necessary result of the conditions of the case :-on the one side, his reverential mind, A saying ascribed to Cardinal Wiseman and longing after clearer knowledge; on has given much satisfaction to German, and the other side, his real ignorance, both of especially Prussian divines and orators, to written revelation and of scientific laws. the effect that the last contest with ProtestHence springs all that timidity and confu- antism must be waged upon the sand of the sion which he often manifests about the gods Mark of Brandenburg. An English traveland heroes: the wavering between a brighter ler suddenly exchanging his own despised, and a vaguer faith: the belief that the hu- and, it would seem, half-conquered country man ministers of oracles might lie for lucre for this Thermophyla of the universe, is apt (v. 63; vi. 66), while yet high above them to wonder both at the fear of Rome and the rose the prophetic power, which was some- confidence of Berlin echoed and re-echoed times manifested in stern decisions upon in this saying. The metropolis of Prussia, moral laws (i. 159; vi. 86); the conception it is true, is the capital of German philosoof God's vengeance on the haughty under a phy and theology, and is probably also form like that which jealousy assumes in the capital of German radicalism, which human rulers; and even the concession, would both give cardinals and legates some which seems strangest of all, that human trouble to subdue. Its university, its pulfancy may have had some influence in fash- pit, and its press, it may be admitted, with ioning the common creed about the gods some unhappy exceptions, are more anti(ii. 53). To this cause also must be ascrib- papal than thirty years ago, and more true ed the greater portion of that credulity, on to the traditional position of the Brandenmatters of religion, which so often believed burg House and people. But so far as the amiss, because it possessed no certain rule pith and substance of a stout and successful which would enable it to believe aright. resistance to Popery, or any other formida Here we must leave the subject: gladly ble invader, is guaranteed by the diffusion acknowledging that much has been already of earnest and intelligent religious convicdone to clear the position of the "Roman- tion among the masses of its population, no tic Poet Sage of History," and looking for- city of Protestantism will be found so ward with hope to find still more accom- wanting. The Protestant army there has its plished in such promised works, as the officers, high and low, gathered more numeTranslation and Annotations which were rously perhaps than before around the banlong since announced by Mr. Rawlinson: and the completion of Mr. Blakesley's Commentary, which, we are told, will be ready for the public by the time when these remarks will reach them. ART. VI.-1. Die Verhandlungen der Wit tenberger Versammlung für Gründung eines deutschen evangelischen Kirchenbundes. Berlin, 1848. ners of the Reformation, because around the banners of positive Christianity, but its rank and file have long ago deserted and are not yet recalled. A more discouraging impression is probably not made any where in Protestant Europe than by a Sunday spent in the Prussian capital. When the world has had its due in the ever-shifting formalism of philosophy, (now for the time in abeyance,) in the prevailing heathenism of art, obtruded on squares, bridges, and frescoed museums, and in the barbarism of frequent reviews and military spectacles, to say nothing of the eagerness of business or dissipation, the day of rest comes round for the Church, to change the scene to a Christian spectator 2. Die Verhandlungen des 2ten Wittenberger Kirchentages. Berlin, 1849. 3. Die Verhandlung des 3ten-6ten Kir- only for the worse. Places of business, inchentages. Berlin, 1850-1853. deed, have recently been closed by an un4. Lehrbuch des Katholischen und Evangeli- popular edict, and public works suspended. schen Kirchenrechts. Von DR. ÆMILIUS In a few churches, and those among the larLUDWIG RICHTER. 4te Auflage. Tauch-gest, a crowd gathers in the morning to hear nitz. Leipzig, 1853. a distinguished preacher, but his colleague The 5. Urkundenbuch der Evangelischen Union. in the afternoon-perhaps equally faithfulVon DR. CARL IMMANUEL NITZSCH. Bonn, addresses a handful of aged women. 1853. middle-classes, to a vast extent alienated 6. Für Beibehaltung der Apochryphen. Aus from Christianity, are engaged in feasting, der Evangelischen Kirchenzeitung. Ber-travelling, or preparing for the evening thelin, 1853. latre, which announces its choicest entertain mass of the numerous officers of state, (as is unhappily all but universal in the third and fourth rate capitals of Germany,) are hardened by rationalism against religion. In Elberfeld-the centre of Rhenish-Westphalian piety and missionary zeal-a great concert was got up two years ago, on the Sunday evening after the meeting of the Kirchentag and Inner Mission-as it were in the face of assembled Christianity. In Bremen a petition was signed, two or three ments everywhere, even on the walls of the three times a day, the shops are open on royal palace. The lower orders are stroll- the day of rest, the theatre is crowded, while ing in pleasure-gardens, or rushing by cheap the churches are partially filled, and the trains to the country, confuting every year, by increasing consumption of brandy, the nostrums of theorists at home who preach up the railway as the safety-valve for intemperance; and the young of both sexes are hastening to hardly disguised ruin, prepared for them in concert-rooms and dancingsaloons, and swelling that tide of illegitimacy which amounts to at least every fifth birth in the population. Hardly an evening service in any Church exists to counteract this frightful evil, though a slight beginning years ago, by upwards of ten thousand perhas lately been made, and hence vast mul- sons, of whom one-half were females, in titudes are hardly ever in a place of worship favour of a preacher named Dulon, who had except when baptized or confirmed. The scandalized all Germany, not only by his want of will is, however, sadder than the rationalism, but his red-republicanism-and want of power and notwithstanding the in- openly declared from the pulpit, on Christfluence of the Court, to which is now added mas, that the gospel of the day was a fable. that of the University, and the attraction of In Hanover, a similar demonstration was zealous preachers, most of them respectable made last year in favour of Steinecker-an in point of eloquence, and one or two ad- adherent of the oldest rationalism, and an asmirable, not more than five per cent. of the sociate of the Friends of Light, though, perinhabitants, or 20,000 in 400,000, are regu- haps, his popularity was increased by his havlarly found in any Christian sanctuary. The ing incurred the displeasure of the Austrian pulpits, it must be owned, are for the most authorities, who dismissed him from Trieste. part free of error, the old rationalism hardly In Hamburg it is notorious that a few hunlingering at all, and the echo of Schleierma- dreds scattered over its immense churches, cher, once so vociferous, rapidly dying count for a large congregation. So hostile away. As Mr. Bethmann Hollweg re- are its senate to the inner mission, that they marked in his late opening speech at the have lately withdrawn the only church in meeting of the Kirchentag in Berlin, that which evening service had been commenced gospel which he heard there for the first time for the rescue of its teeming heathenism; forty years ago, as a secret whispered in the and so far as we know, the free efforts of the ear, is now preached on the house-tops. But Lutheran body, in that great and wealthy what avail as yet the numerous voices cry- city, have not been able to supply a tempoing as in the wilderness. Neither the Pha- rary place of worship. In Dresden a gospel risees nor Sadducees are inclined to repent- sermon is rarely to be heard, and the kingance. The stamp of godlessness is deeply dom of Saxony is one of the last defences fixed on this metropolis of Protestant Ger- of rationalism. In Nuremberg, a more faithmany; and its recent revolutionary history, ful clergy are in that time-honoured seat of as well as moral statistics, which are better hinted at than published, too clearly prove that if Protestantism had no better bulwark than on the "sand of the Mark," it is in more senses than one resting on the sand. It would be unfair to Berlin to darken it in comparison with other great cities in Germany; unfair, perhaps, to Protestant Germany, to take its great cities as a type of its religious character. But as the statistics of these are best known, a few similar details may be added, it being at the same time remembered that in the rural districts and smaller towns matters are here and there decidedly more favourable. In Stuttgard, then, the capital of south German Protestantism, though in many country-parishes of Würtemberg a lively piety flourishes, and domestic worship is maintained even the Reformation, deserted by the people. In Breslau, the stronghold of Silesian Lutheranism, only a third of the Protestant population are church-going, the public houses are forty times the number of places of worship, and the proportion of illegiti mate births is one in four. Stettin, the chief city of Pomerania -a country long the most simple-minded in its adherence to the earlier faith-seems now, partly by the corrupting influences of its position, as for Germany the key of the Baltic, and partly by the general march of decay, sunk to the most deplorable depth of Pagan, and worse than Pagan immorality. In a population of 50,000 the church-attendance is only 7 per cent. The number of persons in jail has doubled since 1851, their crimes being mostly committed under the influence of strong drink. One |