religion; thirdly, What attempts the heathen had made to avert the spiritual ruin which they felt was impending; and, finally, How Christianity met the wants of the heathen, replied to their questions, and solved their doubts. His aim was clearly defined; and his treatment of his subject was for the most part historical, with only such expository and practical remarks as seemed to be required by the circumstances under which the lectures were delivered. But, in the second series, the historical element has been subordinated to the hortatory, and the whole treatment of the subject is vitiated by a faulty method. We are no longer investigating a great historical question under the guidance of one of the first among living historians; but we are reading a volume of sermons, not of the highest merit, in which the historical discussion of the subject fills but a small place. We regret this change of plan the more, because it would have been scarcely possible for a scholar with such ample stores of learning, so keen and vigorous an intellect, and so much practised skill as a writer, not to have spoken wisely and well on such a theme, if he had only given his powers free play, according to their natural bent. Added to this, every reader will miss the brilliant description, the sharp analysis, and the suggestiveness which marked many passages in the earlier volume.

A chief object, indeed, which Mr. Merivale had in view in his second course, as we learn from his preface, was to give "such a sketch of the progress of dogma within the Church as might correspond with the revolution without it ;" and, accordingly, the first three lectures, which naturally connect themselves with the last third of the first volume, treat respectively of the philosophical and the practical view of Christ's revelation, and of the dogmatic inferences from it; how Christianity was regarded and taught by Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria, by Tertullian and Origen, and by Athanasius and Augustine. In dealing with this part of his subject, Mr. Merivale is coldly conservative; and his treatment of it is very far from being satisfactory, though several of the most important points are clearly and soundly stated. The first lecture is by far the ablest and best; and the third, which involves the discussion of many controverted doctrines and theories, is the most open to adverse criticism, both from its narrowness of view and from the weakness of the argument. The fourth lecture describes that relapse of Christian belief and practice of which the student early finds traces in the history of the Church, or, to quote Mr. Merivale's own expressive words, —

"How, in the age of Athanasius and Augustine themselves, in the age which immediately followed the political recognition of the Christian faith, there was a manifest decline in spiritual religion, a decay of spiritual life; how the Church became, in some respects, an open apostate; how her love grew cold, her faith languid; Christianity faded away into colorless indifference; Paganism, latent or avowed, recovered no small portion of the ground she had recently surrendered; the dreams of human ambition enticed men from the firm foundations of revealed dogma."

The picture is well and skilfully drawn; but it is a mere sketch, covering only a few pages: and here, as elsewhere, Mr. Merivale is oppressed by the supposed necessity of adhering to the conventional character of a sermon. The fifth, sixth, and seventh lectures are more directly concerned than those which precede them, with the conversion of the northern nations. In the first of the three, we have a general but too brief survey of the circumstances which prepared the Gothic nations for their complete and final conversion; the sixth lecture describes their passage from heathenism to Christianity, under the authoritative teaching of the Church, and after the fall of Rome; and the seventh lecture shows how this process was aided by that northern sense of personal relation to God which held so small a place in the popular belief of Greece and Rome. The eighth lecture, which has little apparent connection with the main subject of the course, is on "The Northern Sense of Male and Female Equality." It opens with a brief recapitulation of the chief points which Mr. Merivale has sought to establish in the two courses of lectures considered as a whole, and then proceeds to an examination of the question, "What pledge and security is there in the character of the northern nations, that they will permanently retain the impression they have received?" This pledge Mr. Merivale finds, oddly enough, in a belief in the equality of the sexes, to the consideration of which he is led by the text prefixed to his discourse, "When the fulness of time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman." That the sexes are equal, in the sense in which Mr. Merivale understands the phrase, no one doubts; but it is by no means clear, even after reading his discourse, that a belief in this equality is the great buttress of Christian faith among the descendants of the northern nations.

Such, in a few words, are the character and contents of Mr. Merivale's new volume. Its great inferiority to his previous works is due, as we believe, to the defective plan on which it is composed, and to

the unimportant place which the sermon holds in the English Church; but, in spite of its obvious failure to meet the demands of the subject, there are passages enough to show, that under more favorable circumstances our author would have produced a work in every respect worthy of his great reputation.

C. C. S.

HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY.

It is with something of a feeling of despair that one takes up the new (fourth) edition of the first volume of Mommsen's "Roman History," and finds it so materially altered, by additions and corrections, that it is in some parts hardly the same work; and with no clew whatever to guide him in ascertaining what are the changes made. One would think that the author would have made his corrections in the form of an appendix or of notes, leaving the body of the work untouched. He has chosen, however, to incorporate them in the text; and the student has no resource but to find them for himself. Having made a careful comparison of the new edition with the old, -a very tedious and laborious job, we have thought that we should do a service to students of ancient history by making a summary of the most important alterations made in the work: it may save somebody the necessity of doing over again what we have just done. Our references, where not otherwise stated, will be to the second edition. We will observe that the changes are chiefly in the first and second books (coming down to the Punic Wars). In these, for four hundred and fifty-three pages of the second edition, we have four hundred and eighty-six of the fourth; to say nothing of a great amount of alteration, and some omissions. We shall, of course, pass over all merely verbal changes, many of which improve the work very much in respect to ease and perspicuity of style; also all matter of purely antiquarian or archæological interest.

"The history of every nation" (chap. vi. of the new edition opens) -"the Italian above all is a great Synacismus ;" and, in chap. iv., we have a new theory of the Synacismus in the origin of Rome. Professor Mommsen has always fought stoutly the idea that Rome owed any thing, in civilization or religion, to Etruria; giving, on the other hand, an unusual degree of credit to Greek influence. He still

Römische Geschichte von THEODOR MOMMSEN. Erster Band. Bis zur Schlacht von Pydna. Vierte Auflage. Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung. 1864.

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holds to this view, and more firmly than ever; but, whereas he has heretofore accepted the commonly received views as to the union of a Latin and a Sabine town (the latter on the Quirinal) in the city of Rome, he now shows a disposition to give up altogether the notion of a Sabine element. In the old edition (p. 43), the Tities were unquestionably" Sabine; in the new, they "may at least have been" so. corroboration of these views, he shows, at considerable length (in chap, iv.), that Quirinus was not a specially Sabine divinity; nor were the divinities worshipped upon the Quirinal any more Sabine than Latin. His theory of the Roman Synacismus, is, therefore, that of two equally Latin towns, the Septimontium, on the Palatine; and a smaller one, on the Quirinal, of unknown name. The three original Roman tribes all existed in the Septimontium, the Tities being the noblest, perhaps Sabine, and probably originally a body of invaders. When the settlement on the Quirinal was incorporated with the original city, it was by adding a new local tribe (Collina) to the three already existing (Palatina, Suburana, Esquilina); while "each Theil (Tities, Ramnes Luceres) and each Curia received a quota of the new citizens."

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In the new edition, all the passages are omitted (pp. 96, 97, 135, 146, 228) which assumed the correctness of Polybius's statement (iii. 23) that the first consuls, Brutus and Horatius, made a treaty of peace with Carthage, on terms which were given; and this treaty is placed (p. 386) in the year 348, B. C.; the reasons for this change of view will be found in Mommsen's "Römische Chronologie."

In chap. xii. we have a detailed account of a Table of Festivals, which seems to have been lately discovered, and which is here characterized as "without question the oldest of all records (Urkunden), out of Roman antiquity, which have come down to us." From this he deduces important facts as to the primitive religion of the Romans. "The central point, not merely of the Roman, but of the Italian, worship in general, in that epoch in which the race dwelt upon the peninsula, left as yet to itself, was, according to all indications, the god Maurs or Mars." In this calendar, we have festivals of Jupiter, Mars, Quirinus, Janus, Ceres, Vesta, Neptune, Vulcan; but none of Juno, Minerva, Mercury, or Diana: from which it would follow that the worship of these divinities was introduced later. In this edition, the Italian origin of the worship of Hercules (as derived from hercere) is given up (p. 165), and the old view substituted, — that the name is only a cor-. ruption of the Greek "Heracles." We have also (p. 193) a much more detailed statement of the Roman Calendar; in which the year,

at first, consisted of ten months, the decimal system being "national Italian," and existing "before the first contact with the Greeks." This difficult subject has been specially treated in the "Römische Chronologie." The history of the Roman alphabet (p. 196) is also considerably enlarged; but the additions here are not very material in their nature.

We proceed, now, to consider the new views upon the constitutional history of the early republic, which are far the most important and radical of all. No one, who has bestowed any attention upon this most complicated question, will expect that a theory will ever be proposed which shall avoid all difficulties, or even which shall not run directly counter to some explicit statement of the ancients, so contradictory are these statements, and so confused the notions which the Romans, even earlier than the time of Cicero, had of the origin of their own institutions. Since the opening of this discussion by Niebuhr, the writers who have followed it up may, in general, be divided into two classes, one (represented by Becker, Marquardt, and Schwegler) which accepts, in the main, Niebuhr's special views; the other, which— equally reverencing him as a leader, and equally pursuing his method - follows, as Rubino expresses it, "a different direction, and different traces (Spuren) than those of the honored man to whose high merit we owe the opening of this course of study." Of this school, Rubino is the chief; and Mommsen, who has always leaned in this direction, may be considered now as fully belonging to it. This school has two characteristic tendencies. The first is to bring prominently forward the aristocratic character of the early institutions of Rome," the aristocratic element in the oldest Roman commonwealth (Gemeinwesen), which has been heretofore underrated by me, and, I believe, by most of my fellow inquirers," says Mommsen. The other is to give more weight to the views held by the ancients themselves than is done by Niebuhr. We think it will appear that, the new theory presented by Professor Mommsen comes nearer that held by Cicero and Livy (so far as Livy had any clear views at all) than any other which has been reached by a critical examination of the authorities. Further, while it is by no means free from difficulties, it seems, on the whole, the most natural and consistent scheme that has been proposed. Fortunately, we are not left, as heretofore, without any means of weighing Professor Mommsen's opinions. They are, to be sure, stated in the History without any references to the authorities, as is his way; but, shortly