1846.] The Reading of the young Scholar. 119 shown, how the toils of school and its painful discipline take hold of power over his fellow-men for their highest good. Let him clearly feel, that without high attainments and skill attained by use, his triumphs will be short and his success doubtful. Let him be taught to despise the ranting declaimer, the gaudy rhetorician and the impudent and lying charlatan, whether in the pulpit, at the bar, or in any profession or occupation. Let him be fired with the certainty of success if he will but take the pains, and let him be shown how that pains takes hold of success. His studies are dry and repulsive. The cheerful and patient teacher may easily enliven them by illustrations from what the pupil already knows, may sympathize with the dryness and severity of his pains-taking, and help him by a recital of the teacher's own discouragements in the same position. Especially may the study of the classics be made genial and interesting, by connecting it with his reading of modern literature, and if the scholar cannot see how there is beauty or grace in a Latin or Greek sentence, he may be excited as he sees that his teacher regards the classics with more than the eye of a drill-master. Especially should an interest in English literature be engrafted upon instruction in the classics, that the scholar may be taught a warm and personal interest in his studies, and his reading be directed so as to form and strengthen his manhood. The reading of the young scholar, as he advances towards and through the college, is of immense influence on the maturing man. He will read, and read too much, and read that which enervates and corrupts. It is in vain to tell him that it is of little use to read, or that this or that is a corrupting and dangerous book. But if he is led to sce, as he may by slow degrees, that a book has the living spirit of a living man, that he should weigh and test its sentiments as he would the opinions of an associate, and mark its power and elegance of language as he would the words of living speakers, and above all receive into his own character, and make a part of his own life, the spirit and soul of a book, as he would catch the inspiration of a man, then does he learn to take a genial pleasure in all literature, and what is of more consequence, make literature form and fix his character. To form the character of the scholar, as of every other man, the moral and religious should assume the highest place, and be the commanding element. The voice of conscience is the same commanding voice to the scholar which it is to the most unlettered man. His responsibilities are the same with those of other men, for time and eternity. His joys and sorrows, his hopes and fears, are the same with theirs, and the motives that affect them, are fitted to affect him. Thrice happy is the young scholar, who from his earliest years, carries the fervor of youthful piety into the aspirings of youthful ambition, and while he burns with an ardent love of knowledge, hallows the flame by a higher love of the end of all knowledge, in love to God and love to man. The scholar has his peculiar dangers here. His course is beset with these, not so much in its earlier as in its later passages. Knowledge brings her peculiar exposures. She tempts his pride. She leads him through the chaos of doubt, and as he sounds there his dim and perilous way, and seems often to find no foothold, he wishes that he had never been born. The witchery of imagination invades his purer desires. She would first seduce him, by the fame of standing conspicuous on some bad eminence, that she may afterwards damn him by its infamy. A worldly ambition would tempt him to misuse or sell the power which he has gained, for some inferior or base price. But if knowledge has her dangers, she has her securities; if her weakness, she has also her peculiar strength. She teaches reflection, and secures thereby from mere frivolity. She unrolls the page of history, and, by the example of each succeeding age, distinctly affirms the unalterable decree of heaven, that the name of the wicked, however great in philosophy, in science, in history, poetry, statesmanship or art,-that the name of the wicked, however splendid and powerful, it shall rot. It is her solemn testimony that however vice may be excused in the intellectually great while they live, or however skepticism may get a splendid renown in the present generation, it is rejected and loathed by the generations that come after. Such is the testimony of knowledge. Her voice is to the young and the older scholar. Let this voice be made to resound in all the schools of learning, let the peculiar notions which may thus be brought to act, be added to those other considerations that are common to man as man, and we give the highest security that we can give to man, who is liable everywhere to fall. These remarks upon character as a prime element in forming the scholar, and the suggestions as to the manner in which the character should be trained, are far from being precise and dogmatic. It is, however, of prime importance that the springs of action should be developed and regulated. They enter largely into the training of the young scholar, quite as largely as the work which 1846.] Example of Dr. Arnold worthy of Imitation. 121 we bestow on the intellect alone. Let this then be understood and held up and insisted on, to all teachers, all scholars, and all schools, and very much will be gained. Happy is the pupil, happy also the school, which is blessed with a teacher whose own scholarship and character combined, exert on all within his reach, a kindling and inspiring influence; the very contact of whose mind and the magic of whose presence wakes, as by an electric fire, the intellect and the manhood of his pupils; who creates intellect and creates character by the strength, the justness and the ardor of his own. Such a man was the late Dr. Arnold, an eminent and inspiring example to all scholars and all teachers, the record of whose life should be held in the memory of all such, till a brighter example shall arise. It was his to dwell in the past with the accurate knowledge of the exactest and the most thorough scholarship, and yet be alive to the present, as an earnest man,-to concern himself with the readings of Thucydides, the minutest point respecting Rome, with the enthusiasm of the merest man of books; and to engage upon the great questions which agitated England, with all the eagerness of one who had forgotten his books forever, in the hot and busy strife of politics. It was his to be interested alike in the drill of the class-room, the sports of the play-ground, and the adventurous and exciting ramble through swamp and wood. It was for him to rejoice in that nice appreciation of the classics, which the master of the ancient tongues alone possesses, and to esteem the study of the classics of highest value, as they enabled his pupils to read with higher enthusiasm and a better taste their own English writers. It was his as a teacher, to strive earnestly to make his pupils scholars, and still more earnestly if possible to make them men, and through the men whom he sent to the university, to spread himself over all England. What was highest and best of all, it was his peculiar glory to be as wakeful as a boy to all that was good in the present life, and yet to keep an eye open full and clear upon the things which faith beholds in the world which is to be, and to demonstrate by his own example and his own success, that a life of letters may be a life of the manliest and most fervent piety, and that a school of literary training may bring the best appliances to form the noblest Christian character. Would that his name might be honored and his example imitated in all the schools of our land. ARTICLE VI. THE TIMES, CHARACTER AND POLITICAL SYSTEM OF By Daniel R. Goodwin, Professor of Languages, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Me. AMONG the most remarkable phenomena of mediaeval history, may be reckoned the rise and fall of the Italian republics. In the course of what, for most of Europe, was the night of the dark ages, Italy, by a more rapid revolution, had its own early night; then its dawn, its noon, and its second decline; another cloud of darkness gathering over it just as the returning light was chasing away the lingering shades of barbarism from the rest of Europe. It was midnight in Italy when it was but evening in Britain and France; again it was morning in Italy when it was hardly midnight in the neighboring countries. As early as the 13th century Italy contained an almost incredible number of separate republics-independent cities, some of which were respectively possessed of greater wealth, power and foreign influence than England, France or Spain. Their merchants were princes, the islands and coasts of the sea their possessions, the whole commercial world their tributaries. Literature and the arts also shone forth with a short but magnificent effulgence. The great poem of Dante-one name for all, was written about the year 1300, in a language which differs not so much from that now spoken in Italy, as Shakspeare's does from the present ordinary English; while in Dante's time the English language could hardly be said to exist. 1 Opere di Niccolò Machiavelli, 10 vols. 8vo. ; Firenze, per Niccolò Conti, 1818. Besides the Preface of the learned editor to the above mentioned collection of Machiavelli's Works, the authorities consulted in the preparation of this Article are, among others, Botta, Guicciardini, Sismondi and Tiraboschi. Some of the passages translated from these authors, and interwoven into the text are not accompanied with any marks of acknowledgment. Particular references to volume and page have not been thought necessary. And, perhaps, it is equally unnecessary to add, that for the opinions, whether true or false, expressed and defended in this Article, the writer alone is responsible. The subject, though not coming within the narrowest scope of this Review, will be found to have many points of contact with its general objects. 1846.] The Republics of Italy and their Fate. 123 While the great warlike and maritime republics of Venice and Genoa were under an aristocratic form of government, Florence, Pisa, Lucca, Siena, Bologna, Modena, Ferrara, Verona, Padua, Milan, Parma, Mantua and a host more, were democracies more or less pure. In the course of time, Florence subjected or subordinated to herself most of the other Tuscan republics. In her most flourishing periods her wealth was almost incredible. Her revenues were many times greater than those of the crown of England. Some idea of her population may be gathered from the fact that in the great plague of 1348, which has been im. mortalized by the Description and the Decameron of Boccaccio, more than 100,000 of her inhabitants died; and again, in the long mortality which prevailed from 1522 to 1527, of which Machia. velli has left an almost equally graphic description, more than 250,000 of her citizens perished; and in six months of the year 1527, there died within her walls no less than 40,000 persons. Yet she survived, and, but for other causes, might have soon recovered from the blow. Like all the other democratic republics, Florence was subject to many violent revolutions, constantly torn by factions, often under the control of tyrants; but her liberties were not entirely extinguished till 1530, when the overwhelming power of Austria, instigated and backed by the pope, finally reduced the city and gave it into the hands of the Medicean family, who had been exiled as dangerous citizens, and who soon after their return assumed the title of Dukes. Here ends the history, not only of the Italian republics, but of the Italian nation. As to the rest of the democratic cities, before the 14th century they had all fallen under the iron rule of signori, i. e. lords or tyrants, who have been not inaptly compared to the men that sprung from the serpent's teeth sown by Cadmus, and that went on fighting one another until they were all killed. Foreign allies were called in to decide their contests. Italy, which had recovered from the desolations of Goths and Vandals, and become once more the garden of Europe, was made the battle-field and warprize of the most powerful nations of Christendom. Rome, that had often been captured by the barbarians in the early part of the Christian era, never was so savagely treated by any of them, as when sacked by the troops of Charles V. in the 15th century. The republics of Italy and those of Greece present a striking analogy in their character, history and fate; with this important difference, that while those of Greece were subjugated by a sin |