complishments which were necessary to enable them to influence others. Other Greeks could act with bravery in circumstances of peril; but it was an Athenian alone who could think, speak, and act with equal efficiency.

It was this tripartite accomplishment which an aspiring youth was compelled to set before himself as an aim in the democracy of Athens, and which the sophists as well as the .democratical institutions, both of them so hardly depreciated, helped and encouraged him to acquire. It was this tripartite accomplishment, the exclusive possession of which, in spite of constant jealousy on the part of Baotian officers and comrades of Proxenus, elevated Xenophon into the most ascendant person of the Cyreian army, from the present moment until the time when it broke up. I think it the more necessary to notice this fact, that the accomplishments whereby Xenophon leaped on a sudden into such extraordinary ascendency, and rendered such eminent service to his army, were accomplishments belonging in an especial manner to the Athenian democracy and education, because Xenophon himself has throughout his writings treated Athens, not merely without the attachment of a citizen, but with feelings more like the positive antipathy of an exile. His sympathies are all in favour of the perpetual drill, the mechanical obedience, the secret government proceedings, the narrow and prescribed range of ideas, the silent and deferential demeanour, the methodical, though tardy, action of Sparta. Whatever may be the justice of his preference, certain it is, that the qualities whereby he was himself enabled to contribute so much both to the rescue of the Cyreian army and to his own reputation were Athenian far more than Spartan.'-vol. ix. pp. 117, 118.

Our limits warn us to draw our remarks to a close; otherwise we should have willingly dwelt upon many topics in the later volumes, such as the career of Epaminondas, the history of the Sicilian Greeks, and the patriotic struggles of Demosthenes against the rising fortunes of Philip. The graphic account of the despot's progress,' as exemplified by the elder Dionysius, of the intercourse of Plato with the younger tyrant, of the melancholy end of Dion, and of the glorious success of Timoleon, is in Mr. Grote's best style, and is not surpassed in narrative interest by any portion of his work. It is the more valuable, since Dr. Thirlwall has strangely omitted altogether the history of the Sicilian Greeks. There is, however, one subject in the later volumes which we must not pass over entirely,―the estimate which Mr. Grote forms of the character of Alexander the Great. It has been the fashion of recent writers to extol Alexander as one of the benefactors of his kind, whose ambition was ennobled and purified by the desire of knowledge and the love of good, and whose great object was to diffuse the blessings

of

of Hellenic civilization among the torpid nations of Asia. Mr. Grote's judgment is very different. He stigmatizes Alexander as essentially anti-Hellenic. The historian and champion of the free Grecian commonwealths has no sympathy with this 'non-Hellenic conqueror, into whose vast possessions the Greeks are absorbed, with their intellectual brightness bedimmed, their spirit broken, and half their virtue taken away by Zeus.' Alexander was by birth not a Greek, but a Macedonian and an Epirot. His violent temperament and headstrong will were inherited from his furious Epirotic mother Olympias;' the main feature in his character was an exorbitant vanity, which was inflamed and exaggerated to such an extraordinary pitch by the success of his arms, that he at length believed himself to be the son of the King of the Gods, and claimed divine worship from his followers. The only point which he had in common with the Greeks was his warm sympathy with the heroic legends of their country; and he resembled in many points his legendary ancestors, Achilles, Neoptolemus, and the other heroes of the acid race-' a man of violent impulse in all directions, sometimes generous, often vindictive-ardent in his individual affections both of love and hatred, but devoured especially by an inextinguishable pugnacity, appetite for conquest, and thirst for establishing at all cost his superiority of force over others.' He possessed, however, nothing of that sense of correlative right and obligation which characterised the free Greeks of the city-community;' and his character and dispositions had the features, both striking and repulsive, of Achilles, rather than those of Agesilaus or Epaminondas.' His desire of imitating the legendary heroes is seen on many occasions in his life, and led him into many wild and some barbarous acts. His horrible treatment of Batis, the heroic defender of Gaza, is happily without a parallel in the historical times of Greece, and was copied from the Homeric description of the ferocious vengeance which Achilles took upon the corpse of Hector. The Macedonian monarch actually caused the feet of Batis to be bored and brazen rings passed through them; and he then dragged the naked body of this brave man, while still alive, fastened to his chariot, amidst the triumphant jeers and shouts of the army. The murder of the aged general Parmenio and his son Philotas is one of the foulest blots upon the character of Alexander, who, upon this occasion, displayed a personal rancour worthy of his ferocious mother Olympias, exasperated rather than softened by the magnitude of past services.' Mr. Grote, who never fails to point out the non-Hellenic character of the Macedonians, adds-'When we see the greatest officers

officers of the Macedonian army directing in person, and under the eye of Alexander, the laceration and burning of the naked body of their colleague Philotas, and assassinating with their own hands the veteran Parmenio, we feel how much we have passed out of the region of Greek civic feeling into that of the more savage Illyrian warrior, partially orientalised.' The mutilation of Bessus, whose nose and ears Alexander ordered to be cut off, is one of many proofs how much the conqueror of Asia had become orientalised, mutilation being a practice altogether oriental and non-Hellenic.' Alexander could brook no equal; and his celebrated reply to the proposals of Darius after the battle of Issus is characterised by Mr. Grote as the language of brutal insolence.'

6

Alexander represented himself as the avenger of Hellas upon the barbarians, who, a hundred and fifty years before, had burnt the Grecian cities and profaned the Grecian temples. All the Greeks, who kept aloof from his cause, and still more those who fought in the ranks of Darius, he branded as enemies and traitors to the cause of Hellas. But Demosthenes and the patriots took a very different view of the relation of Macedonia to the Grecian states, and regarded the Pan-Hellenic claims of Alexander merely as a pretence to cover a scheme of 'Macedonian appetite and Macedonian aggrandisement.' The real sympathies of Greece were rather adverse than favourable to his success; and the real interests of Greece were on the side of Darius rather than upon the side of Alexander. Such was the melancholy degradation of the Grecian world that its cities had no hope of escaping from the bondage of Macedonia except by entering into alliance with the Persian king, which Mr. Grote considers the Athenian patriots to have been perfectly justified in doing. To invoke the aid of Persia against Hellenic enemies was an unwarrantable proceeding; but to invoke the same aid against the dominion of another foreigner, at once nearer and more formidable, was open to no blame on the score either of patriotism or policy.'

6

While Mr. Grote is thus emphatic in his condemnation of Alexander, he does full justice to his unrivalled military genius. 'Alexander,' he remarks, overawes the imagination more than any other personage of antiquity, by the matchless development of all that constitutes effective force-as an individual warrior and as an organizer and leader of armed masses; not merely the blind impetuosity ascribed by Homer to Ares, but also the intelligent, methodized, and all-subduing compression which he personifies in Athene.' But Mr. Grote gives him no credit for those grand and beneficent views for the improvement of mankind

and

and for the amelioration of government, which some writers attribute to him on the contrary, he considers that Alexander had no other object in his conquests but the gratification of an insane desire for universal dominion; that he was continually subduing new nations simply because 'fighting and man-hunting were the master-passions of his nature;' that his acts show that he intended to continue the traditional system of the Persian government, with the sole improvement of a strong military organization; in one word, that the celebrated Macedonian king possesses no claims to our admiration or respect, either as a ruler or a politician. Even his attempt to form his European and Asiatic subjects into one people, which has received the warm approbation of so many writers, is strongly condemned by Mr. Grote. Alexander had no feeling of nationality, because his exorbitant self-estimation and belief in his divine parentage raised him above all sympathy with any special nation, and made him conceive all mankind as the common subjects of his divine rule. Alexander's disposition and purpose were far more Oriental than Hellenic, as may be seen by his 'violence of impulse, unmeasured self-will, and exaction of reverence above the limits of humanity. Instead of Hellenizing Asia, he was tending, according to Mr. Grote, to render Macedonia and Hellas Asiatic. He was impatient of the free speech of Greeks, and even Macedonians, and he preferred more and more the servile Asiatic sentiments and customs. His conquests, and the rule of his successors, diffused an exterior varnish of Hellenism' over much of the Oriental world; but 'Hellenism, properly so called -the aggregate of habits, sentiments, energies, and intelligence, manifested by the Greeks during their epoch of autonomynever passed over into Asia. Its living force, productive genius, self-organizing power, and active spirit of political communion, were stifled, and gradually died out.'

Mr. Grote closes his work with the generation contemporary with Alexander the Great. It was necessary to draw the line somewhere, for the Greeks have continued to exist as a separate people down to the present day, speaking the language of their forefathers, and cherishing the recollection of their glorious deeds, the most memorable instance of national vitality in the history of the world. Most modern writers have brought down. their history to the time when Greece became absorbed in the Roman empire; but long before that period she had ceased to have a history of her own, and had become an appendage of her powerful neighbours. We therefore think that Mr. Grote has acted wisely in concluding his work at the period at which he does. The freedom of Hellas had completely disappeared;

and

and the historian of the autonomous Hellenic world, feeling that life has departed from his subject, with sadness and humiliation brings his narrative to a close.'

We have thus endeavoured to convey to such of our readers as are not professed scholars some conception of the leading characteristics of Mr. Grote's History of Greece. It will readily be understood that in a history which fills twelve thick octavo volumes the task of selection has not been easy; and that, while we have pointed out a few of Mr. Grote's most striking views and opinions, they must be regarded only as a sample of the vast stores of learning and knowledge-combined with a wonderful power of appreciating and depicting the Hellenic character and feelings-which are. contained in this original work. We have not been using the language of panegyric, but have expressed opinions formed after mature deliberation, and the reasons for which we have laid before our readers. A repeated perusal of the volumes as they appeared, and a long-continued study of their contents, have left so deep an impression upon our minds of the conscientious fidelity and eminent abilities of the historian, that we have thought it our duty to give full expression to our feelings of admiration and respect for a writer who has given such a stimulus to our intellect and enlarged so widely the horizon of our knowledge.

ART. III.-1. Histoire de Charles 1, depuis son avènement jusqu'à sa mort, 5e édition, précédée d'un Discours sur l'Histoire de la Révolution d'Angleterre. Par M. Guizot. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1854.

2. Histoire de la République d'Angleterre et de Cromwell. Par M. Guizot. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1854.

3. Histoire du Protectorat de Richard Cromwell, et du Rétablissement des Stuart. Par M. Guizot. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1856. 4. Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches: with Elucidations. By Thomas Carlyle. Third Edition, enlarged. 4 vols. 8vo. London, 1850.

5. The Statesmen of the Commonwealth of England; with a Treatise on the Popular Progress in English History. By John Forster, of the Inner Temple. 5 vols. small 8vo. London, 1840.

HE most eventful period of English history was the time of

THE most everfa, Pnd Oliver Cromwell was the greatest man whom the crisis produced. The last few years have afforded important elucidations of his career, and M. Guizot in particular

has