century of Rome, that even those who understood it best, found some things in it which with their best attention they could scarcely explain." He then adds-"I see no reason to differ from Niebuhr, who thinks the stories of the kings as we now have them not earlier than the restoration of the city, after the invasion of the Gauls. Yet still their fame is so great, and their beauty and interest so surpassing, that it would be unpardonable to sacrifice them altogether to the spirit of inquiry and of fact, and to exclude them from the place which they have so long held in Roman history. Nor shall I complain of my readers, if they pass over with indifference these attempts of mine to put together the meagre fragments of our knowledge, and to present them with an outline of the times of the kings, at once incomplete and without spirit, while they read with eager interest the immortal story of the fall of Tarquinius, and the wars with Porsenna and the Latins, as it has been handed down to us in the rich coloring of the heroic lays of Rome." It would be unpardonable not to mention in this connection the spirited and beautiful ballads of Macaulay, in which he attempts to revive these stories as felt and sung in contemporary Rome. And this is about all the light we can throw upon the cradle of Romulus and Remus, and upon the lisping origin of that tongue, which in power and grandeur filled the world! How often are we reminded, that that which rises from obscurity in silence and darkness, is by this very fact, acquiring the strength which makes it world-defying. The great men of early Rome were too busy acting, to write.

In discussing the characteristics of the Latin language, we meet with qualities apparently opposite, and, at first view, almost inconsistent. But a further examination satisfies us, that in this is revealed one of the prominent reasons for the position occupied by the Latin; since high excellence is ever an union of apparent opposites. This language corresponds more perfectly to the genius of the American people, as they have been and are, than the Greek, though the latter is much needed as an element in making the nation what it ought to be. The fact that there is this present adaptedness in the one, more than in the other, may account, in part, for the effort which is necessary to retain the Greek language in our academical and

college courses. But dark would be the hour for mankind, if the sun of Hellas should set in this western world.

1. The first characteristic that meets us in the Latin language, is its adaptedness to the Roman people. It is obviously the speech of a ruling race, a language of strength. We do not mean merely that the people who used it were strong, but that this power was interwoven with their spoken and written utterances. The only difficulty is in proving so plain a thing. When we read the Commentaries of Cæsar, the civil criticisms of Sallust, the fierce invective of Juvenal, we see in the very words and sentences, that each man felt that he was a unit of that mighty City, whose pulses throbbed from Britain to the Indies. The language of the victim of Verres thrilled in their heart and on their lips, "I am a Roman citizen." A word or two of this language, nay, even initials, now thrill through the brain. Sacramentum-the oath sworn by the soldier to his eagles—what a world of infamy in its violation! The legio decima—what a host of associations of power and fidelity! S. P. Q. R. on a standard; and the world trembled―S. C. and the nations bowed!

2. This element allies itself with a dignity, which seems to be peculiar almost to the people and the language. Whether it were that the nation of Romulus were peculiarly fortunate in the accidental rudiments of their speech, or whether it grew up under the influence alone of their character, certain it is, that while other nations, as the English, have impressed a dignity often upon that which in itself possesses none, but is homely to rudeness, the very materials of the Latin language are dignified. The Egyptians, with a fortitude which defied time and death, have built ever-enduring monuments of burnt clay; but the Greek in the minutest fragment of his material, showed his sense of beauty; the marble must be disintegrated before the dignity of the Parthenon can perish. And so it is with the Roman speech; the oration is stately, but so is the paragraph, the sentence, the word.

Pompousness arises, when the matter conveyed by the utterance is mean, while the language is sonorous; but there is fitness in clothing lofty ideas in lofty words. When the proprietor of some little German principality, over which a bird.

could fly in half-an-hour, puts on the garb and mien of sovereignty in his proclamations, we can only smile; but that the Ruler of the World should use sonorous Latin, strikes us not as an effort to be great in language, but as the natural expression of one, who unless with an effort could have spoken no otherwise; just as in Shakspeare the language of monarchs seems naturally to pass into poetry, while that of the peasantry breaks off into colloquialisms. This dignity in the Roman nature manifests itself in a thousand ways. It is striking in the New Testament, where character is often depicted by a few touches, and where the picture has the relief of the contrast with Oriental nations. To mention a single example. When the riot is raised against Paul at Jerusalem, and an innocent man is overwhelmed with every missile of slander and invective-a common expedient, to make up in volume and repetition, what is wanting in truth-the chief captain, Claudius Lysias, lays his mailed hand upon the mob, rescues Paul, inquires with dignity into the case, weighs the evidence, and listens to information from every reasonable quarter. He manifests a little Roman and military obtuseness as to speculative questions, and finally sends the man who professes to be a Roman citizen, but against whom no overt act of crime is alleged, with a large escort, by stratagem, from the midst of a populous and infuriated city, to be tried by the pro-consul at Cesarea, accompanied by a letter, which swells from the language in which we have it, into so evident Roman proportions, that when reading it we forget the light-footed Greek, and seem to see the perpendicular Latin character, the documentary sentences, and the essentially military style.

3. And this leads to the remark, that the Latin is a military language. The reader will know exactly what we mean when we say, that though the French are essentially a military people, there is something singularly deficient for that purpose, in their language. We will venture the opinion, that Bonaparte did not write as good despatches as General Taylor. His annunciations of his greatest victories read bombastic. "Seventeen centuries looking down from the pyramids" on his whiskered soldiers, does not sound sublime. Austerlitz is altogether a different thing from the bulletin announcing it. If he

had not fought better than he wrote, the name of Napoleon would have made a very feeble struggle to show itself on the page of history. We do not claim to have read every despatch of Camillus, and Scipio and Marcellus, but we will risk the assertion that there is nothing like Corsican writing in the letters to the Senate, from any celebrated Roman commander. If there might be a little affectation in "veni, vidi, vici," there was something in its Spartan power that suited the Roman character, and Cæsar, a consummate politician, well knew it. But all Latin classic prose reads something like despatches, unless it be Cicero's Orations; but he, we all know, besides being half a Greek, was better at talking than fighting; for after all his praise of himself for saving the State from Cataline, it was C. Antonius who did the fighting at last. The stern expressions; the decided opinions; the haughty impatience of contradiction; the confidence in the Fortune of Rome; the manner in which the author stations himself at a point and brings the facts in array before him; the absence of mere epithet and useless ornament; the very paucity of words, all indicate the edu cated soldier, not the literary man.

4. In a similar vein of thought, we may mention one of the most admirable features of the Latin language, one which, more than almost any other, makes it valuable as a modelits precision, distinctness, and conciseness. A German author* mentions this as a special reason for urging its study upon ladies, that they particularly need this accurate discrimination of the meaning of words which prevents sophistry, and the habit of expressing themselves with perfect clearness. If any one will translate a page of Tacitus, for example, or Sallust, into good English, he will find that the English page will extend further than the Latin; and yet the English is by no means, necessarily, a prolix language. It is this characteristic of the Latin, which qualifies it so eminently for mottoes and proverbs, where a whole subject is condensed into a short sentence. This dramatic power in the Latin is of continual exemplification. How much lies in the most commonly quoted Latin phrases! "Et tu Brute!" "Pro aris et focis;" "Vae victis!" "Habet foenum in cornu;" "Homines novi;” “Auri sacra * De Wette.

fames;" "Labor lima;" "Excelsior." It is their power which makes them common. They appeal to that which is universal in man.

5. Nearly connected with this trait is that curiosa felicitas, which is especially exemplified in Horace; but also frequently by Virgil, Catullus, Juvenal, not to mention others. The influence of Greek literature is here to be distinctly traced, and yet the Latin is shown by these authors to possess, we were almost going to say, unexpected power in adaptation to the elegancies of life. Horace relishes a fine expression, as an epicure, dainties. His Epicureanism is like that of Lucullus, the extracting of an intellectual and tasteful delight from the pleasures which gratified lower propensities in others. Language, in Horace's hands, is the finely-edged scimetar, which like that of Saladin, could sever a down-pillow. down-pillow. The reader remembers his description of the rivulet:

Et obliquo laborat

Lympha fugax trepidare rivo.

What a delightful picture of the country:

Labuntur altis interim rivis aquæ

Queruntur in silvis aves;

Fontesque lymphis obstrepunt manantibus

Somnos quod invitet leves.

The same trait is manifested in the Satires and Epistles; but the genius of Horace seems more finely evident in the Odes.

6. The Romans have been fortunate in their men of genius. But for Virgil, we should never have known the full capability of the Latin for harmony. While reading him, we are beguiled into the belief, that no other language is so susceptible of mellifluous expression, and we see the foreshadowing of Italian in the sterner mother-tongue. His influence over English poetry has been great and most happy; we see him in Pope, in Goldsmith, in Gray, in Campbell. There is no author whom a young poet can study with more advantage. To be useful, however, this should not influence him so much in the first fusion of his thoughts, as in the revisions. If the flow of the lava be checked by continual mental criticism, it will be but shallow. Let it flow, full and free; but afterwards polish the