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in his altar-piece of St. Peter's Church, has justly secured him

an immortal name.

In the last century, Jones and Wren, those great reformers. of the English taste, first modernised our Architecture, and taught us how dependent grace and beauty ever are on order and proportion. Contemporaries with them we behold Gibbons and Cibber rising above a crowd of inferior competitors. Many and eminent works of the first still remain, while the last, by his masterly execution of his figures of madness will for ever reflect honor on the British school. Rysbrach, Schemaker, and Roubillac, whom we may certainly be allowed to look upon as our adopted children, have since that time been evidences at least of our passion, if not our taste, for the art. But, now let our own and genuine offspring, a Bacon, or a Wilton, so worthily assert our national pretensions. Surely no attachment to a foreign school can justify an impolitic inattention to our own. The successful efforts of the French and Italian academies have at last experimentally demonstrated to us the beneficial tendency of such institutions, while the royal munificence in our late establishment has fully enabled us to confute those insufficient speculatists, who in their partial theories have presumptuously branded us with a national incapacity for the elegant manual arts. We shall now no longer behold the genius of the Sculptor chained down to monuments and sepulchral decorations, while English history presents so fair a scene, and national merit offers so many and such worthy subjects of his skill. These, at the same time that they fitly grace our cities and public edifices, will to every intelligent mind open a source of the most pleasing contemplation. Is there, can there be, an Englishman, but must with an enthusiastic exultation trace the skill of a fellow-citizen thus honorably embodied in the figure of a Locke or a Newton, of a Hardwicke, or a Wolfe? Thus while we cherish the rising art, let us by directing his skill within its proper channel render the artist an advantage as well as an ornament to his country. On this principle did the polite legislators of ancient times ever study to make the arts subservient to public virtue and morality. They rightly judged, that the sparks of a generous and useful emulation were naturally warmed into action by honorary memorials of deceased merit,

or animated representations of successful heroism. Thus was every meaner sentiment secluded; no little, no unworthy passion, could find room in a soul pre-occupied by this thirst of noble distinction. Thus did the heroes of former days renew their life in their descendents; and thus were cowards and voluptuaries shamed into courage and activity. By this powerful enchantment on the minds of posterity did the images of Harmodius and Aristogiton stand as the perpetual champions of Athens, and for ages kept alive the holy flame of liberty. National pride may in this point of view be termed the fostermother of national virtue. The ancients, thus nursed in a perpetual contemplation of great and glorious objects, with these testimonies of a nation's gratitude before their eyes, instinctively caught the pious zeal of their fore-fathers, and prodigal of life esteemed their blood and fortune cheaply bartered for the welfare of their country. To spirits actuated by this glorious enthusiasm, every sculptured ruin became an animated monitor, every trophy, every column struck their eye with a sacred fascination; while their marble ancestors seemed starting into life, and beckoning them on to fame and immortality. By these perpetual remembrancers they were made sensible that ancestrial honors are not an inheritance to be enjoyed in indolence and inactivity. Hence may we trace the latent seeds of that nobly emulous spirit which stimulated every rising generation to contest the palm with their illustrious progenitors. From this source flowed the manly tears of a rival Alexander over the tomb of Achilles. Nor was this beneficial influence confined solely to the active and exalted virtues: its operation was also extended over the paths of civil merit, and even shed a softened lustre on every tender charity, and affection of social life. The ancients held in equal estimation the memory of those worthies who had lived for their country, and the memory of those heroes who had died for their country. Thus in their courts of justice, the statues of a Solon or Lycurgus stood as lively memorials of a nation's reverence, and showed that great and wise legislators are held but second from the Gods; while the scrutinising eye and stern regard of a Draco or Zaleucus, whose marble brows breathed an awful severity, terrified the irresolute Judge from any iniquitous rever

sion of the laws. Thus did every street, every portico, or public walk, present some memorial of departed merit, some striking lesson of useful instruction. Next, perhaps, to Codrus or Timoleon might stand the thundering Demosthenes or the subtile Aristotle; here Homer, and there Thales, or some other founder of a distinguished sect. The History of Greece might be studied in the street, as well as in the closet: the very ornaments of their houses were pregnant with utility, and while they entertained the eye, informed the judgment, and transmitted shining examples to the latest posterity. So prevalent and uniform were the effects expected from these sculptured monitors among the Romans, that their satirists and orators instanced the frequent neglect of them as a mark of aggravated degeneracy. Their bold figures, and glowing descriptions, represented the venerable statues as animated with shame and anger at the corruption of their race, painted them as domestic and ever present accusers. With a stern and indignant silence they conjured them by those precious monuments no longer to let their excesses tarnish their hereditary honors, or wound the peace of those illustrious shades, by whose sufferings and virtue those honors were purchased and acquired. Such great advantages did the ancients both expect and derive from a welldirected exercise of Sculpture; nor have we reason even in these days to suspect that its operation should vary, or its influence on the genius of a people be sensibly diminished.

Britain has ever warmly and abundantly discharged the debt of gratitude to her deceased benefactors; but let her now go further she should begin to reap, in the certain encouragement of public virtue, the fruits of that laborious perfection, to which her patient ingenuity has raised the arts.

Now let the Painter, or Sculptor, do that justice to living merit, which we too frequently leave to be done by posterity, in a tardy and posthumous fame; let us tell the deserving, while they can enjoy the pleasing incense, that to be great and good, is to be reverenced and beloved; and that to ornament the shrine of public virtue is a grateful nation's first and nearest

care.

JOHN GRATTAN.

1775.

JUSTIN EMENDATED, AND ESCHYLUS

EXPLAINED.

HOMINIBUS (SC. Scythis) inter se nulli fines; neque enim agrum exercent; nec domus ulla, aut tectum, aut sedes est, armenta et pecora semper pascentibus, et per incultas solitudines errare solitis: uxores, liberosque secum in plaustris vehunt, quibus, coriis imbrium hyemisque causâ tectis, pro domibus utuntur: justitia gentis ingeniis culta, non legibus: nullum scelus apud eos furto gravius; quippe sine tecti munimento pecora et armenta habentibus quid salvum esset, si furari liceret? Aurum et argentum non perinde ac reliqui mortales appetunt lacte et melle vescuntur: lanæ iis usus ac vestium ignotus; et quanquam continuis frigoribus urantur, pellibus tamen ferinis, aut murinis utuntur: hæc continentia illis morum quoque justitiam edidit, nihil alienum concupiscentibus; quippe ibidem divitiarum cupido est, ubi et usus: atque utinam reliquis mortalibus similis moderatio et abstinentia alieni foret! profectò non tantum bellorum per omnia secula terris omnibus continuaretur, neque plus hominum ferrum et arma quàm naturalis fatorum conditio raperet: prorsùs ut admirabile videatur, hoc illis naturam dare, quod Græci longâ sapientium doctrinâ, præceptisque philosophorum consequi nequeunt; cultosque mores incultæ barbariæ collatione superari: tantò plus in illis proficit vitiorum ignoratio, quàm in his cognitio virtutis. Justin. 1. ii. c. 2.

It is a remarkable circumstance that none of the editors of this valuable, but neglected historian, have, as far as I know, observed the dislocation of a sentence in the passage, which is quoted above; yet, as soon as the error is shown, the most scrupulous critic will, perhaps, readily acknowledge it: I read the passage thus: Hominibus inter se nulli fines; neque enim agrum exercent; nec domus illis ulla, aut tectum, aut sedes

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est, armenta et pecora semper pascentibus, et per incultas solitudines errare solitis: uxores, liberosque secum in plaustris vehunt, quibus, coriis, imbrium hyemisque causâ, tectis, pro domibus utuntur: lacte et melle vescuntur: lanæ iis usus ac vestium ignotus; et quanquam continuis frigoribus urantur, pellibus tamen ferinis, aut murinis utuntur: justitia gentis ingeniis culta, non legibus: nullum scelus apud eos furto gravius; quippe sine tecti munimento pecora, et armenta habentibus quid salvum esset, si furari liceret? Aurum, et argentum non perinde ac reliqui mortales appetunt: hæc continentia illis morum quoque justitiam edidit, nihil alienum concupiscentibus, quippe ibidem divitiarum cupido est, ubi et

usus, etc.

I shall now proceed to offer some remarks, which were suggested by the perusal of this passage: Justin says, Uxores, liberosque secum in plaustris vehunt, quibus coriis, imbrium hyemisque causâ, tectis, pro domibus utuntur. In the Variorum Edition of 1669 we have the following note of Berneggeri: "Vix inhibeo manum rescripturientem corticibus, quæ vox è curribus, quod coriis in MS. quodam suprascriptum Bongarsius affirmat, facili literarum ductu formatur: certè plaustra Scythica corticibus tecta facit et Amm. Marcellinus xxii. 19. xxxi. 6. Alanos ait vagari supersedentes plaustris, quæ operimentis curvatis corticum (tanquam imbricibus) per solitudines conserunt."

This ingenious conjecture will derive an additional probability from the following accounts of modern Scythian houses: Mr. Bell of Antermony, in his relation of a journey to Pekin through China, says (Vol. 1. p. 225 :) "The Tonqusy-have no houses, where they remain for any time, but range through the woods, and along rivers at pleasure; and wherever they come, they erect a few spars, inclining one to another at the top; these they COVER WITH PIECES OF BIRCHEN BARK, SEWED TOGETHER, leaving a hole at the top to let out the smoke: the fire is placed in the middle." Again, he says (in Vol. 11. p. 144 :) "Their (the Osteaks) manner of life is nearly the same with that of the Tonguse, who border with them to the eastward: in summer they live in the woods, in huts COVERED WITH BIRCHEN BARK.”

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