the proceedings of the evangelical clergy of the Scottish church. They compelled them to move more rapidly in the right direction. The conviction was entertained-and rightly-that the only course by which to silence opponents, and to meet the demands of the times, was to attend to the great substantial affairs of religion, and to the removal of acknowledged grievances. They accordingly took up this ground, and steadily maintained it till they were driven forth by the pressure of evils which they had not the power to overcome. Very different has been the result of these discussions on the English church. Distrusting the power of truth, a large number, if not the majority, of the clergy have receded from the strong ground which the Reformation had secured, and have fallen back upon the old outworks of Romanism. No inconsiderable portion of those who had the credit of being attached to evangelical truth, we regret to say, have been hurried along in this retrograde movement. Thus the same cause which in the one connexion has been so favourable to the interest of Christian truth and liberty, has tended, in the other, to issues of a strictly opposite description. How long is this state of things to last in the English church? When will some bold reformer arise within the pale of that communion to rebuke the formalism and time-serving by which it is so much dishonoured, and call the thoughts of its clergy to the importance of contending for a purer faith and a more scriptural discipline? When will some holy man appear—another Wycliffe -a man that cannot crouch, and will not fawn; who, with strong faith and singleness of aim, shall, by the Divine blessing, vindicate the simplicity and spirituality of the gospel dispensation? The indications of such an event-an event that would be fraught with the most happy results to the cause of evangelical protestantism and to our common country-are, we lament to say, indistinct and distant. Yet our times have come laden with strange things. The past is not without encouragement. The falling away to the Tractarian heresy may be silently working out consequences the reverse of those which men fear. Wary as the Oxford theologians manifestly are-ready as they are to withdraw for a little when tokens are abroad which indicate that they have gone somewhat too far-they cannot, with all their caution and adroitness, conceal the tendency of their measures; and as that shall become more apparent, a spirit may in the end be awakened before which not only the errors of those men, but everything which has favoured and sheltered them, shall be finally swept away.

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ART. IV.—A Manual of the Political Antiquities of Greece, historically considered. From the German of CHARLES FREDERICK HERMANN. Oxford. 1 vol. 8vo, pp. 423.

IT has been a frequent, as it is an obvious remark, how broad is the difference between the histories of European States and those of Asia and Africa. The reigns of despotic monarchs in India or Babylonia, Constantinople or Cairo, have a wearying and uninstructive sameness. In the military history alone do we look for variety; and except when it derives a peculiar interest from the nations with whom they are in collision, their wars are often as unworthy of detailed record as the brawls of savages.

An exception to the general remark is found whenever we find a well-organized priesthood side by side with the otherwise despotic king. The conflict of such powers uniformly supplies important materials for history; and if the records of early Egypt could be magically recovered, they would for this reason have a great interest. In fact, the reason why the lives of barbarians have so little to instruct us, is, because they act as mere individuals, guided by personal caprice, out of which no great law of humanity can develop itself." In consequence, we learn no more from their history, than we know already from observing the conduct of children and of uneducated persons. But when men begin to act as masses, having enough of organization to preserve some sort of identity through long time; a large part of the capriciousness of individual character is neutralized. Hence the history of a corporation, however insignificant or however corrupt, whether it be the petty community of Niebuhr's native Ditmarsh, or the great Roman Catholic priesthood,-if continued through several generations, becomes a worthy subject for philosophic reflection.

It would be rash to imagine that Asia never developed fixed political institutions other than that of priesthood. So great a chasm intervenes, both of time and of space, between ourselves and the ancient Bactrians and Indians, that very much may have existed which we do not suspect. In fact, the report has reached us of flourishing republics on the western side of India, in very early ages; but no fragment of their history has been preserved. The earliest nation in which a high culture of the arts of life went on side by side with an advancing constitution, is the far-famed Phenician confederacy; and not longer after, her yet more powerful daughter Carthage. The latter state, like Tyre, was, in fact, only the principal member of a great federation; every member having a certain internal freedom

guaranteed to it, with its own peculiar usages; yet all, for certain purposes, acting together, especially for common defence, under recognised leadership. It is by a peculiar and surprising disaster that we have entirely lost the internal history of these most intelligent and active communities. We are mortified by knowing that ample native histories were not only composed, but were actually within the reach of Greeks and Romans, who might have had them translated, and transmitted them to us. No Herodotus arose among the Romans, whose lively gossip might insure the preservation of his versatile work and the ponderous erudition of Varro has perished so entirely, that we are left to mere surmise on the question whether his voluminous collections would lessen the loss which we now lament. The only extraEuropean literature of antiquity which has been preserved to us, is that of the Hebrew nation. It has for us a value of its own which cannot be equalled. But the very fact that the Hebrews were a peculiar people, set aside for Jehovah, 'dwelling alone, and not numbered among the nations,' so cut them off from their natural kinsfolk, the Phenicians and Syrians, that their institutions and fortunes are in no respect blended with theirs.

Thus we are forced to regard the Greeks as the earliest people who have, for us, a history. From them we fitly derive the words Politics, Policy, Monarchy, Tyranny, Aristocracy, Oligarchy, Democracy; since among them first can we recognise all these ideas or institutions in full activity. We must look to the physical geography of Greece as the immediate cause of this, though not forgetting the instincts and intelligence of the Hellenic races. It has been often observed that in different parts of Greece itself, even in later times, there was a tendency to oligarchy in wide and fertile plains, where cavalry could be reared and could act advantageously; to democracy on the sea coast; and to a more mixed constitution on undulating and less fertile tracts. But besides this, (which indeed must be received with caution,) the form of Greece as a whole put great impediments in the way of a universal monarchy. Its lofty mountains and narrow winding valleys, its unnavigable rivers and isolated plains, gave every advantage for the growth of many independent communities and according to the social state in each, one or another class attained the preponderating political power. Those who fell under the displeasure of the ruling body, found a refuge in some neighbouring state; and this, in early times, was perhaps the chief cause which tempered the despotic tendencies of royalty. Priesthoods existed in Greece, as in Rome; but the priests did not form a caste, nor an organized order; and had seldom much power either to resist the king or enslave other classes of the community. It would seem that the absence of a priestly order

is, in fact, the great phenomenon which has from the beginning distinguished the European, as opposed to Asiatic civilization; for we claim the Phenician and Punic systems as European, although not on the soil of Europe; and in this respect they agreed with ancient Greece and Italy. Colonization in all these countries, whether by land or sea, went on unchecked by the mother state, simply because its executive arm was not strong enough to stop, or long enough to reach the fugitive. In consequence, no artificial system of rule, such as that of a technical and official priesthood, could follow the tribes in their migrations; but those commanded reverence and obedience, who by superior knowledge, energy and hereditary reputation, seemed to deserve it.

The Homeric Greeks were already in possession of all the chief arts of social life, and by commerce with Asia were able to obtain any farther improvement which they needed: but they had broken the fetters of caste and priesthood, under which those arts were first brought to high excellence. How the priestly power first fell, no history informs us; but it may be suspected that it was a gradual revolution, of vast geographical extent; if indeed that power was ever spread over some considerable Indo-European tribes. To India, Bactria, and northeastern Persia (i. e., Ariana), we look, as great nuclei of priestly influence: and these nations, like Egypt, attained the earliest social eminence. The glimpses which we get of Asia Minor would make us suppose that special temples, and priesthoods attached to them, had been venerated and wealthy from extreme antiquity, but that the mountainous character of that region had so facilitated the rise of local influence, that the priesthood, becoming hereditary, degenerated into royalty. This would form an intermediate link between the state of Greece and of Bactria. An hereditary priest-king, whose kingly power rose out of the veneration for his temple, would aim to keep up the old religious notions and ceremonies, but without the intellectual influence of a priestly caste. Perhaps then this institution underwent a gradual modification, during the migration of the Grecian tribes from the East.

The old saying, that "a rolling stone gathers no moss," is well applied to societies of men. Not until the waves of Grecian migration had been hushed, could society take any fixed form, or anything deserving the name of "institutions" arise. Without denying that something is due to the peculiarity of Greek genius, (an argument which we think the learned Germans are apt to overstrain,) we are persuaded that even the lowest of the tribes of the human family will, in course of time, crystallize into political form, if only it be forced into local coherence. Strongly

marked as are the African peculiarities in the Egyptian and the Ethiopian, we yet find in both those nations a very early culture not to be despised; depending, no doubt, on the well-defined outline of the region which they inhabited. It may be remarked, that those Grecian states advanced most rapidly, which by their position had access to the sea, with but narrow landed possessions. Such was "the wealthy Corinth," and those islands which were large enough to defend themselves single-handed: nay, and even the little Ægina. Such also were the colonies to Sicily, Italy, and Asia, who were debarred from spreading inland by the hostility of the old inhabitants. The wide extended system of piracy was to the more advanced communities a "pressure from without," formidable enough to keep down internal factions, and force them into amicable compromise; and, when the increase of national navies and the progress of legitimate traffic had put down piracy by sea, and the last great territorial exchange of population by land-the Dorian occupation of Peloponnesus-had given to the diverse clans their final abode; Greece presented the aspect of a cluster of independent states, speaking a common language, and holding in the main a common religion, contained in the great national poems,-states, which, though united by public games held periodically, as well as by continual commercial intercourse, yet, in every political sense, were strictly separate, without any organization even for defensive confederacy.

One island of Greece is in size so considerable, as to have formed in itself a separate nebula of allied or hostile states-the "hundred-citied Crete," which has for us, in most respects, as enigmatic a history as Etruria or Bactria. All that we know about it, points to the conclusion that in it the Greek (or Achæan) people attained to great wealth and strength at a far earlier period than anywhere else. Even Greek religion may seem to have been derived from it, since it is called the birthplace of Jupiter. Upon its soil reigned the earliest Greek potentate who can be regarded as an historical reality,-Minos; whose powerful fleet is believed by Thucydides to have first suppressed the pirates on the Greek seas. Tradition ascribed to him even the maintenance of a cruel dominion over Attica, and while the extreme uncertainty of all such tales must be allowed, the tales would never have been invented, but for a firm traditional belief of the widespread power, which in the ante-Trojan times Crete enjoyed. But this early civilization seems to have destroyed itself by intestine war. The Achæan cities at a later time could not resist the Dorian invaders, whose colonies impressed a new form on all Crete; and so completely were its energies crippled during the historical era of Greece, that this largest of the islands, en