But it is a still stronger index of the intellectual tendencies of our time that even those who succeed in attaining the highest classical honours at our universities dismiss the subject from their minds when they mix in political and common life. It is not only that the young politician's first speech,' with its apposite quotations and its scholarly tone, is a custom of the past; not only that such a publication as established the reputation of Payne Knight, and made him a man of fashion, would now exclude him from respectable houses, and seriously damage his prospects in life; but that in the writings and the speeches of these very men, in their occupations, and in their amusements, you are not conscious of the presence of the old spirit, you do not taste the flavour of the ancient grace, and you think that they might just as well have been devoting their youth to Sanscrit as to Greek, to German as to Latin. The classical feeling of the upper classes of Englishmen in the last century was closely connected with political life and political importance. Sir R. Walpole was an excellent scholar,- so were Pitt and Fox; and the tradition has not failed with Canning or with Palmerston, nor yet with Mr. Gladstone or Sir G. C. Lewis, who are more nearly agreed on the text of Homer than on the conditions of the Budget. Sixty years ago this familiarity with the classics in most cases implied the use of French and Italian; and thus we find that the elder men who had been shut up in England during the whole of the continental war, are, if anything, better instructed in those languages than the younger, who spend winter after winter in Rome, and to whom Paris is as accessible as Edinburgh.

The story of the decline of classical influence on literature is beyond our scope and intention: it is not only written in many languages, but on the face of the languages themselves. France its main incident is the duel between the Classic and Romantic schools; in England it comprehends all that lies between Addison and Carlyle, and the miniature of the same process in America between Washington Irving and Emerson. With us, indeed, the classical manner had long been the continual distinction of polite literature. In the rotundities of Gibbon, in the tripartite sentences of Johnson, the classical basis of style is as visible as in the simplicity of Addison or the clarity of Hume. To subordinate the Saxon to the Roman element, to keep out new words and forms of expression, or, if they were absolutely necessary, to conform them to classical analogies, was a primary duty with a good English writer. And this practice extended to all cultivated society. The fair knowledge of the classics generated the fair current English, and when

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a man aspired to notoriety in public life, whatever else his deserts might be, it was an indispensable requisite that he should clothe his thoughts in some such form. Inaccuracy of phrase and vulgarity of diction were matters of general ridicule among our forefathers, who, fresh from their rough talk and energetic execrations, had somehow or other a pleasure in, and a perception of, the graces of the popular classics which is now wanting in the far more polished and better-informed representatives of the same order of men. The indignation of Fielding's Ensign who had an equally disagreeable remembrance of Homer and the 'other rascal Corderius who got him many a flogging,' is excited by the circumstance that Thomas of our regiment always carries a Homo in his pocket' a trait of character by no means probable in a marching officer of these examining' days. It is quite a characteristic of latter times that ladies should be almost ashamed of a knowledge of the ancient languages; formerly, it was an accomplishment that carried others along with it, and became the foundation of some of the most agreeable English that has been written. Those who had the happiness to be acquainted with that delightful example of the intelligent old age which bridges over generations, the late Miss Berry, will recall the natural and appropriate way in which the verses of Horace or Virgil suggested themselves to her, and enlivened her conversation without a notion of pedantry.

The foundations of this change in the thoughts and expressions not only of this country but of the civilised world must lie deep. Not to go farther back, the great French Revolution (the Dowager, the French now call her) accelerated, while it pretended to arrest, the fall of the traditional literary authorities. Our friend Gracchus, with his Titus hair, and the Goddess of Reason draped as Lucretia, were the real romantic iconoclasts of the classic faith, whatever they thought themselves to be. The most abundant periwig at the court of Louis XIV., or the bitterest satire against the Précieuses' of Paris, were in nearer relation to the thoughts and manners of the ancients than all the travesties of classic liberty. And now henceforward the actual modern life must stand alone on its own truths, and with its own forms of utterance, and what was before a loyal love of the lessons of the early masters and teachers of the intellectual world, will seem to many a servile and unworthy dependence. The new ideas of the dignity of labour, of the worth of men as men, of the dangers of privilege, of society without subject classes, are wholly alien to the associations of the old history of Southern Europe. The Roman Church, indeed, as we have already hinted, almost reciprocated the

liberality of the Roman Emperor who offered a place in the Pantheon to the Founder of Christianity, by the permission it gave to the moral dominion of the classic writers over the spirits of youth, and by its perpetuation, in its most solemn functions, of the ancient language.

6

But in proportion as the true historic character of Christianity has come forth in the air of free thought and free discussion, the Religion of Sorrow' stands in ever more distinct antagonism to the plenary enjoyment of the senses and the all-sufficiency of Nature, which pervade the mind of classic antiquity, and of which the Mythology is nothing more than the imaginative reflection. Christian and Classic life have got on together somehow or other: it will not be so easy with Christian and Heathen philosophy. Thus, too, the gradual predominance of the familylife over the interests and diversions of separate classes, the substitution of the calmer pleasures of domestic existence for the excitements of society, tend to diminish all the traditionary influences, intellectual and moral, of a general culture,—to turn every man towards the action of his own mind, if he has one, and to isolate him in his own originality or in his own dullness. Polite literature implies the friction of society which should give the polish. Elegance is impossible without society to distinguish it, and thus this very word, though unexceptionable in its meaning and derivation, has fallen into disuse. Conversation cannot exist except where men are brought together with a basis of common knowledge and common sympathies; and from an art, which the best and wisest delighted to cultivate, it descends to the rude and necessary interchange of thoughts, without wit, without grace, without colour. Our enlarged politics, our improved morals, our deeper religious convictions, are a weighty compensation for these losses, and yet we linger over the old weak and faulty world with a natural tenderness. It may be quite unimportant to humanity that the Laocoon should be pronounced in four syllables; and yet when we first heard a well-educated American pronounce it like racoon,' it made us shudder. We shall get used to it.

Even in France, though convulsions and changes, to which the social life of this country has not been exposed, have effaced the classical traditions and mutilated the language of the great masters of French literature, the old quarrel of Perrault and Boileau, of La Motte and Madame Dacier, is neither allayed nor forgotten. It has been revived in the present century by the rival votaries of the classic and romantic schools; and in a very elegant and entertaining volume entitled 'Histoire de la

'querelle des Anciens et des Modernes,' Professor Rigault, who is now one of the most popular lecturers in the Schools of Paris, has recently passed in review the varied incidents of this protracted controversy. The second part of this book, in which a sketch of the history of classical taste in England is thrown into the form of an imaginary conversation between St. Evremond, Wotton, Dryden, and Sir William Temple at Wills', is so gracefully executed, that we regret we have not space to borrow the passage; but we recommend those of our readers whom we may have had the good fortune to inspire with an interest in this subject, to pursue it under M. Rigault's guidance.

6

In the meantime, we in England have still the Dilettanti Society,' and we shall not, we are sure, be any worse on the whole, if it continues and extends its influence. There is so much to draw us the other way, that some counterbalance may assuredly be permitted. Whether or not the ancient kings of thought be utterly deposed, whether they still hold an uneradicable power over the imagination of mankind, time alone can determine. True it is that no young poet now, as did Milton and Pope, paves his way to fame by his Latin verse; but, on the other hand, there is no more signal instance of the assimilation of classical ideas with human genius, without any external connexion or educational aid, than in the works of Keats, and the rank they have taken in British literature. There is, too, no reason to believe that classical scholarship need perish, even if the indirect influences of which we have here written cease to prevail. The study of Greek, no doubt, will supersede in a great degree that of the inferior language, as it has already done in Germany; and if we are driven to the choice, there is no doubt this is the right one, not only for its own sake, but because, in a certain extent, the purer and more perfect language includes the other.

It is, perhaps, in the direction of Art that the exertions of the Dilettanti ought mainly to tend. We have London to extend and partially reconstruct; we have continually new public buildings to erect both there and throughout the kingdom. On ques tions of this nature the counsel and influence of the Dilettanti 'Society' ought to be sought, and the extremely confused notions of city scenery and decoration at present prevalent brought to the test of the true principles of art. In the equally important matter of the locality and arrangement of our national treasures of ancient art, the judgment of a permanent body of men who have made the study of these monuments their habit and delight, might fairly be preferred to that of committees and

commissioners, who come fresh to the subject, and in many cases win from the witnesses they examine the knowledge which ought to be the primary qualification of their existence.

At the same time, however apathetic may be the Greek government and the Greek people in the search and preservation of the great past, yet in the many years that have elapsed since any systematic archæological investigation has been made, many works of art must have come to light even by chance, and difficult questions of topography must have gained means of elucidation by the clearance of ground and the opening of pathways. Has Colonel Leake, whose criticism of ancient geography is not blunted by age (as his late analysis of some disputed points in Dr. W. Smith's most erudite Ďictionary fully manifests), no vigorous pupil to emulate his activity and zeal? We believe, indeed, that our sagacious Consul at Rhodes, Mr. Newton, is in communication with the Society, and that he has imparted to them the results of the important excavations he is superintending, and which, if reports be true, have brought to light the mysteries of the original • Mausoleum.'

Other objects, other uses of their undiminished resources, will present themselves to the members of the Dilettanti Society. We have indicated some of the advantages they have conferred upon this country, and we shall rejoice, if after some years, we can resume the subject by showing they have accomplished much more, in the spirit of the motto of the work before us Seria ludo.

ART. IX.-1. The Chinese and their Rebellions, viewed in connexion with their National Philosophy, Ethics, Legislation, and Administration. By M. S. TAYLOR MEADOWS, Chinese Interpreter in Her Majesty's Civil Service. 8vo., with Maps. 1856.

2. Papers relating to the Proceedings of Her Majesty's Naval Forces at Canton. Presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty: 1857.

3. Correspondence respecting Insults in China. Presented to the House of Lords in pursuance of their Address of February 12th, 1857.

R

ECENT events in China have excited a degree of public interest not frequently extended to countries lying beyond the Ganges. The magnitude of the commerce at stake, and the importance of the issue as regards peace or war, would in