election of the Patrician consuls, which he had forced on the people, abrogatory of the Licinian law. Thus, for a time, did the oligarchs triumph; and when we recollect that this was the twelfth year since the passing of the Licinian law, we may form some idea of the obstinacy and tenacity of purpose which characterized them. Next year, the two Patrician consuls who held the elections thought themselves bound in honour to maintain the advantage gained by their order, and they refused to take any votes for the Plebeian candidates; the tribunes and the independent part of the commons, seeing that the consuls were resolute in their determination to maintain the system which had been entered on, left the ground, and then the consuls completed a mock-election by taking the votes of the clients. Such was the patience of the people, that the Patricians were able to carry the elections their own way a third time. But the resistance was secretly gaining strength, and for the five succeeding years, though there was no war of the slightest importance, a dictator was annually made, evidently for no other purpose but to hold the elections. T. Manlius, when dictator, having expressed his determination rather to let the consulate go out of use, than have it shared with the Plebeians, the tribunes would not suffer him to hold any election at all; he had to resign, and the obstinacy of the two parties brought the state again to the eleventh interrex. At last the senate had the good sense to order that the Licinian law should be observed for peacesake, as the historian says, for which, therefore, they were entitled to little gratitude. The Plebeian consul was C. Marius Rutilus, who had been the first Plebeian dictator. The following year, a Patrician dictator vainly essayed to gain a victory for his order, but, when he failed, two interreges succeeded, and the two consuls were once more Patricians; but the next year the superiority was on the side of the Plebeians and justice. "Nay, so great was the power of inflamed public opinion, that C. Marius Rutilus, the same who had first brought into his order the honour of the dictatorship, was declared eligible for the censorship, and the Patricians, though they strove might and main against it, were forced to recognise him as the duly-elected censor."

One might expect that the contest would be now at an end. But not so; the very next year the dictator L. Furius Camillus carried the elections again in favour of the Patricians, and that in the most audacious manner. For in the face of an old senatusconsultum, which forbade the re-election of curule magistrates, and without any regard to decency or propriety, he nominated— himself! and a Patrician colleague, by means, of course, of forced votes; and the Patricians, ignorant and short-sighted, gave a most cheerful consent to this violation of law and decorum. It is curi

ous to see how the aristocratic Livy, who had certainly a very faint conception of the real state of things in those days, represents the matter. His words are" L. Furius Camillus being nominated dictator, and having appointed P. Cornelius Scipio master of the horse, restored to the Fathers the pristine possession of the consulate. On account of this merit he was himself created consul with great favour of the Fathers, and he named Ap. Claudius Crassus his colleague." How very laudable does his conduct appear by this mode of representing it! Certainly there are two ways of telling a story, and in a certain honourable assembly of our own we have daily instances of it. The faction, however, did not stop here; for Ap. Claudius happening to die in his consulate, though there was actually a Gallic war at the time, the senate would not only not have the vacant place filled up, from which it is likely, by the way, that they could not have kept a Plebeian, but they had not even recourse to the old device of appointing a dictator, and Camillus remained sole consul. This shameless proceeding probably alienated many who had hitherto supported the faction, and Plebeian consuls were chosen for the three succeeding years; but in the years 405 and 407 the rule was again broken through. This, however, was the last effort of the oligarchs; the utter hopelessness of their attempts to abrogate the Licinian law, and the danger of irritating the people too much, were now too apparent to be neglected; the contest came to a complete termination, and the amalgamation of the two orders advanced rapidly. We hear no more of feuds and secessions

after this.

There are two circumstances which occurred during this time which are deserving of our notice; the one, the fining of Licinius Stolo for transgressing his own law! the other, the mode that was adopted for liquidating the debts of the people.

"In the same year," (393) says Mr. Niebuhr, "C. Licinius Stolo was condemned under his own law for possessing a thousand jugers of tillage land: one half under the name of his son by a sham emancipation. A melancholy example of the irresistibility of avarice, even by those whom honour should guard most securely against it, when once the heart stands open to it! It also shows that the greatest blessings frequently are assured by hands which are not perfectly clean, and that it may happen that the best cause is maintained by such persons, because the men of stainless character, out of indolence, neglect their duty."

In the year 403, one of the excellent Valerii, a name ever to be held in honour, being consul along with C. Marcius Rutilus, the distinguished Plebeian, the state of debt came to be duly considered, and the consuls made the people choose five commissioners (quinqueviri mensarii), two Patricians and three Plebeians,

for the purpose of making a proper arrangement respecting it. On this occasion the state came forward, for perhaps the first time in history, to assist the debtors by a loan. Tables were set in the Forum, at which the commissioners sat, and any debtor who came before them and showed that he had sufficient property, received, on entering into the requisite securities, from the funds which the treasury had placed at the disposal of the commissioners, as much money as he required to discharge his debt. If he preferred transferring his property, it was valued and handed over to his creditor. By this simple procedure, as the historian observes, a large amount of debt was got rid of, not only without injury, but even without complaint on either side; and we may observe how wealthy the treasury, which was in a manner empty a few years before, must have now become in consequence of the state's having come into the receipt of the rent of its lands, which had been so long unjustly withheld. As so much property changed hands in consequence of this regulation, a new census was become absolutely necessary. The consul C. Marcius Rutilus, the first Plebeian dictator, he in whose first consulate the uncial rate of interest had been established, was also created the first Plebeian censor; and though in this very year the efforts of the Patricians, in the matter of the consuls, were not without effect, they struggled in vain against his appointment to the censorship. We have thus, at some length, explained the Licinian Rogations, and narrated the interesting and instructive history of the contest which they produced between the two orders. Every one must perceive how strictly accordant to justice they all were; and the account of the fruitless and foolish struggles of the Patricians to maintain the old system of abuses and injustice will show the blindness and selfishness of oligarchy, and the wisdom of that first of political maxims-Give way in time to the popular voice when it has reason on its side; for in case of resistance the people will be certain to triumph eventually, and to get even more than they originally demanded. From the Roman Reform Bill good, and great good, resulted, but it would be chimerical in us to expect benefits of equal magnitude from our own. Rome was a young, an agricultural, and a conquering state: our situation is the very reverse. What we have chiefly to expect is the removal of all just ground of popular complaint, that the people may plainly see that the blame of the sufferings and privations which they may have to endure cannot be fairly charged on the government, or on the higher ranks of society. The evil under which we suffer, and we fear long will suffer, is excess of population, not excess of taxation, sinecures, or any of the fancied evils, the removal of which, political empirics

assert, would make the whole body sound and healthy. In England this evil is clearly perceptible, but in Ireland it is awful, and those who boast of the eight millions of the Irish people would show more sense and humanity if they wished there were but half the number; for what can poor-laws, or any other laws, effect in a country where there are three men bidding for one man's work? The rich may be made poor, but we much doubt if the poor can ever be made comfortable. In fine, though legislative enactments may diminish to a certain extent the evils to which the lower orders (the use of this term we observe has been protested against) of society are subject, we fear they never can entirely remove them.

One more short extract shall be our last from this admirable work. It relates to the celebrated Goethe, concerning whose literary merits there is such a difference of opinion in this country, and shows that Niebuhr thought of him like his countrymen in general. In a note written in the summer of 1829, he thus expresses himself:

"Our fathers, ere we, who are now old, were born, recognized in Götz, and the other poems of a young man who was of the same age as Valerius in his first consulship (twenty-three), the poet who towers far above all whom our nation numbers, and who never can be excelled. Goethe has enjoyed this recognition for more than half a century; already the third generation of grown men looks up to him as the first man of the nation, without a second and without a rival, and children hear his name, as formerly among the Greeks they did that of Homer. He has lived to see our literature, mainly on his own account, acknowledged and honoured by foreigners; but he has outlived in it the age of poetry and of youth, and has remained solitary and alone. May he nevertheless, rejoicing in his everlasting strength, long abide cheerful amongst us, receiving from us, as old men, the homage which, as boys, we rendered him! May I be enabled to offer him this history complete, on which he has bestowed his favour!"

This third volume carries the history down to the end of the first Punic war. The various Samnite wars, and that against Pyrrhus, are handled in a masterly manner, and it is quite evident that the author had personally inspected the several theatres of war; hence his narrative has a degree of clearness and consistency not elsewhere to be found. There are lacunæ in his narrative of the Punic war; more especially we miss some account of the origin, previous state and power of Carthage, which undoubtedly would have been given, had he lived to prepare this volume for the press himself.

It has been edited, since his death, in a most conscientious manner, by a pupil of Niebuhr named Classen, under the direc

tion of the able professor Von Savigny, and another learned friend of the deceased. A well-written and highly interesting preface informs us of the state in which Niebuhr's manuscripts were found, and of the manner in which the editor performed his task. From this preface we learn, that we have no farther contributions to our knowledge to expect from the manuscript remains of Niebuhr. A copious index to the third volume completes the work.

We would recommend our English translators to divide the present volume, which in the original contains 732 pages of text alone, into two, and to add a full and complete Index to the entire work.

We here take a reluctant leave of Niebuhr, who has opened a new world to our view, and in doing so we think we cannot conclude better than by adducing the testimony of one of our most elegant and accomplished scholars to his merits. We mean Dr. Arnold, of Rugby. In the preface to his admirable edition of Thucydides, a work which does honour to our literature, and holds forth to Europe a model of the manner in which the apparently humble labour of editing the master-works of antiquity may be made subservient to the promotion of valuable knowledge, and to the furtherance of the best interests of man, by the introduction of profound and elegant essays, conveyed in sound vernacular language, and not in barbarous Latin,* Dr. Arnold thus speaks of Niebuhr's Roman History.

"The former (the History of Thucydides) indeed, like every other ancient history, is chiefly indebted for the light thrown upon it by the extraordinary work of Niebuhr; a work which may justly entitle its author to the merit of having done for history what Bacon did for science. Niebuhr has not so much written a perfect history himself, as he has pointed out the true means by which it may be written; he has taught us to seek for our materials from the most multiplied sources,-from laws and from mythic poems,-from the annals, traditions, governments and usages of the most distant times and countries: he has given us an example of learning as boundless in its range as it is minute and accurate in its observation: of a grasp of mind that can at once comprehend and analyze the principles of the constitutions of different people; and of a quickness and precision that never allows him to overlook a line capable of being turned to any account, or to misapprehend the meaning of a single word in a single sentence, while the contents of volumes are at the same moment in the process of intellectual digestion within his mind. But besides all this, he has rendered an essential service to Grecian history in particular, no less than to Roman, by being

The first Appendix to the first volume is one of the most beautiful essays we have ever read. We trust that ere long the library of no British scholar will be without a copy of Arnold's Thucydides.