decisive opinion on the matter of these extracts, we have been much gratified by them, and hope to derive great pleasure from the perusal of the promised comparison between the two republics. At the same time, were we stationed at the author's elbow during the execution of his purpose, our constant and earnest exhortation would be, Beware of the spirit of system.

The short discussion into which M. Clavier enters, on the causes that led to the migration of Phalanthus and the Parthenia from Sparta, we consider as absolutely a model of historical criticism; combining, exactly in the right degrees, a respect for established authorities with a wholesome scepticism. Indeed he has settled, in our judgment, the subject; but, as the subject itself is of no very great importance, we will not enlarge on it. The legislation of Solon he treats very concisely, and his reviewers may therefore be excused from touching on it at all. There is, however, a view of M. Clavier's work, which we have not yet pointed out, but in which it has not a little interested us; and, as we are willing to impart the interest thus inspired, we shall devote to that object the remainder of our critique.

Fifteen or twenty years ago, the democratical republics of the ancient world formed the favourite common-place of the republicans at Paris. Nothing was to be heard from the most unclassical throats of the Massacrers and Septembrizers,' but classical ravings about Brutus and Thrasybulus: and the Vergniauds and Bris sots conceived themselves to be the transmigrated spirits of those famous orators who wielded at will the fierce democraties' of Greece and Rome. But these banditti had ill estimated the powers and properties of the terrible engine which they undertook to manage, and they fell victims to the force of its recoil. A new order of things has succeeded; Brutus and Thrasybulus have been remanded to the shades; and it is really interesting to observe the altered manner in which the French now express themselves on those classical subjects which formerly inflamed their revolutionary enthusiasm. The memory, indeed, of the regicide excesses, and of the reign of terror, as it may naturally have suggested, so it in some degree, certainly justifies, this change of tone; but there seems room for a shrewd suspicion, that the effect has been assisted by the operation of motives somewhat more pressing than the recollection of the past. We cannot forget how much out of his element the genius of Greek and Roman liberty must find himself-ad prætoria regis-in the levee-room of the emperor of the west.

In this view we have turned over with some curiosity the history of Greece, penned by a Parisian judge, in the year 1809; and have been watchful to observe in what manner he would handle

certain

certain awkward portions of that history. We are far, in the results, from coming to the conclusion that M. Clavier has been forward to rail at republicanism, and to parade the chains with which his unhappy country is bound. Besides that the real tendency to license and anarchy by which Grecian liberty was unquestionably characterised, gives it some claim to be regarded with disfavour by an imperial functionary, it must be remembered that personal gratitude, always an amiable motive, even when the object of it is a villain, must tend to prejudice this author on the same side. Still it is not the less curious to remark the effect of his prejudices struggling with an evidently honest purpose of executing his task faithfully; nor the less melancholy and humiliating to notice the manner in which, under the domination of the new dynasty, a man of sense and liberality is compelled to measure his syllables, that he may not be suspected of carrying either of those qualities to excess.

Almost in the outset of M. Clavier's preliminary discourse, we perceive a tinge of the fashionable French politics. After mentioning the darkness and ignorance of the middle ages,scarcely (he proceeds,) had the firm and wise reign of Charleto the nations of the west, when they gave magne restored peace scope afresh to their inventive faculties, and the ages which succeeded, down to the revival of literature, were distinguished by many important discoveries, as those of the compass, gunpowder, paper, and printing.' This is exactly the orthodox national creed. Every true Frenchman is bound to be a firm believer in Charlemagne, not merely as he believes in Mahomet, that is, that such a person once lived, cut an immense number of throats, and then died, but he must believe in the greatness and glory of Charlemagne as a benefactor, and, as it were, renovator of the modern world;-must believe in his mission,-we do not know that we can exactly say, in his divine mission,-but certainly in his mission from some preternatural quarter or other; and, above all, must believe in his proleptic or typical character, as the high and mighty forerunner of the head of the Corsican dynasty, happy and victorious. As belonging to a nation of heretics, we may be allowed, perhaps, to question a part of these pretensions, on condition of our full acquiescence in the rest. We are, then firmly persuaded that Charlemagne, by force of arms, subjugated a great part of Europe;-that his victories were not more brilliant than his massacres were horrible ;-that he assassinated, as far as was in his power, all those who might dispute with him his title to any part of his possessions;-that he repudiated his first wife (the daughter of Desiderius,) on the ground of her having borne him no children;-that, having signally triumphed in Germany and Italy, and

been

been crowned emperor by the Pope, who, in fact, was his vassal, his pride, ambition, and military glory, received a mortifying and evermemorable check from the gallant population of Spain. All this we believe; but, when we recollect the long, sanguinary, and desolating wars, which his reign entailed on harrassed Europe, and the intense moral and mental darkness, which was the direct consequence of those wars, when we call to mind the atrocities of which he was guilty, his enormous waste of human life and happiness, his cruel contempt for the independence of nations,-we must be tolerated in a considerable degree of scepticism respecting his claims to the dignity of the grand pacificator and civilizer of the western world, must be permitted to count for little his exertions, however laudable in themselves, in diffusing the light of science and letters, and to doubt the value of an illumination, which, reflected from the pages even of his own historian,

Serves only to discover sights of woe.'

Very soon after this allusion to Charlemagne, we find M. Clavier hampered in the expression of a just and liberal sentiment by that unfortunate necessity which has chained up liberty of speech throughout France. In explanation of the dearth of historical records among the Asiatic nations, he observes, that those nations have generally been the victims of despotism, and that, to men so circumstanced, history is without interest. History, on the other hand, he says, 'is necessary to a free people,'-Here an Englishman would have stopped; for his reason and his heart would alike have told him, that no man could doubt under which class of governments he reckoned that of his own country, or would question the justice of the arrangement. The case of our neighbours is by no means quite so clear; and we were greatly amused by the dexterous alternative which M. Clavier has added to his free people. L'histoire est nécessaire aux peuples libres-et-à ceux qui sont soumis a un gouvernement tempéré. Sincerely do we wish that the temperance of the government dont il est question were as clearly a matter of fact as the submission of its subjects.

In perfect consonance with the prepossessions which we have ascribed to him, our historian uniformly espouses the cause of those persons whom the Greeks designated by the appellation of tyrants or usurpers, and of whom the early annals of the Grecian republics commemorate not a few. It is remarkable that the very same disposition, though in a somewhat less degree, is manifested by our own learned and ingenious countryman, Mr. Mitford, who, composing the greater part of his history of Greece, as we believe, at a time when the enormities of the French revolution had inspired most moderate men with a deep horror of democracy, felt a natural alliance towards all those whom he found opposed to the popular interest in the Grecian states. That some of these ty

rants,

rants, as they are called, made an excellent use of power acquired by very questionable means, and that the memories of many of them have been hardly dealt with by the Greek writers, we are much disposed to believe. At the same time, and though we cannot pretend to the possession of any great share of democratical prejudice, we must acknowledge that, both in perusing the pages of Mr. Mitford and those of M. Clavier, we have been much fatigued by the perpetual recurrence of a defensive or a laudatory tone whenever a tyrant happened to appear on the ground. Both these authors, it is true, are too conscientious and too accurate, materially to warp facts; but it is not less true, that a strong predisposition will inevitably infect the mode of viewing an object, even where the intentions are the most honest.

While, however, the English and the French historian concur in a general leaning towards persons of the tyrannical profession, still, in the manner in which they respectively betray this inclination, there is a difference which strikes us as very curious; not because it is unaccountable, but, indeed, for exactly the contrary reason. Mr. Mitford, who is one of a free people, has too much of an English mind to look with favour on usurpation, by whatever motives or pretences sanctified. His usual tendency, therefore, with respect to the Greek tyrants, is to deny the fact of their having been usurpers. They were, according to the general tenour of his representations, simply the leaders of the party who happened to predominate in the state, and, in this sense only, leaders of the state itself.-Like all other governors, they occasionally abused their authority; even when this happened, however, it could not affect their title; but the fact, Mr. Mitford says, is that they very seldom thus offended, and that the brand of tyranny was only maliciously affixed to their names on the subsequent ascendancy of an opposite faction. M. Clavier, on the other hand, who resides un der the protection of a gouvernement temperé, is very little troubled with the old fashioned scruples entertained by Mr. Mitford. He, for the most part, deliberately resolves the Greek tyrannies into as many usurpations; only, he defends these usurpations on the grounds of state necessity, and the subsequent choice of the people. What degree of weight, indeed, might remain in the title of one of these governors after the people chose to submit to his moderation no longer, or how it came to pass that the memory of governments, at once sanctioned by the popular choice, and worthy of that sanc tion, should have incurred, as M. Clavier himself often complains, the popular odium throughout Greece, we do not find that he has any where described. He hesitates not, however, to condemn the unreasonableness of those who exclaimed or rebelled against so rational a yoke, and seems to consider as exceedingly absurd the preference

VOL. V. NO. IX.

C

preference of the turbulent delights of liberty before the 'linked sweetness' of subjection,--

For the sake of exemplifying, so far at least as M. Clavier is concerned, these remarks, we shall refer to his account of Phidon, tyrant of Argos, a sovereign who seems, from the imperfect notices that remain of him, to have lived a short time after Lycurgus, and to have been greatly distinguished by his ability and achievements. Herodotus, says our author, speaks of him 'comme d'un tyran violent et cruel;' but it behoves us, he continues, to be on our guard against the representations, on such matters, of Herodotus, the prevailing object of that author having been to flatter the Athenians, qui, livrés alors à tous les excès de la démocratie, regardoient comme des tyrans, tous les rois, quelque modérés qu'ils fussent: et, malgré tout ce qu'il dit, il paroit que Phidon fut un très-grand prince.' Whether, according to the modern conceptions of the French, a roi modéré is to be considered as synonimous with a très-grand prince, we confess ourselves not to know; but, from the continuation of M. Clavier's account, it appears that King Phidon gave pretty much the same proofs of his moderation and his greatness, which some more recent worthies have condescended to afford. He dexterously availed himself of the opportunity allowed him by the Lacedemonians, then deeply occupied in other quarters, to extend his dominion over almost the whole of the Peloponnesus. Proposing to himself, for a model, his renowned ancestor and predecessor Hercules, (the original Charlemagne, or emperor of the west,) he determined to establish his power over every people who had been subject to the government of that hero, and went far to accomplish his purpose. In imitation of Hercules, also, he resolved to take into his own hands the celebration of the Olympic games; and, with this view, forcibly possessed himself of the city and territory of Pisa, then regarded as sacred (or, in modern Europe it might be called, ecclesiastical) ground throughout Greece. Here, however, his triumphs received a check. The Lacedemonians were roused to arms by their jealousy of his growing greatness; and war, then more faithful to the cause of justice and humanity than unhappily it has proved on some later occasions, reduced the conqueror to limits consistent with the safety of his neighbours.

This story surely requires no comment; but we cannot help adding, that the censure with which our author has treated Herodotus on the subject, is, to say the least of it, much misplaced. The notice of Phidon in Herodotus is entirely incidental, and literally does not cost, in all, so much as half a dozen lines. He begins, indeed, with denominating him the tyrant of the Argives;

but