The Press. — London, England, 1858-08-28 00:00:00

824 ness of fancy, and she does not think forward enough. A mind constantly dwelling in the past is apt to lose its innate energy, and to be come deadened to the free play of the emotions. "Jane Eyre," also, seems to be too much before her thoughts. She has too great a liking tbr the intense developments of a wilful and over-con scious type. Her writing is vigorous, and gram matically correct, but she does not take sufficient care in the construction of her plots. She says herself—" But my pen has run on so fast that I " knew not how much I was writing" (p. 108) ; and the remark is illustrated by the loose way in which the last part of her tale depends on the first portion. She could write autobiography well, if she had a sufficient quantity of external incident to give variety to her narrative. She thus vividly describes the imagination of girl hood:— My only toy WAS a very, very old tailless and maneless rocking-horse, a present from the old Lord Crauftnn to my father, which stood in a dark garret, surrounded by dusty boxes and wornout furniture. But my one toy was to me a perfect treasury of delights; I spent hours riding upon it, and if ever I was missed was sure to he found there. Not even the bitter winter cold could alienate me from my beloved steed. \Vrapt in an old Angola shawl of my mother's, I galloped away amid the frost and snow as happily as in the mildest weather. On the back of this old wooden horse, rocking with all my might, my eyes fast shut that no glimpses of the actual might disturb my visions, I dreamt such dreams and acted such stories as only I believe solitary children indulge in. I hunted, I rode races, I took a steady trot with my father; anon T turned a peg at the back of the saddle, and I mounted up and up, anti felt myself flying through the air I knew not whither. [ went forth in search of adventures, and I found such as made toy heart thrill with excitement. contended with wild bcasta, I trod dragons under my feet, and when I had put myself into such a state of tremor that J could beer no more, I would creep down the broken stairs and return Xi my books and place beside my mother, and gravely reply to her inquiry as to what I had been doing, " I have been tint riding, mamma." On Sundays, when I did not think it right to tell myself stories of giants and dragons, and enchanted damsels and enchanting knights I by-the bye, I must remark that I was always the gentleman in such tales), and yet could net make up my mind to stay ut home and leave my Pegasus unezereisell, I used to ride him at a steady pace into Pa lestine, and pull him up on the brow of the hill where the Crusaders halted, and, gaze on the walls of the distant Jerusalem. Do not smile, dear reader; my mother never did when I told her I had been riding into the Holy Laud; and, in deed, it was in most serious earnest that I went there ; mid even yet, in the stillness of night, the glorious visions I dreamt as a child sometimes come back to me with a thrill of the old emotion. My father, if ever he heard me recounting my marvellous adventures to my mother, would say, " Little woman, yon should not play with your ima• giiiation so much "; but I did not understand what he meant, and my mother would make answer, with a sigh, " It is her only playfellow, poor child "; so the alight check, woe is me, was not heeded, and I was left to give myself up to my dangerous companion without restraiat, without soy farther warning. To me, my rocking-horse was a real living companion. I patted him, I robbed him down, I gave him imaginary oats out of the lid of an old hatbox, I pumped imaginary water for him into a broken bucket and gravely hell it to his p tieted month. My feeling for him amounted to a passionate affection, which must seem strange to any one who does not know how fast the heart of a little child can cling to inanimate ob jects by the aid of a vigorous fancy. I never shall forget the grief I exoerienced in the brief separation from my favourite which I shell presently narrate, nor yet the effort it was to me to give up my rides. That is a passage which might have occurred in one of Miss 13rontirs novels. We cannot recommend " Laighton Manor" to country book-clubs, although its contents are amusing, but "My Three Aunts" is published in so cheap and unpretending a form that it may be added to book-lists for its freshness and healthi ness of tone. The History of the Romans under the Empire. By Charles Merivale, 13. D., late Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. Vol. VI. Lon don: Longnians. (Second Notice.) ONK of the most interesting chapters in this volume is that in which Mr. Merivale proppses and endeavours to answer the question, What gave the Romans patience to endure the tyranny of Nero so long? We cannot say that hi s dis sertation sets the question at rest; perhaps the problem can only be solved approxima tely ; but it is at least full of thought and information, and exhibits the historical facts more luminously than any English treatise on the subject th a t we know of. The genuine historical student is con stantly proposing to himself questions of this kind, not because he hopes thoroughly to solve THE PRESS, AUGUST 28,1858. them, but because the endeavour to solve them excites his imagination and gathers into one view a mass of historical facts. The man who can satisfactorily account for the acquiescence of the French in the absolute sovereignty of the Bour bons, it may almost be said, knows one half of the history of France; and he who can explain their rebellion against that despotism knows the other half—so long is the chain of causes, so various are the co-ordinate processes which issue in any capital political phenomenon. Of this complex and intricate nature is the problem which Mr. Merivale has here attempted to solve. The solution, however, must needs be in great part conjectural, and after all imperfect where the materials for a solution are so scanty. Why did the Romans submit to Nero? A tyrant commonly depends either upon the force of his individual character, or upon a strong party interested in supporting him, or upon physical force, or upon a Jealous espionage joined to an energetic suppression of all the organs of public opinion. But these were not the pillars upon which the tyranny of Nero rested. His abilities were nc,t naturally remark able, and they were rendered contemptible for every practical purpose by the worst education that ever an unhappy human being had. No party in the State was devoted to him except those who regarded the name of Caesar with superstitious reverence, and those who were willing to support even a Nero so long as he was in posSession. The military force at his com mand was not great ; while the legions remained at the frontier of the empire, and were often commanded by men far more fit to be emperors than he who had the title. Nor did Nero sys tematically employ spies ; nor did new books pass through the hands of a licenser. Ile main tained for nine years a government of which the leading principle was the proscription of virtue and merit throughout the Roman world ; and yet he depended neither on partizans, nor on talents, nor on centurions, nor on police. Why, then, did his subjects submit to him ? The question is probably unreasonable. It would be more to the purpose to ask, had his subjects sufficient reason to rebel ? For, when a Government has subsisted and not totally alienated public affection for upwards of seventy years, the governed no longer require a reason for acquiescence, but they require a very strong reason for rebellion. Tyranny may be oppres sive. but yet not heavy enough to set in motion the huge wheel of revolution, to stop which, as all know and feel, no machinery in the social system has been provided. That the empire of the Caesars had deep foundations Mr. Merivale has devoted his earlier volumes to showing, and he has shown it to demonstration. Augustus, throughout his long reign, had taken every occa sion to show his subjects how necessary he was to them, and had made all men feel that if liberty was dead he had not killed it, and if he had become a tyrant it was only because they had first become slaves. Year by year through that long reign as this conviction grew the I louse of the Umesars was more and more felt to be an elected and heaven-favoured house ; while that splendour of success which men so easily persuade themselves is divine never ceased to rest upon it. Respect for the energy of Tiberiu s was more universally felt than hatred of his cruelty. There was something imposing in the caprice of Caius. Ile so sincerely believed himself to be a god that he imposed upon others. The personal weakness of Claudius made the divine favour which protected him more manifest. The re ligious awe with which, when Nero became Em peror, the name of Augustus had come to be re garded was such as could not be weakened but by a long course of extreme misgovernment, and not extinguished but by ill-success. Mr. Merivale labours to show by a graphic picture of the darkest side of Roman manners that the cruelties of Nero which appear to us so enormous excited in his contemporaries but a languid feeling of indignation. The Roman, he says, who, when he entered his own mansion, saw daily the slave chained at the gate, and could mark on the persons of his domestics the traces of the whip and the branding-iron, who had himself not unfrequently at the Circus passed with rapturous delight sentence of death upon the gladiator who appealed to his mercy, would he be disgusted at the death of a Seneca or a Corbulo, or might he not rather sympathize with the tyrant, feel the pleasur e power, and understand th a t l ust of cruelty wh i ch is by us considered the most mysterious part o f the tyrannic nature ? Thi s , we think, may be doubted. Humanity does not so easily p er i sh out of human hearts as some theorists imagin e Man is tenacious of virtue ; after he has Ki r . rendered the outworks, he will maintain the citadel. A theorist may say that he who can treat his fellow-creatures like chattels, or murder them for amusement, cannot have a spark of humanity left ; yet such a person will often be found in practice to have very many sparks of humanity left. The man who has no coin passion for his slaves will of,:en have as much compassion as others for those who are not slaves. In point of fact, w h a t i s i t which has made the name of Nero a proverb of tyranny ? Probably there have been worse tyrants in the world, if in somewhat less con spicuous stations. Mr. Merivale himself has told us what gives Nero this distinction. No other tyrant has been so vividly painted. Yet we can not imagine that even the dramatic skill of a Tacitus would have been capable of producing the most impressive of all delineations of tyranny, if the age in which he lived regarded humanity with indifference. The acquiescence of the Romans in the oppression of Nero would be less surprising if the thoughts of men in that age had been shackled by servile maxims or by an exclu sive relikcion. Despotism in England, France, and Spain has always supported itself by the doctrine of divine right, and by the assistance of persecuting priests. But until our own time there has never been an age of more unbounded freedom of thought than the age of Nero. At that time upon all abstract subjects a man might think and say the thing he would. Nor was he only allowed—he was even encouraged and trained to do so. The reader shall hear Mr. Merivale upon this subject : f he end of the highest education among the Romans was to fit a man for the discharge of his public duties. But in theory at least they took a very liberal view of public duty, and conceived that everything which refined anti enlarged his intellectual powers made him a wiserlegis lator and an abler megistrate. At the age of seven, or sometimes a few years later, the child began his course of public instruction on the benches of the Grammatian. From hiw he learned to read and speak his own language step by step with the Greek, and imbued his memory with the thoughts and language of the classics of either tongue, from Homer to Enttius or Virgil. At fourteen, or as soon as the powers of thought began to unfold themselves, he was transferred to the school of the Rhetorician, wheel he first began to concentrate his studies upon the future business of his life. He. was to be made a public man, and therefore, above all things, a public speaker. He was to be trained for a perfect orator by declamation, by writing, by careful study of the best models, by constant exercise in rivalry with his schoolfellows. But it was not the mere trick of action or knack of speaking that he was to acquire; he was :o be thoroughly informed with the matter requisite for his calling. Every branch of knowledge might some times have its application ; every art and science might serve on occasion to illustrate the topics presented to him for discussion; and if any were too remote from the sphere of forensic eloquence they would serve at least to expand the mind of the pupil, to give breadth and depth and height to his understanding. Among these sciences, however, there was one which held the highest place, one which for its pre-eminence among them deserved to be removed from the circle of the rhetorician's instructions and intrusted to the care of a special teacher. At seventeen, or when the fated struggle begins between the moral principles and the instinct of appetite,—at the core• m ence men t, such as morality and religion have represented it, of the great battle of life between vice and virtue,- - the youth was transferred to the academy of the Philosopher to learn the mysteries of the Good, the Fair, and the Honour. able. While he still continued to exercise himself daily in rhetorical studies Anil practice, he explored the dark by ways of morals and metaphysics under accomplished teachers, and traversed perhaps the whole circuit of Grecian speculation before he (let...mined in which sect definitively to enrol himself. Such a course of education, it must be allowed, was nobly conceived, and nt the hands of the Romans it received fair ploy ; for it was warped by ra f se..tarino prejudices nor confined by narrow uoti uns o state policy. This is an attractive picture, and one which may well win the heart of the theorist on edu cation. here is a complete emancipation of thought ; here every man thinks for himself, and with little reluctance suffers his neighbour to think for himself. But there is something better still behind; for in the period between Augustus and Nero we observe that a great change took place in public opinion. In the Augustan ag e the melancholy principles of Epicurism, the ex tracted essence of all Paganism, were in v o g ue. The doctrine of " Nil admirandum," the dream less torpor of the soul, was preached by Horace. But in the time of Nero, Stoicism had havoc