The Sun.
London, England, 1855-10-19 00:00:00

THE QUARTERLIES.

The Westminster Review. No. CXXVI.

Half-a-dozen elaborate articles, followed by the
usual modicum of reviews under the head of Con-
temporary Literature, constitute the number for
the last quarter of 1855 of the old I3enthamite
Westminster. The most captious must admit that
these six principal contributions possess at least the
merit of variety, and two or three among them the
evidences of extraordinary research. A sketch of
" Marcus Tullius Cicero," partly biographic and
partly critical, may scarcely satisfy the student
versed in Latin history and letters with new lights
thrown upon the darker recesses of the Ronaaupast
as from the lantern of Niebuhr, aided by the "re-
flector" of our present Chancellor of the Exchequer.
But at any rate it can hardly fail to gratify the
literary appetite of the general reader by present-
ing to contemplation a succinct epitome of the
career of one of the most remarkable of the great
statesmen of antiquity, and. a true analysis of the
genius of perhaps, among all men who ever lived,
the most illustrious of rhetoricians. • The paper is
genial and scholarly throughout. It appears to
have been suggested by a new translation of Dr.
Abeken's " Cicero in seinen Briefen," or Cicero as
revealed to us through his Correspondence. Speak-
ing of Tally's Greek Education, the reviewer ob-
serves epigrammatically, " Neither Bolingbroke
nor Chesterfield, Dryden nor Pope, was more
frenchified in his taste than Cicero and his contem-
poraries were hellenisal. The impeachment of
Verres by the great orator in his capacity as advo-
cate of the Sicilians is justly spoken of as perhaps
the most honourable of the forensic and,
political triumphs of the future proconsul. In re-
ferring to the Conspiracy of Catiline and Cicero's
prominent share in its exposure, the Westminster
reviewer remarks with reason that it was at once,
to the object of his scrutiny, the cause of his exal-
tation and of his bitterest calamities. Upon the
inscrutable mystery of the plot we must let the
writer speak for himself through the medium of
the subjoined quotation. It will be perused with
interest, we doubt not, as perhaps the happiest
selection that could be made from the entire article,
indicating as it does simultaneously the eloquence
of the critio and his unforced fertility of illustration.
He here observes :

" The Catilinarian conspiracy is one of the most obscure
and provoking of historical enigmas. It is impossible, but
it is also unimportant, to discover what was the secret
which Somerset, in the great oyer and terminer case of
poisoning, held like a sword over King James's neck, and
thereby cast. the English Solomon into such a pitiable per-
plexity. It is very likely that the authorship of Junius
may never be brought directly home, even to Sir Philip
Francis; but it is quite immaterial for any benefit which
will accrue from the detection. The prime motors in Titas
Oates' Plot may never be disclosed ; but it matters little,
since the only satisfaction from the disclosure would be the
discovery of some greater scoundrel than Oates or Danger-
field. It may never be found out who cut off all the cur-
tain-fringes in the Luxembourg, and flung them on the
supper table of Louis XV., thereby occasioning his
sacred majesty a sleepless night and a fit of indigestion.
We may rest in peace without ascertaining who wore the
iron mask, or whether Perkin Warbeck were really Richard
Duke of York, or no :—none of these problems involve any
great social phenomena, or, if solved, would throw much
additional light on the times in which they occurred. We
need not break our sleeps for them. But it is not so with the
Catilinarian plot. It was universally admitted in its day to
I be ' a good plot, good friends, and full of expectation.'
It is related most pictorially by Sallust ; it is dissected
minutely by Cicero; it has exercised the wits of commen-
tators in every age ; and nevertheless, neither its final ob-
ject, nor its true origin, nor the roll and count of the conspi-
rators, nor its extent, nor its plan, have ever been satisfac-
torily explained. That the head and front of offence Ser-
gins Catalina himself was a man of mark and likelihood
is beyond dispute ; that he reckoned among his adherents
many persons with a large stake in the Commonwealth is
also clear; as well as that their design was known to ex-
ist and suffered to proceed long before any steps were
taken to prevent or to crush it. An in Lolerable insult, and
a contumelious compensation for it, drove the hot-blooded
Faliero into rebellion against the Venetian oligarchy ; but
it does not appear that he proposed to burn the arsenal or
even to massacre the council of forty. The daggers cf the
Pazzi were directed against the persons of the Medici; but
we do not find that they designed also to decimate the
guides, or throw open the gates of Florence either to the
French or Spanish king. Of the Catilinarian conspiracy
we know only that its ramifications were wide, its objects
subversive of the existing constitution, and its most effici-
ent supporters, if not of its actual contrivers, the most
powerful and wealthy men of Rome. But whether it de-
signed reaction or revolution, whether its motives were
social or political, whether its basis were the mob or the oli-
garchy, whether what is told be merely the mask, and what
has been surmised the real visage of some atrocious spectre,
are questions which, if answered, would throw a stream of
light into one of the darkest nooks of Roman annals, but
which, with the documents before us, defy answer and
elude probable conjecture."

Scarcely enough is said upon the subject of Cicero's
death, that most cruel and dastardly of assassina-
tions. The incidents accompanying the murder, as
recounted by the hand of Plutarch, have always
appeared to our mind as invested with the very-
sublimity of pathos. It is hardly enough, there-
fore, to close so generous and picturesque a memo-
rial of Tully as the' one here alluded to, with the
brief but admiring sentence, that although " the
death of the great Athenian orator may have been
more befitting the tragic stage [an opinion with
which we cannot for one instant coincide] : yet we
rate higher and more august in itself, and more ac-
cordant with the precepts of philosophy, the compo-
sure which awed and nearly diverted from their mis-
sion the assassins of Marcus Cicero." The " compo-
sure"—it recalls to us, that one phrase, the picture
as revealed through the loophole of history, look-
ing out from it upon that spot consecrated to the
sympathies of after ages upon the classic shores of
the Roman peninsula. Where the litter was set
down in the highway by the slaves of the fugitive,
and where, from the window of the litter, that
glorious wanderer awaited with the serenity, less
of despair than of resignation, the death-blows
from the captain of the cut-throats. Old, weak,
ill, unshorn, his chin resting upon his hand, as had
been his wont in the senate house and in the ros-
trum, at his desk and in the chair of the arch-
magistracy, gazing calmly with his grand and
mournful eyes upon the face of the master-mur-
derer as the latter approached with upliftel sword
to strike off the head of the groat Conscript
Father—the noblest of Rome's orators, and the
most illustrious of her philosophers. Remember-
ing that heroic close of the lofty drama of his life,
we are willing to forget whatever may have seemed
ignoble in its antecedents--his avaricious courting
of his ward Publilia, his corrupt flattery of Dolo-
belle., his mendicancy of praise from Lucceius, his
inconsistent defence of Fontoius after being the
accuser of Verres, his scarcely reconcileable eulogiums
upon Cnsar after his having been the satellite of
Cneius Pompeius. We forget everything but what
was noble in the life so nobly terminated. We re-
member only the glory of the career, and the ma-
jesty of its conclusion. Immediately preceding
this biographic-criticism upon Cicero, appears a
very pretentious treatise upon " Theism"—the
" leading article" in the new number of the West-
minster. Its style throughout, to our thinking, is
both crabbed and affected. The writer evidently
aspires to the dignity of a theological metaphysician.
It would seem advisible, however, that he should
give an eye to his syntax before entering upon
studies of a more recondite character ; if we may
be permitted so far to conjecture from the very
preamble of his argument, when he sets out with
—" Antecedence and sequence is the only relation,
&-e." Every now and then he is evidently floun-
dering in abysses of obscurity—held up, as he
fancies, by bladders of grandiloquence, buoyed
upon the stream by those favourite corks of
shallow-reasoners, sesquipedalia verba of rhodo-
montade. Professor Newman might have writ-
ten the article during an interval of more
than usually hazy obfuscation. Turning from
this stilted pretence at philosophising upon the
most holy and awful theme that can be
presented to the contemplation of the Christian
philosopher, the study of studies, the science of
sciences, the truth of truths, the existence of the
Supreme God ! the theme to the examination of
which the intellect of man should come simply
and humbly, not as in this instance affectedly and
with an air of esoteric wisdom ! We observe with
no small degree of satisfaction among the remain-
ing. contributions an ingenious essay,
bdae,.sscripatinsdu
of " The position of Woman in Beer
,hrelanartiol„
among the Ancients." This is onefothf the
to which we referred in the outset of
and an ese remarks
as evidencing an uncommon researcheleity
of design
un-
usual excellence, whether as to
dneductions arrived
or importance in respect to t Lady Morgan and
gh.t have conjectureds
at. Montesquieu and Goguei
Dr. Alexander—not as some in
author or a recently pub-
Mr. Fullom, and the
Marriages—are se-
lished work upon mennonite
elaborated essay as the
lected by the writer of this
whose words of moment the
authorities upon
entire paper under notice may be
argument of the raised. Inf t
said to have been an betrothal, wife-
adultery, divorce such
stealing, wife-buy
among the sectional
points treated of by the
essayists
whose glance turns from Greece to Rome,
from ;ado a
tnt to New Zealand, from Mexico to
Nineveh, from antiquity to nowadays, from the.
Asiatics to the Europeans, in the ample survey of
The Position of Woman" as she was among the
Ancients, and as she still is in Barbarism. Under
the title of " Evangelical Teaching," the readers
of the Westminster will find abundant materials
for entertainment in the shape of a slashing on-
slaught upon Dr, John Cumming, the pet preacher
and pulpit prophet of Drury-lane. This is per-
haps of all the most powerful and brilliant of the
six contributions. As the most practically hu-
manising in its general tendency, is the article
entitled " Drunkenness not curable by Legisla-
tion." The paper headed " The London Daily,
Press" might more correctly have been designated
" A ranegyrizoa the Times newspaper.". FIP'44YI