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comfortably, because reasonably hold. Meantime we may, at least in the main, trust Livy before Niebuhr or Arnold. Whatever may have been his laziness, hastiness, carelessness, and general deficiency in critical qualities—all of which may, with limitations, be admitted -some characteristics of modern critics he happily had not; as, boundless love of conjecture, and the fancy of reconstructing the past by historical parallels. When Sir George Lewis, though more temperate and less inclined than Niebuhr and his successors to build up Roman history in opposition to Livy, charges him with want of common sense or common powers of observation, our confidence in Sir George's own criticism is shaken by the very strange logic he sometimes employs in his attacks. Thus Livy illustrates the virulence of a pestilence by the remark, that even vultures abstained from the unburied bodies of those who had died of it; for two years not one was seen; and Sir George, in order to convict the author of carelessness in speaking elsewhere of vultures as being seen at Rome, positively brings this passage forward in proof of their general absence, as if the notable exception did not rather prove the rule. Again, he argues from the present time to ancient days, imagining, it would seem, that as there are no vultures there now, there never were any; which is about as safe an inference as if we were to deny the existence of wolves in England five hundred years ago because the race is now extinct in these islands. Eagles and palm-trees are similarly eliminated from the descriptions of Livy, because the palm does not now grow in Rome, nor eagles appear in its neighbourhood. But Mr. Dyer very properly remarks, in arrest of judgment, that Sir G. Lewis is deceived as to the modern fact, as every stranger visiting Rome cannot fail to notice the palm-trees which are to be found in the garden of Sta. Francesca, near S. Pietro in Vincoli, of S. Bonaventura on the Palatine, in the Colonna Gardens, the inner quadrangle of the Roman College, and many other places; and as for eagles, though they have long since disappeared from the Seven Hills, and even from the Alban and Sabine ranges, so too have they from the Welsh mountains, though stories are yet told of the times, not so long past, when they were to be found at least on Snowdon. Similar hypercriticism is employed upon a statement of Dionysius, that in the winter of B.C. 400 the snow lay seven feet deep at Rome. Though both he and Livy observe upon the extraordinary severity of the season, yet, because snow seldom or never lies now at Rome, and because some scientific men think there has been little change in the Roman climate since ancient times, the whole account is set down as unworthy of credit. These are little things; but if critics are so captious when dealing with physical phenomena, "what treatment," justly asks Mr. Dyer, "are we to expect of moral actions, whose causes are so much more complicated and obscure ?" At the same time, all that either he or we contend for is the admission of the names, order of succession of the kings, and the chief transactions of their reigns, such as pestilences, seditions, victories; which latter have been treated even by so judicious a writer as Professor Malden as little better than a poetical

dream, invented for the purpose of extolling the military reputation of Rome.

The body of Mr. Dyer's work contains a copious and detailed history of the pagan city of Rome, its structures and monuments. From the first enclosure of the little arx, called Roma Quadrata, on the Germalus, or western half of the Palatine-to which, with Signor Rosa, the present active and learned superintendent of the excavations which are being carried on there, Mr. Dyer would confine the Romulean city-he conducts his readers through every stage of progress and enlargement, until the imperial days, when not only the Septimontium, but the Campus Martius, in which modern Rome chiefly lies, was occupied by a dense population-not far short, according to the most probable estimates, of two millions of souls. The narrative is interestingly given, and sufficiently illustrated from the political and social life of the kingdom, republic, and empire, to render the work a most useful auxiliary in the study of Roman history. The topographical details are invested with genuine interest by the accompanying description of the more striking scenes of which Rome was the theatre; and the residences of many of her greatest men are shown to the inquiring stranger with pleasant stories of their occupants, who adorned Rome by their genius, or took a prominent part in its affairs.

Had we the opportunity, we should be tempted to saunter with our readers along the narrow streets of ancient Rome, taking Mr. Dyer for a guide; or, mounting to the platform or terrace before the Church of S. Pietro in Montorio, or, still better, taking our stand by the Arch of Titus, or on that part of the "Sacer Clivus " which mounts the Capitol, survey the city, conjuring up the old Rome before the burning by the Gauls, or in the grand times of the Republic, or after Augustus had transformed a town of brick into a city of marble, or, later still, when the Flavian Amphitheatre had been dedicated by Titus, and Vespasian had re-erected Nero's Colossus, as an image of Apollo, hard by the western extremity of the Coliseum, which could be seen well from the Summa Sacra Via, before Hadrian had built the Temple of Venus and Rome on the spot where now stands the Church of Sta. Francesca.

But the greatness of this world has an end. Even the eternal Rome, by slow degrees, by sackings, and burnings, and earthquake, and neglect, and last, not least, by domestic spoliation, was destined to be reduced to an image of desolation; to become a doleful sepulchral monument to its own grandeur-a witness to all ages of the vanity of earthly domination, and the triumph of a kingdom not of this world. Here, however, Mr. Dyer will disappoint those who love candour and hate intemperate accusation or malicious sneering. Unhappily, in the presence of Catholicity, he forgets his former self, becomes incapable of weighing evidence or adhering to the rules of sound logic in the inferences which he draws. We can sympathise with the indignation of the archeologist baulked by ruthless spoliation of the object of his researches; we can pardon the innocent spite which takes pleasure in gibbeting the spoilers in a row, and hanging

round the neck of each the nature and number of his crimes against taste or science. But it would be more worthy of an historian to take into consideration the circumstances under which such lamentable havoc was made, and to apportion with something like fairness the amount of blame attaching to the very numerous and various destroyers of ancient monuments. Still less can there be any excuse for introducing offensive digressions against "Mariolatry," or depreciating the Roman ritual as a derivation from pagan observances. These are blots upon Mr. Dyer's book; but they can easily be removed, without any damage to his general design, in another edition. As these passages stand, they do no more credit to his learning or his critical acumen than to his taste and good feeling. He knows the writings of the Cavaliere de Rossi, and probably is not unacquainted with those of Padre Garucci: if so, it is marvellous that he can talk of the religious honour paid to Our Lady as first officially recognised in the fifth century. Had he remembered, when writing about the tonsure, the use of lamps and candles in churches, holy water, incense, and other usages of Catholics, what he himself elsewhere very properly says against the logic of post hoc, ergo propter hoc, perhaps he would have spared his readers the strange reasoning by which he fathers all these Christian practices upon the pagans. How does he explain the Mosaic ritual-the altar of incense, the laver of brass, the seven-branch candlestick, the priestly vestments, the sacrifices, the votive offerings? These at least were anterior to the existence of Rome, and expressly ordained by God Himself. His premiss, then, is as weak as his inference. But such absurdities need no refutation; nor should we have drawn attention to them, but that we cannot in conscience praise without qualification a book in which, amidst so much that is harmless, so much that is positively good, there is mixed up even ever so little anti-Catholic mis-statement.

2. Mr. Merivale's new volume* covers a good deal of interesting ground. Taking up Christianity at the point at which he left off in the Boyle Lectures for the year 1864, the consideration, that is, of the principal ways in which the conversion of the Roman Empire seems to have been effected, the author first introduces us to St. Justin and Clement of Alexandria, in order to show how the truths of revelation proved themselves attractive to the highest order of intelligence among the heathens. In the next lecture the second phase of early Christian thought, as represented by Tertullian and Origen, is somewhat carefully reviewed. Then comes the time of the great Councils,-of the grand disputes with hereties, properly so called,—of the dogmatic labours of St. Athanasius and St. Augustine. With the fifth lecture the proper subject of the work begins. A rapid sketch of the spiritual beliefs, the dispositions, and character of the Gothic nations opens the way for the marvellous story of their

*The Conversion of the Northern Nations. The Boyle Lectures for the year 1865, delivered at the Chapel Royal, Whitehall. By Charles Merivale, B.D., Rector of Lawford, Chaplain to the Speaker of the House of Commons. London: Longmans, 1866.

conversion; whilst the two last lectures are devoted to an analysis of the christianised Northern mind upon two points of the highest importance,―man's personal relation to God, and the elevation of woman to an equality with man in the participation of God's gifts and graces; so that their privileges are equal, their hopes identical, and their spiritual functions, though different, yet not so very unequal in practical importance.

Mr. Merivale means well. He intends to illustrate what he quaintly calls "the continuity of God's providence in the spiritual guidance of our species," by the circumstances which led to the conversion of the Northern nations, and their preparation for the reception of Christianity. But a stranger mode of illustration could hardly have been adopted. He admits, indeed, the principle of the Christian covenant to be "that one universal Church is appointed to preserve, under divine guidance, the true knowledge of the Faith, and of Him in whom we believe, the Son of God; and, at the same time, that this economy is directed to God's eternal purpose of sanctifying the individual believer, with a view to his justification and perfection hereafter." There is some confusion of ideas in the latter part of this sentence; but, passing that over, there is good promise in the former half. What, then, is our disappointment to find that this principle failed almost as soon as it came into extended operation; that the Greek and Roman Churches-which, by the bye, are treated as if they were separate all along-failed in their mission; that they corrupted Christianity, and added to or took from the Faith; and that God, provoked, turned to the Northern nations, rejecting the Southern, as He previously rejected the Jews, and turned to the Gentiles! And yet, inconsistently enough, we find this decayed effete Church of Rome described as the great missioner of the North, and its agents preaching the Gospel to the barbarians with force and conviction and authority. A corrupt religion ardently proclaimed, unaccountably generated in the new hearers a pure faith, and maintained the continuity of the doctrines of Christ already lost by their teachers; and that although they did not sift, and judge, and select for themselves, but received the message in its entirety as divine. It is strange Mr. Merivale does not see that he has involved himself in endless contradictions. How does he reconcile with the wisdom of God the choice of means which, after all, never succeed in carrying out His eternal purpose? Will he explain how the failure of God's promises is compatible with His power or His veracity? or how the knowledge of the Faith is protected, perpetuated, and made effectual to the sanctification of the individual believer, till we all come in the body of the Church unto a perfect man, if, after all, the early Christians held a mixture of truth and error-a system which had much truth, but was not all true, nor all the truth? if the second and third centuries, though more deeply conscious of the truths and spirit of Christianity, had not yet grasped the idea of the Christian sacrifice? if the fourth century-according to him, the dogmatic era of the Church-was but the prelude to the fifth, in which "the Church became in some respects an open apostate," love grew cold and faith

languid, Christianity faded away into colourless indifference, paganism revived, and human speculation so carried the Church away from the foundations of revealed dogma, that, in spite of chastisement, she has never yet regained her proper purity and power? It is scarcely a wonder that, in the midst of this entanglement, he cannot even quote the promise that the Church shall never fail, without slipping in the word ultimately—a gloss which he does not attempt to justify, and which certainly will not stand either with the promise of uninterrupted perpetuity of the presence of Christ and the assistance of the Holy Ghost, or with the universal consent of the Church in all ages as to the meaning of the passage.

Enough has been said to show that the whole theory of the book is radically wrong; and, what is perhaps more wonderful, evidently and openly self-contradictory. The details are often not more satisfactory. It is absurd to measure the whole mind and belief of the early writers by the mere contents of their Apologies. Works addressed to the heathen upon the evidences of Christianity, and intended to remove antecedent improbabilities and smooth the way for a patient hearing of the dogmas of the Faith, are not likely to contain explicit dogmatic statements on recondite points; still less to exhibit, in spite of the disciplina arcani and the economical laws of early controversy, the complete cycle of Christian doctrine. Justin and Clement are not to be accused of failure to accept the concurrent tradition of the Church, because for a purpose they present a partial or oblique view of dogma to their readers. They were not individual inquirers feeling their way towards the truth; but for prudential reasons they refrained from giving to the pagan and philosophic world a full exposition of what they held. Mr. Merivale is in error, then, when he imagines upon such grounds that they themselves were unsteady in their adherence to such doctrines as the distinction of persons in the Godhead, or the supernatural character of divine grace, or the redeeming office of our Lord.

Still more astonishing is it to find a man of learning, after all the controversies which Jansenism raised, and which have long since been settled, still able unhesitatingly to represent St. Augustine as "leaning unwarily to the Eastern enthusiasts to the dreams of Gnostics and of Brahmins;" and consequently seeing "in man the mere effluence of God, with no independence of his own at all," and denying "all free will and free agency, and implicitly all moral responsibility, under an absolute predestination to salvation or perdition." The heresy which claimed St. Augustine on its side as the champion of necessitating grace has long since passed away; and even those theologians who appeal to the authority of St. Augustine in favour of the doctrine of the predetermining action of grace-of absolute predestination previous to, or irrespective of, foresight of human correspondence with grace-acknowledge and maintain, what it is impossible for any reader of St. Augustine honestly to deny, that the Doctor of Grace is no less the asserter of free will and human responsibility. We must express also a strong objection. to that portion of the book which treats of woman's place in the

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