party with unswerving loyalty. Mr. Tyrrell has a comparatively easy task in showing this. It is only necessary to reduce the historical perspective of the picture into its true contemporary proportions.

We know that events and characters of the most momentous importance in history appeared in an utterly different light to those who witnessed them; and perhaps of no period in history is this so true as of the period of Cæsar and Cicero. Cæsar's real greatness was hardly understood until he was dead; Cicero had been for many years the foremost figure in domestic politics, as Pompeius had been in foreign affairs. There is nothing surprising in the fact, if it were a fact, that Cicero sincerely believed himself wiser as a politician than Cæsar, and held that in standing by the Roman Constitution as it had been handed down to him he was doing not only the right thing, but the safe thing. Why should not Cæsar have been only another Sulla?

Mr. Tyrrell, then, appears to us to have taken a juster view of the character and position both of Cæsar and of Cicero than Mr. Froude has done; and in so far, to have fulfilled better his duty as a biographer. The task of the historian he did not assume. Froude has assumed not only that, but the task of the political philosopher as well. It may be worth while to see how he has performed

them.

Mr.

It is easy enough to make out an ingenious parallel between Roman affairs, social and political, and those of our own age and country. But these comparisons are misleading; and at best they can help us to understand history only on the condition that the essential differences in the situations be not lost sight of. Especially is this the case when the resemblances are mainly on the

surface, and the essential differences hidden and deep seated; and this is what we maintain in regard to the parallel between the Roman and the British empires. At every point we may perceive the intrinsic divergences which vitiate the superficial likeness. The scepticism of English society is as unlike Roman scepticism, as English Christianity is unlike the worship of Jupiter Capitolinus. The vices and weaknesses of Roman society were not the same as those of our day, save in so far as they both were human. The bored aristocrat of Rome gloated over his gladiators; ours at worst massacre pigeons at Hurlingham, while those who have anything in them kill their ennui by tracking moose in Canadian snows, slaying tigers in Indian jungles, or steering a yacht amid the icebergs of the Polar Sea. The gambler, the profligate, and the mere dilettante or lounger, are alike, it is true, in all ages; but it is only the panegyrist of every age except his own, who would assert or insinuate that these classes form the staple of high society. Equally inaccurate is Mr. Froude's way of writing about politics proper. The Government of Rome was never at any time strictly to be described as constitutional. It was a civic democracy,

on

the one hand continually struggling against the Senatorial oligarchy, and on the other usurping power over subject cities and regions. The Senate was not a House of Lords, nor an Upper Chamber in any constitutional sense; and the Assembly of Tribes, it need hardly be said, was in no wise analogous to any Legislative assembly now known, except in some small and primitive Swiss cantons. For a century before Cæsar's time, as Mr. Froude himself has shown, the Roman polity became a Government by coups d'état; therein resem

bling what the last three generations have seen of France, rather than anything in the history of more law-abiding countries.

The burden of empire had something, though not everything, to do with this, for the main difficulty, no doubt, was to reconcile the supremacy of Rome with freedom in the provinces. Athens had failed in a not dissimilar task, and the Athenian democracy had been ruined along with her supremacy. Roman supremacy was destined to survive, though the democracy perished; but in both cases the mischief supervened just because the governments were not constitutional. It is certainly true that the government of subject races constitutes a serious difficulty in our own polity; but this is precisely because the spirit of our polity in dealing with such races is so widely different from the Roman spirit. In spite of the eloquence of Burke and Sheridan, Warren Hastings never was a Verres: and Warren Hastings was more like a Roman proconsul than any other English provincial governor has ever been. At no period of English history has oppression of subject races been tolerated by home opinion,

ever

and it is less tolerated than ever

in this age, which Mr. Froude likens to the age of Verres and of Cluentius. If England is destined to make shipwreck on the same reef that destroyed Roman freedom, it will not be because of Roman steering. Our danger lies rather in a too philanthropic spirit, in being too ready both to assume that we know how to promote human happiness, and also to take upon ourselves the task of carrying out our own views. This may constitute a serious danger-we for our part believe it does; but it is a danger to which neither the Roman Republic nor the Roman Empire was ever exposed.

And in dealing with this aspect of the question we must never forget that the subject races of the Roman Empire were much more nearly on the Roman level than our own subject races are. The Greeks and even the peoples of Asia Minor were actually the superiors of Rome in civilisation. "Græcia capta feros victores cepit,

et artes

Intulit agresti Latio."

The Spaniards and Gauls certainly did not differ from Romans as Hindoos differ from Englishmen; and Hindoos are the most civilised of our inferior races. Thus not

only did the Romans never try to improve the condition of their subjects, save by barely preventing wars; but if they had tried it they would have been met by difficulties which after nineteen centuries have not yet been surmounted.

These speculations are leading us somewhat away from the main Mr. purport of our remarks. Froude's political Jeremiad is after all very unlikely to do any great harm, nor can his unfavourable estimate of Cicero seriously damage the orator in the eyes of scholars whose judgment is founded on evidence rather than prejudice. The Dublin Professor of Latin has done good service in putting before the scholastic world a true presentation of the great Roman advocate. Of the work done by Mr. Tyrrell in editing the letters we have not at present an opportunity to speak. We may state, however, that the volume under review is only a portion of a larger work, and if the promise of this instalment be fulfilled, literature will be enriched by an edition of Cicero Correspondence which will bear the mark at once of patient research and of brilliant and elegant scholarship.

THE star of the Comédie Française will probably carry back to Paris some rather mixed impressions of English society and the English public. Gifted with some observational powers, she has had abundant and varied opportunity for the exercise of them during her stay in this country, and she may certainly say that in her own brief personal experience she has attested the fickleness of the populace towards the objects of its attachment. The youngest in order of election, the foremost in point of genuine artistic merit, of the famous body of players, she came to London in company with her fellow-comedians some few weeks ago, and almost from the moment that she entered the metropolis became the object of the most remarkable fashionable excitement of the season. It was darkly whispered that Mademoiselle was by no. means unwilling to be carried upon this tide into the staring gaze of society. Be that as it may, she did most assuredly sup to the full on the freely-scattered favours of the metropolis; and if before her departure the favours were flung with a ruder hand, and not unaccompanied with the indignity of jest, well, Mlle. Bernhardt received a lesson which, if of a philosophic turn of mind, she may find of some value during the remainder of a brilliant artistic career. For a while, enough could not be made of her; she was overwhelmed with applause-most deservedly wonat the theatre; she was fêted in

private, and lionised at fashionable parties. Great personages craved the honour of an introduction, and went, it is said, weak at the knees on being presented. Her name was on every tongue, one heard it in the street, in the railway carriage, at the dinner table, in the pauses between the responses at church. Herself, her acting, her pictures, her sculpture, were the common theme of polite conversation; and her stall at the Bazaar was besieged by Royal personages who laid down "a roll of bank-notes" for a picture and a pair of white kittens in a basket. But the voice of envy was already abroad, and in the course of time we were roundly told that we had made too much of Mademoiselle, and were standing ridiculously in the eyes of our Parisian neighbours, who thought we had gone crazy over their favourite of the Théâtre Français. And then our ardour began to cool a little, and small malicious paragraphs found their way into the "high-class journals, and we began to have uncomfortable doubts whether we had not given way to undue sentimentality, which the straight-spoken did not hesitate to call "gush." The inevitable reaction followed, and Mademoiselle, in packing up her wardrobe, found us not so nice or so generous as when she had opened it to take out the robes of Doña Sol some few weeks before.

The Parisians had the truth of it, when they said or thought we had gone crazy over their troupe

of players-not Mlle. Bernhardt alone, but the entire company enjoyed, for a full month-a long while for society to worship-the idolatry of the fashionable world. Their coming was hailed as a new excitement, and Mr. Hollingshead -shrewdest and most enterprising of managers-deserved the success which we trust attended his venture, for gauging so accurately the probable feelings of his patrons.

Some

Society is but a child in taking its pleasures, for it pursues them with all the intemperate heat of childhood, and is tired of them, and throws them away as soon. fresh delight is always being sought to replace that which has begun to pall. Every month an old doll is disgraced and a new one set up in its stead. For two or three weeks the pink cheeks and flaxen locks amuse and are petted; at the beginning of the fourth its eyes are put out, and its hair pulled off, and before three weeks are out its nose is slit, and it is cast aside with as much lack of ceremony as the Neapolitan sailors use towards their wooden idols when a storm comes on, and the deity declines to interfere in preserving them from its fury.

Society's doll takes many forms. Yesterday it was old china and sixteenth-century furniture; still more recently French poodles, performing birds, and the Celestial embassy; to day it has been a French player, to-morrow it may be an interesting Old Bailey hero, or a silk stocking with clocks of a new pattern. The feeling of boredom is at the root of the intemperate haste with which each new pleasure is sought, found, enjoyed, and flung behind. Society, bored to death with life, seeks every means of killing time. Life is so full of weariness to those who do not understand it aright; and its sources of true pleasure, never

found by those who live professedly for pleasure's sake, are believed not to exist, so the time is spent in devising artificial joys. The lesser amusements, which afford ample recreation to the workers, are soon exhausted by the idle; and while the former go through life discovering some fresh, simple pastime which satisfies the brief period allowed by nature for wholesome pleasurable exercise, the latter, who exist but to please themselves, arrive quickly at the end of the line, and looking over, find only boredom and ennui.

Society has its perennial amusements which follow one another in succession, and continue to be partaken of even when their freshness has faded and died. There are the events of the season which must be attended, though attendance is a duty as often as a pleasure. Who would think of omitting Ascot ? but Ascot, the reporters told us, was a terribly dull affair this year, and it appeared that the weather was not wholly responsible. Fashion is an exacting mistress, as her votaries sometimes acknowledge in the secret corners of their hearts. Slaves indeed, not in name, but in fact, are they who confess her sway. "British endurance," and "British pluck," are cant terms in the mouths of the common-place political orator, but they are not devoid of meaning when applied to the habitual existences of many of the upholders and professors of Fashion. She is hardest upon her subjects in the arts connected with their personal beautification, and there is martyrdom, heroically endured, involved in the getting up of a fine lady. The ladies, by the way, with whom it is customary to associate the extravagances of the toilette, have of late been almost outdone by the other sex. So silly a craze as that which has obtained for its fol

and

lowers the class-name of the "crutch and toothpick school," would be unworthy of notice in the pages of any magazine were it not the very illustration here needed. The spectacle of the aristocratic youth of England walking with the assistance of ebon-handled "crutch" walking sticks, flourishing toothpicks which are useless save as an essential portion of the badge, is not comely, and finds place here only as an absurdity which was really likely to grow into an institution until the more sensible portion of the community made a huge joke of the affair, and fairly laughed the foolish youths out of their crutches and their toothpicks. But this was scarcely a more ludicrous fashion than that which prevailed during the early part of last winter, when in the bitter days of November the fiat went forth that great coats were not to be worn, and that whoso did not go clad as in the days of summer, and wear his trousers turned high above the ankle on the driest of days, could present no claim to rank as a man of fashion. So, during the days of east winds, and when the streets were destitute of a speck of mud, heroic youths might have been seen shivering along in their highbuttoned coats, and with their nether garments turned up far above the top of their boots-a sight for gods and men. Shade of Aristophanes, what matter for satire! But now even satire has become stale, for the foibles of idlers repeat themselves with almost as much monotony as the antics of nursery children. Dress is a permanent amusement, which revives as each season dies and a new one commences.

The milder games at which society plays, have, for the most part, a longer run of favour than those of the more extravagant kind,

a fact which is instructive as seeming to show that simplicity, and not extravagance, is the basis of all healthy natural enjoyment. Croquet, say some of a cynical turn, owed much of its charm to the opportunities which were afforded for flirtation (leaving Balmoral boots entirely out of the question); but, wherever the attraction lay, it is sufficient that a pleasant and innocent pastime held its own for many years, and has but recently given way to another as simple and irreproachable as itself. It would be rash to attempt to set a limit to the reign of lawn tennis; but, if we may take as representative, the opinion of the eminent legislator who, on throwing down his bat at the end of his weekly game, exclaimed, "I've nothing more to live for but Saturday next," this game has commenced an enduring exist

ence.

It is when fashion takes artistic flights, enjoins upon her followers to go in for what they term "high art," that her follies come into greater prominence. A concert of classical music at the Crystal Palace is unquestionably a treat to the student who understands and is able to appreciate the trying passages of the master; but, if we would but confess it, it is rather tedious work to us who have no souls for anything higher than Offenbach, Lecocq, and Mr. Sulli

van.

So, too, it is fitting that on occasions we should patronise readings from Shakespeare and the favourite poets; and if at these times the fan is more useful as a concealer of yawns than as an allayer of heat, and if in a moment of inadvertence we look up from the pages of the novel (it is covered in brown paper, and looks like a copy of the text) to applaud in the wrong place, what can be said but that Nature watches her opportunity, and gets her own cynical fun out