The French had not the material of a republic. They were destitute of the elements of freedom. Darkness covered the land, and gross darkness the people. The physical sciences, indeed, flourished among the academicians; and many great advances were made. Mathematics, in particular, was much cultivated. And if liberty, instead of being the golden rule applied to government, had happened to be a rhomboid or an asymptote, the French would have been able to comprehend its nature. But they could neither mete it out by applying the equation of a straight line, nor get it into their crucibles; and its mysteries remained absolutely impenetrable to their understandings. The convention even abolished the academy; and when one of its brightest ornaments, Lavoisier, sought two or three days' respite from the guillotine, that he might perfect a discovery, he was consoled with the kind information, that "the republic had no need of philosophers."

A free government must be firmly based upon intelligence and sound morality: but the ignorance and caprice of the multitude made them an unsafe foundation for a structure requiring so great strength and solidity of material. The revolution was the wild attempt of men goaded to madness by a crushing tyranny. In a moment of popular fury, they hurled their hated tormentors to the earth, and made the dangerous experiment of self-government. A few of the loftier intellects of the nation may have had some faint conceptions of the true theory of government, and the essentials of success: but, the mass, reckless and inconstant, frustrated their projects and disappointed their hopes. They imagined that the noble structure which they had reared, apparently so firm and massive, would lift its towering summit to the clouds for the wondering gaze of many generations to come; but while they were yet singing their pæans of joy for its erection, it fell thundering to the dust, and overwhelmed the miserable builders in the widespread ruin. It had been built upon the sand of popular tumult, rather than upon the rock of sound free principles.

C.

ARTICLE III.-The Citizen of a Republic: what are his Rights, his Duties, and Privileges, and what should be his Education. By ANSALDO CEBA, a Genoese Republican of the Sixteenth Century. Translated and edited by C. EDWARDS LESTER, Translator of The Challenge of Barletta, The Florentine Histories, &c., Honorary Member of the Imperial and Royal Athenæum of Florence. Pp. 190. New-York: Paine and Burgess, 62 Johnstreet. 1845. The Medici Series of Italian Prose, No. 4.

THE attempt to ascertain what are the elements essential to the existence and prosperity of a republic is unquestionably one of the most important duties devolving on a citizen. A republic that is destitute of any of these elements is exposed to peculiar danger from that very system of checks and balances in which the peculiar value of this form of polity consists. In other forms of government, where the joints and ligaments of civil organization are more massive and inflexible, certain elements of the body politic may be wanting with less immediate disastrous effect, on account of the compactness and strength of the system. The same iron framework that prevents growth and expansion, may also prevent the immediate effects of decrepitude and decay, and may maintain unbroken and erect that which at heart is but rottenness and ruin. But to a republic the problem of existence is a Sphinx riddle, whose conditions are solution or destruction. If any essential factor is left out of the solvent, the dire alternative must be met. Existing as it does, a machinery of such mighty energy, and such manifold parts, the very might of that energy will be the measure of its ruin, should any essential parts be omitted in its structure. Hence to ascertain these essential parts is manifestly of the last importance to those in whose hands the destinies of the republic are deposited.

It is equally manifest that among the most important of these conditions is the character of the citizens themselves. Good laws and institutions are necessary; but good citizens will be much more likely to create good laws, than good laws to create good citizens. "Make the tree good, and the fruit will be good." It is therefore not difficult to perceive that it is in the character of the citizens of a republic, rather than in anything external and formal, that these essential elements must be found. Hence this has been usually the subject most carefully pondered by those calm and thoughtful minds whose patriotism is something more than the

horse-leech adhesiveness of party feeling, and whose preparation for the duties of civil life is something more than that nimble dexterity which enables its possessor always to ride the crest of the

wave.

Such was the feeling of the Genoese republican, whose work is before us. Having served his country in various capacities; having shared her brilliant and changeful fortunes in an eventful period of her history; having attained some eminence, not only as a statesman, but as a writer; and having thus the combined advantages of matured experience, extensive observation, and cultivated intellect, to qualify him for the post of a political mentor, he leaves as his most valuable legacy to his countrymen the ripened views of his old age as to the proper character of the citizen of a republic.

This treatise contains much that is of general value and importance, with somewhat that is less adapted to the altered tastes and circumstances of more modern society; brought together without much apparent regard to exact logical method or scientific arrangement. It consists of sixty-five brief chapters; to which the translator has prefixed a dedication to the Hon. J. Q. Adams, with a short and somewhat vague introductory notice of Ceba and his times; and added notes, rendering into English most of the quotations from foreign languages with which, in accordance with the taste of the age, the book is freely interlarded. After some preliminary chapters, showing the necessity and design of political education, and some presupposed qualities and virtues that are requisite in the citizen to be formed, the writer proceeds to define virtue. His definition is made so wide as to comprehend both intellectual and moral excellence. Under what are termed intellectual virtues are ranked, in order, a knowledge of languages, rhetoric, moral philosophy, history, the art of war, poetry, natural philosophy, mathematics, and what is termed practical intellect, or the ability to govern a man's self, his family, and the state. In his delineation of moral virtues, after declaring the possession of Christian graces to be a necessary substratum, he teaches that the citizen should be firm, temperate, liberal, magnificent, magnanimous, moderate in seeking honors, mild, constant, just, clement, heroic, and in what way these virtues are to be acquired, preserved, and exercised.

The following extract from the chapter on clemency will at once present a specimen of our author's style of thought and expression, and convey a merited rebuke to that mawkish sentimentalism so prevalent in our day, that is more merciful than God himself, and

forgets, in its maudlin weepings over the criminal, the hapless victims of his crime, the trampled laws, and the periled interests, and outraged moral sense of society.

"If those tribunals, which are so ready to show compassion to the vile, would remember, that in letting one villain escape they are the immediate instruments of bringing evil directly on many innocent persons, as Pythagoras says, they would confess themselves worthy of any other name in the world rather than merciful. Let the citizen, then, beware of being deceived by the similitude of names. Let him not mistake severity for cruelty, or weakness for clemency; but esteem himself clement or severe when motives of equity or public good call for a light or a heavy punishment. He will esteem that man weak or cruel when, without regard to either, he shall imitate the indulgence of Scipio toward the crimes of Pleminius, or the atrocity of the Carthaginians in the torments they inflicted upon Attilius Regulus. He who gives away the goods of others, rather than his own, cannot properly be called liberal; neither can he be called clement who takes away from the public its security, by showing compassion to a single individual and whether he be an executor of the law, or clothed with arbitrary power, let him remember he is a dispenser of the goods of others, and let him distribute them on just principles, following, in the one case, the letter of the law, and in the other conforming his will to the public good, waiting for the time to come when he can make a sacrifice of himself without detriment to others. Then with the most exalted praise, without confining himself within any prescribed limits, he may pardon injuries, remit punishments, repay kindnesses twofold, and make those magnificent demonstrations which only friends are wont to show toward each other. And if, in executing punishment for public injuries, he shall feel he is violating any of the principles of Christian charity, it will aid him to remember the declaration of Augustin, that to show mercy when punishment ought to be inflicted, is not charity, but infirmity. If any one would maintain the opposite cause to win the reputation of benignity, let him remember the reply of Carlaus, king of Sparta, to one who praised him: 'I should not be a good man if I were not merciless toward villains.' If he would console himself with the flattering idea of pity, let him remember that this sentiment is rather the attribute of a weak mind, than proof of a brave heart; for clemency is shown, not because the judge is under the control of compassion, which, although in some respects praiseworthy, in spite of the Stoics, yet, in the judicial trial, it should, if possible, be plucked up by the roots; for clemency can be practiced and cruelty avoided without indulging pity."-Pp. 88, 89.

He then prescribes some natural advantages and gifts of fortune which are necessary to enable the citizen to reduce to practice the moral virtues already described. The natural advantages are physical health, robustness, and beauty. In laying down the means of acquiring these physical advantages, we cannot forbear noticing

the fact, that our author, although nurtured beneath the sunny skies and surrounded by the luxurious influences of Italy, seems most cynically insensible to the advantages of one means of physical cultivation, very highly valued by some in our day, for we find him declaring,

"And we protest, that under the name of leaping, we have not designed to embrace dancing, which serves rather to render the mind weak and effeminate, than to make the body active and sprightly, as those dances seem to have been which Aristotle tells us were reproved in Callipides, and others who, in going through them, minced like prostitutes in the street. Gregory Nazianzen, in a canzone, calls them the tripping of effeminate boys, who never had a manly movement.”—P. 93.

Among the advantages of fortune he enumerates nobility, riches, good name among the people, honor, children, (whose physical, intellectual, and moral education he strongly urges,) civil power, and friends. He then describes the means of acquiring the favor of others, and enjoins on the citizen the cultivation of the art of pleasing, veracity, and cheerfulness in the ordinary intercourse of society.

The remainder of the book consists of miscellaneous directions concerning his conduct, instructing him how to act in private companies; how to conduct himself in places of public resort for amusement and entertainment; warning him against gaming and libidinous indulgences; directing him how to hold intercourse with his own countrymen and foreigners in the several relations of public and private life; how to act in various circumstances described; and recommending him to spend the first twenty-four years of his life in careful study and education for his duties, and the succeeding six in foreign travel, preparatory to his entrance on the active duties of civil life.

In concluding this portrait of the character of a good citizen, he says,

"In counsel and action he will regard the glory of God; for without the steady guiding-star of Christian principle, he will never accomplish any work that can have an efficacious power to confer lasting prosperity upon the republic; and this is the end we have endeavored, as far as God has given us light, he should keep in view.”—P. 176.

This homage to Christianity and the Bible is of course gratifying to every Christian heart, as a just tribute of respect, too rarely rendered by the mere politician. It is manifest, however, that neither in this treatise, nor in political treatises generally, is there recognized anything more than a mere general relation of Christi