Bright, blissful Host! Oh! who may tell The sure, deep secrets of your heavenly birth? Behind the veil in light ye dwell, Yet deign to soothe with living spell The dim, cold scenes, that once ye loved on earth. And oh if o'er the long-lost sheep, Cradled again upon the Shepherd's arm, With folded wings, whose soft plumes weep Say, bent ye not from yon high dome, As doting mother o'er her best-loved child; A pilgrim meek in raiment undefiled? No meteor glares upon our sight, Who fain would track thee on thy peaceful way; Cheered thee throughout the weary night, Till on thy closing eyelids dawned the day, By priestly hands the flame was fanned, Bade it before the world to stand A crest of light upon Rome's queenly head. In troublous times thy lot was cast, A gentle bark upon an angry sea; Yet, till the storm be overpast, So He hath willed. From cloister dim, Some spirit meek is called by Him, To wield the sword of Cherubim, And turn the quailing powers of air to shame. A higher service calls thee now* Let Rome peal forth her praise: Lord of the world, Before the Cross discrowned and low His laurelled head the Prince will bow, His pennons, all abashed, in silence furled. * S. Silvester was chosen by an heavenly vision to baptize Constantine the Great. The sword, that reeked with Christian gore, Against the Church conspired of yore, Nor least of all the jewels rare, A living halo round thy sainted brow, "Twas thine to quiet fell despair With comfort bland and sheltering care, And thine the robe to which earth's mimic pageants bow.* Thy stream hath reached the watery plain : One knell hath sounded for the year and thee; To us it speaks of prescient pain, And winged moments lent in vain, For thee it carols forth the dawn of liberty. Bethink we then, if whispers rife Of scowling fiends assail our course below,― That Angels wait upon our strife; As, trembling between death and life, We don our panoply to wrestle with the foe. Nor grieve we, if they seem to die, Our fragrant deeds as flowers forgotten pine; 'Tis good beneath the Cross to lie While earthly pomps flit idly by, With hope in CHRIST among the happy stars to shine. "S. Silvester is said to have been the author of Unction, Asylums, and Palls.” -Brady. THE TEACHING OF ANCIENT HISTORY: GROTE'S HISTORY OF GREECE. (Continued from p. 321.) AMONG all Mr. Grote's contributions to Grecian History, the very first and foremost are the admirable chapters in which he traces the growth of the Athenian democracy in these some absolutely new discovery meets us in every page, in a manner recalling the great Niebuhr. This subject is one which Mr. Grote from his political predilections is excellently qualified to deal with; when enlarging on the great democracy, he is completely in his element; every line is written con amore; his style gains vigour and brilliancy from the subject; it never ceases to be interesting, and now and then is not far removed from eloquence. Of these chapters we will now venture to attempt an abridgment. Reviewing has been called an "ungentle craft ;" and it certainly is its misfortune that its tendency is rather to give prominence to defects than to merits. In the present case we are almost inclined to regret that our acquiescence in Mr. Grote's views on this subject is so nearly entire. One or two important points of disagreement would have called for their detailed discussion, and thus have given us occasion to place his system more fully before our readers; as it is, we will only give a general outline, and for the rest refer to the volumes themselves. Mr. Grote has given a complete death-blow to the old scntiment that ὁ Σόλων ὁ παλαιὸς ἦν φιλόδημος τὴν φύσιν. His distinction between the Solonian and post-Solonian constitution of Athens is most valuable; a not unnatural tendency having been busily at work, both among the Greeks themselves and among modern writers on the subject, to attribute to him the erection of the whole democratic system of Athens in a state little short of its full maturity. "Solon," as the heading of one of our author's paragraphs expresses it, "laid the foundations of the Athenian democracy, but his institutions are not democratical." "He left the essential powers of the state still in the hands of the oligarchy;" the completely democratic features of the Athenian constitution as we are familiar with it, the popular constitution of the courts of justice, the use of the lot, the institution of the Nomothetæ, all belong to a later period. Under his constitution the archons retained their full powers as judges; the chief difference introduced by him with regard to those magistrates being the popular mode of their election, and the examination to which they were subjected after the conclusion of their term of office. The most important change due to his legislation was that with which we are so familiar as the Solonian timocracy, which substituted a standard of wealth for that of birth. Still this was only a change within the Ionic tribes themselves the population which had grown up around them was as yet excluded from the franchise.* The senate of Four Hundred was in the Solonian constitution, to which it owed its origin, by no means a merely democratical institution, being "taken in equal proportions from the four tribes,-not chosen by lot, (as they will be found to be in the more advanced stage of the democracy,) but elected by the people, in the same way that the archons then were, -persons of the fourth or poorest class of the census, though contributing to elect, not being themselves eligible." But the real author of the Athenian democracy, though, even as it came from his hands, it lacked much of that fulness with which we are accustomed to see it invested in the days of Aristophanes and the orators, was Cleisthenes. This great man is, as might be expected, Mr. Grote's especial hero, and he expatiates on his reforms with consummate ability. His name," (he observes,) "makes less figure in history than we should expect; because he passed for the mere renovator of Solon's scheme of government after it had been overthrown by Peisistratus. Probably he himself professed this object, since it would facilitate the success of his propositions; and if we confine ourselves to the letter of the case, the fact is in a great measure true, since the annual senate and the Ekklesia are both Solonian, but both of them under his reform were clothed in totally new circumstances, and swelled into gigantic proportions." The tyranny of the Peisistratidæ had opened the way for democratic innovations; as Mr. Grote observes: "For more than thirty years-an entire generation-the old constitution had been a mere empty formality, working only in subservience On this subject Mr. Grote's expressions seem to us not altogether consistent; but it is far more probable that we have not rightly understood him, than that he should have contradicted himself, or forgotten his former statements. In Vol. iv. p. 169, Mr. Grote says, "The political franchise, or the character of an Athenian citizen, both before and since Solon, had been confined to the primitive four Ionic tribes, each of which was an aggregation of so many close corporations, or quasifamilies, the gentes and the phratries: none of the residents in Attica, therefore, except those included in some gens or [and?] phratry, had any part in the political franchise. * Kleisthenês broke down the existing wall of privilege, and imparted the political franchise to the excluded mass." Yet he had before (iii. 175,) mentioned persons "not included in any gens or phratry," who still had votes in the public assembly, and had given it as his opinion, that "all persons not included in the four tribes, whatever their grade of fortune might be, were in the same level with regard to political privilege as the fourth and poorest class of the Solonian census." Dr. Thirlwall (ii. 37,) seems rather to incline to this latter view, but is not very explicit. After all, we ourselves are disposed to concur with Niebuhr's opinion, (ii. 304, 5,) according to which, if we rightly understand it, the Ionic tribes and the Eupatridae are co-extensive, just as the three original tribes and the Patricians at Rome; and Solon's scale removed all the indigent eupatrids from the government, without letting in the rich members of the demus." to the reigning dynasty, and stripped of all real controlling power: we may be very sure, therefore, that both the Senate of Four Hundred and the popular assembly, divested of that free speech which imparted to them not only all their value but all their charm, had come to be of little public estimation, and were probably attended only by a few partisans; and thus the difference between qualified citizens and men not so qualified-between members of the four old tribes and men not members-because during this period practically effaced. This in fact was the only species of good which a Grecian despotism ever seems to have done; it confounded the privileged and the non-privileged under one coercive authority common to both, so that the distinction between the two was not easy to revive when the despotism passed away. As soon as Hippias was expelled, the Senate and the public assembly regained their efficiency; but had they been continued on the old footing, including none but members of the four tribes, these tribes would have been re-invested with a privilege which in reality they had so long lost, that its revival would have seemed an odious novelty, and the remaining population would probably not have submitted to it. If in addition we consider the political excitement of the moment-the restoration of one body of men from exile, and the departure of another body into exile-the outpouring of long-suppressed hatred, partly against these very forms by the corruption of which the despot had reigned-we shall see that prudence as well as patriotism dictated the adoption of an enlarged scheme of government. Kleisthenês had learnt some wisdom during his long exile; and as he probably continued, for some time after the introduction of his new constitution, to be the chief adviser of his countrymen, we may consider their extraordinary success as a testimony to his prudence and skill not less than to their courage and unanimity.' "* The alteration in the tribes effected by Cleisthenes is a matter of some difficulty, as it may be viewed in different lights, according to the ideas entertained as to the previous condition of that part of the population which did not possess the highest rights of citizenship. And here it seems that the analogy of Rome fails us; there the Patricians were, after the suppression of the decemvirate, received into the already existing local tribes of the Commons, preserving their peculiar position as Patricians, side by side with their new character. At Athens the change was more sudden, the whole people being arranged into an entirely new division into tribes and uo;t substituting a division chiefly local for one purely genealogical. This revolution therefore at once swept away all the old distinctions, and placed all Athenians on a comparative level. If our view be correct, the non-Ionian portion of the population were now for the first time invested with political rights, and became a constituent portion of the state. All Athenians * Vol. iv. 172, 3. The duos was in the first instance a purely geographical division, embracing a continuous district; a tribe embraced the territory of several dμo, but not necessarily adjacent ones. |