In none of Burns's lyrics of independence, is there a finer burst than these two often-quoted stanzas. And again, in that sadder and still more frequent strain, which represents a mood of melancholy not unknown to our cheerful poet― 'Pallida mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas Vitæ summa brevis spem nos vetat inchoare longam. Et domus exilis Plutonia: quo simul mearis, Nec tenerum Lycidan mirabere, quo calet juventus In short, looking at his Odes as a whole, Horace was able to say with pride, that he also, satirist and moralist as he was, had shown that he possessed the 'ingenium,' the mens divinior,' the 'os magna sonaturum' of the true poet. And thus in the well-known epilogue to his Odes, 'Exegi monumentum, &c.,' so well translated by Professor Newman: 'Lo! a monument I rear, whose life Gird my hair, even mine, with Delphian bay.' Yet, after all, even in the Odes of Horace it is often the strong, manly sense, and the wise, nervous, and exquisitely apt expression, that wins the admiration, and not the poetical genius as shown in the kind of thought. In this respect Horace was, perhaps, inferior even to his predecessor Catullus. It is in the Satires and Epistles of Horace that we see the man intellectually at his best, and discern the grounds of his reputation, as perhaps, all in all, the most perfect and characteristic of the ancient Roman writers. Many of the Odes are but the Horatian philosophy of the Satires and Epistles expounded in the lyrical form. THE HORATIAN PHILOSOPHY. 227 What the Horatian philosophy is, who is there that does not know? Nil admirari,' quam in arduis rebus servare mentem' -these and other well-known phrases are summaries of it. A discussion of this philosophy, in connexion with the religious beliefs of Horace and his contemporaries, would be very interesting. Suffice it here to say, that the main intellectual characteristic of that age seems to have been entire religious scepticism, an utter abandonment by all educated men of the doctrine of human immortality, however much of practical superstition and of religious observance still remained; and that Horace, sharing in this scepticism, and being a man of the real rather than the ideal, naturally viewed the Art of Living as a theory of the best mode of enjoying existence on this side of Hades; whereas other men, such as Julius Cæsar, though equally sceptics speculatively, had so much of what Goethe and Niebuhr call the demoniac element' in their constitution, that in practice they dashed the Nil admirari' theory to atoms, and walked through the world almost as powerfully as great forces of infatuation, as if they had believed in a Hades, seeing that they carried a Hades in their own breasts. ART. IX.-(1.) The Frontier Lands of the Christian and the Turk, comprising Travels in the Regions of the Lower Danube, in 1850 and 1851. By a British Resident of Twenty Years in the East. Bentley. 1853. (2.) Réponse à quelques Journaux relativement aux Affaires de Turquie par Rustem Effendi et Seid Bey, officiers de l'Armée Ottomane, en Mission à Liege. Bruxelles: F. Michel. 1853. 1853. (3.) Montenegro and the Slavonians of Turkey. By Count VALERIAN KRASINSKI. Chapman and Hall. (4.) Circulaire adressé aux Ministres et Agents Diplomatiques de S. M. l'Empereur de Russie, par M. le Comte de Nesselrode. Extrait du Journal de Saint Petersbourg' du 31 Mai. (12 Juin.) (5.) The Eastern Question in relation to the Restoration of the Greek Empire. By an Inquirer. London: Longman and Co. (6.) Documents concerning the Question of the Danubian Principalities, dedicated to the English Parliament. D. BRATANO. Detkens. 1849. (7.) Russian Turkey; or, a Greek Empire the eventable Solution. Saunders and Stanford. 1853. (8.) The Turks in Europe: a Sketch of Manners and Politics in the Ottoman Empire. By BAYLE ST. JOHN. Chapman and Hall. 1853. REFLECTING Englishmen, of all classes and conditions of life, in town and country, in trades and in professions, have taken a great interest of late years in the question of the integrity and independence of Turkey. Now that the liberties and constitution of Poland are trampled under foot by the Autocrat of all the Russias-now that the language of Poland is discouraged, and that the religion of the majority of Poles is placed under pains and penalties-now that the Roman-catholic clergy of Poland are persecuted, and their ministrations are sought to be supplied by papas of the Greek Church-now that the universities of the ancient kingdom of Poland are shut up, and their places supplied by Russian schools and government institutions-now that Austria, following the example and moving in the wake of Russia, has annihilated the immunities and privileges of the free town of Cracow and annexed its territory, by a species of Austrian appropriation act, to the hereditary territories of the house of Hapsburgh-now that the Hungarian constitution is destroyed, and that, owing to domestic treason and foreign invasion, and the vilest treachery, the nationality of Hungary is, for the moment, obliterated-now that Venice has fallen-that Lombardy is subdued-that Tuscany is garrisoned by Austrian troops-now that the Roman legations are occupied by Croatian and Transylvanian regiments-now that Rome itself is garrisoned by an imperial French force-now that the Roman Republic has given way to a restored pope, protected and propped up by foreign bayonets and Swiss mercenaries-now that Sicily is crushed-and that Naples is under the régime of a Bourbon, who has foresworn his oath and abolished the charter, the chambers, and the constitution-now that Germany is without a free press, and, we may say, without the semblance of a free parliament (for the chambers of Prussia cannot be called a free parliament) -now that France has lost all political, all religious, all social, all literary, and all individual liberty-for there are neither free chambers nor free pulpits, nor free hearths and free fire-sides, nor a free press, nor free discussion with tongue or with pennow, in a word, that everywhere except in England, in Belgium, in Holland, in Sardinia, and in transatlantic America, there is irresponsible and autocratic instead of responsible and constitutional government-thinking and manly minds would sorrow and take shame to themselves if Turkey, the refuge and restingplace of the oppressed in the east, were allowed to perish, or if the last bulwark of Europe against Russia were to be destroyed. This is first among the reasons in which generous and just minds unanimously concur in considering that the independence and integrity of Turkey cannot be destroyed without danger to Europe, and without positive and prospective injury to England. ERRORS OF THE ULTRA-MOVEMENT PARTY. 229 Viewed in a political aspect, such is the result of calm inquiry; and, regarded in a moral point, the case is plainer still. For, so long as the faith of treaties is considered binding-so long as it is considered a cardinal principle that the strong shall not attempt to oppress and overbear the weak-so long must Russian aggression on Turkey be denounced as faithless, immoral, and unjust. For a century, or a century and a half, Turkey has been threatened, and in divers parts of Europe Russian scribes and apologists have been directed to point to the fall of Constantinople as an event certain and inevitable, and only depending on time and opportunity, an event likely to be productive of no inconvenience whenever it does take place. But these special pleaders in the cause of treaty-breaking and spoliation have failed to indoctrinate honest men with their immoral theories, and even the knavish, the slavish, and the apathetic among the civilized classes in European countries have, since the events of 1830 and 1849, had their eyes opened as to the real danger, and where it lies. The condition of Europe, and more especially of France and Germany, in 1848 and 1849 startled some strong, and appalled many weak and vacillating men in the better and more instructed classes of society, but the events consequent on the transactions of the 2nd December, 1851, have shown to the greatest sticklers for order, with or without liberty, that the words Socialism and Communism were, in France, used as mere bugbears to scare the timid, and to terrify what Paul Louis Courrier called the genre epicier. We are as little disposed, in these pages, to justify the errors and mistakes of what is called the party of the movement on the continent of Europe, as we are disposed to justify the intrigues and crimes of absolute cabinets, and it is because we are resolved to speak the truth fearlessly in reference to men with whose efforts we generally sympathise, that we must here record our conviction that the cabinets of Vienna and St. Petersburg would never have been enabled to trample down the constitution and liberties of Hungary, if the Ledru Rollins, the Causidieres, and the Louis Blancs of France, and the Heckers and Struves of Germany, had not by impracticable schemes, not merely divided and weakened the party of progress and improvement, but alarmed the timid and wavering, and discredited the name of republic and republicanism, as well as the name-which is of more consequence-of liberty itself. It is now too late to repair the errors of the past, but in regard to the future we may profit by them. The friends of progress and improvement in all countries will do well to limit, for some time to come, their efforts to that which is possible and practicable, and not, by attempting too much, and, much or little, too hastily, to give the cabinets of Austria and Russia another advantage in addition to that which they both obtained in 1849. It is plain that the enemies of human freedom, having destroyed the nationality of Poland and the constitutional existence of Hungary, are now directing their efforts against Turkey. The battle for the independence of that country must be fought sooner or later with Russia, possibly even with Russia and Austria combined, and it is for this reason that the British public is desirous of knowing the actual condition of those frontier lands of the Christian and the Turk comprised within the regions of the Lower Danube, and which are described by a British resident of twenty years in the East, in the work we have placed first at the head of this article. This gentleman appears to have left England some time in the year 1851, and, after having travelled through France and round the foot of the Maritime Alps, from Nice to Genoa, to have journeyed at length to Fiume, and thence, by way of Tersatto and Sequa, to Croatia. Proceeding by the Louisen Strasse to Grobnick, and passing the Kapella Gebirge through several small villages, he remarks that these are composed of log huts, like those of America, roofed with thin and narrow planks. Entering one of the huts, our traveller observes that it was inhabited by a numerous family of half-savages, besides two small red cows, and four or five long-haired and shaggy goats. A large boiler was suspended by a chain from the roof, over a fire in the centre of the hovel, and hungry children were crouching around it, in an atmosphere of thick smoke. The Croatians, we are told by our traveller, are considered to be remarkable for their fine eyes, (a circumstance we ourselves never observed, either in Croatia or in the numerous Croats who visited Vienna ;) but he goes on to observe (and herein we agree with him) that the Croats have too much of fierceness and cruelty in their quick glance to entitle them to the reputation of great beauty. These Croats, be it observed in passing, were the men of whose services the Ban Jellachich availed himself to retrieve the fortunes of the house of Austria, and whose arms he turned, not merely against the Hungarians, but against the Viennese. The towns in Croatia are, generally, a mere assemblage of peasants' huts, with three or four good houses, one of which is the inn, another the house of the overseer of the road, and the remainder the dwellings of the government foresters. At Szeverin, wishing to give charity to an importunate beggar, our traveller applied to the innkeeper for change of a smail bank |