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stood to be the two winds, and the hammer and anvil would do for the stroke and the counter-stroke, and the iron that was being wrought for the evil lying upon evil. This he imagined because iron had been discovered to the hurt of man. Full of these conjectures, he sped back to Sparta and laid the whole matter before his countrymen. Soon after, by a concerted plan, they brought a charge against him, and began a prosecution. Lichas betook himself to Tegea, and on his arrival acquainted the smith with his misfortune, and proposed to rent his room of him. The smith refused for some time; but at last Lichas persuaded him, and took up his abode in it. Then he opened the grave, and collecting the bones, returned with them to Sparta. From henceforth, whenever the Spartans and the Tegeans made trial of each other's skill in arms, the Spartans always had greatly the advantage, and by the time to which we are now come they were masters of most of the Peloponnese.' (Vol. i. pp. 204 sqq.)

So far as we have examined Mr. Rawlinson's version, it generally makes good the claim to be considered exact.' Here and there, however, we have marked a blunder. To one of these we have already called attention (p. 464), while commenting upon Mr. Blakesley's edition. Another occurs in vol. i. p. 204. The Spartans, Herodotus tells us, had been led on by a lying oracle to make an attack upon Tegen, expecting after their victory to 'mete out for themselves with the measuring-line its goodly plain. The oracle came true. The Spartans didmete out its goodly plain; but in mockery, as captives, not conquerors. Mr. Rawlinson makes them to have been fastened together by a string. But the string is no other than the measuring-line' to which the bitter jest of the oracle made reference. One other error of rather a curious kind has caught our notice. Herodotus gives the following account of the manner in which the Arabians obtain the gum of the cistus (iii. 112): Ledanum, which the Arabians call Ladanum,' (our laudanum, though the name is applied to a very different substance,) is produced in a way still more marvellous. It grows in a most unsavoury place, and yet has itself a most delicious scent. It is found grow'ing in the beards of he-goats, like gum from trees.' Rawlinson renders the last sentence, It is gathered from the 'beards of he-goats, where it is found sticking like gum, having I come from the bushes on which they browze.' Here his translation is as wrong as his facts are right. The gum does 'come from the (cistus) bushes on which they browse; but this is not what Herodotus says. He really thought the ledanum was an animal gum, and his astonishment was great at finding such 'Sabæan odours' proceeding from fœtor. With his translator, the mistake and the marvel disappear together. The story just

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Catholicity of Scholarship.

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before told of the huge roc-like birds, whose nests were made of cinnamon-sticks, made pretty large demands upon the reader's credulity; yet paired with this strangely perverted account of the cistus-gum, one might well feel some such hesitation as to which was the greater wonder, as Sancho Panza tells us was felt by those who were canvassing the relative claims of the adventures of his master with the Windmills and the Fulling-mills. But as the translator tells the story, the palm is clearly wrongly awarded. It is indeed curious that Herodotus should not have been better informed about this gum. He is wrong in saying it was found in Arabia only. The cistus grew, and still grows on the Greek islands; and we are told that one of the methods of collecting it is to lash the foliage of the plant with a whip of small cords. The gum adheres to the cords, and is afterwards removed with the hand. (Larcher, ad 1.).

But these seem to be isolated blemishes. Of course we cannot profess to have compared Mr. Rawlinson's version throughout with the Greek; but we have compared enough to convince us that the opinion we have expressed of its fidelity is fully borne out by its general character.

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We welcome the appearance of such a work as this, not merely for the value of its contributions to our knowledge of antiquity, but because of the manner in which it is likely to interest in such studies those who from deficiency of early education feel themselves almost excluded from the authors designated, with a little too much of the spirit of exclusiveness, classical;' while at the same time the breadth of their general reading has convinced them that for better or for worse, our own culture is indissolubly linked with that ancient past, in which lie the springs of much of our moral and intellectual development, and whose languages constitute no despicable part of our inheritance as a nation. The best security for the down-breaking of the arbitrary barrier between classical and non-classical culture which has to so large an extent prevailed to the prejudice of both the one and the other, is to be found in the pervasion of the classical with that broader spirit which would assign to it its due place as a needful element in the studies of all who would so educate themselves as to be worthy of those intellectual riches which have been handed down to them from foregoing ages, and at the same time would rebuke that absurd quasi-aristocratical pretension which would assign to the learned in Latin and Greek, as such, the exclusive designation of Scholar.

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ART. VII.—(1.) Letter to a Noble Lord on the Nature and Prospects of Political Party. By a Commoner. London: Hatchard.

1858.

(2.) Phases in Politics. By WILLIAM E. LENDRICK. Second Edition. London: T. and W. Boone. 1858.

(3.) Parliamentary Government considered with reference to a Reform of Parliament. By EARL GREY. London: Bentley. 1858. THERE is no fallacy so frequently exemplified in real life as that of attributing striking phenomena to some grand event by which they have been immediately preceded. The Reform Bill doubtless was a measure of the first magnitude. It opened the portals of the Senate to the trading and mercantile interests. It took away the franchise from a handful of aristocratic servlings, and bestowed it upon a crowd of honest artizans. It gave the masters of those artizans seats in the House of Commons. By its instrumentality the shopkeepers of a country town could frequently defeat the influence of a neighbouring magnate who was anxious to secure the constituency for his political nominee. Hence it has become the fashion lately to ascribe every novelty arising out of our parliamentary system, whether cognate to these changes or not, to the influence of the Reform measure of 1832. If the old political parties evince signs of dissolution, of course there can be no other reason for it than the Reform Bill. If ministers break up every two or three years and the legislative coach cannot go on, what other cause can be alleged for the inconvenience but the Reform Bill? The Liberal members have been

strangely mutinous of late. In the spirit of the trite Horatian maxim, they pertinaciously refuse to swear allegiance to any master. This surely cannot be for want of leadership. There is the daring and chivalrous Russell, the wily and dexterous owner of Cambridge House, the ingenuous and impassioned Gladstone, and the plausible master of Netherby; none of whom, we believe, would refuse the dignity, if the power which it conferred should rest on a compact and united body. But the Liberal party has been spoiled by too much success. They have been surfeited with the sweets of office and have grown effeminate and rebellious. Their bankruptcy and defeat, in one word, has been caused by the very measure which should have fixed them in Downing-street for ever. So says Lord Grey, Mr. Lendrick, and two or three cotemporary Reviews; and we must confess it, as far as politics are concerned, to afford a very ingenious method of solving intricate questions. The reader, instead of involving himself in a vast expenditure of thought, and wading through

Relation of Reform Bill to Weak Ministers.

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innumerable pages of Hansard and of Cobbett's Parliamentary Register, need only single out some half-dozen of the most striking legislative changes in our history, and ascribe every political event to them in the order of sequence. Indeed, we see no reason that he should stop here. Why not, like Pythagoras, take a few simple propositions and evolve out of them all the phenomena of the universe. It would save a wonderful deal of trouble and dispense at a stroke with all the libraries and scientific treatises in existence. In this case he would not lack right reverend and even most reverend authority. Archbishop M'Hale is attributing the potato blight in Ireland to the efforts of the Government to provide something like classical education for the people of that country; and the Bishop of Norwich, in tracing the same phenomenon to the endowment of Maynooth, showed the variegated character of the causal relation, and enunciated a discovery which doubtless under an enlightened Government would at once have dissolved the Chemistry Commission.

As regards the matters under consideration, there is, however, one trifling obstacle to the admission of the theory of the gentlemen whose names are at the head of this article. The effects which they attribute to the Reform Bill were in existence long before the propounders of that measure were born. They were also in active operation on the eve of the Reform Bill's adoption by the high powers of Parliament. At the end of Lord Liverpool's administration, there was as much disunion in the Conservative camp as prevails among the Liberals at the present day. Canning had no option between abandoning the helm or obeying the curt advice which Walpole gave Pelham, viz., ' to Whig his administration.' The Marquis of Lansdowne and Mr. Huskisson being called in afforded to the veteran statesman some kind of guarantee for the support of the Liberal party, and indemnified him for the desertion in the ranks of his own. But Canning stood upon an isthmus, daily disappearing beneath the ever-vexed tides of advancing democracy and unyielding Toryism. The ground was not worth six months' purchase. Party ties were loosened for the support of an unstable position, and in the course of four years occurred as many weak administrations.

But if we would study the period when party disorganization was at its height, we must retrace our steps at least a century. We must fix our attention upon the epoch when Chatham's first administration was crowned by the reduction of Canada, by the establishment of our empire in India, and by the rapid victories of Hawke and Boscawen, who maintained in the Mediterranean

and along the northern shore of the Atlantic that supremacy which Clive and Wolfe had so gallantly gained for our arms in opposite quarters of the globe. The Jacobites were completely estranged from the Stuart interest by the connexion of the Pretender with Mrs. Walkinshaw, and by his ingratitude to Bolingbroke. The brilliant success which had united all parties as one man in support of Pitt's administration, was accompanied by the advent of a monarch who openly avowed his hostility to party connexion, and determined to rule irrespective of their influence. The descendants of the Tories of Queen Anne beheld with some regard an heir of the House of Brunswick who could speak the English language with some degree of propriety, and who was resolved to exert his prerogative. The descendants of the Whigs of William found themselves in the position which the Tories had abandoned, of churlish indifference to a sovereign who refused to intrust his sceptre in the hands of the great families to whose ancestors he was indebted for the crown which he wore. Each of the great factions in the State had forsaken their old principles without having settled the dogmas of their future political creed. It is remarkable that from the fall of Walpole to the accession of Lord North, a period extending over nearly thirty years, the Whigs had no political opponents but those which their own intrigues and dissensions flung into rebellion. Parties were distinguished, not by great principles or by the espousal of divergent opinions, but by the names of great families. It was Carteret against the Pelhams, or the House of Wentworth against that of Bedford, or Pitt and Temple, with their immediate connexions against the entire field. The contest, as far as great political doctrines were concerned, was as bootless as the contest of the green and blue factions in the Hippodrome of Constantinople, or as the dissensions between the Neri and Bianchi, the Uberti and Buondelmonti in the palmy days of Florence. So completely had petty family interests absorbed all the old associations arising out of identity of political sentiment that George III. constantly mistook one for the other. The blunt-minded king in praying to be delivered from party ties meant that he might not be sacrificed to the interest of one or two private connexions; and when he alludes in his notes to private connexions, he invariably showed by the context that he thought this was all that was intended by unions based upon political principle. This sovereign found himself in the position for which William III. so devoutly longed, without either Whigs or Tories, and surrounded by statesmen divided by no hostility of opinion; and he reaped the fruit of it by having no escape from the irritating lectures of the Grenvilles, except he was prepared

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