same terms as Curran and Grattan condemned the Irish Union. The similarity extends even further; for Scotland, like Ireland, consisted then of two great divisions, inhabited by two different races, the Lowlanders and the Highlanders, who had but little sympathy with each other. Yet when the Union incorporated two countries that nature had joined together, the flood of improvement that followed swept away the old barriers, and the two races became one homogeneous community. If the Irish complain that their Union was carried by bribery against the sentiments of the nation, we in Scotland had a similar complaint, for a sum of twenty thousand pounds, which passed at the time in an unaccountable manner from England north of Tweed, was believed to have carried the Union. If Ireland has had her rebellions, Scotland had two of them shortly after the Union; and if Ireland has had her agitations for repeal, it is well known, that when Scotland found herself treated after the Union like a conquered country, and English principles were applied to Scottish society with an unbending rigidity, a Bill was actually introduced into the Imperial Parliament to sever the connexion, which was only lost by three votes and three proxies. We all know now the happy effects of this measure: increased order, increased liberty, increased civilisation, the growth of agriculture, the rapid rise of Scotch commerce and manufactures, and the progress of the towns in wealth and comfort at a rate beyond all precedent. If the Union with Ireland had taken place after the battle of the Boyne instead of a century later, she would now have had a calmer and happier history; local oppressions and national animosities would have been merely historical; for through her contact with the freer institutions and larger society of England, she would have become as tenacious of civil rule and liberty as the country with which her fortunes were henceforth to be inseparably linked.

We submit, then, that it would be a clear surrender of empire and duty on our part to dissolve the existing Union. We are prepared to do the completest justice to Ireland, not merely because it is our clear policy to thin the ranks of our adversaries by removing all justifiable causes of misunderstanding, but because we are bound honestly and sincerely to help her to receive the full benefits of the Union. We see no objection to give her even a royal residence, if she desires it, though it is absurd for Mr. Trench to imagine that this would be any panacea for Irish ills: perhaps it might have a slight restorative effect, as combining an appeal to the imaginative disposition of the nation with a concession to certain obvious commercial interests. But after we have done what is wise.

and right, we can on no account swerve from our course in the hope of purchasing loyalty by folly or wrong; for though adherence to duty may bring us neither gratitude nor reward, we are certain that the desertion of it will never fail, at least in public affairs, to bring its own punishment in the end. Beyond all question, the time is fully come for crushing Irish lawlessness of every description. No Government worthy of the name can any longer tolerate the scandal of agrarian murders. The Assassins of Persia, the Thugs of India, and the brigands of Southern Italy have been suppressed without mercy; and no pedantic veneration for forms ought for a moment to stand in the way of all necessary measures being taken for the extinction of Ribbonism. But we are not for fighting the authors of these crimes with any weapons but those of reason, unless they bring themselves under the arm of the law by some overt act of outrage, or set the example of some still more daring hostility. We hope, however, the revolution has spent itself in Ireland. The principal revolutionary influence we have now to encounter is unscrupulous misrepresentation. But facts are working for us, and must continue to work. Statistics show that the country is improving, and needs nothing but time, repose, and steadiness to regain her tone and strength. We cannot despair of a people whose bank savings have increased by a steady progression from sixteen millions sterling in 1864 to twentythree millions in 1869, and this with diminished numbers. Let Irishmen give up their dreams. They can never be realised. There have been times when the feeblest faction could rise into a dangerous importance, and the wildest project acquire a formidable chance of temporary triumph: but these times are not likely soon to return. Why should Ireland not remember the famous query of her own Berkeley: Is it 'not the true interest of both nations to become one people? 'And are either sufficiently aware of this?' What is there in an incorporate union to prevent each of the three nations. forming the United Kingdom from following out its own inherent tendencies, and developing its own special powers? The feelings of race may still exist, but the three nations must know that they are complementary to each other, and designed to work together as a great organic whole. Can the Irish people, after all, do better than cast in their lot and work out their destiny in a cordial partnership with their fellow-subjects. Of this at least we are sure, that although the dissolution of the Union might be inconvenient and even dangerous to Great Britain, it would be incalculably more disastrous and destructive to Ireland herself and to the Irish people.

ART. IX.-Ancient Classics for English Readers. Horace. By THEODORE MARTIN. Edinburgh and London: 1870.

AT T a time when it is debated with some reason and a little zeal, whether it might not be well to discard from our schools and universities the study of Greek and Latin, and to supply the place they have so long occupied by modern languages, the success of Ancient Classics for English Readers' is among the curiosities, if not the inconsistencies of the day. That success is doubtless in the first instance due to the signal ability with which the series is, and promises to be, conducted. Yet its merits alone will not quite account for the welcome it has received. Readers of the original authors, so agreeably treated of in these little volumes, unless they are engaged in tuition or contending for school prizes and college-fellowships, are becoming every year fewer in number, and are often regarded by a busy world as the fossils of a period in literature that has passed away. Why,' it is asked, by many anxious parents and guardians, as well as by some who have won their spurs as classical scholars, do we, in Milton's words, spend seven or eight years in scraping together so much miserable Latin and Greek?' Is not Porson reported to have said that if he had a son, he would have him taught to read Racine and not Euripides'? It is indeed no new cry that is now raised by educational reformers. There was, indeed, very lately reason for thinking that such 'as' Ausonius is will Virgil be;' that Livy and Tacitus will soon repose on the shelf with Baker's Chronicle ;' and Horace's Satires slumber beside those of Hall, Marston, and Donne. It seems, however, as if the Iö Pæan of disendowment has been sounded prematurely; and that it is even now possible to revive an interest in the prince of epic poets, in the father of history, in the second father of the Athenian stage, in the Mantuan bard, in the note-book of Rome's greatest soldier, and in the works of a poet who for centuries has been the favourite of philosophers and men of the world, no less than of scholars.

To say the truth, in spite of this pretended indifference of the age to classical studies, and these attempts to set them aside for more practical subjects of instruction, we question whether English scholarship has in any former age been more active, more intelligent, or more complete. Not a few of the greatest and best literary works of our time have been based on the study of antiquity. Grote, Thirlwall, Lewis, and Merivale

have reconstructed Greek and Roman history on broad and solid foundations. The last contribution to our libraries is Professor Jowett's long expected and highly valued translation of Plato. Innumerable translations of Homer and the Latin poets issue in rapid succession from the press; and even the more artificial process of transfusing our own poets into Greek and Latin is carried on with unceasing interest. In ancient topography we can boast of such works as Mr. Burns' Rome ' and its Campagna,' which is a mine of careful reading and observation, as learned as Bunsen and as graphic as Ampère. And the most original and profound of the Latin poets has at last found a worthy editor in Mr. Munro. The consequence of the direction, which has been given of late years to classical studies, is that we take a broader view of the life of antiquity. Men care less for the grammatical forms of classical literature, but infinitely more for the opinions, the tastes, the manners of those races of men, who are at once so remote from our age and so near to our nature. The pedantry of classical learning is gone out of fashion; but that which makes classical literature imperishable-its truth, its reality, its perfection of form—has retained all its power, and, we think, increased it.

The publication of these little volumes is a proof of it. They are designed to bring some knowledge of the ancient classics within reach of those who do not even know the ancient languages; and the first step towards this object, is to represent the ancients, not as figments of bronze or marble, but as men and women like ourselves, surrounded by the bustle of life, and animated by identically the same tastes and passions. The real value of the classics is that they form an essential part of the general culture of mankind. We can no more afford to lose their immense contributions to the literary traditions of society than we could afford to lose Shakspeare; and book for book, Horace is as much one of our nearest friends and associates as Lafontaine or Molière.

To Mr. Theodore Martin the volume devoted to Horace in this collection was assigned by an almost prescriptive right. No one, either now or formerly, whether as commentator or translator, has entered more thoroughly than he does into the sense, the spirit, the humour, and the character of the Augustan poet. No one by his felicitous command of English measures was more competent than he is to represent the various and often complicated metres of Horace. In other fields than in those of Latin poetry he has shown his gifts as an interpreter. His versions of some of Dante's and Goethe's works are as serviceable

6

and pleasant to the reader as his translation of Catullus published a few years ago. And now, as the biographer of one whom Byron mourned that he could not read with pleasure, because of the drilled dull lessons' of his own school days, Mr. Martin brings home to us in a narrative at once learned, lively, and graceful, the character of the poet and his times; shows how he became ex humili potens,' how the freedman's son was content in either fortune, long before Petrarca had preached the duty of being so; how he grew into favour, honourably and honestly, with the great; how he accepted gifts from Cæsar's prime minister, and declined promotion offered by Cæsar himself; how he chastised the foibles and encouraged the virtues of his contemporaries, added to, or rather created for, Rome a new branch of literature, practised as well as preached moderation to an age given over to excess, and was a fellow-worker with Virgil in recommending to his countrymen the hardy qualities and simple pleasures of their Latin and Sabine forefathers.

A great magician of uncertain date-we are not sure he was not a father of the Church, who may have been no conjurorwas compelled, in order to keep a devil out of mischief, to set him to work upon some arduous, and, if it might be so, endless task. So he commanded him to make ropes from seasand. Doubtless this was a difficult thing to do; and yet, perhaps, not much more so than it is to abridge Mr. Martin's account of Horace, his contemporaries and his works, without injuring it. Every page is so german to the matter that we perpetually pause to consider whether to take one and leave. another with least damage to the whole. We find no crevices in his mail; he never falls short of or goes beyond his subject; we wish after closing his book to be able to read it again for the first time; it is suited to every occasion; a pleasant travelling companion; welcome in the library where Horace himself may be consulted; welcome also in the intervals of business, or when leisure is abundant. Since it is possible, however, that this Journal may come into the hands of readers not yet acquainted with the Ancient Classics for English Readers,' we will take the part of gentleman-usher, and introduce them, as best we can, to this number of the series. There are, indeed, no omissions to supply; but as some questions connected with Horace were either not consistent with the plan, or not compatible with the space allowed to the author, it may be possible to add, without presuming too much, a few illustrations of the subject, though the words of Mercury be harsh' among the songs of Apollo.'