supposed events, and that while we reject the later form of the tale, we can not any the more gain ground for trusting the earliest which has come down to us; since it can never be presumptively traced to contemporary evidence. Applying this to the war of Troy, he holds that it is certainly possible that there was such a war, but equally possible that there was not; and that the poem gives us no adequate reason for believing it. We confess that, while all our old associations make us cling to the belief, we cannot answer Mr. Grote's argument. An ingenious and able professor, whom we respect too much to name without permission, suggested in our hearing that the Eolic colonies in Asia Minor (which were in fact conquests made by the Greeks in Asia) are the primitive historical reality disguised under the Trojan war. If so, we have a still closer similarity in it to the chronicle of Turpin: for there is no doubt that the real crusades in which later kings of France and Germany engaged, suggested to the romancer to depict Charlemagne as undertaking a like expedition. Not that we know how to believe (what many learned men nevertheless hold,) that the poem of Troy originated after the Æolic colonization, and therefore after the great revolution in Greece called the Dorian conquest: but the whole controversy concerning the epics of Homer is one of extreme difficulty.

And this leads us to observe the great length, and signal ability, with which Mr. Grote has treated that whole question.* As Bishop Thirlwall has contented himself with recounting or refuting the theories of others, without distinctly advancing one of his own, these two eminent writers do not come into collision: but we are free to say that we have never yet met any theory so satisfactory as Mr. Grote's. He holds the Odyssey to be an inseparable whole, such that if it has been formed out of a shorter original, we are quite unable to guess what are the parts of that original. On the contrary, the Iliad in many ways betrays its want of unity. He especially attacks the ninth book, (or embassy to Achilles), as wholly at variance with all that follows in the poem for it makes the humiliation of Agamemnon complete, and leaves Achilles nothing more to be angry about. The earlier books, after the first, are so far from tending to honour Achilles, that they are evidently meant to bring forward other heroes. In short, Mr. Grote believes that we should omit books 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, and perhaps the two last in the poem. He retains the 8th book, but believes it has a few interpolations, added to bring it into harmony with the new additions. All

It is striking to see the immense superiority of his criticism, to the clever, but dogmatic and superficial discussions of Sir E. L. Bulwer, in his Athens.

the newer part, he conceives, may have proceeded from a single poet, whose object was to turn the old Achilleid into an Iliad. This view appears to us not only very ingenious, but to fulfil nearly all the conditions of the question; it being understood that the poem was both originated and enlarged during illiterate times, and for a long while preserved only by memory, and not with absolute accuracy. When, however, Mr. Grote assigns as the era of its completion the middle of the ninth century before Christ, (in which he follows Herodotus), we somewhat question whether it can have been so recent, unless the Dorian invasion of Peloponnesus is also brought down to a later era than is generally conceived. Mr. Grote, however, is fully persuaded that the invaders were very long in gaining an absolute predominance: that in Laconia at least, the chief Achæan towns retained their independence long after the Dorians were established in Sparta.

With this subject Mr. Grote first touches purely historical events: but he previously devotes time to that important question, the manners and institutions of the earlier or Homeric Greece. Peculiarly interesting as is Thirlwall's chapter on this very subject, Mr. Grote has nevertheless invested it with a very attractive freshness, and has even brought out some important points into still sharper prominence than Thirlwall: we allude to the kernel or germ of the Greek senate and public assembly, as depicted in Homer, with the indications of their embryo state as compared with later Greece. Our limits do not allow us to enlarge on this topic. On another great primæval question, the races of Greece, Mr. Grote leaves us in some doubt how far he believes it possible for a people of foreign speech and manners to become so assimilated to their conquerors, that a future age regards them as a homogeneous people. Herodotus unhesitatingly believed this concerning the Pelasgians: the great German scholars generally treat it as an absurdity, except where the conquered or inferior race is much fewer in numbers than the invaders. Mr. Grote believes Herodotus (in a well-known passage) to mean, that the Pelasgians were, in the strongest sense of the word, barbarians to the tongue of Greece; and to have had the very best means of judging concerning the fact: yet he speaks doubtfully concerning the possibility of the process of amalgamation, and seems to suspect that the Pelasgians of Homeric legend have nothing in common with the Pelasgians known by Herodotus. For ourselves, we have in more than one article pointed to the fact that the Celts of Gaul, and the Iberians of Spain, talk languages imposed on them by their conquerors: the same is true of England, which speaks a Saxon dialect, modified by Norman, with comparatively little Celtic in it, although no arguments

which we have ever seen have any weight to refute the proofs adduced by Gibbon, that the English are more than half Britons in descent. We are disposed to believe that Herodotus might be thoroughly correct, in saying that the Attic people were barbarian Pelasgians, who became Hellenized by the peaceful immigration of powerful chieftains: but we do not sufficiently know his grounds of judgment. We are at any rate persuaded that this whole question concerning the alleged permanence of languages, needs as much reconsideration as the collateral dogma concerning the permanence of certain qualities in races of men.

Many inquirers have been perplexed at the anomalous fact, that while we have an apparently accurate knowledge of the deeds of Achilles and Theseus, a chasm follows when the heroic race of men passes away, and during a lapse of many centuries little or nothing is ascertained. The common chronology sets the fall of Troy in B. c. 1184, and the Dorian conquest of Peloponnesus eighty years later: yet from this period to the first recorded Olympiad, B. c. 776, we have scarcely an historical fact, and it is much later before we obtain such detailed knowledge as the epic poems furnish. Mr. Grote urges that this is utterly inexplicable on the theory of tradition. Written monuments sometimes give fragmentary notices of distant ages, while we know less of the more recent: nor are we surprised to find that we know the history of Tiberius Cæsar better than of Antoninus Pius. But tradition cannot have been so vivid concerning the distant past, while it was dim for the many centuries more immediately preceding. On the contrary, such an interval is essentially connected with the genesis of a legend. A supposed remote past forms the suitable atmosphere of mythical narrative, and a respectful distance must always be interposed between the miraculous heroes, children of gods, and the men who live in modern degenerate days. This appears to wind up Mr. Grote's argument and close that portion of the subject.

He enters into true history under two different heads, though not so classified :-first, as to the growth of the Greek mind, in his first; next, as to the early history of Sparta, in his second volume. The gradual passage of epic poetry into an effort after history, has been illustrated by several able scholars. During this period Egypt was opened to Grecian commerce, and the wonders of its colossal architecture and high religious pretensions much affected the Greek intellect. Distant navigation and improved knowledge of geography, led to geological speculations; and out of these rose systems of philosophy. During the more

* Barbarian might mean Lydian, or Phrygian, or Lycian : only, not intelligible to Hellenes.

settled periods of political life, the ethical judgment had exceedingly ripened; and at length, three great philosophers at once, with various tendencies of mind, denoted that Grecian intellect (in the Asiatic colonies) was assuming its adult form. These were, Thales, Xenophanes, and Pythagoras, in the sixth century before the Christian era. All agreed in trying to disenthral the mind from the all-personifying tendencies of Homeric superstition, which so closely assimilate that creed with fetishism. Thales is the father of geological cosmogonies; Xenophanes is the first vehement assailant of the immoralities of the Homeric creed, (which he wrote poems expressly to denounce and refute;) Pythagoras, with scientific theories concerning numbers, brought in ascetic fraternities and other mysticism. It is remarkable that in the following century three others may be marked out, as types of Grecian thought, Anaxagoras, Socrates, and Hippocrates; whose views Mr. Grote contrasts most lucidly and instructively.

In regard to the early history of Sparta, the great independence of his judgment is well set off by his extensive learning; the more, since he evidently has no love of eccentricity or paradox, but drives after sound truth as steadily as Thirlwall or Hallam. We can only here denote certain results. He points out a cardinal error pervading the work on the Dorians by the erudite but passionate Müller, who supposes the Spartans to be the true type and most consummate model of the Dorian tendencies. On the contrary, all the Greeks regarded them as abnormal; and it is easy to see that their peculiarities rose out of their local circumstances. In Corcyra, on the coast of Asia, and on the island of Rhodes, Dorian cities assumed institutions, and their people a character, such that it would be scarcely possible to know from them that the race was not Æolic or Ionic. Concerning Lycurgus, Mr. Grote is thoroughly consistent with his own principles of interpretation. Finding it by general confession impossible to adhere to the romance of later times concerning the enormous revolution in property wrought by this legislator, he refuses to compromise the matter with Thirlwall, by supposing a nucleus of historical truth in the tale of his monetary and landed changes; and ingeniously points out that it was all a vision, which was suggested in late times by the attempts which Agis and Cleomenes made at equalization of landed property. This view is exceedingly confirmed by the silence of all earlier writers on these important subjects. Mr. Grote also thinks that a senate is so essential to the Greeks, even in Homeric times, that it cannot be true that Lycurgus instituted this among the Spartans. Altogether, he believes that Lycurgus was the trainer of a military brotherhood, more than the framer

of a political constitution;' his ends exclusively warlike, and his means exclusively severe; and that the gradual conquest of Laconia was a result of the new force which the discipline of Lycurgus imparted. We cannot proceed into the very uninteresting, yet not unimportant, details concerning the growth of the Spartan constitution, which Mr. Grote most assiduously investigates. Let it suffice to say, that in the volumes before us he has shown himself a scholar of first-rate erudition, a historical inquirer of admirably cool and sound judgment, and a clear, decided, ardent advocate of his favourite points. His subject has seldom allowed him to rise into animated narrative; but in his descriptions of the mental tendencies of the Greeks he displays a force and directness of writing, a delicacy of feeling, and a simple eloquence, which gives a promise that in his future volumes none of the qualities of a great historian will be wanting.

Art. II.-On the Means of Rendering more Efficient the Education of the People. A Letter to the Lord Bishop of St. David's. By Walter Farquhar Hook, D D., Vicar of Leeds. London: Murray. IN the world of bustle, of ephemeral impression, of see-saw unrest, our author has played no minor part. Inconsistency is like the motley and successive impersonations and eye-deceiving shiftings of the mime: it seldom fails to furnish amusement. There are those who live much in meditation, addicted to the hidden life, serious and earnest in the questionings of principle and tendency, self-revolving and self-insphered, -their pastime as that of leviathan in the depths. These move noiselessly, their communings are with motives and things; they draw from the fountains and sources of thought; they hold back from the passing tumult and strife; they exist and work for a glorious future. Dr. Hook would most of all admire, were he classed with these. He may wait the tide, he may take it at the flood, he may swim with it; but it is the tide of vulgar fashion, brawling contention, shallow sophism, muddy selfishness. There is a sightless, soundless, stream, which flows onward and for ever; its well is deep, its waters are still; all lives whithersoever those branching rivers come, but they roll not to his sense. Others by an inward power can trace their channel, and catch their pulsing they go too softly for his perception. He is an adroit observer of the superficies of outlying matters: he is not the subtle rhabdomantist, nor can divine the rich ores which are treasured underneath.