6

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only, as we confidently expected that they would, to confirm our conclusions. Mr. Fergusson lays special stress on the genuine Byzantine character of the shafts with their capitals supporting the cupola of the Sakhrah. That they have this character is necessarily admitted by Mr. Conder, who adds that they appear to have been torn from some other building or buildings, probably from Christian churches, just as in the 'case of the mosque of 'Amru at Cairo, or like the pillars which Jezzar Pasha at Acre collected for his mosque. Of every capital in the place I made a careful sketch, as shown in the illustration: of those under the dome only three are • alike. . . . The bases differ as much as the capitals, as we 6 saw when the marble slabs were removed in 1875. The 'shafts are also of various heights and diameters, and one at least is upside down, with the capital of another pillar placed ' on its base end.' (Vol. i. p. 324.) This is proof conclusive indeed, and it fully justifies us in declining to examine further the elaborate arguments on which Mr. Fergusson's learning and ingenuity are alike thrown away.

From a controversy, which ought never to have been raised, it is refreshing to turn to the remarkably interesting chapters in which Mr. Conder describes the present condition and the prospects of the Holy Land and its people. The old associations connected with almost every spot in this wonderful country may tempt many to keep their eyes fixed only on the past; and we are apt to forget that it is still the abode of human beings whose welfare and happiness have a prior title to our consideration. The land is desolate; the people are impoverished. Is this the result of physical changes? If it be, can nothing be done to counteract them? And if it be not so, can we remove the other causes which have brought about and perpetuate the mischief? These questions Mr. Conder answers with the utmost clearness; and all that he says tends to the one conclusion to which thinkers on all sides seem to be rapidly hastening. There has for some time been a tendency in certain quarters to think that the Mohammedan regimen, although an intolerable burden for a Christian population, is well suited to Mohammedans, and that conversion to the faith of the Prophet is productive of far more good than harm to inferior races. The results of recent examinations, which from various causes have been extended over almost the whole Mohammedan world, give no encouragement to this view, which nowhere, perhaps, meets with a sadder and more thorough refutation than in Palestine. The physical conditions of the country are what they were in the days of the Judges and the Kings. The character of the water supply is unchanged, and

there is every reason for believing that the distribution of the springs was the same then as now. There is no difference in the character of the seasons or of the vegetation generally. The parts anciently forest are forest still; the richer regions retain their old fertility, and if many districts once perfectly healthy are now almost deadly, the sole cause is misgovernment, continued and systematic. The land is impoverished for lack of water; but were the old cisterns cleaned and 'mended and the beautiful tanks and aqueducts repaired, the 'ordinary fall would be quite sufficient for the wants of the ⚫ inhabitants and for irrigation' (ii. 320). The lowlands are hotbeds of fever, and the reason is want of drainage. The splendid works of the Romans are in ruins; the great rock cuttings, 'which let out to the sea the water now soaking in the marshes of Sharon, are filled up with earth; Herod's aqueducts, 'which irrigated the plains of Jericho, are destroyed, and no ' attempt is ever made to enforce sanitary regulations or to ' promote public drainage or irrigation works.' The country is in truth under a curse, but it is the curse of Turkish tyranny. With the change of the Waly at Damascus (and this happens generally twice a year), a new set of harpies are let loose on the land: the value of the produce of the fields is often found to fall short of the tax to be collected on it; and the conscription frequently takes away the whole male population. Such rule as this is not likely to improve the character of the peasantry.

"They have no inducement to industry, and, indeed, as one of the better class said to me, "What is the use of my trying to get money, when the soldiers and the Kaimakam would eat it all?" There is only one way of becoming rich in this unhappy land, namely, by extortion. If in the time of Christ the country suffered as much as it does now from unjust judges and tyrannical rulers, what wonder that to be rich was thought synonymous with being wicked, or that it should be Lazarus only who was considered fit for Abraham's bosom?' (Vol. ii. p. 267.)

The baneful working of this system is seen much more among the Mohammedan than among the Christian inhabitants. 'Christian villages thrive and grow, while the Moslem ones fall into decay; and this difference, though due perhaps in part to the foreign protection which the native Christians enjoy, is yet unmistakably connected with the listlessness of those who believe that no exertions of their own can make them richer or better, that an iron destiny decides all things, without reference to any personal quality higher than that of submission to fate, and that God will help those who have lost the will to help themselves.' (Vol. ii. p. 235.)

The contrast between the two religions is greatly heightened when we turn to the German colonies which have fixed them

selves near Jaffa and Carmel. Exposed to constant difficulties arising partly from the impossibility of securing a title for the lands which they have bought, partly from the effects of a climate which probably must, even under the best conditions, remain unsuited to European constitutions, but still more from the passive opposition or the active enmity of the natives, they have yet formed communities of bright and happy folk which furnish a pleasant sight for the traveller. These Teutonic colonists work under another condition which, it might have been thought, would not foster steady industry. They have sought a home in Palestine, because they believe that the glorious hopes of the old prophets will be realised, not in the persons of the physical descendants of Abraham, but in the true Israel which shall be found in the country, and which, it seems, shall be composed of any other nationality except the Jews.' The battle of Armageddon, they feel sure, will be soon fought, and the Millennium will begin. In the meantime, they retain a keen eye for business, make the best use of the soil, flourish as mechanics and tradesmen, and on Sundays march to the meeting-house, where they are comforted with 'the assurance that the end will soon come, and the Temple 'colony be acknowledged, by God and man, to be the example of the whole world, and the true heir of the Holy Land and ' of Jerusalem' (ii. 314). On the whole, Mr. Conder is inclined to think their experiment a mistake. He is convinced that there is one cause only for the ruined state of the country -the corrupt and inefficient system of government'—and that under a different system Palestine might become a rival in 'fertility even to the most fruitful parts of southern Italy, to which, in the character of its productions and cultivation, it is very similar' (ii. 339); but he is not less sure that any attempts to bring about this improvement by means of European and especially of English or German labour must end in disappointment and failure. English enterprise may direct and English capital further the works which, under an upright administration, cannot fail to bring back the old prosperity of the country; but the hands employed in carrying out these works must be those of the Fellahin, who ask the English traveller when his countrymen are coming to make them rich and happy. Mr. Conder does not scruple to express his conviction that the general aspect of things must continue as it is until the country is occupied by some strong European power capable of seeing the value of its natural resources and resolved to turn them to the best uses. Until some such change occurs, the good land must remain a desolation' (ii. 332).

ART. V.-Tacitus and Bracciolini: The Annals forged in the Fifteenth Century. 8vo. London: 1878.

THE Jesuit father, Hardouin, published a couple of learned works to prove that all the Greek and Latin classics, with seven exceptions, were forgeries of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Homer and Herodotus, Plautus, Pliny the elder, portions of Cicero, the Georgics' of Virgil, and the 'Satires' and 'Epistles' of Horace are due to their putative authors; the rest are the glory and the shame of Benedictine monks. The author of Tacitus and Bracciolini' emulates his reverend predecessor's courage in detecting literary imposture; but he is content, for the present at all events, to strip off the false plumes from the Annals' of Tacitus. He grieves at the duty much learning has cast upon him. His generosity is pained at the necessity of fastening upon a man whose moral character has already blots upon it a new imputation of dishonesty. But knowledge, like noblesse, obliges; the charge is substantiated by irresistible evidence;' he has no choice but to demonstrate that, so far as the Annals' are concerned, Tacitus is Poggio and Poggio is Tacitus. It may be a pity that for the last four hundred years scholars and schoolboys should have been wasting such brains as they possess upon a Florentine counterfeit of Roman history. At the same time, that centuries of toil and ingenuity have been misapplied, is no argument for letting future centuries go astray. If,' says the writer, it should be agreed that the theory in this book is without a flaw, I conceive that I shall have done ' not a small but a considerable service to the cause of true history.' It would be captious to deny the claim if the important qualification which introduces it be satisfied.

No author's name appears on the title-page; but as the volume is dedicated to a gentleman described as the writer's brother and named Ross, it would be gratuitous to treat the work as anonymous. Mr. Ross, then, as we may take leave to style him, lays siege in form to the authenticity of the 'Annals.' He produces numerous reasons why Tacitus could not have written them, whoever else did. It is only after he has elaborated this negative side of the position that he points the finger at the counterfeit Roman classic, the Tuscan forger. The argument is an elaborate chain composed of many links, but we shall attempt, so far as we can in our space, to reproduce it.

Tacitus himself in his Histories' had explained his motive

for beginning his work with the accession of Galba. The eight hundred and twenty previous years of Roman history had been, he says, adequately described by many historians. Any leisure and energy he might find hereafter he purposed to devote to the history of the reigns of Nerva and Trajan. No record remains that he ever wrote the lives of those emperors. It is, argues Mr. Ross, not very likely in itself that he would recant his original purpose, and cover ground already, according to his own testimony, well occupied by others. Yet more unlikely is it that he would undertake such a work before completing what he had proposed. Time, however, for chronicling as well the reigns of Nerva and Trajan, as also those of the emperors before Galba, he had not. The younger Pliny, who

was born A.D. 61, refers to himself and Tacitus as

• ætate

propemodum æquales,' although sufficiently junior to look up to the latter with reverence. It has consequently been conjectured that Tacitus may have been ten or eleven years Pliny's senior, being born probably about A.D. 52. If so, at the death of Trajan he would have been sixty-five, and might then have begun the history of Nerva and Trajan with a fair chance of finishing that work in time to retrace his steps and write the Annals.' Mr. Ross, however, argues from the ages the law prescribed for tenure of the quæstorship, ædileship, prætorship, and consulate, that Tacitus could not have been born before A.D. 44. A Roman might not be nominated ædile before he was thirty-six. But Tacitus, who appears to have been ædile in the reign of Titus, would, if born A.D. 52, have held the office at the age of twenty-nine. That being virtually impossible, the alternative is that he was born A.D. 44, and was seventy-three at the death of Trajan. At the probable rate of his historical labours upon the reign of that emperor and his predecessor, he would be eighty, if not ninety, before the Annals' could have been begun, and the terseness and vigour of that work, authentic or unauthentic, is utterly inconsistent with the hypothesis that it may have been commenced in extreme old age. What, in Mr. Ross's judgment, is still more conclusive is that no clear and definite allusion to the Annals' can, he declares, be found until the first half of the fifteenth century. Then the author of the Annals' was hailed immediately as 'inter historicos unicus;' books were written to indicate the sagacity of his reflections and the beauties of his diction; and the admiration he excited provokes simple stupor at such a miraculous instance of perpetuated inanity' as the incapacity of the forty preceding generations to understand the treasure they had consigned to neglected