body lay in state, the chief mourners supported the head. Dark garments, and long abstinence from convivial gatherings, were the outward signs of sorrow. The excessive grief of Achilles showed itself by his throwing dust on his head; torn habiliments and lacerated cheeks were the offerings made to Agamemnon; and a single lock of hair was the touching tribute to his memory by the filial affection of Orestes. The lifeless form was covered and crowned with flowers, a piece of money placed in its mouth, as a fee to Charon for being ferried over the Styx, and a cake of honeyed flour to appease Cerberus. Bust, statue, and mausoleum, grassy mound, inscribed marble, and monumental brass, attested the universal desire of sepulchral honors. The immortality of affectionate remembrances and of public renown was a profound aspiration in their breasts. If the dead were ever insulted, it was the rare instance of momentary rage toward a stubborn foe, and soon gave place to worthier emotions. Achilles dragged behind his chariot the corpse of Hector thrice round the tomb of his beloved Patroclus; but, after the first burst of passion, he ordered his own slaves to wash and anoint the mutilated remains, himself assisting to raise them to a litter, swathed in costly garments, that the eye of a broken-hearted father might bear the sight. The statesmen of Greece, superior as they were in universality of accomplishment, were incomplete personages compared with the pure theocratic natures of antiquity, of whom Moses is the most familiar and accurate type. Many of them were not only priest and magistrate, but also philosopher, artist, engineer, and physician; such a combination for intensity, regularity, and permanence of human power, never was found elsewhere. Pericles, through the whole tenor of his administration, seemed to have had the permanent welfare of his fellow-countrymen at heart, and is said to have boasted, with the benevolence of a true patriot, that he never caused a citizen to put on mourning. The Greek was by no means insensible to high destinies, as he majestically assumed the moral dominion on earth to which he was born; but he formed no idea of future happiness, nor of intellectual dignity vaster than his own. He girded himself for the fearful contest which was his inheritance, bravely struggling against the terrible powers of destiny and the certainty of death. Amazed at his temerity, the sun started back in his course; opposing deities, wounded by his spear, fled howling to Olympus; and the dread abodes of Tartarus yielded up the departed to his triumphant call. Concentrating in the present the intensity of immortal aspirations, he sought to link them forever to the perishable body. Earthly as was his spirit, he yet supremely coveted eternal life, and labored through transcendent genius and fortitude to unite himself immediately with the gods, and ultimately soar amid the splendid hierarchy of the upper skies. The worship of Greece was the Beautiful, and Athens was its most magnificent Shrine. One of her latest and fairest altars was dedicated to the Unknown God. Would that the plinth of artistic beauty had also been the memento of spiritual prayer. Alas! that after all the fine imaginings and glorious achievements of the wondrous Greeks, we must still feel that their loftiest conceptions of divine worship were really as void of true consolation as the empty urn which Electra washed with her tears. PROLOGUE OF MOTTOES. "Thy foot will not stumble, if thou ascribest every thing good and noble to Providence, whether it takes place among the Greeks or ourselves, for God is everywhere the author of all that is good. Some things, indeed, originate immediately with Him, as the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, others again mediately, as philosophy. And even this, he appears to have imparted immediately to the Greeks, until they were called by the Lord; for philosophy led the Greeks to Christ, as the law did the Jews."-CLEMENS of Alexandria. "In the history of a war, we speak only of the generals, and those who performed actions of distinction. In like manner the battles of the human mind, if I may use the expression, have been won by a few intellectual heroes. The history of the development of art and its various forms may be therefore exhibited in the characteristic view of a number, by no means considerable, of elevated and creative minds."-AUGUSTUS WILLIAM SCHLEGEL. "These individual lives, running like so many colored threads, through our record, may impart to it that personal interest and dramatic unity which otherwise it would lack."-DOCTOR ARNOLD. "I saw the ram pushing westward, and northward, and southward; so that no beasts might stand before him, neither was there any that could deliver out of his hand; but he did according to his will, and became great.”DANIEL, viii. 4. PART SECOND. AUGUSTUS.-AGE OF MARTIAL FORCE. CHAPTER I LITERATURE. CIVILIZATION in Greece was beautiful, in Rome invincible. As this latter empire spread, it invaded savage races on every hand, and gave birth to a new world, still more vast, the world of commercial progress, stretching along the Mediterranean and Baltic shores into the unbounded ocean of the West. While Providence was concentrating its conservative forces in Alexander, for the execution of gracious designs, the future heiress of Greece was slumbering in her cradle on the Sicilian and Italian coasts, near where the new centre was preparing, which was to draw around it the barbarous nations of earth. That the graceful progeny of Athene should have migrated with facility from the serene clime of their native home to the stormy wilds of Etruscan Rome was not strange, since naturalists assert that birds of Paradise fly best against the wind; it drifts their gorgeous plumage behind them, which only impedes when before the gale. The most careful consideration of ancient history leads to the belief that many of the nations which flourished in Italy, long before the Roman empire attained its height of power and splendor, were distinguished by a harmony of culture, an exuberance of being, a diversity of manifestation, and originality of genius, which Rome in her best days never exceeded. They each contained an important element of civilization, but only in an incipient degree; they were of co-operative capacity, and when the pre |