[Sidenote: Perversion of the laws.]
But what are we to think of laws when they are either evaded or perverted, when there is not wisdom to feel their justice or virtue to execute them? What are laws if judges are corrupt? The venality of the judges of Rome was proverbial. Even in the comparatively virtuous age of Cicero, a friend wrote to him not to recall a certain great functionary, since he himself was implicated in his robberies, and the request was granted. The empire was regarded as spoil, and the provinces were robbed of their most valuable treasures. Witness the extortions of Verres in Sicily, when a residence of two years was enough to make the fortune of a provincial governor. Nor was Roman law ever independent of political power. The praetors were politicians having ambitious aims beyond the exercise of judicial authority. Influential men could ever buy verdicts, and the government winked at the infamy. There was justice in the abstract, but not in the reality. And when jurisprudence became complicated, judgments were made on technical points rather than on principles of equity. It was as ruinous to go to law at Rome as in London. Lawyers absorbed the money at issue by their tricks and delays. They made the practice of their noble profession obscure and uncertain. Clients danced attendance on eminent jurists, and received promises, smiles, and oyster-shells. It was, too, often better to submit to an injury than seek to redress it. Cases were decided against justice, if some technical form or ancient usage favored the more powerful party. Lawyers formed a large and powerful class, and they had fortunes to make. Instead of protecting the innocent, they shielded the guilty. Those who paid the highest fees were most certain of favorable verdicts. The laws practically operated to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Between the venality of the court and the learned jugglery of advocates, there was little hope for the obscure and indigent. Says Merivale: "The occupation of the bench of justice was the great instrument by which powerful men protected their monopolies; for, by keeping this in their own hands, they could quash every attempt at revealing, by legal practice, the enormities of their administration. And the means of seduction allowed by law, such as the covert bribery of shows and festivals, were used openly and boldly." What, then, could be hoped from the laws when they were made the channel of extortion and oppression? Law, the glory of Rome in the abstract, became the most dismal mockery of the rights of man. Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its savor it is good for nothing, not even for the dunghill. When the laws practically add to the evils they were intended to cure, what hope is there in their conservative influence? The practice of the law ever remained an honorable profession, and the sons of the great were trained to it; but we find such men as Cyprian, Chrysostom, and Augustine, who originally embarked in it, turning from it with disgust, as full of tricks and pedantries, in which success was only earned by a prostitution of the moral powers. Laws perverted were worse than no laws at all, since they could be turned by cunning, and sharp lawyers against truth and innocence. It would be harsh and narrow to say that lawyers were not necessary; but they did very little to avert evils. A wicked generation pressed over the feeble barriers which the laws presented against iniquity. They were only cobwebs to catch the insignificant. Unless good laws are enforced by virtue and intelligence, they prove a snare. It is the enforcement of laws, on the principles of justice, not the creation of them, that saves a state.
[Sidenote: Art among the later Romans.]
If a complicated system of laws and government, on which the reason and experience of ages were expended, did not prevent the empire from falling into the hands of barbarians, much less was to be expected of art, for which the Romans were also distinguished in common with the Greeks. Much is said of the ennobling influence of those great creations which gave so great lustre to ancient civilization. Founded on imperishable ideas, we naturally attribute to them a great element of national preservation, as they were of glory and pride.
[Sidenote: Its inherent beauty.]
It cannot be denied that art, when in harmony with the exalted ideals of beauty and grace, which it seeks to perpetuate on canvas or in marble, does much to improve the taste, to promote refinement and aesthetic culture. And when art is pursued with a lofty end, seeking, like virtue, its own reward, there is much that is ennobling in it. Even that literature is most prized and most enduring which is artistic, like the odes of Horace, the epics of Virgil, the condensed narrative of Tacitus; like the "Elegy in a Country Churchyard," or the "Deserted Village," or "Corinne," or "Waverley." Varro was the most learned writer whom Rome produced, and the most voluminous. Yet scarcely any thing remains of his productions. They were deficient in art, like German histories—very useful in their day, but only survive in the writings of those who made use of their materials. Hence science is not so enduring as poetry, when poetry is exalted, since it is superseded by new discoveries. Hence style in writing, when of great excellence, gives immortality to works which could not have lived without it, even had they been ever so profound. Voltaire's "Charles XII." is still a classic, like the numbers of the "Spectator," although superficial, and, perhaps, unreliable. A great painting is like the history of Thucydides—it lives because it is a creation. Hence art, when severe and lofty, cannot be too highly praised or cherished. A man cannot write for bread as he writes for fame; and he cannot write for fame as he writes to satisfy his own ideal. The immortal poets are those who sing themselves away to the regions of bliss, in a divine ecstacy, from love of art, or to give expression to the feelings which fill the soul. Sir Walter Scott could write his "Ivanhoe" when inspired by the sentiments which warmed the chivalrous ages; he became a mere literary hack when he wrote to pay his debts.
[Sidenote: The true artist.]
The true artist is one of the favorites of Heaven, in a great measure exalted above mortal commiseration, even if his days are clouded with cares and sorrows. He lives in a different and purer atmosphere than ordinary men. He may not banquet on the pleasures of sense, but he revels in the joys of the soul. A Dante may be sad and sorrowful, as when, in his gloomy wanderings and isolations, he asked of Fra Ilario the rest and peace of his sacred monastery; but he was sad as a greater than he wept over Jerusalem, in the profound seriousness of superior knowledge, in the sublime solitariness of an inhabitant of another and grander sphere. Genius ever partakes of this sadness, and it is as shallow to mistake it for misery as it would be to pity the saint passing through the tribulations of our worldly pilgrimage, in full view of the unending glories which are in store for him in the celestial city. The higher joys of the soul are foreign to frivolity, tumult, and the mirth of wine,—those pleasures most prized by the weak or sensual. There is nothing more sublime in this world than the example of a lofty nature seeking the imperishable, the true, the beautiful, the good, amid discomfort, or reproach, or neglect.
Such are truly great artists. Sometimes they are munificently rewarded by their generation with praises and material goods, as was Apelles among the Greeks, and Raphael among the Italians. Sometimes their excellence was unappreciated, except by a few. But whether appreciated or not, the great artists of antiquity belong to the constellation of men of genius which shall shine forever. They lived in their own glorious realm of thought and feeling, which the world can neither understand nor share. They did not live for utilities. They lived to realize their own exalted ideas of excellence.
[Sidenote: Decline of art.]