After this estimate of St. Augustine, he speaks of
"A living author—at once statesman, orator, philosopher, and historian of the higest rank—who has given us, on a less extensive scale, a philosophy of history in its most finished and amiable form. The very attempt on the part of M. Guizot to draw out a picture of civilization during fourteen hundred years, and to depict, amongst that immense and ever-changing period, the course of society in so many countries, indicates no ordinary power; and the partial fulfilment of the design may be said to have elevated the philosophy of history into a science. In this work may be found the moat important rules of the science accurately stated; but the work itself is the best example of philosophic method and artistic execution, united to illustrate a complex subject. A careful study of original authorities, a patient induction of facts, a cautious generalization, the philosophic eye to detect analogies, the painter's power to group results, and, above all, a unity of conception which no multiplicity of details can embarrass; these are some of the main qualifications for a philosophy of history which I should deduce from these works. Yet, while the action of Providence and that of human free will are carefully and beautifully brought out, while both may be said to be points of predilection with the author, he has not alluded, so far as I am aware, to the great evil spirit and his personal operation. Strong as he is, he has been apparently too weak to bear the scoff of modern infidelity—"he believes in the devil"—unless, indeed, the cause of this lies deeper, and belongs to his philosophy; for if there be one subject out of which eclecticism can pick nothing to its taste, it would be the permitted operation of the great fallen spirit. Nor will the warmest admiration of his genius be mistaken for a concurrence in all his judgments. I presume not to say how far such an author is sometimes, in spite of himself, unjust, from the point of view at which he draws his picture. Whether, and how far, he be an eclectic philosopher, let others decide. It would be grievous to feel it true of such a mind; for it is the original sin of that philosophy to make the universe rotate round itself. Great is its complacency in its own conclusions, but there runs through them one mistake—to fancy itself in the place of God" (p. 31).
Those who have ever made the attempt to analyze in a few lines the genius of a great writer will best be able to estimate the combination of keen intellect, patient thought, and scrupulous candor in this criticism. We must not deny ourselves one more quotation:
"St. Augustine, Bossuet, Guizot, Balmez, Schlegel: I have taken these names not to exhaust but to illustrate the subject. Here we have the ancient and the modern society, Africa and France, Spain and Germany, and the Christian mind in each, thrown upon the facts of history. They point out, I think, sufficiently a common result. But amid the founders of a new science, who shall represent our own country? Can I hesitate, or can I venture, in this place and company [i.e., before the Catholic University of Dublin, in the chair of which this lecture was delivered], to mention the hand which has directed the scattered rays of light from so many sources on the wild children of Central Asia, and produced the Turk before us in his untameable ferocity—the outcast of the human race, before whom earth herself ceases to be a mother—by whom man's blood has ever been shed like water, woman's honor counted as the vilest of things, nature's most sacred laws publicly and avowedly outraged,—has produced him before us for the abhorrence of mankind, the infamy of nations? To sketch the intrinsic [{366}] character of barbarism and civilization, and out of common historical details, travel, and observation to show the ineffaceable stamp of race and tribe, reproducing itself through the long series of ages, surely expresses the idea which we mean by the philosophy of history" (p. 38).
We have given a disproportionate space to this inaugural lecture, both for its intrinsic importance and because it gives a shadow of the whole plan of Mr. Allies's work, both that part which lies before us and that which remains to be published; for the volume before us is "only a portion, perhaps about a fourth, of the author's design." In the six lectures which it contains, he gives us an estimate, first, of the physical and political condition of the Roman empire in its palmy days; then, of the force by which it pleased God to constitute the new creation in the midst of it. In the last four lectures he compares the vital principles of these two vast social organizations—the heathen and the Christian—first in a representative man of each class, then in the effects produced upon society at large by the influence of each; then in the primary relation of man to woman in marriage; and, lastly, in the virginal state; although under this last head there can hardly be said to be a comparison, as heathen society has simply nothing to set against that wonderful creation of Christianity—holy virginity.
We know not where we have met any painting of the Roman empire so striking as that contained in the first lecture. Of the multitude of Englishmen who read more or less of the classical Latin authors, a very small proportion have ever paid any attention to the Roman empire, as it is displayed by Tacitus and Juvenal. This is the natural result of the grace and eloquence of Livy and Cicero, much rather than of any strong preference for republican institutions. Indeed it is impossible not to be struck with the vast influence which Roman republicanism exercises in France compared with England. Nor is it difficult to account for this. France, except to a limited degree under the monarchy of July, has never enjoyed constitutional liberty. The Frenchman, therefore, who dreams of liberty at all, places his dreamland in a Roman republic. Boys who in England would rant about John Hampden are found in France ranting about Junius Brutus. For what the Englishman means when he talks about liberty is "English liberty;" the Frenchman means the Roman republic. So much has this been the case, that even in America the war of independence began, not in any aspiration after a republic, but for the rights of English subjects. The sword had been drawn for a year before the colonies claimed independence, and very shortly before Washington had declared that "there was no thought of separation, only of English liberty." What proves that these were not mere words was, that even after independence had been achieved, the leaders, who met in congress, agreed almost to a man in expressing their preference for "an English constitution," if circumstances had placed it within their reach. All the world knows that France became a republic chiefly because Rome in her palmy days had been so called; nay, to this hour all the terms adopted by the revolutionary party have been borrowed from classical times. Such was the term "citizen," so appropriate to a people whose boast was that they were free of a city which had conquered the world, so absurd as denoting the members of a great nation in which not even centuries of extreme centralization have prevented political rights from being exercised by each man in his own province. Such, again, was that inundation of pagan names which the revolutionary times substituted for those of the saints, and which are still characteristic of France—Camille, Emile, Antonine, and even Brute and Timoleon. This we take to be one great reason why many sensible [{367}] persons in France are so greatly afraid of classical studies in schools and colleges. They say that they turn the heads of boys, especially French boys. It is highly characteristic of the man, that the officers of the House of Commons, who made forcible entry into the house of Sir Francis Burdett when he was committed by order of the House, found him reading with his little son, not Plutarch's life of Brutus or Cato, as would assuredly have been the case with a Frenchman, but "Magna Charta." He was not less theatrical, but he was a thoroughly English actor.
And yet we strongly suspect that out of a hundred boys who leave a classical school more than ninety believe that Roman history ends with Augustus. The university no doubt, gives a somewhat more extended view. But even there Tacitus is usually about the limit. We wonder how far this feeling was carried before Gibbon published the "Decline and Fall."
Hence we especially value the wonderful picture of the empire painted by our author.
It was in fact a federation of civilized states under an absolute monarch; the municipal liberties were left so entire that Niebuhr mentions Italian cities, in the immediate neighborhood of Rome itself, which retained all through the times of the empire and the middle ages, down to the wars of the French revolution, the same municipal institutions under which Rome had found them. They were swept away by that faithful lover of despotism, Napoleon I., to make way for the uniform system of a préfet and souspréfet in each district. It is more important to bear this in mind because, as the revolutionists aped the manners and names of the Roman republic without understanding them, the imperialists of France are apt to assume that they faithfully represent the Roman empire. Now the one striking characteristic of the French empire is that it raises yearly 100,000 military conscripts, beside the naval conscription, the police, and the very firemen, all of whom are carefully drilled as soldiers. How was it under Augustus?
"It is hard to conceive adequately what a spectator called 'the immense majesty of the Roman peace' (Pliny, 'Nat. Hist,' xxvii. 1). Where now in Europe, impatient and uneasy, a group of half-friendly nations jealously watches each other's progress and power, and the acquisition of a province threatens a general war, Rome maintained, from generation to generation, in tranquil sway, an empire of which Gaul, Spain, Britain, and North Africa, Switzerland, and the greater part of Austria, Turkey in Europe, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt formed but single limbs, members of her mighty body. Her roads, which spread like a network over this immense territory, from their common centre, the golden milestone of the Forum, under the palace of her emperors, did but express the unity of that spirit with which she ruled the earth her subject, levelling the mountains and filling up the valleys for the march of her armies, the caravans of her merchandise, and the even sweep of her legislation. A moderate fleet of 6,000 sailors at Misenum, and another at Ravenna, a flotilla at Forum Julii, and another in the Black sea, of half that force, preserved the whole Mediterranean from piracy; and every nation bordering on its shores could freely interchange the productions of their industry. Two smaller armaments of twenty-four vessels each on the Rhine and the Danube secured the empire from northern incursion. In the time of Tiberius a force of twenty-five legions and fourteen cohorts, making 171,500 men, with about an equal number of auxiliary troops, that is, in all, an army of 340,000, sufficed, not so much to preserve internal order, which rested upon other and surer ground, but to guard the frontiers of a vast population, amounting, as is calculated, [{368}] to 120,000,000, and inhabiting the very fairest regions of the earth, of which the great Mediterranean sea was a sort of central and domestic lake. But this army itself, thus moderate in number, was not, as a rule, stationed in cities, but in fixed quarters on the frontiers, as a guard against external foes. Thus, for instance, the whole interior of Gaul possessed a garrison of but 1,200 men—that Gaul which, in the year 1860, in a time of peace, thought necessary for internal tranquillity and external rank and security to have 626,000 men in arms. [Footnote 53] Again, Asia Minor had no military force; that most beautiful region of the earth teemed with princely cities, enjoying the civilization of a thousand years, and all the treasures of art and industry, in undisturbed repose. And within its unquestioned boundaries, the spirit, moreover, of Roman rule was far other than that of a military despotism, or of a bureaucracy and a police pressing with ever watchful suspicion on every spring of civil life. The principle of its government was not that no population could be faithful which was not kept in leading-strings, but rather to leave cities and corporations to manage their own affairs themselves. Thus its march was firm and strong, but for this very reason devoid alike of fickleness and haste."