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    We should do otir "Utmostto encourage the Beautiful , for the Useful encourages itself . — GOKTHB .

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    INTRODUCTORY LECTURE TO THE YEARLY COURSE OF ROMAN HISTORY . Delivered at the Ladies' College , 47 , Bedford-square , October 1 , 1850 . By F . W . NEWMAN .

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    It has been questioned whether we are to interpret the events of past time by the present , or conversely . Each view has been plausibly maintained . " VVe ought , I believe , to combine both , in order to be correct . For the present and the past throw light on one another . To understand ourselves we must study our predecessors : to understand them , we must study ourselves . This ought not to be thought a paradox ; it is only part of a larger truth , viz ., all things are best perceived by comparison and contrast . If we had never seen any colour but red , we should not be aware that anything was red ; but when we see both red and green , our attention is stimulated , and we learn to discriminate . In this way the contrasts of ancient times to modern lead us to meditate more deeply on what is ; while the similarities of the modern to the ancient enable us , by means of what is , to understand what teas .

    We have three ancient literatures extant , the Hebrew , the Greek , and the Latin ; out of which flow three main streams of ancient history . But the Hebrews were inhabitants of a very narrow district and made no distant or permanent conquests : moreover , their literature has nearly all a directly religious aim , is of very limited extent , and only by accident ( as it were ) gives us historical information . Hence it is of secondary importance in history , and is by this college intended to be comprized in theological knowledge . There remain to us the two great subjects which we vaguely call Greek and Roman history . But our range of Greek history takes in all that is known of

    Ancient Assyria , Babylon , Syria , Lydia , Phoenicia , Egypt , Persia—of none of ¦ which countries or empires have we any full and continuous history . On the other hand , our Roman history comprizes what is known of the countries which came into contact with the Roman arms . These are , Italy , Spain , France , Britain , a large part of Germany , all of Modern Turkey , with Northern Africa , including the Carthaginian cities . To speak roughly , Greek gives us the history of the East , and Latin of the West . My historical lectures last year within these walls were mainly directed to Greece , and to the Eastern region o history : in the coming year the Western world will engage me .

    There is more of variety and brilliancy in ancient Greece than in ancient Italy ; yet for this very reason there was too much to embrace in so scanty a number of lectures . In Greece we have to tell , not of one city , and one civil polity , but of many ; not of one race , but of several . We are not confined to the domain of politics , to accounts of war and peace , of industrial expansion and popular organization : we are also brought into poetry , poetical religion , and philosophy . At last the history of Greece proper suddenly breaks up , when the Macedonian arms spread over the whole Persian Empire , until Greece touches India , Bokhara , and Nubia . We get glimpses of distant countries , and leave off dissatisfied that our knowledge is so partial .

    But , if in the Grecian world there was a more various and enticing scene , it must be admitted that the world of Rome is one which still more nearly concerns us . When Greece had attained her highest energy , it overflowed against Persia , her hereditary foe . To subdue the stubborn and poor barbarians of Europe was a very uninviting task ; and , as the Greek arms spread eastward , little direct impression was made by Greek civilization on Europe at large . But with the progress of time Europe very sensibly changed . The Spaniards and the Gauls of proper France attained so much of industry and wealth as to attract Roman cupidity . The dominion of Rome reached successively to Spain ,

    to France , to Britain ; as well as to the southern bank of the Danube , and at last to Dacia ( that is , to Wallachia ) on the northern bank . At the Scotch Highlands and the whole fr ontier o Germany the Roman generals paused , and saw before them countries too full of mountain , swamp , or forest , too empty of moveable wealth , to repay the prodigious effort which it would cost to conquer and keep them . Thus the Gael and the German , —and , behind Germany , the Bohemian , the Pole , the Hungarian , the Russ , —remained outside the Roman empire : and , in a geographical view , that empire embraced but half of Europe . Nevertheless , a mere geographical view is here incomplete . What Horace says of Rome , when she conquered Greece , —

    Captive Greece made captive her rude conqueror , And brought arts into rustic Latium ;" this we may say of Germany , when her time came for conquering Rome . The Germans imbibed from Italy both arts and religion ; and when political empire hod fallen in the city of the Caesars a new ecclesiastical empire began . To detail this series of events belongs to the modern historian , and it cannot form part of my lectures ; but I now allude to the subject in order to indicate how far over Europe the influence of Home has spread . The Saxons , the Bohemians , the Poles , and the Hungarians , in time , submitted to the religion of Germany and of Rome : so also did the remote Gaels and Irish . Russia alone , of the

    great northern nations , received Christianity from Constantinople , and thus became imbued with a Greek rather than an Italian influence . With religion first language , and at length something of literature , also spread : so that the Latin culture , which had fi xed itself in Spain and France by conquest , found its way into Germany and Saxon England , into Scandinavia , into Bohemia , Poland , and Hungary , by means of religion . Russia was very late in entering the circle of European politics , andj ' t at last , perhaps * has received more of its knowledge from Germany and France than from its Greek connection . Indirectly , therefore , all Europe ( except Greece proper ) has been largely affected by Roman influences . To come home on this subject , our language is exceedingly imbued with

    Latin words , and still more with Norman , which is the Latin as corrupted in France by the old Gauls and by the invading Germans . Our religion , and in great measure our literary culture , at first came from Papal Rome . It surely belongs to an enlightened curiosity to acquaint ourselves with the history of that remarkable nation , which two thousand years ago exerted so powerful an activity for good or evil over Western and Southern Europe . But there are , besides , analogies and contrasts between the histories of England and of Rome , which fr om us deserve a steady contemplation : and I propose , in this lecture , to run over several lines o thought , which are far from exhausting this subject . In monarchical England and in republican Rome

    there was alike a hard struggle for liberty on the part of the commonalty . The causes of oppression and the modes of gradual extrication were diverse ; yet there was this in common , that ultimate benefit was obtained by a series of smaller constitutional victories and by the establishment of precedents . Each nation occasionally revolted , yet even successful revolt did not always fulfil expectation . For any decisive success o the moving party generally caused a re flux towards the Conservatives ; and as the victory of our Parliament over Charles I . yielded no visible advantage to liberty , so in Rome it is striking to see how little fruit comes of the most complete triumph ever won by the plebeians over the patricians , that which is known as the overthrow of the Decemvirate .

    It has been often observed that as in England the power of the purse is that which enabled the parliaments to wring out o our monarchs the securities found necessary to liberty ; so in Rome , the great weapon of the commonalty was that of refusing to enlist in the army . It was a passive resistance in each case ; and experience seems to show that this is the only appropriate mode of constitutional warfare . A weapon must not be too sharp if it is to be used against authorities which we desire to regulate not to overturn . The most violent of the early Roman measures was Secession , or a threat of emigration in mass .

    Constitutional history is not a subject into which it has hitherto been thought desirable carefully to initiate ladies . I confess it is rather a masculine topic : more feminine , however , than stories of battles , and tournaments , and sieges . To me it appears that as man has been justly called by Aristotle a political animal , not to understand his political capacities and achievements is to remain ignorant o one large part o his moral nature ; those who approve o moral philosophy as a feminine study will not disapprove of the less abstract subject of constitutional history . But I am here disposed to advocate what some will think an extreme doctrine ; namely , that our boys need a more f eminine , and our

    young ladies a more masculine culture . If , in the education of boys , we attended more to that delicacy and purity of mind , that refinement and gentleness of manners which is appropriate to women , as well as to that cultivation of fine taste which we do appreciate , I believe that our young men would be more virtuous and not less manly . And if , in the education of young ladies , we thought less exclusively of that refinement which they have by nature , and were more anxious to give them that strength of understanding and breadth of view which few women have by nature , I think that the sex would become neither less fair , nor less gentle , nor less womanly , but , on the other hand , there would be less danger of their gentleness or fervour degenerating into weakness .

    After this digression I admit that in all the earlier history of Rome , its constitution is rather undesirably predominant . Under the kings of Rome we open with an account of the several races whose fusion at length formed the Roman people ; and already at that time constitutional questions must occupy us . For the greater part of the early period our accounts of the wars and foreign relations of Rome are untrustworthy , and the internal battle of the constitution is unavoidably our main subject . To those who intelligently attend , I believe it will always be found very interesting : but here , as elsewhere , those who desire to be rewarded must earn their delight by exertion . Unless we form clear ideas in the mind , study to complete our picture , fix it thus in our imagination , and familiarize ourselves with that of

    which we are hearing ; and at the same time learn to sympathize with the sufferings and efforts of the oppressed commonalty ;—many things may be judged dry and tedious , which to greater diligence are agreeable as well as instructive . Still , it must be confessed , that here , as in all the darker and more distant portions of history , we know less of individual men than of masses of men , orders , parties;—we cannot confidently draw biographical sketches ;—we do not often know with certainty the moral qualities of the men who are prominent in the political movements ; so that our sympathies are little drawn out by individuals . But it is only in the early times that we have to complain of this . Moreover , even then already the peculiar character of the Roman developes itself ; so that when individuals have no deep mark , there is interest in studying the nation collectively .

    This , indeed , also we may remark in common between the Romans and the English , —perhaps , however , not peculiar to them , —that no sooner is their own liberty consolidated than they enter upon a continuous career of conquest . We must regard this as a natural consequence of the strength which a nation acquires from internal freedom and good laws . It is melancholy to discover , that the first use which every free nation makes of its new strength , is to destroy and oppress the freedom of others . If conquerors proved able to impart their own freedom to the conquered nations , all regret for the violences of conquest would soon be swallowed up in its benefits . But it needs a very high morality for a free nation to raise its subjects into its equals ; and the problem is not yet solved for us ,

    The era at which English liberty was finally established against the tyranny of the Crown , is the great Revolution which brought William of Orange to the throne . In the two preceding reigns , the foreign power of England had been at the lowest ; but with William began our inveterate series of wars with France , which lasted for a century and a quarter ; in the course of -which , considerable portions our vast colonial empire were conquered . In the same period , by wars which were partly kindled by French enmity , a company of English merchants conquered nearly the whole of India . Such is the astonishing and anxious result of the power which the security of industry and energies of liberty have wrought out in our nation . The era at which the Roman commonalty established the adequate securities

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    Oct . 5 , 1850 . ] © j > * HeftfeVV * 667

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 5, 1850, page 667, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1855/page/19/