manding eloquence. His reasoning in defence of revelation is equally subtile and suggestive; and his reflections on the revolutions of empires, which constitute the third part of his "Discourse," are throughout marked by a deeply thoughtful philosophy. His section, particularly, on the growth and decay of the Roman power is full of import; and if Gibbon had not expressly stated that he conceived the design of writing "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" amidst the ruins of the Colosseum, one might suppose that he derived the hint of it from Bossuet. Bossuet's views of the Roman character and people evince profound historical sagacity. The Roman character and the Roman people were, as he conceives, essentially military; and the course of Roman history, as designated by changes in the spirit of the army, may be divided into three stages: the first, when the army was a power for the state; the second, when the army was a power for its leaders; the third, when the army was a power for itself, and at its pleasure or caprice made or unmade Emperors. The author, with characteristic succinctness, thus traces the history of the Roman army. The period when it contended with equals. This period lasted a little more than five hundred years, closing with the ruin of the Gauls in Italy, and with the empire of the Carthaginians. This was a period of frequent peril. The next period involved no peril; and however mighty the wars, victory was always sure. This period ended. in the establishment of the Cæsars, and had continued for two hundred years. The third period was that in which the army steadily maintained its own courage and the glory of the Empire, and which, after four centuries, closed with the reign of Theodosius the Great. The last period is that in which the army met on all sides disaster and defeat, and when the Empire fell to pieces. This period also extended through four centuries. It began with the children of Theodosius, and terminated in the dominancy of Charlemagne. We find one essential error in the closing portion of Bossuet's remarks on the decline of the Roman power. He writes as if the disorders in the state and the disloyalty in the army were really Roman. He gives no due importance to the fact that, even before the close of the Republic, neither citizens nor soldiers

were of the old genuine Roman race. The native Roman people had ceased to exist, or had been swallowed up in deluges of foreigners. This may have been the result of the original lust of conquest which was inherent in the Roman character; but long before the decline of the Empire, all that was Roman in breed and blood had become extinct. The Roman spirit survived, amidst the wrecks of Roman institutions, only in Roman law, and in that it is immortal.

The whole "Discourse" is pervaded by a grave and reflective spirit; it fully deserves the admiration with which it has always been regarded, and does not merit the scornful sneer with which Mr. Buckle alludes to it. The tone is lofty and well sustained. Often it rises to the sublime of melancholy, with the grandeur of sadness.

“Thus," he writes, "when you see pass in an instant before your eyes, I do not say kings and emperors, but the great empires which held the whole world in awe; when you behold the Assyrians, the Medes, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, fall, so to speak, one upon the other, the terrific crash causes you to feel that among men there is nothing solid, and that instability and agitation are the proper lot of human things."

One idea runs through the "Discourse," - is its life, its soul, its spiritual energy; and that is, that true religion is everlasting and divine in its unity and its perpetuity, true religion in the unbroken succession of faith as continued and preserved from age to age in the unity and perpetuity of an infallible Church. For the sake of this Church are all ages and all dispensations. That Church began with time, as time began with human transgression and Divine promise, and only with time will it end. It had its faith in promise under the old law, it has its faith in fulfilment under the new law; and as under the old law it had its consecrated priesthood and sacred institutions, it has them equally under the new law, not in type and shadow, but in spirit and in essence. The "Discourse" seems at first extremely simple; but when the reader advances, and perceives how glowingly the idea is unfolded, with what harmony it rules the subject, and how the whole scope of history has from it import and interpretation, the mind opens to the surpassing grandeur of the design, and

feels amazed at the majesty of intellect and genius exhibited in both the conception and the execution. Yet nothing is forced or carried out of nature.

"The same God," says the author, "who has bound the universe together, and who, all-powerful in himself, has willed, for the purpose of order, that all the parts of the great whole should depend one on another, this same God has also willed that the course of human affairs should have its succession and proportions. I would say that men and nations have had qualities accordant with the elevation to which they were destined; and that, leaving out certain exceptional events, in which God would have his own hand alone apparent, no great change comes to pass which has not had its causes in preceding ages. And as in all concerns there is that which prepares for them, that which determines their occurrence, and that which causes them to succeed, the true science of history is to observe the latent tendencies which have prepared great changes, and the important conjunctures which brought them into fact."

The whole philosophy of Bossuet in relation to history may, we think, be thus concisely summed up: - God is in the universe by his power; God is with humanity by his providence; he is in the Church by his spirit, in the special relation of his eternal and invisible perfection, as the infinitely wise and true, as the source of all holy inspiration.

As

The "Discourse on Universal History" consists simply of narration and reflection. Vico was the first who carried into the philosophy of history the severity of abstract thought. Vico, the son of a bookseller, was born at Naples in 1668, and had his early education among the Jesuits. After a life of domestic retirement and devoted study, he died in 1744. in the case of Swift, who died more than a year later, the closing period of his earthly existence was passed in a state of mental imbecility. His special attainments were in classical literature, in philology, and in jurisprudence; in all these he was profoundly learned. His great work, "The Principles of a New Science," was first published in 1725, in Naples, and, though it afterward fell into obscurity, three editions of it were called for while the author lived.

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This work has the same object with that of Bossuet, to trace the mind of God in the historic life of man. But whereas

Bossuet seeks to do this in the order of events, Vico seeks to do it by means of science. Bossuet discerns the action of God's intelligence in the course and changes of time; Vico, in certain essential and universal principles. Bossuet's method, as we have said, is synthetic, and its spirit ecclesiastical; Vico's method is analytic, and its spirit scientific. Bossuet deals with facts in an onward succession, and looks forward to their issue; Vico deals with facts as to their inward import, and looks backward to their origin. Bossuet assumes or accepts what Vico attempts to explain and demonstrate. Bossuet uses a more expansive course of reading, considered as to space and time; Vico's reading, though in these respects more limited than Bossuet's, is yet deeper, more multifarious, more recondite, more subtile, more speculative, and gives more incentives to inquiry. Bossuet's idea completes itself in a Catholic Church; Vico's, in a common humanity. No connected exposition of Vico is, of course, here expected, and we pretend to offer only a few detached suggestions. A people, according to Vico, has three stages in its course, and this course has the necessity and the uniformity of law. The first stage is the Divine, or the rule of the gods; the second is the Heroic, or the rule of the heroes; the third is the Human, or the rule of men. The first is theocracy, wherein the priest dominates; the second, aristocracy, wherein the noble holds power; the third begins with democracy and closes in monarchy.

There is law in the material world; there is law also in the spiritual world; in each sphere the law is divine. This divine law is equally opposed to the Fate of the Stoics and to the Chance of the Epicureans; and the aim of "The New Science" is to demonstrate such divine law. The humanizing element is religion. All peoples have ascribed the attribute of Providence to Divinity. The ancients sought to know the mind of Providence; the Hebrews spiritually in the Prophets, the Heathens fantastically in their oracles and signs. The deluge was not local, but universal, and after such saturation it required two centuries to dry the earth. While this process continued, men became wilder and wilder. Exhalations from the earth produced awful thunderings and lightnings; and so

each Pagan nation had its Jupiter. Each also had its Hercules,a subduer of this savage earth, which is figured in the Nemean lion. Corn was the first gold of the world, and the time of its early culture was the golden age. Saturn, the god of seed, ruled it. Chronos came, and men began to mark the passage of time. The heavens were then not higher than the mountains, and the gods walked upon the earth. With Homer, the gods dwelt upon Olympus; but when astronomy had enlarged the heavens, Olympus was exalted above the stars. Poetry is the earliest wisdom; and the Homeric is the earliest poetry. By poetry alone the ante-historic life of nations is preserved. By this the old Pagan nations were cultivated, and this gives profound importance to myths and to philosophy.

The children of Noah sank into utter brutality. Striking indications of God, or divine power in the world, aroused many of them to a sense of reverence. Those who were so affected made for themselves dwellings in caves, each being the husband of one wife. Such were the founders of families and of the family institution. Thus the family is founded in religion, and laws originate with the family. This institution becomes associated with the cultivation of the soil. Here the first altar is raised; thus the altar is connected with the hearth; and both are united with the plough. In time such families constitute strong and orderly communities. Other classes of men continue rude; but at last seek, in the more settled districts, refuge either from want or from oppression. They occupy a subordinate or servile position. Thence come cities, with their dominion and decrees; thence come likewise peace and war, with all that they imply. Civil order follows the relation of the body to the soul; those who use the soul command; those who use the body serve. According to this doctrine, the latter must be the many, the former must be the few. Hence it arises, that the ruling class are led to suppose that they are of a different nature from the subject class, and even of a higher nature. But the subject class at length becomes too numerous for contented servitude; and then begin internal strifes, external emigrations, diffusion of VOL. XCV. NO. 196.

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