republic, has transmitted nothing to posterity beyond the title of Senator, which is still borne by the civil governor of Rome under the Papal authority, and the Palace of the Senator,' which has ever since occupied the brow of the Capitol.

If we pause to inquire why the Romans never attained to permanent freedom-why those republican institutions which in the very same century produced such brilliant results in the cities of Lombardy, which flourished so long in Tuscany, at Genoa, and at Venice, proved so ephemeral and short-lived in the Papal city-the answer is not hard to find. The Roman people were unworthy to enjoy a liberty which they had not earned, and for which they had done nothing to qualify them. It was the progress of industry that had produced, as well as enriched, the Italian republics. When the cities of Lombardy raised the standard of freedom against Frederic Barbarossa, they were already amongst the most opulent and thriving towns in Europe; and they continued throughout the middle ages to be active seats of manufacturing industry. Pisa and Florence, Genoa and Venice, rose to freedom as well as power by their commercial energy and ability. It is only from industry, and that feeling of independence which industry alone confers, that a people can derive the strength to be free. But the Romans never were an industrious people. As early as the seventh and eighth centuries they began to depend upon foreigners, and the influx of pilgrims had already come to be essential to the prosperity of the Holy City. The pilgrims of those days, among whom were wealthy prelates and barons as well as poor peasants and barefooted friars, were as important to the Romans as are the Russian princes or English milordi' at the present time; and foreigners flocked thither to purchase rosaries and relics, as they do in our own days mosaics and cameos. The same characteristic is found again at a later period; and the institution of the jubilee by Boniface VIII., in the year 1300, had the effect of attracting enormous numbers of strangers to Rome, and for a time enriched the inhabitants of the city, while it poured vast sums into the Papal treasury. But all such casual riches' will speedily disappear when not recruited by trade or industry; and the translation of the Holy See from Rome to Avignon, only a few years after the celebration of the first jubilee, revealed but too plainly the secret of the poverty of Rome. During the absence of the Papal Court the city declined so rapidly that the population is said to have sunk to 17,000 inhabitants; the streets were half deserted, and even many of the churches were given up to the bats and

owls. The Romans found that they might drive away the Popes, but they could not live without them.

A people so devoid of resources in itself could never hope to be free. The character of the Roman populace in the middle ages is drawn by contemporary chroniclers in the darkest colours, and, with every allowance for the clerical bias by which these writers were actuated, there is abundant evidence to support their charges. A people without industry will necessarily be poor and dependent, and a poor and dependent people will ever be venal and corrupt. The astounding rapidity and suddenness with which their internal revolutions succeeded one another was due in great measure to the fact that the populace were always ready to desert the standard of one leader for that of another who promised them greater gain or distributed his largesses more liberally. Turbulent and seditious among themselves, but envious of their neighbours, they were actuated by a hatred of the rival cities of Tivoli and Tusculum even more bitter than that which they entertained for their priestly governors. But their petty wars with these neighbouring towns, which remind us of the early struggles of the infant Roman republic, could boast of no triumphs, and were repeatedly marked by sanguinary and disgraceful defeats. The battles of Monte Porzio and Viterbo were as calamitous, in proportion to the relative state of the Romans of those days, as had been those of Thrasymene and Cannæ. The ferocious hostility with which they destroyed Tusculum and Albano, when circumstances, rather than the force of arms, had at length thrown these places into their power, and the implacable fury with which they sought to inflict the same fate upon Tivoli, have impressed as dark a stain upon their annals as the shame of their previous discomfitures. It was not without reason that St. Bernard inveighed against them as for ever talking great things, though their deeds were little. The Romans of the present day, for whom we fain would hope that time has better things in store, may look back with pride to the glories of ancient days, but assuredly they will derive little encouragement from the example, and little satisfaction from the recollection, of what their forefathers did in the middle ages.

ART. III.-1. Account of the Principal Triangulation of Great Britain. London: 1858.

2. Extension of the Triangulation of the Ordnance Survey into France and Belgium. By Colonel Sir HENRY JAMES,

R.E. F.R.S. London: 1862.

3. An Account of the Operations carried on for Accomplishing a Trigonometrical Survey of England and Wales; from the Commencement, in the Year 1784, to the End of the Year 1794. By Captain WILLIAM MUDGE and Mr. ISAAC DALBY. London: 1799.

4. Report of the Select Committee on the Cadastral Survey, ordered by the House of Commons to be printed. 1862.

A

CONTROVERSY has for many years been going on respecting the Survey of Great Britain. The one-inch Ordnance Map, and its numerous inaccuracies, must be familiar to our readers. Every year these inaccuracies increase. Changes are made in the face of the country with a rapidity that leaves the revisions of the Survey Department hopelessly in arrear. map, when first published, was not correct; and, although by continual care some errors have been eliminated, it is generally agreed that the map is not sufficiently accurate for the requirements of the country.

The

The question of accuracy has of late years been complicated by a dispute as to the scale on which the Government Survey should be published. One inch to a mile was found too small for anything but a travelling or general map. In 1825, a tenement survey was required in Ireland. The scale of six inches to a mile was somewhat hastily selected. The advantages of the six-inch over the one-inch scale soon became evident; but many scientific men were of opinion that even six inches was not large enough. It was then proposed to survey the whole of Great Britain on what is called a Cadastral scale. Twenty-five inches to a mile, or 0004 of the lineal measure of the ground, the scale upon which Government plans are drawn in France, was that which found most advocates. But its opponents were neither few nor silent. Men eminent in science can be appealed to by both sides, and, until now, no Government has ventured to throw the weight of its authority into the balance. It may be presumed that hesitation is at length at an end. A committee of the House of Commons investigated the subject in 1862, and the late Sir George Cornewall Lewis stated, during

the early part of last Session, that the Cabinet had decided on recommending Parliament to adopt its recommendations.

We propose to disinter the subject from the mass of Blue-books which have accumulated over it, and to state in plain words what is to be done. No subject can become popular while its details are not easily accessible. The Ordnance Survey has been unusually unfortunate in this respect. It has been in progress nearly eighty years. The department intrusted with its conduct has presented an annual report to Parliament; but these reports offer little to attract the attention of the general reader, and were speedily consigned to the limbo of forgotten Blue-books. They were usually honoured, on their appearance, by a paragraph in the daily newspapers, and afforded an opportunity, when the Ordnance estimates were under consideration, for a select band of experts to express opinions in the House of Commons, which other members neither understood nor cared to understand. The public had a vague idea that a few country gentlemen wished their estates to be surveyed at the public expense, on such a scale that an English county would cover the floor of Westminster Hall. The opponents of a cadastral survey took advantage of the popular impression; and, as it is more easy to cavil than to argue, and takes less time to make an assertion than to disprove it, the opponents often got the best of the debate. Gradually, the question became involved in a mist of documentary evidence. Select Committees were appointed; and, as every member of a committee can call his own witnesses, no member found it difficult to elicit evidence in favour of his own theory, to which he might triumphantly refer hereafter. Between 1851 and 1863, fourteen Blue-books were presented to Parliament. Among them were the reports of three Select Committees, and one Royal Commission, besides two ponderous volumes of correspondence, and Treasury minutes, papers, and progress reports innumerable. The Committee of 1861 and 1862 succeeded to this rich harvest of Blue-books. The reports of former investigations were submitted to them, and they received oral evidence to fill up any hiatus which they might discover. Their inquiries were limited by the instructions of the House to the single question, whether or not a cadastral survey of Great Britain should be made.

The French term 'cadastral,' from cadrer, to square, has of late years been generally adopted on the Continent, and is now used in England to denote a survey on a large scale. A cadastral as opposed to a topographical map may be defined to be one on which the objects represented, agree, as to their

relative positions and dimensions, with the objects on the face of the country; while a topographical map, drawn on a small scale, exaggerates, for the sake of distinctness, the dimensions of houses, and the breadth of roads and streams; and is, owing to its smaller size, necessarily less correct than a cadastral plan. The Survey of the United Kingdom is in future to be made sufficiently large to admit of its being drawn, or as it is technically called plotted,' on the scale of 0004, or of the linear measure of the ground. This scale has been generally adopted throughout those parts of Europe in which a Cadastral Survey is in progress. It corresponds so nearly to twenty-five inches to one mile, that it is usually spoken of as the 25-inch scale. It has the further advantage of bearing within a very small fraction, the proportion of one inch to an acre.

In former days, every survey required by the Government was made separate and independent. Each might be accurate in itself, and the objects represented in each might be placed in their proper relative position; but no place was represented in its exact position with reference to distant objects beyond the limits of the plan which contained it. The country was surveyed piece-meal, like a series of private estates. The first published Ordnance plans of Kent and Essex were drawn with reference to the meridian of Greenwich, those of Devon and Cornwall with reference to the meridian of Butterton Bill, those of Dorsetshire with reference to the meridian of Black Down. It is obvious that a national survey, to be of any value, must be referable to one uniform system of triangulation in other words, that the survey of the whole kingdom, if put together, should accurately fit, one sheet into another, and represent the actual bearing of every object noted to every other, however distant.

The principal triangulation of the United Kingdom, which was commenced in 1783, was completed only in 1858. It was originally undertaken by General Roy, for the purpose of determining with accuracy the relative positions of Greenwich and Paris. The present energetic director of the Survey Office, Sir Henry James, R.E., enjoys the crowning honour of having connected, in 1862, the triangulation of the United Kingdom with those of France and Belgium. The completion of this work has conferred great benefits on astronomical and geodetical science. It has now been found possible to measure an arc of parallel extending from Valentia, in the west, to the town of Orsk, on the extreme east of European Russia-probably, as the Astronomer Royal has remarked, the longest that will ever be measured by man.