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    Afrii. 10, 1852.] THE LEADER. 351

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    CLARET AND OLIVES. Claret and Olives, fr...

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    Newman On Regal Home. Beqal Borne: An In...

    was dependent on the flight of birds , which were supposed to indicate the will of the gods . That a popular assembly , which met in the open air , should be liable to mental impressions from so striking a phenomenon as an eagle flying down in the midst of them , —or from other behaviour of powerful birds in a half-wild country , where they have little dread of man , —cannot at all astonish us . A belief in augury becomes ridiculous and monstrous , when it is methodized as in later JRpme ; when the domestic fowl has supplanted the eagle and vulture , and the solitary poulterer , watching his hencoop , reports how many morsels fall on the pavement from the chicken ' s mouth . " Here is a glance at THE WAT HOME WAS PEOPLED .

    " But there is perfect unanimity among the ancients , as to the principle on which the rapid rise of Romulus's colony depended . Walls having been erected sufficient for defence , free reception was given to all who chose to come and claim it / The forms under which this was done remind us of Greek customs , if indeed we may trust the tale . A lofty and steep hill lay to the north-west of the new Rome . Its ' back had a depression in the centre ; the two heights on each side were afterwards called the Citadel and the Capitol . From the Capitol . the whole hill was called Capitoline : the rock of the Citadel was abrupt , and was named the Tarpeiaii . In the depression between , or the descent from it , a spot was consecrated , and called by the Greek name asylum : whoever fled to this was l'eceived , as a claimant of hospitable protection , to whom the walls must not remain closed . Whether such formalities have been correctly reported to us , is of very little

    importance : that the policy herein implied was systematically followed in the whole period of kingly Rome , seems beyond reasonable donbt , and to be a clue to the whole course of events . To the same policy Thucydides ascribes the early aggrandizement of Attica . Defeated chieftains from all parts of Greece flocked thither , with their retinues , as to a safe refuge ; and brought their numbers , experience and skill in the arts of war or peace . Livy , indeed , calls the principle ' familiar to the founders of cities ; ' and undoubtedly it conduces to material prosperity . To harbour criminals is quite a separate matter , and in our days is an odious idea , when criminals are the dregs of society . Not so political offenders . Holland and England have long gloried in protecting those whom the despots of neighbouring communities'have" judged to deserve punishment ; and the arts and wealth of both countries have been increased by the industry and ingenuity of refugees . Hydria in Greece , though a barren rock unnoticed by antiquity , shot up into sudden

    greatness by giving a home and a free port to those who suffered by Turkish tyranny ; and if any causes were at work to disorder the Latin or Etrurian cities , it is easy to believe that refugees may .-have rapidly aggrandized early Home . In that stage of rudeness , indeed , it " may be taken for granted that no distinction would be made between criminals and _ innocent men ; the mixed multitude is not likely to have been much purer than the later Romans represented it ; yet * h ere is an undeniable superiority in such a mass of outlaws in rude over civilized times . Where all men carry arms , and each has to defend himself , personal conflicts are of daily occurrence : the perpetrators of bloodshed are often among the best men of the community ; and if inade outlaws , may prove very valuable citizens to the foreign town which welcomes them . Alban Rome was clearly a robber city ; yet we do not know it to have been stained with blood-thirsty treachery like the Mamertines of Messene . She is rather to be compared to the petty cities of early Greece , when they practised piracy without scruple , and gloried in it .

    " This stage of human society rises out of an immature morality , difficult at first to understand . We are apt to imagine , that men ready to shed blood for the gratification of their cupidity , can have no virtues at all ; but this is an illusion similar to that of supposing that a man who finds his sport in slaywig innocent animals is altogether savage . A line , not wholly arbitrary , is drawn between our own and foreign nations , as between men and brutes , which admits of cultivating many virtues in high perfection towards countrymen , while we disown all moral rights of the stranger . Unhappily , this immature morality propagates itself to a very late stage . Nations called Christian , and glorying in the gentleness of civilization , are often execrably cruel and unjust even towards one another , and much more towards those whom they call barbarians . In early Greece and Home , as in early Germany , the same principles were practised and avowed without disguise . No one criticised them ; all in turn were ready to act upon them ; and every successful warrior was honoured by his own pedple , however grpat had been his injustico to the foreigner . "

    There is one point Newman has in common with Niebuhr , that , namely , of seeing the analogies between existing forms of society , and those of early Home ; and an example is given in this account of

    THE SABINE SERFS . " The state of society in which the oldest Sabines lived , it has been ingeniously observed , seems to have originated the Homeric conception of a Cyclops , —a fierce and arbitrary being , who dwells on the tops of hills and tends his flocks , responsible to no one , but * giving laws to hia children and to his wife / Slavery had no general existence , but every noblo family had dependents permanently attached to it , who were called its Clients . It was a system of high , but kindly aristocracy . The client , like the- Russian serf , was attached to his patron or lord as to a father and a friend . The whole clan was in theory , or rather in feeling , a single largo family , accustomed to yield tho guidance of all external affairs to its leader , as nbsolutel y as Arabs to their sheikh . When wo have the most positive assurances that ovory father in Sabine Rorno possessed power of life and death over his grownup son ; and that the father might eoll him into slavory , and resume hia rights

    over him twice , if twice sot free ; wo must bo prepared to boliovo in tho high authorit y of tho chieftain over tho serf . Yet , aa all tho dignity of tho Patron depended on tho number and well-being of his Clients ; as their swords und their properties wore his'to uho on ovory groat exigency ; it is not to be looked on as poetical fiction that he zealously cared for their physical wolfaro , and by kindly intercourse sustained their loyal symputhios . Tina oiYocb Was ascribed by later writers to tho influonco of religious oaths which bound the parties together ; but , independentl y of religion , a Snbino chief had little moro temptation to oppress his client , than to bo cruel to his son . Both of them crouched before his uiigor , both of them rojoicod in his greatness and pomp . To each wan assigned his & ppropi * iuto external comforts : custom and public opinion regulated tho pnymonts mudo by tho cultivator ; and' tho hardy ponsant was satisfied with so little , that ho must liavo boon a cruel lord indeod who grudged that little . " Many modern writors Bcom unable to conceive such a relation of lord and serf , except whoro it is founded on conquest by foreigners j yet there we instances to

    the contrary so clear , that to impute a conquest is gratuitous . A future generation , on learning how peasants in the Scotch Highlands have been driven off the soil by the representatives of the chieftains for whom their fathers' broadswords won it , will be in danger of mistaking these free , hardy , and much-injured men for a conquered and inferior race . And in fact there is not only a very great similarity in the relations between a Chief of the Gaelic clans and his vassals , to those between a Sabine Patron and his Client , but , in so far as language , is any - test of blood , it would appear that the Sabines and the Gaels are of nearer kindred :, than Irish and Welsh . The patriarchal authority is not easily abused to griping and heartless covetousness in the rude days , when chief and clansman live in daily sight of one another , as in an Arab tribe ; when men are valuable for bravery and devotedness , and not only for the rent which they pay ; and when the arts of life are . so little advanced , that the great use of wealth is to maintain a more gorgeous retinue . But when with the progress of art and political development , the chief covets the land for the sake of rent and not of men , and a custom has hardened into law which enables him to appear as owner of the soil , the relation of Patron to Client is liable to become one of antagonism , and frequently of bitter hostility , as in republican Rome . " We will conclude with a passage on BOMAN" MAREIAGE . " There can be little doubt that the principles of marriage established in later Rome , when Latin influences had become dominant in social life , rose out of the Latin , in contrast to the Sabine customs . In the Latin practice , the wife never came ' into the hand * of her husband , but remained permanently in her father ' s power : in consequence of which , the father , if offended , might at any time recal his daughter , and even give her away to another : nor had the Latin father the same power over his children as in Sabine law . How the Sabines looked on so lax a union , may be in part gathered from the singular phraseology of the later Roman law , which transfers to the marriages of those who are not Quirites terms which must once have been applicable to plebeian unions . A marriage made with the sacred auspices is called connubium ^ or nuptiee legilimcB , and the wife is ajusta uxor ; but a marriage valid in law , yet deficient in ceremonial sanctity , is designated only as matrimonivm , and the wife is oddly called injusta uxor ( an illegitimate wife ?) The name itself of Matrimony , now so honourable , may of itself indicate that the domestic morality of the oldest Latins was less elevated and more barbarous than that of the Sabines . In the savage or infantine state of human society , no union between the sexes is ratified until children are born . Prior to this event > the woman has no claims upon the man ; and if they separate without becoming-parents of a common offspring , society has nothing to do with their mutual intimacy , any more than with an ordinary friendship . But on the impending birth of a child , the weakness and helplessness of woman claims the cares , attentions , and solace of her-partner : the society discerns and avows that she is entitled to a motlier ' s support , ( matrimonium , ) stigmatizes the father as unjust , and punishes him by law if he neglects the duties-contingent on his paternal character . This is indeed a close description of the present state of sexual morality among the lower orders of Wales ; and the tone of grief and almost of disgust which pervades a recent Report to the English Parliament on this topic , may possibly represent to us the disdain and scorn with which the rigid Sabines viewed the matrimony of the Latin plebeian ' s . Whether , in the time of Tarquiu , the plebs of Rome were , in any true moral view , lower as to these matters than the Sabines , we have no sure means of knowledge : but it must not be left out of sight , that to the latest time of Rome a valid marriage was constituted by mere usus or habitual union ; so that , after all , Quirites had gained the right of sacred nuptial auspices , every wife was in danger of falling ' into the hand' of her husband , unless she absented herself froin , his house one day in every year . This total unimportance of any marriage ceremony * must apparently have been part of the same Latin custom . But the patricians , to the last , looked on a marriage so formed as less pleasing to the gods . No man could become a Roman priest , —no boys or girls could sing in sacred chorus on the public festivals , unless born of a marriage contracted by holy bride-cake , ( confarreatio , ) with religious auspices , sanctioned by an augur and pontiff . "

    Newman On Regal Home. Beqal Borne: An In...

    * Thisla still tho law in Scotland , and equally comos down lVoin primitive rudeness , It is now corrected by a practical oloyution of public moral fooling .

    Afrii. 10, 1852.] The Leader. 351

    Afrii . 10 , 1852 . ] THE LEADER . 351

    Claret And Olives. Claret And Olives, Fr...

    CLARET AND OLIVES . Claret and Olives , from the Garonne to tho Shone ; or Notes , Social , Ficturesquo , and Legendary by tho Way . By Angus B . Roach . David Boguc . Undeb the fanciful title of Claret and Olives , Mr . Reach has recorded the picturesque reminiscences of his journeys in tho south of France , whither he proceeded for the purpose of describing in the Moiminy Chronicle tho social and agricultural condition of that country . What claret and olives are to the feast , this volumo is to literature—a luxury , with no pretensions to bo more ; a pleasant flavour and a bright clear colour—the perfume , not the food ! Ho thus states his purpose : — " All sensible readers will bo gratified when I state that I have not tho remotest intontion of describing tho archaeology of Bordeaux , or any other town whatever .

    Whoever wants to know tho height of a steeple , tho length of an aisle , or tho number of arches in a bridge , must betuko themselves to Murray nnd his compeers . I will neither be picturesquely profound upon ogives , tritbriu , clorcatorya , screens , or mouldings ; nor magniloquontly great upon tho arched , tho early pointed , the florid , or tho flamboyant schools . I will go into raptures neither about Virgins , nor Holy Families , nor Oriol windows , in tho fine old cut-and-dry school of tho traveller of ta « te , which means , of course , every traveller who over packed a shirt into a carpot-lmg ; but , leaving tho mero archeology and curved stones alono in their glory , I will try , to sketch living , and now and then historical , Franco—to move gossipingly along in tho byways rather than , tho highways—always moro prono to give a good legend of u grey old ciuitlc , than a correct iiftiumrouiont of tho height of tlio towora ; and always necking to bring up , m well us I can , a varying , shifting picture , well thronged with humanity , before tho reader ' s eye . "

    Of course an author has a right to choose ' what ho will do ; neither tho subject nor tho point of view can bo prescribed for him by anothor ; but while recognising Mr . -Reach ' s right to compose his notes of whatever materials camo smeoroly in his way , the critic must put in a plea in favour of what has boon omittod . It ifl very proper in him to omit profundities upon ogives , triforia , screens and mouldings , if ho really had nothing to say

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), April 10, 1852, page 19, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_10041852/page/19/