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    every language in Europe—from his infancy , through the gradation of his debauched youth , but has examined the pedigree of the Brazen Beards , showing it to have run parallel with a genealogy of ferocity and faithlessness , of cruelty , fraud , lust , and adultery . The father of Nero , an incestuous swindler who married the sister of Caligula , was reputed to have joked at the birth of his child , that from such a father and such a mother nothing could spring but what would , be abominable and fatal to the state- The malediction had its fulfilment , and the educators of Nero did their worst to render it impossible that he should be other than a violator of divine laws and an enemy of the human species . First , they assigned him to the care . of a dancer and a barter ; then thejr clothed him in purple , laid him on a couch of down , satisfied the most insane of his caprices , amused him by

    immodest exhibitions , made . him . a sensualist while he was scarcely more than a child ., and trained him up to become , while yet a youth , a deliberate fratricide . The poisoning of Britannicus was a fit inauguration of the Neronic reign , and while the young emperor mounted an undivided throne , the body of his brother was laid upon a , funeral pyre , so stained and livid tbat it was necessary to paint the limbs that the murder might not . be evident to all eyes . Dien Cassius says that , a shower of rain fell , and washing off these pigments , exhibited the discoloured carcase to the people . We cannot refuse to believe , upon the testimony adduced by Mr . Merivale , that Seneca was an accomplice in this hideous crime ; at alll events , he was easily induced

    to forgive his patvon and pupil , and it would appear from the statecraft with ¦ which the atrocity -was contrived , that Hero had an astute confidential adviser when lie employed Locusta to mix such a potion as would strike young Britannicus dead whenever it touched his lips . Yet Nero has had his apologists . There have been those who have regarded his reign , as one of comparative glory , and derided the invective of Suetonius ; but we can discover no single point in the character of the emperor , or in the influence lie exerted upon his contemporaries , which was not corrupt , degraded , and -vicious . A brawler in the public streets , depraved in private life , a monstrous and vulgar egotist , unnatural in his affections , first contemplating the debauch and next effecting the assassination of his own mother , he rode

    m state through the streets of Rome while secret hands hung the parricides sack upon his statue , and while the names of matricides were placarded , almost in ghastly jest upon the walls . What was this hut demoralization in its most odious form ? The imperial court bgcanie one enormous lupanar , and the courtiers were buffoons , dancers , singers , and female posture-makers , with the emperor among them in the disgxiise of a god , sometimes descending on the stage to sing with a husky voice , out of his thick and bovine throat , his own verses and those of Seneca . The empire was an empire of baths , games , and prostitution . Into the midst of this profligate levity intrudes the bloody image of Octavia , Nero ' s half-sister , whom , he first seduced , and then , as usual , murdered . " The poor child , " says Mr , Merivale , " had not yet attained her twentieth year" when she was seized

    and bound ; her veins were opened , and the life struggling in her body longer than her assassins expected } she was stilled in a warm bath and decapitated , and her head sent as a trophy to Julia Poppoea . The lying Tigellinus acted as chief agent in this ungrateful murder . Mr . Merivale , without the introduction of repulsive details or apocryphal anecdotes , illustrates with wonderful force the progression of Nero ' s abasement , from , his mode marriage with a male parasite to his death—an episode of unprecedented humiliation and infamy . There is a strange moral in that last degradation of the last Caesar : starting from his table , taking poison from Locusta , who prepared the draught for Britannicus , taunted by his soldiers , without a

    friend to despatch him , creeping reluctantly to the necessity of suicide , urged by his slaves to die , measuring his own grave , finding every possible excuse lor delay , pleading in extenuation of his pusillanimity for moments of preparation , and only urged to plant in his breast a dagger which he dared not drive borne when he read the decree sentencing him to perish " in the ancient fashion . " He asked what that was , and was informed that the culprit was stripped , his head placed in a . fork , and his body smitten with the stick till death . Yet he might say then , as his successor said , " 1 was once emperor . " The . Romans had pronounced him all but divine , the people had shouted round his chariot , the civilized world had exhausted its ilattery upon him , the senate had been his footstool , and the army his throne .

    . The natural workings of Lower Uoman imperialism are minutely and with philosophical precision traced by Mr . Merivale , who does not forget , while drawing the portrait of Nero , to stigmatize that corruption of ideas and manners which enabled him to be what he was . He points—and this is the most valuable chapter in his new volume—to the fallacies and sophisms by which men are insincerely reconciled to despotism . Nero , without foreign allies to support him , -with an armed patrician constituency , alone at the head of a warlike and powerful nation , waa master and tyrant , armed with authority to insult the best , to oppress and plunder all , to offend nature , to commit matricide , to compel the nobles of Koine to bleed themselves to death—a class of mandates with which the Chinese and Japanese arc familiar—and Mr . Merivale asks why was this P The view he takes is , that the worst enormities of the emperor were unknown to the mass of tlie

    people , which is probable , and that even when public men were unjustly put to death the agonies of their execution were shrouded from the popular sight . But beyond this and every other reason was , that tlio Romans were debused , that the masters of slaves had become accustomed to slavery , that the women who scourged their handmaids for an error in the adornment of their hair could have no heroic or decent pride , that the multitude in . iho circus could h uve no patriotic feeling , that the Romans loved power more than liberty , and luxury juorc than either , and their poetry and philosophy felt the inlluence of this voluptuous servility . Stoicism was unequal to the task of overcoming the license aud sensuality of the empire . It needed a nobler race and a grander creed to create another free community in Europe . A . century of imperialism rendered it impossible that Koine should not abdicate her historical position , and here is the lesson enforced by Mr . Merivale , whose masterly narration , written with a singular strength and polish oi stylo , is a work which tlio youth of England may study with confidence and ¦ with admiration . J J

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    THE ANCIENTS AND THE MODERNS . Histoire de la Querellc des Anclens et des Modcrnes , Par Hippolyto Rigault . Paris : llachette . The controversy as to whether tlie ancients were or were not superior to the moderns may be said now to have completely died away . There has been no award on either side . People have simply discovered that the dispute ought never to have taken place , because , unless every ancient is superior to every modern , or every modern superior to every ancient , the whole question is one of appreciation of individuals . Tlie methods and tendencies of classical times arc not so different from the methods and tendencies of all modern times as to justify anything more than a chronological division . The only difference between the early literature of the world ffnd the later is , that human knowledge and experience have increased , and it may now , perhaps , require a mind of greater grasp to deal with all the facts presented to it , and at the same time give due attention to form . Life is at present no longer than it was , whilst the requirements of art arc more vast . Tho critics , however , whose disputes M . RUgault records in this interesting ; and exhaustive volume , were wanting in the impartiality "which , would have put an end to the controversy at once . In every case they became hot partisans ; and , as those who took sides for the undents maintained an opinion offensive to human pride and really puerile in itself , it is not surprising that they have at length succeeded in disgusting the public with classical literature altogether , whilst at the same time the advocated of tho

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    MR . FORSTER ' S ESSAYS . ( second notice . ) Historical and Biographical Essays . By John Forster . 2 vols . John Murray-It is no discredit toa writer or reader of history that he has forgotten , or never studied , Rapin . Mr . Forster , ho-wever , maybe surprised to learn that in the work of that old-fashioned compiler , as -well as in Rushworfcb , the Grand Remonstrance is printed textually , a fact which we have remembered accidentally upon reperusing his analysis and chronicle of the glorious document , worthy to stand between Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights among the state papers of ^ England . ^ It is good for- the mind , in these days of factious insincerity , fiction , and timid compromise , to read the narrative of those grand debates which brought up Pym and Hanipden , Hyde and

    Oulpeper , Falkland , Cromwell , and the giants of their days , who laid the foundations of two centuries of progressive and enlightenedjlaw , and it is of special interest to note the variations of the mighty discussion . It will be remarked as an important passage in the history of the Grand Remonstrance that the Commons then established their right to remonstrate independently of the Lords , a right questioned by old Sir John Culpeper , but vindicated "by the majority . Mr . For ster ' s Essay on the Plan tagenets and the Tudors , published for the first time in these volumes , is a criticism on the constitutional history of a period to which he traces an important branch in the genealogy of English freedom . He aims at showing that party spirit , in , its strict sense , arose in England so early as the reign of John ; that the Great Charter

    then sanctioned created no rights , but declared and defined them ; that under the first line of Plantagenets a popular element had forced itself into the councils of the state ; that ministerial responsibility and parliamentary control existed when the opposition barons drove the Poitevin . Bishop of Winchester across the sea , "but that the constitution of parliament , even when these principles had begun to prevail , was essentially feudal ; The immediate vassals of the Crown , representing certain land , possessed the personal right to be present in Parliament . By a fiction , indeed , but a fiction of invaluable influence in after years , villeins were supposed to sit in the assemblage of earls , barons , knights , and freemen . " Is it difficult to discover , " says . Mr . Forster " throughout these efforts of Norman royalty to check the excess of its ministers and obtain the co-operation , of its people , the vague formation of that authority and House of the

    Commons , which was to prove more formidable than either of the powers it was called into existence to control ? " It -was not long before the faint outlines were fixed distinctly upon public law and practice . In the thirty-eighth of Henry 311 . the principles of a real representation had become part of the constitution of the realm . "As of right the commonalty took , and they kept , the place to which they were called , " and through , the reigns of the first and second Edwards and their saccessors , their hold grew firmer upon the institutions they so largely assisted to improve , strengthen , and sustain . The seventy parliaments summoned by the third Edward erected a basis which might he shaken but could never he overthrown . Tracing the process by which the feudal system was extinguished , Mr . Forster has some excellent

    comments on the rebellions of Tyler and Cade , unwritten chapters in the history of England , and he does no injustice to the body of the insurgents , to their chiefs , or to the results of those important but misunderstood movements . Passing on to the reign of Elizabeth , his estimate of the queen is high , though not higher , perhaps , than the records -warrant ; -while speaking of the first JameSj he presents the big-headed and little-legged mannikin in all the elaborate deformity of his dirt , pedantry , baggy-breeches , clumsy , uncouth , shambling figure , " goggle eyes , " " slobbering tongue , " red face , sandy head , and jabber of incessant vanity . Oliver Cromwell might have derived his first idea of divine right from the spectacle of this Guy at HinchinT brook .

    It -will have been noticed that Mr . Forster discusses from an original point of view many controverted questions in connexion with English constitutional history . We must now , however , lay aside these masterly and fascinating volumes , repeating that , although the second is composed of reprinted essays , with large revisions , the contents of the first are almost entirely new . In a , part of our impression last week the publication of this work was , by a clerical error , incorrectly assigned . We therefore deem it a duty to emphasize the announcement that Mr . Forster ' s Historical and Biographical Essays are published by Mr . John Murray .

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    Ko . 425 , May 15 , 1858 Q T H E LE A ; DER , \ __ __ . 473

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), May 15, 1858, page 473, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2242/page/17/