prince, degenerated into mere anarchy, while an able and popular one had everything his own way. The Macedonian government was indeed essentially monarchical; there was no formal constitution, and probably few or no written laws; the absence of a Legislative Assembly is expressly asserted by Polybius;' and Demosthenes testifies to the personal agency of the king himself being the primary moving power of everything,† contrasting it herein with the republican governments of Greece. Still the Macedonians were clearly anything but slaves like the Asiatics; though political liberty had no existence, there were certain barriers of civil liberty which the king could not venture to overpass. There was evidently something analogous to trial by jury; Alexander, in the height of his conquests, did not venture to put a free Macedonian to death, in the way of public justice, till he had been submitted to the judgment of his peers. Again, the Asiatic pomp, both of Alexander himself and afterwards of Demetrius, is expressly alleged to have offended a people used to very different treatment at the hands of their rulers. The mere existence of a Macedonian monarchy is in itself a remarkable phenomenon, as no other civilized European state so long retained a monarchical constitution. Macedonia, and Epeirus also, till in the latter a democratic revolution extinguished the line of Pyrrhus, look like continuations, on a larger scale, of the old heroic monarchies which in Greece and Italy were abolished at a much earlier period. W'e We see then, that, even in a political point of view, Macedonia is far from being an altogether barren subject, while, regarded ethnologically, it is of the very highest interest. will not, however, now enter on the question of the exact amount of national kindred between Greeks and Macedonians, as it is a subject far too extensive to be cursorily examined at the end of an article. It involves the whole Pelasgian controversy, and cannot be determined without a complete. examination of the entire ethnological phenomena of Greece, Italy, and Lesser Asia. We will at present only express our belief that the Macedonians were a branch of that great Pelasgian family-using the word in what we conceive to be Niebuhr's sense of it-which extended into all those countries. That barbarian, especially Illyrian, elements were very much intermingled in the Macedonian nationality, is perfectly clear; but it is to our mind no less clear that the predominant aspect of the Macedonian people is, like that of the Siculians, the Epeirots, even the Lycians and Carians, one of a quasi-Greek character. Their * xxxi. 12. Μακεδόνας ἀήθεις ὄντας δημοκρατικῆς καὶ συνεδριακῆς πολιτείας. Phil. iii. 59, 60. Character and Position of Macedonia. 449 language was not Greek, consequently in the Greek sense it was barbarous, but it was clearly akin to Greek,* in the same way as the different Teutonic tongues are to one another. The whole region which we have mentioned is clearly marked by the recurrence of similar local names in widely different districts, by a similar style of primæval architecture, and by the extreme facility with which all its inhabitants adopted the fully developed Hellenic language and civilisation. The only remaining state of any note during the Macedonian period for the Etolians were mere bandits, and can afford little political instruction-was Sparta. The later history of this once imperial city is highly important in a political point of view, and it is interesting, far beyond that of any contemporary state, in the portraits it affords us of personal character and adventure. Macedonia, after Alexander, gives us, unless we may venture to put in a word for our poor friend Demetrius, no character really calculated to excite our interest; Antigonus Doson was certainly a good man and a good king, but we know comparatively little about him, and there is nothing specially attractive in what we do know. Even the chiefs of the League are not men to excite much enthusiasm on their behalf. The character of Aratus was always stained by many weaknesses, and towards the close of his life it assumed a deeper dye; of the gallant Lydiades we know less than we could desire; even the brave, prudent, and excellent Philopomen is, after all, a hero of a somewhat dull order. But far different is the case when we have to tell how the gallant, unselfish, enthusiastic Agis won the glory of the martyr in the noblest but most hopeless of causes, and how his mantle fell upon an abler, though a less pure successor. Here, for once, we may turn with satisfaction from the prejudiced narrative of Polybius to the picture afforded us by Plutarch of the happy union of kingly virtues with every amiable quality of domestic life. Nowhere either in Grecian or in any other history can we find a character more fitted to call forth our sympathies than the heroic wife of the two last Heracleids; nowhere are more touching scenes recorded than the martyrdom of Agesistrata by the side of her slaughtered son, or the parting of Cleomenes from his mother in the temple of Poseidon, parent and child alike prepared to sacrifice all for the good of Sparta. There can be no doubt but that the designs of Cleomenes would have borne lasting fruit, but for the envious treason with which Aratus stained the glory of his earlier exploits. Agis perished because he undertook the visionary task of restoring a state of things which had for ever passed away; Cleomenes, a * See Müller's Dorians, i. 3, 486. keener and less scrupulous statesman, adapted himself to the circumstances of the time. The Dorian element was dying out in Sparta, just as the Norman and Frankish elements have died oat in England and France; Sparta was again Achæan, as France is again Celtic, and England again Saxon and Danish. The only difference was, that at Sparta formal barriers had to be removed, while in the other cases the silent operation of time has been sufficient. Cleomenes, a Heracleid prince of the old Achæan blood, had no sympathy with Dorian oligarchs. He became the true leader of the people. He swept away, by his unscrupulous energy, distinctions which had outlived their purpose, and re-established the throne of Tyndareus rather than that of Agesilaus. That Aratus could not bear the glory of such a rival; that rather than submit to a cordial and equal alliance with the Spartan king, he preferred to undo his own work, and to hand over the Greece he had liberated to the grasp of a Macedonian ruler, is one of the most painful instances on record of the follies and crimes of otherwise illustrious men. Sparta and the League cordially allied,--for a closer union their circumstances would not have allowed,-might have braved the power of Antigonus and Philip, and perhaps have postponed, for some generations, the predestined absorption of all in the vast ocean of Roman conquest. But time would fail us to tell of Laconian heroism and Achæan treason, of Roman diplomacy and Etolian rashness. We must forbear enlarging on the day, when, at Cynoscephala and Pydna, the shield and the sarissa, which had borne the literature and civilisation of Greece into the deserts of Scythia and the burning plains of Hindostan, were themselves doomed to fall before the mightier onslaught of "the good weapons That keep the war-god's land." We have yet to see the successor of Philip and Alexander toiling his weary way, as a dishonoured captive, along "the bellowing forum" and "the suppliant's grove;" we have yet to witness the last throes of Grecian freedom, disgraced as they were by the rashness and cupidity of a Diæus and a Critolaus, but still calling on us to let fall a tear over the fate of plundered and burning Corinth. But we must tear ourselves from the theme, throwing ourselves in full confidence upon the judgment of our readers, and looking for their favourable verdict in the cause which we have endeavoured to advocate, that of the high interest and value of Grecian history in all its stages, even down to its latest and most miserable decline. ART. VI.-1. Dante's Divine Comedy. Translated in the Original Ternary Rhyme. By C. B. CAYLEY, B.A. 3 vols. London, 1851. 2. Translation of the Divina Commedia. By the Rev. E. O'DONNELL. London, 1852. 3. Dante's Divine Comedy. The First Part. Translated in the Metre of the Original, with Notes. By THOMAS BROOKSBANK, M.A. London, 1854. 4. Dante Hérétique Revolutionnaire et Socialiste. Révélations d'un Catholique sur le Moyen Age. Par E. AROUX, Ancien Député. Paris, 1854. DURING the last few years four new translations of the Divine Comedy have appeared in England, and to these is now added one by Mr. Brooksbank, which does not yet extend beyond the Inferno. New editions have also been issued of the translations by Cary and Wright. Of these translations there is none which does not give some aid to the student of the original. The difficulties in Dante are seldom, we should perhaps say never, verbal ones, so that the correction of a predecessor's mistakes has not been in any case the motive leading a new adventurer into the field. Each book has its own claim of merit, and they interfere but little with each other. We are disposed to welcome all, and a dozen more, should a dozen more make their appearance. At each successive perusal of any profound author, much will strike the mind which had at first escaped notice; and much that had at first perhaps dissatisfied us, will, in other lights, and in connexion with objects not at first brought into our view, be seen to have had, with reference to the purposes of the author, its fitness and proportion, and, in its just adaptation to the place which it occupies, a peculiar beauty and propriety. We are glad to take up a book which, in any way, or from any sources, illustrates a favourite author. If but a single passage is so brought out as to enable us to see what was before obscure, the volume well deserves its place among a student's books; and we sometimes think that there are cases in which our English scholars, fixing their attention on each distinct passage, and even on every minute word and particle, with the object of reproducing its effects in another language, may be of more aid in the interpretation of the letter of Dante than any of his Italian commentators. Blanco White tells us that he once possessed a little pocket edition of Shakespeare, in several small volumes, on the margins of which he marked with pencil lines the passages which struck him with admiration. At first a few passages were marked,-some happy phrase, having to him, a foreigner, often more force than to a native of England, was noted. Now and then something that, if it had no other right to particular comment, reminded him of the poets of his own country. Then would come one of those wonderful passages which, expressed in language of the utmost simplicity, reveal secrets of our common nature with almost the effect of magic, and make the whole world kin. Line after line-scene after scene was thus noted, till the margin of almost every page bore traces of his pencil. There are moments in which to glance over a translation is even pleasanter than looking at the original work, however well acquainted one may be with such original. Of this we have in the case of Goethe a curious proof. "I do not like," he said, "to read my Faust any more in German, but in this French translation"-he spoke of that published under the name of Girard-" all seems again fresh, new, and spirited." The best Italian scholar is not unlikely at times to prefer taking up Rose's Ariosto to looking at the original,—or to amuse himself, in preference to either, with a book which to us gives the spirit of Ariosto, though with less accuracy in details, more truly than Rose, the old strange volume of Sir John Harrington, which, "if there be aught in old tradition true," was the pleasant penance imposed on him by Queen Elizabeth, who, having been more amused than became a virgin of her years with his translation of one of the few passages in the Furioso which pass beyond the bounds of that permitted license with which sportive. poets treat grave questions of morals, commanded him to translate the whole work. Dryden's noble translation of Virgil, with its thousand faults, redeemed by such unequalled beauties as no other poet ever squandered on a work not properly his own, is probably read with most delight by those who are best acquainted with the original. It is probable that the only readers of Frere's or Mitchell's translations of Aristophanes are those who, recollecting the original, are amused by the dexterity with which difficulties are encountered and evaded, but here the enjoyment is rather for the scholar than for those who read poetry with a truer feeling. Of the earlier translators our acquaintance was first made with Cary, and him we still in all respects prefer. Among the later books we think Mr. Brooksbank's will probably give pleasure to a greater number of readers than the others. That pleasure would perhaps have been greater had he not adopted the complicated structure of verse in which the original has been written. This form of verse has also been used by Mr. Cayley. We do not think that any English poet has triumphed over its difficulties. It has been now and then used by Surrey,—by Daniel, -by Sir Philip Sidney, in his translation of the Psalms, and by |