engagement was to take place, where agility in the use of weapons and the advantage of discipline and tried hardihood were sure to make themselves felt, and even against the Pompeian horse he had in some measure defended his own by interspersing picked men of the infantry in their squadrons and supporting them by a reserve of six cohorts. Pompey's cavalry, the flower of the patrician youth, with the impetuosity of high blood, began the attack whilst his infantry remained stationary and awaited the spirited onset of their wary foe. It soon, however, became apparent that the hasty valour of the flower of the Roman youth was no match for the nimbleness and cool dexterity of the legionary, who, without striking the rider's mail, pointed his thrust full at his face. The proud chivalry of Pompey were effectually routed, and by their overthrow exposed his army to assault in flank and in rear as well as in front. Caesar's eagle eye perceived the important moment. He called up his third line and made his whole army move forward; and, pressing with the irresistible weight of his serried battalions on the enemy's denuded infantry, determined irretrievably the fortune of the day and the final issue of the long pending contest. He issued orders that Roman blood should not be spilt; but allowed his soldiers to revel at their discretion in the slaughter of the barbarian auxiliaries.

We will not pursue the outline of the narrative any further; for on the decisive field of Pharsalia the conflict between the two great antagonists, the son and father-in-law-the one the representative of conservatism, the other of revolutionary innovation -is brought to its virtual termination. It is, however, instructive to mark the retributive justice of Providence in the mode in which the foremost actors in the drama, after the example of most men of strife and bloodshed, made their exit from the sphere of their animosities. Clodius, as we have seen, fell in a fray on the Appian road. Curio, as has been related, was slain in Africa. Milo, just about the period of Cæsar's landing in Epirus, attempted to revive the Pompeian cause on the mountains of Lucania, and exerted all the ardour of a Claverhouse; but was killed by a stone hurled from the walls of Cosa. The implacable Domitius, pardoned at Corfinium and escaped from Marseilles, was at length cut down in the flight at Pharsalia by Cæsar's cavalry. Pompey fled from the fatal field to Larissathence to the defiles of Tempe-got on board a merchant vessel, and, having embarked his wife Cornelia and his younger son Sextus from Lesbos, sailed for Egypt, of which country the Senate had constituted him guardian; and, as he was stepping

of the boat on the beach at Alexandria, met his deathstroke

from the sword of Septimius, an old comrade in arms, a minion of the youthful Ptolemy. And Cæsar, although triumphant in the struggle against a decaying oligarchy, was only reserved to be immolated in the senate-house on the ides of March, 44 B.C., and to yield his last breath at the base of his rival's statue.

It is needless for us to say that Mr. Merivale brings to the task of historian the accomplishments of a scholar, and an extensive erudition in the literature of the stirring period of which he has indited the narrative. But, whilst allowing him the large praise he deserves, we must be permitted to differ from his judgment in the estimate to be formed of the characters of many of the most marked men of the era. We have already spoken of Cæsar, and we may add a few words about his rival. It is presumed throughout that Pompey aimed at establishing that absolute sway to which his antagonist attained by his destruction; but is there any adequate proof to warrant such an aspersion? Had he really desired a perpetual dictatorship in name or in reality, what was the motive which withheld him from possessing himself of such autocratic power when it was palpably within his reach? He was entrusted with unlimited authority in doubtful emergencies by the Gabinian and Manilian laws, and had the extraordinary commission assigned him of provisioning the city; but, in discharging the functions of unfettered jurisdiction, he served the State without coercing it under his absolute will. He returned from the East laden with spoils and with glory; but one of his first acts on reaching the free Italian soil was to disband his army, after which he entered Rome a private man. He was elevated to the sole consulship; but he resigned the supreme honour into the hands that had delegated it to him at the close of the year, and for the latter half of it associated another with him in office. He was at an envied pinnacle of grandeur, and of course various surmises and suspicions to his detriment floated in the gossiping air of the forum and in the saloons of the nobility; but suspicions are not real evidence. He clung to his proconsular command, it is true; but so would any one have done under similar circumstances, with a rival plotting the double overthrow of himself and his country. Finally; if he really meditated despotic rule, how came it that his resources and armies were not in better preparation when the crisis arrived? Why did he himself sail with his troops, the fasces, and the senate, to Epirus, when in Spain he had an army which, under such a general, would in. all probability have proved an overmatch for his rival's forces? A man intent on striking a blow is not generally so off his guard

or so inconsiderate. It seems to be with reluctance that even Mr. Merivale is compelled to relate that the conqueror of Mithridates was distinguished by affections which threw a glow and charm over the intercourse of private life; and that, besides his amiable qualities, he was unstained by the abominable vices of the period. Mr. Merivale offers many ingenious speculations to make his case good; but he evidently has found it difficult to strain facts to the requirements of an arbitrary theory. On the other hand, Cæsar is placed on the historical pedestal; and posterity is called upon to bow in silent admiration before the finished idol and libidinous impersonation of the popular taste and vices. We are told that he was "the man of the epoch;" but so also was Napoleon Buonaparte the man of France at the beginning of the present century; as Louis Napoleon, the despotic President of a Republic, is the man of his country now. Such characters, if they succeed in their projects, are of course suited to the national necessities of their times; but only in the same sense in which a strait-waistcoat is suited to confine the limbs of a dangerous madman, and manacles are suited as a clog on the ferocious instincts of an assassin. When a nation becomes so depraved and criminal that it loudly requires the bolts and bars of a prison house, a jailer springs up who is immediately hailed as a deliverer-"the man of his epoch❞— and is intuitively perceived to comprise in his untoward idiosyncracy the grand political desideratum.

The reader will be gratified with the historian's portraiture of his hero's person:

"The accounts we have received of Cæsar's person describe him as pale in complexion, of a tall and spare figure, with dark piercing eyes and an aquiline nose, with scanty hair, and without a beard. His appearance, at least in youth, was remarkably handsome, and of a delicate and almost feminine character. He continued, even in late years, to be vain of his person, and was wont to hint that he inherited his beauty from his divine ancestress. His baldness, which he strove to conceal by combing his locks over the crown of his head, was regarded by the ancients as a deformity; and a slight puffing of the under lip, which may be traced in some of his best busts, must undoubtedly have detracted from the admirable contour of his countenance. We can only infer indistinctly his appearance in early life from the busts and medals which remain of him; for all these belong to the period of his greatness and more advanced age. In the traits which these monuments have preserved to us there is also great diversity. Indeed, it may be said that there is a marked discrepancy between the expression of the busts and that of the medals. The former, which are assuredly the most life-like of the two, represent a long thin face, ith a forehead rather high than capacious, furrowed with strong

lines, giving to it an expression of patient endurance and even suffering, such as might be expected from frequent illness, and from a life of toil, not unmingled with dissipation. It is from the more dubious evidence of the latter that we derive our common notions of the vivid animation and heroic majesty of Caesar's lineaments."

Notwithstanding his intellectual excellencies, and the negative service he rendered in breaking down the pale of aristocratic narrowness, we cannot in the least degree assent that Julius Caesar was the "great prophet of the age." He could make laws and repress the ferocity of the times by a system of external checks; but he could not implant the germ of truth and honesty in the individual, whence alone improvement in morals can extend to the platoon, and thence to society at large. He could and did bestow the suffrage of the city on the Transpadane Gauls-augment the number of senators-limit the term of provincial appointments-throw open the franchise to foreign practitioners of medicine and professors of liberal knowledge-reform the calendar-enact inefficacious laws for repressing luxury and repairing the population by a vigorous progeny; but he was quite incompetent to infuse the life of manly principle and high-souled virtue in the breasts of a people festering in the corruption of bestial degeneracy. The social regenerator, as he begins with the individual, so must always fetch his engines and implements from another than any human source. The revolution, of which Cæsar was the master-spirit, was a means in the chain of providential events towards an end which no earthly eye foresaw. By the whole of the known world being gathered under the sceptre which, though Cæsar did not live to sway, he transmitted, a road was paved through the length and breadth of Europe for the introduction of a heaven-born creed which has given motives and sanctions to virtue unknown before, and has taught man his duties as a social being; and, in dependence on that foundation laid in the individual, as a member of the State, by revealing his relation to his Creator and the connection of the present with a future life. This sublime creed emanated from a province subject to Rome and despised by it. The true prophet and effective teacher, whose voice regenerated the world or at least imparted the principle of new life, when the most decayed and disorganised moral chaos had spread desolation among the nations, was the divine Son of a Virgin, espoused to a carpenter, dwelling in an obscure town, in an unthought of region of conquered Palestine. His disciples were illiterate men-fishermen, shepherds, publicans, mechanics-who had earned a subsistence by dragging their nets in the waters of the sea of Galilee, or

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spent their previous lifetime in some sequestered town or village in the routine of daily toil. These Judæan peasants advanced under the banner of a crucified, risen, and ascended Redeemer, to the spiritual conquest of the city on the seven hills to which the whole world was in bondage; and the fabric of Materialism at length crumbled to its primitive dust before the divine potency of the doctrines of the cross.

ART. VIII.-The Seventh General Council, or the Second of Nicaa. By the Rev. JOHN MENDHAM, M.A. Rector of Clophill. London: Painter.

2. Acta Concilii Tridentini. A Gabriele Cardinale Paleotto Descripta. Edente JOSEPHO MENDHAM, M.A. London: Duncan.

3. Memoirs of the Council of Trent. By the Rev. JoseгH MENDHAM, M.A. London: Duncan.

4. A History of the Council of Trent, compiled from a Comparison of Various Writers; with a Chronological Summary. By the Rev. THEODORE ALOIS BUCKLEY, B.A., Chaplain of Christ Church. London: Routledge.

5. The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent: with a Supplement containing the Considerations of the Early Reformers and other Matters relating to the Council. By the Rev. THEODORE ALOIS BUCKLEY, B.A., of Christ Church, Oxford. London: Routledge.

"O, for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where rumour of oppression and deceit,
Of unsuccessful or successful war,

Might never reach me more !"

SUCH was the wish breathed by the gentle spirit of Cowper, oppressed and grieved by the strife and turbulence of an unquiet world; and to a similar wish might every son of peace be tempted to give utterance, amid the heart-burnings and jealousies of those who "profess and call themselves Christians." But such has been the state of the Church, more or less, from its earliest days-and, alas, will be-till the happy time arrives when every heart shall be filled with love to God, "every high imagination cast down," and every "thought be brought into obedience to Jesus Christ:" Now, I beseech you, brethren (was the Apostle St. Paul

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