The history of the Roman republic by Mr. Levesque, is mentioned with respect in this section of the Report. We could not read this work with any degree of patience, nor can we speak of it without indignation.-In point of literary execution, it is below mediocrity, and in spirit detestable. With a view of recommending himself to his government-probably at its instigation, he has attempted to falsify the records of the republican era of Rome, and to blacken the reputation of the illustrious champions of Roman freedom. The reader may judge of the real drift of Mr. Levesque, by the account given of his labours in the Report. "He has," says the Institute,

in private, their conversations constantly turn upon the subject of military expeditions; that they never meet without eagerly demanding if there is any thing new; that the crowds of newsmongers are seen on all sides tracing upon the earth or upon the wall the chart or map of the country where the army may be situated, announcing its success with a loud voice, but carefully concealing the reverse; seeking and exaggerating reports which precipitate the city into the most immoderate joy, or plunge it into the most terrible despair.'

We have often been struck with the close resemblance in some points, between the comparative character of the Athenians and Lacedemonians, and that of the French and English. The following extract from the parallel between the former drawn by Thucydides in his first book, will leave the same impression on the reader. The Corinthian deputies are made by the historian to address the Lacedemonians thus

"The Athenians are a people fond of innovations, quick not only to con. trive, but to put their schemes in effectual execution: Your method is, to preserve what you already have, to know nothing further, and when in action to leave something needful ever unfinished. They again are daring beyond their strength, adventurous beyond the bounds of judgment, and in extremities full of hope. Your method is, in action to drop below your power, never resolutely to follow the dictates of your judgment, and in the pressure of a calamity to despair of deliverance. Ever active as they are, they stand against you who are habitually indolent; ever roaming abroad, against you who think it misery to lose sight of your homes. Their views in shifting place is to enlarge their possessions. You imagine, that in foreign attempts, you may lose your present domestic enjoyments. They, when once they have gained superiority over enemies, push forward as far as they can go; and if defeated, are dispirited the least of all men. Whenever in their schemes they meet with disappointments, they reckon they have lost a share of their property. When those schemes are successful, the acquisition seems small in comparison with what they have further in design; if they are baffled in executing a project, invigorated by reviving hope, they catch at fresh expedients to repair the damage. They are the only people who instantaneously project and hope and acquire; so expeditious are they in executing whatever they determine. Thus through toils and dangers they labour for wards so long as life continues, never at leisure to fully enjoy what they already have, through a constant eagerness to acquire more. They have no other notion of a festival than of a day whereon some needful point should be accomplished; and inactive rest is more a torment to them than laborious employment. In short, if any one adjudging their characters should say, they are formed by nature never to be quiet themselves, nor suffer others to be so, he describes them justly?”

"denounced those crimes which the Romans, from a fanatical love of liberty, had exalted into virtues;-without offering an apology for every part of the conduct of Cæsar, he has refused to applaud the excesses of the faction opposed to him;but above all, he had it in view to allay the enthusiasm which the Romans inspire, and which he believes to be dangerous, because it is capable of engendering in the minds of men in every age, contempt or disgust for the government of their own country, when it does not resemble that of Rome.".

Thus it is, that after the arms of France have crushed every vestige of modern republicanism in Europe, and are now direct⚫ed, with infuriate and implacable hostility, against the only free constitution remaining there, her writers are employed in profaning as it were the tomb, and polluting the memory of ancient republicanism; in stripping the illustrious founders and protomartyrs of liberty, of the venerable honours with which they had been invested, by the unanimous consent of mankind, and clothing them in the hideous garb of assassins and robbers, in order that there may be nothing left, either in the example of the old, or in the institutions of the modern world, to inflame the imagination against the hellish dominion of the sword.Thus it is that history, under the government of Bonaparte, and in the prostitute hands of the French literati, is used not to enlighten, but to obscure and distort the past; not to recommend and canonize virtue, but to seal the triumph, and to prepare the apotheosis of vice.

The only English work on the subject of ancient history, which the Institute condescend to notice, is that of Mitford in relation to Greece. When this respectable writer considers the spirit which dictated the following observations, he will not find himself much flattered by the compliment they are meant to convey. "The author of the history of Greece," says the Report, "has studied his subject well; he has preserved himself from that enthusiasm of extravagant liberty which has made so many writers, particularly in his own country, wander from the truth. He omits nothing that is calculated to give us a just idea of the morals, the politics, the manners, and the government of the ancient Greeks; but although he declares himself to be free from prejudice, he may be accused of judging on all points, according to the opinions of his age and of his country.

The Report indulges in a particular criticism on Mitford, the propriety of which we are inclined to contest. It is as follows:-" He appears to suppose too readily that the Greeks had a federative constitution, which, according to him, was

dissolved at the period of the battle of Mantinea; whereas the Greeks did not conceive the idea of such a constitution until a century after this battle, when the Achean league was formed."-This assertion of the Institute is much too peremptory. It may indeed be questioned whether the Greeks had any idea of a civil federative union, analogous to our own, anterior to that of Achaia, but there can be no doubt of their having been previously united, in something like a permanent political confederacy.

The dangers to which the northern parts of Greece were exposed from invasion, and the necessity of defending the Peloponnesus from the eastern colonies, led to the establishment and maintenance of the Amphictyonic council, which assumed, even before the Persian war, the character of a general congress, or representative assembly of all the Grecian states. It was undoubtedly in the nature of a permanent diet, charged with the care of the common defence against foreign enemies, and with the preservation of domestic concord. It took cognizance not merely of religious disputes, or of acts of impiety, but of infractions of the law of nations, and deeds of lawless violence between the numerous cities, which acknowledged it as their supreme head, and the depositary of their most important interests. It was, indeed, at all times deficient in coercive strength, but continued, from the authority which it enjoyed, to be usefully operative as a political magistracy, until, by suffering itself to be too much engaged in religious disputes, it degenerated into a mere synod, and no longer served but as an instrument of ambition or revenge, in the hands of the more powerful members of the league. The functions of this institution, and its efficient existence for a long period, leave no doubt but that Mr. Mitford and with him Gillies, Barthelemi, and most of the writers who have treated of Grecian history, are right in supposing, that the Greeks understood the theory, and partially enjoyed the advantages, of a federal government, strictly so called, previous to the age of Aratus.-Such a republic as our own, partly federal and partly national, so happily tempered, so nicely compacted, so firmly established, was indeed, never imagined, even by the most speculative of the philosophical statesmen of antiquity; and required, we may venture to say, before it could have been either conceived or established in our own times, so glorious an archetype and so encouraging an experiment as the British constitution.

After giving a long and tedious account of the labours of the French literati on the history of the middle ages, the authors of the Report proceed to survey the progress of modern

history since 1789.-Here again they are almost entirely taken up with the productions of their own language. Muller's History of Switzerland, and Schiller's thirty years war, are the only foreign works introduced to the knowledge of the reader, and these are only named. They must have experienced no small difficulty, in making up such a catalogue of French writers in history since the revolution, as would satisfy in any manner the cravings of national vanity. To eke out a suitable number of pages on this head, they have foisted in a long eulogium on the history of Russia, by Levesque, published in 1781, but reprinted at Hamburgh in 1800; and a detailed account of the historical writings of Gaillard and Anquetil before the revolution, as introductory to the exhibition of their subsequent and very insignificant labours.-In the notice which they take of Gaillard's history of Charlemagne, they reprove him severely for the unfavourable picture which he has drawn. of the private character, and for the censure which he has passed upon the usurpations, of this ferocious conqueror.

It is perhaps known to most of our readers, that Bonaparte is fond of being called "the modern Charlemagne," and has often asserted his right as Emperor of France, to whatever was conquered by the arms of his "predecessor."-The Institute, in the eagerness of their zeal to flatter the pride and support the pretensions of their sovereign, do not fail to improve the opportunity afforded by the mention of Galliard's work, in order to defend the barbarian hero and his projects, against all vituperation. It is somewhat amusing to sec how their servility works, and to trace the operations of the grovelling spirit of adulation, in such phrases as the ensuing.

"The history of Charlemagne is a noble theme; it affords an opportunity of comparing the great man of a barbarous age, with the great man of a civilized one.-Mr. Gaillard has not been happy in all parts of his work; it would seem that an erroneous idea of ancient France has occasioned his principal faults; he mistakes ancient Gaul, for France properly so called, and seems to think, that Charlemagne ought to have been satisfied with the former.-But this was on the contrary, but an acquisition of the Franks. France properly so called,-the true country of that people—was a part of Belgium, and a vast territory to the right of the Rhine as far as Mein.-As Gaillard's principal object in all his works, is to decry war and conquests, and as he appears to have conceived the hope of bringing about a general peace in Europe by his writings, he represents Charlemagne as the unjust aggressor of the Saxons, as

culpably ambitious, &c. and endeavours to inspire us with more interest for the vanquished, than for the hero."

"Mr. Hegewisch, who published his history of Charlemagne in 1791, is more just towards this prince. While Gaillard, a Frenchman by birth, fatigues his readers with complaints about the evils, which the Saxons suffered ten centuries ago, Mr. Hegewisch, a native Saxon, acknowledges that his ancestors stood in need of being subjugated. Charlemagne, adds this judicious historian, protected the agriculture of the people whom he subdued; he gave them laws as good as the age would admit, and scattered over their country fruitful seeds of prosperity. All the nations whom he conquered ought, even now, to pronounce his name with gratitude. It is the great views of Mr. Hegewisch that render his work very superior to that of Mr. Gaillard."

Thus is poor Gaillard shorn of his beams, and postponed to one of the dullest of chroniclers, for the meanness of his spirit in not admiring war and conquests, and his stupidity in not comprehending, that subjection to the yoke of Charlemagne, accompanied by the most cruel oppressions that barbarian conquest could carry in its train, were among the absolute wants of the Saxons.

Of the late French historians enumerated by the Institute, there is none who truly merits the name, with the exception of M. de Segur and Mr. de Rulhiere. The Tableau historique et politique de l'Europe, by Mr. de Segur, is a production of considerable merit, and worthy of the reputation which the author has established, as an able writer and a sagacious statesman.-In the well known work entitled Politique de tous les Cabinets de l'Europe, of which he was the editor, he has made an invaluable accession to the diplomatic history of the eighteenth century. Mr. de Rulhiere obtained early, a respectable place in the ranks of literature, by his "Historical elucidations of the causes of the revocation of the edict of Nantz." He died in 1791, and left behind him, two historical works, one published in 1797, styled " Anecdotes concerning the revolution in Russia, of 1762;"-the other in 1807, under the title of a history of the anarchy and dismemberment of Poland. The first met with considerable success, and was read with eagerness, as the author was an eye witness of the events which he describes, and has reported them with great fidelity. The Institute notice only the last, which was left in an unfinished state, and much corrupted both in the style and sentiments, by the persons into whose hands it fell.Under these disadvantages it is still to be considered as an