plains of Etruria, observe the insulated Mount Soracte, from whence, by continuing the view westward, over the Lake Sabatinus, the eye fulfils a semicircular prospect of an hundred and fifty miles. Yet how obscure is the origin of a city that has been twice the mistress of the world! I need not tell you how many doubts respecting the early history of Rome, as it is related in our school-books-doubts surmised in the last age, by the French Academician Beaufort, have been since brought into much more formidable shape and array by the learning of Niebuhr. The descent of Romulus from Æneas, and the derivation of Rome as a colony from Alba Longa, are points no longer held tenable. Indeed, the Romans of the Augustan age believed not one half of the traditions that have been since gravely delivered as facts. Cicero, in a letter to Atticus, ridicules the history of Romulus. From Tacitus and Pliny, it might have been learnt that Scævola burnt his hand to very little purpose, since Porsenna continued the siege of Rome, took it, and reduced it to the most humiliating submission. Polybius, too, attests the whole of Camillus's imagined deliverance of Rome to have been a fable; and, unless we reject that most credible historian, the defeat of Brennus must be about as true as the story of Cinderella. "When Rome was founded, and from what people it originally arose, is precisely," says Niebuhr, "what we do not know." On some of the most important questions that relate to this subject, he adds-" If any one pretends peremptorily to decide on them, let none listen to him." Such language from such an inquirer shows how much easier it is to shake off the husks of fable from history, than to pick up the kernels of its truth. Thus much, however, is assumed as indubitable by Niebuhr himself; namely, that the Romans arose from the combination of several nations who were strangers to one another; and that each of these transmitted its inheritance in language, institutions, and religion, to the new people. The Greek name of the city-though the sacred books had another more mysterious name for it, which it was unlawful to pronounce-betokens some people, whether Pelasgic, or Hellenic, to have entered into the elements of her population. The very name of her language also, not to speak of her position, gives Latium a share in her ancestry. It is allowed that the Sabines coalesced with Rome during her infancy, and that her religion was in many respects Sabine; and though there are no proofs that she was an Etruscan colony, yet there are manifest signs of Etruria having impressed a strong influence both on her religious and civil institutions, and of having at one time absolutely governed her. All legends, agree in recognising the Palatine Hill as the original site of Rome. Another hill, inhabited by the Quirites, and from them named the Quirinal, was certainly a Sabine hill. Roma and Quirium, originally separated by an intervening marsh, were at one time two completely distinct cities-like the old and new town of Dantzic, in the middle ages, or the independent cities of Koenigsberg, that made war whilst their walls met. The story of the Sabine rape has nothing in it intrinsically incredible, yet it may be believed without assuring us that it led to the amalgamation of the cities exactly in the manner described by Livy. The traces of this union have not been entirely effaced. A tradition was preserved, that each city had its King and its Senate, and that they met between the Palatine and Capitoline hills. The union became firmer, most probably, from external danger, from intermarriages, and from the community of religion; and the two towns agreed to have only one Senate, one popular assembly, and one King, who was to be chosen alternately by the one people out of the other. Here the Romans, however, seem to have tricked their allies. Lastly, it appears from no mean historical document,* that Servius Tullius brought with him a whole army of Etruscans, whom he settled on the Cælian Mount, so named from Cæles Vivenna, its former commander, under whom Servius himself had served-an army apparently composed of soldiers of fortune, like the Condottieri of the middle ages. The ideas of Rome and of Liberty are apt to be conjoined in our boy. ish days by the reading of Livy. Yet from that historian himself it may be gathered that few nations were ever more mercilessly ground down by an aristocracy than the Romans were, for centuries after the expulsion of their kings. A vestal spark of the principle of popular rights certainly lingered somewhere in the Constitution, yet it is difficult to see how it was preserved. The formation of such an aristocracy could not have been the work of Romulus. It is not by the will of a prince that men are moulded into an aristocratical government. But the victorious occupants of the Palatine Mount in the age of Romulus must have created that Government, by receiving new comers only on the footing of unequal rights; and the patricians by their valour, superior armour, and monopoly of religious offices, kept themselves exalted above the vulgar, like a race descended from the gods. Servius Tullius strengthened the popular interests, though an opposite and absurd opinion has been often propagated. He called in the richest class of plebeians to serve as cavalry; and he obliged the richer plebeians to clothe themselves in a panoply of metal, as well as to fight in phalanx and use the long spear. It was exactly this conversion of the rich plebeian infantry into men-at-arms and disciplined pikemen, that made the commons of modern Europe an overmatch for the feudal chivalry. Servius Tullius evidently encouraged the rich commoners of Rome; but, unhappily, Roman industry was all domestic, and there was no trade to create a numerous and opulent middle class. There is every reason to presume that the tyrant Tarquin, and the no less tyrannical aristocracy after him, had discouraged the discipline of Tullius, and reduced the Roman plebs to a light-armed infantry; since it is manifest, from the whole account of the secession to the Sacred Mount, and of the insurrection against the Decemviri, that nothing like a plebeian heavy-armed infantry could have then existed at Rome. At that time, we find the commons complaining that their cruel patricians seemed to think themselves a race sent down from Heaven. Even long after the institution of Tribunes, a special law was required to proscribe the unfair flogging of vulgar backs. The mutineers of refractory legions were at their peril executed by com * Viz. the speech made by the Emperor Claudius on the admission of some of the Lugdonese Gauls into the Senate, which has come down to us on two tables preserved at Lyons in the 16th century, and which, since Lipsius, has been often printed with the works of Tacitus, but has probably seldom met with a reader.Niebuhr's History of Rome. panies at a time, and their relations were warned neither to cry for them nor bury them. The assertions of Livy as to the real liberty of the Roman people in those dreadful ages, when, in spite of some appearances of popular political weight, all power, civil, military, and sacerdotal, was in reality in the hands of the nobles, appear extremely suspicious. The rights of property itself must have left the Roman plebeian often more miserable than the West Indian negro; for it allowed him to contract debts, and for these debts his creditors could chain him, scourge him, starve him, and finally sell him, after sixty days, if their sensibility revolted at cutting his body into pieces. The popular right to sanction laws, elect magistrates, and declare peace or war, were also, for a long time, more showy than substantial; for when the sovereign people had passed a decree, the Augur was at hand, and the Augur was a patrician; and if he chose to see unfavourable omens, the popular decision was null and void. The people of Rome, it is true, at last extorted political power from the patricians; but for want of that inmost and most essential soul of all free government, REPRESENTATION, they could not enjoy it. The admission of foreigners to Roman citizenship, however abstractedly just in its principle, aggravated the evil of Roman democracy. The people of Rome became a populace-sensible indeed to the charms of eloquence and the splendour of talent, but mercenary, unstable, and with no ascendant delegated power to act over them, like a brain on an organized body. The natural result was their becoming a military government. That event was the consequence of circumstances, which Cæsar himself, if he had felt like Brutus, could not have prevented, and which, therefore, rendered his murder an unnecessary crime. BRIGHTON. "Lo! Colin, here the place whose plesaunt syte From other shades hath wean'd my wandring mind; Tell me, what wants mee here to work delyte? So calm, so cool, as no where else I find, The grassie ground with daintie daysies dight." The Shepherd's Calendar. Now that autumnal migrations to the sea-side have become an established part of our social system, it is really high time that we should find some more dignified appellation for the gay and handsome towns thus called into existence than the odious term of "Watering Places." A more low and inappropriate phrase (for it seems to bear exclusive reference to water-drinking places) it would be difficult to imagine; and as the retention of so barbarous a term conveys an imputation upon the poverty of our language, it is to be hoped that Mr. Wyattville, who seems to have a genius for compound words, will take the case into his most serious consideration, and invent some sonorous and becoming epithet. Brighton, it is true, modestly designates herself the Queen of watering-places; but even this phrase awakens no more elevated idea than that of a horse-pond somewhat larger than its neighbours; and there would be quite as much majesty in the sound were we to talk of the King of kennels. Call it what you will, Brighton, with many points of general resemblance to other sea-side towns, is in several particulars distinct from all, and perfectly unique. A partial subsidence of the cliff qualified it for a small fishing-hamlet. In point of locality it has no other advantage whatever, presenting nothing but a sterile country without trees, and a sea without ships; both equally monotonous and uninteresting. After many centuries of obscurity, the rage for sea-bathing, propinquity to the metropolis, and the fashion consequent upon its becoming the occasional abode of Royalty, suddenly elevated Brighton into a magnificent town, which will now bear competition with any city of the same rank in the empire. In the total absence of local attraction, there is no instance of any such sudden creation of a large and sumptuous town, or of so rapid, so incredible an advance in the value of land. Trade and commerce, as at Liverpool and other places, have effected nearly similar wonders; but here there is no port, there are no manufactories; it does not even possess the advantage of the steam-boats, which, daily conveying such innumerable shoals from Wapping and Whitechapel, disembogue them at Margate, Ramsgate, and Broadstairs. Some jealous Brightonians, beholding with envy this money-spending freightage, have sighed for such a reduction in the coach-fares as might enable them to compete with the steam-boats. It was a greedy and unwise wish. During the summer season, indeed, it might bring down an irruption of Goths and Vandals, and other barbarians, from the eastern districts of London, to the immediate profit of certain low publicans; but they would leave a taint of vulgarity behind them, which, offending the permanent inhabitants of the higher class, and alienating the occasional visitants who make any pretensions to gentility, might, at no distant period, tend to depopulate the town. The Isle of Thanet should not be grudged its steam-boat mob during the summer months, for on that very account it has no other description of visitants. Brighton has a sufficient sprinkling of vulgarity to afford variety, amusement, and bustle in the height of its season, as well as to exalt, by contrast, the charms of that later period when it becomes the residence of rank, beauty, and fashion; and the coronetted carriages and distinguished pedestrians upon the Marine Parade, present a display of attractions only to be rivalled in the Park at London. It is another peculiarity of Brighton that the bathing, which is the primary consideration of most watering-places, is here quite a subordinate object, the beach not being by any means particularly well adapted for the purpose. So much the better. It is not a town to which people come for their health, but for their pleasure; and instead of being revolted, as at Cheltenham, with dyspeptic, yellow-faced dowagers and spinsters, or jaundiced nabobs, who have manifestly turned their livers into gold;-instead of being haunted, as at Bath, with cadaverous, living ghosts, and flannelled Epicurean wrecks, wheeling about in gouty chairs, or groaning upon crutches, one encounters scarcely any but healthy complexions and happy looks. Nothing indeed can be more gay, animated, and vivacious than the perpetually changing panorama of Brighton. In other towns, people congregate that they may make money—a grave and anxious process; they come hither to spend it, to enjoy themselves, to drive away care, to think of nothing but amusement. Vive la Bagatelle is the order of the day; and never was any order more implicitly, more zealously, more inces santly obeyed. What place can convey to a foreigner a more brilliant and fascinating, and at the same time a more deceptive impression of England, than Brighton? Arriving, probably, from the miserable town of Dieppe, one of the shabbiest in France, and landing upon the light and elegant Chain Pier, he beholds before him a range of noble buildings, extending for nearly three miles along the coast, and presenting a frontage to the sea which may fairly be termed magnificent. Toward its centre it is broken by the opening of the Steyne; affording a glimpse of the grotesque and Oriental Pavilion, embosomed in trees, beyond which, over the gardens of the intervening enclosures, rises the beautiful new Gothic Church, the noblest ornament of the town. He gets into one of the hired carriages, handsomer than some of those that belong to nobility in his own country; takes the fashionable ride along the cliffs; sees nothing but splendid equipages and well-dressed people; passes none but spacious and lordly mansions-for all the meaner buildings are carefully placed out of sight; encounters but few common people, this part of the town not being their resort; does not see a single beggar for the vigilance of the police, if it scare not mendicants from the town altogether, commits them instanter to prison; gazes at a Brighton stage-coach, mistaking it at first for the equipage of some grandee; beholds nothing but opulence, splendour, and gaiety; and pronounces England to be beyond all comparison the wealthiest and happiest country in the world. A sapplied to the empire at large, no conclusion could well be more erroneous; limited to Brighton, the deduction might be justified by the premises. If any one, even among ourselves, would duly appreciate the superior advantages of residing in an opulent and cheerful place like this, where the great business of the day is amusement, and every day is a holiday, let him betake himself for a month to some manufacturing town; let him do penance for a while amid the penury, squalor, wretchedness, and vice of Manchester; let him even walk for a single morning among the bustling, sallow, haggard mob of London, and he will return with renovated delight to the pure air, well-dressed crowds, happy faces, and unalloyed vivacity of Brighton. Such a change will come like returning health and a draught of sparkling Champagne, after having been drenched with the sickly and nauseous abominations of the apothecary. Their commercial character has stamped upon Englishmen an universal ambition to make a good bargain; a profound horror of being taken in; a resolute determination to have the most for their money; all of which feelings are conspicuous in their manner of securing lodgings upon their arrival at Brighton. John Bull has no idea, not be, of coming so far, and putting himself to such an expense, without having the sea after all; and so, if he cannot throw a bit of orange-peel into it from the window of his room-if he cannot half blind himself by staring upon its sunny surface, about as pleasant and profitable an object to pore upon as an enormous burning-glass,-he will have nothing to do with the house, shrewdly observing that he might as well be in London if he is not to have a peep at the water. It was for this that he came, and no one shall chouse him out of it. Nay, there is such a manifest apprehension on the part of many that the Atlantic Ocean may play them false, give them the slip, levant, and abscond before they have had their money's worth out of it, that they will sit for whole mornings |