NATIONAL PREJUDICES. NOTHER Assassination! This venerable City," I exclaimed, "what is it, but as it began, a nest of robbers and murderers? We must away at sun-rise, Luigi.”—But before sun-rise I had reflected a little, and in the soberest prose. My indignation was gone; and, when Luigi undrew my curtain, crying, “Up, Signore, up! The horses are at the gate.” "Luigi," I replied, "if thou lovest me, draw the curtain."1 It would lessen very much the severity with which men judge of each other, if they would but trace effects to their causes, and observe the progress of things in the moral as accurately as in the physical world. When we condemn millions in the mass as vindictive and sanguinary, we should remember that wherever Justice is ill-administered, the injured will redress themselves. Robbery provokes to robbery; murder to assassi nation. Resentments become hereditary; and what began in disorder, ends as if all Hell had broke loose. Laws create a habit of self-restraint, not only by the influence of fear, but by regulating in its exercise the passion of revenge. If they overawe the bad by the prospect of a punishment certain and well-defined, they console the injured by the infliction of that punishment; and, as the infliction is a public act, it excites and entails no enmity, 1 A dialogue, which is said to have passed many years ago at Lyons (Mém. de Grammont, i. 3.), and which may still be heard in almost every hôtellerie at day-break. The laws are offended; and the community for its own sake pursues and overtakes the offender; often without the concurrence of the sufferer, sometimes against his wishes.1 Now those who were not born, like ourselves, to such advantages, we should surely rather pity than hate; and, when at length they venture to turn against their rulers,2 we should lament, not wonder at their excesses; remembering that nations are naturally patient and long-suffering, and seldom rise in rebellion till they are so degraded by a bad government as to be almost incapable of a good one. "we "Hate them, perhaps," you may say, should not, but despise them we must, ifenslaved, like the people of Rome, in mind as well as body; if their religion be a gross and barbarous superstition."-I respect knowledge; but I do not despise ignorance. They think only as their fathers thought, worship as they worshipped. They do no more; and, if ours had not burst their bondage, braving imprisonment and death, might not we at this very moment have been exhibiting, in our streets and our churches, the same processions, ceremonials, and mortifications ? Nor should we require from those who are in an earlier stage of society, what belongs to a later. They are only where we once were; and why hold them in derision? It is their business to cultivate the inferior arts before they think of the more refined; and in many of the last what are we as a 1 How noble is that burst of eloquence in Hooker! "Of Law there can be no less acknowledged, than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world. All things in heaven and earth do her homage; the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power." * As the descendants of an illustrious people have lately done. They know their strength and know that to be free, The mighty vision that the prophets saw, Through nations numberless in battle-array, men; The City, that, by temperance, fortitude, Within those silent chambers where they dwell, read the Appian,1 once an avenue onuments most glorious, palaces, doors sealed up and silent as the night, dwellings of the illustrious dead-to turn rd Tibur, and, beyond the City-gate, out my unpremeditated verse re on his mule I might have met so oft ce himself 2- or climb the Palatine, ming of old Evander and his guest, ning and lost on that proud eminence, while the seat of Rome, hereafter found than enough (so monstrous was the brood ndered there, so Titan-like) to lodge n his madness; 3 and inscribe my name, ame and date, on some broad aloe-leaf, shoots and spreads within those very walls e Virgil read aloud his tale divine, re his voice faltered and a mother wept of delight! 4 But what the narrow space underneath? In many a heap the ground es, as if Ruin in a frantic mood done his utmost. Here and there appears, ft to show his handy-work not ours, lle column, a half-buried arch, ll of some great temple. -It was once, long, the centre of their Universe,5 street of the tombs in Pompeii may serve to give us some the Via Appia, that Regina Viarum, in its splendour. It is the most striking vestige of antiquity that remains to us. Augustus in his litter, coming at a still slower rate. He was long by slaves; and the gentle motion allowed him to read, nd employ himself as in his cabinet. Though Tivoli is only miles from the City, he was always two nights on the road.- the words "Tu Marcellus eris." The story is so beautiful, ry reader must wish it to be true. in the golden pillar in the Forum the ways ran to the gates, n the gates to the extremities of the Empire. Went to the ends of the earth. Let us descend We are come, Are now where once the mightiest spirits met In terrible conflict; this, while Rome was free, The noblest theatre on this side Heaven! -Here the first Brutus stood, when o'er the corse Of her so chaste all mourned, and from his cloud Burst like a God. Here, holding up the knife That ran with blood, the blood of his own child, Virginius called down vengeance. But whence spoke They who harangued the people; turning now To the twelve tables,1 now with lifted hands To the Capitoline Jove, whose fulgent shape In the unclouded azure shone far off, And to the shepherd on the Alban mount Seemed like a star new-risen ?2 Where were ranged In rough array as on their element, 3 The beaks of those old galleys, destined still 3 Along the Sacred Way 1 The laws of the twelve tables were inscribed on pillars of brass, and placed in the most conspicuous part of the Forum.-DION. HAL 2 "Amplitudo tanta est, ut conspiciatur a Latiario Jove."-C. PLIN 3 The Rostra. 4 Marcus Junius Brutus. 5 It was in the Via Sacra that Horace, when musing along as usual, was so cruelly assailed; and how well has he described an animal that preys on its kind.-It was there also that Cicero was |