it. But what stirs one's spirit even against Niebuhr is the dictum that Greece does not survive Alexander except as an empty name. During the century and a half after Alexander, as vigorous a political life went on in Greece as had done in the wonderful century and a half before him, and the spirit of free political organization shewed itself as active; Greek literature, past indeed its youthful prime, as our own is, was yet generating at Athens and Alexandria ideas which, filtered unhappily and diluted as most of them have come down to us, yet make a large part of our literary sustenance now. It is a remarkable instance of what comes of fragmentary and particular dating, or rather of the principle upon which it rests, (that of the abstraction of particular portions of history as alone worthy of attention, without regard of their relation to the rest), that Niebuhr, who we may suppose of all in our times had the widest view and strongest grasp of past history, should so quietly, because eloquence in the Pnyx was silent, leave unconsidered the new life which woke in internal Hellas (in Ætolia, the Achæan cities, Arcadia, &c.), as political energy was travelling westwards from the shores of the Ægean sea to those of the Tyrrhenian, as well as all the philosophy at Athens and all the natural science at Alexandria, as something unworthy of Greece, or not belonging to it. It is very proper to close a particular History of Greece with the close of the period during which the political life and the literature were closely associated with each other; because the history of such a period is capable of being exhibited in a manner, both as to interest and instruction, which the history of other periods will not admit of; but if, after the classic period of a nation, its history is to be considered null, we must give up all hopes of ever having history in such a shape as shall enable us to draw from it valuable conclusions, or observe in it laws of human nature. On the subject of epochs in the Italian towns, the chapter of Scaliger (De Em. Temp. p. 385), to which Niebuhr refers, is very amusing, and Niebuhr's treatment of it not a little singular. "The original Roman system," Scaliger says, was to mark times by the Consuls, and not by the years of the city. But most of the other Italian cities had made out or knew their first year, and dated time from that. The foundation-years of the colonies, and the birth-years of the municipia, being thus known in each part of Italy, it was a matter of shame that the origin of Rome should be so little known, as for Ennius to mistake it by no less than 100 years. Cato, first among the actual Romans, was ashamed of this ignorance and supineness, and so proceeded to calculate the origin of the city correctly." The induction upon which Scaliger founds his assertion that city epochal reckoning was the rule in Italy before the origin of Rome was satisfactorily reckoned, is the citation of what he considers three instances of such reckoning, the one of the time of Tiberius, the second of the time of Justinian, and the third of the year 105 B. C., from a colonial foundation epoch, 90 years before. This latter, to begin with it first, is a date on a stone, and considering that Puteoli was in a Greek part of Italy, the practice if it was one, of dating, at that time, from so important a recent event as the reorganization of the city as a colony, is natural enough, and proves nothing as to any old Italian custom. At the time of this inscription, Greece had long been conquered, and Syria was rapidly being so: the Eastern custom of city-dating was very likely by this time becoming fashionable in Italy. On Scaliger's Ravenna inscription of the time of Justinian, (when Ravenna, as every one knows, was a Greek dependency and a Greek city,) we need not observe, except that it is wonderful what he can have thought it would prove about early customs of Italy. The remaining one is a stone at Interamna, and is, he considers, a congratulatory inscription to Tiberius on the death of Sejanus: it bears the date" anno post Interamnam conditam 704." There is nothing wonderful or un-Italian in a petty municipality, now that the epoch of Rome was a recognized fact, pompously imitating it, in an honorary and show inscription, with one of their own: and till we have more instances of the practice, that is what I should think this must be believed to be: any how it proves Scaliger nothing as to the early Italian practice which the Romans were so ashamed of neglecting. Niebuhr repeats Scaliger's general assertion, slightly diluted, apparently as his own independent opinion: "Eras of cities from their foundation were common in Italy:" and then he mentions, referring to Scaliger, in the text the Interamna inscription, and in the note the Puteoli one, this latter in a way which suggests to one that it is an exception, or something peculiar, different from the common rule, and suggests to one therefore also that there is a common rule for it to be different from: it is a curious case of exceptio probat regulam, or the giving an idea of a general practice by indicating a special peculiarity in respect of it. No one would think, from seeing the two instances together in Niebuhr, that the rule, (if we set aside the Ravenna inscription, which Niebuhr does not seem to like to mention), has got nothing but them to stand on. Niebuhr adds from Pliny (N. H. III. 19) that Cato stated, (it is to be supposed in his Origines), that the foundation of Ameria took place 964 years before the war with Perses, that is in fact, from his own time. Now one purpose of Cato's book, so far as we know it, was to do for as many cities of Italy as he could, what he has here done for Ameria, that is, state as a fact at what time their foundation took place: Cato was an antiquarian, and calculated perhaps the date of Ameria as he did that of Rome, or perhaps found traditions there fixing in some way its date: but there is a difference between the supposition or establishment of a date as a fact and the reckoning from it as an epoch, and that "an era from the foundation prevailed at Ameria” is quite an unauthorized conclusion from Cato's statement. It would be very interesting to make out how far there was anything of the nature of genuine epochal city-dating in Italy, and I am very far from imitating Scaliger and Niebuhr, and making a counter general assertion on the other side: but such transference of assertions as we have VOL. I. March, 1854. 6 here seen, from book to book, and on such slight grounds, is surely a thing to be protested against. I do not like to end this criticism of Niebuhr without saying, that if he has been too hasty here, it is what happens with him but very seldom. He over-dogmatizes now and then, and is over-receptive sometimes, as above, of others' dogmatism: but general views, if not true themselves, are often the cause of truth in others by shewing the way to it; and no one who cares for the progress of historical knowledge, has any cause to quarrel with a little rather precipitate generalization, provided he is sure there is some ground for it, and that he always may be with Niebuhr. The historical student is unworthy of the name who has not the feeling in examining Niebuhr, "Non mea hæc est voluptas, de quisquiliis triumphare." St Augustine on Distillation. MANGETUS (Vol. 1. p. 22, seq., where is much curious learning on the subject,) Sprengel, and others, have proved from Dioscor. v. 110, compared with Plin. XXXIII. 8, s. 41, § 123, that distillation was not unknown to the ancients. A passage of St Augustine, (De Gen. ad litt. imperf. 14, § 47), which gives not only a more particular description of a still, but also a correct account of the evaporation of the sea, and of the formation of clouds, rain, and springs, has, I believe, escaped notice: "Nam neque de fontibus et fluminibus dictum est quomodo facta sint. Qui enim scrupulosius ista quærunt et disserunt, æthereo superlapsu de mari dulcem invisibiliter dicunt extrahi vaporem, his videlicet ascensionibus quas nullo modo sentire possumus: inde conglobari nubes; atque ita terram imbribus madefactam antris occultioribus instillare atque insudare tantum, quantum coactum et per diversos tramites lapsum erumpat in fontes, sive parvos, sive gignendis fluminibus idoneos. Cujus rei documenta esse volunt, quod marinarum aquarum decoctarum vapor sinuato cooperculo exceptus humorem dulcem gustantibus exhibet. Et omnibus fere manifestum est diminutos fontes inopiam sentire pluviarum." J. E. B. MAYOR. 83 V. Notes on the Study of the Bible among our Forefathers. No. I. Vive Deo fidens, Christi præcepta sequutus, Carmen B. COLUMBANI. THE following notes which have been gleaned from time to time in various quarters are now strung together, with the hope of adding somewhat to the evidence amassed by other hands in illustration of the rise, the progress, and the numerous vicissitudes of sacred learning in our own and in the sister-island. What were men's ideas of the BIBLE, in the period that elapsed between the planting of the Christian faith and the revival of letters in the fifteenth century? Did they read it? Did they study it? And if they did, with what auxiliaries, and what success? are questions always full of interest, and more especially in such a thoughtful and inquiring age as ours. I purpose, therefore, to produce some data for the solving of these questions, not of course pretending to exhaust them, but desirous of supplying to the general reader a fair specimen of the materials he will find on turning to original authorities. The present paper will be limited to a brief notice of the early scholars in communion with the Keltic, and especially the Irish Church; the period being that which preceded the invasions of the Northmen: for in truth, as Ireland had no Alfred, those invasions proved almost a death-blow to her scholarship. I hope to touch in some future paper on the service rendered by our Anglo-Saxon worthies, such as Aldhelm, Beda, Alcuin, and the rest, who, as the consequence of their estrangement from at least one section of the Keltic Christians, constitute a separate chain of teachers, and an independent class of witnesses. Although the Gospel had been widely spread in Britain, and in Ireland also, long before the date most commonly assigned to the mission of St Patrick (432), he must be regarded as the first of either country who is known to have been a student of theology. The narratives respecting him are, it is true, on many points, most vague, suspicious, and conflicting; but in one particular they all agree, I mean, his diligent pursuit of biblical knowledge. Thus in the Secunda Vita S. Patricii (Colgan's Trias Thaumat. II. 13, Lovan. 1647), c. xxii., we read that he visited Germanus of Auxerre, "apud quem non parvo tempore demoratus, ut Paulus ad pedes Gamalielis, in omni subjectione et obedientia, sapientiæ studium et Scripturarum notitiam sanctarum ferventi animo didicit:" cf. Sexta Vita (Ibid. p. 67). The Gesta S. Germani (Ibid. II. 244) confirm the previous statement: "non mediocrem e tanti vena fontis in Scripturis cœlestibus haurire eruditionem." And the writer commonly entitled Nennius (between 796 and 994), although stating that St Patrick went to Rome, agrees as to the leading object of his journey: "per longum spatium ibidem mansit ad legendum scrutandaque mysteria Dei sanctasque percurrit Scripturas:" Apud Monum. Hist. Britan. ed. Petrie, I. 71, B. We have no means of ascertaining the character of any of the elementary tracts ("abietoria"), which this writer would ascribe to St Patrick (Ibid. 72, ▲): but his own Confessio and Epistola ad Coroticum (of which the former has been printed, there is reason to believe, in its genuine shape, by Sir W. Betham, Irish Antiquarian Researches, Append. to Part II.) abound in proofs of his familiarity with the letter of the Bible. The MS. in which these writings are preserved is known as The Book of Armagh, and is not later than the 7th or 8th century. It contains, among other treasures, a fine copy of the New Testament in the version of St Jerome, together with the Prologues, or arguments, of the heterodox Pelagius, the spurious Epistle to the Laodiceans, &c.: and, what is remarkable, it omits the disputed verse, on the Three Witnesses, 1 St John v. 7 (Betham, as above, Part II. p. 273). Nor should I fail to add, that the Confessio of St Patrick, as well as his Epistle to Coroticus, do not quote the Vulgate of St Jerome, but an older Latin version. We are told that in his efforts to convert the Irish, Patrick came across the channel into Britain, where he soon enlisted many fellow-workers: and a further proof of the religious intercourse subsisting then and afterwards is furnished in the Life of Gildas (Badonius), who became the rector of the school of Armagh, and had the credit of restoring the Irish Church to the position it had reached in the life-time of St Patrick. Gildas heads the catalogue of British Christian writers: for the bards, |