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triumph that lasted so short a time. . . . It was all past and gone now, that constraint and repugnance in the tent, that impatience of each other's presence, those angry recriminations, those heartless biting taunts, and the final rupture that could never be pardoned or atoned for now.

Oh, that she could but speak to him once more! Only once, though it were in words of keen reproach or bitter scorn. It seemed like a dream that he should never hear her voice again; and yet his senses vouched that it was waking cold reality, for was she not lying there before him, surrounded by the slain of his devoted legion? The foremost, the fairest, and the earliest lost amongst them all.

Hippias himself and Placidus are both conveniently disposed of in the same general slaughter, leaving the stage free for Esca and his Mariamne, who live happy ever after under the protection of his gentle patron, Licinius.

Such are Major Melville's Gladiators; and we are bound to say in their behalf that they are brought before us as living men, moulded into what they were by the exigencies of a profession, justly reprobated by the improved sentiment of modern times, and yet which had its bright as well as its dark side, and cannot be dismissed in a few sonorous sentences as a mere excrescence of a luxurious and degraded civilization. Nothing is easier, or more popular, than to string together commonplaces in disparagement of that popular tendency which developed itself in exhibitions of mortal combat at Rome, as it does in other exhibitions of strength or valour elsewhere. And it must be admitted that it is almost as easy, if not quite so popular, to string together equally polished commonplaces in their defence. When we have assented to the common verdict that the gladiatorial exhibitions were 'bloody and brutal' -as they were, to an extent hardly conceivable by people educated in more humane ideas-we have by no means exhausted the subject of contemplation which they offer. The effect of such exhibitions upon the spectators themselves,' says Merivale,' was simply evil; for while they utterly failed in supplying the

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bastard courage for which they were said to be designed, they destroyed the nerve of sympathy for suffering which distinguishes the human from the brute creation.' How far they failed in supplying courage' may be a question; spectators sitting at a safe distance do not catch the infection from exhibitions of valour, but, indirectly, the habit of dwelling in imagination on deeds of daring is not without its influence on the character, and the seat of imagination can hardly be reached in ordinary natures except through appeals to the senses. That they did in fact destroy the popular nerve of sympathy with suffering, seemspace so great an authority-still less evident. History shows that all through the era when the taste for these exhibitions most prevailed, that nerve was slowly acquiring more acuteness, under the all but imperceptible, yet irresistible, influence of increasing intelligence and material civilization. In truth, the absence of the sentiment in question is commonly remarkable in youthful nations, just as it is in young children. The early Roman was brought up to give and take away life with the indifference of the American Indian. Or rather, his primitive morals, as far as we know them, are those of a slow struggle out of a condition of sanguinary barbarism, to which the customs of Dahomey alone afford a parallel. He was the descendant of men who, in times hardly yet forgotten, had practised human sacrifice in the market-place, had devoted to death all the children born within two months of spring, in the hideous mystery of the Ver Sacrum;' of those who had still more recently confirmed by law the power of death to father over son, husband over wife, creditor over debtor. And when the slowly breaking light had scared away these grisly phantoms of domestic savagery, the law of war remained still deformed by the murderous usages which had become partially obsolete in the code of civil life. The conquering people which scourged to death the princes of Etruria, and massacred or sold its commonalty, had not as yet be

come acquainted with gladiators. The avengers of Hannibal's victories, who obliterated Carthage and its people, hardly knew them. In truth, these exhibitions themselves, brutalising as they are termed, were but a substitute for the more savage practice of early times. Combats of gladiators, we are told by Servius, were introduced among funeral rites instead of the primæval slaughter of captives round the tomb; 'quod crudele visum est.' And in those early shows where the swordsmen fought round the funeral pyre, the spectacle would not have been deemed complete without the death of all the vanquished. And much later, fighting matches of gladiators without quarter-sine missione '-were common enough in the republican days. They were prohibited, it is said, under Augustus. And thus, as the unbounded license of blood which characterized the republican times became restrained by the slow advance of what, with all its defects, we must call comparative civilization; when human life began to have in men's minds a certain amount of sentimental value; when wholesale massacre, in war or after war, began to be stigmatized as something exceptional, something to be reproved or apologized for-it was then that the passion for gladiators culminated, and this great Roman 'fancy' became interwoven with the thoughts and passions of all classes to an almost inconceivable degree. As the actual spectacle of death in war was more and more removed from the popular eye, as the long compulsory peace of the early Empire succeeded to the bloody struggles of the preceding era, so the 'fancy' gradually supplied more and more the place of the reality. It gratified no doubt the innate ferocity of the Roman-ought we not rather to say of the human-spirit? But it did much more. It furnished also the image of the manlier virtues which imagination attributed to the old days-hardihood, endurance, chivalry, courtesy; for all these qualities were often and often exhibited by the hired gladiator in the exercise of his profession, and it was

through their exhibition that he became the hero of the hour, a favourite at once with the populace and the higher classes, the trusted comrade of an Emperor, or the object of the fierce love of the patrician Lionnes,' in a higher degree than the most fashionable bullfighter who ever knelt before a Queen of Spain. And as this kind of romantic halo was thrown round the character of the gladiator, so his profession itself-sanguinary as it still remained—acquired a kind of polish of its own. The 'bestiarii,' or beast-fighters-slaves, criminals, Christians, and the like, who were sent to combat with wild animals for a chance of their lives- became altogether a different class from those accomplished swordsmen who were matched against each other with almost the solemnity of the judicial duels of after ages. And we may conceive that though the populace jealously retained the right of awarding life or death, by the well-known usage of turning the thumbs up or down, to the defeated champion, it was more and more commonly exercised on the side of mercy, as the memories of fiercer times melted away. Marcus Antoninus, clement beyond his age, is said even to have attempted to reduce these combats to sham fights with blunt weapons. But with all this refinement, we are forced to imagine that the business lost by degrees its high popular flavour. It became overdone.

Everybody who wanted to please the people, or to win an entry into public or fashionable life, gave a ludus,' just as a lady eager to make her way into society gives a concert or a ball. 'A shoemaker has just been exhibiting gladiators at Bologna,' exclaims Martial, ' a fuller at Modena: where will a publican do it next?' Then the fashionable world began to meddle with the business, not as exhibitors only, but as actors. Senators, knights, very fast ladies like Valeria, proud at first of taking lessons from distinguished professionals, at last themselves turned gladiators for the nonce; and as there is no record, so far as we are aware, of any of these interesting

personages having been either slain in the fight or popularly condemned to death by the rule of thumb,' we are compelled to suppose that means must have been devised to accommodate the bloody hazard to the requirements of persons of quality. Poets and novelists now got hold of it for 'sensation' purposes (see Juvenal and Petronius), much as adventures among Barbary corsairs and Highland caterans served at different times the turn of modern novelists in search of catastrophes. It became less and less the mimicry of existing life-the stage, exhibiting the form and pressure of the actual time-more and more an image, a reproduction of the past, an historical romance of Roman chivalry addressing itself to the eyes. It lost in life and freshness what it gained in artistic perfection. No doubt, also, it became too much of a trade. A deal of business must have been done in a quiet way among the fighters and their illustrious backers, of which the public had only an indefinite conception. It is true that the imperfect records of those times furnish no distinct evidence of a 'cross' between secutos and retiarios; nor were the Romans, albeit desperate gamblers in other ways, much addicted to betting-at least we hear only of occasional wagers on the chariot races, not of systematic book-keeping. But that something of the kind attended the degeneracy of the art we may be certain, and that it contributed greatly to its ultimate decay. That decay, as in most similar instances, was interrupted by many spasmodic reactions, when prodigal emperors or imaginative nobles furbished up the old sentiment for a time, and men who despised modern tenden*cies exulted in a revival of the manlier spirit of old Rome; but, on the whole, the progress was towards extinction. Philosophers and politicians looked in general with despair on the practice; less, indeed, from our point of view than from one more appropriate to their age and country: as servile, ignoble, 'low,' rather than as cruel. But, notwithstanding all the supposed brutalizing tendency of the exhibi

VOL. LXIX. NO. CCCCXI.

tions themselves, reason and feeling made their way at last. Even before Christian sentiment had penetrated the masses Lucian could introduce his supposed philosopher, Demonax, as warning the Athenian assembly, in debate on a proposal to exhibit a show of gladiators, in order to eclipse the Corinthians who had just done the like: Before you come to the vote on this subject, O Athenians, you must pull down the altar of Mercy.' And we can hardly doubt that, though Christianity contributed largely to the decline of the fancy,' and ultimately produced its legal suppression, yet it did but cooperate in this matter with a change in public taste, caused partly by the slow but invisible softening of manners, and still more by the still slower but equally certain decline of interest in the amusement itself, as representing only the traditional characteristics of a world gone by.

Now in the history of the great Roman fancy'-the most magnificent, extravagant, and diabolically pungent to which the world has given birth-we have, on a grander scale, that of all the 'fancies' of civilized nations. And where is the brave and hearty people which were ever educated without one? Delight in the exhibition of mere activity and bodily skill is an universal feeling; but when the game becomes one of danger, and bravery, endurance, forbearance, are called into exercise along with those more ordinary qualities, then this delight may become exalted into a passion, and a passion grounded in some degree on the nobler principles of our nature. But to be universally popular, the 'fancy' must gratify another feeling beyond all these what we may term the dramatic passion. It must, like the early stage, represent the world without. It cannot subsist long on associations far removed from those of actual life. The games of Greece grew out of the daily invigorating habits of the Grecian youth: when those daily habits lost their simplicity, the games became first mere artificial shams, and then nonentities. The tournament, the magnificent, though somewhat mo

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notonous, passion of the "middle ages, drew all its spirit and all its popularity from the circumstance that battles were decided and fiefs and castles won, and crowns given away, by the men who could with the greatest dexterity manage a heavy horse in heavy armour. When the German musqueteers and the Swiss pikemen had put an end to this absurd episode in the history of warfare, the tournament became out of date, but not for a long time. It was kept up by the fancy' for a century or two with greater enthusiasm than ever, and only grew by degrees first pedantic, and then obsolete. So the bull-fight owed in truth its intense popularity to the fact that it represented on a mimic stage the free country sport of a gallant people of horsemen. Now that population has become more numerous, and equestrian habits are declining, it no longer represents reality it has become, so to speak, professional, and, having lost its root in national manners, it is no doubt doomed to extinction, whatever appearance of vitality it may yet exhibit. And such-to pass to our own great national fancy-is the real history of pugilism: the only instance of the kind, except that of the gladiatorial shows, in which a taste of this sort, first originating in the populace, has been taken through inoculation by the more refined class, and now chiefly owes its remaining vitality to the latter. It was in truth a representation of real life, such as it existed in our rough English story' not so many generations ago: the life of a brave, spirited, and quarrelsome race, who yet cherished a peculiar aversion to bloodshed, and also to the use of deadly weapons, not through fear, but through a peculiar sense of degradation in the employment of aught which might diminish the fair stand-up equality between man and man. So long as the noble science of defence was really an essential part of the education of any man who did not mean to give the wall to others through the whole of his life, so long pugilism enjoyed a real and deeply-grounded popu

larity. As law and order grew more practical and uniform in their prosaic application to society, so the Ring became more and more a thing apart, something professional, which represented nothing but itself; and now that we are all taught from childhood to rely on the policeman's truncheon rather than on our fists, it is in truth out of date. Herein lies, as we suspect, the real reason of its inevitable decline: not so much in the improved tastes of the people, nor even in the blackguardism and swindling with which it has become unhappily connected, great as the evil influence of this latter cause has been. We are not criticising the efforts of those, doubtless fundamentally in the right, who condemn all such exhibitions as inconsistent with the true development, and derogatory to the dignity of man. But these are boldly confronted by their opponents, who are now engaged in stirring up the embers of the old fire-who exhibit in eloquent language the nobler side of pugilism-who descant on its manly and Christian points, or dwell, perhaps more effectively, on the mean and paltry tendencies which are apt to develop themselves in the progress of society, along with the decline of the taste for rougher sports. But the fact is, that the fancy' is liable to a profounder cause of decay, which cannot be counteracted by any amount of paradoxical eloquence expended in efforts for its revival: it is obsolete and unreal, a sham and a formula.' It must go the way of gladiators, and Olympic games, and bull-fights -aye, and of greater things than these; for it is as certain that locomotives will extinguish horse-racing as that gunpowder put an end to tournaments, though most of us may fondly hope that they will last our time. Our descendants will no doubt accommodate their tastes and their inclinations to that strange new world-the stranger, assuredly, the more we endeavour to exercise our mental eyesight by gazing on its possibilities of which the vista seems to open at the end of this waning century.

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M.

LAND TENURE QUESTION.*

HE rulers of England-QUEEN and landed aristocracy-inherit a position nearly the most brilliant in human history. Spain for two generations was on a like eminence: Russia and the United States alone compete with us. China being in decadence and in apparent dissolution, there now exist only three powers of the greatest scale, if we look at the surface of the earth which they cover, and the prospect of their future. All three are necessarily exposed to envy and severe criticism. Hitherto, in the comparison of the three, England has stood fairest in the eye of foreign censors; for the serfdom of Russia and the slavery sustained within the American Union have served as a foil, reflecting brilliancy upon our imperial policy, which, however ambitious of territory and of subjects, has been impartially humane in its theory and strivings; nay, in regard to freedom of the press and of social life, has been the most liberal of known despotisms, both in India and in the Crown colonies. The freedom of the Englishman on his own soil has been an axiom over Europe, and, since the great Reform Act of 1832, has been supposed victorious over aristocracy, as, long before, over a tyrannical dynasty. Thus whatever nation aspired to well-ordered freedom, whether Spain and Sicily, Hungary, Greece, Naples, or Piedmont, looked up to England with admiration and with hope. We have been judged somewhat more severely since the concourse of foreigners, and especially of exiles, to our shores has made them more intimately acquainted with our state; and we are about to be judged far more severely still, after American slavery has disappeared, and Russian serfdom been absorbed into a system of petty freeholders.

With a nation, as with a child, liberty has its grave moral dangers. If liberty be understood to mean

that wisdom shall abdicate government, the character will soon degenerate into vice, and the gravest evils must follow. There are two possible courses towards virtue for an individual: either to plunge into evil and drink its bitterness, then through the miseries of repentance sadly struggle up towards a solid goodness; or, being warned, and becoming wise in due time, to shun evil before it can be dominant, and pass without convulsion into the higher state. The same is clearly true of a nation. But the latter and happier course implies wise instructors for the child, wise institutions for the nation; and the wisdom of institutions must in part be measured by their power of shielding each order from its own vices, as well as from oppression by another order. If we apply this test, it is to be feared that large deductions must be made from the panegyrics which we are accustomed to bestow on our national institutions.

An American newspaper editor, wishing to illustrate the unfairness of one-sided representations, lately drew two pictures of England, favourable and unfavourable, declaring that each separately was true, though either presented singly was unfair. Such a critic is not splenetic and sour-minded. And what were the chief features of the unfavourable portrait? Foremost he places-that in England the rate of wages for agricultural labour is so small as to deprive the peasantry of all but the coarsest food and clothing, and of any reasonable hope of rising in the social scale; that the manufacturing and mining population is to a great extent uneducated, intemperate, irreligious, and immoral, and often reduced to severe suffering by strikes for increased wages; that Scotland, formerly eminent for piety and education, now consumes more spirits per head of its population than any other part of the kingdom; that in

*Letters on Landed Tenure; in Morning Star of December, 1863, and January,

1864.

Manual of Political Economy. By Henry Fawcett. M'Millan and Co.
A Plea for Peasant Proprietors. By W. T. Thornton. John Murray.

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