says, contributed to the Eclectic Review. By JOHN 2. Miscellaneous Essays on Christian Morals, Ex- perimental and Practical. By John Foster. The Miscellaneous Works of THOMAS ARNOLD, D. D. First American Edition, with nine additional Essays, not included in the English Collection. VIII. WARE'S LIFE OF HENRY WARE, JR. 1. A Discourse on the Life and Character of the REV. HENRY WARE, D. D., pronounced in the First Church in Cambridge, September 28, 1845. By JOHN G. PALFREY, D. D., LL. D. 1. The History of Oregon and California, and the other Territories on the Northwest Coast of North America; accompanied by a Geographical View and Map of those Countries, and a Number of Documents as Proofs and Illustrations of the History. BY ROBERT 2. The Oregon Question; or, a Statement of the British Claims to the Oregon Territory, in Opposition to the Pretensions of the Government of the United States of America. By THOMAS FALCONER, Esq. 4. Berzelius on the Use of the Blowpipe 5. Baldwin's Universal Pronouncing Gazetteer NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. No. CXXX. JANUARY, 1846. ART. I.. Greece under the Romans: A Historical View of the Condition of the Greek Nation, from the Time of its Conquest by the Romans until the Extinction of the Roman Empire in the East. By GEORGE FINLAY, K. R. G. Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons. 1844. 8vo. pp. 554. THE period of Grecian history embraced in the work before us extends from one hundred and forty-six years before Christ to the year 717 of our era. It is full of interest, though of an interest widely different from that which belongs to the classical ages of Hellenic civilization. Greece had run her brilliant career. In every species of literature, in every department of art, in all the regions of æsthetic beauty, she had left monuments of her genius which the world has not since been able to rival. The principles of political science had been richly illustrated by the various experiences of her numerous and widely contrasted polities. That peculiar kind of confederation which combines under one energetic government a cluster of republics, each sovereign in some respects, and in others constituting only a part of the united sovereignty, like the government of the United States of America, alone has no exact parallel in the political history of the Grecian republics. It is not without reason, therefore, that students of politics have resorted to Grecian history to trace the workings of institutions and principles, as men observe in small models the operations of wheels and springs combined in mechanical inventions. But the free action of the Greek political life ceased with VOL. LXII. - No. 130. 1 the Roman conquest. From that moment, the fair land of ancient civilization ceased to have an independent existence, and was incorporated into the vast body of the martial empire of Rome. Though Greece had foolishly exhausted her resources and energies in civil wars, her genius was preeminently for the arts of peace. The quick sense of the beautiful, the rapid invention, the intuitive elegance of imagination, which distinguished the leading races, especially the Ionian, led them to engage with passionate enthusiasm in those pursuits which adorn and exalt human life, rather than in the brutalizing and bloody works of war; and while Rome stands foremost among the military nations that have placed their chief glory in conquests, the name of Greece is for ever identified with all that is most beautiful in imagination, most thrilling in eloquence, most harmonious and entrancing in poetry. Which species of fame is most worthy the ambition of beings endowed with the immortal energies of reason and imagination ? This work of Mr. Finlay goes over, in part, the same ground that Gibbon has occupied in his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; but the subject handled here was only an incident to Gibbon's stupendous undertaking, as Greece was only a small province of the world-embracing empire of Rome. In many respects, therefore, Mr. Finlay has gone beyond the researches of Gibbon, inasmuch as his labors come within a narrower range. He has carefully studied and thoroughly mastered all the original authorities upon which a satisfactory history of such a period must necessarily be constructed, and the fruits of modern researches that come in as useful subsidiary aids. His work is, therefore, learned and profound. It throws a flood of light upon an important though obscure portion of Grecian history, which has been but little attended to by scholars, because it is not adorned by the splendors of poetry and eloquence which shed an undying glory over the great ages of Greece. Mr. Finlay's style has none of the elaborate elegance and the stately historic march of Gibbon's; it is sometimes rugged and uncouth; but it is always significant and clear. He is so well informed upon all the details of his subject, his views are so distinct and so thoroughly reasoned out, that the language is never vague, the meaning never involved, the sentences never merely half significant, through the imperfect knowledge of the writer. In the essential requisites of fidelity, accuracy, and learning, Mr. Finlay bears a favorable comparison with any historical writer of our day; but in the literary merits of composition, in artistic beauty of form, he is greatly inferior to many. Mr. Finlay is known to the world as a distinguished Philhellene; a friend of Greece in her hour of affliction, sharing with our gallant countryman, Dr. Howe, and others, in the perils and the glory of her brave resistance to the barbarian. He has long resided in that country, we believe, and identified his interests with her dubious fortunes under the existing government; and, besides the present work, he has written on subjects of a classical and antiquarian character; his work possesses, therefore, almost the authority and interest of one written by a native of the country. There are circumstances in the character of the Greek nation which attach a peculiar interest to every period of its history. The Greeks of the present day are the only unquestionable representatives of antiquity. Though Greece fell under the military power of Rome, many of her peculiar institutions remained untouched by the conquerors, and her population continued to a great extent homogeneous and unmixed; and though, at the downfall of the Byzantine empire, Greece was overrun and trampled under foot by Asiatic barbarians, she still preserved her language and the consciousness of her illustrious descent. Among her mountain fastnesses, while her plains were held by the dark and turbaned infidel, a heroic race, resembling the warriors of Homeric song, maintained their independence, and chanted their deeds of daring in strains that do no discredit to their inherited genius. Thus the Hellenic race was preserved; and when the hour struck which was to see the foreign yoke thrown off, and the oppressor's power shattered and dispersed for ever, the thrilling recollections of old, uttered in words that have resounded over Greece since the days of Homer, strengthened the heart and nerved the arm with the exalting consciousness that Marathon and Thermopyla were to them no themes of schoolboy learning, kindling a factitious enthusiasm, but immortal names in their own history, scenes of fame in which their own great ancestors had acted, and which they, no unworthy sons of such ancestors, were bound to emulate. The period, therefore, illustrated by Mr. Finlay's work is characterized not merely by a scientific or antiquarian relation to the general mass of our knowledge, but has important bearings upon the present condition of living men. There is a feature in Mr. Finlay's method of treating his subject which gives to the result of his researches a special value; he has investigated not merely the facts of history, so as to present an intelligible narrative, but has inquired into the causes of political phenomena, laying them open to the light of modern science in such a manner, that the reader sees how the vices of administration worked out their inevitable consequences in the decline of physical prosperity, and in the gradual disorganization of the elements which constitute the necessary conditions of a progressive national existence. In other words, Mr. Finlay understands the principles of political economy, and has applied them skilfully to the explanation of the facts in his narrative. The old relations of Greece with the rest of the world were greatly modified by the conquests of Alexander. Like other ancient warriors, he set out in his career without the least shadow of right to justify his invasion of remote and unoffending nations; but unlike other ancient warriors, he sought to create a new and better era, by founding new cities, extending the commerce of the world, encouraging the arts, and establishing a great empire on enlightened political institutions. The teachings of his great master, Aristotle, had initiated him in the science of government, and now, when he attempted to consolidate his conquests, guided him into the path of wisdom, which no other ancient founder of an empire had had the sagacity to discern and to follow. The language and institutions of the Greeks were planted among the barbarians, but not forced upon them. The power and wealth of the monarchs who succeeded Alexander, and divided his empire, overbalanced the influence of the free states of Greece, and, by opening a more extended sphere of action and holding up to the view of the ambitious more glittering rewards, drew off from the small theatre of continental Greece a large proportion of her ablest men, and Alexandria became the capital of the civilized world. A more intimate intercourse with the Asiatic courts corrupted the simplicity of Grecian manners, the kings of Macedonia assailed the independence of the southern Grecian states, which it was found impossible to unite in their common de |