It cannot, indeed, be denied, that the civil history of Rome, and her military operations, present our species in a lofty aspect of power, magnanimity, and courage—that they exhibit the widest range and utmost extent of the human powers in enterprize and resources—and that statesmen or philosophers may derive from them topics to illustrate almost every political speculation. Yet, however vast and instructive may be the page which unfolds the eventful history of the foreign hostilities and internal commotions of the Roman people, it can hardly be more interesting than the analogies between their literary attainments and the other circumstances of their condition;—the peculiarities of their literature, its peculiar origination, and the peculiar effects which it produced. The literature of a people may indeed, in one sense, be regarded as the most attractive feature of its history. It is at once the effect of leisure and refinement, and the means of increasing and perpetuating the civilization from which it springs. Literature, as a late writer has powerfully and eloquently demonstrated, possesses an extensive moral agency, and a close connection with glory, liberty, and happiness(1); and hence the _history_ of literature becomes associated with all that concerns the fame, the freedom, and the felicity of nations. “There is no part of history,” says Dr Johnson, “so generally useful, as that which relates the progress of the human mind—the gradual improvement of reason—the successive advances of science—the vicissitudes of learning and ignorance, which are the light and darkness of thinking beings—the extinction and resuscitation of arts, and the revolutions of the intellectual world. If accounts of battles and invasions are peculiarly the business of princes, the useful or elegant arts are not to be neglected(2).” If, then, in the literary history of Rome, we do not meet with those dazzling events, and stupendous results, which, from their lustre and magnitude, still seem, as it were, placed at the summit of human affairs, we shall find in it more intelligence and order, in consequence of its progress being less dependent on passion and interest. The trophies, too, of the most absolute power, and the most unlimited empire, seem destined, as if by a moral necessity, to pass away: But the dominion which the writers of Rome exercise over the human mind, will last as long as the world, or at least as long as its civilization— “Alas, for Tully’s voice, and Virgil’s lay, And Livy’s pictured page!—But these shall be Her resurrection; all beside—decay(3).”