Literary history is, _secondly_, of importance, as being the index of the character and condition of a people—as holding up a mirror, which reflects the manners and customs of remote or ancient nations. The less influence, however, which literature exercises, the less valuable will be its picture of life and manners. It must also be admitted, that from a separate cause, the early periods, at least, of Roman literature, possess not in this point of view any peculiar attractions. When literature is indigenous, as it was in Greece, where authors were guided by no antecedent system, and their compositions were shaped on no other model than the objects themselves which they were occupied in delineating, or the living passions they portrayed, an accurate estimate of the general state of manners and feeling may be drawn from works written at various epochs of the national history. But, at Rome, the pursuit of literature was neither a native nor predominant taste among the people. The Roman territory was always a foreign soil for letters, which were not the produce of national genius, but were naturalized by the assiduous culture of a few individuals reared in the schools of Greece. Indeed, the early Roman authors, particularly the dramatic, who, of all others, best illustrate the prevalent ideas and sentiments of a nation, were mere translators from the Greek. Hence, those delineations, which at first view might appear to be characteristic national sketches, are in fact the draught of foreign manners, and the mirror of customs which no Roman adopted, or of sentiments in which, perhaps, no Roman participated.