shocking want of taste, and an utter ignorance of the actual state of things. Before Trajan’s time, Greek literature had long been dead; in the reign of Augustus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus was accomplished as a critic and as an historian; in that of Tiberius, Strabo was eminent for his practical turn for history. Yet these stand quite alone. Under Domitian, Greek literature began to be restored by the schools of the rhetoricians, who assume quite a different character. Dio Chrysostom of Prusa is really an author of uncommon talent, whose speeches for the most part painfully impress us by the triflingness of the matter of which they treat: everywhere we find in him an excellence of language, a pure, though acquired Atticism, over which he has a wonderful mastery. There is not a more amiable mind than his: he is not vain, like a rhetorician, and yet he is conscious of his powers. He was an unaffected Platonist whose whole soul was in Athens: by-gone Athens was all the world to him, and for it he forgets Rome and its rulers. He is succeeded by Plutarch of Chæronea, whose amiability every one must know and appreciate, although it is easy enough to see his defects as an historian, and the weakness of his eclectic philosophy. Notwithstanding this, there is no saying how much we owe him; and it is impossible to read him but with the highest pleasure. His language is far less perfect than that of Dio. By these two men, Greek literature was raised again; and though they had no successors to equal them, yet we may date from them a new era. The real Alexandrine literature must be deemed to end with the death of Eratosthenes in the reign of Ptolemy Evergetes: the period from Aristarchus to Dio, is an intermediate one which has no distinct character. In Rome under Augustus, a bad Greek literature became in vogue, the Greek “_abbés_” (or language-masters) having corrupted every body’s taste, as the French did ours in the last century: Livy stands forth like a great man in that age. The fancy for what was Greek, even though this had no longer a literature, spoiled Rome until the time of Seneca: much mischief was also done by the fondness for sophistry. Then follows Quintilian as the restorer of pure taste in Roman literature: from him to Tacitus, there is a new classic era. Yet this epoch did not last: the Greek school raises its head again, and fascinates the Romans anew. Under Hadrian, the Greek language once more becomes prevalent, and is generally written by all persons of education; under the Antonines, all is hellenized.—The taste is changed; the antiquarian fondness for the quaint and for Grecian phraseology, becomes the ruling fashion of the day. HADRIAN. T. ANTONINUS PIUS. M. AURELIUS ANTONINUS.