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learn by their experience to avoid their difficulties: Napoleon crossed the Alps with scarcely the loss of a man, while Hannibal left behind him nearly half his army; yet Napoleon was not a greater man than Hannibal, nor was his enterprise conducted with greater ability. (13) Two things we ought to learn from history; one, that we are not in ourselves superior to our fathers; another, that we are shamefully and monstrously inferior to them, if we do not advance beyond them.

And now if the view here taken of the greatness, first of all history, and then especially of modern history, be correct, it will at once show in what way the professorship which I have the honor to hold, may be made productive of some benefit to the University. It is certainly no affected humility, but the very simple truth, to acknowledge, that of many large and fruitful districts in the vast territory of modern history I possess only the most superficial knowledge, of some I am all but totally ignorant. I could but ill pretend to guide others. where I should be at a loss myself: and though many might possess a knowledge far surpassing mine, yet the mere ordinary length of human life renders it impossible for any one to have that profound acquaintance with every part of modern history in detail, which might enable him to impart a full understanding of it to others. But yet it may be possible, and this indeed is my hope, to encourage others to study it, to point out how much is to be done, and to suggest some rules for doing it. And if, in addition to this, I could myself exemplify these rules in working at some one particular portion of history, I should have accomplished all that I can venture to anticipate. Meanwhile we have in this place an immense help towards the study of modern history, in our familiar acquaintance with the history of the ancient world, or at any rate with the works of its greatest historians. The importance of this preparation is continually brought to my

mind by observing the bad effects of the want of it in those who have not enjoyed our advantages: on the other hand, here, as in other matters, advantages neglected are but our shame, and if we here are ignorant of modern history, we are I think especially inexcusable.

I have detained you I fear too long, and yet have left much unsaid, and have compressed some part of what I have said into limits which I am afraid have scarcely allowed it to be stated intelligibly. This defect however it may be possible to remedy on future occasions, when much that has been now put summarily may be developed more fully. For other defects not equally within my power to remedy, I have only in all sincerity to request your indulgence. Deeply as I value the privilege of addressing you as one of the professors of this University-and there is no privilege which I more value, no public reward or honour which could be to me so welcome-I feel no less keenly the responsibility which it involves, and the impossibility of discharging its duties in any manner proportioned to its importance, or to my own sense of what it requires. (14)

NOTES

ΤΟ

INAUGURAL LECTURE.

NOTE 1.-Page 25.

***"The works of great poets require to be approached at the outset with a full faith in their excellence: the reader must be convinced that if he does not fully admire them, it is his fault and not theirs. This is no more than a just tribute to their reputation; in other words, it is the proper modesty of an individual thinking his own unpractised judgment more likely to be mistaken than the concurring voice of the public. And it is the property of the greatest works of genius in other departments also, that a first view of them is generally disappointing; and if a man were foolish enough to go away trusting more to his own hasty impressions than to the deliberate judgment of the world, he would remain continually as blind and ignorant as he was at the beginning. The cartoons of Raphael, at Hampton Court Palace, the frescoes of the same great painter in the galleries of the Vatican at Rome, the famous statues of the Laocoon and the Apollo Belvidere, and the Church of St. Peter at Rome, the most magnificent building perhaps in the world -all alike are generally found to disappoint a person on his first view of them. But let him be sure that they are excellent, and that he only wants the knowledge and the taste to appreciate them properly, and every succeeding sight of them will open his eyes more and more, till he learns to admire them, not indeed as much as they deserve, but so much as greatly to enrich and enlarge his own mind, by becoming acquainted with such perfect beauty. So it is with great poets: they must be read often and studied reverently, before an unpractised mind can gain any thing like an adequate notion of their excellence. Meanwhile, the process is in itself

most useful it is a good thing to doubt our own wisdom, it is a good thing to believe, it is a good thing to admire. By continually looking upwards our minds will themselves grow upwards; and as a man, by indulging in habits of scorn and contempt for others, is sure to descend to the level of what he despises, so the opposite habits of admiration and enthusiastic reverence for excellence impart to ourselves a portion of the qualities which we admire; and here, as in every thing else, humility is the surest path to exaltation."

Dr. Arnold's Preface to 'Poetry of Common Life.'

NOTE 2.-Page 31.

In one of his travelling journals,' Dr. Arnold writes:

"This is the Canton Uri, one of the Wald Staaten or Forest Cantons, which were the original germ of the Swiss confederacy. But Uri, like Sparta, has to answer the question, what has mankind gained over and above the ever precious example of noble deeds, from Murgarten, Sempach, or Thermopylæ. What the world has gained by Salamis and Platea, and by Zama, is on the other hand no question, any more than it ought to be a question what the world has gained by the defeat of Philip's armada, or by Trafalgar and Waterloo. But if a nation only does great deeds that it may live, and does not show some worthy object for which it has lived—and Uri and Switzerland have shown but too little of any such-then our sympathy with the great deeds of their history can hardly go beyond the generation by which those deeds were performed; and I cannot help thinking of the mercenary Swiss of Novara and Marignano, and of the oppression exercised over the Italian bailiwicks and the Pays de Vaud, and all the tyrannical exclusiveness of these little barren oligarchies, as much as of the heroic deeds of the three men, Tell and his comrades, or of the self-devotion of my namesake of Winkelried, when at Sempach he received into his breast ‘a sheaf of Austrian spears.'

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Life and Correspondense: Appendix C, No. ix

He, too, of battle-martyrs chief!

Who, to recall his daunted peers,
For victory shaped an open space,

By gathering with a wide embrace,

Into his single breast a sheaf

Of fatal Austrian spears."*

Wordsworth's Poetical Works, vol. iv. p. 147.

In his History of Rome, (ch. xxxvii.,) Dr. Arnold speaks of a state of society where patriotism becomes impossible-the inner life being so exhausted as to inspire the citizens (of the Greek commonwealth in their decline) with neither respect nor attachment.

NOTE 3.-Page 35.

"These 'high commissioners,' (under the Terentilian law,) 'Decemviri legibus scribendis,' were like the Greek voμoléraι, or in the language of Thucydides, (viii. 67,) which exactly expresses the object of the law, δέκα ἄνδρας ἑλέσθαι ξυγγραφέας αὐτοκράτορας—καθ ̓ ὅ τι ἄριστα ἡ πόλις οἰκήσεται. We are so accustomed to distinguish between a constitution and a code of laws, that we have no one word which will express both, or convey a full idea of the wide range of the commissioners' powers; which embraced at once the work of the French constituent assembly, and that of Napoleon, when he drew up his code. But this comprehensiveness belonged to the character of the ancient lawgivers; a far higher term than legislators, although etymologically the same; they provided for the whole life of their citizens in all its relations, social, civil, political, moral, and religious."

Arnold's History of Rome, vol. i. 228, note. ***The Greeks had, as we have, their aypapos véμos, or unwritten law of reason and conscience: but they had no other written law, vópos yɛypaμμévos, than the civil law of each particular state; and by this law not only their civil but their moral and religious duties also were in ordinary cases regulated. It was the sole authority by which the several virtues could be enforced on the mass of mankind; and to weaken this sanction in public opinion, by representing the law as a thing mutable and subject to the popular judgment, instead of being its guide and standard, was to leave men

*" Arnold Winkelried, at the battle of Sempach, broke an Austrian phalanx in this manner. The event is one of the most famous in the annals of Swiss heroism; and pictures and prints of it are frequent throughout the country."

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