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himself been bribed, probably by the Spartan and Messenian exiles, whose restitution, on entering upon his office, he immediately effects.

With regard to the precise relation of the federal authority to the individual cities, we are again left to draw our inference from the incidents of the history itself. It would seem that the act by which a new city entered the league took the form of a treaty with the league-a treaty recorded in the usual Greek manner, upon a monumental pillar. These pillars are frequently alluded to in the course of the history. Unfortunately, not one of the inscriptions on them has been preserved to our time. One thing, however, is perfectly clear, that the management of foreign affairs was vested absolutely in the federal government, and that each city on entering the league simply ceased to exist as an independent state in the presence of foreign nations. One of the most striking proofs that this was the rule is presented by an exception to it. The city of Megalopolis, in the Cleomenic war, sends an embassy to Antigonus Doson to ask for his help. But it asks and obtains the leave of the federal assembly before it takes this step. And the reply of Antigonus is, that he will send the assistance requested, "if the Achaians give their consent." Later, however, when Rome was preparing the way for the dissolution of the Achaian League, we hear of frequent embassies from discontented states (as Lacedæmon and Messene) to Rome. But this, it cannot be doubted, was a violation of the federal constitution, as it also was of the treaty with Rome, in which, according to Pausanias, it was expressly provided that ambassadors should be received at Rome only from the federal government, and not from the individual states. In earlier times, we hear of cities belonging to the league sending ambassadors to represent them at the assembly (see the cases of Mantinea and Megalopolis, in Mr. Freeman's work, pp. 448-466). In this (though it is contrary to the usage of the United States of America) there is clearly nothing contrary to the principle of a federal union: nor do we quite understand the surprise at it which Mr. Freeman expresses. Since the Mantinean or Megalopolitan citizens who attended a meeting of the assembly, attended only as private citizens, and not as accredited representatives of their city, it is clear that, in order to address the assembly in the name of the city, special commissioners were necessary. This necessity is not felt in America, where the states are represented in Congress, not only as populations, in the House of Representatives, but as states, in the Senate. In Switzerland, however, although the cantons are represented precisely as the states in America, it is, * Paus. vii. 9, 12.

*

nevertheless, in addition provided that a canton shall have the right of communicating directly, by correspondence, with either house of the legislature.

sion.

We should gladly, if our limits had permitted, have followed Mr. Freeman's course through the events of the Achaian history, as well as through the somewhat dry details of the Achaian constitution. We can only refer to one or two points. Few histories are so biographical as that of the Achaian League. The lives of Aratus and Philopomen exhaust between them nearly the whole story. To these names the filial piety of Polybius has induced him to add that of his own father Lycortas, who, after the death of Philopomen, endeavoured steadily to carry out his policy of temperate resistance to Roman aggresMr. Freeman, we are sure, would wish to complete the list with Markos, the first general of the Achaians, and Lydiadas, the tyrant of Megalopolis, who voluntarily laid down his tyranny, and united the "great city" to the league. On Aratus Mr. Freeman is severe, perhaps even hardly just. The picture that he gives us of his military character is certainly over-coloured. "No man," we are told, "risked his life more freely in a surprise, in an ambuscade, in a night assault;" but "this man, so fearless in one sort of warfare, was in the open field as timid as a woman or a slave. . . . History puts the fact itself beyond a doubt: Aratus in the open field was a coward." Human nature presents many strange contradictions; but the contradiction here described seems to us to pass the bounds of credibility. The fact, which history puts beyond a doubt, is, that Aratus lost almost every battle that he fought, and never fought a battle when he could help it. What he was afraid to risk was the Achaian army, and with it the Achaian commonwealth; his own life he probably held as cheap by day as by night. And something might be said in his defence. The Achaian troops were not to be depended on; they had confidence neither in their leaders nor in one another. It is true that, under Philopomen's training, they showed that they could become good soldiers; but Aratus did not possess Philopomen's military genius. In one instance, at least, the military demerits of Aratus are exaggerated by Mr. Freeman. At the battle of Ladocea he is accused of halting his heavy-armed troops on the brink of a trench, and refusing to allow them to cross it. In this he was probably wrong, though Plutarch says he was inferior in numbers to Cleomenes. But, at any rate, it is fair to observe that the obstacle which, in Mr. Freeman's English is a trench, in the Greek of Plutarch is a deep ravine. Lydiadas, perhaps with more courage than judgment, called to the cavalry to follow him, and charged the enemy. Still Aratus

did not stir. In the broken ground Lydiadas was overpowered and killed. The popular judgment of the Achaians was probably the truth; it was, that Aratus had not supported Lydiadas as he ought to have done, and that through his fault Lydiadas had perished.

Lydiadas is a great favourite with Mr. Freeman; he places him "among the first of men." It is disappointing, after his ardent panegyric, to turn to Polybius, or even to Plutarch; we are made to feel how scanty the materials are for so much enthusiasm. Something of greatness there must have been about this man, or he could not have divided with Aratus the affections of the Achaian people. We feel that Cleomenes did well when he wrapped the body of the fallen hero in a kingly robe and sent it crowned to Megalopolis. We wish to believe all that Mr. Freeman has found to say about him; but the utmost that we can bring ourselves to credit is, that it may be true. We read in Plutarch that Lydiadas, when he was yet a youth, made himself tyrant of Megalopolis. On this text we have the following comment:

"In his youth he seized the tyranny of his native city; but he seized it with no ignoble or unworthy aim. We know not the date or the circumstances of his rise to sovereign power, but there is at least nothing to mark him as one of those tyrants who were the destroyers of freedom. He is not painted to us as a midnight conspirator, plotting rebellion against a state of things which made him only one free citizen among many. Still less is he painted as the chief magistrate of a free state, bound by the most solemn oaths to be faithful to its freedom, and then turning the limited powers with which his country had intrusted him to overthrow the liberties of which he was the chosen guardian. We do not read that he rose to power by driving a lawful senate from their hall by the spears of mercenaries, or by an indiscriminate massacre of this fellow-citizens in the streets of the Great City. We do not read that he reigned by crushing every noble feeling, and by flattering every baser passion, of his subjects; we are not told that every man of worth or talent shrank from his service, and left him only hirelings and flatterers as the agents of his will. There is no evidence that the dungeons of Megalopolis or the cities of free Greece were filled with men whose genius or whose virtue was found inconsistent with his rule. We do not hear that his foreign policy was one of faithless aggression; that he gave out that tyranny should be peace, and then filled Peloponnesos with needless wars. It is not told us that he seized on city after city, prefacing every act of plunder with solemn protestations that nothing was further from his thoughts. Still less do we find that he ever played the basest part to which tyranny itself can sink; that he stretched forth his hand to give a hypocritical aid to struggling freedom, and then drew back, that he might glut his eyes with the sight of a land wasted by anarchy and brigandage, to which a word from him would at any moment put an end. No; Lydiadas was" &c.

For Mr. Freeman's sake, no less than for that of his readers, we enter our protest against this mode of writing history. We have no partiality for Louis Napoleon, nor have we any wish to spare him a single invective, so long as invective does not intrude into history. But we instinctively feel that invectives against him, which might suit the columns of the Saturday Review, are out of place in a history of the Achaian League. To tell us what Louis Napoleon has done, under pretence of telling us what Lydiadas did not do, neither helps us to understand Achaian history, nor really does any honour to Lydiadas. Unfortunately the passage we have cited is not the only instance of the fault-so grave, and yet so easy to avoid-of carrying the passions and the language of a journalist into history. It is a real blemish in Mr. Freeman's book; it is a serious drawback to the pleasure with which we read his comparisons of the ancient and modern world, and it gives an ephemeral character to a work the interest of which is not, and ought not to be, ephemeral.

ART. V.-POLAND AS IT IS.

[It may be right to say that we give in the following Article the exact words of a most intelligent eye-witness of the Polish Revolution. The policy of this country with regard to Poland is discussed in Article LX.]

La Pologne Contemporaine.

Michel Lévy.

Par Charles de Mazade.

Paris :

Recueil des principaux Traités. Par Martens. Vols. VIII. and X.

THE saying of the Emperor Nicholas, "there is no Poland except among the émigrés," may now take place with the similar aphorism of Metternich, that Italy was only a geographical expression. At the very moment when the work of the Holy Alliance seemed to be complete, the accident of a political dinner among a few third-rate politicians in Paris shook it to the ground. The first Italian War, and the reappearance of a Napoleon in France, led up so naturally to Sebastopol and Solferino, that the new order might almost seem to have been inherited. The instinctive hatred which the Tory and Legitimist party every where have felt for the Crimean War, and their unreasoning previsions of evil, have been fully justified by the results on the absolutist system. We are making a new world every where in Europe; or rather, perhaps, we are stripping off the lath-and-plaster with which

certain kingly architects defaced the natural work of time nearly fifty years ago. There has been much bloodshed in the operation, and not a little blundering and intrigue. But the final results at present attained have been Italian liberty, serf-emancipation in Russia, a constitution in Austria, and a great expansion of material progress in France and England. Perhaps fifteen years could hardly have been expected to do

more.

With the first beginnings of troubles, all eyes were turned upon Russian Poland. To the surprise of all, it remained quiet. There was insurrection in Posen and a war in Hungary, in which Poles did gallant service; but they seemed still to be the true countrymen of Sobieski, doing battle for every banner except their own. The Crimean War came and passed with no armed uprising against the Russian yoke in Warsaw. The campaign of Solferino had almost produced an insurrection in Hungary; but Poland was still apathetic, or at least peaceful. Suddenly, in 1861, the news came, not of insurrection, but of massacre. Europe heard with consternation of an unarmed crowd shot down in a public square without warning, and, as it seemed, with no better motive than the caprice of a subaltern of police. Presently, however, it appeared that a struggle of a kind never yet known had commenced throughout the Polish provinces of Russia. On the one hand, the Russians were striving to provoke a revolt, in order, as Wielopolski once expressed it, that they might bring the abscess to a head. On the other hand, the Poles had resolved to offer themselves to death on every possible occasion, in the belief that the spirit of martyrdom would at length be too strong for despotism itself. The parallel steadily kept in view, and unflinchingly acted up to, was that of the early Christians under the Empire. "The crown of thorns," said a manifesto, "has been our emblem for a century... it means patience in grief, self-sacrifice, deliverance, and pardon." The crown of thorns is never long waited for. Not two months after the first massacre a second crowd assembled near the castle, refused to disperse, and received fifteen volleys with the solidity of veterans. Only prayers and hymns answered the roll of musketry. It might seem that this enthusiasm would be as short-lived as all violent emotions commonly are. But months passed; and the Poles were still readier to offer themselves to death than the Russians to slay. The whole country wore the garb and the aspect of a funeral. Such depth of national sentiment, the growth of long misery, confounded observers in happier distant countries, and was at first mistaken for a mere masquerade. The Saturday Review, which is professedly incapable of understanding that

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