to drag on their days without comfort for the present, and with as little hope for the future. Peace is banished from their firesides, and joy from their hearts, and light from their countenances; because their time, and strength, and substance, to say nothing of the blood frequently poured out by the members of their own families, are invaded and exacted, to support a vicious and idle multitude, whose business it is to consume and destroy without producing. These are the legitimate fruits of war; these are the evils flowing from a violation of the laws of God and nature, by shedding a brother's blood; these are the results to the miserable people, while kings, and military chieftains, and rulers of every grade, are either indifferent to their condition, or, rioting in their own abundance, make an open mockery of their wretchedness.

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CHAPTER FIFTH.

INFLUENCE OF WAR ON THE PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION.

IN adverting to the evils of war, and in endeavoring to impress them upon the mind of the reader, it is important to take into account its unpropitious influence on what may be termed, in a single word, cIVILIZATION. The leading elements of a truly and highly civilized state of society are various; such as agriculture, the useful arts, the liberal or polite arts, literature, the domestic relations and duties, civil and religious institutions, &c. If we had it in our power to examine, at some length, each of these elements separately, we could not fail, with the utmost distinctness, to perceive the deleterious influence of war on that complex civilization, of which, in a great degree, they constitute the parts. Instead, however, of that minute examination of the subject, which would, perhaps, be desirable, we shall be obliged to leave it with the reader, with a few suggestions, made as briefly as possible,

I. The cultivation of the soil, if we look at the subject with candor, and with a suitable regard to all its relations, will justly be esteemed an indispensable element of civilization. Aş men rise in the scale of being, as they more and more bring themselves under the influence of just and benevolent principles, the earth itself, as if conscious of so propitious a change, will begin to put forth, and to bloom more beautifully. But war always throws cultivation back; the soldier is called from his plough, and the vine of his cottage droops till his return. But this is not all; whole

provinces have been laid waste at once; houses, lands, cornfields, vineyards, all at once, as if by an overflow of lava or a blast of the sirocco. It would not be difficult to adduce instances and facts that would fill volumes. What was the result of the irruptions of the Huns and Vandals into Italy in this respect, as well as in others? Before that time, historians inform us that this beautiful country was cultivated to the highest pitch; but afterwards large tracts of land, not naturally barren or of little value, were covered with forests and marshes of vast extent.* Repeatedly, in the course of European wars, has the whole Palatinate been laid waste; not merely cities, but villages, country-seats, cottages, fields, gardens, every thing. The Ukraine, during the last century, was laid waste, in the same savage manner, by Catherine of Russia. Almost the whole of La Vendee, thickly peopled, as it was, with an industrious and rural population, and every where bearing the marks of a high state of culture, was subjected, during the French revolution, to a most horrid and complete devastation. The devastation of the Peninsula, by the armies of Napoleon, was almost as great. "Affecting traces (says a writer who was there at the time) of the invasion of this smiling country were every where to be seen. tages all roofless and untenanted, the unpruned vine, growing in rank luxuriance over their ruined walls, gardens, the shells of fine houses destroyed by fire, ****** all proclaimed, silently, but forcibly, that I was travelling through a country which had been the theatre of war." †

Cot

It is unnecessary to recapitulate the horrid scenes of the Carnatic, of St. Domingo, of the Russian Provinces in the late war with France, - of Scio, of the Morea, and of other parts of Greece, in the re

* Robertson's Charles V. Historical Illustrations, Note V. + Recollections of the Peninsula, Phil. Ed. p. 185.

cent Greek war. On few has the hand of war borne more heavily than on the cultivators of the soil; and, perhaps, in no period of the world have they suffered more than in the last half century. In peaceful countries, the husbandman quietly moves behind his plough, or tends his flock in the shade of his native hills; but, when war rages, it is too often the case that they find themselves without flocks, fields, or home. With hearts bleeding under the experience of human crime and cruelty, they are obliged to adopt the language of Virgil's unfortunate shepherds:

"Nos patriæ fines et dulcia linquimus arva.”

II. Not to speak of the useful arts, which, although less splendid in their pretensions, are not less propitious in their influence on the progress of civilization, it will surely not be maintained that war has been otherwise than unfavorable to the progress of the fine arts-sculpture, painting, architecture, and the like. The time has been, when Athens and Corinth - not to mention other distinguished cities of Greece - displayed the proud testimonials of their refinement in their temples, paintings, and statues; and we know not that any satisfactory reason can be given, why it is not now as it was then, except it be the devastations of war. In the year 410, the city of Rome was taken and pillaged by the Goths and Huns of Alaric. After the streets had been strewed with the dead of every age and condition, a violent assault was commenced upon the works of art. "The palaces of Rome," says Gibbon, in his history of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, were rudely stripped of their splendid and costly furniture. The sideboards of massy plate, and the variegated wardrobes of silk and purple, were irregularly piled in the wagons, that always followed the march of a Gothic army. The most exquisite works

of art were roughly handled, or wantonly destroyed; many a statue was melted, for the sake of the precious materials; and many a vase, in the division of the spoil, was shivered into fragments by the stroke of the battle-axe." And yet Gibbon gives his readers to understand, and Robertson does not hesitate to confirm the statement, that far greater outrages than these were committed, when, at a much later period, the city of Rome was assaulted, and, during several months, was subjected to every species of cruelty and depredation by the soldiers of Charles V. So far as we have been able to perceive, the works of art have not, in any country, or in any age of the world, been respected by the invading and conquering army, whenever the removal or demolition of them was supposed to promote their objects. Mr. Southey, in his History of the Peninsular War, speaking of the Castle of Benevento, which he represents as superior to any thing of the kind in England, observes, "Every thing combustible was seized. Fires were lighted against these fine walls; and pictures of unknown value, the works, perhaps, of the greatest Spanish masters, and those of other great painters, who left so many of their finest productions in Spain, were heaped together as fuel." And, what is remarkable, this was done, not by the enemies of Spain, but by those English allies who had come to defend her. So late as the year 1814, the British army, that entered the city of Washington, burnt down the Capitol, the president's house, and the public offices, destroying with them the national library, and a multitude of papers and documents of great value in a civil and historical point of view.

*

III. Science and literature, too, as well as the arts, suffer from a state of war. It is, indeed, said of one of the philosophers of Germany, that he calmly

* As quoted in the Harbinger of Peace. Vol. I. p. 47.