or less the whole west of Europe, from the head of the Gulf of Bothnia to the most southern promontory of Sicily; 2 from the Oder and the Adriatic to the Hebrides and to Lisbon. It is true that the language spoken over a large portion of this space is not predominantly German; but even in France, and Italy, and Spain, the influence of the Franks, Burgundians, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, and Lombards, while it has coloured even the language, has in blood and institutions left its mark legibly and indelibly. Germany, the Low Countries, Switzerland for the most part, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, and our own islands, are all in language, in blood, and in institutions, German most decidedly. But all South America is peopled with Spaniards and Portuguese, all North America and all Australia with Englishmen. I say nothing of the prospects and influence of the German race in Africa and in India-it is enough to say that half of Europe, and all America and Australia, are German more or less completely, in race, in language, or in institutions, or in all.-ARNOLD'S Modern History.'

THE first and second Punic Wars were separated by an interval of two-and-twenty years, and the first Punic War, as we have seen, had lasted for a period of exactly the same duration. The end of the fourth Samnite war, and the final submission of the Samnites, Lucanians, and Bruttians, took place eight years before the beginning of the contest with Carthage; and the treaty which permanently settled the relations of Rome with the Etrurians, was concluded eight years earlier still. Thus, when Hannibal, in the spring of the year 537,' invaded Etruria, few living Etrurians had seen their country independent, except in their childhood or earliest youth, and all who were still in the vigour of manhood had been born since it had become the dependent ally of Rome. And when, after this victory at the Lake of Thrasymenus, he marched into Samnium, and encouraged the Samnites to take up arms once more in their old national quarrel,

fifty-five years had passed since the Samnites, abandoned by Pyrrhus, and having tried fortune and hope to the uttermost, had submitted to the consul Sp. Carvilius Maximus.

So in Samnium, as well as in Etruria, the existing generation had grown up in peace and alliance with the Romans; and many a Samnite may have been enriched by the plunder of Sicily, and must have shared with the Romans in the memorable vicissitudes of the first Punic War; in the defeat of Drepanum, and the disastrous shipwrecks which followed it; in the five years of incessant fighting with Hannibal's father at Eryx and by Panormus; in the long and painful siege of Lilybaum; in the brilliant victory of L. Metellus; and in the final triumph of C. Lutatius at the Egates.3 It is true, that fifty-five years of constrained alliance had not extinguished the old feelings of hatred and rivalry; and the Samnites joined Hannibal, as a hundred and fifty years afterwards they joined the younger Marius against the same enemy, the dominion of the Roman aristocracy. But that their rising was not universal, nor persisted in with more desperate resolution; that Etruria, with some doubtful exceptions, offered no encouragement to the Carthaginian general; that the fidelity of Picenium, of Umbria, of the Vestinians, Marsians, Pelignians, Marrucinians, and Sabines never wavered; that the "Latin name " remained true to a man; and that even in Campania, the fidelity of Nola, and of Cuma, was as marked as the desertion of Capua ;-all this is to be attributed mainly to the system of government which the Romans had established after their conquest of Italy, and which, so far as can be traced, we must now proceed to examine in its complicated details. Not that we should by any means regard this system of government as a constitution founded upon justice, and granting to all whom it embraced within its range the benefits of equal law. Its praise is rather, that it secured the Roman dominion, without adopting the extreme measures of tyranny; that its policy was admirable, its iniquity and oppression not intolerable. And so small a portion of justice has usually been dealt to the mass of mankind, that their highest hopes have commonly aspired to nothing more than an escape from extravagant tyranny.

If life, and property, and female honour, and domestic, national, and religious feelings have not been constantly and capriciously invaded and outraged, lesser evils have been contentedly endured. Political servitude, a severe conscription, and a heavy taxation, habitual arrogance on the part of the governors, and occasional outbreaks of insolence and cruelty, have been considered no less incident to the condition of humanity, than the visitations of poverty, disease, and death. The dominion of the

Romans over the people of Italy, therefore, as it allowed the ordinary enjoyment of many rights, and conferred some positive advantages, was viewed by its subjects, notwithstanding its constant absoluteness and occasional tyranny, as a condition, quite as likely, if overthrown, to be changed for the worse as for the better. ARNOLD'S History of Rome.'

THE land attack was committed to Appius Claudius, while Marcellus in person conducted the operations of the fleet. The Roman army is spoken of as large; but no details of its force are given. It cannot have been less than twenty thousand men, and was probably more numerous. No force in Sicily, whether of Syracusans or Carthaginians, could have resisted it in the field; and it had lately stormed the walls of Leontini as easily, to use the Homeric comparison, "as a child tramples out the towers and castles which he has scratched upon the sand of the sea-shore."

But at Syracuse it was checked by an artillery such as the Romans had never encountered before, and which, had Hannibal possessed it, would long since have enabled him to bring the war to a triumphant issue. An old man of seventy-four, a relation and friend of King Hiero, long known as one of the ablest astronomers and mathematicians of his age, now proved that his science was no less practical than deep; and amid all the crimes and violence of contending factions, he alone won the pure glory of defending his country successfully against a foreign enemy. This old man was Archimedes. Many years before, at Hiero's request, he had contrived the engines which were now used so effectively. Marcellus brought up his ships against the sea-wall of Achradina, and endeavoured by a constant discharge of stones and arrows to clear the walls of their defenders, so that his men might apply their ladders and mount to the assault. These ladders rested on two ships, lashed together, broadside to broadside, and worked as one by their outside oars; and when

the two ships were brought close up under the wall, one end of the ladder was raised by ropes passing through blocks affixed to the two mast heads of the two vessels, and was then let go till it rested on the top of the wall.

But Archimedes had supplied the ramparts with an artillery so powerful, that it overwhelmed the Romans before they could get within the range which their missiles could reach; and when they came closer they found that all the lower part of the wall was loopholed; and their men were struck down by fatal aim by an enemy whom they could not see, and who shot his arrows in perfect security. If they still persevered, and attempted to fix their ladders, on a sudden they saw long poles thrust out from the top of the wall, like the arms of a giant, and enormous stones, or huge masses of lead, were dropped from these upon them, by which their ladders were crushed to pieces, and their ships were almost sunk. At other times, machines like cranes, or such as are used at the turnpikes in Germany, and in the market gardens round London to draw water, were thrust out over the wall, and the end of the lever, with an iron grapple affixed to it, was lowered upon the Roman ships. As soon as the grapple had taken hold, the other end of the lever was lowered by heavy weights, and the ship raised out of the water, till it was made almost to stand upon its stern; then the grapple was suddenly let go, and the ship dropped into the sea with a violence which either upset it, or filled it with water.

With equal power was the assault on the land side repelled; and the Roman soldiers, bold as they were, were so daunted by these strange and irresistible devices, that if they saw so much as a rope or a stick hanging or projecting from the wall, they would turn about and run away, crying "that Archimedes was going to set one of his engines at work against them." Their attempts indeed were a mere amusement to the enemy, till Marcellus in despair put a stop to his attacks; and it was resolved merely to blockade the town, and to wait for the effect of famine upon the crowded population within.—ARNOLD'S "History of Rome.'

OUR Own Alfred sheds a much brighter glory over the ninth century than Charlemagne and the Caliph Haroun' do over the

eighth. Alfred was born in the year 849, succeeded to the crown in 871, and his reign extended to the close of the century. Even the unusual lateness of the period at which his acquaintance with books commenced, was but the least of the untoward circumstances with which this wonderful man had to contend in his pursuit of knowledge.

Born, as he was, the son of a king, how scanty were the means of education of which he had it in his power to avail himself, compared with those which, in our happier days, are within the reach of the poorest peasant! In that age it demanded the price of a goodly estate to purchase a book, and, in England especially, teachers were so scarce that Alfred, so long as he continued merely a prince, dependant upon his father or his elder brothers, actually seems to have been without the requisite resources to procure their services. Nothing, as his biographer, Asser, informs us, was a more frequent subject of regret with him than that, during the only time of his life when he had either health or leisure for study, he had thus been left utterly without the means of obtaining instruction: for as soon almost as he had passed his boyhood he was obliged to engage in active duty as a soldier; and the incessant toils of a military life—in the course of which he is recorded to have fought no fewer than fifty battles, as well as to have undergone a succession of hardships and sufferings, under which an ordinary mind would have broken down in despair-consumed not a few of the best of his succeeding years.

And even after he succeeded to the throne, when we consider that, in addition to the extensive literary labours which he accomplished, he not only attended to his multifarious public duties with a punctuality that has never been surpassed; but, notwithstanding his harassing bodily ailments, signalized himself by his prowess and dexterity in every manly exercise, we may well ask by what mysterious art did he find time for all this variety of occupation?

The answer is, that he found time by never losing it. Time is the only gift or commodity of which every man who lives has just the same share. The passing day is exactly of the same dimensions to each of us, and by no contrivance can any one of us extend its duration by so much as a minute or a second. It is not like a sum of money, which we can employ in trade, or put out to interest, and thereby add to or multiply its amount. Its amount is unalterable. We cannot "make it breed;" we cannot even keep it by us. Whether we will or no we must spend it; and all our power over it, therefore, consists in the manner in which we spent it.

Part with it we must, but we