of his alma mater was vacant, and his vote could influence selection. He was a trustee of Drew Seminary, and had given and planned for its future. For years a member of the Missionary Board, and many times its representative on the General Committee, the time was in sight when he might touch the whole world with his hand. Yet he had been shaken by bereavements in his own family. The virile inheritance of his brothers failed to keep them on earth. Even before he felt the pangs which wasted strength, he thought that his time was short. Yet the world was so full of opportunity, its pace so great, and new questions, social, political, religious, were so abundant, that the strong man hoped for ten years of working life. Shortly after the interview of which mention has been made he went to Ocean Grove, in hope of rallying from increasing weakness. The lamp did for a time blaze up. Now the spiritual fires burned brilliantly. He became a prophet, a seer, a saint. All who talked with him left him with benediction. Rapture came with weakness. The soul soared as its physical weights diminished. Not in dreams, but with open eye, he saw "the goodly company and fellowship of the first-born." The veterans at rest seemed to enter the earthly life again to strengthen his faith and promise welcome. His deep conviction of undeserving sinfulness was lost in the assurance of redeeming love. Hosannas were on his lips.

Yet it was granted to him to die in his own home, and sooner than most expected. His conversation on the day of his death, without directly asserting it, is seen now to have indicated his conviction that it was his last on earth. He kept his loved ones near him by gentle hints, and fell on sleep as if a wearied spirit had found a Father's arms. D. A. GOODsell.

ART. II-MOMMSEN'S ROMAN PROVINCES.*

THE history of the world has been written too much from the stand-point of its so-called great men and of its leading states. The warriors, the kings, the statesmen, have occupied the stage, and the masses of the people have been relegated to obscurity. We have been informed with scrupulous care upon what fortunate day this or that prince first saw the light of day; we have been made familiar with his personal characteristics, and even with his personal appearance; we have been introduced into his palace and have witnessed his occupations, serious and trivial. The most insignificant of his words and actions have been rehearsed to us, as if nothing pertaining to such august personages must be allowed to pass into oblivion. So clumsily, indeed, is this irrelevant recital made, that all due sense of relative importance seeins obliterated, and a picture arises before the mind's eye as false to nature as it is defiant of all the rules of the art of perspective. Much of the illustration which passes current under the name of historical delineation of men, whether in the contemporary novel or in more formal treatises of past events, lies open to censure. The observation of the eminent Rapin de Thoyras is as appropriate now as when it was first made, nearly two centuries ago:

are good embellishBut our romancers We make too many such as agree to noWe take a pleasure

The portraits and characters of persons ments of history, if accurately performed. have corrupted our genius in this respect. pieces without the least resemblance, and body, because they agree to all the world. in painting the face and mien of persous, and those outward features, which we have really nothing to do with. What shall I be the better for knowing whether Hannibal had a fine set of teeth, provided his historian acquaint me with the greatness of his genius-if he display to me a hardiness and restlessness of spirit, a vast and enterprising thought, and a fearless heart; and all these qualities animated with an irregular ambition and sustained by a more than athletic constitution, which is the picture we have of him in Livy ? †

*The Provinces of the Roman Empire from Cæsar to Diocletian. By THEODOR MOMMSEN. Translated by WILLIAM P. DICKSON, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Divinity in the University of Glasgow. With ten maps by Professor KIEPERT. Two volumes, 8vo. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1887.

Reflections upon History. Critical Works, translated by Kennet, ii, 302. 52-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. III.

Meanwhile, it is quite in keeping with the extravagant prominence assigned to unimportant details of the personal portraiture of the rulers, that the people have secured but scant notice, that the story of the weal or woe of the great masses of the population has been for the most part untold. Peace, we are told, hath its victories as well as war; but in the clamor of armies, amid the shouts of the contending forces, and through the smoke of battle, our eyes can scarcely discern the details of those more humble, and possibly more homely, scenes of the every-day life of the husbandman and artisan, far from the din of conflict. It is, in fact, only in our own times that the rights of the people, of civilization, to a hearing in the halls of history have been vindicated, and that the ablest of scholars and the most skillful of writers have recognized the work of tracing the successive steps in the upward progress of the poor and down-trodden toward freedom and social equality, as a task worthy of the exertion of the most resplendent abilities. The esteem enjoyed by the philosophical investigations of Guizot into the progress of society collectively, and of the individual man during the Middle Ages, not less than the popularity of Macaulay's pictures of life in England in the seventeenth century, exhibit at least the fact that our age has awaked to the value of a long-neglected branch of research.

It is to the credit of Theodor Mommsen that he has noticed and has set himself to remedy a somewhat analogous injustice done to the provinces of the great Roman Empire. The effulgence of that wonderful city, the prowess of whose citizens, assisted by a marvelous concurrence of propitious events in world history, secured for it a domain almost co-extensive with the known portions of the globe, has dazzled the eye to such a degree as to prevent the observer from seeing the conquered provinces save in their relations to Rome. Not, indeed, but that before these provinces were merged in the empire their fortunes received attention and historical treatment. Without referring to the great monarchies of the East, to Egypt, to Judea, to Greece, we may notice that even such comparatively insignificant districts as Libya and Arabia were made the subjects of antiquarian research even in Roman times. But the Jubas and Josephuses concluded their works at the incorporation of the countries of which they treated in the vast empire

that doubtless appeared to them to be the ultimate government, the reservoir into which all streams of nationality had been seen to pour, but from which none had ever yet been known to emerge. By the side of Rome no other city of the world waз worthy of account; consequently no city but Rome, no country but Italy, was entitled to separate treatment. And yet of the millions of men, women, and children in the Roman Empire the vast majority inhabited the provinces. These multitudes outside of Italy were touched but very superficially by the events that occurred in the "eternal city." The rise or fall of emperors affected only in a very remote degree the provincials, who, beyond the acknowledgment of the authority of a sovereign whose face they never saw, and beyond the payment of tribute to support his state, had little in common with the dwellers upon the banks of the Tiber. What was the condition, moral and intellectual, of these untold numbers of so called barbarians? How was the conflict waged between the native and the imported superstitions? What was the resultant gain and loss? How was the way paved for a higher civilization? These are some of the inquiries which the ordinary histories of the Roman Empire make little effort to answer. They are the inquiries which Mommsen in his new work has attempted to meet, and which to some extent he does meet. We say to some extent, because the undertaking is by no means an easy one. There are lamentable gaps in our sources of information, chasms which no ingenuity at this late date can hope to fill. Our informants, or, more correctly speaking, those who might have been our informants had they chosen or known how to enlighten us, have for the most part adopted a course savoring less of caprice than of perversity. The better we become acquainted with the subject the more we shall be inclined to regard Mommsen's strong words in his Introduction as none too strong: "Any one who has recourse to the so called authorities for the history of this period-even the better among them-finds difficulty in controlling his indig nation at the telling of what deserved to be suppressed, and at the suppression of what there was need to tell." The great problems that confront the student of their pages are precisely those to which they do not even pretend to furnish an answer. Among these problems is the radical inquiry into the reasons

of the success of the Latin-Greek civilization in molding to a great extent, and in securing the prosperity of, the whole ancient. world, from the borders of Persia to the shores of the German Sea. Dr. Mommsen says (i, 5):

Old age has not the power to develop new thoughts and display creative activity, nor has the government of the Roman Empire done so ; but in its sphere, which those who belonged to it were not far wrong in regarding as the world, it fostered the peace and prosperity of the many nations united under its sway longer and more completely than any other leading power has ever succeeded in doing. It is in the agricultural towns of Africa, in the homes of the vine-dressers on the Moselle, in the flourishing townships of the Lycian mountains, and on the margin of the Syrian desert that the work of the imperial period is to be sought and to be found. Even now there are various regions of the East, as of the West, as regards which the imperial period marks a climax of good government, very modest in itself, but never withal attained before or since; and, if an angel of the Lord were to strike the balance whether the domain ruled by Severus Antoninus was governed with the greater intelligence and the greater humanity at that time or in the present daywhether civilization and national prosperity generally have since that time advanced or retrograded-it is very doubtful whether the decision would prove in favor of the present. But, if we find that this was the case, we ask of our surviving books, for the most part in vain, How came it to be so? They no more give an answer to this question than the traditional accounts of the earlier republic explain the mighty phenomenon of the Rome which, in the footsteps of Alexander, subdued and civilized the world.

The two volumes now before us form a remote sequel to the four volumes of the English translation (the three of the original German edition), in which the history of Rome is traced from the foundation of the city to the overthrow of the republic by the institution of the new monarchy by Julius Cæsar. The last installment of that history was given to the world just thirty years ago. For almost an entire generation the learned author has been pursuing with undivided attention that branch of antiquarian research in which no scholar of our own or of recent times has shown himself his equal, and adding to the rich stores of knowledge in the monumental work entitled, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. The general public, as well as scholars, who set a high estimate upon his achievements in the larger field of Roman law, and in the study of