t would not have been exactly
such a revolution. The style, the accessories, would have been in many
respects different. There would have been less of bombast in language,
less of affectation in manner, less of solemn trifling and ostentatious
simplicity. The acts of legislative assemblies, and the correspondence
of diplomatists, would not have been disgraced by rants worthy only of a
college declamation. The government of a great and polished nation would
not have rendered itself ridiculous by attempting to revive the usages
of a world which had long passed away, or rather of a world which
had never existed except in the description of a fantastic school of
writers. These second-hand imitations resembled the originals about as
much as the classical feast with which the Doctor in Peregrine Pickle
turned the stomachs of all his guests resembled one of the suppers of
Lucullus in the Hall of Apollo.

These were mere follies. But the spirit excited by these writers
produced more serious effects. The greater part of the crimes which
disgraced the revolution sprung indeed from the relaxation of law, from
popular ignorance, from the remembrance of past oppression, from
the fear of foreign conquest, from rapacity, from ambition, from
party-spirit. But many atrocious proceedings must, doubtless, be
ascribed to heated imagination, to perverted principle, to a distaste
for what was vulgar in morals, and a passion for what was startling and
dubious. Mr Burke has touched on this subject with great felicity of
expression: "The gradation of their republic," says he, "is laid in
moral paradoxes. All those instances to be found in history, whether
real or fabulous, of a doubtful public spirit, at which morality
is perplexed, reason is staggered, and from which affrighted nature
recoils, are their chosen and almost sole examples for the instruction
of their youth." This evil, we believe, is to be directly ascribed to
the influence of the historians whom we have mentioned, and their modern
imitators.

Livy had some faults in common with these writers. But on the whole he
must be considered as forming a class by himself: no historian with whom
we are acquainted has shown so complete an indifference to truth. He
seems to have cared only about the picturesque effect of his book, and
the honour of his country. On the other hand, we do not know, in the
whole range of literature, an instance of a bad thing so well done. The
painting of the na