ll may see how the truth of things is not
altered by the changes and diversities of time. Machiavel drew his
illustrations of modern history from the ancient.

When the French Revolution recalled our attention to a similar eventful
period in our own history, the neglected volumes which preserved the
public and private history of our Charles the First and Cromwell were
collected with eager curiosity. Often the scene existing before us, even
the very personages themselves, opened on us in these forgotten pages.
But as the annals of human nature did not commence with those of Charles
the First, we took a still more retrograde step, and it was discovered
in this wider range, that in the various governments of Greece and Rome,
the events of those times had been only reproduced. Among them the same
principles had terminated in the same results, and the same personages
had figured in the same drama. This strikingly appeared in a little
curious volume, entitled, "Essai sur l'Histoire de la Revolution
Francoise, par une Societe d'Auteurs Latins," published at Paris in
1801. This "Society of Latin Authors," who have written so inimitably
the history of the _French_ Revolution, consist of the _Roman
historians_ themselves! By extracts ingeniously applied, the events of
that melancholy period are so appositely described, indeed so minutely
narrated, that they will not fail to surprise those who are not
accustomed to detect the perpetual parallels which we meet with in
philosophical history.

Many of these crises in history are close resemblances of each other.
Compare the history of "The League" in France with that of our own civil
wars. We are struck by the similar occurrences performed by the same
political characters who played their part on both those great theatres
of human action. A satirical royalist of those times has commemorated
the motives, the incidents, and the personages in the "Satire Menippee
de la Vertu du Catholicon d'Espagne;" and this famous "Satire Menippee"
is a perfect Hudibras in prose! The writer discovers all the bitter
ridicule of Butler in his ludicrous and severe exhibition of the "Etats
de Paris," while the artist who designed the satirical prints becomes no
contemptible Hogarth. So much are these public events alike in their
general spirit and termination, that they have afforded the subject of a
printed but unpublished volume, entitled "Essai sur les
Revolutions."[188] The whole work was modelled on