LOVE AND RESIGNATION. 89 to the charm of old associations, Virgil is indeed a “link between the ancient and the modern world" and a precursor of Christianity "; and we have other two distinctive links in his representation of love as a sentiment and his pious resignation to the will of heaven. “It is in his verse," it has been thought, "that we may trace the first dawn of that sentiment to which all modern drama owes its main interest" and "which forms the main subject of modern fiction. Nothing in ancient verse seems to us so closely allied with modern feeling as the meeting of Dido and Aeneas in the shades. The silence of wounded love, the hush of a mighty recollection that can as little revive as discard the emotions to which it points, are painted in those few lines, not certainly as a modern would have painted them, but with more force, because with more reticence, than a second-rate artist of our day would give them, and with more apprehension than any firstrate artist before Virgil could have given them. We meet in his verse for the first time with something like the romantic sentiment of love."1 And no one has inculcated the duty of resignation with more pensive thoughtfulness or pious zeal than Virgil. He had apparently no very settled convictions or consistent beliefs about the gods, or their relation to the world. Men and stars, and abstractions like Fame, and fauns and dryads, and all the gods of tradition are mixed up in his fancy in inextricable confusion, and yet also he seems inclined to accept the idea of an omniscient and omnipresent pantheistic god, or soul of the universe, as rational and likely. 166 1" Virgil as a Link between the Ancient and Modern World," by Julia Wedgwood, The Contemporary Review, July, 1877. "Deum namque ire per omnes Terrasque tractusque maris coelumque profundum; At one time he seems to identify the will of Jove with fate (Aeneid i. 254 et seq.), and at another time he seems to set them apart as separate powers (id. viii. 398-399). But, at any rate, and whatever be the relations between them, reverence the gods and pay your annual offerings (Georgic i. 338-350), and, whether it be Jove or fate that rules, be resigned to heaven's will. "What avails it to indulge so much in frenzied grief? These things happen not without the will of the gods" (Aeneid ii. 776-778). And "perchance the day will come when the memory of even this will be a pleasure. Through various mishaps, through sundry risks and chances, our course is to Latium; there the fates point to quiet resting-places, there heaven allows that the kingdom of Troy once more shall rise. Endure hardness, and reserve yourselves for better days" (Aeneid i. 203-207). And now, in bringing this chapter to a close, we cannot do better than quote from an article by Principal Shairp on "Virgil as a Precursor of Christianity." "His experience," says the Principal, "would seem to have awakened within him a longing and aspiration after something purer, higher, lovelier, than eye or ear here discover. His poetry has the tone of one of whom it may be said in his own words-'He was stretching forth his hands with longing desire for the farther shore.' Therefore, while we may not, as former ages did, accept the fourth Eclogue as in any sense a prophecy of the Messiah, we need not be blind to that 1 Georgic iv. 221-224. PREPARED AND WAITING. 91 which it does contain-the hope of better things, the expectation that some relief was at hand for the miseries of an outworn and distracted world. This expectation was, we know, widely spread in Virgil's day, and probably none felt it more than he. Likely enough he expected that the relief would come through the establishment and universal sway of the Roman Empire; but the ideal empire, as he conceived it, was something more humane and beneficent than anything the earth had yet seen—something such as Trojan may perhaps have dreamed of, but which none ever saw realized. His conception of the future work which he imagined the empire had to do contained elements which belonged to a kingdom not of this world. In his enthusiastic predictions regarding it we may say, in Keble's words 'Thoughts beyond their thoughts to those high bards were given.' Taking then all these qualities of Virgil together, his purity, his unworldliness, his tenderness towards the weak and downtrodden, his weariness of the state of things he saw around him, his lofty ideal, his longing for a higher life than this daily one, I think we may say that in him the ancient civilization reached its moral culmination. When that civilization could produce such a spirit as his, which it could so little satisfy, does it not appear that the fulness of time was come? He was a spirit prepared and waiting, though he knew it not, for some better thing to be revealed."1 1 The Princeton Review, September, 1879. THE DEVELOPMENT OF TASTE, IN RELATION ESPECIALLY TO THE BEAUTIFUL IN NATURE: THE CHRISTIAN INFLUENCE-ENGLISH LITERATURE. THE "better thing to be revealed" for which Virgil was perfectly prepared and waiting appeared in Christianity. And in Christianity, as represented by the lives and teaching of Christ and His apostles, we have indeed in the truest and best of senses the Religion of Humanity-not the Positivist caricature of it which has assumed to itself the name, and which is without religion and without humanity, but the thing itself which binds us all together and to God in sympathy. When Christ appeared, the old world hardness vanished in the thought of the essential unity of the Divine and Human and of Universal Brotherhood. "One is your Father which is in heaven, and all ye are brethren." And in the principle of judgment, "inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren ye have done it unto me," we have a new motive of action which at once took shape in pity and care for the poor, the oppressed, and the lonely of whatever nationality or caste, and in a yearning tenderness for the purity and peace of men the world over, and in self-sacrificing efforts and continuous labours for their good. And hence reforms of a humane description THE CHRISTIAN INFLUENCE. 93 and in all their ramifications unto this day. With all our cruelties in various ways, we are tenderness itself in comparison with pre-Christian times, and our sympathies are shown in a thousand practical ways unknown to preceding ages. And the change introduced by Christianity into the thoughts and sentiments of men could not of course exist without showing itself by degrees in art in all its branches and in all directions. The contents of art became more peaceful and more hopeful in their character. The lion gave place to the lamb, the warrior with his sword and shield to Him who was the Prince of Peace, man in his bodily strength and beauty to man in his moral need craving the peace and purity of God, and the dread of death and of the gloom of the ghostly realms beyond to the longing for immortal life and the hope of the glory to be revealed. Long before Constantine acknowledged Christianity by publicly joining it, the inner need of the young community had found its expression in significant forms. As, however, this entire life still bore the stamp of the rule of the Caesars, the effort after the outward representation of the new ideas of God was obliged to be satisfied at first with the forms afforded by the art of the heathen ages. Thus declining ancient art became the garment in which the young and world-agitating ideas of Christianity were compelled to veil themselves. The new wine had to be put into the old bottles, till it burst asunder the decaying vessels, and issued forth in a new form of art as in a vessel appropriate to itself. So wonderful and profound, however, are the laws which regulate the inner life of man, that in this way alone could an infinitely rich and new develop |