the interest of the Roman Catholic church. The schismatical Armenians hold firmly to their peculiar doctrines and polity. They regard themselves as the orthodox, and call the united or Roman Armenians, schismatics.

Since 1830, the Protestant Missionary, Tract and Bible Societies of England, Basle, and the United States, have laboured among the Armenians, especially the Monophysite portion, with great success. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions,* in particular, has distributed Bibles and religious books in the Armenian and Armeno-Turkish language, and founded flourishing churches and schools in Constantinople, Broosa, Nicomedia, Trebizond, Erzroom, Aintab, Kharpoot, Diarbekir, and elsewhere. Several of these churches have already endured the crucial test of persecution, and justify bright hopes for the future. As the Jewish synagogues of the diaspora were witnesses for monotheism among idolaters, and preparatory schools of Christianity, so are these Protestant Armenian churches, as well as the Protestant Nestorian, outposts of evangelical civilization in the East, and perhaps the beginning of a resurrection of primitive Christianity in the lands of the Bible, and harbingers of the future conversion of the Mohammedans.

Compare respecting the Armenian mission of the American Board the publications of this Society, Eli Smith and H. G. 0. Dwight, (Missionary Researches in Armenia, Boston, 1833,) Dr. H. G. O. Dwight, (Christianity Revived in the East, N. York, 1850,) and H. Newcomb, (Cyclopædia of Missions, p. 124–154.) The principal missionaries among the Armenians are H. G. O. Dwight, W. Goodell, C. Hamlin, G. W. Wood, E. Riggs, D. Ladd, P. O. Powers, W. G. Schauffler, (a Wurtemberger, but educated at the Theological Seminary of Andover, Massachusetts,) and Benjamin Schneider, (a German from Pennsylvania, but likewise a graduate of Andover.) IV. The youngest sect of the Monophysites, and the solitary

This oldest and most extensive of American missionary societies was founded A. D. 1810, and is principally supported by the Congregationalists and New-school Presbyterians.

†The Armeno-Turkish is the Turkish language written in Armenian cha

racters.

memorial of the Monothelite controversies, are the MARONITES, so called from St. Maron, and the eminent monastery founded by him in Syria, (400).* They inhabit the range of Lebanon, with its declivities and valleys, from Tripolis on the north, to the neighbourhood of Tyre and the lake of Gennesaret on the south, and amount, at most, to half a million. They have also small churches in Aleppo, Damascus, and other places. They are pure Syrians, and still use the Syriac language in their liturgy, but speak Arabic. They are subject to a Patriarch, who commonly resides in the monastery of Kanobin, on Mount Lebanon. They were originally Monothelites, even after the doctrine of one will of Christ, which is the ethical complement of the doctrine of one nature, had been rejected at the sixth oecumenical council, (A, D. 680). But after the Crusades (1182), and especially after 1596, they began to go over to the Roman church, although retaining the communion under both kinds, their Syriac missal, the marriage of priests, and their traditional fast-days, with some saints of their own, especially St. Maron. From these came, in the eighteenth century, the three celebrated Oriental scholars, the Assemani, Joseph Simon (1768), his brother Joseph Aloysius, and their cousin, Stephen Evodius. These were born on Mount Lebanon, and educated at the Maronite College at Rome.

There are also Maronites in Syria, who abhor the Roman church. Respecting the present condition of the Maronites, compare also Robinson's Palestine, Ritter's Erdkunde, (Th. 17, Abthlg. 1), and Rödiger's article in Herzog's Encyl. Bd. x. p. 176 ff. A few years ago (1860) the Maronites drew upon themselves the sympathies of Christendom, by the cruelties which their old hereditary enemies, the Druses, perpetrated upon them.

*He is probably the same Maron whose life Theodoret wrote, and to whom Chrysostom addressed a letter when in exile. He is not to be confounded with the later John Maron, of the tenth century, who, according to the legendary traditions of the Catholic Maronites, acting as Papal legate at Antioch, converted the whole of Lebanon to the Romish church, and became their first Patriarch. The name "Maronites" occurs first in the eighth century, and that as a name of heretics, in John of Damascus.

ART. IV.-Life of Marcus Tullius Cicero. By WILLIAM FORSYTH, M. A., Q. C. In two volumes. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1865.

An Account of the Life and Letters of Cicero: Translated from the German of BERNARD RUDOLPH ABEKEN. Edited by Charles Merivale, B. D. Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans. 1854.

The Life of Marcus Tullius Cicero. By CONYERS MIDDLETON, D. D. In three volumes. London. 1804.

THE character and position of Cicero were such that the most opposite views have been entertained respecting him. During his life his enemies were exceedingly bitter, but their calumnies could not blacken his memory; and whatever may be our judgment as to his political career, we must confess that we can scarcely recall a statesman even in a Christian country with so unblemished a moral character. It is singular that, with the exception of the chef d'œuvre of Sallust, the historians of this period of Rome are chiefly Greek. They are Plutarch, Appian and Dion Cassius; and they cannot be relied upon for a just estimate of Cicero. Plutarch is indeed impartial, but some of his statements are manifestly erroneous, and others must be received with caution. His imperfect acquaintance with Latin is partly the cause, for no more honest writer can be found. Moreover he says he wrote lives, not history; and his object was to delineate character, in which he has been most successful. Hence he often passes slightly over the most important events in a man's life, and subordinates them to dreams, jests, and anecdotes of doubtful authenticity, but which served to give point to his illustrations and comparisons. Appian is in many parts little more than a reproduction of Plutarch. Dion Cassius, who flourished in the reigns of Commodus, Septimius Severus and Alexander Severus, was not likely to take a favourable view of Cicero. Neither tyrants, nor their servants, are wont to admire patriots or their deeds. The speeches, which are introduced into Dion's work, are excellent rhetorical VOL. XXXVIII.-NO. IV. 73

productions, but that of Fufius Calenus, in which he seems to have collected all the slanders that were ever uttered against Cicero, and concentrated all the malevolence that the most bitter enemy could entertain, is a pure invention. No such speech was ever delivered, and as Forsyth says, "he would rather have put a blister on his tongue than allowed it to expose him to the castigation he was sure to receive," for there was no greater master of invective than Cicero, and even his friends suffered not unfrequently from his biting sarcasm. These charges, this "infamous stuff," as Middleton calls them, can have but little effect upon any one familiar with the history of the period, or who will impartially examine into the matter.

With the revival of letters came a new and a juster estimate of Cicero, and there is no measure to the admiration felt for him by literary men in later times. This culminated in the panegyric of Middleton and the views of Niebuhr, which provoked a strong reaction especially in Germany. Even De Quincey while admitting that in that "age, fruitful in great men, except the sublime Julian leader, none as regards splendour of endowments stood upon the same level as Cicero," and that he was "a thoughtfully conscientious man," has yet, we think, done him great injustice. Some authors have gone so far that they can find no merit in him. Abeken's Life and Letters of Cicero* (translated by Merivale), and Merivale's own works give a very fair and impartial estimate of Cicero. But we have met with nothing to equal this work of Forsyth. He has, we think, pursued the proper course in delineating the character of Cicero. He has presented him not merely as a public man, an orator and a statesman, but has made us acquainted with him as a man in all the relations of life, showing us those private virtues which are calculated to win our love, as well as those more shining qualities and brilliant achievements that excite our admiration. For this purpose he has selected as a basis, his letters, which not only reveal the man, but are more important in giving us a just and vivid conception of contemporary Roman history than any formal work that has descended to our hands. English readers have been made familiar with his letters Ad Diversos in the translation of *Cicero in Seinen Briefen.

Melmoth; but as many of these were of a public and political character, they were written in a more guarded manner than those to Atticus, to which Forsyth makes constant reference, and which bring us into intimate contact with Cicero himself, and give us an insight into the very heart and soul of the man, exhibiting his daily feelings, at one time exalted to the highest pinnacle by the greatness of the deliverance he had wrought out for his country, and the honours showered upon him by a grateful senate and a saved nation; at another sick at heart, and disgusted at the ingratitude of a fickle people, an exile from his beloved Rome. At one moment we see him devoted to literature and philosophy, at another engaged in erecting villas and adorning his grounds; now indulging his taste for the fine arts, or strolling by the seashore unable to work; now immersed in politics, and trembling for the fate of his country, or mourning its lost liberty.

While Mr. Forsyth finds but little to blame in the character and career of Cicero, yet he has not been so dazzled by the splendour that surrounds his life as to present us with a mere panegyric. This biography is, upon the whole, fair, and as impartial, perhaps, as we could expect from an Englishman, in whom there would naturally be a bias towards the aristocratic side in the disputes and civil contentions that so long distracted Rome, and upon more than one occasion broke out into open war, until liberty was extinguished and the great Julius became the master of Rome, her Imperator, in a new sense of the

term.

On a hill rising above the valley of the Liris, and near its junction with the Fibrenus, was situated Arpinum, an ancient city of the Volscians. The remains of the ancient walls, still extant, show it to have been, in early times, a city of no little importance. More than 300 B. C. it fell into the hands of the Romans, but did not obtain the franchise until 188 B. C., the year in which Rome ratified the peace with Antiochus. Although a considerable town, it owes its celebrity to the fact that it gave birth to two of the most illustrious men of Rome, each of them the saviour of his country, the one by repelling barbarian invasion from her borders, the other by crushing a conspiracy in her capital; the one, Marius, the rude soldier,