which a demonstrated truth is distinguished from a plausible supposition.  He is not content with suggesting that an event may have happened.  He is certain that it happened, and calls on the reader to be certain too, (though not a trace of it exists in any record whatever,) because it would solve the phenomena so neatly.  Just read over again, if you have forgotten it, the conjectural restoration of the Inscription in page 126 of the second volume; and then, on your honour as a scholar and a man of sense, tell me whether in Bentley’s edition of Milton there is anything which approaches to the audacity of that emendation.  Niebuhr requires you to believe that some of the greatest men in Rome were burned alive in the Circus; that this event was commemorated by an inscription on a monument, one half of which is sill in existence; but that no Roman historian knew anything about it; and that all tradition of the event was lost, though the memory of anterior events much less important has reached our time.  When you ask for a reason, he tells you plainly that such a thing cannot be established by reason; that he is sure of it; and that you must take his word.  This sort of intellectual despotism always moves me to mutiny, and generates a disposition to pull down the reputation of the dogmatist.  Niebuhr’s learning was immeasurably superior to mine; but I think myself quite as good a judge of evidence as he was.  I might easily believe him if he told me that there were proofs which I had never seen; but, when he produces all his proofs, I conceive that I am perfectly competent to pronounce on their value.

As I turned over his leaves just now, I lighted on another instance of what I cannot but call ridiculous presumption.  He says that Martial committed a blunder in making the penultimate of Porsena short.  Strange that so great a scholar should not know that Horace had done so too!

Minacis aut Etrusca Porsenae manus.

There is something extremely nauseous to me in a German Professor telling the world, on his own authority, and without giving the smallest reason, that two of the best Latin poets were ignorant of the quantity of a word which they must have used in their exercises at school a hundred times.

As to the general capacity of Niebuhr for political speculations, let him be judged by the Preface to the Second Volume.  He there says, referring to the French Revolution of July 1830, that “unless God send us some miraculous help, we have to look forward to a period of destruction similar to that which the Roman world experienced about the middle of the third century.”  Now, when I see a man scribble such abject nonsense about events which are passing under our eyes, what confidence can I put in his judgment as to the connection of causes and effects in times very imperfectly known to us.

But I must bring my letter, or review, to a close.  Remember me most kindly to your wife.  Tell Frank that I mean to be a better scholar than he when I come back, and that he must work hard if he means to overtake me.