CHARLES MERIVALE. 463 



The Conversion of the Roman Empire. (Boyle Lecture for 1864.) 

 The Conversion of the Northern Nations. (Boyle Lecture for 1865.) 



Also the following works of a non-historical character : -- 



Open Fellowships : a Plea for submitting College Fellowships to Univer- 

 sity Competition. 

 Homer's Iliad in English rhymed verse. 



The titles of these works show at a glance the direction of Dr. 

 Merivale's activity as a student and writer. The period of the transi- 

 tion from the ancient to the mediaeval world had for him an irresistible 

 attraction. Both his historical and his religious instincts found there 

 subjects on which they could have ample play. It was indeed a period 

 of momentous issues, of large and lasting transformations, — a period 

 in which every political and religious institution of the civilized world 

 seemed more than once to be at the point of destruction. An old 

 order was passing away amid throes and disasters ; a new order was 

 painfully struggling into being. The Republic had failed to develop 

 its constitution in harmony with the position its conquests had given 

 it. The meeting of the Roman citizens in their centuries and tribes 

 answered passably as the sovereign power, while Rome's dominion 

 was limited to her own neighborhood. When her arms had carried 

 her sway over the best portions of three continents, her city organiza- 

 tion became simply and absurdly impossible as a constitution for so 

 great a territory and such a multitude of subjects. The difficulties 

 that modern England has on her hands, owing to the growth of her 

 dependencies, are as nothing in comparison with those that confronted 

 the Roman Republic. For the English have a representative Parlia- 

 ment, in which, when the English and their colonial fellow subjects 

 agree in desiring it, colonial representatives may take their seats side 

 by side with the members for the three kingdoms. But Rome had no 

 representative body. The citizens who lived in Gaul, or in Asia 

 Minor, could make their voice felt in the government only by going 

 to Rome to vote. The world-wide Republic, organized as a city, was 

 unable or unwilling to recognize its new position. It had ceased to 

 be Roman when it became the civilized world. It could not remain 

 a republic, for the elements of its population were too heterogeneous 

 and scattered to agree in anything. The ancient world of city consti- 

 tutions had reached its term. 



The period of Dean Merivale's studies covers the transformation of 

 the Republic into the Empire. The same period includes also the 

 early stages of that other historical movement which has so deeply 



