224 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book III. 



conftitution of their government, and the firft ages of it, are very 

 much better related by the HaUcarnafTian than by Livy, as I have 

 fhown in volume 5. of the Origin of Language*: And 1 fhould not 

 have thought myfelf fufficiently informed of the moft remarkable 

 period of the Roman hiftory, the firft and fecond Punic wars, in 

 which the Romans fhowed fo much magnanimity, and a Ipirit not to 

 be fubdued by the moft difafterous events, and by the greateft lofles 

 both by lea and land, if Polybius had not given us the hiftory of it. 



Upon the fubjedt of the Latin learning, 1 will only add, further 

 to what 1 have faid in volume 5. of the Origin of Language f, and 

 in volume 6. J, that 1 ftill continue of the opinion I have delivered 

 in the paflage laft quoted, that the moft valuable work of the liter- 

 ary kind that has come down to us from the Romans, is that collec- 

 tion of laws, commonly known by the name of the Corpus Juris ; 

 and 1 have obferved there, that they were the only antient nation who 

 made a fcience of the law of private property. It was by a decree 

 of the Emperor Lothario, declared to be the common law of all the 

 Weftern Empire: And at this day it is the law of moft of the na- 

 tions of Europe, and in Scotland it is the common law of the coun- 

 try. 



Without the things I have mentioned, I think this life cannot be 

 happy; and if, to all thefe, we can join the profped of a much hap- 

 pier life in the world to come, and if we have lived fo in this, that, 

 when we become old, and find that we are incapable to make any 

 further improvement of our minds, we defire, as foon as it ftiall 

 pleafe God, to be delivered from this body, which incumbers our 

 intelledual part, and obflruds its operations fo much, that it may 

 be faid to be a kind of death to the inrelled, and therefore is pro- 

 perly enough called, by St Paul, this body of death ^ of which he de- 

 fires 



* Book 1. Chap. i. f P^ge 21. % Page 280. 



