Page:Philological Museum v2.djvu/492

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482
Miscellaneous Observations.

many interesting points. Thus for instance in the chapter on the domestic history from the beginning of the second Samnite war to the Lucanian, we find it observed that the import of the Publilian laws can scarcely be determined with any degree of certainty from the sources of information at present known to us : an expression which, as the editor ob- serves, would undoubtedly have been modified in a revision of the chapter, since a more decided and precise opinion is given on the subject both in the second volume (in the chapter entitled. The Jirst year after the restoration of freedom) and in the chapter of the present volume On the Publilian laws. The views there proposed are the same, we are informed, that Niebuhr had been in the habit of unfolding; in his lectures: and this remark is interesting, as it suggests a hope, which can scarcely prove altogether fallacious, that even for those parts of his subject on which no fragments are found among his manuscripts, his history has not altogether died with him : and that those treasures of learning which he so freely scat- tered among his academical audiences, have not been wasted and will not long lie buried, but will in due time, though not in the form which the author himself would have given to them, be added to the public store of literature. In the mean while the literary world has cause to rejoice in the addition which the third volume has made to knowledge, the friends of the author in the new monument it has raised to his fame.