assemblies, though constitutionally omnipo- thenes, and comparing him with his rival tent, could maintain a successful contest Eschines. Let him speak for himself. against men who possessed the whole property "In earliest youth Demosthenes earned an of the state. Hence the necessity for measures opprobrious nickname by the effeminacy of tending to unsettle the whole frame of society, his dress and manner." Does Mr. Mitford and to take away every motive of industry; the abolition of debts, and the Agrarian laws -propositions absurdly condemned by men who do not consider the circumstances from which they sprung. They were the desperate remedies of a desperate disease. In Greece the oligarchal interest was not in general so deeply rooted as at Rome. The multitude, therefore, often redressed, by force, grievances which, at Rome, were commonly attacked under the forms of the constitution. They drove out or massacred the rich, and divided their property. If the superior union or military skill of the rich rendered them victorious, they took measures equally violent, disarmed all in whom they could not confide, often slaughtered great numbers, and occasionally expelled the whole commonalty from the city, and remained, with their slaves, the sole inhabitants.

From such calamities Athens and Lacedæmon alone were almost completely free. At Athens, the purses of the rich were laid under regular contribution for the support of the poor; and this, rightly considered, was as much a favour to the givers as to the receivers, since no other measure could possibly have saved their houses from pillage, and their persons from violence. It is singular that Mr. Mitford should perpetually reprobate a policy which was the best that could be pursued in such a state of things, and which alone saved Athens from the frightful outrages which were perpetrated at Corcyra.

Lacedæmon, cursed with a system of slavery more odious than has ever existed in any other country, avoided this evil by aimost totally annihilating private property. Lycurgus began by an Agrarian law. He abolished all professions except that of arms; he made the whole of his community a standing army, every member of which had a common right to the services of a crowd of miserable bondmen; he secured the state from sedition at the expense of the Helots. Of all the parts of his system this is the most creditable to his head, and the most disgraceful to his heart.

These considerations, and many others of equal importance, Mr. Mitford has neglected; but he has a yet heavier charge to answer. He has made not only illogical inferences, but false statements. While he never states, without qualifications and objections, the charges which the earliest and best historians have brought against his favourite tyrants, Pisistratus, Hippias, and Gelon, he transcribes, without any hesitation, the grossest abuse of the least authoritative writers against every democracy and every demagogue. Such an acrusation should not be made without being supported; and I will therefore select one out of many passages which will fully substantiate the charge, and convict Mr. Mitford of wilful misrepresentation, or of negligence scarcely Ess culpable. Mr. Mitford is speaking of one of the greates: men that ever lived, Demos

know that Demosthenes denied this charge,
and explained the nickname in a perfectly dif
ferent manner? And if he knew it, shoul
he not have stated it? He proceeds thus:--
"On emerging from minority, by the Athenian
law, at five-and-twenty, he earned another op-
probious nickname by a prosecution of his
guardians, which was considered as
a dis-
honorable attempt to extort money from them."
In the first place, Demosthenes was not five
and-twenty years of age. Mr. Mitford might
have learnt from so common a book as the
Archæologia of Archbishop Potter, that, at
twenty, Athenian citizens were freed from the
control of their guardians, and began to ma
nage their own property. The very speech of
Demosthenes against his guardians proves
most satisfactorily that he was under twenty.
In his speech against Midias, he says, that
when he undertook that prosecution he was
quite a boy. His youth might, therefore, ex-
cuse the step, even if it had been considered,
as Mr. Mitford says, a dishonourable attempt
to extort money. But who considered it as
such? Not the judges, who condemned the
guardians. The Athenian courts of justice
were not the purest in the world; but their de-
cisions were at least as likely to be just as the
abuse of a deadly enemy. Mr. Mitford refers
for confirmation of his statement to Eschines
and Plutarch. Eschines by no means bears
him out, and Plutarch directly contradicts him.
"Not long after," says Mr. Mitford, "he took
blows publicly in the theatre (I preserve the
orthography, if it can be so called, of this his-
torian) from a petulant youth of rank named
Meidias." Here are two disgraceful mistakes.
In the first place, it was long after; eight years
at the very least, probably much more. In the
next place, the petulant youth, of whom Mr.
Mitford speaks, was fifty years old. Really
Mr. Mitford has less reason to censure the
carelessness of his predecessors than to re-
form his own. After this monstrous inaccu-
racy with regard to facts, we may be able to
judge what degree of credit ought to be given
to the vague abuse of such a writer. "The
cowardice of Demosthenes in the field after-
wards became notorious." Demosthenes was
a civil character; war was not his business.
In his time the division between military and
political offices was beginning to be strongly
marked; yet the recollection of the days when
every citizen was a soldier was still recent.
In such states of society a certain degree of
disrepute always attaches to sedentary men;
but that any leader of the Athenian democracy
could have been, as Mr. Mitford says of De
mosthenes, a few lines before, remarkable for

See the speech of Eschines against Timarchus * Μειρακύλλιον ων κομίδη.

Whoever will read the speech of Demosthener against Midias will find the statements in the text corcoming acquainted with one of the finest composition firmed, and will have, moreover, the pleasure of be. in the world

an extraordinary deficiency of personal courage' is absolutely impossible. What mercenary warrior of the time exposed his life to greater or more constant perils? Was there a single soldier at Choronea who had more cause to tremble for his safety than the orator, vho, in case of defeat, could scarcely hope for 1. ercy from the people whom he had misled, or the prince whom he had opposed? Were not the ordinary fluctuations of popular feeling enough to deter any coward from engaging in political conflicts? Isocrates, whom Mr. Mitford extols because he constantly employed all the flowers of his schoolboy rhetoric to decorate oligarchy and tyranny, avoided the judicial and political meetings of Athens from mere timidity, and seems to have hated democracy only because he durst not look a popular assembly in the face. Demosthenes was a man of a feeble constitution; his nerves were weak, but his spirit was high; and the energy and enthusiasm of his feelings supported him through life and in death.

notion to those readers who have not the means of comparing his statements with the original authorities, of his extreme partiality and carelessness. Indeed, whenever this his torian mentions Demosthenes, he violates ali the laws of candour and even of decency; he weighs no authorities, he makes no allow ances; he forgets the best-authenticated facts in the history of the times, and the most generally recognised principles of human nature. The opposition of the great orator to the policy of Philip, he represents as neither more nor less than deliberate villany. I hold almost the same opinion with Mr. Mitford respecting the character and the views of that great and accomplished_prince. But am I, therefore, to pronounce Demosthenes profligate and insincere? Surely not; do we not perpetually see men of the greatest talents and the purest intentions misled by national or factious prejudices? The most respectable people in England were, little more than forty years ago, in the habit of uttering the bitterest abuse against Washington and Franklin. It is certainly to be regretted that men should err so grossly in their estimate of character. But no person who knows any thing of human nature will impute such errors to depravity.

Mr. Mitford is not more consistent with him self than with reason. Though he is the ad. vocate of all oligarchies, he is also a warm admirer of all kings; and of all citizens who raised themselves to that species of sovereignty which the Greeks denominated tyranny. If monarchy, as Mr. Mitford holds, be in itself a blessing, democracy must be a better form of government than aristocracy, which is always opposed to the supremacy, and even to the eminence of individuals. On the other hand, it is but one step that separates the demagogue and the sovereign.

So much for Demosthenes. Now for the orator of aristocracy. I do not wish to abuse Eschines. He may have been an honest man. He was certainly a great man; and I feel a reverence, of which Mr. Mitford seems to have no notion, for great men of every party. But when Mr. Mitford says, that the private character of Æschines was without stain, does he remember what Æschines has himself confessed in his speech against Timarchus? I can make allowances, as well as Mr. Mitford, for persons who lived under a different system of laws and morals; but let them be made impartially. If Demosthenes is to be attacked, on account of some childish improprieties, proved only by the assertion of an antagonist, what shall we say of those maturer vices which that antagonist has himself acknowledged? "Against the private character of If this article had not extended itself to so Eschines," says Mr. Mitford, "Demosthenes great a length, I should offer a few observaseems not to have had an insinuation to op- tions on some other peculiarities of this writer, pose." Has Mr. Mitford ever read the speech-his general preference of the Barbarians to Demosthenes on the embassy? Or can he have forgotten, what was never forgotten by any one else who ever read it, the story which Demosthenes relates with such terrible energy of language concerning the drunken brutality of his rival? True or false, here is something more than an insinuation; and nothing can vindicate the historian who has overlooked it from the charge of negligence or of partiality. But Eschines denied the story. And did not Demosthenes also deny the story respecting his childish nickname, which Mr. Mitford has nevertheless told without any qualification? But the judges, or some part of them, showed, by their clamour, their disbelief of the relation of Demosthenes. And did not the judges, who tried the canse between Demosthenes and his guardians indicate, in a much clearer manner, their approbation of the prosecution? But Demosthenes was a demagogue, and is to be Biantered. Eschines was an aristocrat, and is to be panegyrized. Is this a history, or a party pamphlet?

These passages, all selected from a single Daze Mr. Mitford's work, may give some

the Greeks, his predilection for Persians, Carthaginians, Thracians, for all nations, in short, except that great and enlightened nation of which he is the historian. But I will confine myself to a single topic.

Mr. Mitford has remarked, with truth and spirit, that "any history perfectly written, but especially a Grecian history perfectly written, should be a political institute for all nations." It has not occurred to him that a Grecian history, perfectly written, should also be a complete record of the rise and progress of poetry, philosophy, and the arts. Here his work is extremely deficient. Indeed, though it may seem a strange thing to say of a gentleman who has published so many quartos, Mr. Mitford seems to entertain a feeling, bordering on contempt, for literary and speculative pursuits. The talents of action almost exclusively attract his notice, and he talks with very complacent disdain of the "idle learned." Homer, indeed, he admires, but principally, I am afraid, because he is convinced that Homer could neither read nor write. He could no avol speaking of Socrates; but he has been

rar more solicitous to trace his death to politi- and useless minutenes but improvemen cal causes, and to deduce from it consequences the most essential to the comforts of huma unfavourable to Athens and to popular go-life extend themselves over the world, and in vernment, than to throw light on the character and doctrines of the wonderful man,

"From whose mouth issued forth
Melliduous streams that watered all the schools
Of Academics, old and new, with those
Surnamed Peripatetics, and the sect
Epicurean, and the Stoic severe."

He does not seem to be aware that Demos-
thenes was a great orator; he represents him
sometimes as an aspiring demagogue, some-
times as an adroit negotiator, and always as a
great rogue. But that in which the Athenian
excelled all men of all ages, that irresistible
eloquence, which, at the distance of more thar.
:wo thousand years, stirs our blood and brings
tears into our eyes, he passed by with a few
phrases of commonplace commendation. The
origin of the drama, the doctrines of the so-
phists, the course of Athenian education, the
state of the arts and sciences, the whole do-
mestic system of the Greeks, he has almost
completely neglected. Yet these things will
appear, to a reflecting man, scarcely less
worthy of attention than the taking of Sphac-
teria, or the discipline of the targeteers of
Iphicrates.

troduce themselves into every cottage, before any annalist can condescend from the dignity of writing about generals and ambassadors, te take the least notice of them. Thus the pro gress of the most salutary inventions and dis coveries is buried in impenetrable mystery mankind are deprived of a most useful species of knowledge, and their benefactors of their honest fame. In the mean time every child knows by heart the dates and adventures of a long line of barbarian kings. The history of nations, in the sense in which I use the word, is often best studied in works not professedly historical. Thucydides, as far as he goes, is an excellent writer, yet he affords us far less knowledge of the most important particulars relating to Athens, than Plato or Aristophanes. The little treatise of Xenophon in Domestic Economy contains more historical information than all the seven books of his Hellanics. The same may be said of the Satires of Horace, of the Letters of Cicero, of the novels of Le Sage, of the memoirs of Marmontel. Many others might be mentioned, but these suffi ciently illustrate my meaning.

I would hope that there may yet appear a writer who may despise the present narrow limits, and assert the rights of history over

This, indeed, is a deficiency by no means peculiar to Mr. Mitford. Most people seem to imagine that a detail of public occurences-every part of her natural domain. Shoul the operation of sieges-the changes of administrations-the treaties-the conspiracies-the rebellions-is a complete history. Differences of definition are logically unimportant, but practically they sometimes produce the most momentous effects: thus it has been in the present case; historians have, almost without exception, confined themselves to the public transactions of states, and have left to the negligent administration of writers of fiction a province at least equally extensive and valuable.

All wise statesmen have agreed to consider the prosperity or adversity of nations as made up of the happiness or misery of individuals, and to reject as chimerical all notions of a public interest of the community, distinct from the interest of the component parts. It is therefore strange that those whose office it is to supply statesmen with examples and warnings, should omit, as too mean for the dignity of history, circumstances which exert the most extensive influence on the state of society. In general, the under current of human life flows steadily on, unruffled by the storms which agitate the surface. The happiness of the many commonly depends on causes independent of victories or defeats, of revolutions or restorations, causes which can be regulated by no laws, and which are recorded in no archives. These causes are the things which it is of main importance to us to know, not how the Lacedæmonian phalanx was broken at Leuc tra-not whether Alexander died of poison or by disease. History, without these, is a shell without a kernel; and such is almost all the history which is extant in the world. Fatry tkirmishes and plots are reported with absurd

such a writer engage in that enterprise, ir which I cannot but consider Mr. Mitford as having failed, he will record, indeed, all that is interesting and important in military and political transactions; but he will not think any thing too trivial for the gravity of history which is not too trivial to promote or diminish the happiness of man. He will portray in vivid colours the domestic society, the manners, the amusements, the conversation of the Greeks. He will not disdain to discuss the state of agriculture, of the mechanical arts, and of the conveniences of life. The progress of painting, of sculpture, and of architecture, will form an important part of his plan. But above all, his attention will be given to the history of that splendid literature from which has sprung all the strength, the wisdom, the freedom, and the glory of the western world.

Of the indifference which Mr. Mitford shows on this subject, I will not speak, for I cannot speak with fairness. It is a subject in which I love to forget the accuracy of a judge, in the veneration of a worshipper and the gratitude of a child. If we consider merely the subtlety of disquisition, the force of imagination, the perfect energy and elegance of expression, which characterize the great works of Athenian genius, we must pronounce them intrin sically most valuable; but what shall we say when we reflect that from hence have sprung, directly or indirectly, all the noblest creations of the human intellect; that from hence were the vast accomplishments and the brillian: fancy of Cicero, the withering fire of Juvena!; the plastic imagination of Dante; the humour of Cervantes; the comprehension of Bacon the wit of Butler; the supreme and universa.

xcellence of Shakspeare? All the triumphs | the hidden riches of the universe. Surely it is of truth and genius over prejudice and power, in every country and in every age, have been the triumphs of Athens. Wherever a few great minds have made a stand against violence and fraud, in the cause of liberty and reason, there has been her spirit in the midst of them; inspiring, encouraging, consoling;-yet unexplored mines. This is the gift of by the lonely lamp of Erasmus; by the restless bed of Pascal; in the tribune of Mirabeau; in the cell of Galileo; on the scaffold of Sidney. But who shall estimate her influence on pri- | vate happiness? Who shall say how many | thousands have been made wiser, happier, and better, by those pursuits in which she has taught mankind to engage; to how many the studies which took their rise from her have been wealth in poverty,--liberty in bondage, health in sickness,-society in solitude. Her power is indeed manifested at the bar; in the senate; in the field of battle; in the schools of philosophy. But these are not her glory. Wherever literature consoles sorrow, or assuages pain,-wherever it brings gladness to eyes which fail with wakefulness and tears, and ache for the dark house and the long sleep, -there is exhibited, in its noblest form, the immortal influence of Athens.

The dervise, in the Arabian tale, did not hesitate to abandon to his comrade the camels with their load of jewels and gold, while he re ained the casket of that mysterious juice, which enabled him to behold at one glance all

no exaggeration to say, that no external advan
tage is to be compared with that purification
of the intellectual eye, which gives us to con
template the infinite wealth of the mental
worid; all the hoarded treasures of the pri
meval dynasties, all the shapeless ore of its
Athens to man. Her freedom and her power
have for more than twenty centuries been an.
nihilated; her people have degenerated into
timid slaves; her language into a barbarous
jargon; her temples have been given up to the
successive depredations of Romans, Turks, and.
Scotchmen; but her intellectual empire is im
perishable. And, when those who have rival.
led her greatness shall have shared her fate:
when civilization and knowledge shall have
fixed their abode in distant continents; when the
sceptre shall have passed away from England;
when, perhaps, travellers from distant regions
shall in vain labour to decipher on some
mouldering pedestal the name of our proudest
chief; shall hear savage hymns chanted to
some misshapen idol over the ruined dome of
our proudest temple: and shall see a single
naked fisherman wash his nets in the river of
the ten thousand masts,-her influence and her
glory will still survive,-fresh in eternal youth,
exempt from mutability and decay, immortal as
the intellectual principle from which they de
rived their origin, and cver which they exe
[cise their control

ON THE ATHENIAN ORATORS.

To the famous orators repair,

l'hose ancient, whose resistless eloquence
Wielded at will that fierce democratie,

Shook the arsenal, and thundered over Greece
To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne.

MILTON

THE celebrity of the great classical writers | all that could be done by the resolving and s confined within no limits, except those combining powers of the understanding, seems which separate civilized from savage man. not to have possessed much of sensibility or Their works are the common property of every imagination. Partly, also, it may be attributed polished nation. They have furnished sub-to the deficiency of materials. The great works jects for the painter, and models for the poet. of genius which then existed were not either In the minds of the educated classes through- sufficiently numerous or sufficiently varied to out Europe, their names are indissolubly asso-enable any man to form a perfect code of literaciated with the endearing recollections of ture. To require that a critic should conceive childhood, the old school-room, the dog-classes of composition which had never exeared grammar,-the first prize, the tears so isted, and then investigate their principles, often shed and so quickly dried. So great is would be as unreasonable as the demand of the veneration with which they are regarded, Nebuchadnezzar, who expected his magicians that even the editors and commentators, who first to tell him his dream, and then to interperform the lowest menial offices to their me- pret it. mory, are considered, like the equerries and With all his deficiencies Aristotle was the chamberlains of sovereign princes, as entitled most enlightened and profound critic of antito a high rank in the table of literary prece-quity. Dionysius was far from possessing the dence. It is, therefore, somewhat singular that their productions should so rarely have been examined on just and philosophical principles of criticism.

same exquisite subtlety, or the same vast comprehension. But he had access to a much greater number of specimens, and he had devoted himself, as it appears, more exclusively to the study of elegant literature. His parti cular judgments are of more value than his general principles. He is only the historian of literature. Aristotle is its philosopher.

The ancient writers themselves afford us but little assistance. When they particularize, they are commonly trivial: when they would generalize, they become indistinct. An exception must, indeed, be made in favour of Aris- Quintilian applied to general literature the totle. Both in analysis and in combination, same principles by which he had been accusthat great man was without a rival. No phi- tomed to judge of the declamations of his pulosopher has ever possessed, in an equal de- pils. He looks for nothing but rhetoric, and gree, the talent either of separating established rhetoric not of the highest order. He speaks systems into their primary elements, or of con- coldly of the incomparable works of Eschylus. necting detached phenomena in harmonious He admires, beyond expression, those inexsystems. He was the great fashioner of the haustible mines of commonplaces, the plays of intellectual chaos: he changed its darkness Euripides. He bestows a few vague words on into light, and its discord into order. He the poetical character of Homer. He then brought to literary researches the same vigour proceeds to consider him merely as an ora and amplitude of mind, to which both physical tor. An orator Homer doubtless was, and a and metaphysical science are so greatly in- great orator. But surely nothing is more redebted. His fundamental principles of criti-markable, in his admirable works, than an art cism are excellent. To cite only a single instance; the doctrine which he established, that poetry is an imitative art, when justly understood is to the critic what the compass is to the navigator. With it he may venture upon the most extensive excursions. Without it he must creep cautiously along the coast, or lose himself in a trackless expanse, and trust, at best, to the guidance of an occasional star. It is a discovery which changes a caprice into a

science.

The general propositions of Aristotle are valuable. But the merit of the superstructure bears no proportion to that of the foundation. This is partly to be ascribed to the character of the philosopher, who, though qualified to do

with which his oratorical powers are made subservient to the purposes of poetry. Nor can I think Quintilian a great critic in his own province. Just as are many of his remarks, beautiful as are many of his illustrations, we can perpetually detect in his thoughts that flavour which the soil of despotism generally communicates to all the fruits of genius. Ei quence was, in his time, little more than a condiment which served to stimulate in a des pot the jaded appetite for panegyric, an amuse inent for the travelled nobles and the blue. stocking matrons of Rome. It is, therefore, with him, rather a sport than a war: it is a contest of foils, not of swords. He appears to think more of the grace of the attitude than of