the world only for the use of gentlemen. But they spring in general from utter heartlessness. No war ought ever to be undertaken but under circumstances which render all interchange of courtesy between the combatants impossible. It is a bad thing that men should hate each other, but it is far worse that they should contract the habit of cutting one another's throats without hatred. War is never lenient but where it is wanton; when men are compelled to fight in self-defence, they must hate and avenge; this may be bad, but it is human na ture, it is the clay as it came from the hand of the potter.

bullies; there was no established table attending for a remote colony, a frontier town, which every one must dine, no established the honours of a flag, a salute or a title, that style in which every one must converse. An they can make fine speeches, and do good Athenian might eat whatever he could afford offices to their enemies. The Black Prince to buy, and talk as long as he could find peo- waited behind the chair of his captive; Villars ple to listen. The government did not tell the interchanged repartees with Eugene; George people what opinions they were to hold, or II. sent congratulations to Louis XV., during a what songs they were to sing. Freedom pro- war, upon occasion of his escape from the atduced excellence. Thus philosophy took its tempt of Damien; and these things are fine origin. Thus were produced those models of and generous, and very gratifying to the author poetry, of oratory, and of the arts, which of the Broad Stone of Honour, and all the other scarcely fall short of the standard of ideal ex-wise men who think, like him, that God made cellence. Nothing is more conducive to happiness than the free exercise of the mind, in pursuits congenial to it. This happiness, assuredly, was enjoyed far more at Athens than at Sparta. The Athenians are acknowledged even by their enemies to have been distinguished, in private life, by their courteous and amiable demeanour. Their levity, at least, was better than Spartan sullenness, and their impertinence, than Spartan insolence. Even in courage it may be questioned whether they were inferior to the Lacedæmonians. The great Athenian historian has reported a remarkable observation of the great Athenian minister. Pericles maintained that his countrymen, without submitting to the hardships of a Spartan education, rivalled all the achievements of Spartan valour, and that therefore the pleasures and amusements which they enjoyed were to be considered as so much clear gain. The infantry of Athens was certainly not equal to that of Lacedæmon; but this seems to have been caused merely by want of practice the attention of the Athenians was diverted from the discipline of the phalanx to that of the trireme. The Lacedæmonians, in spite of all their boasted valour, were, from the same cause, timid and disorderly in naval | action.

It is true that among the dependencies of Athens, seditions assumed a character more ferocious than even in France, during the reign of terror-the accursed Saturnalia of an accursed bondage. It is true that in Athens itself, where such convulsions were scarcely known, the condition of the higher orders was disagreeable; that they were compelled to contribute large sums for the service or the amusement of the public, and that they were sometimes harassed by vexatious informers. Whenever such cases occur, Mr. Mitford's skepticism vanishes. The "if," the "but," the "it is said," the "if we may believe," with which he qualifies every charge against a tyrant or an aristocracy, are at once abandoned. The blacker the story, the firmer is his belief; and he never fails to inveigh with hearty bitterness against democracy as the source of every species of crime.

every other state which then existed. The violence of faction in that age sprang from a cause which has always been fertile in every political and moral evil, domestic slavery.

But we are told that crimes of great enormity were perpetrated by the Athenian government and the democracies under its protection. It is true that Athens too often acted up to the full extent of the laws of war, in an age when those laws had not been mitigated by causes The Athenians, I believe, possessed more which have operated in later times. This ac- liberty than was good for them Yet I will cusation is, in fact, common to Athens, to La- venture to assert, that while the splendour, the cedæmon, to all the states of Greece, and to all intelligence, and the energy of that great peostates similarly situated. Where communities ple were peculiar to themselves, the crimes are very large, the heavier evils of war are felt with which they are charged arose from but by few. The ploughboy sings, the spin-causes which were common to them with ning-wheel turns round, the wedding-day is fixed, whether the last battle were lost or won. In little states it cannot be thus; every man feels in his own property and person the effect of a war. Every man is a soldier, and a soldier fighting for his nearest interests. His own trees have been cut down-his own corn has been burnt-his own house has been pillaged his own relations have been killed. How can he entertain towards the enemies of his country the same feelings with one who has suffered nothing from them, except perhaps the addition of a small sum to the taxes which he pays? Men in such circumstances cannot be generous. They have too much at stake It is when they are, if I may so express inyself, playing for love, it is when war is a inere game at chess, it is when they are con

The effect of slavery is completely to dissolve the connection which naturally exists between the higher and lower classes of free citizens. The rich spend their wealth in purchasing and maintaining slaves. There is no demand for the labour of the poor; the fable of Menenius ceases to be applicable; the belly communicates no nutriment to the members; there is an atrophy in the body politic. The two parties, therefore, proceed to extremities utterly unknown in countries where they have mutually need of each other. In Rome the oligarchy was too powerful to be subverted by force; and neither the tribunes nor the popular

"In earliest youth Demosthenes earned an

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 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; know that Demosthenes denied this charge, the abolition of debts, and the Agrarian laws and explained the nickname in a perfectly dif -propositions absurdly condemned by men ferent manner?* And if he knew it, should who do not consider the circumstances from he not have stated it? He proceeds thus:which they sprung. They were the desperate "On emerging from minority, by the Athenian remedies of a desperate disease. In Greece law, at five-and-twenty, he earned another opthe oligarchal interest was not in general so probious nickname by a prosecution of his deeply rooted as at Rome. The multitude, guardians, which was considered as a distherefore, often redressed, by force, grievances honorable attempt to extort money from them." which, at Rome, were commonly attacked un- In the first piace, Demosthenes was not five der the forms of the constitution. They drove and-twenty years of age. Mr. Mitford might out or massacred the rich, and divided their have learnt from so common a book as the property. If the superior union or military Archæologia of Archbishop Potter, that, at skill of the rich rendered them victorious, they twenty, Athenian citizens were freed from the took measures equally violent, disarmed all control of their guardians, and began to ma in whom they could not confide, often slaugh- nage their own property. The very speech of tered great numbers, and occasionally ex- Demosthenes against his guardians proves pelled the whole commonalty from the city, most satisfactorily that he was under twenty. and remained, with their slaves, the sole in- In his speech against Midias, he says, that habitants. when he undertook that prosecution he was quite a boy. His youth might, therefore, excuse 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 decisions were at least as likely to be just as the abuse of a deadly enemy. Mr. Mitford refers for confirmation of his statement to Eschin's 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 historian) 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 reform his own. After this monstrous inaccuracy 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 afterwards 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

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 almost 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 accusation 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 less culpable. Mr. Mitford is speaking of one of the greatest men that ever lived, Demos

See the speech of Æschines against Timarchus. 4 Μειρακύλλιον ων κομίδη.

Whoever wili read the speech of Demosthenes

against Midias will find the statements in the text confirmed, and will have, moreover, the pleasure of becoming acquainted with one of the finest compositions in the world.

"an extraordinary deficiency of personal cou-notion to those readers who have not the rage" is absolutely impossible. What mercenary warrior of the time exposed his life to greater or more constant perils? Was there a single soldier at Charonea who had more cause to tremble for his safety than the orator, who, in case of defeat, could scarcely hope for mercy 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 sup·ported him through life and in death.

means of comparing his statements with the original authorities, of his extreme partiality and carelessness. Indeed, whenever this historian mentions Demosthenes, he violates all 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 himself than with reason. Though he is the advocate of all oligarchies, he is also a warm admirer of all kings; and of all citizens who raised themselves to that species of sovereign

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 Eschines 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,ty which the Greeks denominated tyranny. If 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 options on some other peculiarities of this writer, pose." Has Mr. Mitford ever read the speech-his general preference of the Barbarians to of Demosthenes on the embassy? Or can he the Greeks, his predilection for Persians, Carhave 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 cause 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 slancered. Eschines was an aristocrat, and is to be panegyrized. Is this a history, or a party-pamphlet?

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

thaginians, 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 not avoid speaking of Socrates; but he has been

far more solicitous to trace his death to politi- and useless minuteness: but improvements cal causes, and to deduce from it consequences the most essential to the comforts of human unfavourable to Athens and to popular go-life extend themselves over the world, and invernment, than to throw light on the character | troduce themselves into every cottage, before land doctrines of the wonderful man,

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

any annalist can condescend from the dignity of writing about generals and ambassadors, to 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 He does not seem to be aware that Demos- of knowledge, and their benefactors of their thenes was a great orator; he represents him honest fame. In the mean time every child sometimes as an aspiring demagogue, some- knows by heart the dates and adventures of a times as an adroit negotiator, and always as a long line of barbarian kings. The history of great rogue. But that in which the Athenian nations, in the sense in which I use the word, excelled all men of all ages, that irresistible is often best studied in works not professedly eloquence, which, at the distance of more than historical. Thucydides, as far as he goes, is two thousand years, stirs our blood and brings an excellent writer, yet he affords us far less tears into our eyes, he passed by with a few knowledge of the most important particulars phrases of commonplace commendation. The relating to Athens, than Plato or Aristophanes. origin of the drama, the doctrines of the so- The little treatise of Xenophon in Domestic phists, the course of Athenian education, the Economy contains more historical information state of the arts and sciences, the whole do- than all the seven books of his Hellanics. mestic system of the Greeks, he has almost The same may be said of the Satires of Hocompletely neglected. Yet these things will race, of the Letters of Cicero, of the novels of appear, to a reflecting man, scarcely less Le Sage, of the memoirs of Marmontel. Many worthy of attention than the 'taking of Sphac-others might be mentioned, but these suffi teria, or the discipline of the targeteers of Iphicrates.

This, indeed, is a deficiency by no means peculiar to Mr. Mitford. Most people seem to imagine that a detail of public occurences 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.

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 every part of her natural domain. Should such a writer engage in that enterprise, în 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 All wise statesmen have agreed to consider of the conveniences of life. The progress of the prosperity or adversity of nations as made painting, of sculpture, and of architecture, will up of the happiness or misery of individuals, form an important part of his plan. But above and to reject as chimerical all notions of a all, his attention will be given to the history of public interest of the community, distinct from that splendid literature from which has sprung the interest of the component parts. It is there-all the strength, the wisdom, the freedom, and fore strange that those whose office it is to the glory of the western world. supply statesmen with examples and warnings, Of the indifference which Mr. Mitford shows should omit, as too mean for the dignity of his- on this subject, I will not speak, for I cannot tory, circumstances which exert the most ex-speak with fairness. It is a subject in which tensive 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. Paltry skirmishes and plots are reported with absurd

Ilove 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 Athe-
nian 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 brilliant
fancy of Cicero, the withering fire of Juvenal;
the plastic imagination of Dante; the humour
of Cervantes; the comprehension of Bacon;
the wit of Butler; the supreme and universa

END OF VOL. IIL