'The dark'ning universe defy,

To quench his immortality."

Straightway Philosophy hung down her head. She deigned to look at man. She asked him for his health. She went arm in arm with him to the agora. She talked and laughed with him at the theatres. She passed sleepless nights in planning for his welfare.

This change was important, not only as applicable to the times, but also as influencing the subsequent philosophy of Greece. Ethics received a scientific spirit of inquiry. They ceased to be comprehended within the few aphorisms of the seven wise men, and the sparse allusions in the epic, lyric, and tragic poetry. Truths, in moral philosophy and natural theology, became boldly prominent. Plato developed a contemplative morality. Aristotle projected a theory of the active virtues. May not these means have kept alive a religious feeling in the heart? May not the moral philosopher have been an appointed forerunner of Him who came “in the fullness of time?" May not the apostle's victory on Mars' Hill have owed something to the son of Sophroniscus ?

Moreover, Socrates was the first that subjected every question to the light of universal science. From this starting point, subsequent philosophy went forward. It clearly distinguished object-matter into dialectics, physics, and ethics. It fully recognized the coëxistence and inter-communion of these sciences. This was an important truth. The merit belongs chiefly to Socrates, though something is due to Anaxagoras.

The son of Sophroniscus effected another change. He had repudiated the old dialectics, because they were available only for disputation and victory. Hence, it was necessary that he should substitute a new method which would elicit the truth. The Sophists founded their reasoning on arrogant assumption. Socrates laid his basis in the moral convictions. The Sophists indulged in petty quibblings, and unmanly evasions. Socrates proceeded cautiously by question and answer. He and his interlocutor carried on a process of investigation. Both arrived at the same conclusions. There was an entire absence of dogmatism.

But it was the negative part of his dialectics, for which he became most distinguished. He would ask, what is the honorable? what is the base? Numerous definitions would be improvised. He would interrogate by way of further analysis. He would cause the interlocutor to contradict himself. He would show his definition to be too wide, or too narrow. Moreover, he made free use of logical distribution, and of analogy. He classified and distinguished objects according to the genus, the subordinate genera, and the individuals. He tested the truth of an as

sumption by parallel cases. Thus, he constantly limited the subject. But he left it negatively, rather than positively defined. He substituted the proper order of investigation, analysis for synthesis, and used the dialogistic process. This was his change as to the methods of philosophizing.

It was of vast importance to the times. Men were afraid to think for themselves. They supplicated the gods to act as their proxy. They were complete automata. The Socratic Elenchus gave them analytical acumen. It developed their faculties. They became philosophers.

Moreover, the intellect needed purification. It was surfeited with false sentiment. It was corrupted by authority and example. The Socratic Elenchus forced opinions to a test. It was adapted for a thorough purgation. It opened the way for truth. Socrates did the same for moral and political science, that Bacon did for physics. Both carried on an experimental process. Both removed old abuses. Both prepared the mind for positive results.

It is a method of eternal value. It makes the great men of to-day. They question their knowledge. They subject it to every variety of combination. They make it account for itself. They first clear away with the negative arm of dialectics. Then they build with the positive arm. They raise a Doric column of perfect symmetry. The base corresponds to the die, the die to the shaft, the shaft to the capital. Our own country can boast of such men. The turf is not full-grown on their graves. One of them sleeps at Marshfield; another at Ashland.

But this method was important as influencing the subsequent philosophy of Greece. It enlarged beyond comparison the number of dominant minds. All the schools were Socratic in origin. They lasted till the edict of Justinian, a thousand years. The teachers at the Academy, and at the Lyceum; Aristippus, and the philosophers of the Porch; Diogenes, and Euclid of Megara—all traced their legitimacy to the son of Sophroniscus. They all bore a certain resemblance to their great progenitor. They all had a kind of family likeness among themselves. They reflected.

This freedom of thought gave rise to a diversity of systems. So it did after the reformation of Luther. So it has done through the whole of European civilization. But it has illustrated the grandeur of human progress. Where this reflection has not existed, some exclusive principle has become predominant. Immobility has followed. This is verified in the physics of the ancients, the caste and theocracy of Asia, and the infallibility of the Romish Church. Diversity accompanies reflection. Reflection is the condition of progress. So in the myth, the waves roared.

Their dark waters fought. They became crested with foam. Thence was born Aphrodite, the Goddess of beauty.

Reflection is the legitimate and inevitable effect of the Socratic Elenchus. Thus, the change which Socrates introduced as to the objects and methods of philosophizing, may be characterized. It was reflection applied to find out truth; but especially, the truth of man.

Socrates had now done his work. An accusation of impiety, and of corrupting the youth, is brought against him. He is condemned to die. The execution of the sentence is delayed by some religious ceremony. At length the Theoric Galley is seen off Sunium. It reaches the Piræus. Does he tremble? Does he supplicate for life? No! No! In his youthful days he had seen service at Potidæa, at Delium, at Amphipolis. He is now weak with age; but the truth makes him strong. Crito may weep. Xanthippe may weep. The officer may weep. But Socrates, the founder of the logical and moral schools of Athens, weeps not.

He drinks the hemlock. He dies. History, thou hast done him injustice! He only shook off the ungainly exterior of the satyr. He is as well known to-day, as when standing in the agora at Athens. He can "The dark'ning universe defy To quench his immortality."

Inconnue.

INCONNUE, inconnue, I am thinking of thee,
A murmur of music has floated to me,
So sweet was its cadence and silver its tone

That a spell of entrancement around me was thrown.

Did it come o'er the wave from some wonderful shell,

In the caves where the Sea Nymphs and Mermaidens dwell?
Did regions ethereal give it its birth,

Or was it the song of a daughter of earth?

I never may know whence the melody came,

I never may see thee, or utter thy name,
But still in my thoughts thou art present to view,
And I dream thou wilt not be for aye inconnue.

L

Cervantes.

To deduce from abstractions their true value in the concrete and the practical, demands genius of a high order; to make and apply these deductions, argues superior endowments. Cervantes not only refined upon the idea of the burlesque, by severe contemplation of its philosophy, but he demonstrated in actual application, the power of humor to reclaim and elevate the intellect. He found his age foolishly romantic; he left it, at least wise to its own folly. The sunshine of his wit had melted away the fantastic frostwork of romance, and vivified the latent germs of a more solid literary taste. To trace the process of this transition, claims our present attention. In every period of society, the sentiments of chivalry have been more or less operative, but in Spain, from its peculiar political and social condition, these sentiments, lofty in themselves and embellished by the softer refinements of courtesy, became extravagances; thus was Spain emphatically, the land of romantic chivalry. The religious element, fostered by wars against Islamism, sanctioned, while the laws of the land legalized Knight Errantry, and an atmosphere of romance seemed to intercept the rays of reason, and tint them with unnatural hues. When the lance and target became gradually modernized into musket and cartouch-box, then the old love of the marvelous gave birth to a corresponding taste for tales of wonderment and extravagance; faith in them was strengthened by tradition, and a disposition naturally romantic; the reader gave himself up to the illusion, and by a too credulous intercourse with fantasies, lost all relish for more healthful literature. An individual or a nation thus enthralled, the sensibilities become warped, the muscles of the mind enervated, and a full development is impossible. Such was the captivity of the age. The emergency was threatening. Cervantes successfully confronted it. But his work was a delicate one, demanding acute penetration into the secret springs of human action; the disease of the age needed medicine, mingled with peculiar discrimination; a moiety too much would nauseate; an ingredient too mild would destroy the effect; Cervantes theorized upon, and examined the disordered intellectual anatomy of his nation, and the result was a remedy! By pandering to the popular taste; by gratifying the whims of national caprice, Cervantes might have purchased distinction and wealth; but he chose the nobler, though seemingly less remunerative purpose, of restoring his country's mental vigor; the decision has ranked him among the truly great!

The feeling of the ridiculous has a strong tendency to overturn those nobler qualities and finer susceptibilities, which have the lawful mastery over the mind. The habit of seeing things in a ludicrous light, often makes aggressive movements upon principles held sacred by the wise and good. How dangerous to society, is such a perversion of wit! The raillery of Aristophanes sadly biased the public mind, and originated the persecution of the unimpeachable Socrates. Had Cervantes thrown the reins over, the neck of his humor, its wild vagaries might have trampled down the rich fruitage of thought instead of its weeds alone; but he felt himself a Reformer; his satire had in it, a purpose; it was directed against the false taste of the age. His wit was heightened by a strong sense of its necessity; lurking under an odd similitude, or an uncouth conceit, he hid severe censure. He ridiculed seriously and grandly! Moreover, mark the prudence of his plan. He angered by no direct expostulation; knowing that pride refuses to stir before arrogated authority, but that it goes readily, when seeming to have its own way, he cloaked sly satire under gravity of style, and left men to apply for themselves, the blame to their own case. The incongruity of his writings with real fact, was a parody on the habits of the times. In Don Quixote, was burlesqued the mass of romance readers of that day; the author made them ridiculous in their own eyes, without seeming to bestow upon them a passing thought. Don Quixote's faith in the reality of chivalrous romance, was but their own; his extravagant acting in accordance with his belief, made such belief ludicrous in the extreme, and contempt for his folly reacted upon their own minds, when they felt that his permanent inconsistency in action, and their own inconsistency in emotional bursts of feeling over romantic story, were but one and the same in nature, varying only in issue.

But the reform to be effectual must be comprehensive; the taste of a whole nation must be modified; romance reading was the dissipation of the high, the bane of the low. Cervantes realized all this, and uttered chivalrous sentiments for the high-minded by the mouth of his principal hero; a hero, whose enthusiasm, though ill-directed, was noble; whose very dreams were the dreams of a magnanimous heart, and whose aspirations were too lofty to do battle with the realities of life.

For the learned, Cervantes had indirect instruction and original criticism; his strictures upon literature were bold, but just. With the truly refined, his profound acquaintance with true principles of taste, gained him ascendency. In Don Quixote, he combined with the finer inconsis