common spirit of liberty against the encroachments of Philip, is a great moral spectacle in the history of the world. Our feelings, however, on these subjects, must not be at variance with reason; something is still wanting to the grandeur of the picture, and, much as we may admire the impetuous torrent of argument and eloquence, which enabled him to wield at will," that fierce democratie," we cannot revere him as the consummate statesman, without the calm conviction that his great talents were directed to just and patriotic ends. Without such a conviction, indeed, we may feel the magic effects of his eloquence; that genuine eloquence which, at once chaste and vehement, harmonious and' robust, borrowed no aid from fancy, contemned the puerilities of illustration and figure, threw off in its athletic course the trappings of vulgar rhetoric as idle incumbrances, and rushed forward at once to its object. But all this will come short of satisfying the taste for moral beauty. We fear that this has been too much overlooked in the notions which are instilled at schools and universities respecting Demosthenes.

-It is natural that the enthusiasm excited by such eloquence should bribe our judgments from their integrity. The wily and intriguing statesman is overlooked in the matchless and irresist→ ible orator. Hence we have suffered our historical prejudices to convert a monarch whom the voice of antiquity almost without dissent, has held up to us as an example of moderation and virtue rarely to be found in that elevated condition, into a crafty and overbearing tyrant. We, therefore, owe usurious amends to Philip for the part which we have taken against him. They who still adhere to the vulgar opinion that it was Demosthenes who, in the eventful contests of the time, monopolized all its virtue and its patriotism, would do well to recollect that the stern and inflexible justice of Phocion was uniformly ranged against him; that Phocion was the steady friend of Philip, from the earliest to the latest stage of his life; and that even the speeches of Demosthenes himself, when he was at a loss for a keen reproach to the Athenians, bore the strongest testimony to the great qualities of the Macedonian. If any doubt can be entertained by any one on this subject, we will remind him of the letter sent by Philip to the Athenians in answer to the fourth Philippic, which was universally considered as a declaration of war; a letter full of sound reasoning, and breathing a spirit of moderation and good temper rarely exhibited in the state papers of any age. It has fortunately been preserved by Demosthenes in his speech for the crown, and we strenuously recommend it to the perusal of future Greek lecturers at Edinburgh and St. Andrews.

With regard to the orator himself, he is by no means exempt

from the reproach to which all the Athenian orators are liable,→→ of pandering to the base passions of the many-headed tyrant, and promulgating maxims repugnant to every notion of honesty and justice. That which the people willed, was always right; that which was for their interest, was always expedient; that which was expedient, was always just. Machiavel himself would have shuddered at the policy recommended by Demosthenes concerning the Rhodians, who were living under a mild and liberal aristocracy. He tells the assembly in plain terms that there must be no aristocracy in Greece.

"Not the Rhodians only, but the Chians, Lesbians, in short all mankind, were living under a form of government different from the Athenian. The danger of the Athenian democracy was alarming, and those who establish any other form of government ought to be esteemed the common enemies of freedom."

Again

"If all indeed would be just, then it would be shameful if the Athenians were otherwise. But when all others are providing for themselves with means to be formidable, for us alone to cultivate justice, and scruple to use advantageous occasions, I consider not as uprightness, but as weakness. All states regulate their rights by their power."

It is impossible not to contrast with the religious faith and sturdy rectitude of the Roman republic this crooked policy, which reminds us of the studied or accidental adoption of these infernal maxims by the National Convention of France, one and indivisible, at a period not very remote from that in which we now write. We might dilate farther on these topics, but enough has been said to show the importance of conveying correct impressions of the great characters of history.

Were we to draw out a catalogue of Professor Dalzel's omissions, we should occupy a space equal to that which has been consumed already. Of the three great institutions which, after the Dorian conquest, were the main instruments of preserving Greece from a relapse into barbarism, and in every stage of her progress most powerfully influenced her affairs, the Oracles, the Council of Amphictyon, and the Public Games, little is said, and that little might as well have been omitted. The third part treats of the polite learning of the Greeks; and here we began to indulge the prospect of being repaid by the taste and learning of Mr. Dalzel, for the severe trial to which he had put our patience in other parts of his work. But we were soon taught the error of our calculations.

With expectations, however, still unsubdued by successive disappointments, we hoped, at least, that when we came to the ancient drama, some curious research would open upon us. We

were once more disappointed. The lecturer is so completely: satisfied with all that has been said before, that he trudges along in the same heavy march round the circle of vulgar opinions, without one effort or aspiration beyond it. Is it to be wondered: at, therefore, that so reverend and consecrated an absurdity as the three dramatic unities should receive the profound homage of Professor Dalzel; that his criticisms upon the ancient drama should wear the livery of this antiquated error; that he should render suit and service to Aristotle, wholly unmindful of the successful revolt of Shakspeare and Nature? His remarks are a dull and superficial echo of the French school; but if the expiring authority of these exploded tenets are ever to be revived, it is not, we will venture to affirm, by such reasoning as we find in this volume.

The diligence of the Greek Professor, however, ought at least to have led him to the passage in Aristotle's Poetics, the source of this long contest, which has caused the shedding, of so much ink, and puzzled so many understandings. No such thing: he does not appear to have read it. It is a remarkable circumstance that Aristotle,* who has given his name to the unities, speaks only with any minuteness of unity of action, concerning which, liberally interpreted and rightly understood, there can be no dispute,-for it must be admitted to be essentially requisite to dramatic poetry. To the second unity, that of time, he makes only a vague and passing allusion. Of the unity of place he has not said a syllable. "But," observes Mr. Dalzel, "these rules were strictly observed and attended to by the ancient Greek tragic writers." This is inconsiderately said. The Agamemnon of Eschylus comprehends the whole space of time from the destruction of Troy to the arrival of that prince at Mycenae, which must have been a considerable number of days. In the Trachiniæ of Sophocles, the journey from Thessaly, in Euboea, is made three times. In the Supplices of Euripides, an army marches from Athens, arrives at Thebes, gives battle, and returns in triumph, and all this during the recitation of the chorus. In the Eumenides of Eschylus, Orestes returns from Delphi to Athens, a journey of several days. As to unity of place, the continued presence of the chorus rendered a frequent change of scene impracticable; but it is wholly changed in the Eumenides of Æschylus, and the Ajax of Sophocles. And here it ought to be observed that, in the ancient theatres, the scene comprehended a much wider space than in ours. It generally represented the public place where there were various buildings, temples, and basilika. When the interior of a building was re

*Arist. Poetic.

presented, a machine called the encyclema gave a view of the inner apartments, and thus answered the modern purpose of raising the curtain.

But it is still more singular that in his twenty-second lecture, which professes to trace the Greek tragedy from its earliest beginnings, Mr. Dalzel should betray an inexcusable negligence of the most extraordinary phenomenon in its progress-the sudden transition, almost anomalous in the literature of nations, with which it leaped, as it were, from its rudest elements to a state nearly mature: a miraculous energy, which repeals the ordinances of nature, and outstrips the developements of time, but not peculiar to the Greek drama only; for the Greek language itself, bounding at once from its oriental infancy, arose almost to sudden consummation, and became immediately in the hands of Homer, ready for every tone of passion and every operation of mind, and furnished with that variety of inflexion, and vigour of combination, which have given it a lasting empire over the heart and the understanding.

Here we must close; there is no end of pursuing the lengthening chain of Mr. Dalzel's errors and omissions.

ART. XVI. An Apology for the Freedom of the Press, and for General Liberty, with Corrections: New Edition. 1821.

THE capacity of being the instrument of diffusing happiness, in the purest and most permanent understanding of the term, is man's highest distinction, as it most assimilates him to the divine nature. Knowledge is one of the appointed means; and knowledge can neither be attained nor imparted without free discus

By virtue of the freedom of the press, a private Englishman, if he be mentally capable of making the fullest use of it, possesses a power of influencing the condition of his fellow-mortals, greater than that of the sovereign who reigns despotically over millions.

Bacon, Newton, and Locke, have modified the intellectual existence of all Europe, and still reign with a silent, yet real, influence. Their works are now, indeed, the common property of mankind: but it is the glory of mental dominion, that it has the principle of perpetuation in itself; and the distinction it confers is not the less honourable, because the homage it receives is voluntary.

The right of free discussion is no less sacred than it is valuable; God has consecrated it by employing it in imparting

the knowledge of his Word, "that last best gift of heaven;" and dearly should England prize a privilege which has given to her sons the will and the power to be foremost among the nations of the earth, in the diffusion of revealed truth. To her blessed agency, in thus employing the power of the press, enlightened millions will, at no distant period, it is probable, confess their deep and lasting obligations.

We deem it important thus to declare our attachment to the liberty of the press, before we enter upon the invidious task of opposing a writer in so many respects, and in some so deservedly popular, as the Reverend Robert Hall; while he contends for rights which have scarcely any other limit than the wisdom of the people who are to exercise them?

It is very foreign to our wish to lessen Mr. Hall's influence as a minister of the gospel. The elegance of his fancy, and the vivacity of his illustrations, when found on the side of the great truths of Christianity, cannot fail to delight as well as interest and instruct; and his conduct in private life we are taught to believe forms a contrast to the spirit which seems to us to characterize his feelings towards those whom he views through the discolouring mists of religious and political differences.

Mr. Hall pleads, in extenuation of the faults his pamphlet may contain, that it was a youthful production. His youth, however, was not very green; having reached the age of twenty-eight years at its first publication: but had this been otherwise, when a Christian minister, at the age of fifty-six, republishes his own work, he must have some very prevailing collateral reason for retaining that which his maturer judgment must whisper to him is calculated to disturb the harmony and happiness of society, of which he forms a part. It is but too probable that it appeared to him, in reperusing his performance, that its juvenile warmth constituted so large a portion of its vigour, that to quell the fever would be to quench the fire. We shall endeavour to show, in the course of this article, that Mr. Hall has judged well for the success of his publication, in not referring his pretensions as a jurist, a statesman, or a patriot, to the award of calm deliberative judgment, or the test of tried and acknowledged principles, but to the decision of those whose selfish and factious purposes have been at all times carried forward by deceptiously placing before the view of the public impracticable theories and abstract rights, the prosecution of which is experimentally known to be the sure road to military despotism. We will not charge upon Mr. Hall the full knowledge of these consequences, and yet we must not deny him the credit of great acuteness: we will therefore adopt a middle course, and consider him as made the instrument of unintentional mischief by feelings of humanity and views of