stocked with deer. You have now topped the little hill above the village, and a straight line of level road, a mile long, goes forward to a country town which lies immediately behind that white church with its spire cutting into the sky before you. You descend on the other side, and having advanced a few perches, look to the left, where you see a long thatched chapel, only distinguished from a dwelling-house by its want of chimneys, and a small stone cross that stands on the top of the eastern gable; behind it is a grave-yard, and beside it a snug public-house, well whitewashed; then, to the right, you observe a door apparently in the side of a clay bank, which rises considerably above the pavement of the road. What! you ask yourself, can this be a human habitation? But ere you have time to answer the question, a confused buzz of voices from within reaches your ear, and the appearance of a little gorsoon, with a red close-cropped head and Milesian face, having in his hand a short white stick, or the thighbone of a horse, which you at once recognise as the pass' of a village school, gives you the full information. He has an inkhorn, covered with leather, dangling at the button-hole (for he has long since played away the buttons) of his frieze jacket-his mouth is circumscribed with a streak of ink-his pen is stuck knowingly behind his ear-his shins are dotted over with fire-blisters, black, red, and blue-on each heel a kibe—his ‘leather crackers'-videlicet, breeches-shrunk up upon him, and only reaching as far down as the caps of his knees. Having spied you, he places his hand over his brows, to throw back the dazzling light of the sun, and peers at you from under it, till he breaks out into a laugh, exclaiming, half to himself, half to you: You a gintleman!—-no, nor one of your breed never was, you procthorin' thief you !' You are now immediately opposite the door of the seminary, when half-a-dozen of those seated next it notice you. 'Oh, sir, here's a gintleman on a horse!-masther, sir, here's a gintleman on a horse, wid boots and spurs on him, that's looking in at us.' 'Silence!' exclaims the master; 'back from the door-boys, rehearse-every one of you rehearse, I say, you Boeotians, till the gintleman goes past!' 'I want to go out, if you plase, sir.' 'No, you don't, Phelim.' 'I do indeed, sir.' "What! is it afther conthradictin' me you'd be? Don't you see the "porter 's" out, and you can't go.' "Well, 'tis Mat Meehan has it, sir; and he's out this half-hour, sir; I can't stay in, sir!' 'You want to be idling your time looking at the gintleman, Phelim.' 'No, indeed, sir.' Phelim, I know you of ould go to your sate. I tell you, Phelim, you were born for the encouragement of the hemp manufacture, and you'll die promoting it.' In the meantime the master puts his head out of the door, his body stooped to a half-bend'-a phrase, and the exact curve which it forms, I leave for the present to your own sagacity-and surveys you until you pass. That is an Irish hedge school, and the personage who follows you with his eye a hedge schoolmaster. MARY RUSSELL MITFORD. MARY RUSSELL MITFORD, the painter of English rural life in its happiest and most genial aspects, was born in 1786 at Alresford, in Hampshire. Reminiscences of her early boarding-school days are scattered through her works, and she appears to have been always an enthusiastic reader. Her father, Dr Mitford, was at one time possessed of a considerable fortune-on one occasion he won Our The a lottery-prize of £20,000-but he squandered it in folly and extravagance, and was latterly supported by the pen of his daughter. When very young, she published a volume of miscellaneous. poems, and a metrical tale in the style of Scott, entitled Christine, the Maid of the South Seas, founded on the discovery of the mutineers of the Bounty. In 1823 was produced her effective and striking tragedy of Julian, dedicated to Mr Macready the actor, 'for the zeal with which he befriended the production of a stranger, for the judicious alterations which he suggested, and for the energy, the pathos, and the skill with which he more than embodied its principal character.' Next year Miss Mitford published the first volume of Our Village, Sketches of Rural Character and Scenery, to which four other volumes were subseEvery quently added, the fifth and last in 1832. one, says a lively writer, 'now knows Village, and every one knows that the nooks and corners, the haunts and the copses so delightfully described in its pages, will be found in the immediate neighbourhood of Reading, and more especially around Three-Mile Cross, a cluster of cottages on the Basingstoke Road, in one of which our authoress resided for many years. But so little were the peculiar and original excellence of her descriptions understood, in the first instance, that, after having gone the round of rejection through the more important periodicals, tion than the Lady's Magazine. But the series they at last saw the light in no worthier publicaof rural pictures grew, and the venture of collecting them into a separate volume was tried. public began to relish the style, so fresh, yet so finished-to enjoy the delicate humour and the simple pathos of the tales; and the result was, that the popularity of these sketches outgrew that of the works of loftier order proceeding from the same pen; that young writers, English and American, began to imitate so artless and charming a manner of narration; and that an obscure Berkshire hamlet, by the magic of talent and kindly feeling, was converted into a place of resort and interest for not a few of the finest spirits of the age.' Extending her observation from the country village to the market town, Miss Mitford published another interesting volume of descriptions, entitled Belford Regis (1835). She also gleaned from the New World three volumes of Stories of American Life, by American Writers, of which she remarks: 'The scenes described and authors, extending in geographical space from the personages introduced are as various as the Canada to Mexico, and including almost every degree of civilisation, from the wild Indian, and the almost equally wild hunter of the forest and prairies, to the cultivated inhabitant of the city and plain. Besides her tragedies-which are little inferior to those of Miss Baillie as intellectual productions, while one of them, Rienzi, has been highly successful on the stage-Miss Mitford contributed numerous tales to the annuals and magazines, shewing that her industry was equal to her talents. It is to her English tales, however, that she must chiefly trust her fame with posterity; and there is so much truth and obser * Mr Chorley-The Authors of England. HENRY FOTHERGILL CHORLEY, a pleasing miscellaneous writer and musical critic, died February 15, 1872. In vation, as well as beauty, in these rural delinea- Tom Cordery, the Poacher. aptness to like, which is certain to be repaid in kind; the very dogs knew him, and loved him, and would beat for him almost as soon as for their master. Even May, the most sagacious of greyhounds, appreciated his talents, and would as soon listen to Tom sohoing as to old Tray giving tongue. This human oak grew on the wild North-of-Hampshire country; a country of heath, and hill, and forest, partly reclaimed, inclosed, and planted by some of the greater proprietors, but for the most part uncultivated and uncivilised, a proper refuge for wild animals of every species. Of these the most notable was my friend Tom Cordery, who presented in his own person no unfit emblem of the district in which he lived-the gentlest of savages, the wildest of civilised men. He was by calling rat-catcher, hare-finder, and broom-maker; a triad of trades which he had substituted for the one grand profession of poaching, which he followed in his younger days with unrivalled talent and success, and would, undoubtedly, have pursued till his death, had not the bursting of an overloaded gun unluckily shot off his left hand. As it was, he still contrived to mingle a little of his old unlawful occupation with his honest callings; was a reference of high authority amongst the young aspirants, an adviser of undoubted honour and secrecy-wife-for he was married, though without a family— suspected, and more than suspected, as being one who, though he played no more, o'erlooked the cards.' Yet he kept to windward of the law, and indeed contrived to be on such terms of social and even friendly intercourse with the guardians of the game on M- Common, as may be said to prevail between reputed thieves and the myrmidons of justice in the neighbourhood of Bow Street. Never did any human being look more like that sort of sportsman commonly called a poacher. He was a tall, finely-built man, with a prodigious stride, that cleared the ground like a horse, and a power of continuing his slow and steady speed, that seemed nothing less than miraculous. Neither man, nor horse, nor dog, could out-tire him. He had a bold, undaunted presence, and an evident strength and power of bone and muscle. You might see, by looking at him, that he did not know what fear meant. In his youth he had fought more battles than any man in the forest. He was as if born without nerves, totally insensible to the recoils and disgusts of humanity. I have known him take up a huge adder, cut off its head, and then deposit the living and writhing body in his brimless hat, and walk with it coiling and wreathing about his head, like another Medusa, till the sport of the day was over, and he carried it home to secure the fat. With all this iron stubbornness of nature, he was of a most mild and gentle demeanour, had a fine placidity of countenance, and a quick blue eye beaming with good-humour. His face was sunburnt into one general pale vermilion hue that overspread all his features; his very hair was sunburnt too. Everybody liked Tom Cordery. He had himself an Behind those sallows, in a nook between them and the hill, rose the uncouth and shapeless cottage of Tom Cordery. It is a scene which hangs upon the eye and the memory, striking, grand-almost sublime, and, above all, eminently foreign. No English painter would choose such a subject for an English landscape; no one, in a picture, would take it for English. It might pass for one of those scenes which have furnished models to Salvator Rosa. Tom's cottage was, however, very thoroughly national and characteristic; a low, ruinous hovel, the door of which was fastened with a sedulous attention to security, that contrasted strangely with the tattered thatch of the roof and the half-broken windows. usual signs of cottage habitation; yet the house was No garden, no pigsty, no pens for geese, none of the covered with nondescript dwellings, and the very walls were animate with their extraordinary tenantspheasants, partridges, rabbits, tame wild-ducks, halftame hares, and their enemies by nature and education, the ferrets, terriers, and mongrels, of whom his retinue consisted. Great ingenuity had been evinced in keeping separate these jarring elements; and by dint of hutches, cages, fences, kennels, and half-a-dozen little hurdled inclosures, resembling the sort of courts which children are apt to build round their card-houses, peace was in general tolerably well preserved. Frequent sounds, however, of fear or of anger, as their several instincts were aroused, gave token that it was but a forced and hollow truce; and at such times the clamour was prodigious. Tom had the remarkable tenderness for animals when domesticated, which is so often found in those whose sole vocation seems to be their destruction in the field; and the one long, straggling, unceiled, barn-like room, which served for kitchen, bed-chamber, and hall, was cumbered with bipeds and quadrupeds of all kinds and descriptions—the sick, the delicate, the newly caught, the lying-in. In the midst of this menagerie sat Tom's married to a woman lame of a leg, as he himself was minus an arm-now trying to quiet her noisy inmates, now to outscold them. How long his friend, the keeper, would have continued to wink at this den of live game, none can say the roof fairly fell in during the deep snow of last winter, killing, as poor Tom observed, two as fine litters of rabbits as ever were kittened. Remotely, I have no doubt that he himself fell a sacrifice to this misadventure. The overseer, to whom he applied to reinstate his beloved habitation, decided that the walls would never bear another roof, and removed him and his wife, as an especial favour, to a tidy, snug, comfortable room in the workhouse. The workhouse! From that hour poor Tom visibly altered. He lost his hilarity and independence. It was a change such as he had himself often inflicted—a complete change of habits, a transition from the wild to the tame. No labour was demanded of him; he went about as before, finding hares, killing rats, selling brooms; but the spirit of the man was departed. He talked of the quiet of his old abode, and the noise of his new; complained of children and other bad company; and looked down on his neighbours with the sort of contempt with which a cockpheasant might regard a barn-door fowl. Most of all did he, braced into a gipsy-like defiance of wet and cold, grumble at the warmth and dryness of his apartment. He used to foretell that it would kill him, and assuredly it did so. Never could the typhus fever have found out that wild hillside, or have lurked under that broken roof. The free touch of the air would have chased the demon. Alas, poor Tom! warmth, and snugness, and comfort, whole windows, and an entire ceiling, were the death of him. Alas, poor Tom! THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK. THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK (1788–1866) was born He at Weymouth, the son of a London merchant. was an accomplished classical scholar, though self-taught from the age of thirteen. He was long connected with the East India Company, and in 1816 came to be Chief Examiner of Indian correspondence, as successor to James Mill, the historian. On Peacock's retirement in 1856, John Stuart Mill took his place. Peacock was the author of some lively, natural, and descriptive novels, with little plot or story, but containing witty and sarcastic dialogues, with copies of verses above mediocrity, and sketches of eccentric character. Headlong Hall was produced in 1816; Nightmare Abbey in 1818; Maid Marian in 1822; Misfortunes of Elphin in 1829; Crotchet Castle in 1831; and Gryll Grange in 1860-the last, though written when its author was seventy-two, is as full of humour and clever dialogue as his earlier tales. Besides these works of fiction, Peacock wrote several poetical satires and other poems, and contributed to Fraser's Magazine Memoirs of Shelley, with whom he was on terms of close intimacy. Conjointly with Byron, he was named as Shelley's executor, with a legacy of £1000. To Peacock we owe a clear and authentic account of the most interesting passages of Shelley's life and domestic history. In 1875 the collected works of Peacock were published in three volumes, with a Preface by Lord Houghton, and a biographical notice by Peacock's granddaughter, Edith Nicolls. Freebooter Life in the Forest-From Maid Marian.' The baron, with some of his retainers, and all the foresters, halted at daybreak in Sherwood Forest. The foresters quickly erected tents, and prepared an abundant breakfast of venison and ale. 'Now, Lord Fitzwater,' said the chief forester, *recognise your son-in-law that was to have been, in the outlaw Robin Hood.' 'Ay, ay,' said the baron, 'I have recognised you long ago. And recognise your young friend Gamwell,' said the second, in the outlaw Scarlet.' And Little John, the page,' said the third, 'in Little John the outlaw.' And Father Michael of Rubygill Abbey,' said the friar, in Friar Tuck of Sherwood Forest. Truly I have a chapel here hard by in the shape of a hollow tree, where I put up my prayers for travellers, and Little John holds the plate at the door, for good praying deserves good paying.' 'I am in fine company,' said the baron. 'In the very best of company,' said the friar; 'in the high court of Nature, and in the midst of her own nobility. Is it not so? This goodly grove is our palace; the oak and the beech are its colonnade and its canopy; the sun, and the moon, and the stars, are its everlasting lamps; the grass, and the daisy, and the primrose, and the violet, are its many-coloured floor of green, white, yellow, and blue; the Mayflower, and the woodbine, and the eglantine, and the ivy, are its decorations, its curtains, and its tapestry; the lark, and the thrush, and the linnet, and the nightingale, are its unhired minstrels and musicians. Robin Hood is king of the forest both by dignity of birth and by virtue of his standing army, to say nothing of the free choice of his people, which he has indeed; but I pass it by as an illegitimate basis of power. He holds his dominion over the forest, and its horned multitude of citizen-deer, and its swinish multi tude or peasantry of wild boars, by right of conquest and force of arms. He levies contributions among them by the free consent of his archers, their virtual representatives. If they should find a voice to complain that we are "tyrants and usurpers, to kill and cook them up in their assigned and native dwelling-place," we should most convincingly admonish them, with point of arrow, that they have nothing to do with our laws but to obey them. Is it not written that the fat ribs of the herd shall be fed upon by the mighty in the land? And have not they, withal, my blessing?-my orthodox, canonical, and archiepiscopal blessing? Do I not give thanks for them when they are well roasted and smoking under my nose? What title had William of Normandy to England that Robin of Locksley has not to merry Sherwood? William fought for his claim. So does Robin. With whom both? With any that would or will dispute it. William raised contributions. So does Robin. From whom both? From all that they could or can make pay them. Why did any pay them to William? Why do any pay them to Robin? For the same reason to both -because they could not or cannot help it. They differ, indeed, in this, that William took from the poor and gave to the rich, and Robin takes from the rich and gives to the poor; and therein is Robin illegitimate, though in all else he is true prince. Scarlet and John, are they not peers of the forest?-lords temporal of Sherwood? And am not I lord spiritual? Am I not archbishop? Am I not Pope? Do I not consecrate their banner and absolve their sins? Are not they State, and am not I Church? Are not they State monarchical, and am not I Church militant? Do I not excommunicate our enemies from venison and brawn, and, by 'r Lady! when need calls, beat them down under my feet? The State levies tax, and the Church levies tithe. Even so do we. Mass-we take all at once. What then? It is tax by redemption, and tithe by commutation. Your William and Richard can cut and come again, but our Robin deals with slippery subjects that come not twice to his exchequer. What need we, then,_ to constitute a court, except a fool and a laureate? For the fool, his only use is to make false knaves merry by art, and we are true men, and are merry by nature. For the laureate, his only office is to find virtues in those who have none, and to drink sack for his pains. We have quite virtue enough to need him not, and can drink our sack for ourselves." 'Well preached, friar,' said Robin Hood; 'yet there is one thing wanting to constitute a court, and that is a queen.-And now, lovely Matilda, look round upon these silvan shades, where we so often have roused the The rising sun smiles upon stag from his ferny covert. Shall I us through the stems of that beechen knoll. take your hand, Matilda, in the presence of this my court? Shall I crown you with our wildwood coronal, and hail you Queen of the Forest? Will you be the Queen Matilda of your own true King Robin ?' Matilda smiled assent. 'Not Matilda,' said the friar: 'the rules of our holy alliance require new birth. We have excepted in favour of Little John, because he is Great John, and his name is a misnomer. I sprinkle not thy forehead with water, but thy lips with wine, and baptise thee MARIAN.' Truth to Nature essential in Poetry. From Gryll Grange. Miss Ilex. Few may perceive an inaccuracy, but to those who do, it causes a great diminution, if not a total destruction, of pleasure in perusal. Shakspeare never makes a flower blossom out of season! Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey are true to nature in this and in all other respects, even in their wildest imaginings. The Rev. Dr Opimian. Yet here is a combination, by one of our greatest poets, of flowers that never blossom in the same season: Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine, Miss Ilex. Very beautiful, if not true to English seasons; but Milton might have thought himself justified in making this combination in Arcadia. Generally, he is strictly accurate, to a degree that is in itself a beauty. For instance, in his address to the nightingale: Thee, chauntress, oft the woods among, And missing thee, I walk unseen The song of the nightingale ceases about the time that the grass is mown. The Rev. Dr Opimian. The old Greek poetry is always true to nature, and will bear any degree of critical analysis. I must say I take no pleasure in poetry that will not. Mr Mac-Borrowdale. No poet is truer to nature than Burns, and no one less so than Moore. His imagery is almost always false. Here is a highly applauded stanza, and very taking at first sight: The night-dew of heaven, though in silence it weeps, Shall brighten with verdure the sod where he sleeps; And the tear that we shed, though in secret it rolls, Shall long keep his memory green in our souls. But it will not bear analysis. The dew is the cause of the verdure, but the tear is not the cause of the memory: the memory is the cause of the tear. The Rev. Dr Opimian. There are inaccuracies more offensive to me than even false imagery. Here is one in a song which I have often heard with displeasure. A young man goes up a mountain, and as he goes higher and higher, he repeats Excelsior! but excelsior is only taller in the comparison of things on a common basis, not higher as a detached object in the air. Jack's bean-stalk was excelsior the higher it grew, but Jack himself was no more celsus at the top than he had been Mr Mac-Borrowdale. I should take it to be a description of the Queen of Bambo. The Rev. Dr Opimian. Yet thus one of our most popular poets describes Cleopatra, and one of our most popular artists has illustrated the description by a portrait of a hideous grinning Ethiop! Moore led the way to this perversion by demonstrating that the Egyptian women must have been beautiful because they were 'the countrywomen of Cleopatra.' Here we have a sort of counter-demonstration that Cleopatra must have been a fright because she was the countrywoman of the Egyptians. But Cleopatra was a Greek, the daughter of Ptolemy Auletes and a lady of Pontus. The Ptolemies were Greeks, and whoever will look at their genealogy, their coins, and their medals, will see how carefully they kept their pure blood uncontaminated by African intermixture. Think of this description and this picture applied to one who, Dio says—and all antiquity confirms him-was 'the most superlatively beautiful of women, splendid to see, and delightful to hear.' For she was eminently accomplished; she spoke many languages with grace and facility. Her mind was as wonderful as her personal beauty. HISTORIANS AND BIOGRAPHERS. In depth of research and critical investigation, the historical works of this period are honourable to our literature. Access has been readily obtained to all public documents, and private collections have been thrown open with a spirit of enlightened liberality. Certain departments of history-as the Anglo-Saxon period, and the progress generally of the English constitution-have also been cultivated with superior learning and diligence. The great works of Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon, still maintain their literary pre-eminence, but the historical value of the first two has been materially diminished by subsequent inquiry and new information. WILLIAM MITFORD. The most elaborate and comprehensive work we have here to notice is The History of Greece from the Earliest Period, by WILLIAM MITFORD, Esq. (1744-1827). The first volume of Mr Mitford's History came before the public in 1784, a second was published in 1790, and a third in 1797. It was not, however, till 1810 that the work was completed. Mr Mitford, descended from an ancient family in Northumberland, was born in London on the 10th of February 1744, and was educated first at Cheam School, Surrey, and afterwards at Queen's College, Oxford. He studied the law, but abandoned it on obtaining a commission in the South Hampshire Militia, of which regiment he was afterwards lieutenant-colonel. In 1761, he succeeded to the family estate in Hampshire, and was thus enabled to pursue those classical and historical studies to which The Rev. Dr Opimian. I do not look for profound he was ardently devoted. His first publication knowledge; but I do expect that poets should understand what they talk of. Burns was not a scholar, but was an Essay on the Harmony of Language, inhe was always master of his subject. All the scholar-tended principally to illustrate that of the Engship of the world would not have produced Tam olish Language, 1774, which afterwards reached a Shanter, but in the whole of that poem there is not a false image nor a misused word. What do you suppose these lines represent? at the bottom. Mr Mac-Borrowdale. I am afraid, doctor, if you look for profound knowledge in popular poetry, you will often be disappointed. second edition. While in the militia, he published a Treatise on the Military Force, and particularly of the Militia of the Kingdom. This subject seems to have engrossed much of his attention, for at a subsequent period of his life, when a member of the House of Commons, Mr Mitford advocated the cause of the militia with much fervour, and recommended a salutary jealousy relative to a standing army in this country. He was nevertheless a general supporter of ministers, and held the government appointment of Verdurer of the New Forest. Mr Mitford was twice elected member of parliament for the borough of Beer-Alston, in Devonshire, and afterwards for New Romney, in Kent. The History of Greece has passed through several editions. Byron says of Mr Mitford as an historian: 'His great pleasure consists in praising tyrants, abusing Plutarch, spelling oddly, and writing quaintly; and what is strange, after all, his is the best modern History of Greece in any language, and he is perhaps the best of all modern historians whatsoever. Having named his sins,' adds the noble poet, 'it is but fair to state his virtues learning, labour, research, wrath, and partiality. I call the latter virtues in a writer, because they make him write in earnest.' The earnestness of Mr Mitford is too often directed against what he terms 'the inherent weakness and the indelible barbarism of democratical government.' He was a warm admirer of the English constitution and of the monarchical form of government, and this bias led him to be unjust to the Athenian people, whom he on one occasion terms the sovereign beggars of Athens.' His fidelity as a reporter of facts has also been questioned. He contracts the strongest individual partialities, and according as these lead, he is credulous or mistrustful -he exaggerates or he qualifies-he expands or he cuts down the documents on which he has to proceed. With regard to the bright side of almost every king whom he has to describe, Mr Mitford is more than credulous; for a credulous man believes all that he is told: Mr Mitford believes more than he is told. With regard to the dark side of the same individuals, his habits of estimating evidence are precisely in the opposite extreme. In treating of the democracies or of the democratical leaders, his statements are not less partial and exaggerated.'* It is undeniable that Mr Mitford over-coloured the evils of popular government; but there is so much acuteness and spirit in his political disquisitions, and his narrative of events is so animated, full, and distinct, that he is always read with pleasure. His qualifications were great, and his very defects constitute a sort of individuality that is not without its attraction in so long a History. A more democratic but also more comprehensive view of Grecian history was afterwards taken by Mr Grote. . Condemnation and Death of Socrates. We are not informed when Socrates first became distinguished as a Sophist; for in that description of men he was in his own day reckoned. When the wit of Aristophanes was directed against him in the theatre, he was already among the most eminent, but his eminence seems to have been then recent. It was about the tenth or eleventh year of the Peloponnesian war, when he was six or seven and forty years of age, that, after the manner of the old comedy, he was offered to public derision upon the stage by his own name, as one of the persons of the drama, in the comedy of Aristophanes called The Clouds, which is yet extant. Two or three and twenty years had elapsed since the first representation of The Clouds; the storms of * Westminster Review for 1826. conquest suffered from a foreign enemy, and of four revolutions in the civil government of the country, had passed; nearly three years had followed of that quiet which the revolution under Thrasybulus produced, and the act of amnesty should have confirmed, when a young man named Melitus went to the king-archon, and in the usual form delivered an information against Socrates, and bound himself to prosecute. The information ran thus: 'Melitus, son of Melitus, of the borough of Pitthos, declares these upon oath against Socrates, son of Sophroniscus, of the borough of Alopece: Socrates is guilty of reviling the gods whom the city acknowledges, and of preaching other new gods: moreover, he is guilty of corrupting the youth. Penalty, death.' Xenophon begins his Memorials of his revered master with declaring his wonder how the Athenians could have been persuaded to condemn to death a man of such uncommonly clear innocence and exalted worth. with Xenophon, has nevertheless, I think, given the Ælian, though for authority he can bear no comparison solution. 'Socrates,' he says, 'disliked the Athenian constitution; for he saw that democracy is tyrannical, and abounds with all the evils of absolute monarchy.' But though the political circumstances of the times made it necessary for contemporary writers to speak with caution, yet both Xenophon and Plato have declared enough to shew that the assertion of Ælian was well founded; and further proof, were it wanted, may be derived from another early writer, nearly contemporary, and deeply versed in the politics of his age, the orator Eschines. Indeed, though not stated in the indictment, yet it was urged against Socrates by his prosecutors before the court, that he was disaffected to the democracy; and in proof, they affirmed it to be notorious that he had ridiculed what the Athenian constitution prescribed, the appointment to magistracy by lot. Thus,' they said, he taught his numerous followers, youths of the principal families of the city, to despise the established government, and to be turbulent and seditious; and his success had been seen in the conduct of two of the most eminent, Alcibiades and Critias. Even the best things he converted to these ill purposes: from the most esteemed poets, and particularly from Homer, he selected passages to enforce his anti-democratical principles.' his disapprobation of the Athenian constitution. His Socrates, it appears, indeed, was not inclined to deny defence itself, as it is reported by Plato, contains matter on which to found an accusation against him of disaffection to the sovereignty of the people, such as, under the jealous tyranny of the Athenian democracy, would sometimes subject a man to the penalties of high treason. You well know,' he says, Athenians, that had I engaged in public business, I should long ago have perished without procuring any advantage either to you or to myself. Let not the truth offend you it is no peculiarity of your democracy, or of your national character; but wherever the people is sovereign, no man who shall dare honestly to oppose injustice-frequent and extravagant injustice-can avoid destruction.' Without this proof, indeed, we might reasonably believe, that though Socrates was a good and faithful subject of the Athenian government, and would promote no sedition, no political violence, yet he could not like the Athenian constitution. He wished for wholesome changes by gentle means; and it seems even to have been a principal object of the labours to which he dedicated himself, to infuse principles into the rising generation that might bring about the desirable change insensibly. Melitus, who stood forward as his principal accuser, was, as Plato informs us, noway a man of any great consideration. His legal description gives some probability to the conjecture, that his father was one of the commissioners sent to Lacedæmon from the moderate party, who opposed the ten successors of the thirty |