no less than to spread civilization eastward, and westward, and northward, and southward. Especially she had to secure Europe against Asia, and this could only be done by a union of all Greece, and a concentration of the entire energies of the Hellenic race against its inveterate foe. The Persian must be humbled in his own country-nay! the whole East must be made to feel the irresistible might of the West in attack no less than its indomitable spirit in defence, to secure Europe against the continual recurrence of invasions like that of Xerxes; invasions which, calamitous as they might prove to the invader, could not but also inflict most terrible injury on the people attacked,—an injury which it took perhaps half a century to repair. Such was clearly the task to which Greece was bound to brace herself from the time that she rolled back that fearful wave of invasion which had threatened to annihilate her, and with her to sweep from the earth the blessing of free civilization.

For this purpose a union of all Greece was necessary—a real union; and therefore one dominant state, a single yepovía. The question seemed to be, should Athens or Sparta be this dominant power? what should absorb the other?

This was a question of life or death, not only to the two states primarily concerned, but to Greece herself. If Sparta absorbed Athens, Greece was dead. All spirit of enterprise, all grand and comprehensive scheming, all thought of foreign contest, would at once have died away. Greece might still have retained the vis inertiæ: she might still have presented a formidable barrier against an invading power; but for purposes of offence, for retaliation, for conquest, for spreading civilization, she would have been powerless-paralyzed! Had Cimon's policy been followed, this would have been the result. Pericles had at any rate a nobler aim.

Pericles sought to obtain for Athens a decided supremacy over the rest of Greece,' to put her instead of Sparta at the head of the general confederacy,-not, we may be sure, to rest there, but to give to Athens that task which afterwards fell to Alexander the chastisement of Persia, and the subjugation of the whole of the East.

To obtain this supremacy, it was necessary to overcome Sparta. She could not be expected to submit without a struggle, no, nor without a fierce and a protracted one.

Yet even

tual success, Pericles doubted not, would be with his countrymen. That the issue was otherwise was owing entirely to one circumstance which no one could foresee-to one of those events by which Providence seems openly to vindicate to itself the direction of mundane affairs-the infatuation of the commanders at Ægos Potami. Athens, which seemed pointed out by nature as the power in Greece, by which the humiliation of Persia was to

be effected, was set aside by the inscrutable decrees of the great Ruler of the universe. She sunk under her rival, and with her sunk at once all thought of foreign enterprise. The East obtained a reprieve for half a century.

Cimon's ostracism, then, was simply the decision of Athens upon her future course, the determination to adventure all for the sake of placing herself at the head of Greece, and thereby of the mighty movement by which Greece was to impress herself upon the world, eternizing her name, her language, and her modes of thought. Who shall say that she was wrong, or that even as events turned out, she did not gain by having cherished these grand and noble aspirations, in preference to confining herself always to a dull and safe mediocrity? Better to have run her brief career of high emprise, and alternate extreme peril and unexampled success, than to have remained for centuries Sparta's timid and inglorious follower!

Such seems to be the defence and the true account of Cimon's ostracism. It was not mere petty spite bent on revenging what had been felt as a gross indignity upon the person who had been the cause of it. Cimon's ostracism did not take place until two years after the return from Ithome. It concerned rather the future than the present. It was the signal and the provoca. tive of a rupture with Sparta. It was the necessary preliminary to that grand career of glory on which Athens then entered as a wholly independent power. It was requisite to the complete establishment of the system and the influence of Pericles. When that had been effected, his recall took place. The state had no intention of denying his military talents, or refusing to avail itself of them. His political authority and weight once completely done away with, they were not slow to avail themselves anew of his talents as a general. They had entrusted to his command a fleet of two hundred sail, when sickness carried him off at Citium.

With respect to Pericles himself it will not be possible entirely to justify the Athenians. His condemnation appears to have been wholly undeserved, and to have been entirely uncalled for by any circumstances of state necessity. It was a mere outbreak of popular discontent and irritation, which longed to vent itself in some way, and was best pleased to fasten upon the most conspicuous object. Their defence with respect to him must rest upon the steadiness of their affection towards him through so many years, and the transient endurance of this single gleam of their displeasure. It did not even prevent them from re-electing him to his office of strategus at the very next opportunity, or make any difference in the confidence they reposed in him. It was simple ill-humour, neither more nor less, and Pericles himself, we believe, would have been the first to forgive it, and

to repel with indignation any charge, brought on this account, against his beloved Athens of injustice and ingratitude.

Finally, we have the case of Alcibiades to consider. It need not detain us very long. Of all the men that Athens ever produced, Alcibiades was by far the most dangerous to her liberties. Gifted with immense talents, a man of commanding genius, uniting to all the qualities for which Themistocles was renowned, a far bolder spirit and more comprehensive grasp of mind, and at the same time possessed with an ambition that knew no limits, and wholly unprincipled and unscrupulous, there was nothing but fear of his turning his abilities against her that could justify Athens in intrusting to him any office of importance. Whether his disgraces were deserved at the exact times and in the particular circumstances under which they occurred, or no, we do not think it necessary to inquire. Alcibiades could have no claim on the gratitude or favour of his countrymen, for it was perfectly clear that he was utterly devoid of patriotism, and that his own personal aggrandizement was the sole object that he had in view. Every success that he procured the Athenian arms was as full of danger to Athens as of advantage to her: and whether fighting on her side, or in the adverse ranks, he was equally her enemy. Had he returned victorious from the Sicilian expedition, or brought the Peloponnesian war to a successful close, by the humiliation of Sparta and her confederates, it would have been hopeless to have struggled against his ascendancy. Athens must have submitted herself wholly to him. He would have made himself king of Greece. It may be that he would have anticipated the career of Alexander.

Thus have we vindicated the Athenian commonalty from the charge of treating with ingratitude and injustice their greatest men. We have shown that in every case but one they were fully justified in what they did. Pericles alone had any right to utter a complaint, and his disgrace was too brief and too trifling to allow of any serious charge being grounded upon it. Thus have we rebutted the accusation. We have also done something, we think, towards establishing the contrary position;—to wit, that they were steady in their affections towards those who were deserving of their confidence. Aristides, Cimon, Pericles-three of the cases usually brought forward to prove them ungrateful, to our minds prove directly the reverse. We know of no free state which ever continued more faithful to its benefactors, than Athens to these statesmen. One cloud in the political life of each-one light passing cloud-when did the favourites of a sovereign fare so well? When were the ministers of a constitutional government so fortunate? The political life of Aristides extended over a period of nearly a quarter of a century:

.*

* From the battle of Marathon, B.C. 490, where he was one of the Strategi-to his death in the archonship of Theogenides. B. c. 478. Twenty-three years.

Cimon's was still longer, being twenty-seven years. Pericles' exceeded even this, being not less then forty years. The disgrace of Pericles lasted a few weeks, that of Aristides something more than two years, that of Cimon not quite five years. Each experienced but one disgrace, and two of them not without cause. All died in the favour of the people; all in the possession of their respect and esteem; all were ever remembered with affection and gratitude. If we are to cast a slur upon the character of a noble people, because it did not pin itself to individuals, but judged their policy, and transferred its confidence from time to time to new counsellors, what nation shall be secure from obloquy? No! ingratitude was not the vice of the Athenians. There was historical truth at least, in that seeming paradox of Plato's, * προστάτης πόλεως οὐδ ̓ ἂν εις ποτε ἀδίκως ἀπόλοιτο ἐπ' αὐτῆς τῆς πόλεως ἧς #роσTαTE. The Athenians did not ostracise their great men without a reason. That ostracism itself, so much misunderstood by the moderns, was but a slight matter, no real disgrace-it was no punishment, no penalty. It was the necessary accompaniment of a change of ministry, in a state where the office of prime-minister was not a definite and legally constituted one. It was a contingency to which every one knowingly exposed himself, who came forward upon the arena of politics, and aspired to be the leader and director of the republic. It was not retrospective, but prospective; not vindictive, but precautionary-it was not for the punishment of the discarded minister, but for the security of' the newly-appointed one. A right understanding of this matter will remove much of that misunderstanding of the Athenian character which we have been combating. It will silence all abuse of them on the score of their treatment of Cimon, Aristides, and Themistocles. The cases of Miltiades, Alcibiades, and Pericles will remain; the first to be justified by the deep disgrace of the Parian expedition; the second by the ambitious designs of that dangerous individual; the third not to be justified, but to be palliated by the accumulation of miseries under which the people were suffering,-war, ravage, crowded dwellings, scant diet, and above all, the pestilence and by the fact that it was the single occasion, during a period of forty years, in which Pericles experienced even a passing frown from the people whom he served for that long space of time, and of whose affairs he was, for sixteen years out of the forty, sole manager. It will be hard, indeed, if

for this single burst of temporary spleen the men of Athens are to be branded with the name of an ungrateful nation.

Thus have we disposed of fallacy the second: we have still a goodly array in store for our readers.

* We find him in command at Syros, B. c. 476. He died B. c. 449. + Gorgias, § 74.

The Works of Walter Savage Landor. In two volumes. Moxon. 1846.

IN these volumes are embodied a prodigious amount of thought, most copious stores of wit and humour, most admirable powers of illustration, and a large fund of scholarship. About Mr. Landor's writings, moreover, there is the charm of earnestness. Right or wrong, Mr. Landor gives utterance to opinions which he honestly entertains. He is no mere copyist-no echo of the voices of other men. His intellect is always active. His spirit is always manly.

A writer, however, who attempts so much as Mr. Landor has attempted, must, of necessity, fail in some things; and Mr. Landor has failed in many. Such a result was, we repeat, in Mr. Landor's case, inevitable. In his Imaginary Conversations,' Mr. Landor brings on the stage some of the greatest thinkers and most illustrious men of action, who have ever influenced the opinions or the condition of their fellow-men. He introduces his readers to wits, poets, orators, statesmen warriors, philosophers, selected from different countries, and from widely separated periods of time. He uses the utmost freedom with the highest names. He essays to paint the manners of ages removed from the present by intervals so vast as to be virtually inappreciable. He attempts to determine the value, and to exhibit the operation of infinitely diversified systems of thought.

Mr. Landor has, in short, proposed to himself a task, which no human intellect, perhaps,-however strengthened and expanded by learning,-could execute without the perpetration of prodigious blunders. It is a task beyond the scope even of dramatic poetry;-for dramatic poetry, although it may deal with philosophers, abstains from discussions about the value of schemes of philosophy. To the imagination of the dramatic poet, it may, indeed, be permitted to body forth the forms of things unknown, and to give to airy nothing, a local habitation and a name. Mr. Landor, however, deals very freely with many things which are not unknown-save in some cases, to himself; while he, not unfrequently, reverses the poet's privilege, by seeking to reduce to airy nothings, the local habitations-the well-defined intellectual fabrics-in which eminent philosophers have sought to enshrine their names for the admiration of remote posterity.

Mr. Landor's knowledge is not equal to his courage. He is a wit and a critic. He gives himself credit for being, at the same time, a master of the First Philosophy. To some extent, there