No Shrine was ever worshipp'd more! Live but the timid life of slaves, This was one of the factious charges brought by the poli tical economists of Athens against Pericles. 48 Those spots which have been the theatre of great events, or the abodes of eminent men we behold with thoughtful interest and remember with tenderness and regret. Something analogous to this, Milton has embodied in the language of Adam, when the angel informs him that the leaving the garden of Eden shall be the penalty of his disobedience. Adam, with melancholy feel. ing, anticipates the pleasure he should have enjoyed, in pointing out to his children the places which had been sanctified by the presence of their great Creator!... 49 The best and wisest men of Athens have by their writings exercised more influence over all countries than their own, and over all ages than the age in which they lived. Thucydides wrote his history in exile; in exile Eschylus sought refuge from the hatred of those who had heard the Agamemnon. The ashes of Themistocles were laid by stealth in the land which his genius had delivered. The bad measures of Pericles scarcely sus tained him against the unpopularity to which his good measures exposed him, Plato thought the cause of political morality less desperate in the Syracuse of Dionysius than in the Athens of the Sophists. Half of each speech of Demosthenes is taken up with lamentations over the utter neglect shown to all that had preceded it. Of all Rot in ignominious graves! A penance for their fathers' crimes," those who have made the name of Athens dear and venerable, there were few who did not in persecution, humiliation, envy, if not in greater injuries and worse sufferings, taste of the cup of Socrates. The only writer who can be said to have enjoyed universal and unbroken popularity, is as immoral as he is meretricious. The only public man who retained to his death the support and confidence of his countrymen was a fool, a sycophant, a peculator and a poltroon. . . 50 The Delphic Oracle was never so prophetic as when it responded to the question of Chorophon, that "Socrates was the wisest of men." He was, in his youth, working at his bench as a journeyman statuary, when the mysterious voice of the familiar spirit which whispered to him through life called to him to devote himself to the instruction of mankind; and he flung down his tools, and became the missionary of truth and virtue. For forty years he chose a life of poverty, temperance, and severe self-denial. While all the other teachers grew rich with their fees, he alone would never accept one mina for proclaiming truth. Mean in apparel, pinched in coarse food, bare-footed, venerated, almost worshipped, by the greatest and most learned of his countrymen, did he daily move through Athens, the grand centre figure of mankind, the most divine man that God ever sent on earth to guide his fellowmortals in the path of wisdom, purity, justice, and mercy! Turn'd her back and closed her eyes That glorifies your happier day! Lights up first the lofty mind, Cato the Censor admired nothing more in Socrates, than his living in an easy and quiet manner with an ill-tempered wife and stupid children. "Socrates," says the Quarterly Review, in a strain of noble enthusiasm, "no longer stands amongst us. Yet we could fancy what would result were he now to visit us. . . With that Silenic physiognomy, eccentric manner, indomitable resolution, captivating voice, homely humour, solemn earnestness, siege of questions... in the groves and cloisters of our Universities, in our ecclesiastical and religious meetings, at the foot of the pulpits of our wellfilled churches. How often, in a conversation, in a book, debate, speech, sermon, have we longed for the doors to open, and for the son of Sophroniscus to enter how often, in the tempest of pamphlets, in the heat of angry discussions, in discourses that have darkened counsel by words without knowledge, during the theological controversies What indemnity have you? Your religion, false are you! When on some peaceful prosperous land "Men of slaughter! men of plunder! 54 of the past year, have we been tempted to exclaim, ' O for one hour of Socrates!"" 51 Hostes humani generis. 52 "It is a principle of the Chinese Government," says Dr. Morrison, "not to license what they condemn as immoral. I know they glory in the superiority, as to principle, of their own Government, and scorn the Christian Governments that tolerate these vices, and convert them into a source of pecuniary advantage, or public revenue.".. "I know enough of political economy to have perceived in the father of the British School (Adam Smith) that the wealth of nations is every thing in that school, and the morality and happiness of nations nothing."-Southey. 53"Who better live than we, tho' less they know." 54 What a noble response was that of the Athenians to the declaration of Aristides, "that the enterprise which The poor heathen asks with wonder, Grecian arts you Britons borrow; Themistocles proposed, (burning the confederate fleet at Pagasa) was indeed the most advantageous in the world, but, at the same time, the most unjust." They commanded him to lay aside all thoughts of it. 56 Deus patiens quia Æternus."-St. Augustin. In the blast Sending the ship sinking under In horrid war, in (what is worse), It hath broken silence, spoken- From some fell form (plague, famine, storm)! Heard, but heeded not, made naught Of sounds with direst meaning fraught, Ungrateful Britain! and defied, |