tyrants, while Thrasybulus held Piræus, and Pausanias was encamped before Athens. He was a poet, and stood forward as in a common cause of the poets, who esteemed the doctrine of Socrates injurious to their interest. Unsupported, his accusation would have been ⚫ little formidable; but he seems to have been a mere instrument in the business. He was soon joined by Lycon, one of the most powerful speakers of his time. Lycon was the avowed patron of the rhetoricians, who, as well as the poets, thought their interest injured by the moral philosopher's doctrine. I know not that on any other occasion in Grecian history we have any account of this kind of party-interest operating; but from circumstances nearly analogous in our own country -if we substitute for poets the clergy, and for rhetoricians the lawyers-we may gather what might be the party-spirit, and what the weight of influence of the rhetoricians and poets in Athens. With Lycon, Anytus, a man scarcely second to any in the commonwealth in rank and general estimation, who had held high command with reputation in the Peloponnesian war, and had been the principal associate of Thrasybulus in the war against the thirty, and the restoration of the democracy, declared himself a supporter of the prosecution. Nothing in the accusation could, by any known law of Athens, affect the life of the accused. In England, no man would be put upon trial on so vague a charge-no grand jury would listen to it. But in Athens, if the party was strong enough, it signified little what was the law. When Lycon and Anytus came forward, Socrates saw that his condemnation was already decided.

By the course of his life, however, and by the turn of his thoughts for many years, he had so prepared himself for all events, that, far from alarmed at the probability of his condemnation, he rather rejoiced at it, as at his age a fortunate occurrence. He was persuaded of the soul's immortality, and of the superintending providence of an all-good Deity, whose favour he had always been assiduously endeavouring to deserve. Men fear death, he said, as if unquestionably the greatest evil, and yet no man knows that it may not be the greatest good. If, indeed, great joys were in prospect, he might, and his friends for him, with somewhat more reason, regret the event; but at his years, and with his scanty fortune -though he was happy enough at seventy still to preserve both body and mind in vigour-yet even his present gratifications must necessarily soon decay. To avoid, therefore, the evils of age, pain, sickness, decay of sight, decay of hearing, perhaps decay of understand ing, by the easiest of deaths (for such the Athenian mode of execution by a draught of hemlock-was reputed), cheered with the company of surrounding friends, could not be otherwise than a blessing.

Xenophon says that, by condescending to a little supplication, Socrates might easily have obtained his acquittal. No admonition or entreaty of his friends, however, could persuade him to such an unworthiness. On the contrary, when put upon his defence, he told the people that he did not plead for his own sake, but for theirs, wishing them to avoid the guilt of an unjust condemnation. It was usual for accused persons to bewail their apprehended lot, with tears to supplicate favour, and, by exhibiting their children upon the bema, to endeavour to excite pity. He thought it, he said, more respectful to the court, as well as more becoming himself, to omit all this; however aware that their sentiments were likely so far to differ from his, that judgment would be given in anger for it.

It was usual at Athens for execution very soon to follow condemnation-commonly on the morrow; but it happened that the condemnation of Socrates took place on the eve of the day appointed for the sacred ceremony of crowning the galley which carried the annual offerings to the gods worshipped at Delos, and immemorial tradition forbade all executions till the sacred vessel's return. Thus, the death of Socrates was respited thirty days, while his friends had free access to him in the prison. During all that time he admirably supported his constancy. Means were concerted for his escape; the jailer was bribed, a vessel prepared, and a secure retreat in Thessaly provided. No arguments, no prayers, could persuade him to use the opportunity. He had always taught the duty of obedience to the laws, and he would not furnish an example of the breach of it. To no purpose it was urged that he had been unjustly condemned-he had always held that wrong did not justify wrong. He waited with perfect composure the return of the sacred vessel, reasoned on the immortality of the soul, the advantage of virtue, the happiness derived from having made through life his pursuit, and with his friends about him, took the fatal cup and died.

Writers who, after Xenophon and Plato, have related the death of Socrates, seem to have held themselves bound to vie with those who preceded them in giving pathos to the story. The purpose here has been rather to render it intelligible—to shew its connection with the political history of Athens-to derive from it illustration of the political history. The magnanimity of Socrates, the principal efficient of the pathos, surely deserves admiration; yet it is not that in which he has most outshone other men. The circumstances of Lord Russell's fate were far more trying. Socrates, we may reasonably suppose, would have borne Lord Russell's trial; but with Bishop Burnet for his eulogist, instead of Plato and Xenophon, he would not have had his present splendid fame. The singular merit of Socrates lay in the purity and the usefulness of his manners and conversation; the clearness with which he saw, and the steadiness with which he practised, in a blind and corrupt age, all moral duties; the disinterestedness and the zeal with which he devoted himself to the benefit of others; and the enlarged and warm benevolence, whence his supreme and almost only pleasure seems to have consisted in doing good. The purity of Christian morality, little enough, indeed, seen in practice, nevertheless is become so familiar in theory, that it passes almost for obvious, and even congenial to the human mind. Those only will justly estimate the merit of that near approach to it which Socrates made, who will take the pains to gather -as they may from the writings of his contemporaries and predecessors-how little conception was entertained of it before his time; how dull to a just moral sense the human mind has really been: how slow the progress in the investigation of moral duties, even where not only great pains have been taken, but the greatest abilities zealously employed; and when discovered, how diffi cult it has been to establish them by proofs beyond controversy, or proofs even that should be generally admitted by the reason of men. It is through the light which Socrates diffused by his doctrine, enforced by his practice, with the advantage of having both the doctrine and the practice exhibited to highest advantage in the incomparable writings of disciples such as Xenophon and Plato, that his life forms an era in the history of Athens and of man,

COXE-GEORGE CHALMERS-C. J. FOX.

Condemnation pronounced wrought no change upon him. He again addressed the court, declared his inno- DR JOHN GILLIES-SHARON TURNER-WILLIAM cence of the matters laid against him, and observed that, even if every charge had been completely proved, still, all together did not, according to any known law, amount to a capital crime. But,' in conclusion he said, 'it is time to depart-I to die, you to live; but which for the greater good, God only knows.'

While the first volume of Mitford's History was before the public, and experiencing that degree of favour which induced the author to continue his work, DR JOHN GILLIES (1747-1836), who

succeeded Robertson as Historiographer to His Majesty for Scotland, published The History of Ancient Greece, its Colonies and Conquests, two volumes, quarto, 1786. The monarchical spirit of the new historian was scarcely less decided than that of Mr Mitford, though expressed with less zeal and idiomatic plainness. The history of Greece,' says Dr Gillies, 'exposes the dangerous turbulence of democracy, and arraigns the despotism of tyrants. By describing the incurable evils inherent in every republican policy, it evinces the inestimable benefits resulting to liberty itself from the lawful dominion of hereditary kings, and | the steady operation of well-regulated monarchy.' The History of Dr Gillies was executed with considerable ability and care; a sixth edition of the work (London, 1820, four volumes, 8vo) was published, and it may still be consulted with advantage. Dr Gillies also wrote a View of the Reign of Frederick II. of Prussia, a History of the World from the Reign of Alexander to Augustus (1807-10), a translation of Aristotle's Rhetoric (1823), &c.

able works, containing letters, private, official, and diplomatic, with other details drawn from manuscript collections. As a biographer, Coxe was apt to fall into the common error of magnifying the merits and sinking the defects of his hero; but the service he rendered to history by the collection of such a mass of materials can hardly be overestimated.

Resembling Turner and Coxe in the vastness of his undertakings, but inferior as a writer, was GEORGE CHALMERS (1742-1825), a native of Fochabers, county of Elgin, and originally a barrister in one of the American colonies before their disjunction from Britain. His first composition, A History of the United Colonies, from their Settlement till the Peace of 1763, appeared in 1780; and from time to time he gave to the world many works connected with history, politics, and literature. Among these was a Life of Sir David Lyndsay, with an edition of his works; a Life of Mary, Queen of Scots, from the State Papers, &c. In 1807, he commenced the publication of his Caledonia, of which three large volumes had appeared, when his death precluded the hope of its being completed. It contains a laborious antiaquarian detail of the earlier periods of Scottish history, with minute topographical and historical accounts of the various provinces of the country.

In 1799, MR SHARON TURNER, a London solicitor, commenced the publication of a series of works on English history. The first was History of the Anglo-Saxons (1799-1805); the second, a History of England during the Middle Ages (1814-15). In subsequent publications he continued the series to the end of the reign of Elizabeth; the whole being comprised in twelve volumes, and containing much new and interesting information on the government, laws, literature, and manners, as well as on the civil and ecclesiastical history of the country. From an ambitious attempt to rival Gibbon in loftiness of style and diction, Mr Turner has disfigured his History by a pomp of expression and involved intricacy of style, that often border on the ludicrous, and mar the effect of his narrative. This defect is more conspicuous in his latter volumes. The early part of his History, devoted to the Anglo-Saxons, and the labour, as he informs us, of sixteen years, is by far the most valuable. Mr Turner also published a Sacred History of the World, in two volumes. So late as 1845, Mr Turner published an historical poem, Richard III. He latterly enjoyed a pension of £200 per annum, and died at his residence in London, February 13, 1847, aged seventy-nine.

CHARLES JAMES FOX (1749-1806), the celebrated statesman and orator, during his intervals of relaxation from public life, among other literary studies and occupations, commenced a History of the Reign of King James II., intending to continue it to the settlement at the Revolution of 1688. An Introductory Chapter, giving a rapid view of our constitutional history from the time of Henry VII., he completed. He wrote also some chapters of his History; but at the time of his death he had made but little progress in his work. Public affairs, and a strong partiality and attachment to the study of the classics, and to works of imagination and poetry, were constantly drawing him off from historical researches; added to which, he was fastidiously scrupulous as to all the niceties of language, and wished to form his plan exclusively on the model of ancient writers, without note, digression, or dissertation. He once assured me,' says his nephew, Lord Holland, 'that he would admit no word into his book for which he History has been largely indebted to the per- had not the authority of Dryden.' We need not severing labours of the REV. WILLIAM COXE, therefore wonder that Mr Fox died before completArchdeacon of Wilts (1747-1828). In the capacity ing his History. Such minute attention to style, of tutor to young noblemen, Mr Coxe travelled joined to equal regard for facts and circumstances, over various countries, and published Travels in must have weighed down any writer even of active Switzerland (1778–1801), and Travels in Poland, habits and uninterrupted application. In 1808, Russia, Sweden, and Denmark (1778-84). Settling the unfinished composition was given to the world at home, and obtaining church preferment, he by Lord Holland, under the title of A History of entered on those historical works, derived from the Early Part of the Reign of James II., with an family papers and other authentic sources, which Introductory Chapter. An Appendix of original form his most valuable publications. In 1798 papers was also added. The History is plainly appeared his Memoirs of the Life and Adminis- written, without the slightest approach to pedantry tration of Sir Robert Walpole; in 1802, Memoirs or pretence; but the style of the great statesman, of Lord Walpole; in 1807, History of the House with all the care bestowed upon it, is far from of Austria; in 1813, Memoirs of the Kings of being perfect. It wants force and vivacity, as if, Spain of the House of Bourbon; in 1816-19, in the process of elaboration, the graphic clearMemoirs of the Duke of Marlborough; in 1821, ness of narrative and distinct perception of events Correspondence of the Duke of Shrewsbury; and and characters necessary to the historian, had in 1829, Memoirs of the Pelham Administration. evaporated. The sentiments and principles of the The last was a posthumous publication. The author are, however, worthy of his liberal and Memoirs of Walpole and Marlborough are valu- | capacious mind.

SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH.

neglect literature, though he wanted resolution for continuous and severe study. The charms of society, the interruptions of public business, and As a philosophical historian, critic, and poli- the debilitating effects of his residence in India, tician, SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH deserves honour- also co-operated with his constitutional indolence able mention. He was also one of the last of the in preventing the realisation of the ambitious Scottish metaphysicians, and one of the most dreams of his youth. He contributed, however, brilliant conversers of his times-qualifications various articles to the Edinburgh Review, and apparently very dissimilar. His candour, benevo-wrote a masterly Dissertation on the Progress of lence, and liberality gave a grace and dignity to Ethical Philosophy for the Encyclopædia Britanhis literary speculations and to his daily life. nica. He wrote three volumes of a compendious Mackintosh was a native of Inverness-shire, and and popular History of England for Lardner's was born at Aldourie-house, on the banks of Loch Cabinet Cyclopædia, which, though deficient in the Ness, October 24, 1765. His father was a brave graces of narrative and style, contains some adHighland officer, who possessed a small estate, mirable views of constitutional history and anticalled Kylachy, in his native county, which Sir quarian research. His learning was abundant; James afterwards sold for £9000. From his earliest he wanted only method and elegance. He also days James Mackintosh had a passion for books; contributed a short but valuable Life of Sir and though all his relatives were Jacobites, he was Thomas More-which sprung out of his researches a staunch Whig. After studying at Aberdeen into the reign of Henry VIII., and was otherwise where he had as a college-companion and friend a subject congenial to his taste-to the same the pious and eloquent Robert Hall-Mackintosh miscellany; and he was engaged on a History went to Edinburgh, and studied medicine. In of the Revolution of 1688, when his life was 1788, he repaired to London, wrote for 'the press, somewhat suddenly terminated on the 30th of and afterwards applied himself to the study of May 1832. The portion of his History of the law. In 1791, he published his Vindicia Gallica, Revolution which he had written and corrected a defence of the French Revolution, in reply to amounting to about 350 pages-was published Burke, which, for cogency of argument, historical in 1834, with a continuation by some writer who knowledge, and logical precision, is a remarkable was opposed to Sir James in many essential work to be written by a careless and irregular points. In the works of Mackintosh we have young man of twenty-six. Though his bear-only the fragments of a capacious mind; but in ing to his great antagonist was chivalrous and all of them his learning, his candour, his strong polite, Mackintosh attacked his opinions with the love of truth, his justness of thinking and clearardour and impetuosity of youth; and his work ness in perceiving, and his genuine philanthropy, was received with great applause. Four years are conspicuous. It is to be regretted that he had afterwards he acknowledged to Burke that he had no Boswell to record his conversation. been the dupe of his own enthusiasm, and that a 'melancholy experience' had undeceived him. The excesses of the French Revolution had no doubt contributed to this change, which, though it afterwards was made the cause of obloquy and derision to Mackintosh, seems to have been adopted with perfect sincerity and singleness of purpose. He afterwards delivered and published a series of lectures on the Law of Nature and Nations, which greatly extended his reputation. In 1795, he was called to the bar, and in his capacity of barrister, in 1803, he made a brilliant defence of M. Peltier, an emigrant royalist of France, who had been indicted for a libel on Napoleon, then First Consul. The forensic display of Mackintosh is too much like an elaborate essay or dissertation, but it marked him out for legal promotion, and he received the appointment-to which his poverty, not his will, consented-of Recorder of Bombay. He was knighted; sailed from England in the beginning of 1804; and after discharging faithfully his high official duties, returned at the end of seven years, the earliest period that entitled him to his retiring pension of £1200 per annum. Mackintosh now obtained a seat in parliament, and stuck faithfully by his old friends the Whigs, without one glimpse of favour, till, in 1827, his friend Mr Canning, on the formation of his administration, made him a privy-councillor. On the accession of the Whig ministry in 1830, he was appointed a commissioner for the affairs of India. On questions of criminal law and national policy Mackintosh spoke forcibly, but he cannot be said to have been a successful parliamentary orator. Amid the bustle of public business he did not

Chivalry and Modern Manners.

From the Vindicia Gallica.

in unforeseen excesses and execrable crimes. In the eye The collision of armed multitudes [in Paris] terminated of Mr Burke, however, these crimes and excesses assume an aspect far more important than can be communicated to them by their own insulated guilt. They form, in his opinion, the crisis of a revolution far more important than any change of government—a revolution in which the sentiments and opinions that have formed the manners of the European nations are to perish. The age of chivalry is gone, and the glory of Europe extinguished for ever!" He follows this exclamation by an eloquent eulogium on chivalry, and by gloomy predictions of the future state of Europe, when the the tone in arts and manners is thus debased and nation that has been so long accustomed to give her corrupted. A caviller might remark, that ages much more near the meridian fervour of chivalry than ours have witnessed a treatment of queens as little gallant and generous as that of the Parisian mob. He might remind Mr Burke that, in the age and country of Sir Philip Sidney, a queen of France, whom no blindness to accomplishment, no malignity of detraction, could reduce to the level of Marie Antoinette, was, by ‘a nation of men of honour and cavaliers,' permitted to languish in captivity, and expire on a scaffold; and he might add, that the manners of a country are more than by the licentious frenzy of a mob. He might surely indicated by the systematic cruelty of a sovereign, remark, that the mild system of modern manners which survived the massacres with which fanaticism had for a century desolated and almost barbarised Europe, might perhaps resist the shock of one day's excesses committed by a delirious populace.

it.

But the subject itself is, to an enlarged thinker, fertile in reflections of a different nature. That system of manners which arose among the Gothic nations of Europe, of which chivalry was more properly the effusion than the source, is, without doubt, one of the most peculiar and interesting appearances in human affairs. The moral causes which formed its character have not perhaps been hitherto investigated with the happiest success. But to confine ourselves to the subject before us, chivalry was certainly one of the most prominent features and remarkable effects of this system of manners. Candour must confess that this singular institution is not alone admirable as a corrector of the ferocious ages in which it flourished. It contributed to polish and soften Europe. It paved the way for that diffusion of knowledge and extension of commerce which afterwards in some measure supplanted it, and gave a new character to manners. Society is inevitably progressive. In government, commerce has overthrown that feudal and chivalrous' system under whose shade it first grew. In religion, learning has subverted that superstition whose opulent endowments had first fostered Peculiar circumstances softened the barbarism of the middle ages to a degree which favoured the admission of commerce and the growth of knowledge. These circumstances were connected with the manners of chivalry; but the sentiments peculiar to that institution could only be preserved by the situation which gave them birth. They were themselves enfeebled in the progress from ferocity and turbulence, and almost obliterated by tranquillity and refinement. But the auxiliaries which the manners of chivalry had in rude ages reared, gathered strength from its weakness, and flourished in its decay. Commerce and diffused know-years have not effaced them from your memory, that ledge have, in fact, so completely assumed the ascendant in polished nations, that it will be difficult to discover any relics of Gothic manners but in a fantastic exterior, which has survived the generous illusions that made these manners splendid and seductive. Their direct influence has long ceased in Europe; but their indirect influence, through the medium of those causes, which would not perhaps have existed but for the mildness which chivalry created in the midst of a barbarous age, still operates with increasing vigour. The manners of the middle age were, in the most singular sense, compulsory. Enterprising benevolence was produced by general fierceness, gallant courtesy by ferocious rudeness, and artificial gentleness resisted the torrent of natural barbarism. But a less incongruous system has succeeded, in which commerce, which unites men's interests, and knowledge, which excludes those prejudices that tend to embroil them, present a broader basis for the stability of civilised and beneficent manners.

Revolution had swallowed up all the asylums of free discussion on the continent, we enjoyed that privilege, indeed, more fully than others, but we did not enjoy it exclusively. In Holland, in Switzerland, in the imperial towns of Germany, the press was either legally or practically free. Holland and Switzerland are no more; and since the commencement of this prosecution, fifty imperial towns have been erased from the list of independent states by one dash of the pen. Three or four still preserve a precarious and trembling existence. I will not say by what compliances they must purchase its continuance. I will not insult the feebleness of states whose unmerited fall I do most bitterly deplore. These governments were, in many respects, one of the most interesting parts of the ancient system of Europe. The perfect security of such inconsiderable and feeble states, their undisturbed tranquillity amidst the wars and conquests that surrounded them, attested, beyond any other part of the European system, the moderation, the justice, the civilisation, to which Christian Europe had reached in modern times. Their weakness was protected only by the habitual reverence for justice which, during a long series of ages, had grown up in Christendom. This was the only fortification which defended them against those mighty monarchs to whom they offered so easy a prey. And, till the French Revolution, this was sufficient. Consider, for instance, the republic of Geneva; think of her defenceless position in the very jaws of France; but think also of her undisturbed security, of her profound quiet, of the brilliant success with which she applied to industry and literature, while Louis XIV. was pouring his myriads into Italy before her gates; call to mind, if ages crowded into happy period when we scarcely dreamed more of the subjugation of the feeblest republic in Europe than of the conquest of her mightiest empire, and tell me if you can imagine a spectacle more beautiful to the moral eye, or a more striking proof of progress in the noblest principles of civilisation. These feeble states, these monuments of the justice of Europe, the asylum of peace, of industry, and of literature-the organs of public reason, the refuge of oppressed innocence and persecuted truth-have perished with those ancient principles which were their sole guardians and protectors. They have been swallowed up by that fearful convulsion which has shaken the uttermost corners of the earth. They are destroyed, and gone for ever! One asylum of free discussion is still inviolate. There is still one spot in Europe where man can freely exercise his reason on the most important concerns of society, where he can boldly publish his judgment on the acts of the proudest and most powerful tyrants. The press of Mr Burke, indeed, forebodes the most fatal conse-England is still free. It is guarded by the free constituquences to literature, from events which he supposes to have given a mortal blow to the spirit of chivalry. I have ever been protected from such apprehensions by my belief in a very simple truth-that diffused knowledge immortalises itself. A literature which is confined to a few may be destroyed by the massacre of scholars and the conflagration of libraries, but the diffused knowledge of the present day could only be annihilated by the extirpation of the civilised part of mankind.

Extract from Speech in Defence of Mr Peltier, for a

tion of our forefathers. It is guarded by the hearts and arms of Englishmen, and I trust I may venture to say, that if it be to fall, it will fall only under the ruins of the British empire. It is an awful consideration, gentlemen. Every other monument of European liberty has perished. That ancient fabric which has been gradually reared by the wisdom and virtue of our fathers, still stands. It stands, thanks be to God! solid and entire -but it stands alone, and it stands in ruins! Believing, then, as I do, that we are on the eve of a great struggle, that this is only the first battle between reason and Libel on Napoleon Bonaparte, February 1803. power-that you have now in your hands, committed to your trust, the only remains of free discussion in Gentlemen-There is one point of view in which this Europe, now confined to this kingdom; addressing you, case seems to merit your most serious attention. The therefore, as the guardians of the most important real prosecutor is the master of the greatest empire the interests of mankind; convinced that the unfettered civilised world ever saw-the defendant is a defence- exercise of reason depends more on your present verdict less proscribed exile. I consider this case, therefore, than on any other that was ever delivered by a jury, I as the first of a long series of conflicts between the trust I may rely with confidence on the issue-I trust greatest power in the world and the ONLY FREE PRESS that you will consider yourselves as the advanced-guard remaining in Europe. Gentlemen, this distinction of of liberty-as having this day to fight the first battle of the English press is new-it is a proud and a melancholy free discussion against the most formidable enemy that distinction. Before the great earthquake of the French | it ever encountered !