Æschines had repeated several times in the course of his oration.

"When you had obtained your enrolment among our citizens, by what means I shall not mention, but when you had obtained it, you instantly chose out the most honorable of employments, that of under scrivener and assistant to the lowest of our public officers. And, when you retired from this station, where you had been guilty of all those practices you charge on others, you were careful not to disgrace any of the past actions of your life. No, by the powers!— You hired yourself to Simmichus and Socrates, those deep groaning tragedies, as they were called, and acted third characters. You pillaged the grounds of other men for figs, grapes, and olives, like a fruiterer; which cost you more blows than even your playing, which was in effect playing for your life; for there was an implacable, irreconcilable war declared between you and the spectators; whose stripes you felt so often and so severely, that you may well deride those as cowards, who are unexperienced in such perils.— But I shall not dwell on such particulars as may be imputed to his poverty. My objections shall be confined to his principles. Such were the measures you adopted in your public conduct, (for you at last conceived the bold design of engaging in affairs of state,) that while your country prospered, you led a life of trepidation and dismay, expecting every moment the stroke due to those iniquities which stung your conscience; when your fellow citizens were unfortunate, then were you distinguished by a peculiar confidence ; and the man who assumes this confidence, when thousands of his countrymen have perished, what should he justly suffer from those who are left alive? And here I might produce many other particulars of his character. But I suppress them. For I am not to exhaust the odious subject of his scandalous actions. I am confined to those which it may not be indecent to repeat. Take then, the whole course of your life, Eschines, and of mine; compare them without heat or acrimony. You attended on your scholars; I was myself a scholar. You served in the initiations; I was initiated. You were a performer in our public entertainments; I was the director. You took notes of speeches; I was a speaker. You were an underplayer; I was a spectator. You failed in your part; I hissed you. Your public conduct was devoted to our enemies; mine to my country.'

The next passage, which we select, is a rapid and forcible enumeration of the various and important measures, which had been adopted for the security of the state. To say nothing of its other beauties, the manner in which the orator introduces himself in the third person is singularly happy.

'Consider; what was the part of a faithful citizen? Of a prudent, an active, and an honest minister? Was he not to secure Euboea as our defence against all attacks by sea? Was he not to make Boeotia our barrier on the midland side? the cities bordering on Peloponessus our bulwark, on that quarter? Was he not to attend, with due precaution, to the importation of corn, that this trade might be protected through all its progress up to our very harbor? Was he not to cover those districts which we commanded, by seasonable detachments as the Proconesus, the Chersonesus, and Tenedos ? To exert himself in the assembly for this purpose, while, with equal zeal, he labored to gain others to interest and alliance, as Byzantium, Abydos, and Euboea? Was he not to cut off the best and most important resources of our enemies, and to supply those in which our country was defective? And all this you gained by my counsels and my administration. Such counsels, and such an administration, as must appear, upon a fair and equitable view, the result of strict integrity; such as left no favorable juncture unimproved, through ignorance or treachery; such as ever had their due effects, as far as the judgment and abilities of one man could prove effectual. But if some superior being, if the misconduct of generals, if the iniquity of your traitors, or if all these together, broke in upon us, and at length involved us in one general devastation, how is DEMOSTHENES to be blamed? Had there been a single man in each Grecian state to act the same part, which I supported in this city; nay, had but one such man been found in Thessaly, and one in Arcadia, actuated by my principles, not a single Greek, either beyond or on this side Thermopylæ, could have experienced the misfortunes of this day. All had then been free and independent, in perfect tranquillity, security and happiness, uncontrolled in their several communities, by any foreign power, and filled with gratitude to you and to your state, the authors of these blessings, so extensive and so precious. And all this by my means.'

The last quotation, which we shall make, is a part of the oration on the Crown, concluding with his apostrophe to the departed heroes of Athens. Leland's version of this passage is uncommonly elegant and happy. The principal truth, which Demosthenes here labors to enforce, is no other, than that success is not the necessary result of human exertions, however wise, but the gift of heaven. This would seem to many not only an indisputable, but a commonplace maxim of morality, though no one will deny the singular ability with which it is amplified and illustrated. It is necessary, therefore, to refer to the argument of Eschines. Availing himself of the

disasters, which had befallen Athens during the administration of Demosthenes, this orator accused him with the greatest vehemence, as the author of all her calamities. He represents him as the evil genius of his country, the accursed thing which had drawn down upon her the vengeance of heaven; the illstarred wretch, whose disastrous destiny had outweighed and controlled her better fortunes. These charges, which we believe would not be without their effect on the feelings even of a modern audience, under similar circumstances, must have seemed far more credible to a Pagan assembly, who were prone to consider misfortune, not only as a presumptive proof of misconduct, but as a sure indication of the wrath of the gods. Demosthenes, in reply, after urging that neither he nor any other statesman could be required to possess the gift of prophecy; after showing that the measures, which he pursued, were those of a wise and patriotic minister, and were admitted so to be, by the silent acquiescence of Eschines himself, at the time of their adoption, proceeds as follows.

'But, since he hath insisted so much upon the event, I shall hazard a bold assertion. But, in the name of heaven, let it not be deemed extravagant; let it be weighed with candor. I say then, that had we all known what fortune was to attend our efforts; had we all foreseen the final issue; had you foretold it, Eschines, (you whose voice was never heard,) yet, even in such a case, must this city have pursued the very same conduct, if she had retained a thought of glory, of her ancestors, or of future times. For, thus, she could only have been deemed unfortunate in her attempts; and misfortunes are the lot of all men, whenever it may please heaven to inflict them. But if that state, which once claimed the first rank in Greece, had resigned this rank, in time of danger, she had incurred the censure of betraying the whole nation to the enemy. If we had indeed given up those points without one blow, for which our fathers encountered every peril, who would not have spurned you with scorn? You, the author of such conduct, not the state, or me? In the name of heaven, say with what face could we have met those foreigners, who sometimes visit us, if such scandalous supineness on our part had brought affairs to their present situation? If Philip had been chosen general of the Grecian army, and some other state had drawn the sword against this insidious nomination, and fought the battle, unassisted by the Athenians, that people who, in ancient times, never preferred inglorious security to honorable danger? What part of Greece, what part of the barbarian world, has not heard, that the Thebans, in their period

of success, that the Lacedemonians, whose power was older and more extensive, that the king of Persia would have cheerfully and joyfully consented, that this state should enjoy her own dominions, together with an accession of territory ample as her wishes, upon this condition, that she should receive law, and suffer another state to preside in Greece? But, to Athenians, this was a condition unbecoming their descent, intolerable to their spirit, repugnant to their nature. Athens never was once known to live in a slavish, though a secure obedience to unjust and arbitrary power. No; our whole history is one series of noble contests for preeminence, the whole period of our existence hath been spent in braving dangers, for the sake of glory and renown. And so highly do you esteem such conduct, so consonant to the Athenian character, that those of your ancestors, who were most distinguished in the pursuit of it, are ever the most favorite objects of your praise. And with reason. For who can reflect without astonishment upon the magnanimity of those men, who resigned their lands, gave up their city, and embarked in their ships, to avoid the odious state of subjection? Who chose Themistocles, the adviser of this conduct, to command their forces; and, when Crysilus proposed that they should yield to the terms prescribed, stoned him to death? Nay, the public indignation was not yet allayed. Your very wives inflicted the same vengeance on his wife. For the Athenians of that day looked out for no speaker, no general to procure them a state of prosperous slavery. They had the spirit to reject even life, unless they were allowed to enjoy that life in freedom. For it was a principle fixed deeply in every breast, that man was not born to his parents only, but to his country. And mark the distinction. He who regards himself as born only to his parents, waits in passive submission for the hour of his natural dissolution. He who considers, that he is the child of his country also, is prepared to meet his fate freely, rather than behold that country reduced to vassalage; and thinks those insults and disgraces, which he must meet, in a state enslaved, much more terrible than death. Should I then attempt to assert, that it was I who inspired you with sentiments worthy of your ancestors, I should meet the just resentment of every hearer. No; it is my point to shew, that such sentiments are properly your own; that they were the sentiments of my country, long before my days. I claim but my share of merit in having acted on such principles, in every part of my administration. He, then, who condemns every part of my administration, he who directs you to treat me with severity, as one who hath involved the state in terrors and dangers, while he labors to deprive me of present honor, robs you of the applause of all posterity. For if you now pronounce, that, as my public conduct hath not been right, Ctesiphon must stand condemned, it must be thought that you yourselves have acted

wrong, not that you owe your present state to the caprice of fortune. But it cannot be! No, my countrymen! it cannot be that you have acted wrong, in encountering danger bravely, for the liberty and safety of all Greece. No! by those generous souls of ancient times, who were exposed at Marathon! By those who stood arrayed at Piatæa! By those who encountered the Persian fleet at Salamis, who fought at Artemisium! By all those illustrious sons of Athens, whose remains lie deposited in the public monuments! all of whom received the same honorable interment from their country; not those only who prevailed, not those only who were victorious. And with reason. What was the part of gallant men they all performed! Their success was such as the Supreme Director of the world dispensed to each.'

No writings could, we think, be read to more advantage by the rising orators of our own country, than those of Demosthenes. A thorough study of his concise, manly, and practical eloquence, would do much to correct the two most prominent faults of American oratory. The first of these, is the excessive prolixity, by which we are most unfortunately contradistinguished from our transatlantic brethren. In our national House of Representatives, for instance, which, composed as it is of our most distinguished politicians, is certainly no unfair specimen of our deliberative assemblies, five or six weeks are spent in debating upon questions, which would be discussed in the Parliament of Great Britain, and well discussed too, in half as many evenings. The best speakers in that country generally find two or three hours at most, amply sufficient for a complete exposition of their arguments, and those eloquent orations of five or six hours, which are so much in fashion at Washington, are almost unknown. There is some appearance, indeed, that this prolixity of our congressional speakers is working its own cure, and it already begins to be suspected that, in order to convince, it is not indispensably necessary to fatigue. The next fault, to which we allude, is the fondness for unnatural and meretricious ornament, which is occasionally displayed, even by some of our ablest speakers, and which is exhibited, in irrelevant and ostentatious digressions, in cold and trite similes, and a gay confusion of metaphors, in finical circumlocutions, and a studied avoidance of direct and definite language, and, to speak more generally, in offences of every description against classical simplicity. This fault is by no means confined to our oratory, it infects in some degree every