orations too, as well those which he had only pronounced as those he had committed to writing, as if, with a juvenile vanity, he were vying with the rhetoricians Isocrates and Anaximenes, instead of being inspired with the great ambition of guiding the Roman people,

Fierce in the field, and dreadful to the foe.

It is necessary, indeed, for a statesman to have the advantage of eloquence; but it is mean and illiberal to rest in such a qualification, or to hunt after praise in that quarter. In this respect Demosthenes behaved with more dignity, with a superior elevation of soul. He said,

His ability to explain himself was a mere acquisition; and not so perfect but that it required great candour and indulgence in the audience." He thought it must be, as indeed it is, only a low and little mind, that can value itself upon such attainments.

They both, undoubtedly, had political abilities, as well as powers to persuade. They had them in such a degree that men, who had armies at their devotion, stood in need of their support. Thus Chares, Diopithes, and Leosthenes availed themselves of Demosthenes; Pompey and young Cæsar, of Cicero ; as Cæsar himself acknowledges in his commentaries addressed to Agrippa and Mæcenas.

It is an observation no less just than common, that nothing makes so thorough a trial of a man's disposition, as power and authority for they awake every passion, and discover every latent vice. Demosthenes never had an opportunity for a trial of this kind. He never obtained any eminent charge; nor did he lead those armies against Philip, which his eloquence had raised. But Cicero went quæstor into Sicily, and proconsul into Cilicia and Cappadocia ; at a time, too, when avarice reigned without control; when the governors of provinces, thinking it beneath

them to take a clandestine advantage, fell to open plunder; when to take another's property was thought no great crime, and he who took moderately passed for a man of character. Yet, at such a time as this, Cicero gave many proofs of his contempt of money; many of his humanity and goodness. At Rome, with the title only of consul, he had an absolute and dictatorial power against Catiline and his accomplices. On which occasion he verified the prediction of Plato, "That every state will be delivered from its calamities, when, by the favour of fortune, great power unites with wisdom and justice in one person."

It is mentioned, to the disgrace of Demosthenes, that his eloquence was mercenary; that he privately composed orations both for Phormio and Apollodorus, though adversaries in the same cause. To which we may add, that he was suspected of receiving money from the king of Persia, and condemned for taking bribes of Harpalus. Supposing some of these the calumnies of those who wrote against him (and they are not a few); yet it is impossible to affirm that he was proof against the presents which were sent him by princes, as marks of honour and respect. This was too much to be expected from a man who vested his money at interest upon ships. Cicero, on the other hand, had magnificent presents sent him by the Sicilians, when he was ædile; by the king of Cappadocia, when proconsul; and his friends pressed him to receive their benefactions when in exile; yet, as we have already observed, he refused them all.

The banishment of Demosthenes reflected infamy upon him; for he was convicted of taking bribes that of Cicero, great honour; because he suffered for destroying traitors, who had vowed the ruin of their country. The former, therefore, departed without exciting pity or regret : for the latter, the senate changed their habit, continued in mourning, and could not be persuaded to pass any act、

till the people had recalled him. Cicero, indeed, spent the time of exile in an inactive manner in Macedonia ; but with Demosthenes it was a busy period in his political character. Then it was (as we have mentioned above) that he went to the several cities of Greece, strengthened the common interest, and defeated the designs of the Macedonian ambassadors. In which respect he discovered a much greater regard for his country than Themistocles and Alcibiades, when under the same misfortune. After his return, he pursued his former plan of government, and continued the war with Antipater and the Macedonians. Whereas Lælius reproached Cicero in full senate with sitting silent, when Cæsar, who was not yet come to years of maturity, applied for the consulship contrary to law. And Brutus, in one of his letters, charged him with " having reared a greater and more insupportable tyranny than that which they had destroyed."

As to the manner of their death, we cannot think of Cicero's without a contemptuous kind of pity. How deplorable to see an old man, for want of proper resolution, suffering himself to be carried about by his servants, endeavouring to hide himself from death, which was a messenger that nature would soon have sent him, and overtaken notwithstanding and slaughtered by his enemies! The other, though he did discover some fear, by taking sanctuary, is, nevertheless to be admired for the provision he had made of poison, for the care with which he had preserved it, and his noble manner of using it. So that, when Neptune did not afford him an asylum, he had recourse to a more inviolable altar, rescued himself from the weapons of the guards, and eluded the cruelty of Antipater.

LESSON LXXXIII.

The Pernicious Effects of Unnecessary Drinking,

IT is truly astonishing to behold how completely the habit of unnecessary drinking pervades the various classes of our community. In one way or another, it is their morning and evening devotion, their noonday and midnight sacrifice. From the highest grade to the lowest, from the drawing-room to the kitchen, from the gentleman to the labourer, down descends the universal custom. From those who sit long at the wine that has been rocked upon the ocean, and ripened beneath an Indian sky, down to those who solace themselves with the fiery liquor that has cursed no other shores than our own-down, till it reaches the miserable abode, where the father and mother will have rum, though the children cry for bread— down to the bottom, even to the prison-house, the forlorn inmate of which hails him his best friend, who is cunning enough to convey to him, undiscovered, the all-consoling, the all-corroding poison.

Young men must express the warmth of their mutual regard, by daily and nightly libations at some fashionable hotel-it is the custom. The more advanced take turns in flinging open their own doors to each other, and the purity of their esteem is testified by the number of bottles they can empty together-it is the custom. The husband deems it but civil to commemorate the accidental visit of his acquaintance by a glass of ancient spirit, and the wife holds it a duty to celebrate the flying call of her companion with a taste of the latest liqueur-for this, also, is the custom. The interesting gossipry of every little evening coterie must be enlivened with the customary cordial. Custom demands that idle quarrels, perhaps

generated over a friendly cup, another friendly cup must drown. Foolish wagers are laid, to be adjusted in foolish drinking-the rich citizen takes a dozen, the poor one a dram. "The brisk minor panting for twenty-one," baptizes his new-born manhood in the strong drink to which he intends training it up. Births, marriages and burials are all hallowed by strong drink. Anniversaries, civic festivities, military displays, municipal elections, and even religious ceremonials are nothing without strong drink. The political ephemera of a little noisy day, and the colossus whose footsteps millions wait upon, must alike be apotheosised in liquor. A rough-hewn statesman is toasted at, and drank at, to his face in one place, while his boisterous adversary sits through the same mummery in another. Here, in their brimming glasses, the adherents of some successful candidate mingle their congratulations, and there, in like manner, the partisans of his defeated rival forget their chagrin. Even the great day of national emancipation is, with too many, only a great day of drinking, and the proud song of deliverance is trouled from the lips of those, who are bending body and soul to a viler thraldom than that from which their fathers rescued them.

I need not swell the catalogue-it were a shorter task to tell where liquors do not abound, than where they do. And all these things would only wake a smile, but that their consequences make us sad, and ought to make us wise. Is it not here that the mischief we mourn over begins?—and if so, ought not the reformation to begin here also? Look back to the days of childhood. Call up round you the little groups that made your young hours happy. Follow them along, from year to year, as you and they grew older. Remember how this one and that one, the generous and the gifted, dropped off from your sides into the grave. Did not intemperance drag them down?