grows old, and the most distinguished tomb they could have; not so much that in which they are laid, as that in which their glory is left behind them, to be everlastingly recorded *on every occasion for doing so, either by word or deed, that may from time to time present itself. For of illustrious men the whole earth is the sepulchre; and not only does the inscription upon columns in their own land point it out, but in that also which is not their own there dwells with every one an unwritten memorial of the heart, rather than of a material monument. Vieing then with these men in your turn, and deeming happiness to consist in freedom, and freedom in valour, do not think lightly of the haz[and those] who have no hope of any good, that would with most reason be unsparing of their lives; but those who while they live, still incur the risk of a change to the opposite condition, and to whom the difference would be the greatest, should they meet with any reverse. For more grievous, to a man of high spirit at least, is the misery which accompanies cowardice, than the unfelt death which comes upon him at once, in the time of his strength and of his hope for the common welfare.

that adorned her with them; and few of the Greeks are there whose fame, like these men, would appear but the just counterpoise of their deeds. Again, the closing scene of these men appears to me to supply an illustration of human worth, whether as affording us the first information respecting it, or its final confirmation. For even in the case of men who have been in other respects of an inferior character, it is but fair for them to hold forth as a screen their military courage in their country's behalf; for, having wiped out their evil by their good, they did more service collectively, than harm by their individual offences. But of these men there was none that either was made a coward by his wealth, from preferring the continued enjoy-ards of war. For it is not the unfortunate, ment of it; or shrank from danger through a hope suggested by poverty, namely, that he might yet escape it, and grow rich; but conceiving that vengeance on their foes was more to be desired than these objects, and at the same time regarding this as the most glorious of hazards, they wished by risking it to be avenged on their enemies, and so to aim at procuring those advantages; committing to hope the uncertainty of success, but resolving to trust to action, with regard to what was visible to themselves; and in that action, being minded rather to resist and die, than by surrendering to escape, they fled from the shame of [a discreditable] report, while they endured the brunt of the battle with their bodies; and after the shortest crisis, when at the very height of their fortune, were taken away from their glory rather than their fear.

"Such did these men prove themselves, as became the character of their country. For you that remain, you must pray that you may have a more successful resolution, but must determine not to have one less bold against your enemies; not in word alone considering the benefit [of such a spirit], (on which one might descant to you at great length-though you know it yourselves quite as well-telling you how many advantages are contained in repelling your foes;) but rather day by day beholding the power of the city as it appears in fact, and growing enamoured of it, and reflecting, when you think it great, that it was by being bold, and knowing their duty, and being alive to shame in action, that men acquired these things; and because, if they ever failed in their attempt at any thing, they did not on that account think it right to deprive their country also of their valour, but conferred upon her a most glorious joint-offering. For while collectively they gave her their lives, individvally they received that renown which never

"Wherefore to the parents of the dead-as many of them as are here among you I will not offer condolence, so much as consolation. For they know that they have been brought up subject to manifold misfortunes; but that happy is their lot who have gained the most glorious-death, as these have,-sorrow, as you have; and to whom life has been so exactly measured, that they were both happy in it, and died in [that happiness]. Difficult, indeed, I know it is to persuade you of this, with regard to those of whom you will often be reminded by the good fortune of others, in which you yourselves also once rejoiced; and sorrow is felt, not for the blessings of which one is bereft without full experience of them, but of that which one loses after becoming accustomed to it. But you must bear up in the hope of other children, those of you whose age yet allows you to have them. For to yourselves individually those who are subsequently born will be a reason for your forgetting those who are no more; and to the state it will be beneficial in two ways, by its not being depopulated, and by the enjoyment of security; for it is not possible that those should offer any fair and just advice, who do not incur equal risk with their neighbours by having children at stake. Those of you, how

* Literally, "on every occasion, either of word or deed, that may from time to time present itself."

prevailed an easy and natural mode of intercourse which in some respects must have been singularly delightful, Secure of his own position, and with no desire to contest the social claims of others, a man was satisfied, and sometimes only too easily satisfied, to show himself exactly as he was. There was no use in trying to impose upon people who had been his school-fellows at Eton, his brother-officers in the Guards, his colleagues in Parliament, his partners at whist, his cronies at the club, his companions in a hundred revels. Every friend with whom he lived was acquainted with every circumstance in his career and every turn in his affairs-who had jilted him, and who had schemed for him; how many thousands a year had been allowed him by his father, and how many hundreds he allowed his son; how much of his rent-roll was unmortgaged, and how much wood was left uncut in his plantations; what chance he had of getting heard at two in the morning in the House of Commons, and what influence he possessed over the corporation of his neighboring borough. Unable to dazzle those for whose good opinion he cared, it only remained for him to amuse them; and the light and elegant effusions in which the fine gentlemen of White's and Arthur's rivalled, and, as some think, excelled, the wittiest pens of France remain to prove of what Englishmen are capable when they devote the best of their energy to the business of being frivolous.

communities, and in those alone, personal, not. Within the charmed precincts there allusion, the most effective weapon in the armory of letters, can be employed with a certainty of success. A few thousand people who thought that the world was made for them, and that all outside their own fraternity were unworthy of notice or criticism, bestowed upon each other an amount of attention quite inconceivable to us who count our equals by millions. The actions, the fortunes, and the peculiarities of every one who belonged to the ruling class became matters of such importance to his fellows that satire and gossip were elevated into branches of the highest literary art. Every hit in an Athenian burlesque was recognized on the instant by every individual in an audience which comprised the whole body of free-born citizens. The names and habits of every parasite and informer and legacy-hunter within the circuit of the Seven Hills were accurately known to every Roman who had enough spare sesterces to purchase a manuscript of Juvenal. In the eighteenth century, in our own country, the same causes produced the same results; and the flavor of the immortal impertinences which two thousand years before were directed against Pericles and Euripides may be recognized in the let ters which, when George the Third was young, were handed about among a knot of men of fashion and family who could never have enough of discussing the characters and ambitions, the incomes and genealogies, the scrapes and the gallantries, of everybody who had admission to the circle within which their lives were passed.

The frivolity of the last century was not confined to the youthful, the foolish, or even The society pictured in these letters had to the idle. There never will be a generation much the same relation to what is called good which cannot supply a parallel to the lads society now that the "Boar Hunt" by who, in order that they might the better hear Velasquez, in the National Gallery, with its the nonsense which they were talking across groups of stately cavaliers, courteous to each a tavern table, had Pall Mall laid down with other, and unmindful of all besides, bears to straw at the cost of fifty shillings a head for the scene of confused bustle and dubious en- the party; or to the younger brother who joyment represented in the "Derby Day" of gave half a guinea every morning to the Mr. Frith. So far from being a vast and ill-flower-woman who brought him a nosegay of defined region, capable of almost infinite expansion, into which anybody can work his way who has a little money and a great deal of leisure, and who is willing to invest his industry in the undertaking, good society, when Lord Chesterfield was its oracle and George Selwyn its father-confessor, was inclosed within ascertained and narrow boundaries. The extent of those boundaries was so familiar to all who were admitted and all who were excluded that a great lady, when she gave an evening party, would content herself with sending cards to the women, while she left the men to judge for themselves whether they had a right to come or

roses for his button-hole. These follies are of all times; but what was peculiar to the period when Charles Fox took his seat in Parliament and his place in society consisted in the phenomenon (for to our ideas it is no thing else) that men of age and standing, of strong mental powers and refined cultivation, lived openly, shamelessly, and habitually, in the face of all England, as no one who had any care for his reputation would now live during a single fortnight of the year at Monaco. As a sequel to such home-teaching as Lord Holland was qualified to impart, the young fellow, on his entrance into the great world, was called upon to shape his life ac

then, in the later and sadder stage, actually courted and welcomed as a friend. It is pitiful to witness the loftiest minds and the brightest wits reduced to the most barren and lugubrious of topics; talking of old age at seven-and-forty; urging a fellow-sufferer to stuff himself with Morello cherries, in order to develop a crisis in the malady; or rejoicing with him over the cheering prospect that the gout at length showed symptons of being about to do its duty. It spoke well for George the Third's common-sense that he never would join in the congratulations which his ministers eagerly and unanimously bestowed upon any of their number who was condemned to list slippers and a Bath chair. "People tell me," said his Majesty, "that the gout is very wholesome; but I, for one, can never believe it."

the reward of courtiers, and not very much of the comfort on which an Englishman of rank reckons as his birthright. Doors and windows so habitually open that a maid of honor encountered five distinct and thorough draughts on the way from her own room to the queen's boudoir: expeditions on foot across country for ten miles on end, without shirking a ploughed field or skirting a patch of turnips; early prayers in winter, with a congregation dwindling daily as the mornings grew colder and darker, until by Christmas the king and his equerry were left to shiver through the responses together. Nothing would have retained men of fortune and men of pleasure in such a Spartan service, except the strong and disinterested affection with which George the Third inspired all who had to do with him in his character of master of the household.

As far as he was himself concerned, the king had no occasion to adopt any such des- The habit and morals of that household perate medical theory. He applied to the were those which prevailed rather in the midmanagement of his own health a force of will dle than the upper classes of his Majesty's and an independence of judgment which subjects. The first two hundred lines of the greater men than he too seldom devote to that Winter's Evening"-a passage as much behomely but most difficult task. His imagina-yond Cowper's ordinary range as it surpasses tion had been profoundly impressed by the in wealth and strength of thought, and in sight of his uncle, the Duke of Cumberland, sustained beauty and finish of execution, all dying at forty-four of a complication of dis- the pictures of lettered leisure and domestic eases aggravated or caused by an excessive peace that ever tantalized and tempted a polcorpulence, which the vigorous habits of a itician and a Londoner-show us what was soldier who entertained a soldier's dislike to then the aspect of a modern English home, rules of diet had altogether failed to keep in refined by culture, and ennobled by a reli check. From that time forward George the gious faith of which hardly a vestige can be Third observed a rigid temperance, which traced in the records of fashionable and minmight not have been meritorious in a religious isterial circles. Cowper has elsewhere left a recluse, but was admirable when practised reference to the astonishment with which the amid the temptations of a court by one who official world witnessed the appearance in its husbanded his bodily powers for the sake of midst of such a phenomenon as his studies. He never allowed himself to be complimented on his abstinence. "'Tis no 64 one who wears a coronet and prays" virtue," he said. "I only prefer eating plain and little to growing sickly and infirm." He in the person of Lord Dartmouth. Voltaire, would ride in all weathers from Kew or Wind- writing in 1766, pronounced that there was sor to St. James's palace, and dress for a no more religion in Great Britain than the levee, at which he gave every individual pre- minimum which was required for party pursent some token of his favor or displeasure. poses. Commenting on this passage in the Then he would assist at a privy council or do first blank space which he could find, as was business with his ministers till six in the ever his custom when he read, Macaulay reevening, take a cup of tea and a few slices of marks, "Voltaire had lived with men of wit bread-and-butter without sitting down at and fashion during his visit to England, and table, and drive back into Berkshire by lamp- knew nothing of the feeling of the grave part light. In his recreations he was more hardy of mankind, or of the middle classes. He and energetic even than in his labors. On says in one of his ten thousand tracts that no hunting-days he remained in the saddle from shopkeeper in London believes there is a eight in the morning till the approach of hell." Shopkeepers who had listened to night sent him home to a jug of hot barley- Whitefield and the Wesleys for thirty years water, which he in vain endeavored to induce were not likely to be skeptics on the queshis attendants to share with him. His gen- tion of future punishment; but men of fashtlemen in waiting tasted nothing of the lux-ion did not concern themselves about the beury which the humble world presumes to be liefs of smaller people. There is just as much