tales under one general title, and joined by one connecting narrative. The outline was by no means prepossessing or natural, but as soon as the reader had got through this exterior scaffolding, and entered on the first story, the genius of the author was found to be undiminished in vivid delineation of character and description. The effects of gambling are depicted with great force. There is something very striking in the conception of the helpless old gamester, tottering upon the verge of the grave, and at that period when most of our other passions are as much worn out as the frame which sustains them, still maddened with that terrible infatuation which seems to shoot up stronger and stronger as every other desire and energy dies away. Little Nell, the grandchild, is a beautiful creation of pure-mindedness and innocence, yet with those habits of pensive reflection, and that firmness and energy of mind which misfortune will often engraft on the otherwise buoyant and unthinking spirit of childhood; and the contrast between her and her grandfather, now dwindled in every respect but the one into a second childhood, and comforted, directed, and sustained by her unshrinking firmness and love, is very finely managed. The death of Nell is the most pathetic and touching of the author's serious passages-it is also instructive in its pathos, for we feel with the author, that when death strikes down the innocent and young, for every fragile form from which he lets the panting spirit free, a hundred virtues rise, in shapes of mercy, charity, and love, to walk the world and bless it. Of every tear that sorrowing mortals shed on such green graves, some good is born, some gentler nature comes. In the destroyer's steps there spring up bright creations that defy his power, and his dark path becomes a way of light to heaven.' In the course of this tale there are many interesting and whimsical incidents and adventures, with fine glimpses of rural scenes, old churches, and churchyards. The horrors of the almost hopeless want which too often prevails in the great manufacturing towns, and the wild and reckless despair which it engenders, are also described with equal mastery of colouring and effect. The sketch of the wretch whose whole life had been spent in watching, day and night, a furnace, until he imagined it to be a living being, and its roaring the voice of the only friend he had ever known, although perhaps grotesque, has something in it very terrible: we may smile at the wildness, yet shudder at the horror of the fancy. A second story, Barnaby Rudge, is included in Master Humphrey's Clock,' and this also contains some excellent minute painting, a variety of broad humour and laughable caricature, with some masterly scenes of passion and description. The account of the excesses committed during Lord George Gordon's riots in 1780 may vie with Scott's narrative of the Porteous mob; and poor Barnaby Rudge with his raven may be considered as no unworthy companion to Davie Gellatley. There is also a picture of an old English inn, the Maypole, near Epping Forest, and an old innkeeper, John Willet, which is perfect in its kind -such, perhaps, as only Dickens could have painted, though Washington Irving might have made the first etching. After completing these tales Mr Dickens made a trip to America, of which he published an account in 1842, under the somewhat quaint title of American Notes for General Circulation. This work disappointed the author's admirers, which may be considered as including nearly the whole of the reading public. The field had already been well gleaned, the American character and institutions frequently described and generally understood, and Mr Dickens could not hope to add

to our knowledge on any of the great topics connected with the condition or future destinies of the new world. On one national point only did the novelist dissertate at length-the state of the newspaper press, which he describes as corrupt and debased beyond any experience or conception in this country. He also joins with Captain Basil Hall, Mrs Trollope, and Captain Marryat, in representing the social state and morality of the people as low and dangerous, destitute of high principle or generosity. So acute and practised an observer as Dickens could not travel without noting many oddities of character, and viewing familiar objects in a new light; and we are tempted to extract two short passages from his American Notes,' which show the masterly hand of the novelist. The first is a sketch of an original met with by our author on board a Pittsburg canal boat:—

There are two canal

A thin-faced, spare-figured man of middle age and stature, dressed in a dusty drabbish-coloured suit, such as I never saw before. He was perfectly quiet during the first part of the journey; indeed I don't remember having so much as seen him until he was brought out by circumstances, as great men often are. The canal extends to the foot of the mountain, and there of course it stops, the passengers being conveyed across it by land-carriage, and taken on afterwards by another canal boat, the counterpart of the first, which awaits them on the other side. lines of passage-boat; one is called the Express, and one (a cheaper one) the Pioneer. The Pioneer gets first to the mountain, and waits for the Express people to come up, both sets of passengers being conveyed across it at the same time. We were the Express company, but when we had crossed the mountain, and had come to the second boat, the proprietors took it into their heads to draft all the Pioneers into it likewise, so that we were five-and-forty at least, and the accession of passengers was not all of that kind which improved the prospect of sleeping at night. Our people grumbled at this, as people do in such cases, but suffered the boat to be towed off with the whole freight aboard nevertheless; and away we tested lustily, but, being a foreigner here, I held my went down the canal. At home I should have propeace. Not so this passenger. He cleft a path among the people on deck (we were nearly all on deck), and, without addressing anybody whomsoever, soliloquised as follows: This may suit you, this may, but it don't suit me. This may be all very well with down-easters and men of Boston raising, but it wont suit my figure nohow; and no two ways about that; and so I tell you. Now, I'm from the brown forests of the Mississippi, I am, and when the sun shines on me, it does shine a little. It don't glimmer where I live, the sun don't. No. I'm a brown forester, I am. I an't a Johnny Cake. There are no smooth skins where I live. We're rough men there. Rather. If down-easters and men of Boston raising like this, I am glad of it, but I'm none of that raising, nor of that breed. No. This company wants a little fixing, it does. I'm the wrong sort of man for 'em, I am. They wont like me, they wont. This is piling of it up, a little too mountainous, this is.' At the end of every one of these short sentences he turned upon his heel, and walked the other way; checking himself abruptly when he had finished another short sentence, and turning back again. It is impossible for me to say what terrific meaning was hidden in the words of this brown forester, but I know that the other passengers looked on in a sort of admiring horror, and that presently the boat was put back to the wharf, and as many of the Pioneers as could be coaxed or bullied into going away, were got rid of. When we started again, some of the boldest spirits on board

generally of the English constitution-have also been cultivated with superior learning and diligence. The great works of Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon, still maintain their pre-eminence with the general reader, but the value of the two first has been materially diminished by subsequent investigations and new information.

WILLIAM MITFORD.

The most elaborate and comprehensive work we have here to notice, is The History of Greece from the Earliest Period, by WILLIAM MITFORD, Esq. The first volume of Mr Mitford's history came before the public in 1784, a second was published in 1790, and a third in 1797. It was not, however, till the year 1810 that the work was completed. Mr Mitford, descended of an ancient family in Northumberland, was born in London on the 10th of February 1744, and was educated first at Cheam school, Surrey, and afterwards at Queen's college, Oxford. He studied the law, but abandoned it on obtaining a commission in the South Hampshire Militia, of which regiment he was afterwards lieutenant-colonel. In 1761 he succeeded to the family estate in Hampshire, and was thus enabled to pursue those classical and historical studies to which he was ardently devoted. His first publication was an Essay on the Harmony of Language, intended principally to illustrate that of the English Language, 1774, which afterwards reached a second edition. While in the militia, he published a Treatise on the Military Force, and particularly of the Militia of the Kingdom. This subject seems to have engrossed much of his attention, for at a subsequent period of his life, when a member of the House of Commons, Mr Mitford advocated the cause of the militia with much fervour, and recommended a salutary jealousy relative to a standing army in this country. He was nevertheless a general supporter of ministers, and held the government appointment of Verdurer of the New Forest. Mr Mitford was twice elected member of parliament for the borough of Beeralston, in Devonshire, and afterwards for New Romney, in Kent. He died in 1827. The History of Greece' has passed through several editions. Byron says of Mr Mitford as a historian- His great pleasure consists in praising tyrants, abusing Plutarch, spelling oddly, and writing quaintly; and what is strange, after all, his is the best modern history of Greece in any language, and he is perhaps the best of all modern historians whatsoever. Having named his sins (adds the noble poet), it is but fair to state his virtues-learning, labour, research, wrath, and partiality. I call the latter virtues in a writer, because they make him write in earnest. The earnestness of Mr Mitford is too often directed against what he terms the inherent weakness and the indelible barbarism of democratical government.' He was a warm admirer of the English constitution and of the monarchical form of government, and this bias led him to be unjust to the Athenian people, whom he on one occasion terms the sovereign beggars of Athens.' His fidelity as a reporter of facts has also been questioned. 'He contracts the strongest individual partialities, and according as these lead, he is credulous or mistrustful-he exaggerates or he qualifies he expands or he cuts down the documents on which he has to proceed. With regard to the bright side of almost every king whom he has to describe, Mr Mitford is more than credulous; for a credulous man believes all that he is told: Mr Mitford believes more than he is told. With regard to the dark side of the same individuals, his habits of estimating evidence are precisely in the opposite

extreme. In treating of the democracies or of the democratical leaders, his statements are not less partial and exaggerated.'* It is undeniable that Mr Mitford has over-coloured the evils of popular government, but there is so much acuteness and spirit in his political disquisitions, and his narrative of events is so animated, full, and distinct, that he is always read with pleasure. His qualifications were great, and his very defects constitute a sort of individuality that is not without its attraction in so long a history.

[Condemnation and Death of Socrates.]

We are not informed when Socrates first became distinguished as a sophist; for in that description of men he was in his own day reckoned. When the wit of Aristophanes was directed against him in the theatre, he was already among the most eminent, but his eminence seems to have been then recent. It was about the tenth or eleventh year of the Peloponnesian war, when he was six or seven-and-forty years of age, that, after the manner of the old comedy, he was offered to public derision upon the stage by his own name, as one of the persons of the drama, in the comedy of Aristophanes, called The Clouds, which is yet extant. Some antipathy, it appears, existed between the comic poets collectively and the sophists or philosophers. The licentiousness of the former could indeed scarcely escape the animadversion of the latter, who, on the contrary, favoured the tragic poets, competitors with the comedians for public favour. Euripides and Aristophanes were particularly enemies; and Socrates not only lived in intimacy with Euripides, but is said to have assisted him in some of his tragedies. We are informed of no other cause for the injurious representation which the comic poet has given of Socrates, whom he exhibits in The Clouds as a flagitious yet ridiculous pretender to the occult sciences, conversing with the clouds as divinities, and teaching the principal youths of Athens to despise the received gods and to cozen men. The audience, accustomed to look on defamation with carelessness, and to hold as lawful and proper whatever might amuse the multitude, applauded the wit, and even gave general approbation to the piece; but the high estimation of the character of Socrates sufficed to prevent that complete success which the poet had promised himself. The crown which rewarded him whose drama most earned the public favour, and which Aristophanes had so often won, was on this occasion refused him.

Two or three-and-twenty years had elapsed since the first representation of The Clouds; the storms of conquest suffered from a foreign enemy, and of four had passed; nearly three years had followed of that revolutions in the civil government of the country, quiet which the revolution under Thrasybulus produced, and the act of amnesty should have confirmed, when a young man named Melitus went to the kingarchon, and in the usual form delivered an informaThe information ran thus:- Melitus, son of Melitus, tion against Socrates, and bound himself to prosecute. of the borough of Pitthos, declares these upon oath against Socrates, son of Sophroniscus, of the borough of Alopece: Socrates is guilty of reviling the gods whom the city acknowledges, and of preaching other new gods: moreover, he is guilty of corrupting the youth. Penalty, death.'

with declaring his wonder how the Athenians could Xenophon begins his memorials of his revered master, have been persuaded to condemn to death a man of such uncommonly clear innocence and exalted worth. Elian, though for authority he can bear no comparison with Xenophon, has nevertheless, I think, given the

* Westminster Review for 1826.

solution. Socrates,' he says, 'disliked the Athenian constitution; for he saw that democracy is tyrannical, and abounds with all the evils of absolute monarchy.' But though the political circumstances of the times made it necessary for cotemporary writers to speak with caution, yet both Xenophon and Plato have declared enough to show that the assertion of Ælian was well-founded; and farther proof, were it wanted, may be derived from another early writer, nearly cotemporary, and deeply versed in the politics of his age, the orator schines. Indeed, though not stated in the indictment, yet it was urged against Socrates by his prosecutors before the court, that he was disaffected to the democracy; and in proof, they affirmed it to be notorious that he had ridiculed what the Athenian constitution prescribed, the appointment to magistracy by lot. Thus,' they said, 'he taught his numerous followers, youths of the principal families of the city, to despise the established government, and to be turbulent and seditious; and his success had been seen in the conduct of two of the most eminent, Alcibiades and Critias. Even the best things he converted to these ill purposes: from the most esteemed poets, and particularly from Homer, he selected passages to enforce his anti-democratical principles.'

·

Socrates, it appears, indeed, was not inclined to deny his disapprobation of the Athenian constitution. His defence itself, as it is reported by Plato, contains matter on which to found an accusation against him of disaffection to the sovereignty of the people, such as, under the jealous tyranny of the Athenian democracy, would sometimes subject a man to the penalties of high treason. You well know,' he says, 'Athenians, that had I engaged in public business, I should long ago have perished without procuring any advantage either to you or to myself. Let not the truth offend you: it is no peculiarity of your democracy, or of your national character; but wherever the people is sovereign, no man who shall dare honestly to oppose injustice-frequent and extravagant injustice-can avoid destruction.'

Without this proof, indeed, we might reasonably believe, that though Socrates was a good and faithful subject of the Athenian government, and would promote no sedition, no political violence, yet he could not like the Athenian constitution. He wished for wholesome changes by gentle means; and it seems even to have been a principal object of the labours to which he dedicated himself, to infuse principles into the rising generation that might bring about the desirable change insensibly. His scholars were chiefly sons of the wealthiest citizens, whose easy circumstances afforded leisure to attend him; and some of these zealously adopting his tenets, others merely pleased with the ingenuity of his arguments and the liveliness of his manner, and desirous to emulate his triumphs over his opponents, were forward, after his example, to engage in disputation upon all the subjects on which he was accustomed to discourse. Thus employed, and thus followed, though himself avoiding office and public business, those who governed or desired to govern the commonwealth through their influence among the many, might perhaps not unreasonably consider him as one who was or might become a formidable adversary, nor might it be difficult to excite popular jealousy against him.

Melitus, who stood forward as his principal accuser, was, as Plato informs us, no way a man of any great consideration. His legal description gives some probability to the conjecture, that his father was one of the commissioners sent to Lacedæmon from the moderate party, who opposed the ten successors of the thirty 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 principai 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 understanding, by the casiest of deaths (for such the Athenian mode of exccution-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 intreaty 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.

Condemnation pronounced wrought no change upon him. He again addressed the court, declared his innocence 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.'