Tim. (interrupting). Say rather the far-sighted! Scandalous, in truth, was their conduct; yet thou needest, O Alcibiades, to cast only a glance upon their hearts and their condition, and thou wilt find thyself ready enough to confess they act but as they must.

Alc. As they must?

Tim. Unquestionably! Must they not fear, that in victory every honour would fall to thy share, in defeat every disgrace to theirs? Must they not a thousand times rather see their country in danger, than thee at its head? Must they not-But how is this? Ye good gods, do I behold aright? Or does this flickering light deceive me?

Alc. Well, then what see'st thou ? Tim. Tears in thine eyes! Tears -the first thou hast shed in Thrace; the first since Antiochus fell! Must I dry these also for thee, Son of Clinias?

Alc. O that thou couldst ! But the fall of a hundred Antiochuses-dear as a single one was to me!-were nothing to the fall of Athens.

Tim. Inexplicable being! So indifferent to thine own misfortunes, and often so sensitive to those of others. To think of the countenance with which you said, Timandra, we must once more be wanderers! The tranquillity with which you announced to us all both your banishments

Alc. (interrupting). Was far less heroic than this solitary-solitary tear -for Athens' coming ruin. I, I alone then suffered; and what I suffered was too little to affect me. Even out of Athens I was still Alcibiades. Every path every kingdom-every corner of the world-stood open to me; friends near and far, who knew and loved me; mighty commonwealths that prized me, that would fain behold me at their armies' head; monarchs who needed a commander ;-all these were proud to tender me a refuge and protection. Mine own arm could combat-experience has shown how gallantly! But be all this as nothing! Suppose myself annihilated. I am soldier enough not to shrink from death; and Greece is not so poor in great men, that the loss of one should destroy her. But Athens! Athens! With thee falls Grecia's freedom. Who shall raise thee again, thou noble city, when thou once hast sunk? Who shall reinstate the cedar a storm has rooted from the earth?

Tim. What melancholy pictures of a too hasty fancy art thou creating for thyself! Has not many a tempest passed over Athens, and yet she is blooming? Already has she fallen and risen again.

Antisth. Risen again, like a second Antæus, with redoubled strength. Alc. Fallen? Risen again? Know ye what ye say?

Tim. Undoubtedly. Do you forget her history in the Persian war? Was she not twice in ashes, and yet rose she not more stately from the ruin?

Alc. O no, Timandra! O no, my friend! No foolish Xerxes, coward and incendiary, is now the foe of Athens. 'Tis the SPARTAN, the most terrible of all. Not against lifeless walls alone will he war. To crush the Constitution of Athens-at least to cripple it for ever-will be his aim. Blind rage is formidable. It sweeps along like a hail-storm, devastating where it falls, but confined in its compass, and short in its duration. But envious spite enervates by degrees its victim, until the last strength is drained away, and dead for ever it sinks down. O fate of Messenia, terrible to all posterity, soon, I fear me, wilt thou be renewed in the calamity of Athens.

Tim. And if it be so, think not thou on her misfortune, but on her ingratitude alone. Why-as I have already asked thee twenty times in vain-why dost thou lament for a state that has twice banished thee? twice threatened thy life? which thou couldst save, but not improve? Why torment thyself about a people that has so oft repaid thy benefits with injury? that even now rejects thy counsel? that, didst thou ten times again pluck it from the jaws of destruction, would soon forget its preserver, for the next good fluteplayer? Leave them to mourn and vex themselves who have to thank Athens for favours!

Dioph. By thy head, Son of Clinias, Timandra is right. First of men, for whom all Greece is too little, listen to thy friends, and forget Athens.

Alc. Senseless!-forget that it is my country! that I owe to it the first, the costliest of blessings-life.

Tim. Country! Life!-Chimeras! would Prodicus exclaim.

Alc. And truly too, were it mere existence that I spoke of. But no where out of Athens could Alcibiades have been Alcibiades. With this peo

ple alone could my virtues have met with love, my faults with forgiveness. Here alone there flourished, for my ripening youth, arts and sciences in union. Here alone I found ample verge for noble enterprise and soulentrancing pleasure. Here there tended me a Pericles, who brought me up; a Socrates, who taught me; friends that thronged around me in the fight and in the feast; maids that kissed away from my brow the wrinkles of disquietude; a populace that adored my very humours that shouted out so often let Nicias the sober be silent, let Alcibiades the reveller speak! O here, here only could the germ of so many self-opposing impulses wax strong, expand, and flourish.

Tim. Dreamer! And is Athens then alone the cradle of great men? Have Sparta, Argos, Corinth, none such upon their roll of citizens? Imagine thee born there trained there-imagine thee the son of some Thracian churl-what matters it? Even thus wouldst thou have risen into the hero and the states

man.

Alc. Very possibly-but never into that, which Athens made me! Renowned alike amid men and maidens; victor where the myrtle-branch went

round; victor where swords clashed and helmets rung; softest of the soft, and boldest of the bold. O Timandra

how often must I repeat it to thee and to thy friends ?-to be a hero, and nothing but a hero, was never my design. To be first in virtue and in pleasure, that did I wish-that did I achieve-and there I find my consolation, even in this melancholy hour. Name me a delight-I have enjoyed it; a virtue-I have practised it. But name me too-if thou canst another commonwealth in Greece, where such opportunities for both can be found. Thou art silent! Ungrateful! Thou art already convinced; and yet I have kept back my strongest arguments. Was it not at Athens that we met each other? Was it not there you learned the thousand arts that have chained princes to your car? that allured me to select thee from hundreds of thy sisters? and that bless us yet? O for that cause, for that cause alone, shall Athens be the city of my soul, so long as a nerve thrills, or a pulse throbs in me. Let destiny do her worst upon me! To cross my plans may be but sport to her; but thee-'tis Atropos alone shall tear thee from me!

still.

"THE Devil," said Dr Johnson, "was the first Whig ;" and however much modern liberalism may be inclined to modify the caustic severity of this ce lebrated saying, it must be confessed that every day's experience is proving more clearly, that there was in the observation of the Tory Giant of the eighteenth century a profound knowledge of human nature. It is not merely as the first rebel against authority that the great author of evil bears an affinity to his degenerate progeny in later days; it is more clearly and deeisively from the evident connexion between the efforts of sin and the selfishness of democracy, and the mysterious invitation to our first parents to eat of the fruit of the TREE OF KNOWLEDGE, that the connexion is established. This experience of these latter days was necessary to evince the truth of the aphorism; but it has now become apparent from actual proof, how deeply it was founded in human nature, and how strongly to the end of the world the political as well as private sins of mankind are destined to bear testimony to the verity of the truths unfolded in the first chapter of Genesis.

Much as we have written on democracy and its effects, past, present, and to come, during the last six years, we are conscious that we have not hitherto gone to the bottom of that subject. We could not have done so till, passing through the intermediate stratum of political effects, we dived to the depths of the HUMAN HEART, and sought in our own feelings, and the feelings of every one with whom we live in society, the remote but certain causes of the total failure of the great political experiment which was going on around us, and of the corresponding failure of all similar attempts in all ages and nations of the world. It would have been to little purpose to have made the attempt sooner: for it is experience alone which can either substantiate the conclusions of the thoughtful, or command the assent of the bulk of mankind; and philosophy reasons in vain when its conclusions are at variance

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with the unreflecting wishes of an ardent and heated generation. There is a time, however, when a different set of opinions begin to prevail : when experience has opened the eyes of the thoughtful, and disappointment has cooled the ardour of the enthusiastic : when innovation has been found to be productive only of fresh evil, and a change of masters prolific of nothing but varied methods of corruption.

Then is the moment to endeavour to investigate the ultimate causes of these things, to show in what principles of human nature they take their origin, and by what law of the Almighty they are permanently regulated; and instead of sinking in despair under the pressure of evil, and abandoning the great cause of freedom and social amelioration, from a well-founded disgust with the methods pursued by the democratic party for their attainment, to recur with fresh vigour to the great truths unfolded by religion, supported by reason, confirmed by experience, which explain the only methods by which they can be really promoted, and which, like the eternal church, are overwhelmed for a time under a load of delusion, only to rise again, brighter, and fairer, and more invincible than ever.

It was on this day six years that, penetrated with a sense of the ruinous principles of speculative government which had sprung up with the triumph of the Barricades, and threatened to overturn even the ancient fabric of Saxon freedom, which a thousand years had erected in these lands, we began the great conflict with democratic ambition. We were well aware how deep and strong was the current with which we were to strive; how many and powerful the motives which swelled the ranks of our opponents. All the varied passions of the human heart, usually ranged on opposite sides in every social conflict, were there, by an extraordinary combination of circumstances, ranged against us. The Whigs had two months before been seated in office, not from any casual accident or court

intrigue, but the admitted inability of the old half-changed, half-liberal Tory party to carry on the government. The overthrow of Charles X., and the unparalleled spectacle of the government of a powerful monarchy being destroyed by a vast urban tumult, had excited, to an unparalleled degree, the factious, reckless, and desperate over all Europe. A general regeneration of society, a total and universal change of government was everywhere expected. Reeling under the shock, the throne of the King of the Netherlands, guaranteed by all the powers of Europe, had sunk into the dust: Switzerland was in a state of alarming fermentation: many of the lesser thrones of Germany were overturned or loosened the old anarchical ambition of the Poles was reviving, untaught by the disasters of six centuries, and already gave presage of that desperate struggle which it was to maintain with the power of Russia, while the ardent spirits of the Spanish Peninsula, deeming the hour of democratic ascendency at hand, were already evincing, in no equivocal colours, the reckless and infuriate ambition which was destined, for six long years after, to bathe the Peninsula in blood.

Dark, however, as was the prospect on the continent of Europe, it was not there that the worst symptoms of the political atmosphere were to be descried. It was at home that the seat of the real evil was to be found, it was there that the seeds of lasting decline had been implanted in the British empire. Not only was the Whig party, which is obliged by its principles to give at all times a certain license to democratic ambition, firmly, and to all appearance immovably, seated in power, but the strength of their once powerful opponents was, as far as human foresight could penetrate, permanently broken. The old compact and dauntless aristocracy, which, under the guidance of Pitt and Burke, had with fearless hearts braved the terrors of the first French Revolution, and with the arms of Nelson and Wellington struck down the gigantic power of Napoleon, appeared to be no more. Determined as was the character, vast the talent, discriminating the judgment of many of that heroic band, their power as a body seemed crumbling into the dust. At a moment of unparalleled danger, under

the pressure of perils infinitely greater than those which, with tears in his eyes, had drawn Burke from the side of Fox, and ranged him on his natural side, the defence of freedom and order, the British aristocracy were divided amongst each other. The fatal poison of Catholic emancipation rankled in their veins, stimulating the popular ardour of some, rousing the profound indignation of others. Numbers of their youth had become tinged with the false liberality of the times: the evils of democratic sway were forgotten, because they had long been unfelt; the blood-written lesson of the French Revolution was dimly descried through the blaze of intervening glory, and British patriotism, in its higher classes, was fast melting away under the praises of French philosophy and the smiles of Italian beauty.

While such were the dispositions of the higher ranks, the temper of the middle and lower were, if possible, still more alarming. Various events, conspiring to one common effect in so surprising a manner as almost seems inexplicable, had weakened the patriotic spirit of a large portion of the old defenders of the constitution, and excited, to such a degree as to be for the moment irresistible, the ardent passions of republican ambition. The changes in the currency had involved in distress, unavoidable, perhaps, but still most poignant, the whole agricultural classes, the natural defenders in all troubled times of existing institutions.

The rapid fall of prices, consequent on the same alteration, had reduced almost to despair a large proportion of the manufacturing classes, and all those, of whatever party, who, without considerable capital, were involved in the then perilous business of buying and selling commodities. Foreign travelling, the natural inclination of youth to opposition to government, a mania for liberal opinions, had deprived the constitution of its soundest bulwark-the young men of thought and education in the learned and liberal professions. The monstrous passion in the great for exclusive and aristocratic society had spread, far and wide through the middling ranks, an aversion to their influence, which has happily proved only transitory, and is totally at variance with the natural disposition of the English character. The Tories had become unpopular,