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appropriate and beneficial services, whatever the estimate and verdict of others. The way will be formed for the will. Systems and functionaries may forbid a particular mode of entrance into the work, may impede a particular line of progress in it, but they 'have nothing more that they can do. They cannot, and were never meant to, prevent the utterance, and effectual utterance, of those who can say, believe, and therefore speak.' The greatest men in God's church have often been raised up beside, and independently of, existing institutions. Melchizedek, the Prophets, Paul, and multitudes since, owed little to the ordinary and regular provisions of the church; and they who come 'in their spirit and power' may yet find that where there is life, opportunity of labour will not be withheld. But how is the existence of life to be ascertained? There is but one waythe marking what men are as private Christians. If in that capacity they be merely respectable saints, maintaining only a common character of holiness and zeal, doing no more than others, filling no peculiar positions, and producing no peculiar impression; if there be no reason to suppose that out of the ministry they would stand apart as distinguished by devotedness, and spiritual power; if the strong probability be that their official distinction will be their only distinction; then we say, that it is a hazardous thing to invite or encourage them to become ministers of Christ.

'But if only such men can be found-what then?" The plainest of all things-do without them. There is no obligation anywhere to maintain an inefficient, and especially a spiritually inefficient, ministry. The ends of God are not answered in filling so many pulpits, and sustaining so many churches. Numbers have no mystic virtue here. Ministers are to be weighed, not counted. We are persuaded that the best policy, as well as the best principle, is to let the truth of things come out. To patch up institutions, to paint sepulchres, to cover a certain amount of surface, to uphold a certain amount of machinery, is worse than useless. Speaking literally, there are just as many ministers as there are right ministers-no more: speaking practically, there are not so many, if there be more. Men who are wanting in the sterling qualities of able ministers of the New Testament-who make no impression on the world-whose official position is kept up chiefly by successive expedientswho are more indebted for it to the backing of brethren than their own power-who are as often thinking of removing from, as of remaining in, stations-men of this kind are doubtless of no value to any denomination. They may reckon in a manual or a register, but they reckon not otherwise, 'true zeros, nothing in themselves, but much in sequence.' And something

has to be deducted on their account from other men's labours, before the true worth and weight of a ministry cau be appreciated. We say then that if the point were, which we do not believe it is, that if the ordinary kind of ministers are not received into our colleges and churches, there must be none received at all, there is nothing in the conclusion to alarm or distress us. Be this as it may, the question we put to the congregations of non-conformists is this, Shall there be a ministry among us, having 'the spirit of power'?

We shall perhaps return to the subject of the ministry, ere long.

Art. III. Pericles. A Tale of Athens in the 83rd Olympiad. By the Author of a Brief Sketch of Greek Philosophy. In two vols. Longman & Co., London, 1846.

THE vapid novels or romances which forty years ago alone supplied the English demand for works of fiction, have been gradually supplanted by a species of writing, neither foreseen nor wished for: without which, however, neither the disdain of the learned, nor the frowns of the good, would probably have been able to extirpate those evil weeds of literature. The happy change is mainly due to the imaginative genius and lore of Sir Walter Scott, whose instinct led him to the same practical maxim as had been elicited by the profound analysis of Aristotle two thousand years before; -Poetry is more philosophical than History. The Greeks indeed had not as yet produced prose works of fiction, unless the dialogues of Plato are to be so reckoned; otherwise instead of Poetry, the illustrious father of criticism would doubtless have used the larger term Fiction, which would be fully justified by his argument. We must not be understood to mean that history is not philosophical. But the instruction which it yields depends very much on the materials themselves; and, even with the same historian, one century or one nation is very far from being equally fruitful of wisdom to the reader of its history, as another. Its proper business is with details, and in this respect it rather furnishes the raw materials of science, than becomes a science itself; and a history is philosophic, when its materials are so disposed as to aid the reader in generalizing concerning politics or morals, though neither of these sciences can be treated as such by the historian. A work of fiction on the contrary is plastic to the hand of genius, and should exhibit, not what actually was, nor

barely what possibly may have been, but that which gives a vivid picture of the times; being a more brilliant assemblage of countless rays under one focus, than can anywhere be hoped for in the dim and fragmentary records of past times. In no other way can deep impressions of reality be so effectually given, unless by rare good fortune we possess some minute contemporary or personal biography: and even then, the writer is always apt to omit, as known, the very details which, to a foreign reader or after a long lapse of time, are needed to fill up the scene. History itself, as written by a contemporary, may even mislead one who is unaware of customs and manners assumed by the historian as familiar to his readers: hence to assist the knowledge of ancient time, special books on Antiquities are diligently compiled, in which everything of the kind is registered. We do not undervalue these aids to students; and used

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books of reference, they are as needful in their way as dictionaries. But as no one will improve by reading his dictionary straight through, so, we fear, it is a hopeless thing to learn Antiquities by single study of the books which profess to treat of them. Unless the imagination or affections be stimulated, the memory cannot retain what is poured in so profusely upon it; or even if it could, it would be dry and barren. But when the information is interwoven with a pleasant tale, it can. be imbibed with delight even by the young and previously unlearned.

Such considerations had pressed themselves on the mind of the Abbé Barthelemi in the last century, and issued in the production of his very elaborate work, entitled Anacharsis the Younger in Greece; on which he had been occupied thirty years. On the score of erudition, nothing is to be said against this arduous and able book; but we believe a sentence has long since past against it, that it is wanting in interest, as well as in dramatic and narrative skill. The qualities needed in a writer of such a work are very numerous. He should have the imagination and pictorial power of a poet, with the accuracy of a man of learning; the freedom of genius, with a power of curbing it at will. If, over and above, he selects for his leading characters names well known in history, he gains thereby some great advantages in the interest attached to his story, but involves himself in one more danger,-that of corrupting the truth of history for the sake of his tale: in fact, unless the events themselves are so stirring or so remarkable as to give full interest to the narrative, independently of all doubtful questions, -he can scarcely hope to reconcile the conflicting demands of history and fiction.

In such difficulties, to a certain extent, the author before us has entangled himself, by his deliberate purpose to make his work at once, (what it is,) a beautiful and bewitching narrrative, and a historical justification of the great PERICLES. His notes, as well as preface, show him to be anxiously striving to introduce nothing with the air of history which is not at least probably true: for which reason, before concluding our notice, we shall add some remarks on the extent to which he seems to us to have succeeded or failed in his aim. At present we address ourselves to the tale as it stands.

In the year 445, before the Christian era, the Athenians had narrowly escaped from a dangerous combination of circumstances. They had extended their empire over a far greater surface of Greece than they were able to hold. Bœotia and Phocis had just thrown off the yoke, and defeated, with great loss, an Athenian army, which marched against them. Eubea revolted, and when Pericles crossed over thither with a large force, a Spartan army invaded Attica, and threatened Athens herself. From these pressing dangers Pericles extricated her, by a bribe of ten talents to the Spartan general Cleandridas, who commanded for the young king* Pleistoanax, then a mere boy; upon which, to the agreeable surprise of the Athenians, the Spartans withdrew after a few trivial and sham attacks. This left Pericles free to reconquer Eubea, and then conclude an honourable peace, called the thirty years truce. Such is the crisis of affairs with which the Tale of Athens, opens. At this time Pericles, as of high aristocratic birth, yet head of the democratic party, is the most influential individual in the state; but he has to struggle against the jealousy of the older aristocrats, men of no talent, attached to old things because they are old, and against the enmity of the younger nobles, among whom a profligacy of the deepest dye is making fearful inroads. They receive aid from the wealth and impudence of newly-risen commoners, who have no other bond to the nobility than a common opposition to Pericles; of these men the most signal is Cleon, son of Cleænetus, a tanner, a man of ready eloquence, long purse,† and disgusting vices. This harmonious opposition select as a butt of attack peculiarly galling to Pericles, the professors of the new philosophy then rising in Athens, with whom Pericles has become united in most intimate friendship, and from whom he had imbibed much of the virtue and nobleness which still makes his name stand out in proud preeminence.

• The author has twice (by error of memory?) written Leotychides for Pleistoanax.

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T † The author talks freely of purses of gold:' can this be correct? Gold coins, we apprehend, were too scarce to be current for common purposes.

On this band of philosophers, shall we say, or saints and martyrs? the whole interest of the tale turns. Their leader is the old Anaxagoras, the apostle of his age, and true founder of whatever was holy and lovely, and of much that was scientifically true, in Athenian philosophy. Born at Clazomenæ, and heir to an ample patrimony, he felt himself called to higher service than that of administering wealth, and voluntarily abandoned it to his relations, directing his steps to Athens, as the centre of Grecian influence. Here he commenced lecturing publicly to all who would attend him, and, first among the Greeks, expounded the great doctrine, that the Gods were not (as the common mythology taught) the giant first-born children of nature, nor was this universe made by chance or self-causation; but that all was moulded under the direction of a single presiding* MIND, which alone is God, and that he is neither in shape nor in nature like ourselves. This doctrine, in connexion with expositions of natural philosophy and mathematics, had been taught so long and perseveringly, yet with little public notice, as already to have produced a sensible effect. The sage lived on voluntary gifts from his disciples, and though often in great penury (once, it is said, at the point of starvation), had made no change in his method; poor, therefore, as well as rich, were occasionally found among his hearers. One of them was a young man, who lived by the trade of stonecutter, Socrates, son of Sophroniscus, whom the discourses of Anaxagoras so fascinated, that he abandoned his workshop for philosophy, and, for a scanty remuneration, performed a duty abandoned in Athens to slaves-that of tutor to a little boy. Another eminent disciple of the Clazomenian philosopher was Euripides, son of Mnesarchus, already at this time a man of middle age, who, after studying painting and rhetoric, finally chose, as the business of his long remaining life, the tragic drama, with the express object of inculcating the moral and spiritual views of Anaxagoras, and of undermining the popular mythology when it became dangerous to attack it directly. A more interesting pupil still was the beautiful, eloquent, and ardent Aspasia, a native of Miletus; who, scorning the trammels which Athenian customs had imposed on women, eagerly sought after truth in the lecture room of Anaxagoras; and becoming, in turn, herself a teacher, at the early age of five-and-twenty, discoursed of sublime truths not only to such young ladies as Athenian parents would entrust to her, but also before warriors, statesmen, and young men, if curiosity or interest induced them to

* The graceless wits of Athens, it appears from Plutarch, nicknamed Anaxagoras, νοῦς.