alone that he prevailed, in a divided state, above all the subtilty of intrigue, all the dexterity of negotiation, all the seductions, all the corruptions, and all the terror that the ablest and most powerful prince could employ ? Was Demosthenes wholly taken up with composing orations, and haranguing the people in this remarkable crisis? He harangued them, no doubt, at Thebes, as well as at Athens, and in the rest of Greece, where all the great resolutions of making alliances, waging war, or concluding peace, were determined in democratical assemblies. But yet haranguing was, no doubt, the least part of his business, and eloquence was neither the sole, nor the principal talent, as the style of writers would induce us to believe, on which his success depended. He must have been master of other arts, subserviently to which his eloquence was employed, and must have had a thorough knowledge of his own state, and of the other states of Greece, of their dispositions, and of their interests relatively to one another, and relatively to their neighbours. I say, he must have been master of many other arts, and have possessed an immense fund of knowledge, to make his eloquence in every case successful, and even pertinent or seasonable in some, as well as to direct it, and to furnish it with matter whenever he thought proper to employ this weapon."

The fatal day of Chæronea,

"That dishonest victory,"

overthrew all the hopes of Demosthenes, and established the military and political ascendancy of the Macedonian king. For a time Athens remained helplessly submissive to the victor; but Demosthenes did not despair of his country. After a few years, news arrived that the veteran King of Macedon was dead, and that a young man had succeeded to the throne, of whose transcendant abilities no man could then form any adequate notion. The moment was favourable for a struggle, and a second allied league was organized by Demosthenes. The result was, however, that Thebes was destroyed by Alexander, and Athens was only spared on its acceptance of terms more humiliating than any ever before imposed upon it. The victor departed for the conquest of Asia, and, during his lifetime, Demosthenes seems to have thought it useless to renew the war.

But though, during the period of Alexander's Persian victories, Demosthenes seems to have engaged in no public measure of importance, it was during this time that the celebrated trial came on, in which he completely triumphed over his old political antagonist and oratorical rival, Æschines. That statesman, who, throughout his career at Athens, had advocated the Macedonian interest, indicted Ctesiphon, one of the friends of Demosthenes, for having illegally proposed a decree, conferring on Demosthenes the honour of a public crown. Some technical reasons were assigned for the illegality of the decree; but the main charge of the indictment was an averment that Ctesiphon had untruly described Demosthenes as having deserved well of his country. This was the great issue that was raised and debated on the trial; and as it was heard before the great court of the Heliæa at Athens, consisting probably on that occasion of several thousand Athenian citizens, it was equivalent to the proposition of a public vote of censure on Demosthenes. I do not pause here to describe the incidents of the trial, or the failure of the accuser; nor shall I enter into any criticism of the world-renowned orations which these two great masters of eloquence delivered at this, their decisive

VOL. XXX.

GG

combat. But I quote some portions of the speech of Demosthenes (marred and mutilated as they must be in translation) because they embody in the noblest language the leading ideas which I am seeking to convey in these sketches of Unsuccessful Great Men. The passage to which I particularly advert, is that where the great orator, in reminding his judges and his accuser of the state of events immediately before the campaign of Chæronea, tells them, "At that fatal period, some of our perils were actually pressing us; others, as it then seemed, were impending. . . . . Judge of my administration at that crisis, by the degree of forethought and skill with which I decided on my line of policy; and do not point your malicious cavils at the result of circumstances. The final issue of all human policy is as Heaven ordains. It is by the design that the statesman is to be judged. Do not then impute it as a crime of mine that Philip overcame us in the battle. It was God that gave him the victory, not I. But prove that I did not take every precaution which human prudence could suggest; prove that I did not exert myself with integrity, with earnestness, and with laboriousness even beyond my strength prove that my measures were not honourable, that they were not worthy of the state, that they were not requisite: prove aught of this, and then, but not until then, impeach me. But, if the thunderbolt, the whirlwind of calamity has proved too much not only for our strength but for the strength of all Greece, why turn upon me? With equal justice might the ship-owner, who sends his vessel to sea fully equipped for her voyage, and with every human precaution taken to insure her safety, be deemed criminally responsible for her wreck, if a storm comes on and her cargo perishes.

"But since he has laid so much stress on the event, I will hazard what may even seem a paradox. Let, however, no man turn from it as extravagant, but let it be fairly considered. I say, then, that had we all known what fortune was to attend our efforts; had we all foreseen the final issue; had you foretold it, Eschines, had you growled out your terrible denunciations (you whose voice was never heard), yet even then must Athens have pursued the very same line of conduct, if she retained a love of glory, if she remembered her heroes of old, or if she thought of the days to come. Now, all that can be said against Athens, is that she has been unfortunate; and misfortune is the common lot of humanity, whenever it may please Heaven to inflict it. But if Athens, Athens that ever claimed the first rank among the Hellenic States, had shrunk from her post in the time of danger, she would be cursed as the cowardly traitress that had given up the liberties of Greece to Philip.

"The Athenians never were known to live contented in a slavish, though secure obedience to unjust and arbitrary power. No. Our whole history is a series of gallant contests for pre-eminence: the whole period of our national existence hath been spent in braving dangers, for the sake of glory and renown. And so highly do you esteem such conduct, as characteristic of the Athenian spirit, that those of your ancestors who were most eminent for it, are ever the most favourite objects of your praise. And with reason: for who can reflect without astonishment on the magnanimity of those men who resigned their lands, gave up their city, and embarked in their ships, rather than live at the bidding of a stranger? The Athenians of that day looked out for no speaker, no general to procure them a state of easy slavery. They had the spirit to reject even life, unless they were allowed to enjoy that life in free

dom. For it was a principle fixed deeply in every breast, that man was not born to his parents only, but to his country. And mark the distinction. He who regards himself as born only to his parents, waits in passive submission for the hour of his natural dissolution. He who considers that he is the child of his country also, volunteers to meet death rather than behold that country reduced to vassalage; and thinks those insults and disgraces which he must endure, in a state enslaved, much more terrible than death. Should I attempt to assert that it was I who inspired you with sentiments worthy of your ancestors, I should meet the just resentment of every hearer. No: it is my point to show that such sentiments are properly your own; that they were the sentiments of my country long before my days. I claim but my share of merit in having acted on such principles in every part of my administration. He then who condemns every part of my administration, he who directs you to treat me with severity, as one who hath involved the state in terrors and dangers, while he labours to deprive me of present honour, robs you of the applause of all posterity. For if you now pronounce, that as my public conduct hath not been right, Ctesiphon must stand condemned, it must be thought that you yourselves have acted wrong, not that you owe your present state to the caprice of fortune.-But it cannot be! No, my countrymen, it cannot be that you have acted wrong in encountering danger bravely for the liberty and the safety of all Greece. No! I swear it by the spirits of our sires, who were in the van of peril at Marathon! by those who stood arrayed at Plataa !-by those who fought the sea-fight at Salamis ! - by the men of Artemisium! by the others, so many and so brave, who now rest in our public sepulchres! —all of whom their country judged worthy of the same honour; all, I say, Æschines; not those only who prevailed, not those only who were victorious. And with reason. What was the part of gallant men they all performed: their success was such as the supreme Ruler of the world dispensed to each."

--

It is not one of the least glories of the Athenian people, that the truth and justice of this noble defence were sanctioned by the approving votes of the very men who were now suffering under the actual results of the policy of Demosthenes, and by the sons and other relatives of those who had marched, at his persuasion, to Chæronea, and had there fallen beneath the Macedonian spears. Yet, a few years afterwards, the Athenians listened to a false and malignant charge against their great orator, of having taken a bribe from Harpalus, a traitorous Macedonian general, who, taking advantage of Alexander's supposed death in India, fled to Greece, carrying with him large treasures from Babylonia. Thirlwall proves conclusively that the story found in Plutarch of Demosthenes having accepted a gold cup from Harpalus, was an idle and unfounded tale. Dinarchus, a bitter enemy of Demosthenes, never mentions the story of the cup; and a still stronger proof of the innocence of Demosthenes is found in the fact, that, after the death of Harpalus, his steward, on being called upon to give an account of all the persons to whom Harpalus had given any kind of bribe, did not mention the name of Demosthenes. No one, indeed, has ever ventured to insinuate that, even if Demosthenes did take the gold of Harpalus, it was given with a view to buy him over to a Macedonian alliance, or to make him forego his old principles of devotion to his country. For a short time, Demosthenes remained in exile, and it is no discredit to him that he feared exile more

than death. He remained in the neighbouring territories, whence he might still obtain a view of the cliffs of his beloved Attica: and when a favourable opportunity offered itself, by the death of Alexander, he was recalled by his countrymen, and succeeded, for the third time, in organizing Southern Greece into a most powerful league against the Macedonian rule. Even before the decree pronouncing his recall had been passed, he had busily and successfully exerted himself in obtaining allies among the neighbouring states; he went from city to city, everywhere pleading the cause of Greece, and competing successfully with the envoys of Antipater, the Macedonian viceroy.

Everything appeared at first to favour the efforts of the independent Greeks in this war, which Ralegh has truly termed "the last honourable enterprise that ever was undertaken by the great city of Athens." Macedon had been weakened by the very successes of Alexander, and was almost drained of troops and treasure. There were great and increasing dissensions among the Macedonian generals, and Athens had found in the brave and skilful Leosthenes, a military chief worthy of her best days. He gained a brilliant, and as it seemed, a decisive victory over Antipater; but a chance shot deprived Athens of her last hero, while he was besieging the defeated Macedonians in the town of Lamia; and his successors in the command, though not deficient in bravery, were wanting in the genius by which Leosthenes animated and guided the militias of the confederacy against the enemy's regular troops.

At this very crisis, also, it happened that a large body of Alexander's veterans, who had been discharged from service in Upper Asia, approached the Hellespont on their homeward march to their native country. They were promptly led into Europe to the help of Antipater, and the inde pendent Greeks were utterly overthrown. Athens was now compelled to surrender to Antipater absolutely, and without conditions; and Demosthenes well knew from this man's fierce and coarse character, exasperated also by his temporary reverses, that he had no mercy to expect.

The other statesmen who had promoted the war, took refuge at different shrines, in the vain hope that the sanctity of the temples might for a time protect their lives; but they were pursued, dragged back to Athens, and put to death, with every circumstance of indignity and cruelty. Demosthenes sought shelter in the temple of Neptune, at Calauria; but he was tracked out by a band of Antipater's cut-throats, led on by Archeas, who, after endeavouring to induce him to leave the temple by promises, resorted to threats. Demosthenes seeing that all hope had fled, asked permission to write a letter to his friends, and contrived to bite off a portion of a reed pen, in which he had for some time carried poison; after a short time, during which his head had been bowed, as in thought, his enemies taunted him with cowardice, and he rose to leave the temple, but fell dead before the foot of the altar.

A Christian bishop has truly said of the death of Demosthenes, that "His end would undoubtedly have been more truly heroic, though not in the sight of his own generation, if he had braved the insults and torture which awaited him. But he must not be judged by a view of life which had never been presented to him: according to his own, it must have seemed base to submit to the enemy whom he had hitherto defied, for the sake of a few days more of ignominious wretchedness. And even on the principles of a higher philosophy, he might think, that the gods, who were not able to protect him, had discharged him from their service,

and permitted him to withdraw from a post which he could no longer defend."

Indeed, even if Antipater had been capable of the clemency of Philip and Alexander, for Demosthenes to have outlived the Lamian war would have only been to him a prolongation of hopeless misery. By perishing when he did, he was spared from seeing his country become the prey of successive soldiers of fortune, and look to a change of masters as the only possible vicissitude of slavery. He was spared also, from what would have agonized his proud and patriotic spirit yet more keenly, from seeing this once powerful and high-minded nation debase herself by the lowest, the most promiscuous adulation; and prostitute her intellectual beauties in favour of every military adventurer who filled her strongholds with his mercenaries, and of every foreign prince, who heaped her granaries with his ostentatious bounty. Demosthenes knew not the depth of the vileness from which he had endeavoured to save Athens. He was denied the good for which he had heroically striven, but he was taken away from the fulness of the triumphant evil.

RATTLESNAKES.

WE believe that we have seen a greater number of these reptiles, in our various journeyings, and been more intensely frightened by them than any other scenery-loving tourist or angler in the country, and hence the idea of our present essay. We shall record our stock of information for the benefit of the general reader, rather than for the learned and scientific, beginning our remarks with what we know of the character of that really beautiful and magnanimous, but most deadly animal, which was adopted as the revolutionary emblem of our country, as the eagle is now the emblem of the republic.

The rattlesnake derives its name from an instrument attached to its tail, consisting of a series of hollow scaly pieces which, when shaken, make a rattling or rustling noise. The number of these pieces or rattles are said to correspond with the number of years which the animal has attained, and some travellers assert that they have been discovered with thirty rattles, though thirteen is a much more common number. It is one of the most venomous of serpents, and yet one that we cannot but respect, since it habitually makes the most honourable use of the singular appendage with which it is gifted. It never strikes a foe without first warning him of his danger. In form it is somewhat corpulent, has a flat heart-shaped head, and is supplied with fangs, varying from a half inch to an inch in length, which lie hidden horizontally in the flesh of the upper jaw, and are capable of being thrown out like the blade of a knife. The venom emitted by it is so deadly, that it has been known to cause the death of a human being in a very few hours, and to destroy a dog or cat in less than twenty minutes, and yet we have met with some half-dozen individuals in our travels who have been bitten by the rattlesnake without being seriously injured. Horses and cattle are known to become ex

* Thirlwall.