dominion of the rabble. A democracy thus | hend the result of all these things together: corrupted exhibited many features of a tyranny." Vol. i., pp. 408, 599. For the best picture of such a democracy in its social and every-day workings, we must have recourse to Plato : "When, methinks, a democratic state, thirsting for liberty, has bad servants to supply it, and becomes intoxicated with a too deep and unmixed draught; then, unless its rulers are very yielding and afford it much license, it charges them with being wicked aristocrats, and punishes them.” "You are right, said he, for that is what they do." "And those who obey the rulers," I continued, "it insults, as voluntary slaves and men of no account; and it praises and honors the rulers for being like subjects, and subjects for being like rulers. Must they not go to the extremity of freedom in such a state ?" "Of course." "And this inherent anarchy," I went on, "extends itself to private houses, and finally descends even to animals." "I do not perfectly understand you," he observed. "For instance," said I, "the father will grow like a boy and be afraid of his sons, and the son like a father, and have neither reverence nor fear for his parents, to show how free he is; and the resident alien is as good as a native citizen, and the native citizen no better than a resident alien, nay, than an absolute foreigner." "I am afraid it is so," said he. "Yes, it is so," said I, "and some other little things like this happen: the teacher is afraid of his scholars, and flatters them, and the scholars despise their teacher; and generally the youth imitate old men, and rival them in words and actions, while the old men, letting themselves down to a level with the youth, become very witty and obliging, in imitation of the young, so as not to appear unpleasant or. tyrannical." He assented. "And the last stage, my good sir, of this freedom of the many, as it prevails in such a state, is when servants are on a complete equality with their masters; and I had nearly forgotten to mention the point to which they carry the political equality of the sexes and the free participation of woman in public affairs. * And as regards the animals subject to man, no one would believe without seeing it how much freer they are there than elsewhere; for it is literally according to the proverb, Love me, love my dog,' and the very horses and asses are wont to roam about in all the majesty of freedom, running over every one they meet in the streets who does not get out of their way; and all other ereatures have a corresponding surfeit of liberty.* ** And you can compre * * Plato does not specify the pigs: The idea of a public promenade for them transcended even his Imagination. the popular mind is made tender and irritable, so that if one endeavors to put the least amount of restraint upon it, it frets and will not bear it; and ultimately, you know, they take no care of law or precedent, that no one may be their master any way."-Republic, 562-3. That much of this pungently satirical description was directly suggested to Plato by the existing state of things in Athens, we can hardly help supposing; and such sketches help us considerably toward the solution of that perplexing problem, why so many of the most eminent Athenians, especially the leading Socratics, openly preferred the constitution of Sparta, odious as that constitution seems to us. It is but human nature to exaggerate the inconveniences which we ourselves suffer. Had Plato, as a Spartan citizen, personally experienced the disadvantages of Spartan rule, the tables might have been turned; and we might have had from his pen a picture equally able, and still more repulsive, of an illiterate and oppressive oligarchy. We are not afraid of having Xenophon's case quoted against us. A gentleman of reputation, leaving his country for political reasons, is not likely to form an impartial judgment on the institutions of the people among whom he finds an asylum; the less so because they, feeling flattered by his preference, pet him in return, and are anxious to make everything appear to the best advantage before him. But we are anticipating a subject on which we hope to say more on some future occasion, when Mr. Grote comes to speak of it. Returning from the digression into which Thirlwall's remarks on the Greek government led us, we will dip into Grote's chapter on the same subject, at the point where he is examining the anti-monarchical feeling of ancient Greece : "It is important to show that the monarchical institutions and monarchical tendencies prevalent throughout medieval and modern Europe have been both generated and perpetuated by causes peculiar to those societies, whilst in the Hellenic societies, such causes had no place; in order that we may approach Hellenic phenomena in the proper spirit, and with an impartial estimate of the feeling universal among Greeks towards the idea of a king. The primitive sentiment entertained towards the heroic king died out, pass tion; receiving from every one unmeasur demonstrations of homage, which are nev translated into act except within the bounds. a known law; surrounded with all the pes phernalia of power, yet acting as a passive s strument in the hands of ministers marked o for his choice by indications which he is nutz liberty to resist. This remarkable combinar: of the fiction of superhuman grandeur a license with the reality of an invisible stra waistcoat, is what an Englishman has in: mind when he speaks of a constitutional kne the events of our history have brought it pass in England, amidst an aristocracy the powerful that the world has yet seen, but have still to learn whether it can be made exist elsewhere, or whether the occurrence a single king at once able, aggressive, and ra olute, may not suffice to break it up."-Vol 1 pp. 15, seq. ing first into indifference, next-after expe- | rience of the despots-into determined antipathy. To an historian like Mr. Mitford, full of English ideas respecting government, this anti-monarchical feeling appears of the nature of insanity, and the Grecian communities like madmen without a keeper; while the greatest of all benefactors is the hereditary king who conquers them from without; the second best is the home despot, who seizes the Acropolis and puts his fellow-citizens under coercion. There cannot be a more certain way of misinterpreting and distorting Grecian phenomena than to read them in this spirit, which reverses the maxims, both of prudence and morality, current in the ancient world. The hatred of kings as it stood among the Greeks (whatever may be thought about a similar feeling now) was a pre-eminent virtue, flowing directly from the noblest and wisest part of their nature: it was a consequence of their deep conviction of the necessity of universal legal restraint; it was a direct expression of that regulated sociality, That last sentence suggests some inter which required the control of individual pas- esting speculations. There certainly an sion from every one without exception, and many supposable cases in which the r most of all, from him to whom power was confided. The conception which the Greeks form- Power and influence of an English monar ed of an irresponsible one, or of a king who might have been, or may be, brought to could do no wrong, may be expressed in the violent trial. If anything had happee pregnant words of Herodotus: He subverts to Queen Victoria while she was Princes the customs of the country; he violates wo- Victoria, Ernest of Hanover would cer men; he puts men to death without trial. No tainly have undertaken to govern Englan other conception of the probable tendencies of on ultra-tory principles; but as that per kingship was justified either by a general sonage is not so "able knowledge of human nature, or by political ex- he would probably have been put dow perience as it stood from Solon downward: no without much difficulty. Or suppose th other feeling than abhorrence could be entertained for the character so conceived: no other the present king-consort had united w than a man of unprincipled ambition would his personal advantages, intellectual en ever seek to invest himself with it. Our larger | dowments of a high order, and an amt political experience has taught us to modify tious spirit-that he had made himself ti this opinion, by showing, that under the condi- wife's master, instead of her dependanttions of monarchy in the best governments of that he had in her name taken hold modern Europe, the enormities described by political affairs-played off the Protes Herodotus do not take place, and that it is pos- tionists and Free-traders against eac! sible by means of representative constitutions, acting under a certain force of manners, cusother-or given a head and a nucleus t toms and historical recollection, to obviate many some doubtful interest, "Young England, of the mischiefs likely to flow from proclaim- for instance-might not the personal infa ing the duty of peremptory obedience to an heence of the crown have made itself sensi reditary and irresponsible king, who cannot be bly felt in British politics? Might not th changed without extra-constitutional force. But such larger observation was not open to Aristo- antagonist forces have stopped the ma tle, the wisest as well as the most cautious of chine altogether, and rendered a recon ancient theorists; nor if it had been open, could struction of the frame of government in he have applied with assurance its lessons to the dispensable? There is nothing very ex governments of the single cities of Greece. The travagant in the supposition, that at som theory of a constitutional king, especially as it period the sovereign of Great Britain ma exists in England, would have appeared to him be a man of great ability and energy, and— impracticable: to establish a king who will reign so much do "circumstances alter cases' without governing, in whose name all government is carried on, yet whose personal will is in it is possible that the presence of thes practice of little or no effect; exempt from all qualities in an English executive may b responsibility without making use of the exemp- as productive of awkward consequence 66 as aggressive, as the absence of them sometimes is in our own. Having thus far spoken of Mr. Grote's work in the highest terms, particularly for its lively and attractive style, we are now compelled to express our disappointment at the jejune and summary way in which he has narrated some of the most interesting episodes in Grecian history-the stories relating to the early princes, and especially those told by Herodotus. The substantial authenticity of these narratives he admits, and accordingly mentions their more important details, but with such rapidity that all the romance of the tale vanishes. One instance of this has struck us remarkably the story of Periander's quarrel with his son, which, in Mr. Grote's abridgment, reads like a scrap of an old newspaper. The original legend is so touching and poetical, that we are tempted to translate it verbatim, though well aware that no words of ours can convey a proper impression of the Ionic historian's beautiful language: "After that Periander had slain his own wife, Melissa, upon that mishap there befel him this other: he had two sons from Melissa, one seventeen, one eighteen years old; these, their mother's father, Procles, that was sovereign of Epidaurus, sent for to himself and treated lovingly, as was but natural, since they were his own daughter's sons; but when he sent them away, he said, on speeding them, 'Do ye know, my sons, who it was that slew your mother?' This word the elder of them made of no account, but the younger, Lycophron by name, was so grieved at the hearing it, that when he came to Corinth he neither saluted his father, for that he was the slayer of his mother,) nor joined in converse with him, nor answered word to his questioning, until that Periander, possessed with wrath, drove him forth from the palace. And having driven him forth, he inquired of the elder what their grandfather had told them, whereunto the boy replied that he had received them lovingly, but the word that Procles had said, on dismissing them, he remembered not, for he had not taken it to heart. Then Periander said it might not be but that he had given them some secret counsel, and he pressed him with questions; so the other remembered it, and told the speech. Then Periander, perceiving this, and willing to yield nothing, sent a messenger to those with whom the son whom he had driven out was dwelling, and forbade them to entertain him; therefore, when he was expelled from that house and went to another, he was driven from that also, for Peri ander threatened his hosts and bade them shut him out. Yet he went to another house of his friends, and they received him, as being the son last, Periander made proclamation that whosoof Periander, though they were in fear. At ever should admit him into his house, or speak to him, should pay a fine to Apollo, and the amount of the fine was stated; by reason of which proclamation, no one would speak to him nor receive him under his roof-nay, he himself deigned not to attempt what was fornades. But on the fourth day, Periander bebidden, but endured living in the public colonholding him bowed down with squalidness and hunger, was moved to pity, and relaxing from his wrath, approached and accosted him. 'My son, which is preferable for thee, to fare as thou now dost, or to inherit the sovereignty and the good things which I now enjoy, by being friendly to thy father? Thou, who, being my son and the king of prosperous Corinth, hast chosen a wanderer's life in perversity, indulging anger against him towards whom it least befitted thee; for if there hath happened any calamity for which thou holdest me in suspicion, it hath happened to me also, and I bear the greater share thereof, forasmuch as I myself did all. But do thou, now that thou hast learned how much better it is to be envied than to be pitied, and what it is to quarrel with thy parents and betters, depart hence, home.' With these words did Periander come upon him, but he answered his father nothing more than to say that he had incurred a fine to the god by entering into conversation with him. Then Periander, finding how unmanageable and invincible his son's disorder was, fitted out a ship for Corcyra, which island he also ruled over, and sent him out of his sight. And afterward Periander made a campaign against his father-inlaw, Procles, as the chief cause of his present difficulty, and took Epidaurus and Procles himself alive. But when, in the lapse of years, Periander had passed his prime, and was conscious of being no longer able to oversee and administer the government, he sent to Corcyra and invited Lycophron to the sovereignty, (for he saw nothing in his elder son, who seemed to him witless ;) but Lycophron deigned not even to give an answer to him that brought the message. Then Periander, for he cleaved to the youth, sent to him a second, his sister, his own daughter, thinking that he would be most likely to yield to her; she came and addressed him : Wouldst thou, my brother, that the sovereignty should fall to others, and thy father's house be scattered, rather than go thyself and enjoy them? Depart home; cease being thine own tormenter. Pride is a mischievous thing; try not to cure evil with evil. Many prefer feasibility to justice; and many seeking their mother's interests have thrown away their father's. The sovereignty is a slippery possession; many are desirous of it; he is already an old man and past his prime; give not thine own property to others. Thus said she to him the most seductive things, as instructed by her father, but he said in answer that he would no wise come to Corinth while he knew that his father was alive. When she had reported this, Periander sent for the third time a herald, that he meant himself to come to Corcyra, and he bade his son return to Corinth, to receive the sovereignty from him. As the youth agreed to these conditions, Periander prepared to sail to Corcyra, and his son to Corinth; but the Corcyræans, on learning the change, slew the young man, that Periander might not come into their country." Clio, chap. 50–54. Our bare and literal version will give some idea of what the story might be made, in the hands of an elegant writer. Of course it would not be possible or desirable that all the tales of Herodotus should be thus repeated at full length, but we cannot help thinking that a few of them, narrated in suitable language, would add great interest to a history of this kind, and do much to further what ought to be one of the historian's chief objects-encouraging his readers to pursue their study further, and have recourse, when it is in their power, to the original authorities which he consults. And now other nations come upon the stage, and particularly the people of the Great King, whose previous conquests and military reputation served so much to heighten the renown of the gallant little bands that victoriously resisted them. This glorious struggle has continually been the theme of the poet, the orator, and the patriot, and not without good reason, for it is a triumph unmatched in the pages of any history, except our own. In almost all the cases of regular battles gained against great odds, (we put surprises and ambuscades out of the question,) there have been some counterbalancing physical advantages on the side of the minority, some superior equipment, the result of superior civilization-armor, horses, firearms, or something of the sort unknown to the other party, and rendering the victory less wonderful. But in this instance, | the accoutrements and military science and experience of the Persians seem to have been no way behind those of the Greeks; nay, in some departments of warfare, such as archery, it is probable that the Persians were the more skillful. The Greeks gave the fairest proof that they were, in Highland phraseology, "the prettier men." In describing these world-renowned battles, both Thirlwall and Grote have acquitted themselves well, but neither remarkably. Their accounts suffer on comparison with those magnificent pictures of Arnold, which give to Hannibal's campaigns all the interest of a new story. But to say that they fall short of Arnold is no great censure, nor can we feel disposed to blame them much, when we remember how often a "picturesque "historian is tempted to sacrifice accuracy to effect. With the battle of Marathon terminates Mr. Grote's fourth volume, and here our article must terminate also. We wait with impatience for his observations on later Greek politics and philosophy, the more so because the increased interest and liveliness in the corresponding parts of Dr. Thirlwall's book, induce a hope that Mr. G. will, in a similar manner, continue to rise with his subject. We have accomplished our main purpose, which was to supply, to the best of our small ability, a singular omission on the part of American reviewers. Here are two works which will be, for many years at least, the standard Histories of Greece in the English language; one of them has been completed four years, the other is now about half published; and we are not aware that the least notice has been taken of them by any American periodical. To Mr. Grote's history we are almost positive that there has not been the slightest allusion. We have therefore made bold, in default of abler scholars, to take the matter in hand, deeply regretting that so interesting and important a subject has not attracted the attention of some one better qualified to do it justice. • THE NEW EDITION OF WEBSTER'S DICTIONARY.* THE price of the previous editions of Webster's Dictionary, that of 1828, in two volumes quarto, at twenty dollars, and that of 1840, in two volumes, royal octavo, at fifteen dollars, was such as to keep it out of the possession of the majority of those who desired such a work. The present edition, comprising all the matter of the former ones, after a thorough revisal of the whole, and with large additions, appears in a single volume of fourteen hundred and forty-one pages, crown quarto, in a type, though small, yet beautifully distinct, presenting a page on which the eye can rest with pleasure, and run with ease, at the price of six dollars, --an unprecedented achievement in the art of book-making in this country. The reputation of Webster's Dictionary has been constantly gaining strength with the progress of time. The result, in the first place, of more than twenty years of study and toil--in which we have an example, in a country like ours, most singular and to be admired, of persevering devotion, solitary and unapplauded, to a labor purely literary, requiring extraordinary ability, and capable of yielding no immediate return of profit or honor-this work, surpassing everything in the same department from the mother country, with all her advantages, was an honor to our own land, of which we were quite too insensible. Slighted by some, and by the majority more or less undervalued, from the very fact that it was a home production; while others were repelled, and in a measure blinded to the real merits of the work, by orthographical changes, offensive, because unfamiliar; it has, however, worked its way, and even gained for itself a reputation from the other side of the water. The work continued to receive emendations from the author's hand, to the very close of his life, which was prolonged, with powers still vigorous, to the age of more than eighty-five years, and to a period of just fifty years after he first conceived the design. The preparation of the present edition was intrusted to Professor Goodrich, of Yale College, who has devoted nearly three years to this task, for which he is well known to be excellently qualified by the studies which have been the labor of his life as professor of rhetoric. Aware, however, that it is "impossible for any one mind to embrace all the departments of knowledge," the editor has secured the aid of other gentlemen, in particular branches of science, art and literature, who have become responsible for the classes of words relating to their several departments; revising the whole, remodelling or enlarging old definitions, and adding and defining new words. This has been done for the department of law, by the Hon. Elizur Goodrich; ecclesiastical history and ancient philosophy, by Dr. Murdock; chemistry, by Professor Silliman; botany, anatomy, physiology, medicine, and some branches of natural history, by Dr. Tully ; Oriental literature, to some extent, by Professor Gibbs; astronomy, meteorology, and natural philosophy, by Professor Olmsted; mathematics, by Professor Stanley; geology, mineralogy, and other subjects, by James D. Dana, Esq.; entomology and practical astronomy, more or less, by Edward C. Herrick, Esq.; and painting and the fine arts, by Nathaniel Jocelyn, Esq.; a general revision of these classes of words, through the first two letters of the alphabet, having been previously made by Dr. An American Dictionary of the English Language: Containing the whole vocabulary of the first edition in two volumes, quarto, the entire corrections and improvements of the second edition in two volumes, royal octavo; to which is prefixed an Introductory Dissertation on the Origin, History, and Connection of the Languages of Western Asia and Europe; with an explanation of the principles on which languages are formed. By NOAH WEBSTER, L.L.D., &c., &c. Revised and enlarged by CHAUNCEY A. GOODRICH, Professor in Yale College. WithPronouncing Vocabularies of Scripture, Classical and Ge ographical Names. Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam. 1848. |