magnificence of Cimon: he attacked his enemy | consequence of a subsequent affront offered by on other ground. Money, we must conclude, had at this time as much influence in Athens, as in any city of more modern times. Pericles partly obtained his authority by a prudent distribution of the state property; he divided the conquered lands among the citizens, and first attached pensions to every kind of public employ. Up to his time the Athenians had discharged gratuitously most, if not all, of the duties exacted by the state; Pericles opened the public treasury to bestow bounties on those who frequented the courts of justice, and lavished the contents of the treasury in order to support the games and amusements which beguiled the populace, and rendered them indifferent to his gradual acquirement of power, and the successive steps of his ambitious policy. In every adventurer who elevates himself to public pre-eminence there is a jealousy of influence and power which has any other source than himself; this jealousy Pericles felt for the senate of the Areopagus: it is said he had been refused admittance to their body, and that his determination to weaken their power was partly prompted by a desire to revenge himself upon them for their disrespect. However that may be, he succeeded in undermining their influence, in which the nobility placed their chief hope; and after this, there were few things of which he need despair. When Cimon returned to Athens, he was grieved to find the authority of the Areopagus little more than a shadow of what it had formerly been, and his own popularity considerably on the decline. Pericles undoubtedly obtained part of his influence by the delicate flattery wherewith his addresses were impregnated; whatever vanity, or even just pride in themselves, the Athenians before his time possessed, must have been wonderfully inflated by the pre-eminence which Pericles assigned to them over the other peoples of Greece. A curious instance of the effect aimed at by Pericles' administration occurred not very long after the return of Cimon. Sparta, the only worthy rival of Athens, was almost ruined by a fearful earthquake; and the rebellion of the Helots (who looked on this as a proper season to regain their liberty), seemed to promise to complete what the ravages of the earthquake had begun. In their extremity the Lacedæmonians sent to Athens for assistance; but the appeal was opposed by Ephialtes, the friend of Pericles, on the selfish ground that it was inadvisable for Athens to help her rival. Cimon, who had been before accused of a preference for the Spartans (in the Athenian judgment no mean charge), was generously offended by this illiberal policy. He urged the necessity of assistance, and succeeded in obtaining a considerable number of troops, with whom he marched to the help of the unfortunate Lacedæmonians. It is natural to suppose, in spite of Cimon's success, that Pericles, who made every other interest subordinate to that of Athens, would be the prime favourite of the people. In the Lacedæmonians to some Athenians under the command of Cimon, that distinguished man was banished; yet Pericles was some years after compelled, on account of the necessities of Athens, to recall his great rival. But the death of Cimon left the field to Pericles. In order, however, to prevent the assumption of monarchical authority, Thucydides, a connexion of Cimon, was opposed to the fortunate ruler. His object in obtaining power was doubtless the gratification of a temper disposed for authority; his ambition compassed the greatest heights, and was jealous of rivalry; but we may safely assert that he used his great authority to promote, what he considered to be, the interests of his country. During his rule, the chief of those lovely works which make Athens the classic city of architects and sculptors, were executed. It is true that he confiscated the money of all Greece, in order to defray the extravagant expenses involved in his splendid buildings; but such an offence was not calculated to awaken the lasting anger of the Athenians, who reaped the benefit of the injustice. One must be gratified to know, that there were citizens who declaimed against this use of money which the allies had subscribed for the purpose of supporting the charges of the war, and cannot but own that Pericles acted for Athens to the detriment of Greece. The way in which he extricated himself from the difficulty in which this opposition involved him is interesting, and proves how an appearance of generosity will shame people into toleration of a thing they have before condemned. Pericles, no doubt well guessing the end, offered one day to defray himself the charges of the public edifices, provided the inscriptions on such buildings should state at whose expense the city was adorned. The Athenians were thus made conscious that the chief object of Pericles was the splendour of their city, and unanimously cried that the treasury was quite at his service. So powerful was the effect of an artful appearance of generosity! But if the employment of the allies' money had before been unjust, no magnanimity on the part of Pericles could alter that fact; nor did the Athenians stay to remember that they thus assumed the right of disposing of funds which no more belonged to them exclusively than to Pericles, and the asserted misapplication of which had been the original ground of dispute. Pericles thus shifted the responsibility, and induced them to sanction the course they had formerly condemned. Many men aim at political power in order to aggrandize their families and increase their estates, but this was by no means the object of Pericles; his paternal inheritance, we are told, was prudently managed, under his direction, by a faithful slave, whom he had taught to manage his affairs in order to leave himself leisure for the public business; but he amassed no riches by his administration, and died not any richer for his public place. His wife and family were discontented with the great economy which ruled over his household; the former, we are told, was frequently upbraiding him because he would not assume the luxury and expense proper to a man who held such a distinguished place in the republic; but Pericles was immovable. His great moderation in living may have sprung from a real dislike to pomp and show, or from a desire to avoid provoking the jealousy of the Athenians; most probably the latter was the ruling motive, for that he loved magnificence, his public works seem abundantly to testify. That his domestic circumstances, with such a wife, were not happy, we can scarcely wonder; and if he separated from her, we cannot entirely blame him on that account. We must recollect that we are apt to judge the actions of Pericles by the Christian standard, a standard inconceivably higher than that of the heathen world. involving a possible improvement in the culture and condition of the feminine part of human nature; and women may feel that Socrates and Pericles, if not juster, were kinder, than the little authorities of modern times, and may well be emulated to a loftier idea of what their sex ought to be, and can be, by remembering that two of the greatest men of antiquity were not ashamed to learn of a woman. Bright and gifted as she undoubtedly was, it is not surprising that Aspasia attracted the love of Pericles, or that she succeeded to the place of his unreasonable and discarded wife. It may be that Pericles wished, when he first separated from his wife, to marry Aspasia; but we must recollect that the marriage law of Greece allowed no second marriage while children of the first wife survived; indeed, the Greek legislation in such regards was much severer than our own. Passing by this part of the question as one with which it is impossible for an unlearned woman at any rate to deal fairly, one cannot but love to imagine, though only dimly, what must have been the commune of such souls as Pericles, Socrates, and Aspasia. Pericles has been blamed, because, when Aspasia was accused of impiety, he defended her so eloquently, that he was himself affected to tears: but to us those tears are by no means the mark of an ignoble spirit. It was no common beauty he defended, but a richly cultivated woman, threatened with punishment for holding doctrines which he too believed, and which, perhaps, she had partly imbibed from his conver Aspasia, a native of Miletus, a woman celebrated for personal and mental accomplishments, rather than beauty, had established herself in Athens as a teacher of eloquence: she had the credit of contributing to form some of the finest of the Greek orators; Socrates was proud to be her pupil, and Pericles sought her instructions. Aspasia was accused of impiety towards the gods, and has been represented as a woman of worthless character. The charge of impiety was at that time brought against all who asserted the existence of one superior creative Mind; and Aspasia shared it with Socrates, Anaxagoras, and all whose superior enlightenment and dis-sations. cernment helped them to throw discredit on the doctrine of the plurality of gods. This accusation was no small thing for a woman to sustain in the days of Pericles; no doubt the orthodox Athenian matrons were filled with disgust for Aspasia, whose neglect of the worship due to the gods would provoke unpopularity. If the Athenian women also were much like their sex in these days, we may readily believe that there were some who were jealous of her superior talents; and from jealousy to scandal is a very short step, for such. There was, too, an appearance of truth, afforded by the fact that the house of Aspasia was frequented by the philosophers and wits of the age, rather than by persons of repute among her own sex, We do not intend by any means to advance that Aspasia did not deserve the charges brought against her, because we have no means of judging whether she was innocent or guilty; but we claim the allowance that some doubt hangs over the subject. She appears to us, if innocent, a lovely example of the generally unhappy fate of gifted women. She seems to have reached the highest point which female development in her age permitted, and it is a fair question how far we have herein outstripped the ancients. It is rather the fashion, in certain circles, to sneer at every idea * The example of De Fleury, who was similarly honest, may be here recalled. He must be a stoic indeed, who could show himself indifferent in such a cause. It was not the courtesan Aspasia-as historians are prone to call her-for whom Pericles wept; but a genius, a woman threatened with persecution. His connexion with her, of whatever nature it might be, was fruitful in trouble to him. It is even asserted that one of his wars was begun on account of an insult offered to her. She must, however, have been a woman of rare powers and temper, to have and hold ascendancy over such a man as Pericles. The old age of Pericles is mournful to contemplate. All his legitimate children died; the son Xanthippus, whose prodigal expenditure occasioned him so much vexation, included. How life-like these household pictures seem, that were drawn so long ago! The Areopagus is a faint vision; the eloquence of Pericles a dim tradition: but life-like and natural seem the grumblings of the orator's wife-her discontent at his small expenditure, her envy because her house, perhaps, is not so splendid as Aspasia's, her jealousy because Pericles spends so much of his time abroad. Did she believe that he went to Aspasia's only to study oratory? Was she sorry when the lovely stranger was arraigned for impiety towards the gods? We imagine not. Xanthippus, the son, is the very mould of a fast young Athenian; and his extravagant young wife must be true to the life. All these broad features of human nature are common to every broken by misfortune. That this steady principle was wholly within reach of any heathen we will not say; but there were some who made noble advances towards it, some whose lives so far generation; and one has only to change names and places to find the counterparts of Pericles' family in any age you please. Are there not many such families, O friendly Asmodeus, beneath the roofs of our great and glorious Lon-transcended the systems of morals current in don? Having lost his legitimate children, Pericles was forced to relax the stringent laws himself had made against spurious offspring; and thus secured a succession in favour of one of his natural children. The fearful plague, the war, and the death of the once brilliant ruler, complete a mournful picture. With all his talent, with even all his good qualities, Pericles has not entitled himself to the entire respect of succeeding ages. He was a genius indeed, but he corrupted his countrymen he patronized art, but he confounded right and wrong; and though he made it his boast, on his death-bed, that he had never put the citizens of Athens into mourning, he did not care to recollect that he had often caused them to benefit by, and to rejoice in, injustice. He seems to have wanted that steady principle which is the only anchor of man (putting out of the question the Christian faith, which, of course, was not in his power)-he seems to have wanted the principle which ennobles a man to live purely and rightly, neither dazzled by success nor their day, that we are almost ashamed to think what are our lives, remembering the superior light and information which all-bountiful Heaven has given these later ages. To judge Pericles and Aspasia aright, we should endeavour to imagine what, in our day, they would have been. Let us not be over severe in our consideration of the past, however careful to apply its every lesson; for a man shall be judged according to that which he hath, and not according to that which he hath not.* Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime; Sailing o'er life's solemn main, HOW ALICE HUNTINGFIELD WAS LOST AND WON. BY MRS. WHITE. "There is an old notion of fatality about marriages," said the major," which every country retains, and which would in many instances lead us to suppose that, if not made in heaven, they are sometimes overruled and brought about by circumstances quite out of the ken of human foresight. I think my own story as apposite as any other to illustrate these premises. In the summer of 18-, I returned on sick-leave from India, where the major part of the regiment in which I had a troop were stationed. I was about forty years of age, wealthy, and, though an invalid, by no means a bad specimen of a tall, well set-up, soldierly-looking captain of cavalry. My illness-the result of a wound got in real battle at the hands of a Sikh chiefgained me all sorts of attentions at home, and a thousand tendernesses from the fair Samaritans of my acquaintance, which otherwise would never have been bestowed upon me. More than one sweet widow, with Mrs. Wadman's eyes, looked as if she could have bathed it with her tears; but within three weeks after my arrival I was proof to every glance but the sweet, bright, trusting one of Alice Huntingfield. The pretty sea-side villages of Devon are the haunts of army and navy superannuants, who, partly for the salubrity, and also for cheap ness, look upon this county as one of the most favourable for eking out life and half-pay. For the first reason I resolved to winter (by the advice of my physician) at D—, in the vicinity of which one of my oldest friends and fellow-officers resided. Jack Huntingfield was the younger son of a good Kentish family, whom he had displeased by what is called in the world's parlance a misalliance-an union with a young woman possessing all the virtues that serve to make home amiable, but deficient in that which, since the encroachment of Mammon on the affections, is necessary to give a colouring to the transaction, and stamp it with the currency of prudence. She was poor-a circumstance that ever after kept her husband so; for his friends withdrew their interest in him, and left the married subaltern to shift for himself. There is a poverty ten thousand times worse than that which is engendered in attics and cellars, that leans on beggary as on a staff, and is not ashamed to make merchandise of its rags Should there be any of our readers unfamiliar with the beautiful classic romance of Mr. Walter Savage Landor, "Pericles and Aspasia," they are hereby requested to read it: they will thank us for the recommendation, we are sure. and wretchedness. There is a poverty where willing hands are idle, and necessity makes the shuttle silent and the loom stand still-where lack of work strikes down the strong-framed labourer into the attenuated recipient of parish relief, and strips him of every possession short of that which enables him to feel their loss-life. There is a still worse poverty, where the subject of it, trained by the soft hands of worldly prosperity, and nurtured so delicately that the rough passages of life go nigh to overwhelm him, struggles to bear up amidst every species of hidden privation, and looking the world in the face smilingly, carries off a prize for appearances! Such was the poverty which my poor friend had been suffering, from the date of his retirement to the present time. He had four daughters, all very lovely, and, thanks to their mother's accomplishments and talent, well educated. They possessed the advantage of residing near a watering-place, where many of their father's acquaintance were in the habit of spending a portion of the summer months, and proved quite a valuable acquisition at the houses of their richer neighbours, who invited them in order to benefit by the brilliancy of their playing, the sweetness of their songs, or the grace of their appearance-just as we army men are cajoled in country quarters for the sake of our coats, and made to give a fictitious glory to the stupid dinner-tables and insipid drawingrooms, where a neighbouring squire, plethoric and prejudiced, a mortified-looking curate, and a self-important parish doctor, constitute, with their families, the cream of the company. Yet these advantages, (as the poor half-pay subaltern conceived them,) flattered his vanity, and left his children a chance of settling in the sphere of life they naturally belonged to. It is astonishing what pitiful frauds genteel poverty plays off upon itself with ostrich blindness. How because it turns its back upon the world while accomplishing its frugal shifts, it fancies no one cognisant of them, and, rather than own their existence, flies to the thinnest subterfuges for concealment. Day after day I found the sisters busy as possible with embroidery, knitting, and crochet-not taken up to exhibit an elegant industry during the short period of a morning visit, for it was the same at whatever hour I called. I half wondered at the constancy of such expensive amusement, and the earnestness with which they engaged in it, till one day, while I was admiring a beautiful piece of needlework in Alice's frame, her father approached us. "That is for Lady Mayfield, is it not, my love?" he inquired, as the young girl's eyelids fell, and a deep blush discomposed her features. "We have no other means of returning kindnesses," he continued rapidly; so the girls are always making up little nicknacks for their lady friends." 66 "It is very good of them," I said, "who, in | accepting courtesies, confer a more than repaying amount of pleasure on their entertainers.' A quick upward glance to her father's face, with an humbled expression in the eye, though her lip expressed contempt-a look that convicted him of having expressed a falsehood-faded in confusion as mine were turned upon her; but without seeming to notice it, Huntingfield jestingly inquired of one of the other young ladies if she had completed the anti-macassars she intended for the bride's drawing-room, or how much longer she intended to confine herself to counting and Strutt's cotton? "These things so soon soil," said this sophisticated Arachne, looking up in her father's face with a comical look of intelligence, "that I think I must furnish her with a remove, in which case I cannot promise when I shall be done with them." 66 "Those were very handsome I saw you employed on last week," I ventured to observe. Pretty well," said the lady; they were Carey's invention. I am going to send them to a friend at Bath." "Go to Bath with you!" I was ready to exclaim, for I began to see my way amongst the work, and felt certain that these things were going to the repository at D-, as if I had seen them directed there. So, then, the subaltern and his elder daughter were ashamed of the very efforts made towards self-support; with them there was more credit in appearing profuse amidst poverty, than in converting their abilities to the noblest of purposes-independence. They wilfully deprived themselves of the only sweet drop in the cup of labour to finesse with appearances; and while toiling hard as the meanest seamstresses over these elegant trifles, ambitioned rather to be thought imprudent than necessitous, though all the neighbourhood knew their circumstances as well as themselves. There seemed-I know not why-a trust established between myself and Alice from that day. I had read her heart, and had found truth there, in contradistinction to the affected pretences encouraged by the rest of her family-her three sisters and father; for her mother, whose simple and transparent character she inherited with her beauty, was dead. Time passed on, and the more I saw of the sweet girl the stronger became the interestnay, why should I check the expression?-the love she awakened in me. There was a subdued self-dependence in her manner of thought and expression, that might have taught me she had learned to feel in the refining school of affection; but my own attachment, while it found food in the result, quite overlooked the cause; and the very ease that this inward possession gave her in my society, I construed into the flattering_notion, that with all my supernumerary years I was not disagreeable to her. Meanwhile my attentions were received by her family in a spirit that left me little to fear for the success of my suit; and after a little time I broached the matter to my old friend her father, and had the satisfaction to hear that nothing could be more in accordance with his wishes. All this time I had rested my security on generalities; I never heard of any suitor that the fair Alice had-never met any one in her society who, by the utmost stretch of probability, founded on appearances, could be regarded as an aspirant to her hand. She was rather reserved than otherwise in the company of younger men, while the warmth of her reception, and the pleasure she appeared to feel in conversing with me, completely lulled me with the belief of her regard; besides, according to the traditions of the mess-table, rank and wealth are powerful advocates in these transactions, and could not fail of favourably affecting a young lady who, with a taste for the refinements of life, daily laboured under the discomfort of foregoing them not that Alice Huntingfield was to be so biassed; but whenever I thought of the difference of our age, my conscience fell back upon this conventionally, received compensation with feelings of relief and complacency; and yet it was not in youth to offer her the sustained and pure affection I felt. By degrees I began to fancy an alteration in her manner, which, though always kind, exhibited a reserve as painful as it was new; and though for a time I flattered myself it was but a natural result at finding a friend converted into a lover, far from wearing out, it increased, till doubts began to fill me for the results of the hopes I had brooded. Her father, however, who had promised to sound my way with the young lady, assured me that, in common with the other members of her family, she felt much gratified by my offer; and I, who, the more I felt her deservings, became more diffident of my own, resolved not to hurry her inclinations, but to give her full time to understand her feelings and become acquainted with mine. Time wore away, but, alas! Alice's reserve did not; and a faint suspicion at length occurred to me that, in making her father my confidant, I had inadvertently bribed him to barter his daughter's happiness-a notion that determined me to observe for myself, and to be guided by the result in my conduct to her. Only a few mornings after this resolution was formed, being about to drive over to D, I thought I would call at Honeyden and see if I could be of any service to the young ladies there. As I drew near the windows of the sitting-room which opened on the lawn, I perceived that Alice was its only inmate, and, with the privilege of my position, I entered by one of them without any ceremony but a playful tap. To my surprise I found her in tears, and faltering out some confused apology, she was hastily leaving the room, when I prevented her; and leading her back to her seat with all the tenderness my own affection and the sight of her grief inspired, besought her to unbosom herself to me, and if she could permit me no other name than that of friend, she would for both our sakes grant me the privilege of one. In a moment her hands were in mine, and lifting her tear-wet eyes with a furtive look that sought to read my heart, and did so, she exclaimed: "Dear Captain Hilton, I feel that I may trust you, and that you will not be accessory to a worse deception than any our poverty has yet forced upon us. My father tells me that I have been unfortunate enough"-(yes, that was the phrase)" to awaken a sentiment in you to which it is impossible for me to respond. Respect, esteem, I feel for you, more than for any individual I know; but for love, I have it not to give; and I must indeed have made a false estimate of the delicacy and generosity of your character, if I could for a moment believe that you would accept from my father's selfishness what I am constrained to deny." 66 Say no more, my beloved Alice; dear Miss Huntingfield, say no more," I interrupted, for with every breathi she swept off some air-built hope, some delusive expectation, which I had indulged in. "I knew you better than to presume that the advantages I had to offer would have had any weight in winning you, but I did hope that the sincerity of my affection would have helped you to overlook the disparity in our years as if," I added sorrowfully, "eighteen could possibly feel sympathy with forty!" The tone, perhaps, in which I uttered these words might have expressed something of the regret (deeper than expression) which I felt; for Alice quickly rejoined, lifting her blue eyes frankly to mine, and with some emotion in her accents: "Dear friend, do you know I have never thought about your age at all-you are precisely one of those persons with whom years seem to have nothing to do-to me your heart seems not a day older than my own; and I have discovered so much freshness and goodness there, that if I were not-that is, if my affections were not another's-there is no man in whose hands I would so readily trust my happiness as in yours." "Oh, Alice, how can you tell me this, in the same breath with which you crush all hope?" "And would you," cried the dear girl, interrupting me, while she blushed (with indignation, I suspect) even deeper than before, though the confession she had just made had coloured her from her temples to her very throat with confusion-" could you respect, much more regard me, were I capable of sacrificing an old engagement, and-and- -" She could not well get through with it; so with a naïf archness, that went further than anything to place us both upon our old friendly footing, and prevent me, in the humour I was in, from making an egregious simpleton of myself, she exclaimed, "Would you have me, against all the rules of the service, leap from a lieutenant to a full majority?" for I forgot to say that the preceding day's mail had brought me news of my promotion. "It is so, is it? Then my rival is of my own profession." "As the daughter of a soldier," said Alice, with a little air of haughtiness that amazingly became her, "I have my predilections; though, as regards Henry Warren-you see I don't deal in half-confidences with you-profession would have been of slight consequence; we have been attached from our boy and girlhood, and I rather think he consulted my taste more than his own in making choice of that of a soldier." |