most smartly written. In all societies the most eminent persons are the surest marks for scandal, and nothing gives wider pleasure. If we do not always believe scandalous stories about such persons, they amuse us, and we remember and repeat them. Let them be cleverly set down, and in a generation or two, when refutation is no longer possible, they will pass into admitted facts. "Calumny," says Sir Arthur Helps, "can make a cloud appear a mountain; nay, give it time, it can make a cloud become a mountain." The historian, when he comes to deal with these materials, thinks that he shows his impartiality by reporting evil as well as good. If he desires to be thought wise, he will incline rather to believe the evil than to disbelieve it, and the verdict is left to the opinion of the average public, which in these matters forms its opinions for itself. In Art and Science the public accepts the judgment of the specialist. It is conscious of its own inability, and allows itself to be guided. Every man is taught to suppose that he is a competent judge of political action; and as the majority of men are commonplace, their interpretations of character are naturally commonplace also. They explain conduct by motives with which they are themselves familiar. When they are told that Cromwell was an ambitious hypocrite, they think it so likely that they do not care to look further; nay, as in some ages the disposition is to an extravagant worship of great men, so there is in others a disposition to disbelieve in their existence; a visible desire to deny superiority in any man, and to drag saint and hero down to the common level.

These tendencies are plainly traceable in most modern historic judgments. We believe what we consider likely to be true, rather than weigh the evidence by which it is proved to be true; and our biographical conceptions of the distinguished figures in past ages are still mythical. There is a mythology of excessive admiration; there is a mythology of studied depreciation; and both alike are fatal to a sound judgment. Of the first we are in little danger at present; as to the other, which is the worst of the two, a few words of warning will not be out of place.

To the student who would understand the history of the men and women whose portraits are here laid before him, I recommend the following considerations :

Exceptional eminence in public life is generally found in abnormal times, when the constitution of society is changing; when an old order of things is passing off, and a new order is coming in. Therefore no one is in a position to form a judgment on the conduct of men in such times who does not completely understand their position, and the element in which they had to work.

Men have accomplished great things in this world when they have represented the strongest and best contemporary interests and tendencies; their contemporaries have said to them: Certain things must be done; you see most clearly how they should be done; do you do them, and we

will honour you and stand by you. Confidence of this kind is not usually given to personally ambitious men, or to men abandoned to vicious pleasure. Their strength is in the cause of which they are champions; so far as they have selfish objects they are weak.

Greatness is observed to be simultaneous in all departments of human achievement. The age of great statesmen is the age of great artists and thinkers something has stirred the highest qualities into activity, and the spiritual level is universally elevated. The Prince, or chief, who under these conditions is especially honoured and admired, has the verdict in his favour of exceptionally good judges. We ought to bear this in mind when we are forming an opinion for ourselves.

Let us remember that libellous anecdotes are not necessarily true, because we read them in books a hundred or a thousand years old, and because they have been repeated ever since. The strength of the chain is only as great as the strength of its first link. A generous mind is clearer sighted than a mind prone to receive the worst interpretation; and, as Goethe says, "The way to insight is through good-will."

J. A. FROUDe.

PERICLES, one of the noblest heroes of Greek antiquity, was orator, statesman, warrior, and administrator. He came of a renowned family, his mother being a niece of Clisthenes, a foe to tyranny and founder of the Athenian constitution. In his youth he had for instructors some of the most noted philosophers, among whom was Anaxagoras, whom the people called "Nous," or "Intelligence," chief of the Ionian school, "the first who professed philosophy at Athens." It was this master who gave him that force and sublimity of sentiment, and that admirable dignity of manner, for which he was afterwards distinguished.

Extraordinary events occurred in Greece during the boyhood of Pericles. As he was growing up, Athens was increasing in power, and his early military service enabled him to share in some of her glorious enterprises.

At this time Cimon was at the head of the aristocratic party in Athens. Pericles, though belonging to a family of this class, declared himself of the opposite party, the people, and rapidly acquired an influence which, as it grew, seemed little short of fascination. He became the popular idol. He was distinguished for his oratory, but it was not this which rendered him the arbiter of Athens. It was by his universal genius, his disinterestedness, the simplicity of his life, his courage, and military talents, his unalterable probity and his administrative abilities, his intelligence of affairs and capacity as a statesman, together with his fidelity and devotion to the democratic party. The influence which he obtained was not a passing favour; for forty years he maintained his position, destroyed in a great measure the aristocratic authority of the Areopagus, in taking away many of its prerogatives, notably the inspection of the treasury, which he transferred into the hands of the people, together with much of the judicial power. Another victory which he gained over the aristocracy was in the banishment of their leader Cimon (460). But later on, when his presence seemed necessary to the interest of the republic, Pericles had the magnanimity to exert his influence for his recall.

After the death of Cimon and the banishment of Thucydides, son of Melesias, who had undertaken to lead the aristocratic party, Pericles found himself without a rival in the field (444). He dispersed the oligarchic faction, established unity and peace in Athens, and, under the modest title of strategos, exercised an almost absolute dictatorship, disposing of the public revenues, and directing the movements of the army and the fleet. But all this time the republican forms of government were preserved; it was always the people who in public assemblies decided all the affairs.

Among some of his public acts must be cited the distribution of conquered lands among the poorer citizens, the establishment of colonies in Thrace, Naxos, &c., the building of the long walls which joined Athens to the Piræus and to Phalerius, the development of the Athenian navy, the immense public works undertaken to give occupation to the unemployed, the increase of the national defensive army, and the consolidation and extension of the power of Athens.

Pericles further added to his glory by his protection of letters, arts, and philosophy, and by the construction of those admirable monuments of which our age can admire the débris, and which made Athens the most beautiful city of Greece, and consequently of the world. The Parthenon, the Odeon, the Propylæa, the temple at Eleusis, those chefs d'oeuvres of human genius, gloriously justify the name of The Age of Pericles, given. to this epoch. His idea was that, while Athens should be always prepared for war, she must also contain everything within herself to make the citizens satisfied with peace.

"The Athenians in their government had constantly in view," says

M. Burnouf, "to make their State a work of art. Without comprehending this, it is impossible to see how a man like Pericles could govern the republic during forty years when he held, not the power of Archon, which was the first in the State, but only that of general, which was second. But Pericles was the incarnation of the genius of the Athenian people. In the opening paragraphs of his celebrated funeral oration, preserved by Thucydides, we see how he understood their needs and their ideals. In handling public affairs he essayed to model the State as a work of art, full of life, of thought and liberty. Pericles may be characterized as the political artist of the Athenians. As the work to which he devoted himself demanded independence of thought and speech, without which action is impossible in a democratic State, so he respected in others what he demanded for himself. He was the most powerful man of his time, because he was the most liberal."

In his military expeditions he always joined to the valour which executes, the foresight which prepares, and the genius which conceives. The Chersonesus and Thrace, conquered and colonized, the democracy reestablished in Sinope, and in all the Greek colonies of Pont Euxine, the aristocracy humbled in the islands of Eubeus and Samos, where the popular government was established, the domains of the republic extended by his victories, are sufficient testimony to the military capacities of a genius diverse and without an equal. Yet towards the end of his career his credit suffered from the envious, who, not daring to attack him openly, sought to wound him by accusations against his friends Phidias and Anaxagoras. After the discouraging events of the Peloponnesian war, and a frightful plague, there were not wanting, finally, murmurs and threatenings against Pericles himself, and he was excluded from the government; but when the Athenians found themselves so badly served by his successors, they re-elected him, but too late for their good, for he fell a victim to the plague before he had had time to accomplish anything to add further to his own glory or his country's greatness.

"Pericles," says Thirlwall, "to describe his policy in a few words, had two objects mainly in view throughout his public life-to extend and strengthen the Athenian empire, and to raise the confidence and selfesteem of the Athenians themselves to a level with the lofty position which they occupied. Almost all his measures may be clearly referred to one or other of these ends."

A few paragraphs from Plutarch will seem to throw light upon the person and character of this greatest of Athenian statesmen.

"Pericles acquired not only an elevation of sentiment and a loftiness and purity of style, far removed from the low expression of the vulgar, but likewise a gravity of countenance which relaxed not into laughter, a firm and even tone of voice, an easy deportment and a decency of dress, which no vehemence of speaking ever put into disorder. These things,