Generally we are little apt to exaggerate merit. In our maladies of the mind the cold fit usually is longer and more intense than the hot, and our dreams are rarely of water in the desert. We must have been among the departed before we experience this sensation. In our road through life, we may happen to meet with a man casting a stone reverentially to enlarge the cairn of another, which stone he had carried in his bosom to sling against that very other's head. Seriously, my Cleone, I am inclined to think that even in these dark days (as they are called) of literature we may occasionally catch a glimpse of poetry. We should be laughed at if we ventured to compare the living with the dead, who always are preferable, but there are choruses in Sophocles and Euripides as pathetical as those tender words of Sappho in her invocation to Hesperos: "Thou bringest the wine, thou bringest the kid, thou bringest the maiden to her mother." Certainly these words are very unsophistical, and they who have seen others weep at them, weep also. But pardon me, if looking attentively, you find no letter in the sentence obliterated by a tear of mine. Sometimes I fancy that the facility and pliancy of our language is the reason why many of the most applauded verses are written with more intenseness of feeling and less expenditure of thought. What is graceful must be easy; but many things are very easy which are not very graceful. There is a great deal even of Attic poetry in which a slight covering of wax is drawn over a bundle of the commonest tow and tatters: we must not bring it too near the lamp.. But it is something to abstain from an indulgence in grossness, prolixity, and exaggeration, which are never the signs of fertility, but frequently the reverse. This abstinence is truly Attic, but Attic not exclusively for Pindar has given manifold examples of it, and is heavy and tedious then only when he wipes away the foam off his bit with old stories and dry genealogies.

SPEECH OF PERICLES.

On the Defection of Eubœa and Megara. Euboea has rejected our authority and alliance, Megara our friendship. Under what pretext? That we have employed in the decoration of our city the sums of money they stipulated to contribute annually; a subsidy to resist the Persians. What! must we continue a war of extermination with Persia, when she no longer has the power to molest us? when peace has been sworn and proclaimed? Do we violate the compact with our confederates? No; men of Athens ! our flects are in harbour, every ship in good condition; our arsenals are well stored; and we are as prompt and as able now to repell aggression as we ever were.

Are our dues then to be withholden from us, because we have anticipated our engagements? because our navy and our army are in readiness before they are wanted? because, while our ungrateful allies were plotting our ruin, we were | watching over their interests and providing for their security? States, like private men, are subject to the distemper of ingratitude, erasing from their memory the impression of past benefits; but it appears to be peculiar to the Megarians to recompense them with hatred and animosity. Not only have we protected them from aggression, by building for them the very walls from which they now defy us; but, when Mardonius sent against them, at Mount Citharon, the whole force of the Median cavalry, under the command of Magestios, and when they called aloud to every near battalion of the Grecian army, and when Pausanias in vain repeated the exhortation, three hundred Atheni ans, led by Olympiodoros son of Lampon, threw themselves forward from Erythrai, and, after losing many brave comrades, rescued from imminent death the fathers of those degenerate men who are now in the vanguard of conspirators against us. Ingratitude may be left to the chastisement of the Gods, but the sword must consolidate broken treaties. No state can be respected if fragment after fragment may be detached from it with impunity; if traitors are permitted to delude and discompose the contented, and to seduce the ignorant from their allegiance; if loyalty is proclaimed a weakness, sedition a duty, conspiracy wisdom, and rebellion heroism. It is a crime then for us to embellish our city! it is a reproach to enlarge and fortify our harbours! In vain have we represented to the clamorous and refractory, that their annual contributions are partly due to us for past exertions, and partly the price of our protection, at this time, and in future; and not against Persia only, but against pirates. Our enemies have persuaded them that rebellion and war are better things; our enemies, who were lately theirs, and who by this perfidious instigation are about to become so more cruelly than ever. Are Athenians avaricious? are Athenians oppressive? Even the slaves in our city have easier access to the comforts and delights of life than the citizens of almost any other. Until of late the Megarians were proud

of our consanguinity, and refused to be called the descendants of Apollo, in hopes to be acknowledged as the children of Pandion. Although in later times they became the allies of Sparta, they can not but remember that we have always been their friends, often their deliverers; and it is only for their dishonesty and perfidy that we now are resolved at last to prohibit them from the advantages of our ports. Sparta and Corinth have instigated them; Corinth, whose pride and injustice have driven Corcyra, with her fleets, to seek deliverance in the Piraeus. What have we to fear from so strange a union as that of Corinth and Sparta? Are any two nations so unlike? so little formed for mutual succour or for mutual esteem? Hitherto we have shared both our wealth and our dangers with Euboea. At the conclusion of a successful war, at the signature of a most honourable and advantageous peace, we are derided and reproached. What is it they discover to despise in us? I will tell you what it is. It is the timid step of blind men: this they saw in us while they were tampering with Sparta. Not ashamed of their seduction, they now walk hand in hand, with open front, and call others to join in their infamy. They have renounced our amity, they have spurned our expostulations, they have torn our treaties, and they have defied our arms. At the peril of being called a bad citizen, I lament your blindness, O Megara and Euboea!

XCVI. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.

I find, among the few records in my hands, that Pericles went in person, and conquered the faithless Megara and the refractory Euboea. Before he sailed to attack the island, he warned the Athenians against an inconsiderate parsimony, which usually terminates in fruitless expenditure. He told them plainly that Euboea was capable of a protracted and obstinate resistance; and he admonished them that, whatever reverses the arms of Athens might experience, they should continue the war, and consider the dominion of the island a thing necessary to their existence as a nation; that whoever should devise or counsel the separation of Euboea from Athens, be declared guilty of treason, and punished with death.

occasion.

"If Thebes, in a future war," said he, "should take possession of this productive country, and shut up, as she easily might, the passage of the Euripus, she would gain an ascendancy over us, from which we never could recover. Losses, defeats, inadequate supplies, may tempt her; she would always have Sparta for an ally on such an Indeed, it is wonderful that the Boeotians, as brave a race of men as any in Greece, and stronger in body, should not have been her masters. Perhaps it is the fertility of her own territory that kept her content with her possessions, and indisposed the cultivators of so rich a soil from enterprise and hazard. Euboea is no less fertile than Boeotia, from which she is separated by the distance of a stone's throw.

Give me fifty galleys, and five thousand men, and Euboea shall fall ere Sparta can come to her assistance."

XCVII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.

Perpetual as have been the wars of Attica, she is overpeopled. A colony hoisted sail for the Chersonese; another to repeople the ruined walls of Sybaris. Happy the families whose fathers give them lands to cultivate, instead of keeping them in idleness at home; such are the founders of colonies. The language of this city is spoken in Italy, in Sicily, in Asia, in Africa, and even on the coast of Gaul, among the yelpings and yells of Kimbers and Sicambers.

Surely the more beneficent of the Gods must look down with delight on these fruit-trees planted in the forest. May the healthfullest dews of heaven descend on them!

We are now busied in the Propylæa; they, although unfinished, are truly magnificent. Which will remain the longest, the traces of the walls or of the colonies? Of the future we know nothing, of the past little, of the present less; the mirror is too close to our eyes, and our own breath dims it.

XCVIII. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.

I have only time to send you a few perfumes and a few verses. These I transcribe out of a little volume of Erinna: the perfumes came to me from Syria.

Blessed be the man whose beneficent providence gave the flowers another life! We seem to retain their love when their beauty has departed.

ERINNA TO LEUCONÖE.

If comfort is unwelcome, can I think
Reproof aught less will be?

The cup I bring to cool thee, wilt thou drink,
Fever'd Leuconoe?

Rather with Grief than Friendship wouldst thou dwell,
Because Love smiles no more!

Bent down by culling bitter herbs, to swell
A cauldron that boils o'er.

XCIX. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.

Thanks for the verses! I hope Leuconöe was as grateful as I am, and as sensible to their power of soothing.

Thanks too for the perfumes! Pericles is ashamed of acknowledging he is fond of them; but I am resolved to betray one secret of his: I have caught him several times trying them, as he called it.

How many things are there that people pretend to dislike, without any reason, as far as we know, for the dislike or the pretence!

I love sweet odours. Surely my Cleone herself must have breathed her very soul into these! Let me smell them again: let me inhale them into the sanctuary of my breast, lighted up by her love for their reception.

But, ah Cleone! what an importunate and exacting creature is Aspasia! Have you no willows fresh-peeled? none lying upon the bank for baskets, white, rounded, and delicate, as your fingers! How fragrant they were formerly! I have seen none lately. Do you remember the cross old Hermesionax? how he ran to beat us for breaking his twigs? and how, after looking in our faces, he seated himself down again, finished his basket, disbursed from a goat-skin a corroded clod of rancid cheese, put it in, pushed it to us, forced it under my arm, told us to carry it home with the Gods! and lifted up both hands and blest us.

I do not wish that one exactly; cheese is the cruellest of deaths to me; and Pericles abhors it. I am running over trifling occurrences which you must have forgotten. You are upon the spot, and have no occasion to recall to memory how the munificent old basket-maker looked after us, not seeing his dog at our heels; how we coaxed the lean, shaggy, suspicious animal; how many devices we contrived to throw down, or let slip, so that the good man might not observe it, the pestilence you insisted on carrying; how many names we called the dog by, ere we found the true one, Cyrus ; how, when we had drawn him behind the lentisk, we rewarded him for his assiduities, holding each an ear nevertheless, that he might not carry back the gift to his master; and how we laughed at our fears, when a single jerk of the head served at once to engulf the treasure and to disengage him.

I shall always love the smell of the peeled willow. Have you none for me? Is there no young poplar then, with a tear in his eye on bursting into bud? I am not speaking by metaphor and Asiatically. I want the poplars, the willows, the water-lilies, and the soft green herbage. How we enjoyed it on the Mæander! what liberties we took with it! robbing it of the flowers it had educated, of those it was rearing, of those that came confidently out to meet us, and of those that hid themselves. None escaped us. For these remembrances, green is the colour I love best. It brings me to the Fortunate Island and my Cleone; it brings me back to Childhood, the proud little nurse of Youth, brighter of eye and lighter of heart than Youth herself.

These are not regrets, Cleone; they are respirations, necessary to existence. You may call them half-wishes if you will. We are poor indeed when we have no half-wishes left us. The heart and the imagination close the shutters the instant they are gone.

Do not chide me then for coming to you after the blossoms and buds and herbage: do not keep to yourself all the grass on the Mæander. We used to share it; we will now. I love it whereever I can get a glimpse of it. It is the home of the eyes, ever ready to receive them, and spreading its cool couch for their repose.

C. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.

Demophile, poor honest faithful creature! has yielded to her infirmities. I have spent almost as many hours with her in these last autumnal months, as I did in the earliest of my existence. She could not carry me in her arms again, but she was happy when mine were about her neck, and said they made her stronger. Do you remember how often she dropt my hand to take yours, because you never cried? saying,

"People never weep nor work, themselves, who can make others weep and work for them. That little one will have weeper and worker too about her presently. Look at her, Cleone! Can not you look like that? Have not you two lips and two eyes? Aspasia has not three. Try now! Mind how I do it!"

Good simple heart!

When she was near her end, she said to me, "Do you ever go and read those names and bits of verses on the stones yonder? You and Aspasia used formerly. Some of them tell us to be sad and sorry for folks who died a hundred years ago; others to imitate men and women we never should have had a chance of seeing, had they been living yet. All we can learn from them is this, that our city never had any bad people in it, but has been filled with weeping and wailing from its foundation upward."

:

These things puzzled Demophile she was somewhat vext that she could not well comprehend them, but praised the Gods that our house was safe, when many others must have been rent asunder: such a power of lamentation !

"My name," said she, "I believe, is a difficult and troublesome one to pinfold in a tombstone: nobody has ever tried how it would sound in verse: but if you and Aspasia think me worth remembering, I am sure you could do more with it than others could; and you would lead your little ones, when the Gods have given you any, to come and see it, and tell them many things of old Demophile."

I assured her that, if I outlived her, I would prove, in the manner she wished, that my memory and love outlived her likewise.

She died two days afterward.

Nothing is difficult, not even an epitaph, if we prefer the thoughts that come without calling, and receive the first as the best and truest. I would not close my eyes to sleep until I had performed my promise.

Demophile rests here: we will not say
That she was aged, lest ye turn away;
Nor that she long had suffered early woes
Alone can touch you; go, and pity those!

CI. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.

Ah poor Demophile! she remembered me then! How sorry I am I can not tell her I remember her!

Cleone! there are little things that leave no

little regrets. I might have said kind words, and perhaps have done kind actions, to many who now are beyond the reach of them. One look on the unfortunate might have given a day's happiness; one sigh over the pillow of sickness might have insured a night's repose; one whisper might have driven from their victim the furies of despair.

We think too much upon what the Gods have given us, and too little why.

We both are young; and yet we have seen several who loved us pass away; and we never can live over again as we lived before. A portion of our lives is consumed by the torch we follow at their funerals. We enter into another state of existence, resembling indeed and partaking of the former, but another! it contains the substance of the same sorrows, the shadow of the same joys. Alas! how true are the words of the old poet.

We lose a life in every friend we lose,
And every death is painful but the last.

I often think of my beautiful nurse, Myrtale, now married very happily in Clazomenai. My first verses were upon her. These are the verses I thought so good, that I wrote a long dissertation on the trochaic metre, to prove it the most magnificent of metres; and I mentioned in it all the poets that ever wrote, from epigrammatic to epic, praising some and censuring others, a judge without appeal upon all.

How you laughed at me! Do you remember the lines? I wonder they are not worse than they are.

Myrtale! may heaven reward thee

For thy tenderness and care!
Dressing me in all thy virtues,
Docile, duteous, gentle, fair.

One alone thou never heededst,

I can boast that one alone;
Grateful beats the heart thy nurseling,
Myrtale! 'tis all thy own.

CII. PERICLES TO ASPASIA.

Receive old Lycoris, and treat her affably. She has much influence in her tribe. The elderly of your sex possess no small authority in our city, and I suspect that in others too they have their

sway. She made me tremble once. Philotas asked her how she liked my speech, I forget upon what occasion: she answered,

"His words are current words, and ring well; but unless he gives us more of them for the trouble of our attendance, he shall not be archon,

I

promise him."

CIII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.

It is difficult and unsafe to pick up a pearl dropped by Alcman. Usually it is moist with the salt of its habitation; and something not quite cleanly may be found adhering to it. Here however is one which even my chaste Cleone may look down on with complacency.

"So pure my love is, I could light
The torch on Aglae's wedding-night,
Nor bend its flame with sighs,
See, from beneath, her chamber-door
Unclose, and bridemaids trip before,
With undejected eyes."

Cupid stood near and heard this said,
And full of malice shook his head,
Then cried "I'll trust him when he swears
He can not mount the first three stairs;
Even then I'll take one look below

And see with my own eyes 'tis so."

And even Mimnermus, who bears but an indifferent character with the chaste, is irreproachwritten in the decline of life. able in those verses, which he appears to have

Love ran with me, then walk'd, then sate,
Then said "Come, come! it grows too late:'
And then he would have gone.. but..no..
You caught his eye; he could not go.

CIV. PERICLES TO ASPASIA.

Send me a note whenever you are idle and thinking of me, dear Aspasia! Send it always by some old slave, ill-dressed. The people will think it a petition, or something as good, and they will be sure to observe the pleasure it throws into my countenance. Two winds at once will blow into my sails, each helping me onward.

If I am tired, your letter will refresh me; if occupied, it will give me activity. Beside, what a deal of time we lose in business!

CV. ASPASIA TO PERICLES.

Would to heaven, O Pericles! you had no business at all, but the conversation of your friends. You must always be the greatest man in the city, whoever may be the most popular. I wish we could spend the whole day together; must it never be? Are you not already in possession of all you ever contended for?

It is time, methinks, that you should leave off speaking in public, for you begin to be negligent and incorrect. I am to write you a note whenever I am idle and thinking of you!

Pericles! Pericles! how far is it from idleness We come to rest before we

come to idleness.

CVI. PERICLES TO ASPASIA.

In our republic it is no easy thing to obtain an

Now, oysters are quite out of season in the summer of life; and life, just about this time, I do assure you, is often worth keeping. I thought so even before I knew you, when I thought but little about the matter. It is a casket not precious in itself, but valuable in proportion to what Fortune, or Industry, or Virtue, has placed within it.

CVII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.

When Pericles is too grave and silent, I usually take up my harp and sing to it; for music is often acceptable to the car when it would avoid or repose from discourse. He tells me that it not only excites the imagination, but invigorates eloquence and refreshes memory: that playing on my harp to him is like besprinkling a tessellated pavement with odoriferous water, which brings out the images, cools the apartment, and gratifies the senses by its fragrance.

I will not send a stranger to you, Cleone! I will send the fugitive of Miletus when Epimedea was giving her the lecture in the bath. Be quiet now; say nothing; even the bath itself is quite imaginary.

Panenos plays upon the harp. I praised him for the simplicity and melody of the tune, and for his execution. He was but little pleased.

"Lady" said he to me "a painter can be two things; he can be painter and statuary, which is much the easier: make him a third, and you reduce him to nothing."

I

"Yet Pericles," said I, "plays rather well.” "Rather well, I can believe," said he, "because

know that his master was Damon, who was very skilful and very diligent. Damon, like every clever composer I have met with, or indeed ever heard of, was a child in levity and dissipation. His life was half feast, half concert."

"But, Panenos," said I, "surely we may be fond of music, and yet stand a little on this side of idiocy."

Come sprinkle me soft music o'er the breast,
Bring me the varied colours into light

That now obscurely on its tablet rest,

Show me its flowers and figures fresh and bright. Waked at thy voice and touch, again the chords Restore what restless years had moved away, Restore the glowing cheeks, the tender words,

Youth's short-lived spring and Pleasure's summer-day.

I believe he composed these verses while I was playing, although he disowns them, asking me whether I am willing to imagine that my execution is become so powerless.

You remember my old song: it was this I had been playing:

The reeds were green the other day,
Among the reeds we loved to play,

We loved to play while they were green.
The reeds are hard and yellow now,
No more their tufted heads they bow
To beckon us behind the scene.
"What is it like?" my mother said,
And laid her hand upon my head;

"Mother! I can not tell indeed.
I've thought of all hard things I know,
I've thought of all the yellow too;
It only can be like the reed."

CVIII. ASFASIA TO CLEONE.

Panenos is our best painter: he was educated by Pheidias, who excels all the painters in correctness of design. Panenos has travelled into Egypt, in which country, he tells us, the colours are as fresh upon the walls of the temples as when they were painted, two thousand years ago. Pericles wishes to have a representation of me in the beginning of every Olympiad. Alas! what

than a nightingale's, and his heart than a lizard's. Record me one memorable saying, one witticism, one just remark, of any great musician, and I consent to undergo the punishment of Marsyas. Some among them are innocent and worthy men; not many, nor the first. Dissipation, and, what is strange, selfishness, and disregard to punctuality in engagements, are common and nearly general in the more distinguished of them.

"O Music! how it grieves me, that imprudence, intemperance, gluttony, should open their chan- ! nels into thy sacred stream!"

Panenos said this: let us never believe a word of it. He himself plays admirably, although no composer.

CIX. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.

O Aspasia have you heard (you surely must) that the people of Samos have declared war against us? It is hardly sixty years since our beautiful city was captured and destroyed by the Persians. In vain hath she risen from her ashes with fresh splendour! Another Phrynicus will have perhaps to write another tragedy upon us.

Is it an offence to be flourishing and happy! The unfortunate meet and embrace: the fortunate meet and tear each other to pieces. What wonder that the righteous Gods allow to pros perity so brief a space!

CX. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.

Pericles to the Athenians.
Be composed and tranquil: read the speech of

SPEECH OF PERICLES.

The Milesians, it appears, have sent embas