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erected, not to display the victor, but to expose the vanquished. A blunder very easy for an idle traveller to commit. Few of the Thracians, I conceive, even in the interior, are so utterly ignorant of Grecian arts, as to raise a statue at such a highth above the ground that the vision shall not comprehend all the features easily, and the spectator see and contemplate the object of his admiration, as nearly and in the same position as he was used to do in the Agora.

The monument of the greatest man should be only a bust and a name. If the name alone is insufficient to illustrate the bust, let them both perish. Enough about Thracians; enough about tombs and monuments. Two pretty Milesians, Agapentha and Peristera, who are in love with you for loving me, are quite resolved to kiss your hand. You must not detain them long with you: Miletus is not to send all her beauty to be kept at Athens: we have no such treaty.

LVI. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.

There is such a concourse of philosophers, all anxious to show Alcibiades the road to Virtue, that I am afraid they will completely block it up before him. Among the rest is my old friend Socrates, who seems resolved to transfer to him all the philosophy he designed for me, with very little of that which I presented to him in return.

And Alcibiades, who began with ridiculing him, now attends to him with as much fondness as Hyacinthus did to Apollo. The graver and uglier philosophers, however they differ on other points, agree in these; that beauty does not reside in the body, but in the mind; that philosophers are the only true heroes; and that heroes alone are entitled to the privilege of being implicitly obeyed by the beautiful.

Doubtless there may be very fine pearls in very uninviting shells; but our philosophers never wade knee-deep into the beds, attracted rather to what is bright externally.

LVII. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.

Alcibiades ought not to have captious or inquisitive men about him. I know not what the sophists are good for; I only know they are the very worst instructors. Logic, however unperverted, is not for boys; argumentation is among the most dangerous of early practices, and sends sway both fancy and modesty. The young mind should be nourished with simple and grateful food, and not too copious. It should be little exercised until its nerves and muscles show themselves, and even then rather for air than anything else. Study is the bane of boyhood, the aliment of youth, the indulgence of manhood, and the restorative of age. I am confident that persons like you and Pericles see little of these sharpers who play tricks upon words. It is amusing to observe how they do it, once or twice. As there are some flowers which you should smell but slightly to extract all

that is pleasant in them, and which, if you do otherwise, emit what is unpleasant or noxious, so there are some men with whom a slight acquaintance is quite sufficient to draw out all that is agreeable; a more intimate one would be unsatisfactory and unsafe.

LVIII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.

Pericles rarely says he likes anything; but whenever he is pleased, he expresses it by his countenance, although when he is displeased he never shows it, even by the faintest sign. It was long before I ventured to make the observation to him: he replied,

"It would be ungrateful and ungentle not to return my thanks for any pleasure imparted to me, when a smile has the power of conveying them. I never say that a thing pleases me while it is yet undone or absent, lest I should give somebody the trouble of performing or producing it. As for what is displeasing, I really am insensible in general to matters of this nature; and when I am not so, I experience more of satisfaction in subduing my feeling than I ever felt of displeasure at the occurrence which excited it. Politeness is in itself a power, and takes away the weight and galling from every other we may exercise. I foresee," he added, "that Alcibiades will be an elegant man, but I apprehend he will never be a polite one. There is a difference, and a greater than we are apt to perceive or imagine. Alcibiades would win without conciliating: he would seize and hold, but would not acquire. The man who is determined to keep others fast and firm, must have one end of the bond about his own breast, sleeping and waking."

LIX. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.

Agapenthe and Peristera, the bearers of your letter, came hither in safety and health, late as the season is for navigation. They complain of our cold climate in Athens, and shudder at the sight of snow upon the mountains in the horizon.

Hardly had they been seen with me, before the housewives and sages were indignant at their effrontery. In fact, they gazed in wonder at the ugliness of our sex in Attica, and at the gravity of philosophers, of whom stories so ludicrous are related. I do not think I shall be able to find them lovers here. Peristera hath lost a little of her dove-like faculty (if ever she had much) at the report which has been raised about her cousin and herself. Dracontides was smitten at first sight by Agapenthe; she however was not at all by him, which is usually the case when young men would warm us at their fire before ours is kindled. For, honestly to confess the truth, the best of us are more capricious than sensitive, and more sensitive than grateful. Dracontides is not indeed a man to excite so delightful a feeling. He is confident that Peristera must be the cause of Agapenthe's disinclination to him; for how is

it possible that a young girl of unperverted mind could be indifferent to Dracontides? Unable to discover that any sorceress was employed against him, he turned his anger toward Peristera, and declared in her presence that her malignity alone could influence so abusively the generous mind of Agapenthe. At my request the playful girl consented to receive him. Seated upon an amphora in the aviary, she was stroking the neck of a noble peacock, while the bird pecked at the berries on a branch of arbutus in her bosom. Dracontides entered, conducted by Peristera, who desired her cousin to declare at once whether it was by any malignity of hers that he had hitherto failed to conciliate her regard.

"O the ill-tempered frightful man!" cried Agapenthe; "does anybody that is not malicious ever talk of malignity?"

Dracontides went away, calling upon the Gods for justice.

The next morning a rumour ran through Athens, how he had broken off his intended nuptials, on the discovery that Aspasia had destined the two Ionians to the pleasures of Pericles. Moreover, he had discovered that one of them, he would not say which, had certainly threads of several colours in her threadcase, not to mention a lock of hair, whether of a dead man, or no, might by some be doubted; and that the other was about to be consigned to Pyrilampes, in exchange for a peacock and sundry smaller birds.

No question could be entertained of the fact, for the girls were actually in the house, and the birds in the aviary.

Agapenthe declares she waits only for the spring, and will then leave Athens for her dear Miletus, where she never heard such an expression as malignity.

O may you prove, as well as we,
That even in Athens there may be
A sweeter thing than liberty.

"This is surely the hand-writing of Mnasylos," said Agapenthe.

"How do you know his hand-writing?" cried Peristera.

A blush and a kiss, and one gentle push, were the answer.

Mnasylos, on hearing the sound of footsteps, had retreated behind a thicket of laurustine and pyracanthus, in which the aviary is situated, fearful of bringing the gardener into reproof for admitting him. However, his passion was uncontrollable; and Peristera declares, although Agapenthe denies it, that he caught a kiss upon each of his cheeks by the interruption. Certain it is, for they agree in it, that he threw his arms around them both as they were embracing, and implored them to conceal the fault of poor old Alcon, "who showed me," said he, "more pity than Agapenthe will ever show me."

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Why did you bring these birds hither?" said she, trying to frown.

"Because you asked," replied he, "the other day, whether we had any in Attica, and told me you had many at home."

She turned away abruptly, and, running up to my chamber, would have informed me why. Superfluous confidence! Her tears wetted my cheek.

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Agapenthe!" said I, smiling, "are you sure you have cried for the last time, 'O what rude people the Athenians are!'"

LXI. ASPASIA TO PERICLES.

I apprehend, O Pericles, not only that I may become an object of jealousy and hatred to the "O what rude people the Athenians are!" Athenians, by the notice you have taken of me,

said she.

LX. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.

Rather than open my letter again, I write another. Agapenthe's heart is won by Mnasylos: I never suspected it.

On his return out of Thessaly (whither I fancy he went on purpose) he brought a cage of nightingales. There are few of them in Attica; and none being kept tame, none remain with us through the winter. Of the four brought by Mnasylos, one sings even in this season of the year. Agapenthe and Peristera were awakened in the morning by the song of a bird like a nightingale in the aviary. They went down together; and over the door they found these verses :

Maiden or youth, who standest here,
Think not, if haply we should fear
A stranger's voice or stranger's face,
(Such is the nature of our race)
That we would gladly fly again
To gloomy wood or windy plain.
Certain we are we ne'er should find
A care so provident, so kind,
Altho' by flight we repossest
The tenderest mother's warmest nest.

but that you yourself, which affects me greatly more, may cease to retain the whole of their respect and veneration.

Whether, to acquire a great authority over the people, some things are not necessary to be done on which Virtue and Wisdom are at variance, it becomes not me to argue or consider; but let me suggest the inquiry to you, whether he who is desirous of supremacy should devote the larger portion of his time to one person.

Three affections of the soul predominate; Love,

Religion, and Power. The first two are often

united; the other stands widely apart from them, and neither is admitted nor seeks admittance to their society. I wonder then how you can love so truly and tenderly. Ought I not rather to say I did wonder? Was Pisistratus affectionate? Do not be angry. It is certainly the first time a friend has ever ventured to discover a resemblance, although you are habituated to it from your opponents. In these you forgive it; do you in me!

LXII. PERICLES TO ASPASIA.

Pisistratus was affectionate the rest of his

character you know as well as I do. You know course would in some degree lead us to countethat he was eloquent, that he was humane, that he was contemplative, that he was learned; that he not only was profuse to men of genius, but cordial, and that it was only with such men he was familiar and intimate. You know that he was the greatest, the wisest, the most virtuous, excepting Solon and Lycurgus, that ever ruled any portion of the human race. Is it not happy and glorious for mortals, when, instead of being led by the ears under the clumsy and violent hand of vulgar and clamorous adventurers, a Fisistratus leaves the volumes of Homer and the conversation of Solon, for them?

nance the suspicion of your enemies. Religion is never too little for us; it satisfies all the desires of the soul. Love is but an atom of it, consuming and consumed by the stubble on which it falls. But when it rests upon the Gods, it partakes of their nature, in its essence pure and eternal. Like the ocean, Love embraces the earth; and by Love, as by the ocean, whatever is sordid and unsound is borne away.'

We may be introduced to Power by Humanity, and at first may love her less for her own sake than for Humanity's, but by degrees we become accustomed to her as to be quite uneasy without

ber.

Religion and Power, like the Cariatides in sculpture, never face one another; they sometimes look the same way, but oftener stand back to back.

We will argue about them one at a time, and about the other in the triad too: let me have the choice.

LXIII. ASPASIA TO PERICLES.

6

"Love indeed works great marvels,' said Anaxagoras, but I doubt whether the ocean, in such removals, may not peradventure be the more active of the two.'

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Acknowledge at least,' said I, 'that the flame of Love purifies the temple it burns in.' "Only when first lighted,' said Anaxagoras. Generally the heat is either spent or stifling soon afterward; and the torch, when it is extinguished, leaves an odour very different from myrrh and frankincense.'

"I think, Aspasia, you entered while he was speaking these words."

He had turned the stream. proceeded.

Pericles then

"Something of power," said he," hath been consigned to me by the favour and indulgence of the Athenians. I do not dissemble that I was

We must talk over again the subject of your anxious to obtain it; I do not dissemble that my letter; no, not talk, but write about it.

I think, Pericles, you who are so sincere with me, are never quite sincere with others. You have contracted this bad habitude from your custom of addressing the people. But among friends and philosophers, would it not be better to speak exactly as we think, whether ingeniously or not? Ingenious things, I am afraid, are never perfectly true: however, I would not exclude them, the difference being wide between perfect truth and violated truth; I would not even leave them in a minority; I would hear and say as many as may be, letting them pass current for what they are worth. Anaxagoras rightly remarked that Love always makes us better, Religion sometimes, Power never.

LXIV. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.

Pericles was delighted with your letter on education. I wish he were as pious as you are; occasionally he appears so. I attacked him on his imulation, but it produced a sudden and powerful effect on Alcibiades. You will collect the whole from a summary of our conversation.

"So true," said he, "is the remark of Anaxagoras, that it was worth my while to controvert it. Did you not observe the attention paid to it by young and old? I was unwilling that the graver part of the company should argue toLorrow with Alcibiades on the nature of love, as they are apt to do, and should persuade him that he would be the better for it.

"On this consideration I said, while you were empied, 'O Anaxagoras! if we of this household knew not how religious a man you are, your dis

vows and supplications for the prosperity of the country were unremitted. It pleased the Gods to turn toward me the eyes of my fellow-citizens, but had they not blessed me with religion they never would have blessed me with power, better and more truly called an influence on their hearts and their reason, a high and secure place in the acropolis of their affections. Yes, Anaxagoras! yes, Meton! I do say, had they not blessed me with it; for, in order to obtain it, I was obliged to place a daily and a nightly watch over my thoughts and actions. In proportion as authority was consigned to me, I found it both expedient and easy to grow better, time not being left me for sedentary occupations or frivolous pursuits, and every desire being drawn on and absorbed in that mighty and interminable, that rushing, renovating, and purifying one, which comprehends our country. If any young man would win to himself the hearts of the wise and brave, and is ambitious of being the guide and leader of them, let him be assured that his virtue will give him power, and power will consolidate and maintain his virtue. Let him never then squander away the inestimable hours of youth in tangled and trifling disquisitions, with such as perhaps have an interest in perverting or unsettling his opinions, and who speculate into his sleeping thoughts and dandle his nascent passions. But let him start from them with alacrity, and walk forth with firmness; let him early take an interest in the business and concerns of men; and let him, as he goes along, look steadfastly at the images of those who have benefited his country, and make with himself a solemn compact to stand hereafter among them."

Pericles told me they will not pour out the rose-water for their beards, unless into a Corinthian or golden vase.

I had heard the greater part of this already, all | to mathematics and strategy, and seldom comes but the commencement. At the conclusion Al- among them cibiades left the room; I feared he was conscious that something in it was too closely applicable to him. How I rejoiced when I saw him enter again, with a helmet like Pallas's on his head, a spear in his hand, crying, "To Sparta, boys! to Sparta!"

Pericles whispered to me, but in a voice audible to those who sate farther off, “Alcibiades, I trust, is destined to abolish the influence and subvert the power of that restless and troublesome rival."

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Acquit me now of any desire that, in your generosity, you should resolve on presenting me with such a treasure, for I am without the ability of returning it. But have you never observed how many graces of person and demeanour we women are anxious to display, in order to humble a rival, which we were unconscious of possessing until opposite charms provoked them?

Sparta can only be humbled by the prosperity and liberality of Athens. She was ever jealous and selfish; Athens has been too often so. It is only by forbearance toward dependent states, and by kindness toward the weaker, that her power can long preponderate. Strong attachments are strong allies. This truth is so clear as to be colourless, and I should fear that you would censure me for writing what almost a child might have spoken, were I ignorant that its importance hath made little impression on the breasts of

statesmen.

I admire your wisdom in resolving to increase no farther the domains of Attica; to surround her with the outworks of islands, and more closely with small independent communities. It is only from such as these that Virtue can come forward neither hurt nor heated; the crowd is too dense for her in larger. But what is mostly our consideration, it is only such as these that are sensible of benefits. They cling to you afflictedly in your danger; the greater look on with folded arms, nod knowingly, cry sad work! when you are worsted, and turn their backs on you when you are fallen.

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"But take care," added he, "to offend no philosopher of any sect whatever. Indeed to offend any person is the next foolish thing to being offended. I never do it, unless when it is requisite to discredit somebody who might otherwise have the influence to diminish my estimation. Politeness is not always a sign of wisdom; but the want of it always leaves room for a suspicion of folly, if folly and imprudence are the same. I have scarcely had time to think of any blessings that entered my house with you, beyond those which encompass myself; yet it can not but be obvious that Alcibiades hath now an opportunity of improving his manners, such as even the society of scholastic men will never countervail. This is a high advantage on all occasions, particularly in embassies. Well-bred men require it, and let it pass: the ill-bred catch at it greedily; as fishes are attracted from the mud, and netted, by the shine of flowers and shells."

LXVIII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.

At last I have heard him speak in public. may turn the pious pale; my Pericles rises with Apollo may shake the rocks of Delphi, and serenity; his voice hath at once left his lips and entered the heart of Athens. The violent and desperate tremble in every hostile city; a thunderbolt seems to have split in the centre, and to have scattered its sacred fire unto the whole cir cumference of Greece.

The greatest of prodigies are the prodigies of a mortal; they are indeed the only ones: with the Gods there are none.

Alas! alas! the eloquence and the wisdom, the courage and the constancy of my Pericles, must have their end; and the glorious shrine, wherein they stand pre-eminent, must one day drop into the deformity of death!

O Aspasia of the tears thou art shedding, tears of pride, tears of fondness, are there none (in those many) for thyself? Yes; whatever was attributed to thee of grace or beauty, so valuable for his sake whose partiality assigned them to thee, must go first, and all that he loses is a loss to thee! Weep then on.

LXIX. PERICLES TO ASPASIA.

Do you love me? do you love me? Stay reason upon it, sweet Aspasia ! doubt, hesitate question, drop it, take it up again, provide, raise obstacles, reply indirectly. Oracles are sacred, and there is a pride in being a diviner.

LXX. ASPASIA TO PERICLES.

I will do none of those things you tell me

do; but I will say something you forgot to say, about the insufficiency of Phidias.

He may represent a hero with unbent brows, a sage with the lyre of Poetry in his hand, Ambition with her face half-averted from the City, but he cannot represent, in the same sculpture, at the same distance, Aphrodite higher than Pallas. He would be derided if he did; and a great man can never do that for which a little man may deride him.

I shall love you even more than I do, if you will love yourself more than me. Did ever lover alk so? Pray tell me, for I have forgotten all they ever talked about. But, Pericles! Pericles! be careful to lose nothing of your glory, or you lose all that can be lost of me; my pride, my appiness, my content; everything but my poor Weak love. Keep glory then for my sake!

LXXI. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.

I am not quite certain that you are correct in your decision, on the propriety of sculpturing the statues of our deities from one sole material. Those however of mortals and nymphs and genii should be marble, and marble only. But you will pardon a doubt, a long doubt, a doubt for the chin to rest upon in the palm of the hand, when Cleone thinks one thing and Phidias another. I debated with Pericles on the subject. "In my opinion," said he, "no material for statuary is so beautiful as marble; and, far from allowing that two or more materials should compose one statue, I would not willingly see an interruption made in the figure of a god or goddes, even by the folds of drapery. I would venfure to take the cestus from Venus, distinguishing her merely by her own peculiar beauty. But in the representations of the more awful Powers, who are to be venerated and worshipped as the patrons and protectors of cities, we must take into account the notions of the people. In their estimate, gold and ivory give splendour and mity to the Gods themselves, and our wealth dsplays their power! Beside .. but bring your ear closer.. when they will not indulge us with their favour, we may borrow their cloaks and naments, and restore them when they have recovered their temper."

LXXII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.

After I had written to you, we renewed our versation on the same subject. I inquired of Pericles whether he thought the appellation of guides was applied to Venus for her precious gifts, for some other reason. His answer was: "Small statues of Venus are more numerous than of any other deity; and the first that were Elt in Greece, I believe, were hers. She is worshipped, you know, not only as the goddess of baty, but likewise as the goddess of fortune. In the former capacity we are her rapturous adorers for five years perhaps; in the latter we

persevere for life. Many carry her image with them on their journeys, and there is scarcely a house in any part of Greece wherein it is not a principal ornament."

I remarked to him that Apollo, from the colour of his hair and the radiance of his countenance, would be more appropriately represented in gold, and yet that the poets were unmindful to call him the golden.

They never found him so," said he; "but Venus often smiles upon them in one department. Little images of her are often of solid gold, and are placed on the breast or under the pillow. Other deities are seldom of such diminutive size or such precious materials. It is only of late that they have even borne the semblance of them. The Egyptians, the inventors of all durable colours, and indeed of everything else that is durable in the arts, devised the means of investing other metals with dissolved gold; the Phoenicians, barbarous and indifferent to elegance and refinement, could only cover them with lamular incrustations. By improving the inventions of Egypt, bronze, odious in its own proper colour for the human figure, and more odious for Divinities, assumes a splendour and majesty which almost compensate for marble itself."

"Metal," said I, "has the advantage in durability.”

"Surely not," answered he; "and it is more exposed to invasion and avarice. But either of them, under cover, may endure many thousand years, I apprehend, and without corrosion. The temples of Egypt, which have remained two thousand, are fresh at this hour as when they were first erected; and all the violence of Cambyses and his army, bent on effacing the images, has done little more harm, if you look at them from a short distance, than a single fly would do in a summer day, on a statue of Pentelican marble. The Egyptians have laboured more to commemorate the weaknesses of man than the Grecians to attest his energies. This however must be conceded to the Egyptians; that they are the only people on earth to whom destruction has not been the first love and principal occupation. The works of their hands will outlive the works of their intellect: here at least I glory in the sure hope that we shall differ from them. Judgment and perception of the true and beautiful will never allow our statuaries to represent the human countenance, as they have done, in granite, and porphyry, and basalt. Their statues have resisted Time and War; ours will vanquish Envy and Malice.

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