by no unqualified panacea, but by that remedy, physical or moral, which is specifically suited to the individual case.

Common sense, and common experience alike vindicate the golden maxim of Hippocrates, that Nature is the great physician, Νόσε φύσις ἰητρός. The energies of vitality in the human frame are, after all, those providential guides and guards which save through the valley of the shadow of death; but often in the pilgrimage of life, overpowered for a time in the unequal conflict, that inner escort requires extraneous assistance; and the wise master in the healing art knows well that too much help in a limited space is as bad generalship, as too little; that the body weakened by disease, like a town besieged, asks not so great an addition to the garrison, as may straiten yet more its famishing resources; nor yet, is in a state to be put off with infinitesimal succour, throwing one recruit into the beleaguered citadel. The millionth part of a remedial drop may have a wholesome influence on the imagination, but if it is alleged to go further, then man must be all but immaterial, capable of living on an exhalation, and ready to

Die of a rose in aromatic pain;

Hippocrates need not rise to tell us that this is a reductio ad absurdum.

THUCYDIDES.

So might an angel weep, thou noble boy;
For, all unmixt with envy's duller flame,
Enthusiastic hope, and chivalrous joy

To note the calm historian's rising fame,
Glowed at thy heart, and bade thee emulate
Those grand attempts, that honourable fate,
A brother, not a foe: years sped away,
And saw thee, still with patriot feelings warm,
A warrior-exile at thy Thracian farm,

Weaving the web of glory, day by day, For Athens, that ingrate; thy manly pen Eternal good for evil could repay,

For all prophetic was thy boldness, when

It writ thy works an" heritage for aye."

Of the young Thucydides there is told the picturesque anecdote, that, when as a mere youth mingling with the crowd assembled at the eighty-fourth Olympiad to hear Herodotus recite his history, Thucydides first arrived at the grand idea of literary glory, he burst into tears. If this be true, we may fairly date his intentions to prosecute his great work from his earliest years; and this may explain the minute accuracy, and terse fullness of his narrative. However, it was not until half a lifetime of patriotic warfare, full of honour, and rewarded, as was proper to republican Athens, with most ill-deserved exile, that Thucydides began to realize his generous hope of adding to the glories of his ungrateful country by recording a portion of her history.

Mitford,-who entertains so high an opinion of Thucydides, that he says (i. 178,) his "simple affirmation carries more authority than that of any other writer, and has been [in the History of Greece] universally followed,"-tells us (iii. 41,) that he was "banished from Attica for twenty years. Precluded thus from active life in the service of his country, it was the gratification of his leisure to compose that history which has been the delight and admiration of all posterity. The affairs of Athens continued to be

known to him through his numerous friends in high situations there. His banishment led to information concerning those of the Peloponnesians, which he could hardly otherwise have acquired." It is right to state that many others, taking this view of the causes of his accuracy and research, have considered the anecdote to which reference has been made above as very questionable, inasmuch as Thucydides was no more than thirteen years junior to Herodotus, and was therefore six and twenty when the latter recited his history at Elis, an age, according to them, too near maturity for so romantic a display of feeling. But surely, they know little of the innocent ambitions of the human heart, little of the eternal youth of noble sentiment in souls unblighted by the world, who can think scorn of such a generous ebullition : the mind that is dead to fame must not plead in pardon for its lethargy some fifty years of human life, but far more the indulgence of mammonizing cares and worldly principles.

An attempt will be recognized to render the wellknown ктnμa iç asi by "heritage for aye;" it is confessed, that however exact the así and 'aye' may be, the word heritage does not exhaust ктnμа: but perhaps the fullness of the Greek, including as it does the ideas of wealth, possession, and inheritance, is not to be expressed by any single word in our looser modern tongue.

Little more need here be said of the famous son of Olorus: as a writer, he is regarded as having carried

his country's dialect, Atticism, to perfection; and like every other noble Athenian, he was almost as much distinguished as a warrior by land and sea, as by the just praise of being the world's unrivalled historian. Of the Romans, Sallust and Tacitus have closely followed his style, and to exemplify the extreme of terseness, succinct yet distinct, which those writers have imitated from Thucydides, it is known that Sallust boasted of having described the character of Catiline in four words," alieni appetens, sui profusus ;" which, when Tacitus heard, he declared he could accomplish it in two, and immediately wrote “ rapti prodigus:" a marvellous instance of Thucydidean fullness.

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