himself, when, praising Tellus the Athenian, and teaching vain-glorious Croesus the instability of greatness and wealth, he bids the Lydian son of Alyattes" to look to the end of life." Truly, the two words of Solon outweigh all the rest for practical wisdom, and many a volume could not exhaust the fullness of γνώθι σεαυτόν. ex Solon was a descendant of the celebrated Cadmus, the last king of Athens, and flourished in the seventh and sixth centuries before Christ: the popular accounts of him are accessible, if not familiar, to all; but it may not be so well known that even to us, the " tremis orbe Britannis," the wisdom of the sovereign legislator and archon of Athens has furnished laws: his original" kyrbes," (as the triangular tablets were called on which his code was written,) survived to the time when the twelve Roman tables were composed, and were incorporated into them; these again formed the ground-work of the laws of Justinian, many canons of which are in force in our own civil and ecclesiastical courts. "The law commonly called the civil law, had its birth in Rome; and was first written by the Decemviri, three hundred and three years after the foundation of the city. It was compounded as well out of the Athenian and other Grecian laws, as out of the ancient Roman customs and laws regal." So far Sir Walter Raleigh, lib. ii. c. 4: we learn from other places, that the kyrbes of Solon were the staple and substance of the twelve tables of Rome. Solon is known to history as a poet as well as a lawgiver; indeed it is said that his laws were written in verse, in order that the Athenians might more readily remember them: a striking contrast to our own verbose and unintelligible enactments, where words appear to be multiplied for the sole purpose of “darkening knowledge." There is a story told of him, which will afford an opportunity of presenting the reader with a fragment of his elegiac poetry. The Athenians having decreed that any one who should propose the recovery of Salamis from the Megarensians should be put to death, Solon, considering the decree dishonourable, had the patriotism to disobey it, and at the same time had the prudence to evade the law by feigning madness: accordingly he composed an elegy, and rushing into the agora in the dress worn by the insane, declaimed in a seeming inspiration against the measure the poem began as follows, Never was this fair city by Providence doom'd to be ruin'd, κ. τ. λ. There may not be sufficient interest to warrant further rendering let it be enough to know that the attempt of Solon succeeded in raising to higher sentiments the variable populace. A ESOP. A GARDEN of ungathered parable Lies ripe around us, in fair-figured speech Blooming, like Persian love-letters, to teach Dull-hearted man where hidden pleasures dwell: Its fruits, its flowers, of love and beauty tell, And, as quick conscience wings the thought, to each Doth all our green sweet world sublimely preach Of wisdom, truth, and might, unutterable : For thee, poor Phrygian slave, mind's free-born son, In whose keen humour nought of malice lurk'd While good was forced at wit's sarcastic fire, The world should pay thee thanks, for having work'd That garden first, and well the work is done, A labourer full worthy of his hire. Of Esop's life we have little certain information. One Planudes, indeed, gives us a number of apocryphal anecdotes, all bearing upon his wit and ugliness, and in general derogatory to the philosophical grandeur of a certain Xanthus, otherwise Idmon, who appears to have been the but of his too satirical slave. The time at which Æsop lived is generally stated to be about 600 A. C.; and tradition tells of him that he originally came from Phrygia, was sold in Athens as a slave, actually at so low a sum as three copper oboli, through his clever defence of Samos obtained his manumission, became known to Solon, and through him, shared the bounty of Croesus. His death is reported to have been owing to the exasperation of the people of Delphi, whose enmity he had excited by hindering the tide of gold from flowing into their coffers, and ridiculing their priestcraft in a fable: it is said that they managed to accuse him of sacrilege, by concealing a cup of gold among his baggage, as in Benjamin's case, and then hurried the condemned innocent man to the dreadful death of their Parnassian precipice. St. Jerome instances Esop as one of the most unfortunate of men; for his birth, state, and death were alike miserable; in that he was born deformed, lived a slave, and died the death of a criminal. Yet did the holy father judge of him too much with the mind of a pagan Solon; for though deformed in body, he was a proper man in intellect, though a slave in condition, a freeman in soul, though visited by death in his worst shape, yet visited innocently. Verily, there are many fair, many free, many quietly dying who might find much to envy in foul, fettered, persecuted Æsop. Even the accounts of his extreme deformity, as we have them, are very questionable: but there is some little antecedent probability of it; for dwarfs and hunchbacks have almost universally been famous for a cunning spirit, whether shown in the form of illnatured and acrimonious sarcasms, or manifested by "quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles." Of this established fact in human nature, many writers of fiction have availed themselves, and no novel reader can be at a loss for examples. The name Esopus is said to be synonimous with Æthiops, in allusion to his black complexion; but it seems nearer allied to Asopus, a river in Asia: the great fabulist of antiquity is reported also to have been visited with the like affliction under which Moses, Paul, and other great men of old have laboured, impediment of speech; but if we reflect how often his extemporaneous eloquence served him in good stead, we shall see reason to reject the tradition. Is it necessary to explain the allusion to a "Persian love-letter?" the phrase is, perhaps, scarcely a |