ANTISTROPHE.

Bring rewards for great achievements:

Come now let us hymn the noble,
Come, his triumph let us speed

With lovely canzonets of joy :

Doubly a conqueror fate hath will'd Melissus,
Filling with honied delight our hearts within us;

He was crown'd on plains of Isthmus;

And in the echoing grove of Nemaa
Where the throttling lion moaned,
His fair prowess honoured Thebes.

EPODE.

Victorious charioteer !
Ancestral renown

Its offspring never disgraces.
Of old ye know Cleonymus,
His ancient fame in chariots:
And thy mother-kin, the Labdacidæ,
Mighty heirs of treasure, toiled

In the strife of the four-horse car.
Time with his whirling periods

Brings about various accidents:

The children of heaven alone know not change nor harm.

The above is the third Isthmian ode; and was selected, although less poetical than many others, as a brief epitome of the peculiarities of Pindar: his re

ligion; compare James, i. 17, "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above," &c.: his moralizing tone, compare Psalm i. 3, 4, where the same image is used concerning the just and the ungodly: his spirited variety in introducing the hero: his patriotic joy that Thebes has been honoured: his well-known foible of almost worshipping wealth and rank and the wise hint to the exulting victor with which he concludes, reminding him that he is mortal. There is a curious parallelism here with that phrase in Shakspeare; " and so the whirligig of time brings round his revenges." Of course, the reader who is learned in Greek metres, will be the best judge of the possibility of combining accuracy with a due degree of elegance. The idea of such possibility is a favourite one with the writer, and he has presently attempted a chorus of Eschylus under the same difficult circumstances.

ARISTIDES.

SEVERE in simple virtue, nobly poor,

The guard alike and glory of all Greece
Thro' fierce invading war, and factious peace,
Model for youth, the temperate and pure,
Exemplar for old age, the just and good,
Athenian Aristides meekly stood,

A thankless people's boast: thee-country's love
Warm'd with its holiest flame; thee-party spite

From hearth and home to bitter exile drove

Envied for goodness: still, the patriot fight

Against the Mede beheld thee in the van
Doubly a victor, at the selfsame hour

Crushing the foreign despot's giant power,
And conquering in thyself the pride of man.

1

Republicanism has little to boast of, in the conduct of ancient Athens towards her most illustrious children. No sooner did any one, by his talents, virtues, or the more accidental matter of prosperous industry, rise to influence, power, fame, or wealth, than he became immediately obnoxious to the popular envy. To exemplify this position fully would ask merely a transcription of the names and fortunes of all Athenians, who, in spite of the deadening poison of democracy, were bravest, greatest, wisest, best; Lucian in his Dialogue on Calumny furnishes us with a long list of these injured worthies : republican Rome is open to a similar accusation, and indeed the evil is a necessary consequence of government being in the hands of a bad majority. Scripture warns us against going with the multitude to do evil; and history is full of proofs of the danger of neglecting this warning: truth, virtue and excellence are not to be predicated of the masses; they are necessarily rarities; the principle of representation is only good in so far as it is a faithful abstract of the wisdom, religion, industry, and patriotism of a state: when it descends to indiscriminate polling, it can only be expected to bear witness to the vice, folly, and self-interest of man below the average.

Aristides is not one of those, who have dropped into the grave "illacrymabiles, ignotique longâ nocte, carent quia vate sacro;" for he has found a laudatory historian in Plutarch, who gives several anecdotes in witness of his worth: e. g. that he was universally surnamed the Just; that the whole theatre with one acclaim recognized the eulogy on Amphiaraus in Esch. sept. contra Theb. as applicable to him; that he had the magnanimity to give up his military command to Miltiades; that when he went into exile, he prayed aloud for his ungrateful country; that in the fall of Themistocles, his bitterest personal and political enemy, he refused to join with Alcmæon, Cimon, and the rest, in prosecuting him, and was a friend to his own worst foe; that having had many opportunities of enriching himself from the public monies, he died a poor man, insomuch that he left his two daughters dependent on public charity, and had not enough to pay the expenses of his burial. Few will be found willing to deny a similar eulogium for public honesty to our great statesman, William Pitt.

Aristides flourished about 490 B. C. and was mainly instrumental in conquering the navies and armies of Xerxes at Salamis and Platea: indeed he proved himself alike illustrious as a warrior, a minister, and a judge.