had a place assigned to them in the Essayist. The Poetic Section has brought into the permanence of type not a few specimens of ideas touched with Castaly's dews, or breathing with the perfumes of Parnassus. The Reviewer has been conducted, as far as possible, upon the same impartial plan as heretofore of speaking the truth in love of all books brought under inspection-judging and determining the merits of their execution, and their special adaptability to attain their object, rather than adjudicating upon the peculiar tenets held by the authors compared with the critics. The Inquirer has been freely opened, and we are happy to note not only the general ingenuousness of the queries proposed, but also the ingenuity and intelligence of many of the answers-in great part contributed by the general body of our readers. Our Literary Notes have been at once concise and copious; they form a brief summary of the chief matters that have had the power to stir the book-loving world. The Societies' Section, though second to none in importance, has, we are afraid, had less justice done to it. If brevity were more studied by our contributing friends, this section would be richer and more valuable. We give this "word to the wise." Some of our contributors have been casual; some have but recently been placed upon our roll; others have been co-labourers with us for years. The acceptance which their labours have met with from our readers and the critical press is matter of high gratification [to us]. The unpayable gratitude of heartfelt thanks is due to all who have aided our exertions by act, or voice, or pen -to our known and unknown helpers alike—in the attempt to train our fellow-men to a sincere and earnest search for truth. It is no part of our aim or business to persuade our readers either to quit or follow any special creeds, canons, or opinions; we wish to culture, in all, a loving reverence for truth-the mistress of a right life without reference to the number of those who throng her temples and follow her behests. Opinion we regard as valuable only when it has been formed after deliberate and honest examination-after an inquisitive, rigid, and impartial criticism of all that can be best said on all sides of a subject. Our mission is strictly educative, not propagandic. We have no special tenets to impress on any mind, and we desire that each human soul should regard truth as "the pearl of great price," and search for it " as for hid treasure." Truth is the highest, best, and holiest gift of heaven; -may it be ours to become successful inquirers as to how, where, or wherein it may be found. THE BRITISH CONTROVERSIALIST. Epoch Men. SOCRATES. SOCRATES, the son of Sophroniscus, a sculptor of repute, and of 'the noble-minded midwife Phænarete,"* was born in the deme (township) of Alopece, a suburb of the city of Athens, on the 5th day of the month Thargelion, in the year 468 B.C. (Olympiad LXXVII. 4). He had an elder brother by the mother's side, named Patrocles. He was himself of strictly Attic descent, being of the tribe of Antiochis, and of the gens (clan) Dædalidæ. His family, though poor and humbly circumstanced, was good and old. Of his early life little or nothing is known. The highest charm of modern biography, its detail of private particulars and of personal characteristics, was seldom consciously imparted by ancient authors to their works. Individual and domestic existence formed a theme too lowly, and the daily routine of life was too petty to merit record in the enduring pages which they wrote. Inference can lend but little help in filling up the foreground of a sketch of the life of Socrates. Doubtlessly the sculptor's doors would wear the usual ornaments of olive, indicative of the birth of a son, on that springtide morning when he first puled in the nurse's arms. On the tenth, or name-day, gossips would assemble round the hearth, and the celebration feast would be at once fitting and choice. The λαλα (lullaby) would be sung over him, the μορμολύκειον (bugaboo) would be used to frighten him to quietness, and a honied sponge would sometimes tickle his palate when it was inconvenient to attend otherwise to the wants of his babyhood. The public registrar would get notice of the father's intention of bringing him up, and he would grow in stature as the months flew past. The years of childhood being spent, the mother's and the nurse's special care would be exchanged for the labours of the pedagogue, the schoolmaster, and the gymnast. That he received the ordinary education within reach of the Athenians we know,† but there is no reason for supposing that in his youth he had any superior advantages. The law enjoined that the children of citizens should be † Plato's "Crito," par. 12. * Plato's "Theætetes," par. 17. TOL. IV. B instructed in grammar, music, and gymnastics; grammar included the arts of reading and writing, a little history, and some elocution; music was used as a generic name for intellectual culture, e.g., philosophy, poetry, rhythm, melody of speech, voice, and song-tone, as well as the empiric use of the lyre, the flute, the pipe, and choral singing; gymnastics was a systematic course of physical training in all those arts which "Brace the nerves, or make the limbs alert, And mix elastic force with firmness hard." From six to sixteen this process of education would most probably, as was then usual, go on; for the jealous watchfulness of the law was superadded to natural affection to secure the proper upbringing of the young. Bodily strength, intellect, and taste, having thus been, in some measure, subjected to culture, as his father was not wealthy, it became necessary to decide upon a profession for him. It was at length-some authors say, against his own willdetermined that he should follow his father's business; and hence Timon, the Syllograph, speaks of him as "The stone chipper, The reasoning legislator, the enchanter The labours of apprenticeship would occupy some years closely. On attaining his eighteenth year he would be enrolled among the citizen Ephebi (persons of age); would receive a spear and buckler from the State, and would, according to law, take oath, that he would never disgrace his armour, desert, revolt, or damage his country, but would conform to the religion, and endeavour to extend the dominion of Athens, defend its laws, maintain its rights, fight, and if need be, die, for his country. The Ephebi were the guardians of the bounds of Athens, and performed the duties of an internal police during the two years which elapsed between that enrolment and their introduction to their fellow-burghers and their registration eis ävdpas (among the men). At twenty the Athenians were emancipated. from the government of parents and guardians, and became subject to the laws alone. They then became men in the civic sense, and were free to make their way in the world as best they might or could. He appears to have devoted himself with some earnestness and industry, for a time, to his business as a sculptor, an art which in the luxurious age of Pericles was both remunerative and popular. Pausanius (circ. 170 A.D.), the geographer (in the "Periegesis, or Itinerary of Greece," book i.), reports, that when he visited Athens a statue of Mercury, and a group of the Graces, clothed in flowing drapery, were preserved and shown on the walls of the Acropolis as his work. It is believed that his father died shortly after the majority of Socrates. He left him an inheritance of eighty mine (about £320); but this he lost by the treachery of the trustee, and he was compelled to earn his bread by the exercise of his professional skill; contenting himself, however, with doing enough to procure a simple subsistence, suited to his unambitious life; and devoting his whole leisure to the perusal of all the accessible works of the ancient philosophers, or in listening to those teachers of wisdom who from time to time visited Athens. This greedy thirst for knowledge attracted, it is said, the notice of Crito, a wealthy Athenian, subsequently both a disciple and a friend of the reflective statuary, who supplied Socrates with the means of cultivating his talents, and of paying for the instructions of those who taught the various accomplishments of life in Athens. He is reported, though this is thought improbable, to have been one of the students and auditors of Anaxagoras. Under Archelaus he studied physics; Evenus of Paros, a famous elegist, taught him poesy; Theodore, of Cyrene, gave him lessons in geometry; he may have seen Zeno, and must have been acquainted with his system of dialectics; the art of eloquence was expounded to him by Prodicus; the ethical and political uses of music were confided to him by Damon; and even in his old age he "put himself to school" under Konnas, an eminent and highly cultured musician, to acquire the power of playing on the lyre. Though all his life professing to know nothing, he was in reality possessed of the most encyclopedic store of information of any Greek. This is abundantly proven, not more from the felicity than by the range of his illustrations, and the fearless readiness with which he met all men on their own ground. Against these traditions regarding the teachers, and this remark about the acquired knowledge of Socrates, the ironic humility with which, in Xenophon's "Symposium," he confesses himself to be only self-taught in philosophy," does not really militate, even if interpreted in the most literally serious sense. He drew the vital elements of his philosophic system from no predecessor. He struck out a pathway in the maze of speculation for himself. He had every right to advance a claim to originality. "He taught that man has to discover and recognize in himself what is the right and the good; and that this right and good are in their nature universal. Socrates is celebrated as a teacher of morality, but we should rather call him the inventor of morality,"*-if we dare say that any man invented that which God at first impressed on the heart, and afterwards expressed in His law, which, however, was then only revealed to the Hebrews. But hold! this is criticism, not biography. Let us return. Marriage was directly enjoined as a duty due to the Gods and the State by every Greek who had attained the full development and vigour of his physical being. Abstinence from it was discountenanced, and no man was permitted to exercise important political functions, to manage public trusts, or to regulate national affairs, unless he had given proof of his attachment to the State by placing himself in such relations as to be likely to contribute to the increase of its citizens, and had tied himself, by the bands of conjugal or parental affection, to his country. We have no certain information as to * Hegel's "Philosophy of History," part ii. sect. ii. chap. 3. * the date of the marriage of Socrates. Solon thought thirty-five the best age for the marriage of males, Aristotle thirty-seven, Plato and Hesiod thirty; and it is the impression of scholars that "the usual age for men was thirty, and for women twenty years." We may safely infer that Socrates was married between 438 and 433 B.C. His first wife is said to have been Myrto, daughter of Aristides (the Just), who was at that time a widow. This is probable, though some classicists dispute the story as well as explicitly contradict the grosser tale, which affirms that Socrates had two wives at once. We know that he was married to the ill-reputed Xantippe, now the synonym for a shrew. We are inclined to believe. that calumny has had a large share in the making of this unpleasing characterization; for Xenophon* gives a dialogue in which Socrates pleads affectionately in her favour with Lamprocles, his eldest son, who had indulged in some peevish anger towards her; and Lamprocles denies no one of her claims to his regard which his father presses upon him. He does, indeed, speak of her ill-temper; and Socrates does not directly deny it. In the "Symposium," too, when he is bantered by Antisthenes about her passionate violence, Socrates good-humouredly breaks a jest about it, and changes the subject. Active life opens upon Socrates in the shape of military servicewhich every Athenian was bound to give on demand-between the ages of twenty and forty, when he was about thirty-seven. The Peloponnesian War began in 431 B.C., and lasted for twentyseven years; that is, till within five years of the close of the life of Socrates. The story of that eventful contest has been narrated with such artistic grace by Thucydides, and that narration has been transferred with such singular fidelity from the Greek original into English, by Hobbes-besides being retold with all aid and illustration from comparison of ancient writers and extensive scholarship by Mitford, Thirlwall, and Grote-that there is no need for interpolating the merest sketch of the cause, events, and termination of it in the present paper. We shall therefore only notice the circumstances in which Socrates took a part-of which we have accounts in the "Apology" and in the "Symposium" of Plato, &c. Potidea, a town in Macedonia, colonized by Corinthians, but tributary to Athens, revolted against the dominion of that city—at the instigation of their mother-city, and with the connivance of the other states in the Peloponnesus-the south and peninsular, mulberry-leaf shaped part of Greece, now called the Morea. In the campaign against it Socrates performed military service as an hoplite a heavily-armed soldier. There he endured the severe intensity of a Thracian winter, bare-foot, and clad only in his ordinary dress, sustaining hunger uncomplainingly, and out-doing most in the endurance of fatigue. In the engagement there, he distinguished himself by his valour, by defending Alcibiades-who himself tells the story-when fallen and wounded, and thus saving |