History has been emphatically condemned as a many-volumed lie! Without going to the extent of sustaining a sentence thus unconditional, we may at least declare that so many ingredients of fable have been found to mingle with the matter of the gravest records, that one is inclined to take nothing upon mere authority-not even the authority which rests upon the apparent consent of mankind continued through centuries of time. No historical statements, for example, have been considered more incontrovertible than the following, viz: that the Greek Sophists were intellec. tual and moral corruptors, and that the special merit of Socrates was, that he rescued the Athenian mind from such demoralizing influences; and lastly, that notwithstanding this and other services still more conspicuous, Socrates, through the malignant misrepresentations of the meanest enemies, encouraged by the complicity of corrupt judges, suffered the penalty of death, an involuntary, although heroic

martyr.

Until recently, these statements were universally accepted as correct; they are generally (in a popular sense), accepted as correct now. And yet, it has been proved with a certainty and force of demonstration which belongs to few sciences, excepting the Mathematics, that these opinions are radically false. The argument of Grote, the great English historian of the Greeks, is, to our mind, conclusive upon the subject. His view of the condemnation and death of Socrates, together with the circumstances which brought about these events, is particularly worthy of note. We will condense a portion of his argument for the benefit of such of our readers as may still hold to the conclusions derived from Mitford and others.

When about forty years of age, Socrates abandoned his profession of a statuary, and devoted himself exclusively to the task of teaching.

Early in the morning he frequented the public walks, the gymnasia, and the schools for youth; and, at a somewhat later hour, he might be seen in the market place, when it was most crowd

ed, talking to any one, old or young, rich or poor, who sought to address him, and in the hearing of all who chose to stand by, never asking nor receiving reward, and being careful not to make the slightest distinction of persons. He conversed with politicians, soldiers, philosophers, tradesmen, poets, artisans, physicians, governors, students in every department of science or letters, and even with the Hetaerae. He visited every person in the city who interested him, without waiting to be invited. Aspasia was his friend, and Théodote his frequent companion. Nothing could be more public, perpetual, and indiscriminate as to persons than his conversation. Now, no other person in Athens, or any other Grecian city, ever manifested himself in this manner as a public talker for instruction. He acquired a few devoted friends, but at the same time (as was quite natural) provoked a large number of bitter personal foes. Not only was Socrates distinguished from other teachers, by this extreme publicity of conversation, but his persuasion of "a special religious mission, of restraints, impulses and communications sent him from the Gods," was another peculiarity of belief which aroused the enmity of the orthodox around him. Of course the faith in a general supernatural agency was not peculiar to Socrates, but his faith was not of a general nature; it inferred a "speciality of inspiration," for according to his own defence before the Dicastery, "he had been accustomed to hear, even from childhood, a divine voice, interfering at moments, when he was about to act in the way of restraint, but never in the way of instigation." Some writers speak of this as the "dæmon" of Socrates, but he himself does not personify it, but alludes to it as "a divine sign, a prophetic voice!" No one can doubt that the conviction of Socrates on this point was sincere.

"A circumstance," Grote says, "little observed, but really deserving of particular notice-as stated by himself-is, that the restraining voice began when he was a child, and continued down to the end of life, thus becoming an estab

lished conviction long before his philosophic habits began." There were other ways in which Socrates believed himself to have received special divine mandates. A special mandate, for example, had been imposed upon him by dreams and oracular intimations. Of these intimations from the oracle, he particularly mentions one received in answer to a question put at Delphi by his intimate friend, Chærephon. The inquiry was, whether any other man was wiser than Socrates. The Pythian Priestess replied in the negative; whereupon Socrates affirms that he was greatly perplexed, being "conscious that he possessed no wisdom on any subject, small or great." At length, he resolved to test the accuracy of the decree by "taking measure of the wisdom of others as compared with his own." Beginning with a leading politician, he matches his wit and reason against the wit and reason of almost every prominent man (whether poet, artisan, or scholar,) in the State, and of course, owing to his superior intellectual acuteness, vanquishes all of his opponents. Here, then, we find the second peculiarity which distinguished Socrates, in addition to his publicity of life and indiscriminate conversation. He was not only a Philosopher, but a religious missionary doing the work of philosophy.

The third characteristic of Socrates, was his intellectual originality, whereby he first turned his thoughts, and those of others to the subject of ethics. Nature, or the "Cosmos," it will be remembered, was the theme both of the philosophers before and after him, viz: of Parmenides and Anaxagoras, as well as of Plato and Aristotle.

Socrates was the first to proclaim, and practically act, in accordance with the rule that, "the proper study of mankind is man!" This was a capital innovation in regard to the subject of Athenian study. In looking at the motives which determined it, we find Socrates exhibited chiefly as a religious man and practical philanthropic preceptor, repudiating physical science. Here was another, although a subsidiary cause of cavil.

"In describing the persevering activity of Socrates as a religious and intellectual missionary, we have," says Grote again, "really described his life." His existence was legally blameless, and he had never been brought before the Dicastery, until his one final trial, when he was seventy years of age. It was in the year 399 B. C. that Melêtus, together with Anytus and Lycon presented against him, and hung up in the appointed place, (the portico before the office of the King Archon) the following indictment against

him: "Socrates is guilty of crime, first for not worshipping the Gods whom the city worships, but introducing new Di vinities of his own; next for corrupting the youth. The penalty is-death!"

Our surprise is great, not that this charge was urged against him, but that it had not been urged twenty-five or thirty years before. How Socrates could have gone on so long, standing in the market place and aggravating everybody by his pertinent queries, which nobody was able to answer, is the true subject of wonder!

There were particular circumstances, (at least, so we have reason to think,) which induced his accusers to prefer their indictment at the actual moment, despite the age of Socrates. In the first place, one of the accusers, Anytus, a prominent politician, seems to have become incensed against him because Socrates had dissuaded his son, a very clever youth, from following his father's trade of a leather-seller. Another circumstance which tended to provoke certain persons against the philosopher was his past connection with Critias and Alcibiades, the latter of whom was especially odious.

The primary accuser of Socrates, Meletus, was a poet, probably one of those mediocre versifiers, who are of all men the most vain and bitter, whilst his coadjutor, Lykon, was a rhetor. Both these classes had been offended by the terrible cross-examining dialectics of Socrates. They were the last men on earth to bear such an exposure with patience.

When the case came before the dicastery, the accusers, by an ingenious use of "partial citations from the philosopher's continual discourses, given without the context-by bold invention, as well as by taking up real error," succeeded in producing a strong array of evidence against him. The attacks of Anytus were particularly vigorous against the vulnerable side of the Socratic theory of ethics, which asserts a very partial truth when it declares that "virtue depends wholly upon knowledge!" The bearing of Socrates at the trial was, to the last degree, defiant and uncom promising; so much so indeed, that the final verdict of "guilty" must be considered as having been deliberately provoked by the prisoner himself.

The Platonic Defence" informs us that this verdict was pronounced by a majority of only five or six, amidst a body (the Dicastery) numbering no less than five hundred and fifty-seven members!"

"If the verdict of guilty," Grote goes on to say, "was thus brought against Socrates by his own coöperation, much

more may the same remark be made respecting the capital sentence which fol lowed it. In the Athenian procedure, the penalty inflicted was determined by a separate vote of the Dicasts, taken after the verdict of guilty. The accuser having named the penalty which he thought suitable, the accused party named some lighter penalty upon himself; and between these two, the Dicasts were called to make their option. The prudence of an accused party always induced him to propose some measure of punishment which the Dicasts might be satisfied to accept." Now, when the time came for Socrates to make his counter proposition, (Melêtus of course still urging the punishment of death,) instead of suggesting such a punishment as fine, imprisonment, exile, &c., &c., he amazes his judges, one and all, by declaring that so far from meriting obloquy and disgrace, it is his conviction that he deserves the very highest honor ever accorded to an Athenian citizen, viz: subsistence at the public expense in the Prytaneum!

We must all admire this reply, and the noble independence and sincerity which prompted it, but who, in consideration of all the facts of the case, the position of the Dicasts, the natural popular exasperation against Socrates, and lastly, the philosopher's bearing on the occasion of his trial, can marvel at the conduct of the Athenian judges, or indeed very severely condemn them?

It affords us pleasure to state that a weekly literary journal, devoted chiefly to the interests and the intellectual advancement of the South, is about to be published in Columbia, under the Editorial supervision of Mr. Howard H. Caldwell, and Prof. J. Wood Davidson. Both these gentlemen are well and honourably known to the public of our State, and of the South, as poets and essayists. From their acknowledged scholarship and ability, we have good reason to believe that their journal will be a publication of interest and value. We have not yet seen its prospectus, and therefore cannot enter into particulars. Mr. Caldwell and his coadjutor have both contributed to this Magazine; the former having favored us with the admirable papers on Victor Hugo, Beranger, and other French celebrities, whilst Mr. Davidson is generally known as the author of the appreciative essay on Edgar Poe, which appeared in our second volume.

We trust that the new enterprise may be abundantly successful.

If there be any proof more convincing th an another of the supereminent merit,

America, thank Heaven! has not as yet contributed much to swell the list of Commentaries, and the little she has contributed is really of value. We have before us at this moment the "Shakespeare Scholar" of Richard Grant White, which is partly devoted to a consideration, and we may add a very acute refutation of the so-called amendments of Mr. Collier's famous Folio of 1632.

His remarks upon this folio are succeeded by an examination ofthe various doubtful passages in all of Shakespear's dramas, wherein he displays generally much critical subtlety, and poetical appreciation. Generally we say, because at times Mr. White make some rather strange blunders. Turning, for example to his comments upon The Tempest, we are surprised to encounter this note upon the accompanying passage:

seems to us to

If you be maid, or no-;

Miranda-No wonder Sir, But certainly a maid!”

"It would seem," says Mr. White, "impossible to misunderstand this passage, or perhaps it is better to say, to understand it in more than one sense. Ferdinand, struck with Miranda's wonderful beauty, asks her as the question in which he is most interested, and just as he would have asked her in any other place if he had no other means of obtaining the momentous information, "tell me you wonderful creature, are you maid or wife,”—and she

replies with proper modesty that though she has no claims to be considered "a wonder," she is certainly "a maid." But instead of this obvious, and simple signification, we have diverse far-fetched constructions of the passage thrust upon us by various commentators; some supposing that Ferdinand means to ask Miranda if she were made or no, and that Miranda replies that "she is not a celestial being, but a maiden." But if she were a celestial being on earth, she certainly would be "a wonder," &c. &c."

Now it seems "obvious" to us that Ferdinand struck by the appearance of so lovely a creature on a desert Island, and-(from his peculiar position at the time-inclined to expect marvels)-did mean to ask whether she were a mortal maid or no; her answer, "no wonder, (that is, no supernatural person!)— but "a maid" (or in other words, a mortal creature, and a virgin), is just the answer to be expected. Ferdinand probably had as little idea of asking directly whether she was "a wife" as of inquiring concerning the texture of her dress. The far-fetchedness of the Commentators, to which Mr. White alludes, appears to have resulted from the singular substitution of "made" for the unquestionably right word "maid."

There is another passage in the same play, Mr. White's interpretation of which, derived from Dyce and Malone, we will make bold to question. Everybody remembers the splendid lines:

a simile at all appropriate to what would remain after such an all-devouring catastrophe."

Plausible as this seems, we are by no means satisfied that the old interpretation is not correct. It is surely in better keeping with the entire imagery of the passage. First, we have the spirits invoked by Prospero, disappearing, melting away, so to speak, like clouds under the sun rays, a gradual process of dissolution from what is comparatively substantial, to the merest film, or "shadow of a shade;" thus, "the globe and all that inherit it" shall dissolve, (a most sugestive word,) pointing to a "a rack," or thin, fading vapor, and not to "a wrack,” which suggests something too solid and tangible to be in keeping with the rest of these superbly ideal lines. But, says Mr. White, "that object (“A RACK") does not furnish a simile at all appropriate to what would remain after such an all-devouring catastrophe!" Indeed! And what, we inquire, would and must remain after a devouring conflagration but a thin wreath or vapor of smoke, which, resembling a cloud or misty exhalation, may, with perfect propriety, be termed "a rack?"

vision,

The cloud capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea! all which it inherits shall dissolve, And like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind."

Of this passage. Mr. Dyce remarks: "So this famous passage stands in all editions, old and new. But I believe that Malone's objection to the reading 'a rack,' is unanswerable. No instance, he observes, has yet been produced where 'rack' is used to signify a single, small fleeting cloud; therefore, I hold that 'rack' is a mis-spelling for wrack, i. e. a wreck."

"The wonder is," Mr. White proceeds to say, "that another opinion should have been entertained by any reader. The dissolution of towers, palaces, temples, and the globe, might be said, with propriety, not to leave "a wreck" behind, but it would be very strange indeed if it should leave a small, fleeting cloud behind; neither does that object furnish

period a member of the Senate of the United States from the State of New York. It is well worthy of perusal and preservation:

"WASHINGTON, Jan. 31, 1807.

* * The greatest exhibition in Washington is the levee of Mr. Jefferson on New Year's day. A large number of fashionable and respectable people here make it a point to visit the President on the 1st of January, and that gentleman is always civil enough to be at home and receive them. It is the only great levee-day at our court. On this occasion, the company assembles voluntarily and without invitation.

Among the personages present, I observed the King and Queen of the Mandas, a tribe of Indians living about sixteen hundred miles up the Missouri river. His Majesty was dressed in a sort of regimental coat, given him by the Government since his arrival, and Her Majesty, wrapped in a blanket, sat on one of the sofas in the great audience chamber, and received the visits of the ladies and people of quality; when I had the honor of being introduced, she did