A. D. 113, no less distinguished for his virtues than his talents. Of the writings of this ingenious and excellent man, only his epistles and panegyric remain. It has been a matter of some surprize, that Trajan should have been able patiently to listen to this long discourse, in which panegyric appears exhausted; but if the author has exceeded the bounds of praise, he has not surpassed the limits of truth. His letters, though greatly studied, exhibit the extent of his genius. They manifest, however, more taste than nature, and if Pliny, like Cicero, does not interest us by a detail of the intrigues and revolutions of the most turbulent period of the republic, he entertains us by a rapid and sprightly recital, intermixed with occurrences and anecdotes, that paint the manners and characters of his cotemporaries. FEPIKAHE PERICLES. Engraved by George Cooke. London: Published by Vernor, Hood & Sharpe, Poultry, Dec.1 1809. PERICLES. FEW men have so well served their country as Pericles. He was great in war, but still greater in peace. Placed in the first rank among the Athenians, by his eloquence, his talents, and his virtues, an enlightened protector of the arts, ambitious of every species of glory, he well deserved that posterity should distinguish, by his name, age to which he was so illustrious an ornament. the Pericles devoted himself to the study of philosophy from his earliest years. Anaxagoras, of Clazomenæ, his master, guarded him from his infancy from all destructive prejudices; but the talent which Pericles cultivated with the greatest care, because he considered it as the most necessary acquirement in any one desirous of influencing the people, was that of public speaking. He gave, to use the words of Plutarch, to the study of philosophy the colour of rhetoric. The most brilliant imagination seconded all the powers of logic. Sometimes he thundered with vehemence, and set all Greece in flames; at other times, the goddess of persuasion, with all her allurements, dwelt upon his tongue, and no one could defend himself from the solidity of his argument and the sweetness of his discourse. Pericles, by birth, had some title to the confidence of the people: Xanthippus, his father, had beaten at Mycale the lieutenants of the Persian king. He was grand nephew, by Agariste his mother, of Calisthenes, who expelled the Pisistratida, and re-established the popular government in Athens. The old men who had known Pisistratus, fancied they saw in Pericles the same personal qualities, the same talent for elocution and sweetness of voice. He also resembled him in point of character. He was, like him, tender and moderate; but, like him, he thirsted for power. His riches, his illustrious birth, his powerful friends, his talents, and his virtues, would have subjected him to Ostracism, had he at first m meddled in public affairs. Pericles knew the danger, and avoided it. He suffered those to die who were able to trace in him any likeness to Pisistratus, and sought, amid war and peril, a glory less suspicious to the interests of the republic, and less subject to envy. て After the death of Aristides and the exile of Themistocles, Pericles, seeing that Cimon was engaged out of Greece in a foreign war, began to appear in public with greater boldness. He was then observed to withdraw himself from society, to renounce pleasure, to attract the attention of the multitude, by a slow step, a sober deportment, a modest exterior, and by irreproachable manners. He declared himself in favour of the popular party, in order to remove any suspicion that he aspired to absolute dominion, and to form a rampart against the reputation of Cimon, who was at the head of the opulent and the nobles. It is at this period we are to form our judgment of the policy of Pericles; "of his ascendancy over himself, and of the combination of his projects. Athens, until then, had only considered him as the first of orators; she now regarded him as on as one of her ablest statesmen. Incessantly occupied with the administration of public affairs, and devoting all his léisure hours to the study of those whom he intended to |