The Germans, by the report of Tacitus, held solemn and deep drinking–bouts for the consideration of all important business, upon the old maxim that in wine there is no deceit; but they took care to reconsider their decision the next morning. Some court of temperate review would have preserved the Athenians from many heinous crimes, into which they were led by a temper unusually excitable, and when ruled by prejudice and passion, less fitted to judge wisely and equitably than the phlegmatic temper of the Germans, even under the influence of strong drink. With Theramenes and the accusers this was plainly a party measure, undertaken in total recklessness of right or wrong. In these corrupt motives the people could have no share; on the contrary, they seem to have been acted on at first by a right feeling of indignation at the alleged abandonment of meritorious citizens. Their fault lay in the readiness with which they discarded gratitude to entertain suspicion; in the blind fury with which, overleaping all law in jealously asserting the people’s omnipotence, they followed a mere impulse, a delusion, which the least exercise of judicial calmness would have dispelled. It is true that, when the reign of passion was over, and they returned to their senses, they rendered such amends for their precipitance as were then in their power. But such tardy repentance could neither repair nor expiate the wrong committed; and Athenian repentance generally came too late. Prompt in action, both from temper and from the forms of the state, which required no revision of a decree of the people, no assent from any concurring authority, performance followed close upon resolve. Of the many cruel edicts, repented or unrepented, uttered by the Athenian people, the revocation of the decree against the Mitylenæans, by which all male citizens were condemned to death, is the only one where repentance came in time. It seems a fitting judgment that the signal victory of Arginusæ was the last gained during the war; and that in the next year it was followed by the still more signal defeat at Ægospotami, which laid Athens prostrate at the feet of her haughty rival. Not strictly analogous to the prosecution of the generals, but a still more memorable example of the cruelty and ingratitude to which party spirit can rouse even a phlegmatic people like the Dutch, the very antipodes of the Athenians in temper, is the murder of the brothers De Witt. Both illustrious, though not equally so, to the elder Holland owes deeper obligations than to any other of her citizens, except those great captains who burst the Spanish yoke. These obligations, and De Witt’s high qualities, are best described by a writer qualified to do justice to the subject by the affection of a friend, as well as the penetration of a statesman—Sir William Temple.