tumultuous agora, he brings the living statesman or demagogue upon the stage, developing in our hearing his views, his conceptions of surrounding circumstances and characters, his projects, his means for accomplishing them. That the speeches found in his history were actually in that form delivered, I will by no means affirm. He probably obtained but the substance from report, and himself clothed it in those vivid expressions which two thousand years have not stripped of their freshness. Nevertheless, the more trifling the amount of what he owed to the relations of others, the greater must appear his genius, his unerring sense of fitness, his dramatic power of projecting himself successively into a whole gallery of characters, and truly interpreting the opinions, maxims, feelings of each; for no one pretends that he has ever misrepresented a single individual. And if those speeches be examined on the score of eloquence, whether of thought or language, it will I think be found, that in almost every excellence they may rank with those of Demosthenes. In each a peculiar economy is observed in the management of the arguments, in the sentiments, in the opinions, in the logical tone, in the manifestations of individuality which diffuse themselves over the whole and give a colour to it. The defects—for such there are—resolve themselves into a certain magisterial air, indicating a consciousness of superiority, sure, more or less, to offend in all cases, and a certain imperspicuity of style arising principally from the loose manner in which the drapery of language is flung over his ideas, which is chiefly observable in the orations, his narrative for the most part being free from this imperfection. Besides, whatever be the series of facts he relates, their importance appears to be enhanced by his manner of handling them. He casts aside, as unworthy both of himself and the reader, whatever is of inferior moment. These, in fact, the mere chaff of human affairs, only cling round the grain of action to conceal it, and must be blown aside by the reader if the historian neglect to do it.