THE. AGE OF PERICLES. 137 



young, decking out a false philosophy with meretricious ornament?, and 

 instilling into the mind those lessons of morality, exemplifications of 

 which the school of Aspasia was daily exhibiting. They were the in- 

 fidel gentlemen of Pagan Greece furnishing lessons which not only 

 tended to undermine the existing religious views, but laid the foundation 

 for all the sophistry on that subject, which has subsequently appeared. 

 Against these time-servers, these destroyers of morality and correct 

 reasoning, Socrates lifted up his voice. He exposed them to ridicule, 

 showed the fallacy of their reasonings, and triumphed over them. Con- 

 fining himself in his reasonings within the limits of what could be 

 known by man, and reasoning from facts, by exhibiting the truth in its 

 native simplicity, he showed that his opponents were mere theorists and 

 had erected superstructures without foundations. The cup of hemlock 

 and his parting discourse with his disciples so full of tenderness teaches 

 us how short-lived was his triumph, and how deeply seated in the 

 minds of the people were the principles and reasoning of his enemies. 

 Without dwelling longer on this topic, which alone would furnish an 

 interesting and instructive essay, and without deducing those practical 

 reflections, we will hasten to a conclusion, which the subject awakens in 

 such abundance. The age of Pericles then, the glorious age of Greece, 

 presents us with a picture full of interest and instruction. Pericles 

 stands on the fore-ground proudly-eminent. With a mind vast and ca- 

 pacious, a genius at once lofty and versatile, eloquence so overpowering 

 that he was sur-named the Thunderer — he employed all for the eleva- 

 tion of himself and his country, and having raised his country to a pitch 

 of glory unexampled in her previous history, he prepared the w-ay for 

 her ruin by his extravagance. Next we see Aspasia introduced and 

 maintained by him in his native city, to the scandal of the virtuous and 

 the destruction of good morals. Next we have the stage, once employ- 

 ed for the instruction of the populace in piety and virtue and heroism, 

 degenerating into a theatre of lampoon and obscenity, and finally the 

 false logic and false sentiments of the sophists ultimately triumphing in 

 the death of Socrates and the dispersion of his disciples. Gradually 

 the lights of Greece, one by one, expire, her philosophers degenerate in- 

 to quibbling sophists, and her generals and oiators become the venal tools 

 of a foreign foe. Finally, the eye of Greece is closed, and Athens, shorn 

 of her glory, sits solitary and in sack-cloth, the slave of those she form- 

 erly ruled. Yet the Parthenon remains a monument of her architectu- 

 ral greatness, and her poets and philosophers and historians will exert 

 an inHuence whilst there is on earth correct taste and feeling. 

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