ught to be given to the vague abuse of such a writer.
"The cowardice of Demosthenes in the field afterwards became notorious."
Demosthenes was a civil character; war was not his business. In his time
the division between military and political offices was beginning to be
strongly marked; yet the recollection of the days when every citizen was
a soldier was still recent. In such states of society a certain degree
of disrepute always attaches to sedentary men; but that any leader
of the Athenian democracy could have been, as Mr Mitford says of
Demosthenes, a few lines before, remarkable for "an extraordinary
deficiency of personal courage," is absolutely impossible. What
mercenary warrior of the time exposed his life to greater or more
constant perils? Was there a single soldier at Chaeronea who had more
cause to tremble for his safety than the orator, who, in case of defeat,
could scarcely hope for mercy from the people whom he had misled or
the prince whom he had opposed? Were not the ordinary fluctuations of
popular feeling enough to deter any coward from engaging in political
conflicts? Isocrates, whom Mr Mitford extols, because he constantly
employed all the flowers of his school-boy rhetoric to decorate
oligarchy and tyranny, avoided the judicial and political meetings
of Athens from mere timidity, and seems to have hated democracy only
because he durst not look a popular assembly in the face. Demosthenes
was a man of a feeble constitution: his nerves were weak, but his spirit
was high; and the energy and enthusiasm of his feelings supported him
through life and in death.

So much for Demosthenes. Now for the orator of aristocracy. I do
not wish to abuse Aeschines. He may have been an honest man. He was
certainly a great man; and I feel a reverence, of which Mr Mitford seems
to have no notion, for great men of every party. But, when Mr Mitford
says that the private character of Aeschines was without stain, does
he remember what Aeschines has himself confessed in his speech against
Timarchus? I can make allowances, as well as Mr Mitford, for persons who
lived under a different system of laws and morals; but let them be
made impartially. If Demosthenes is to be attacked on account of some
childish improprieties, proved only by the assertion of an antagonist,
what shall we say of those maturer vices which that antagonist has
himself acknowledged? "Against the private character of Aeschines,"
says Mr Mitford, "Demosthen