is little band of auditors were Speusippus,
his nephew and successor, and Aristotle. He died in 347, at the age of
81 or 82, and bequeathed his garden to his school.

ARISTOTLE was born in 381 B.C., at Stagira, a seaport town of
Chalcidice, whence he is frequently called THE STAGIRITE. At the age
of 17, Aristotle, who had then lost both father and mother, repaired to
Athens. Plato considered him his best scholar, and called him "the
intellect of his school." Aristotle spent twenty years at Athens,
during the last ten of which he established a school of his own. In
342 he accepted the invitation of Philip of Macedon to undertake the
instruction of his son Alexander. In 335, after Alexander had ascended
the throne, Aristotle quitted Macedonia, to which he never returned.
He again took up his abode at Athens, where the Athenians assigned him
the gymnasium called the Lyceum; and from his habit of delivering his
lectures whilst walking up and down in the shady walks of this place,
his school was called the PERIPATETIC. In the morning he lectured only
to a select class of pupils, called ESOTERIC. His afternoon lectures
were delivered to a wider circle, and were therefore called EXOTERIC.
It was during the thirteen years in which he presided over the Lyceum
that he composed the greater part of his works, and prosecuted his
researches in natural history, in which he was most liberally assisted
by the munificence of Alexander. The latter portion of Aristotle's life
was unfortunate. He appears to have lost from some unknown cause the
friendship of Alexander; and, after the death of that monarch, the
disturbances which ensued in Greece proved unfavourable to his peace
and security. Being threatened with a prosecution for impiety, he
escaped from Athens and retired to Chalcis; but he was condemned to
death in his absence, and deprived of all the rights and honours which
he had previously enjoyed. He died at Chalcis in 322, in the 63rd year
of his age.

Of all the philosophical systems of antiquity, that of Aristotle was
best adapted to the practical wants of mankind. It was founded on a
close and accurate observation of human nature and of the external
world; but whilst it sought the practical and useful, it did not
neglect the beautiful and noble. His works consisted of treatises on
natural, moral and political philosophy, history, rhetoric, criticism,
&c.; indeed there is scarcely a branch of knowledge which his vas