ively interest
in his glory. Three of these he taught to rival Aristotle, and it became
their mutual interest to depreciate his merits. Unfortunately one day
Plato found himself in his school without these three favourite
scholars. Aristotle flies to him--a crowd gathers and enters with him.
The idol whose oracles they wished to overturn was presented to them. He
was then a respectable old man, the weight of whose years had enfeebled
his memory. The combat was not long. Some rapid sophisms embarrassed
Plato. He saw himself surrounded by the inevitable traps of the subtlest
logician. Vanquished, he reproached his ancient scholar by a beautiful
figure:--"He has kicked against us as a colt against its mother."

Soon after this humiliating adventure he ceased to give public lectures.
Aristotle remained master in the field of battle. He raised a school,
and devoted himself to render it the most famous in Greece. But the
three favourite scholars of Plato, zealous to avenge the cause of their
master, and to make amends for their imprudence in having quitted him,
armed themselves against the usurper.--Xenocrates, the most ardent of
the three, attacked Aristotle, confounded the logician, and
re-established Plato in all his rights. Since that time the academic and
peripatetic sects, animated by the spirits of their several chiefs,
avowed an eternal hostility. In what manner his works have descended to
us has been told in a preceding article, on _Destruction of Books_.
Aristotle having declaimed irreverently of the gods, and dreading the
fate of Socrates, wished to retire from Athens. In a beautiful manner he
pointed out his successor. There were two rivals in his schools:
Menedemus the Rhodian, and Theophrastus the Lesbian. Alluding delicately
to his own critical situation, he told his assembled scholars that the
wine he was accustomed to drink was injurious to him, and he desired
them to bring the wines of Rhodes and Lesbos. He tasted both, and
declared they both did honour to their soil, each being excellent,
though differing in their quality;--the Rhodian wine is the strongest,
but the Lesbian is the sweetest, and that he himself preferred it. Thus
his ingenuity designated his favourite Theophrastus, the author of the
"Characters," for his successor.

ABELARD AND ELOISA.

Abelard, so famous for his writings and his amours with Eloisa, ranks
amongst the Heretics for opinions concerning the Trinity! His superior
geniu