cted upon each other; such banishments as that, for instance,
in which its great poet Dante was involved.

Of one remarkable event, characterising the working of the Athenian
government, we do not assent to the view presented to us by Mr Grote.
His last published volume brings down the affairs of Greece to the
battle of Marathon and the death of Miltiades. In the sentence passed on
the hero of Marathon, the operation of a popular government has been
often disadvantageously traced; the Athenians have been accused of
fickleness and ingratitude. Mr Grote repels the charge. With some
observations upon this defence, which forms the conclusion of the fourth
and last of the published volumes, we shall bring our own notice to a
close.

_Ingratitude_, we readily admit, is not the proper word to be used on
such an occasion. A citizen serves the state, and is honoured; if he
commits a crime against the state he is not, on this account, to go
unpunished. His previous services invest him with no privilege to break
the laws, or act criminally. What man, capable of doing, a patriotic
action, would wish for such a privilege, or dream of laying claim to it?

Not gratitude or ingratitude--but justice or injustice--is the issue to
be tried between Miltiades and the Athenian assembly. And although Mr
Grote is supported, in some measure, by Dr Thirlwall in the judgment he
gives on this transaction, we prefer to side here with the opinion
expressed by the earlier historian, Mr Mitford: we view the sentence
passed on Miltiades not as the triumph of law or justice, but of mere
party-spirit, the triumph of a faction gained through the unreasonable
anger of the people.

Though the extract is rather long, we must, in justice, give the
narrative of Mr Grote in his own language.

"His reputation (that of Miltiades) had been great before the
battle (of Marathon), and after it the admiration and confidence of
his countrymen knew no bounds; it appears indeed to have reached
such a pitch, that his head was turned, and he lost both his
patriotism and his prudence. He proposed to his countrymen to incur
the cost of equipping an armament of seventy ships, with an
adequate armed force, and to place it altogether at his discretion;
giving them no intimation whither he intended to go, but merely
assuring them that if they would follow him, he would conduct them
to a land where gold was abundant, and thus