conjecture, but a rational deduction, that supposing the universal reign of religion in a community, for a series of generations, the issue would be favourable to the extended natural life of its members. Disease would remain, accidents occur, and death ensue; but in consequence of temperance, disease would be mitigated in its frequency and violence, and because of regulated tempers and habits the design of Providence would be the general rule-"the days of our years are threescore years and ten." T. M. EXCURSION TO ELEUSIS, IN GREECE. CROSSING the valley of the Cephissus, savs Mr. Borrer, we mounted the lofty hill of Egaleos, from whence looking back the traveller beholds a noble scene: Athens and its plain, with its mountain background; the calm expanse of the deep blue sea; and craggy Peloponnessus. Lofty cliffs, clothed with myrtle and arbutus, now shut us in on either hand, as, passing on, we entered the beautiful “Defile of Daphne." A monastery, ruined and very picturesque, stood upon our left; there are also remains of a theatre, with temples to Apollo and to Venus nigh at hand. Lovely peeps of the Gulf of Salamis led us to halt at times with exclamations of delight at the beautiful character of the scenery, as at each wind of the defile it burst afresh upon our sight. And now we arrived at the embouchure of the pass, into that sacred plain, on the western confines of which, upon a mound, is perched the modern village of Eleusis. Leaving upon our right the salt water pools, remnants of those channels mentioned by Pausanias, as the ancient boundaries of the Eleusinian and Attican lands, and from the waters of which none but the priests might take the fish, sacred to Proserpine and Ceres, we passed on across the Thriesian, and soon reached the Rharium plain, extending around the base of the hill upon which the celebrated temple of Ceres stood. Upon this plain was grown the barley of which those cakes were made, which were especially intended for offerings to the goddess, because there it was, according to the ancients, that seeds were first sown and fruits increased. Nigh at hand stood extensive remains of an aqueduct, and fragments of marble were strewed around, some of them bearing ancient inscriptions. We now had reached the foot of that hill, once graced with the most sacred of all shrines to the honour of Ceres; a temple as renowned for its beauty of architecture without, as it was venerated for those sacred mysteries which took place within, of all rites the most solemn and mysterious observed in Greece; rites which, if divulged by the initiated, called down upon him the wrath of the gods, the hatred of man, a dreadful and destructive curse upon himself and upon his whole house. Pausanias would have divulged them, but "he was restrained by a vision in a dream." For one thousand eight hundred years the ceremonies survived, until virtuous Theodosius Magnus, in his zeal for the progress of Christianity, suppressed them in the fourth century after Christ. Miserable huts, filled with wretched inhabitants, now mark the site of the city which possessed that temple, to which kings and philosophers alike resorted, bowing down with reverential awe to that mysterious deity, the site of whose favoured altar is now so desecrated. A ragged, dirty village, situate upon the eastern base and slope of the venerated hill, represents Eleusis; and amidst its filth may be found fragments of frieze of capitals and columns, cut with the chisel of well-skilled sculptors, poor remnants of the temple that once enshrined the statue of the goddess. Clarke seems to have discovered that very statue-and in what a situationengulfed in a dunghill ! This, however, seemed intended as a compliment to the goddess; for that traveller observes, "The inhabitants of this village still regarded this statue with a very high degree of superstitious veneration." a common observer this might be deemed a most ambiguous method of showing veneration; but a stronger proof could not be given, for so surely did they rely on the virtue contained in this prostrate image of the goddess, that its very touch they thought endued with surprising fertility the manure heaped about it. Thus ousted from her proper temple, they raised her one of dung. Dr. Clarke, however, tore her from her humble shrine, and, amidst the curses of men, women, and children, inhabitants of the surrounding plain, robbed them of what they deemed the cause of the fertility around Eleusis. Το Arrived at the summit of the hill whereon the temple stood, we sat and gazed across that gulf, upon the bosom of which, above four hundred years before the Christian era, three hundred and eighty triremes of Greece strove with a thousand Persian ships, and smote them. There lay the isle of Salamis; girt with the bright waters of its gulf, calm as a lake, glistening like a mirror, land-locked and beautiful. The proud Persian trembled on his mountain throne of ivory and gold upon Ægaleos, as overlooking this same spot the echoing shouts of conquest rung upon his ear; and, as gazing forward with dismay, he beheld the waters of Salamis studded with the wrecks of his ambition; the crippled remnants of his once magnificent fleet flying towards the wide expanse of the Ægæan sea, chased by the iron-beaked galleys of Athens and her allies. The martial pæan which had roused the echoes of Salamis, Trozen, and Ægina was now responded to by a chorus of mirth and victory, proceeding from the mouths of Athenian women and children, transported thither for safety. Smoke still ascended from the ruins of their beloved city, and the rock of the Acropolis was dyed with the blood of its defenders: but the Persian had fled for Asia again; and vultures, gorged with food, were on his track. Mardonius, with the shattered remains of those millions, who, surrounded with women, eunuchs, and luxurious revelry, had entered Greece; was now driven back, to pass a rigid winter amidst the mountains of Thessaly and Macedonia! Athens had never yielded earth and water to the Persian heralds. Darius, the son of Hystaspes, had demanded it; but though Thebes, Egina, and many other towns, tremblingly submitted to the insult, Athens and Lacedæmon proudly repelled it. The sun was now high in the heavens, diffusing a delightful warmth; it was a day, indeed, recalling to our minds those delicious hours that now and then we have in England in the month of May; cheering days, when the flowers budding forth, every breath of air is laden with incense, and the birds venture to hail with their joyful notes the coming spring. Crowds of children surrounded us as we sat upon the hill of Eleusis, partly, I presume, gathered together to satisfy their curiosity by gazing on us, and partly with the hope of sharing some oranges and bread we had brought with us. One dirty little son of Greece was adorned with a skull-cap, composed of coins strung together so as to lap one over the other in circles round his head, whilst a row of small white cowries ornamented the edge. The coins were chiefly Turkish, but amongst them were gold Venetian pieces and some ancient silver ones; but a hideous-looking hag, who seemed to be his mother, would not allow us to examine it very closely, fearing, perhaps, the influence of the "evil eye; and though we offered her a considerable sum, she seemed to deem it preposterous to dream of selling so valuable à charm; for the presence of these coins and cowries is considered amongst the Grecians, as amongst the Egyptians, to counteract the effects of the evil eye one might certainly suppose that the abominably dirty state of the wearers would prove quite a sufficient antidote; and it is, indeed, with the hope that such may prove the case, that children are left so generally in that filthy state which excites the disgust of the traveller. a ; The women of Eleusis had an aspect of great poverty: a kind of long, loose, woollen jacket, braided with black, and extremely unbecoming, seemed the favourite costume. After remaining an hour or two, enjoying one of the most lovely views that can be portrayed, even in the imagination of those whose lot it may have been to behold the sea like a bright shining mirror, framed in mountains, and reflecting the deep azure of a southern sky, we again mounted for Athens. As we rode on we could but admire the beautiful beds of anemone carpeting the sward on the roadside pink was the predominating colour, but the purple and white with the pink eye were also there, flourishing far more luxuriantly than ever I beheld them in the gardens of England. Again we entered the defile of Daphne, with its towering rocks. High in air a noble eagle soared, whilst ravens, perched amongst the crags of Ægaleos, croaked hoarsely; neither were the ominous sounds confined to our right hand, as we might have wished: a falcon, however, flying from that part of heaven "from whence first is diffused all light, heat, motion, and life-the east!" dispersed any unpleasant feelings that might have invaded our minds by reason of our solemn neighbours. ENGLISH HISTORY. GEORGE III. THROUGH the whole of the political struggles during the first twenty years of this reign, the unpopularity of the king and his ministers was much increased by the unfortunate manner in which public measures were brought forward, and public documents worded. Thus, at the beginning of 1770, when the whole of the British empire was in a flame, and the most exaggerated language was used in reference to every transaction, the ministers caused the king's speech, at the opening of parliament, to begin by a reference to a murrain among the horned cattle, which certainly had caused much distress in some agricultural districts, but was quite out of place when every man fancied that evil and destruction were assailing the nation on all sides. The anonymous author of Junius did not allow such an opportunity for strengthening his malignant effusions pass; he represented it as a mean evasion on the part of the king, instead of treating it as a puerility of his ministers. These feeble proceedings were brought forward more strongly by the force with which Chatham now denounced the results of measures which he might have prevented, and which, in fact, he had to originally encouraged. For after all, it was not so much as to the abstract question of a pecuniary claim upon America that the ministry were wrong, but rather as to the overbearing, injudicious manner in which that abstract question had been urged, and the obstinacy with which it had been persisted in. Chatham now rightly said, that the discontent of two millions of people could only be stayed by removing the causes, but he ought in the commencement to have stayed those causes from operating. It was not fair for him and his supporters now to come forward, and blame proceedings in which they had silently participated, or at most had feebly resisted, while they had fully urged the superiority of the mother country over the colonies. It is also to be noticed, that Chatham concluded his opposition to the address, by attributing the universal discontent to the proceedings against Wilkes, proposing to state this to the king. Camden, the lord chancellor, spoke very strongly to the same effect. In another speech Chatham disavowed any personal partiality for Wilkes, but represented that the public rights and liberties had been endangered by the proceedings against him. However much the injudicious pertinacity of the monarch C had aggravated evils, there was in the above declaration a personal attack upon royalty. It is indeed obvious that much of the contests of that day originated from the struggle of the king to increase his prerogative, by freeing himself from the thraldom in which his predecessors had been held by the nobles that surrounded them, and the efforts of that party to maintain their power. It is painful to be obliged to remember, that although the leaders on both sides desired, and in many respects endeavoured, to carry out what they considered to be right, yet they were mainly influenced by the desire for power and place. Selfish considerations prevailed. The contest was rather who should rule, than what should be the proceedings of the rulers. The celebrated Charles James Fox first attracted notice in the debates of this session. The part taken by Camden caused his dismissal; this his party foresaw, and obliged the ministers to take the seals from him. These were unwillingly accepted by Yorke, second son of the late lord chancellor Hardwick, but he shrunk from the office, and awfully rushed by his own act into the presence of his Maker two days after his appointment. No one was willing to take his place; the great seal was put into commission, lord Mansfield consenting to preside for a time in the House of Lords. Granby and others resigned, some of them declaring that they thought it needful to do so, for the honour of lord Chatham, and the quiet of the country. The mighty peer made another remarkable speech, in which he declared that parliamentary reform was necessary, attributing the prevalent evils to the corruption of the people; but his plan, so far as explained, only proposed what would have exclusively strengthened the landed interest. At the end of January, the duke of Grafton resigned, when lord North became prime minister; it was, in effect, a continuation of the late administration, with a few additional names; thus Chatham and his supporters, who thought that all was in their power, were left in opposition. Lord North was, by some, supposed to be indirectly related to the king, while his dislike to Chatham was increased by personal considerations. His quiet temperament rendered him well able to meet opposition and party rancour, and though not a man of commanding abilities, he possessed many of the qualifications needed by a minis terial leader. Chatham, in continuing his opposition, spoke darkly and in strong terms of the secret influence of Bute, although he was at this time in Italy. Grafton did not hesitate to say this was the visionary idea of a distempered mind; but in reply, Chatham made his memorable assertion, that there was something behind the throne, greater than the throne itself. The influence of Bute, really, had ceased long before this time; but it suited the opposition to prolong this cry, and they did so for several years longer. On March 14th, 1770, the lord mayor, with the civic authorities, presented a bitter remonstrance, referring to the evil proceedings of the Stuarts, demanding the immediate dissolution of parliament, with the removal of evil advisers; this was brought under the notice of parliament, when an address was presented to the king, censuring the remonstrance; but the monarch wished for a stronger measure. It was well that parliament was not inclined to go to the lengths urged on either side, for the popular leaders blamed the opposition as too moderate, while the court party complained that the ministerial supporters had not gone far enough. During this struggle, a measure of importance was passed the giving up the decision of disputed elections by the votes of the whole house, referring them to committees of fifteen members. The protection claimed by the peers and members of the commons for their servants, which was continually abused, was also given up. An occurrence in March, 1770, sounds strangely to us: the Chester mail was robbed between London and Islington by a single highwayman. He proved to be a young man who had just begun business, and was detected on endeavouring to pass a bill taken from one of the letters. Impressed with the necessity for quieting America, lord North brought in a bill for repealing all the obnoxious duties, excepting that upon tea. In vain was it urged that the angry feelings excited would still remain; North urged that it was necessary for maintaining the national honour to have this tax, thus clinging to the principle in dispute; the bill was passed, though the American opposition was becoming every day more alarming and decided. Wilkes was still the cause of parliamentary contests at home. Chatham's efforts in parliament were outvoted, but he had support from the city; another address to the throne was presented on May 23rd, by Beckford, complaining of the answer to the former, when the king stated that his sentiments remained unaltered. The lord mayor requested permission to add a few words, which being granted, he uttered a few sentences, which were afterwards wrought into a more regular form, and subsequently inscribed on a monument erected to his memory in Guildhall. It appears that the political clergyman, John Horne, known as Horne Tooke, had prepared Beckford for this display, suggesting to him the words, or nearly so, in which he had answered his king. It is hardly needful to say, that this bold proceeding caused much consternation, and all speeches on such occasions in future were prohibited. In the following month Beckford died, after a short illness. Among the home proceedings at this time, was the prosecution of Woodfall and Almon, two printers of one of the letters of Junius, for a libel on the king; they were found guilty, but Woodfall obtained a new trial on legal grounds. Lord Mansfield was loudly condemned for his directions to the jurors on these trials. He endeavoured to lay down that they had nothing to do with the intention of the writer, or whether it was truth or falsehood, but only to decide as to the fact of publication. They brought a verdict of guilty of printing and publishing only, which was, in fact, refusing to find that it was a libel, and therefore was an acquittal. The proceedings in America showed the folly of resolving on coercive measures, without a power there adequate to enforce them. Lives were lost in the quarrels between the military and the populace of Boston; the former were then withdrawn from the town, which strengthened the opposition. It was now evident that much higher objects than the repeal of the duty on tea were sought, and that the leading characters were determined on more important proceedings. The objects the government sought to enforce were really of no moment to Britain; while a separation from the mother country would cause a much greater national loss by the interruption of the trade with the colonies, which in 1771 was nearly double the amount in 1768. A dispute with Spain relative to a settlement on the Falkland Islands, had nearly led to a war with that power. A fleet was to be manned as usual by impressing seamen. The civic authorities refused to authorise this within their jurisdiction, till Chatham denounced their resistance; his word was the rule of their actions. He was weakened by the deaths of Granby and George Grenville at this period. The year ended with an order to the English ministers at Madrid to return home. This brought matters to a crisis. The king of France advised the Spanish monarch to avoid hostilities, and that court complied with the British demands. The English settlement was reinstated in the Falkland Islands; but in a few years, either from a tacit agreement with Spain, or from not understanding its value, that colony was deserted : it is now resettled. In July, 1770, a vast quantity of stores was burned by a fire at Portsmouth dockyard, the act of an incendiary. One event of this year must not be passed unnoticed. It was the death of George Whitefield in America; he was in the midst of his career of usefulness when called to his reward. But the concerns of eternity had long been his sole object, as he had stated twenty years previously in a letter to a friend, "I trust I can say that with simplicity and godly sincerity I desire to have my conversation in the world; and I hope it is my daily study to keep a conscience void of offence towards God, and towards man. Whilst this is the case, we need not fear what men or devils can say or do unto us. They can only speak all manner of evil against us falsely, and that our Lord has taught us to expect. They can only kill the body; blessed be God the soul is out of their reach. I am content to wait till the day of judgment for the clearing up of my character; and after I am dead, I desire no other epitaph than this, "Here lies G. W.: what sort of a man he was the great day will discover." To this extract may be added the description of him by Cowper. "Leuconomus, (beneath well-sounding Greek And he that forged, and he that threw the dart, Blush, calumny, and write upon his tomb, And say, 'Blot out my sin, confess'd, deplored, |