it into his pocket, went into the pulpit, preached as usual, did not make the remotest allusion to his bereavement, and not until he went home and attempted to communicate the intelligence to his family, did the "great deep" of his grief break up. Then came, as we have heard him say, the most dreadful conflict of his life. "For God," as he said, "had laid the pride, the idol, the honor and glory of his house in the dust. I did not know how to reconcile it either with his wisdom or his goodness; nor do I yet know, but I believe, yes, I believe, it is all right, all wise, all good, and that is enough to satisfy reason and piety; and passion and selfishness ought to submit, must submit, yea, and I do submit, rejoicing that the Lord God omnipotent reigneth."

He himself had several violent attacks of fever at different times, from which he hardly recovered. The writer assisted to nurse him in one of these, when it was not expected that he would live. He was lying near a window that looked to the west. It was autumn, and the sun was near his setting. He asked that the curtains might be removed and the window opened, that he might, as he said, "look out upon God's glorious world once more before he died." He was in a burning fever. As the cooling breeze reached his fevered cheek he said, "how refreshing is this-what a fine emblem is the wind of the precious and refreshing influence of the Holy Spirit! O that sun, how grand it looks! Its setting is like the dying of Christ. It sheds a glory over all created things. Darkness will soon be here, and I shall not probably see this world any more, but if I do not, I shall open my eyes on another sort of a world to this. O what a world! What a world that must be where Christ is, of which God and the Lamb are the light thereof. O to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better." Then turning to the writer, and seizing him by the hand, he added, "Get ready to preach as soon as you can, and then preach Christ! Preach Christ and him crucified! Preach with all your power, and preach nothing else." The crisis of the disease took place that night, and he rapidly convalesced.

He lived fifteen years afterward to preach Christ himself, and then died, rejoicing to be with Christ, which is far better. We add no more, having already transcended the limit which we had prescribed to ourselves.

ARTICLE III.

ARISTOTELES, Græce (et Latine, interpretibus variis), ex recensione IMM. BEKKERI, edidit Academia regia Borussica. Berolini: Reimer. 1830-36. IV vol.

PROBABLY no uninspired, or merely human being, has exerted so wide and lasting an influence over mankind as Aristotle of Stagira. His internal history, as is the case frequently, if not usually, with the princes or peers of the realm of thought, comprises comparatively few particulars. Ancient biography, did not so much as modern, delight in minutiæ. No diary of Aristotle, like that of Pepys, has been preserved to chronicle the trappings and transitions of the outward man, or like Chalmers, to admit us to the inner sanctuary of emotion. No Boswell existed then, to treasure the oracles as they fell from his lips. So far as our researches extend, we are told nowhere "what kind of shoes and stockings he wore,"*-one of the modern diagnostics of character-whether in early life he was fed on pulse, or roast beef; a free liver, or a "son of temperance." Curiosity, in these particulars, is only to a small extent gratified. Beyond these it is vain to speculate. The bust which accompanies some editions of his works, said to be accurate, is itself a study and a volume. Raphael, in his "School of Athens," paints him "with a look of deep thought, and penetrating eyes,

directed forward."

Aristotle was born at Stagira in Macedonia, B. C. 384, was of small stature, had sparkling eyes, an observable lisp in his pronunciation, and a somewhat sarcastic curl about his lips. He was studiously attentive to his personal appearance, adorning his short and slender figure always with an elegant costume,not disdaining the use of rings, or the art of the barber. Compared with Diogenes, possibly with Socrates, in these respects, he might be denominated as, in earlier years, of the species dandy. His father was court physician of Augustus II. of Macedonia, where Aristotle was familiar with Philip, the son of the reigning monarch. Philip's famous annunciation at

Carlyle on Countess Ossoli.

the birth of Alexander, is familiar to all classic ears. At the early age of seventeen Aristotle left this court, after being a student of medicine, to go to Athens, the acknowledged focus of the world's wisdom, where Plato then resided and taught. We may conceive, though we are not told, how Plato was affected when his large, lustrous eyes first fastened on this pupil, from a then semi-barbarous region. We shall never forget how a pair of eyes, now dim in death, affected us, when we first sat as a visitor in the old oratory at Princeton. Plato's after estimate is recorded in the epithet he gave his illustrious pupil and rival, "the mind of the School."

In his 37th year, after a full course, contrasting strongly and painfully with that of modern scholars, Aristotle left Athens. This was the period when the triumphs of Philip were becoming terrible to the liberties of Greece, and waking the thunders of Demosthenes. He became the tutor of Alexander, at the crisis "of concentrated organizing power, of successful assaults on freedom, of grand conceptions, and of what has well been called material sublimity." We may add, also, when the star of empire, ever westward, was about to pass forever from Asia and the East, the rise of the third universal monarchy, symbolized to Daniel as "the he-goat," and "the belly and thighs of brass." Alexander the Great was the "Пoinua" of Aristotle.* He made him what he became, and what historians and poets, in another sense, describe. For his pedagogic genius had full plastic power over his pupil, by the father's direction, from the fourteenth to the seventeenth year of the future conqueror of the world,"till the times before appointed," of a greater than Philip. He had no cause to be ashamed of "his workmanship," according to the ordinary standard of glory among men. ideas of Aristotle wrought themselves out into terrible realities in the world's history, through the energies and resources, the material appliances and opportunities of Alexander, justifying the eulogy of the father upon the master, and the presentiment concerning his son, as destined to outshine himself.

The

After training Alexander, Aristotle returned to Athens and founded his famous school, the Peripatetic. While his pupil

"Пoinua," literally, poem-translated "workmanship." Eph. ii. 10, « We are his workmanship."

was gaining the physical mastery of the earth, he was laying the foundations of an intellectual empire, far nobler, and destined under Providence, to be more lasting. There, at Athens, he treasured up the facts and materials which his devoted pupil faithfully and gratefully transmitted to him, in the progress of his military triumphs, and thence he corresponded with his royal patron.* There he taught his admiring disciples, and wrote his marvellous works. There he suffered, as other men, domestic sorrows, and knew by experience, human faithlessness and ingratitude. He was misunderstood, and suspected, and calumniated by the dominant powers; was charged as Anaxagoras and Socrates before him had been, with impiety and heresy, according to the accredited orthodoxy. Declining to appear before the Areopagus, where in after ages a kindred intellect was called and browbeaten, he was condemned to death-retired to Chalcis, and there died in the year 322, B. C. at the age of 62. As his after commentator, Boethius, left his prison at Pavia, where he composed the "Consolations of Philosophy," only to be beheaded, Aristotle left Athens, the scene of his glory, only to die in exile of a broken heart. Philosophy, as well as piety, has "her noble army of martyrs."

Such are the outlines of the external history of Aristotle. Born in a place comparatively obscure, and illustrious only as his birth-place-at one of the turning points, or transition periods of the world's checkered history, a meeting place of its cycles, "ovia rav aiwvwv" (Matt. xxiv. 3, Heb. ix. 26) he was raised up by Providence as the depositary, the expositor and representative of its ideas, and to exert an influence on the thinking portion of the race, to remotest ages! After all that has been done in the way of history and analysis, it may still repay us to go back and meditate on the peculiarities of his mental character, the elements of his power, the principles of his philosophy, and the varied features of his works. This is the task we now propose.

We shall feel at liberty, on each of these points, to intersperse

• Historians intimate an after alienation between Alexander and Aristotle, effected by the courtiers of the former. If this happened at all, it must have been when growing debauchery had clouded his mind and heart. When he slew his bosom friend, he was capable of censuring Aristotle.

such suggestions as arise in our minds, and may tend to practical benefit.

First, we shall attempt to give the peculiarities of his mental

character.

It is said of Baron Cuvier, that from a single bone of the animal of a defunct species, he could adjust accurately its place in the animal kingdom, and indeed reconstruct, hypothetically, its whole physical fabric. So, in regard to the physical frame of man, we might confidently say, "Ex pede, Hercules." Rational psychology, however, has not attained to this degree of accuracy in reconstructing the mental and spiritual character of the great in other ages. Still there are certain laws of coexistence and contradiction, in mental philosophy and human character, which applied to the mental productions of other times, enable us to gain and to give a tolerably accurate view of their authors. A careful study of the works of Aristotle, no small task, even by the aid of commentaries and translations, leaves an impression on the mind of what he was, which, without any pedantic parade of particulars, may be reproduced-an ideal of the man, which, leaving others to judge of its correctness, may be actualized in description. This exercise of mind, where the subject is worthy, is of the highest philosophical, and, indeed, in one application, of the most momentous religious importance. The works of Plato and Xenophon have, for their great object, to give a perfect ideal of their wonderful master, Socrates. And may we not say, reverently, that the great object of the evangelists is to place us as nearly as possible in the circumstances of those who were eye witnesses of His majesty and glory, in reference to a greater than Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle, "God manifest in the flesh." How can intellect, and a sanctified imagination—the energies of the soul and the love of the heart-be more worthily and profitably employed, than in forming for ourselves, through the aid of that Infinite Spirit which enlightened their minds and assisted their memories and guided their pens, a true ideal of the living reality, which the evangelists portray. Aristotle, or any other giant of ancient times, is infinitely below our Lord Jesus Christ; but the exercise of faculties which reproduces the philosopher as a reality to the mind, is in many respects analogous to that which constitutes our highest religious obligation, and which gives the