common account however is as follows, viz. Solon of Athens, Thales of Miletus, Periander of Corinth, Cleobulus the Rhodian, Chilon the Lacedæmonian, Bias of Priene, and Pittacus of Mitylene.

This distribution was well calculated to inspire emulation amongst rival states, and to that emulation Greece was indebted for the conspicuous figure she made in the world of letters. The Ionic and Italian schools of philosophy were established under Thales and Pythagoras; the first was supported by Anaximander the successor of Thales, by Socrates, Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle, Diogenes, Zeno and other illustrious men; Pythagoras's school devolved upon Empedocles, Heraclitus, Zenophanes, Democritus, Pyrrho and Epicurus. The original tenets of the first masters were by no means adhered to by their descendants; the wanderings of error are not to be restrained by system; hypothesis was built upon hypothesis, and the labyrinth at length became too intricate to be unravelled: sparks of light were in the mean time struck out by the active collision of wit; noble truths occasionally broke forth, and sayings, worthy to be registered amongst the doctrines of Christian revelation, fell from heathen lips: in the lofty spirit of philosophy they insulted pain, resisted pleasure, and set at defiance death itself. Respect is due to so much dignity of character; the meek forgiving tenets, which Christianity inculcates, were touched upon but lightly and by few; some however by the force of intellect followed the light of reason into a future state of immortality; they appear to have contemplated the Divine Essence, as he is, simple and supreme, and not filtered into attributes corruptly personified by a synod of divinities. Of such men we must think and speak with admiration and affection.

Thales, the founder of the Ionic school, was a great man and a good citizen; he studied geometry under Egyptian masters, and introduced some new discoveries in astronomy and the celestial sphere, regulating and correcting the Greek Calendar, which Solon, about the same time, made some attempts to reform at Athens. This he did by bringing it to a conformity with the Hebrew calendar, except that his year began with the summer solstice, and that of the Hebrews with the vernal. Now the Hebrew calendar comprised twelve months, and each month severally comprised the same, or nearly the same number of days as ours. This appears by an examination of Moses's account of the deluge in the seventh chapter of Genesis.

Amongst other nations the calendar was exceedingly vague and unsettled: the Egyptians measured their year by four months; the Arcadians by three; the Carians and Acarnanians by six; and the people of Alba by ten; at the same time all these nations were in the practice of making up the year to its natural completion by intercalendary months or days. In the time of Romulus the Romans followed the calendar of the Albanians; and of the ten months, which their year consisted of, four com prized thirty-one days each, viz. Martius, Maius, Quintilis, October; the six other consisted of thir ty days, and were named Aprilis, Junius, Sextilis, September, November, December. By this calendar Romulus's year regularly consisted of only 304 days, and to complete the natural period he was obliged to resort to the expedient of intercalendary days.

Numa was too much of a philosopher not to seek a remedy for these deficiencies, and added two months to his year: the former of these he named

N° 125, Januarius from bifrons Janus, one of whose faces was supposed to look towards the past, and the other towards the succeeding year; the other new month he called Februarius, from Februus, the deity presiding over lustrations; this being the month for the religious rites of the Dii Manes, it was made to consist of twenty-eight days, being an even number; all the others, conformably to the superstition of the times, consisted of odd numbers as more propitious, and accordingly Martius, Maius, Quintilis, October, had each thirty-one days, and the other seven, twenty-nine days, so that the year thus regulated, had 355 days, and it was left to the priests to make up the residue with supplementary days.

This commission became a dangerous prerogative in the hands of the sacerdotal order, and was executed with much irregularity and abuse; they lengthened and shortened the natural period of the year, as interest influenced them to accord to the prolongation or abbreviation of the annual magistracies dependent thereupon. In this state things were suffered to remain till Julius Cæsar succeeded to the pontificate; he then undertook a reform of the calendar, being in his third consulate, his colleague being Emilius Lepidus. Assisted by the best astronomers of the time, particularly the philosopher Sosigenes, he extended the year of his reform to 442 days, and thenceforward ordained that the year should consist of 365 days, distributed into months as it now stands, except that he added one day to February every fifth year, and not every third.

Thales died in the fifty-eighth Olympiad in extreme old age: the famous philosopher Pherecydes died a few years before him of that horrible distem

per called the Morbus Pediculosus, and in his last illness wrote, or is supposed to have written, to Thales as follows:

PHERECYDES TO THALES.

May your death be easy, when the hour shall come! for my part, when your letter reached me, I was sinking under the attack of a most loathsome disease, accompanied with a continual fever. I have therefore given it in charge to my friends, as soon as they shall have committed my remains to the earth, to convey my manuscripts to your hands. If you and the rest of your wise fraternity shall on perusal approve of making them public, do so; otherwise let them not see the light; certainly they do not satisfy my judgment in all particulars; the best of us are liable to error; the truth of things is not discoverable by human sagacity, and I am justly doubtful of myself: upon questions of theology I have been cautious how I have committed myself: other matters I have treated with less reserve; in all cases however I suggest rather than dictate.

"Though I feel my dissolution approaching and inevitable, I have not absolutely dismissed my physicians and friends; but as my disease is infectious, I do not let them enter my doors, but have contrived a signal for informing them of my condition, and have warned them to prepare themselves for paying the last offices to my corpse to-morrow. 'Farewell for ever!*

NUMBER CXXVI.

Ignotum Tragica genus invenisse Camena
Dicitur, et plaustris vexisse poemata Thespis
Qui canerent agerentque peruncti facibus ora.

HORAT.

HAVING carried down the history of Athens to that period, when a new species of poetry made its appearance, I propose in this place to treat of the origin and introduction of the drama: in, doing this, my chief study will be to methodize and arrange the matter, which other writers have thrown out, sensible that in a subject so often exhausted very little else can now remain to be done.

'

Aristotle says That Homer alone properly deserves the name of poet, not only as being superior to all others so called, but as the first who prepared the way for the introduction of the drama; and this he did, not merely by the display of his powers on grave and tragic subjects, but inasmuch as he suggested the first plot and device for comedy also; not founding it upon coarse and opprobrious invective, but upon wholesome and facetious ridicule so that his Margites bears the same analogy to comedy, as his Iliad and Odyssey do to tragedy.'

This assertion in favour of Homer coming from such high authority has been adopted by the scholiasts, critics, and commentators, who have treated either of that great poet or of the drama from the time when it was made to the present: but it should