etrinitugr, fnat lTiUbrUIL ATHENs Axn ENGLAND.—" Peace is restored: we

have nothing now to prevent us from again turning our attention to the revision of our institutions, so that, if we should again be called upon to put forth our strength, war may find us better prepared for the conflict. Dark clouds seem gathering in the horizon : like Athens, we may, at no very distant period, find ourselves marked for destruction by the powers to whom our prosperity, founded on rational freedom, is a tacit reproach. Let the occasion, when it, conies, find no such rotten corners in the fabric of our constitution as caused the ruin of that wonderful people : and let it not be forgotten that the wisest of their statesmen and the greatest of their philosophers undertook the task of elevating the women of their country to a more equal position, and considered this emancipation as an element of strength in their political state. The attempt was frustrated by the conservative Aristophanes, who brought all the force of his coarse wit to thwart the salutary plan. The audience laughed aloud at hearing Pericles stigmatized as the gallant' of immodest women, for so the pupils of Aspasia were characterized—as we have laughed at hearing lately of the gallantry of the Law Amendment Society : but they forgot, while laughing, that Pericles could effect nothing without the support of the people ; they laughed a little, but wondered more, when Socrates was held up to scorn as a visionary theorist, whose speculative doctrines were dangerous to the peace of families : but they listened to the coarse jester, and allowed his insinuations to sink into their minds, till this passive reception of calumny bore bitter fruit, and the greatest and most virtuous of her sages was put to death as a preacher of novelties and a corrupter of youth. Aristophanes, at all times coarse, revelled in such a subject as the attempted emancipation of women ; all his ribaldry was poured forth in the Ecclesiazusle' to scare modest women from availing themselves of the means of instruction offered them,—and he succeeded. 'The sanctity of the domestic hearth' was preserved, doubtless much to the satisfaction of the Athenian conservatives ; and the women remained prisoners, as before, in the Gynsaceum ; without instruction, without an object in life, without any means of elevating or enlarging the mind. The mothers of the race were ignorant, frivolous, and despised : and the sons became what such mothers were likely to produce, vicious, unprincipled, and venal ; for the stern rough virtues of a rude period had disappeared before the wealth and luxury consequent on victory hi their great contest, and they refused to accept the virtues of a higher state of civilization, which those great men had set before them, but in vain. The downfall of Athens was not rapid, but it was sure; and within less than a century from the death of Pericles, the proud republic had bent its neck to the yoke of the barbarians of Macedon. There are many points of resemblance in the history of aneient Athens and modern England : let us take warning by the fate of our predecessor in freedom, in commercial greatness, and in luxury ; and take care that no lack of principle in our home relations deprives us of that best bulwark against foreign aggression—a united people ; united, because each class finds its rights defended and its interests attended to ; united, because the laws are equal for strew; and weak, rich and poor ; united, finally, because it has carried out in its institutions the golden rule of Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye unto them.' "— Westminster .Review.

BALZAC ON NAMES.—" Amongst a thousand proofs of Balzac's strong faith in the real existence of his brain-progeny, we will take the following. He is met one morning, by appointment, by Leon Gozhm, to whom he had written to say he had an important service to ask of him. Balzac is, by the way, in a very bad humour, because he has just seine from paying a visit to Madame the Girardin, whose Ionic-pillared stone-built habitation of the Rue de Chaillot lie had found disagreeably damp and cold. The idea,' growls he, ' of any one presuming to inhabit a temple who is not a god!' But what is the service ' he has to ask of his friend ? We shall see. He is busied through the medium of the .Rerne de l'aris in bringing to the knowledge of the public an individual with whom he has been in familiar intercourse for the last six months, but of whose history he has not yet been able to write a line, for the simple reason that the said individual has no name. ' He gave me all the minutest details of the personage's life and career,' says Gozlan ; and he adds that the service' was merely to help him in finding out the said personage's name. A name,' cried Balzac, that cannot possibly fit any one else, but that will fit him, as the gum fits the tooth, as the nail fits the flesh—that is in short his name.' Gozlan, in spite of his long habits of intimacy with Balzae, which teach him how useless it is to dispute with him upon any of his convictions, does nevertheless try to discuss the point, and goes so flu. as to offer his cooperation in the work of making a name, of inventing one. Balza° starts back. 'Make a name!' he echoes contemptuously ; ' people can no more make names than they can make granite, or marble, or carbon. A. name is • and the man and his name are one." Well, then,' sighed Gozhin, if that is the ease, we have but one resource, namely, to/led it, if it exists." It does exist,' replies Balzac, with triumphant conviction ; but he avows at the same time that he has passed six months in the daily study of the clbnanach Royal without discovering it. lipon this, Gozlan proposes to perambulate all Paris, reading the names on the shop-fronts and sign-boards. Tim two start on their journey, reading to right and to left, and fruitlessly ; and they go on spelling through the whole town in all imaginable direetions. At last, near nightfall, in an obscure narrow street in the eeighbourhood of the Grand' Poste, Balsac found what he sought : Marcos,' lie exclaimed, that is his name !' " —National Reriew.

GREEK, ROMAN' AND NRCIRO LONGEMITY.—" Zeno is stated to have lived 102 years ; Democritus, 104; Pyrrho, 90; Diogenes, 90; Hippocrates, 99; Plato, 82; Isoerates, 98; Corms' the master of Isocrates, 107. But for the cup of hemlock, mid the sword of the Roman soldier, the 70 years of Socrates, and the 75 years of Archimedes might well have reached the same high class of longevities. The old age of Sophoeles, 90 years, is associated with the touching anecdote of his recitation of verses from the CEdipus Coloneus, in proof of his then sanity of mind. The lofty lyric genius of Pinder was not lost to his country until -he had reached 84 years. Simonides

wore his elegiac laurels to the age of 90

"The census instituted by Vespasian furnishes some results as to longevity singular enough to suggest doubts of their entire accuracy. The instances given by Pliny are taken exclusively from the region between the Appenines and the Po ; and upon the record of this census (which he himself calls res eonfessa) he enumerates 54 persons who had reached the ago of 100, 14 of 110 years, 2 of 12,5, 4 of 130, 4 of 135, and 3 of 140 years. In the single town of Valciatium, near Placentia, lie mentions 6 persons of 110, 4 of 120, 1 of 150 years. These round numbers are somewhat suspicious as to the reality of the ages in question ; and the whole statement, derived from a district by no means noted for its salubrity, is so much in excess of any similar record in other countries, that we cannot but hesitate

in admitting it

"In 1840, when the population of the United States was about 17 millions, of which 2 millions in round numbers were Negroes, the census gave 791 as the number of Whites above 100; while of slaves the number of those above 100 is registered as 1333, of ire(' Negroes as 647. In 1865, we find from the census, that 43 persons died in the United States above

100; the oldest White male at 110, the oldest White female 109; the oldest

Negro man 130, the oldest Negro woman 120, both slaves. From Professor Taer's analysis of the American census from 1790 to 1840, published a year ago, we derive the strange result, if true, that the chances of living above 11111 are 13 times as great among the slaves, and 40 times as great in the free Negroes, as in the White population of the country."—Edinburgh Review.

AN INconnieinix.—" The Russian Ambassador, M. do Kourakin, visiting the prison of St. Lazare, had his snuff-box in his hand at the moment

that he entered that portion of the prison in which women were confined for theft. One of the women, seeing it, fell into fits. After she had been brought round, she was questioned as to what had had such an effect upon her. It is so frightful,' she said, to see a snuff-box of gold and not to be

able to take it.' The Prince said, smiling, it is impossible to alter the vocation of some people; this one has the further fault of an exceeding sincerity.' "—Memoirs by Charles Maurice, in Bentley's Miscellany.

AMERICAN GIRONDINS.—" In preparing and pushing forward the various measures which they deem essential to the consolidation and extension of

their power, the slaveholders have one great advantage over the honest Re publicans of the North, in their greater knowledge and more unscrupulous use of the demagogues and electioneering agents by whom the ignorant De

mocracy is managed. While they are united as one man upon every ques tion which relates in the slightest degree to their two thousand millions of dollars' worth of property, and while they scruple not to hang or burn, or

at the very least to expel from their dominions any person who dares to

call in question the character of their ' domestic institutions,' they find no difficulty in obtaining unprincipled scoundrels and reprobates of every grade to debauch the Democracy of the North, to inspire the poor with hatred of the rich, and to draw such lessons from that very degradation and demoralization which they have ilORC so much to produce, as in some degree to war rant their assertion that free society is a failure.' In the first French Re

volution the weapons of the Girondins were political philosophy, respectability, and eloquence. The Republican party of the United States possesses all these. It is impossible to glance over a Boston or New York paper with out perceiving that the best men of New England are all on the side of justice and freedom. But the party to whom they are opposed possesses one

quality which, we fear, will be too strong for respectability and eloquence in a revolutionary epoch like the present. It has audacity, and that quality has a wonderful influence over the American mind at all periods. How much greater must that influence be in a period of crisis? "—British and Foreign Quarterly.