yet in the sudden
meridian of a civilized age. And scarcely does he recede from our
gaze, ere all the evils which only his genius could keep aloof, gather
and close around the city which it was the object of his life not less
to adorn as for festival than to crown as for command. It is almost
as if, with Pericles, her very youth departed from Athens. Yet so
scanty are our details and historical materials, that the life of this
surprising man is rather illustrated by the general light of the times
than by the blaze of his own genius. His military achievements are
not dazzling. No relics, save a few bold expressions, remain of the
eloquence which awed or soothed, excited or restrained, the most
difficult audience in the world. It is partly by analyzing the works
of his contemporaries--partly by noting the rise of the whole people--
and partly by bringing together and moulding into a whole the
scattered masses of his ambitious and thoughtful policy, that we alone
can gauge and measure the proportions of the master-spirit of the
time. The age of Pericles is the sole historian of Pericles.

This statesman was now at that period of life when public men are
usually most esteemed--when, still in the vigour of manhood, they have
acquired the dignity and experience of years, outlived the earlier
prejudices and jealousies they excited, and see themselves surrounded
by a new generation, among whom rivals must be less common than
disciples and admirers. Step by step, through a long and consistent
career, he had ascended to his present eminence, so that his rise did
not startle from its suddenness; while his birth, his services, and
his genius presented a combination of claims to power that his enemies
could not despise, and that justified the enthusiasm of his friends.
His public character was unsullied; of the general belief in his
integrity there is the highest evidence [263]; and even the few
slanders afterward raised against him--such as that of entering into
one war to gratify the resentment of Aspasia, and into another to
divert attention from his financial accounts, are libels so
unsupported by any credible authority, and so absurd in themselves,
that they are but a proof how few were the points on which calumny
could assail him.

II. The obvious mode to account for the moral power of a man in any
particular time, is to consider his own character, and to ascertain
how far it is suited to command the age in which he