he character of Demosthenes is compromised by
this and other attacks, it is not possible to decide to the satisfaction
of all. The results of the contest in regard to the crown and the trial
in the Harpalus matter were very different; but the verdict of neither
trial, even if they were not conflicting, could be accepted as decisive.
To me, the evidence,--weighed as we weigh other evidence, with a just
appreciation of the source of the charges, the powerful testimony of the
man's public life viewed as a whole, and the lofty position maintained
in the face of all odds among a petulant people whom he would not
flatter, but openly reproved for their vices,--the evidence, I say, read
in this light justifies the conclusion that the orator was a man of high
moral character, and that in the Harpalus affair he was the victim of
the Macedonian faction and of the misled patriotic party, co-operating
for the time being.

When the tidings of the death of Alexander startled the world,
Demosthenes at once, though in exile, became intensely active in
arousing the patriots to strike one more blow for liberty. He was
recalled to Athens, restored to his high place, and became again the
chief influence in preparing for the last desperate resistance to the
Macedonians. When the cause of Greek freedom was finally lost,
Demosthenes went into exile; a price was set upon his head; and when the
Macedonian soldiers, led by a Greek traitor, were about to lay hands
upon him in the temple of Poseidon at Calauria, he sucked the poison
which he always carried ready in his pen, and died rather than yield
himself to the hated enemies of his country.

It remains only to say that the general consensus of ancient and modern
opinion is, that Demosthenes was the supreme figure in the brilliant
line of orators of antiquity. The chief general characteristics in all
Demosthenes's public oratory are a sustained intensity and a merciless
directness. Swift as waves before a gale, every word bears straight
toward the final goal of his purpose. We are hardly conscious even of
the artistic taste which fits each phrase, and sentence, and episode, to
the larger occasion as well as to each other. Indeed, we lose the
rhetorician altogether in the devoted pleader, the patriot, the
self-forgetful chief of a noble but losing cause. His careful study of
the great orators who had preceded him undoubtedly taught him much; yet
it was his own original and creative power, lodged