sluice, without calculating how it would be enlarged by the rushing waters, until the very walls of the city are undermined by its power."

"But can the safety of the state be secured by merely excluding the vicious poor?" said Plato. "Are there not among us vicious rich men, who would rashly vote for measures destructive of public good, if they could thereby increase their own wealth? He who exports figs to maintain personal splendour, when there is famine in Attica, has perhaps less public virtue than the beggar, who steals them to avoid starvation."

"But the vicious rich man will bribe the beggar to vote as he dictates," replied Anaxagoras; "and thus his power of doing evil becomes two fold."

"Your respect for permanent institutions makes you blind to the love of change, inherent and active in the human mind," said Pericles. "If society be like the heaving ocean, those who would guide their vessels in safety, must obey the winds and the tides."

"Nay, Pericles," replied the old man, earnestly; "if society be a tumultuous ocean, government should be its everlasting shores. If the statesman watches wind and tide only that his own bark may ride through the storm in safety, while every fresh wave sweeps a landmark away, it is evident that, sooner or later, the deluge must come."

The discourse was growing too serious to be agreeable to Pericles, who well knew that some of his best friends deemed he had injured the state, by availing himself too freely of the democratic tendencies of the people. Plato, perceiving this, said, "If it please you, Anaxagoras, we will leave these subjects to be discussed in the Prytaneum and the Agoras. Fair and glorious is the violet-crowned city, and let us trust the gods will long preserve it so."

"Thou hast well spoken, son of Aristo," replied Artaphernes: "Much as I had heard of the glory and beauty of Athens, it far surpasses my hopes. Perhaps I find myself lingering to gaze on the Odeum more frequently than on any other of your magnificent edifices; not for its more impressive beauty; but because it is in imitation of our Great King's Pavilion."

Hermippus looked up, and smiled with ill-natured significance; for Cratinus, the ribald, had openly declared in the theatre, that Pericles needed only to look in his mirror, to discover a model for the sloping roof of the Odeum. Athenian guests were indignant at being thus reminded of the gross