WELLMAN'S

LITERARY MISCELLANY.

GEMS FOR THE PEOPLE.

The Miscellany is designed to cultivate, expand and elevate the mind, and instil
into the heart the love of virtue and the right. Its pages will be filled with the
choicest literary gems.
It will maintain a high Literary Standard rather than at-
tempt to suit the morbid and vicious tastes of those who can read nothing but that
which excites the passions. All articles of a trashy and sickly love-tale character,
will find no place in the pages of the Miscellany.

THE MISCELLANY

Is Published Monthly, at One Dollar a Year, in advance.

DETROIT:

PUBLISHED BY J. K. WELLMAN.

OFFICE ON WAYNE STREET, BETWEEN LARNED AND CONGRESS.

G. W. Pattison, Commercial Bulletin Printing House, Detroit.

CONTENTS OF VOL. 1 OF THE MISCELLANY—1849.

37.3

Few subjects of study reward our pains so well, as the lives of the greatly good, in past ages. The example of those who are eminent in virtue among ourselves, has not an equal influence; for beside a suspicion of their sincerity, which men cherish from an unwillingness to confess themselves outdone by others in the same circumstances, there is a real imperfection in every thing human, which will not bear to be looked at too closely. Good character, like a good picture, is seen to the best advantage from such a distance that the shadows of present jealousy may not fall upon it, and after time has mellowed the coloring, which, to be impressive and lasting, must be strong. This led Lord Bacon to say, that "death extinguisheth envy, and openeth the gate to good fame;" and the twin dramatists of his time to put into the mouth of an honest man, oppressed by wrong, the bitter exclamation:

"Oh, Antiquity!

Thy rare examples of nobility,
Are out of imitation, or at least
So lamely followed, that thou art
As much before this age in virtue
As in time."

But among the "rare examples" of moral dignity. which the history of heathen nations affords us, SOCRATES deserves the highest place, whether we consider the disinterested and firm devotion of himself to the true welfare of mankind, the singular modesty of his searches after truth, or the remarkable agreement of many doctrines which he taught, with that better wisdom, now shed upon our souls by light from above. The best of the ancients freely rewarded his memory with ths honor, and the greatest of modern poets, ("who," Mackintosh observes, "from the loftiest eminence of moral genius ever reached by mortal, was perhaps alone worthy to place another crown upon his brow,") says:

"Him well inspired the oracle pronounced
Wisest of men !"

Yet, notwithstanding the greatness of his fame, it is only after much and cautious study, that we can form any just opinion of his character and philosophy. His very virtue made him enemies, not only in his own day, but in subsequent times; and some pious fathers of the church, naturally fearful lest his character for wisdom and goodness might seem to disprove the necessity of revelation, have most uncandidly repeated their foul and baseless slanders against him; while, within a few years, a learned translator of Aristophanes, in his zeal * Knickerbocker.