to dream of danger.....I never thought of forming a party for my support.... or that a party could form itself for my destruction......In a word.....I did not know, that virtue....merit....and universal benevolence...........were so many incentives to envy........hatred ......and malevolence.

A sad experience has made me wiser.........I was banished from my native country......robbed of the affections of my fellow citizens....... stripped of the means of serving others.....and lastly......the inestimable blessing of being independent myself, was torn from my possession.

This cabal was composed of some of the noblest and most affluent persons in Athens.....I stood alone..... My father was dead.......and my unalterable affection for my beloved Psyche, made me reject an alliance with some of the most powerful fami

lies at Athens, whose authority and influence would have helped me........ at such a moment........to stem the waves of oppression which dashed around me.

I was arraigned as a criminal before an assembly of the people.....where..... a few months before.......I might have dictated laws, amid the universal plaudits of a grateful nation.

The charges against me were framed by envy.......preferred by malice,....... confirmed by ingratitude.

I had little to oppose.....my faithful services.....my uncorrupted innocence! Popularity is like a prosperous gale at sea.....fluttering round the confiding bark which trusts an open bosom to its fickle friendship.... At length it veers from point to point.....now speciously deceiving with a steady breeze.....now lowering with the gloomy aspect of an approaching storm........now howling

with the terrific horrors of despair and desolation.

The person chosen to accuse me was one of those easy......pliant...... venial.......characters, who prostitute their talents in worshipping a rising Sun.

He had been educated under the ablest masters......was a sophistical..... florid.....speaker.....supplying the want of argument with effrontery.......and misleading the judgment with plausibility.

He undertook to prove, that all I had done was merely calculated to throw dust into the citizens' eyes;...... that I was ambitious.......had projected the slavery of my country, under the false appearances of magnanimity....... generosity,....and popularity,......while my sole object was to make myself master of the empire ;...that I possessed imposing talents, which had misled

them;.......that the seeming virtue 1 assumed, was but the covering of some vice........secretly at work,.......to blow up the liberty and privileges of the Athenians........And......lest his artifices to prejudice me with a people who had so lately venerated my name, should appear too obvious to be mistaken.......He,...... by admirable strokes of pleasantry......which gratified the taste, and delighted the ears of his auditory..........robbed them of their judgment.

He continued to play on the weakness of the Athenians......who were famed for taking wit for argument..... irony for truth ;.....and raillery.....sharpened by malice......supplied his want of solid evidence.

He roused the feelings of the people by his honorable exertions,.........and, in two hours, converted the popularity I had enjoyed for two years..........into

the most rancorous hatred..... ....The citizens shuddered at the abyss to which their blind partiality had suffered me to lead them.......and were astonished at their weakness in not seeing the fallacy of

....and my

my administration thirst for arbitrary power.

Every man thought himself released from his gratitude, now he perceived my services to have been mere baits, thrown out to deprive my fellow citizens of their dearest rights.....And the very people......who had so eagerly sought to place me in the chair of sovereignty........Now,......as anxiously desired to fit the noose about my neck, and exalt me to a gibbet.

Notwithstanding every thing succeeded to favor the designs of my enemies, they were not yet content;...and fearful lest I might only be sentenced to a temporary banishment........they sprang a new mine upon me, which