for the improvement even of that fabrick which his ancestors have erected with infinite exertions of virtue and genius, but which, like all human fystems, will ever advance nearer to perfection and ever fall fhort of it. In the course of his enquiries he will conftantly obferve a striking uniformity among all nations, whatever feas or mountains may feparate them, or how many ages foever may have elapfed between the periods of their existence, in those great and fundamental principles, which, being clearly deduced from natural reafon, are equally diffused over all mankind, and are not fubject to alteration by any change of place or time; nor will he fail to remark as striking a diverfity in thofe laws, which, proceeding merely from positive inftitution, are confequently as various as the wills and fancies of thofe who enact them: fuch, among a thousand, are the rules by which the poffeffions of a perfon deceased, whether folid and permanent, or incorporeal and fluctuating, are tranfinitted to his heirs or fucceffors, and which could never have been fo capriciously diverfified, if they had been founded on pure reafon, inftead of being left to the discretion of every fociety, for whofe convenience they are calculated.

Sir MATTHEW HALE, to whofe learning and diligence the prefent age is no less indebted

than his contemporaries were to his wifdom and virtue, feems to have approved the study which I recommend; and, in his History of the Common Law, has given a fummary of the rules which prevailed among the ancient Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans, concerning the hereditary tranfmiffion of property; but, as he profeffed to touch very shortly on that fubject, and was contented with transcribing the version of Petit, without having recourse to the authors by whom the originals are preferved and explained, his account of the Attick laws is remarkably fuperficial and erroneous. He complains, that the text is very obfcure it is indeed, as he cites it, not only dark, but corrupt; and the fense, which he collects from it, is by no means perfpicuous. A defire of removing this obfcurity, and of fupplying a defect, however unimportant, in the work of fo great a man, first induced me to renew my acquaintance, which had been for many years interrupted, with the Athenian orators, from whofe private fpecches I had reafon to expect the clearcft light on the subject of inheritances; and I prefently recollected one of them, whofe remains I had feen when I was a boy, but had been deterred, like many others, from reading them, by the difficulty of the forenfick terms, which occurred in almost every page.

This was ISÆUS, a lawyer of the first class at Athens, and an advocate, as the ancient criticks agree, of a strong original genius; but, as his works must have been dry, if not unintelligible, to the herd of grammarians and philologers, by whom the old monuments of Grecian learning were faved from deftruction, they seem to have been greatly neglected; for, out of at leaft fifty of his genuine fpeeches, which were extant in the ninth century, ten only remain; and thefe, as they all relate to the Athenian laws of hereditary and teftamentary fucceffion, and give abundant fatisfaction upon that head, I here prefent to the student of our English laws in his native language, not doubting but that they will yield him the fame entertainment which they have afforded me: fince, however, he will naturally expect fome account of an author, with whom fo few are acquainted, I will endeavour, before I refume the subject of the Attick laws, to fatisfy his expectations; having first apprized him, that this ancient orator must be carefully diftinguished from another of the fame name, who seems to have flourished at Rome in the reign of Trajan or Domitian; for he is highly extolled in a fet epistle by the younger Pliny, and incidentally by Juvenal, as a wonderfully rapid fpeaker, and a sketch of his life is drawn by Philoftratus, who calls him an

Affyrian, and adds, that in his youth he was extremely addicted to the pleasures of love and wine, and was remarked for the foppery of his drefs, but that he afterwards changed his course of life, and became, as it were, a new man; it it is evident, that the declaimer, of whom they fpeak, had nothing in common with my author but the volubility of his language, and his name, which was probably affumed, as that of Ifocrates also was taken by one of the later sophists who wrote the inftructions to Demonicus.

ISÆUS, the master of Demofthenes, and the true fountain of that eloquence which afterwards flowed with fo impetuous a ftream, is by some supposed to have been a Chalcidian, and by others, with greater appearance of probability, an Athenian: but whatever country may claim the honour of being his birth-place, it is certain that he was educated at Athens, where he became famous as a pleader of causes after the close of the Peloponnefian war. The time of his birth may be nearly ascertained by reafoning from the known or fuppofed dates of his fpeeches; for that on the estate of Dicæogenes appears to have been delivered in the fourth year of the ninety-feventh Olympiad, or two thousand one hundred and fixty-fix years ago: now it is very probable that he was then at leaft in his twenty-seventh year; for it has been

remarked, that both Demofthenes and Cicero began to diftinguish themselves at that age; and Dionyfius, on a fimilar occafion, supposes that Dinarchus must first have spoken in publick at the age of twenty-five or twenty-fix; whence we may fairly conclude, that Ifæus was not born after the ninetieth Olympiad; and we can hardly believe that he was much older, fince he certainly continued to flourish as an advocate, and compofed the fpeech on the estate of Hagnias, after the beginning of Philip's reign. If this computation be juft, he could not have been regularly a pupil of Ifocrates, who was born in the first year of the eighty-fixth Olympiad, but, according to the best accounts, did not open his school till the archonship of Lysistratus, when Ifæus was at least in his forty-eighth year, and in the height of his reputation: it is not, indeed, improbable, and no more, perhaps, than this was meaned by Hermippus, that he might occafionally attend the lectures of fo renowned a mafter; but it is certain, that he took pupils himself at that very time; for Demofthenes, who was then but twelve years old, and who foon after deliberated on the choice of an inftructor in the art of fpeaking, preferred him to Ifocrates, not from any difference in the prices of their inftructions, as it is vulgarly fuppofed, but from a well-grounded opinion, as Plutarch