27 June–3 July 1870

I cannot but please myself with the recoil when Plutarch tells me that "the Athenians had such an abhorrence of those who accused Socrates that they would neither lend them fire, nor answer them any question, nor wash with them in the same water, but commanded the servants to pour it out as polluted, till these sycophants, no longer able to bear up under the pressure of this hatred, put an end to their own lives." — Plutarch, Morals, vol. ii, p. ^6.