income been set apart for maintenance and education, and two-thirds profitably invested, the son must have been decidedly rich when at the age of sixteen, ten years after his father's death, he attained his majority.
As it was, he found himself comparatively poor. He had to receive something less than two talents, and his income could not have exceeded from £60 to £70 a-year. His father, we may surmise, had misgivings about the administration of the property, as he practically endeavoured to bribe the three guardians, two of whom were his nephews, into a faithful discharge of their trust by giving them full control over almost one-third of the property. His sister's son, Aphobus, was to marry the widow, with a fair fortune, and to have the house and furniture during the minority of Demosthenes. His brother's son, Demophon, was to have two talents, and to marry the daughter in due time. In all respects he seems to have carefully provided for his two children, and to have left them in the charge of relatives on whose fidelity he might reasonably reckon. The result can be ascribed only to negligence and dishonesty. The property must have been partly muddled away, partly actually embezzled. Admitting that some of the investments were precarious, and that the business of the two manufactories was simply mismanaged, we can hardly doubt that the trustees were unprincipled as well as utterly careless. It is true, indeed, that Demosthenes was taunted by his rival Æschines with having squandered his patrimony in ridiculous follies; and it was alleged by one of the guardians, in defending the action, that large advances had been made. The
