cepted, till the first charm of novelty was past, and the first heat of enthusiasm had cooled. What would the same capricious theorists say to that reverence with which the Egyptians, above cited, regarded antiquity, example, custom, law, prescription? This sage people considered every political novelty with a jealousy equal to the admiration with which it is regarded by the new school. Trial, proof, experience, was the slow criterion by which they ventured to decide on the excellence of any institution. While, to the licentious innovator, antiquity is ignorance, custom is tyranny, order is intolerance, laws are chains. But the end has corresponded with the beginning. Their "baseless fabrics" have fallen to pieces before they were well reared; and have exposed their superficial, but selfsufficient builders, to the just derision of mankind. CHAPTER VII. Greece. WHEN We contemplate Greece, and especially when we fix our eyes on Athens, our admiration is strongly, I had almost said, is irresistibly excited, in reflecting, that such a diminutive spot concentrated within itself whatever is great and eminent in almost every point of view; whatever confers distinction on the human intellect; whatever is calculated to inspire wonder, or communicate delight. Athens was the pure wellhead of poetry: Hither, as to their fountain, other stars Repairing, in their golden urns draw light. It was the theatre of arms, the cradle of the arts, the school of philosophy, and the parent of elo quence. To be regarded as the masters in learning, the oracle of taste, and the standard of politeness, to the whole civilized world, is a splendid distinction. But it is a pestilent mischief, when the very renown attending such brilliant advantages becomes the vehicle for carrying into other countries the depraved manners by which these pre-eminent advantages are accompanied. This was confessedly the case of Greece with respect to Rome. Rome had conquered Greece by her arms; but whenever a subjugated country contributes, by her vices, to enslave the state which conquered her, she amply revenges herself. But the perils of this contamination do not terminate with their immediate consequences. The ill effects of Grecian manners did not cease with the corruptions which they engendered at Rome. There is still a serious danger, lest, while the ardent and high-spirited young reader contemplates Greece only through the splendid medium of her heroes and her artists, her poets and her orators; while his imagination is fired with the glories of conquest, and captivated with the charms of literature, that he may lose sight of the disorders, the corruptions, and the crimes, by which Athens, the famous seat of arts and of letters, was dishonoured. May he not be tinctured (allowing for change of circumstances) with something of that spirit which inflamed Alexander, when, as he was passing the Hydaspes, he enthusiastically exclaimed, "O Athenians! could you believe to what dangers I expose myself, for the sake of being celebrated by you!" Many of the Athenian vices originated in the very nature of their constitution; in the very spirit of that turbulent democracy which Solon could not restrain, nor the ablest of his successors control. The great founder of their legislation felt the dangers inseparable from the democratic form of govern ment, when he declared," that he had not given them the best laws, but the best which they were able to bear." In the very establishment of his institutions, he betrayed his distrust of this species of government, by those guards and ramparts which he was so assiduous in providing and multiplying. Knowing himself to be incapable of setting aside the popular power, his attention was directed to divest it, as much as possible, of its mischiefs, by the entrenchments that he strove to cast about it. His sagacious mind anticipated the ill effects of that republican restlessness, that at length completely overturned the state which it had so often menaced, and so constantly distracted. This unsettled government, which left the country perpetually exposed to the tyranny of the few and the turbulence of the many, was never bound together by any principle of union, by any bond of interest, common to the whole community, except when the general danger, for a time, annihilated the distinction of separate interests. The restraint of laws was feeble; the laws themselves were often contradictory; often ill administered; popular intrigues and tumultuous assemblies frequently obstructing their operation. The noblest services were not seldom rewarded with imprisonment, exile, or assassination. Under every change, confiscation and proscription were never at a stand; and the only way of effacing the impression of any revolution which had produced these outrages, was to promote a new one, which engendered, in its turn, fresh outrages, and improved upon the antecedent disorders. By this light and capricious people, acute in their feelings, carried away by every sudden gust of passion, as mutable in their opinions as unjust in their decisions, the most illustrious patriots were first sacrificed, and then honoured with statues; their heroes were murdered as traitors, and then reverenced as gods. This wanton abuse of authority, this rash injustice, and fruitless repentance, would be the inevitable consequence of lodging supreme power in the hands of a vain and variable populace, inconstant in their very vices, perpetually vibrating between irretrievable crimes and ineffectual regrets. That powerful oratory, which is to us so just a subject of admiration, was, doubtless, no inconsiderable cause of the public disorders. And to that exquisite talent, which constitutes one of the chief boasts of Athens, we may look for one principal source of her disorders: Those ancients, whose resistless eloquence Shook th' arsenal, and fulmin'd over Greece, When we consider what mighty influence this talent gave to the popular leaders, and what a powerful engine their demagogues possessed, to work upon the passions of the multitude, who composed their popular assemblies; when we reflect on the character of those crowds on whom this stirring eloquence was exercised, and remember that their opinion decided on the fate of the country: all this will contribute to account for the frequency and violence of the public commotions, and naturally explains why that rhetorical genius, which shed so bright a lustre on the country, was, from the nature of the constitution, frequently the instrument of convulsing it. While the higher class, in many of the Greek republics, seemed without scruple to oppress their inferiors, the populace of Athens commonly exerted the same hostile spirit of resentment against their leaders. Competition, circumvention, litigation ; every artifice of private fraud, every stratagem of personal injustice, filled up the short intervals of foreign wars and public contests. How strikingly is St. Paul's definition of that light and frivolous propensity of the Athenians, which led them to pass the day only "to hear or to tell some new thing," illustrated, by Plutarch's relation of the illiterate citizen, who voted Aristides to the punishment of the ostracism !* When this great man questioned his accuser, whether Aristides had ever injured him, he replied, so far from it, that he did not even know him, only he was quite wearied out with hearing him every where called the just. Besides that spirit of envy which is peculiarly alive in democracies; to have heard this excellent person calumniated, would have been a refreshing novelty, and have enabled him " to tell a new thing." That passionate fondness for scenic diversions, which led the Athenians not only to apply part of the public money to the support of the theatres, and to pay for the admission of the populace, but also made it a capital crime to divert this fund to any other service, even to the service of the state, so sacred was this application of it deemed-was another concurrent cause of the profligacy of public manners. The abuses to which this universal A popular mode of condemning a person accused of state offences among the Athenians. Each citizen inscribed his name on a shell pronouncing the decree of guilty. Hence the term Ostracism, from a word signifying a shell.-ED. † Pericles not being rich enough to supplant his competitor by acts of liberality, procured this law, with a view to make his court to the people. He scrupled not, in order to secure their attachment to his person and government, by thus "buying them with their own money," effectually to promote their natural levity and idleness, and to corrupt their morals. rulers of a neighbouring nation have been too skilful adepts in the art of corruption, not to admire and eagerly adopt an example so suited to their political circumstances, and so congenial to their national frivolity. Accordingly, an unexampled mul The |