of posterity by bestowing, instead of displeasure, additional distinctions on the author and adviser of the struggle which had preserved their honor, though not their safety or their freedom.

In every respect, Athens deserved the high commendation given her by Pericles, in his Funeral Oration, of being the educator of Greece.* And we cannot better set forth the characteristics of this great commonwealth at its greatest period than by following Mr. Grote in quoting some passages from that celebrated discourse.†

"We live under a constitution such as noway to envy the laws of our neighbors; ourselves an example to others, rather than imitators. It is called a democracy, since its aim tends towards the Many, and not towards the Few. In regard to private matters and disputes, the laws deal equally with every one; while, in respect to public dignity and importance, the position of each is determined, not by class influence, but by worth, according as his reputation stands in his particular department: nor does poverty or obscure station keep him back, if he has any capacity of benefiting the State. And our social march is free, not merely in regard to public affairs, but also in regard to tolerance of each other's diversity of tastes and pursuits. For we are not angry with our neighbor for what he does to please himself; nor do we put on those sour looks, which are offensive, though they do no positive damage. Thus conducting our private social intercourse with reciprocal indulgence, we are restrained from misconduct in public matters by fear and reverence of our magistrates for the time being, and of our laws, especially such laws as are

* Τὴν πᾶσαν πόλιν τῆς Ἑλλάδος παίδευσιν εἶναι. — Thuc., ii. 41. † Vol. vi. pp. 193-196. We have ventured to change a few expres. sions in Mr. Grote's translation, in order, though at the expense of smoothness, to bring it closer to the literal meaning of the original.

instituted for the protection of the wronged, and such as, though unwritten, are enforced by a common sense of shame. Besides this, we have provided for our minds numerous recreations from toil, partly by our customary solemnities of sacrifice and festival throughout the year, partly by the elegance of our private arrangements, the daily charm of which banishes pain and annoyance. From the magnitude of our city, the products of the whole earth are brought to us, so that our enjoyment of foreign luxuries is as much our own, and assured, as of those which we produce at home. In respect to training for war, we differ from our opponents (the Lacedæmonians) on several material points. First, we lay open our city as a common resort: we apply no xenêlasy to exclude any one from any lesson or spectacle, for fear lest an enemy should see and profit by it; for we trust less to manœuvres and artifices, than to native boldness of spirit, for warlike efficiency. Next, in regard to education: while the Lacedæmonians, even from their earliest youth, subject themselves to an irksome exercise for the attainment of courage, we, with our easy habits of life, are not less prepared than they to encounter all perils within the measure of our strength. . . .

...

We combine taste for the beautiful with frugality of life, and cultivate intellectual speculation without being enervated: we employ wealth for the service of our occasions, not for the ostentation of talk; nor is it disgraceful to any one who is poor to confess himself so, though he may be blamed for not actively bestirring himself to get rid of his poverty. Our politicians are not exempted from attending to their private affairs, and our private citizens have a competent knowledge of public matters; for we stand alone in regarding the man who keeps aloof from politics, not as a blameless person, but as a useless one. Far from accounting discussion an impediment to action, we think it an evil not to have been instructed by deliberation before the time for execution arrives. For, in truth, we combine, in a remarkable manner, boldness in ac

tion, with full debate beforehand on that which we are going about; whereas, with others, ignorance alone imparts daring, debate induces hesitation. Assuredly those ought to be regarded as the stoutest of heart, who, knowing most accurately both the terrors of war and the sweets of peace, are still not the less willing to encounter peril."

This picture, drawn by Pericles and transmitted by Thucydides, of ease of living, and freedom from social intolerance, combined with the pleasures of cultivated taste, and a lively interest and energetic participation in public affairs, is one of the most interesting passages in Greek history; placed, as it is, in the speech in which the first of Athenian statesmen professed to show "by what practices and by what institutions and manners the city had become great.” * This remarkable testimony, as Mr. Grote has not failed to point out, wholly conflicts, so far as Athens is concerned, with what we are so often told about the entire sacrifice, in the ancient republics, of the liberty of the individual to an imaginary good of the State. In the greatest Greek commonwealth, as described by its most distinguished citizen, the public interest was held of paramount obligation in all things which concerned it: but, with that part of the conduct of individuals which concerned only themselves, public opinion did not interfere; while, in the ethical practice of the moderns, this is exactly re

It is worthy of notice, that in the speech of Nicias to his troops, preceding their final death-struggle in the harbor of Syracuse, he, too (if correctly reported by Thucydides), reminds them of the same feature in their national institutions and habits, the unrivalled freedom of the individual in respect to his mode of life:

πατρίδος τε τῆς ἐλευθερωτάτης ὑπομιμνήσκων, καὶ τῆς ἐν αὐτῇ ἀνεπιτάκτου πᾶσιν ἐς τὴν δίαιταν ἐξουσίας. — Thuc., vii. 69.

versed, and no one is required by opinion to pay any regard to the public, except by conducting his own private concerns in conformity to its expectations. On this vital question of social morals, Mr. Grote's remarks, though belonging to an earlier volume than those which we are reviewing, are too valuable, as well as too much to the purpose, to require any apology for quoting them (vol. vi. pp. 200–2): —

"The stress which he (Pericles) lays upon the liberty of thought and action at Athens, not merely from excessive restraint of law, but also from practical intolerance between man and man, and tyranny of the majority over individual dissenters in taste and pursuits, deserves serious notice, and brings out one of those points in the national character upon which the intellectual development of the time mainly depended. The national temper was indulgent in a high degree to all the varieties of positive impulses: the peculiar promptings in every individual bosom were allowed to manifest themselves, and bear fruit, without being suppressed by external opinion, or trained into forced conformity with some assumed standard: antipathies against any of them formed no part of the habitual morality of the citizen. While much of the generating causes of human hatred was thus rendered inoperative, and while society was rendered more comfortable, more instructive, and more stimulating, all its germs of productive fruitful genius, so rare everywhere, found in such an atmosphere the maximum of encouragement. Within the limits of the law, assuredly as faithfully observed at Athens as anywhere in Greece, individual impulse, taste, and even eccentricity, were accepted with indulgence, instead of being a mark, as elsewhere, for the intolerance of neighbors or of the public. This remarkable feature in Athenian life will help us in a future chapter to explain the striking career of Socrates; and it farther presents to us, under another face, a

great part of that which the censors of Athens denounced under the name of "democratical license." The liberty and diversity of individual life in that city were offensive to Xenophon, Plato, and Aristotle, attached either to the monotonous drill of Sparta, or to some other ideal standard, which, though much better than the Spartan in itself, they were disposed to impress upon society with a heavy-handed uniformity. That liberty of individual action, not merely from the over-restraints of law, but from the tyranny of jealous opinion, such as Pericles depicts in Athens, belongs more naturally to a democracy, where there is no select One or Few to receive worship and set the fashion, than to any other form of government. But it is very rare, even in democracies; nor can we dissemble the fact, that none of the governments of modern times, democratical, aristocratical, or monarchical, presents any thing like the picture of generous tolerance towards social dissents, and spontaneity of individual taste, which we read in the speech of the Athenian statesman In all of them, the intolerance of the national opinion cuts down individual character to one out of a few set types, to which every person or every family is constrained to adjust itself, and beyond which all exceptions meet either with hatred or with derision. To impose upon men such restraints, either of law or of opinion, as are requisite for the security and comfort of society, but to encourage rather than repress the free play of individual impulse subject to those limits, is an ideal, which, if it was ever approached at Athens, has certainly never been attained, and has indeed comparatively been little studied or cared for, in any modern society."

The difference here pointed out between the temper of the Athenian and that of the modern mind is most closely connected with the wonderful display of individual genius which made Athens illustrious, and with the comparative mediocrity of modern times. Origi