of Asia; coping with that power before which he had fallen; defeating its countless myriads; and at last prescribing to its now submissive lord how far his vessels might be permitted to sail, beyond what limits they should not trespass, and within what distance of the coast the horsemen of the king should dare to ride?

The stubborn patriotism of the younger of these two nations had achieved this great victory. Yes! to the eternal glory of Athens be it recorded, she, and she alone, was the deliverer of Greece! Had she once faltered, every thing must have gone down before the invader's power. It cannot be denied that, in the glorious struggle which freed Greece from the power of the Persian, almost the entire praise, not only of courage, but of nobleness, wisdom, and disinterestedness, lies on the side of Athens. The gratitude which she reaped was proportionate. And who can doubt but that gratitude would have been lasting-who can suppose that Greece would ever have forgotten what she owed to Athens, how true Athens had been to her, had Athens but have continued true to herself?

In the Peloponnesian war which followed so soon after the great conflict with the East, and which in our eyes seems to partake of the character of a civil contest, the wonderful and almost supernatural events of the preceding struggle are indeed wanting; but yet the stake is not less great; and the much-extended list of conflicting principles and interests, which are found to enter into the contest, supply the want of magnitude and grandeur of conquests, by the intensity of the feelings embarked in it.

Accustomed, as we very naturally are, to look with suspicion on Sparta, for her dilatory and nigh fatal conduct in the Persian warknowing little of her internal habits or constitution, or over-ready to set them down as harsh and revolting, as contrasted with the polish and elegance of those of her opponents— unacquainted with the literary productions of the one, whilst we seem at home with the other, through the writings of her orators, her poets, and her historians,- we seldom hesitate to attach ourselves to that side, to that nation, which even now stands

before us "in the bodily frame and substance of her glorious literature." And yet such was not the feeling of those who were most interested in the event of the conflict-of the great body of the states of Greece at the outbreaking of the Peloponnesian war. Could they, by this time, have forgotten how noble, how courageous, how wise in purpose, how disinterested in execution, Athens had been during the earlier years of that arduous struggle with the Persian? No; the conference with the King of Macedon, the heroic line of conduct which the Athenians then laid down for themselves, and from which they never swerved one iota, was yet fresh in their memory. Besides, the wisdom, the perseverance, the ability, which Athens had shewn in the concluding occurrences of that war, constituted far more recent claims of gratitude which she had on the states of Greece. And yet how frankly does the great historian of the Peloponnesian war admit, that at the outbreak of the conflict the preference of the great body of the states of Greece was decidedly with the Spartans!

Among the reasons which may be assigned for this preference, are those feelings of respect for superior birth and ancestral reputation (feelings too inherent in our hearts ever to be eradicated by the sharpest sayings of wits and satirists), which in those days exercised a very powerful influence over the affections of the men of Greece. Of the two races by whom the allegiance of the minor states was sought, they could not but admit that superiority, as well of descent as of ancestral reputation, lay on the side of Sparta. In the mythoheroic poems, the great Heraclide family enjoyed all that fame which mythic poetry can give, whilst the Athenians were comparatively unknown. That the latter nation were themselves well aware of this their inferiority, and of the effect it must naturally have, their actions amply prove. Peisistratus, we are told, in order to please the Athenian people, inserted among the airy tenants of the Elysian land of Homer the phantoms of Theseus and Pirithous; and took good care that Ulysses should not leave the shades below until he had seen those heroes, and, though not introduced to them, had most carefully noted their ap

pearance in his diary, for the benefit of Attic genealogists.* Mark, too, the studied care with which history was falsified, in order that the overproud title of Autochthones should be called in question as little as possible, and all traces of the forcible occupation of Attica and the foreign origin of the Eupatrida might be obliterated. Consider how the vacant period between the times of the Erecththidæ and the Ægide was supplied with arbitrarily devised fables, and the interposition of Ion misrepresented in a thousand various ways; and how, even in later days, we find the popular poet, Euripides, assisting in the continuation of these falsehoods, and ingeniously altering the entire fable of Xuthus, so as to make it appear that Ion was no new-comer, but the legitimate descendant of the female branch of the Erecththida.f Why, then, all this craving after Autochthonic descent, this love of genealogies, this falsifying of records, among a people so entirely democratic? Was it not from the innate respect which always has been, and always will be, entertained, however they may seek to conceal it, by even the most democratic, for blood and birth? that natural assurance, which all must and do feel, that high birth is a guarantee for the cultivation of those virtues, without which it is rather a degradation than an honour-from that reliance which always has been, and always will be, placed on the honour of a nobleman and the word of a gentleman, equally with the oath of the ignoble, and preferably to that of the serf? But, besides all this, in the times of which we now are treating, the patriarchal right of the elder branch, not only to the respect, but also to the obedience of the younger, was universally recognised, and must have gone far to influence many of the states of Greece in their decision, and make the majority more willing to side with that nation which could trace its uninter

rupted and unquestioned descent from the third generation in the new æra of mankind, to that which failed of tracing its origin beyond the fourth, and which was continually disgracing itself by creating false claims to higher antiquity. And when we know that all Greece looked upon the kings of Sparta as nearly allied to the great god of their land, and reverencing them before all created men then on earth, hesitated to strike them in the day of battle when the opportunity offered,t-how can we help admitting that the claims which were advanced by, and allowed to, Sparta, of superior descent, formed one, and very far from a weak cause, of the feelings of the states of Greece being so decidedly (raga ov) with the Spartans at the outbreaking of the Peloponnesian war?

Grateful as the states of Greece must have been to Athens, not only for her conduct during the height of the Persian war, but also for the perseverance with which she carried on that war to its close, and rested not until she had eradicated every remnant of Eastern influence, as well in the isles of the Ægean and the coasts of Ionia, as on the continent of Greece, -willing as they were to concede to her the lead when the war became too remote and too naval for the Spartans, still they could not shut their eyes to the use to which the Athenians had converted the continuance of the war, and the ingenious and plausible methods by which they had rendered it so conducive to the gradual enlargement of their powers and their resources.

Again, we are assured by Aristotle that the origin of the plethocracy, or rather pantocracy, of the Athenian state, was to be dated from the success of the naval forces at Salamis. The victories of Platea and Marathon might have been repeated very many times, without causing any alteration in the relative power of the rulers and the ruled; though con

tinued and oft-repeated success in military enterprises might, indeed, at last have tended to depress the power of the people. The heavy-armed soldier of those days, on whose powers and prowess the fate of the engagement depended, was of much superior rank to the mass of the people, by whom he was paid, and for whom he nominally fought; and his feelings were rather with that class to which he might hope to attain, than with that from which he sprung: as for his inferiors, he despised them. In the naval service, too, the commanders and the marines-if such a term may be applied to those heavyarmed troops which formed part of every ship's complement-were of superior rank, and looked down on the moving power of the ship, the sinews by which the oars were rowed, the crashing stroke given, as a modern manufacturer does on his steamengine, or rather his unfortunate factory children, as mere living machines

the έμψυχα όργανα of Aristotle. When the battle was won, and the rewards distributed among the leaders, these living machines began to clamour for their dues. They had toiled without ceasing for the cause of Athens and of Greece; they had borne the heat and burden of the great day; they too would be rewarded; they would claim to influence that government for whose benefit their energies, their lives, were employed; they would be heard in the agora, and they were heard.

These men, the very lowest dregs of the Piræus- "the bench-tied populace "*-worked gradually and surely to the downfal of Athens. No government could be more uncertain, more inconsistent, more ruinously expensive, than that which naturally resulted from the large admixture of the lowest people among the legislators of the agora. To her own citizens the terrors of that rule were sufficiently great. What must they have been to their allies-to the allies of that nation which regarded them as mere engines for its own aggrandisement, and their treasures and their resources as the legitimate supporters of the frivolities and extravagances of Athens? "The arm of Athens was indeed a long

one, the gripe of Athens indeed a tight one, as many an island in the Egean, and many a town on the Ionian coast, could witness to their sorrow."

With this rapid progression of ultra-democratic influence in the constitution of Athens, since the battle of Salamis, so constantly before them, and with a certain knowledge and ofttimes sad experience of the fluctuations to which such a popular voice was liable, what confidence could the states of Greece place in the Athenian nation? Conscious, as they must have been, of the natural restlessness of the Athenian character-of the tendency of that people to fly from one proposition to its very opposite-to court one demagogue to-day, and send him sis xogaxas to-morrow-they could not confide in their assurances, their protestations, or their proffered friendship. And although they might reverence many among them as the best, the wisest, and ablest men of the æra, they could not trust to the present power or influence of the favourite of the agora, as the same power which set him up but as yesterday might consign him to a cruel death on the morrow. Nothing but continued bribes could keep the pulace of Athens in good-humour with their leaders; and though they cared little whether the bribe arose from the confiscation of a rich citizen, or the robbery of a richer ally, provided it must be, unless the leader preferred the loss of power, pay, and life. With such vast resources, and more vast desires, with a situation the most suitable for aggression, few could regard Athens in any other light than that of a hotbed of dangerous ambition. In the opponents of this fickle nation, the cold, sober, stoical Spartans, they might perceive much to find fault with, much to condemn; but they could not discover in them that dangerous craving after power which appeared so plainly in their rivals. They did see them to be situated in a country little fitted for encroachments on them and their territories, and naturally inclined rather to defend what they had acquired than to seek to add to it by further acquisitions. But more than this,

po

they felt that dependence could be placed on the public faith of the government, and that there would not be on her part capricious or wayward feelings, but such a fixedness of purpose and constancy of principle as the stability and uniformity of her constitution seemed to guarantee. One nation, indeed, may have been, and most probably was, influenced by far different motives, Athens' most bitter and persevering enemy, the state of Corinth. Were Athens overthrown, she might naturally expect, from her bimarine situation, to succeed to her place, and to add to her favourite epithet of rich, that muchdesired one of mighty. Holding in her own hands the key of the Peloponnese, whilst through her two ports she could threaten the whole circuit of its shores with her naval forces, she might well desire to erase the name of Athens from among her rivals, and to reign without an equal on the seas. But the rest of the states of Greece too clearly saw that they would be in no way benefited by this change of power, this shifting of the too dangerous naval supremacy from Athens to Corinth. Reduced and fettered, so as to be no longer a continued source of fear and danger, they wished that Athens might still remain, in sufficient power to admit of her being balanced, as occasion might require, against any unexpected encroachment of her rival; and sufficiently independent to insure that continuance of good and great men who, in the hour of danger, might once more come forth and lead the united fleets of Greece against the power of some later Xerxes.

We have stated that those fixed and constant principles of thought and action among the Spartans, which were opposed to the restlessness and inconsistency of the Athenians, were the result of that remodelled form of government which Sparta received from her lawgiver, Lycurgus. We wish to shew, that as from the democracy of the Athenians the inconstancy and restless ambition of the people resulted, so did the fixedness of purpose and constancy of principle of the Spartans flow from the aristocratic nature of their constitution.

Respecting the origin and the reputed author of the Spartan polity,

no two opinions can be conceived more diametrically opposed to one another than those which have been dreamed of, entertained, and contended for, by critics of the highest German breed and best authority, in matters classical as well as metaphysico-critical. The one party accord to Lycurgus the merit, not only of introducing and establishing this polity among his countrymen, but also of thinking it out in all its minutiæ. In their eyes it appears as a wondrous and mysterious prodigy of art, claiming their admiration on account of its execution, and the power required for its completion ; whilst, to the other side, Lycurgus sinks into " a mere symbol of a developement of gradual change," "an hieroglyphical note of a spontaneous growth," which at the very utmost required only a few touches from the hand of man to bring it to its maturity. Is it possible that either of these theories can be correct? With the right reverend and learned Bishop of St. David's, we can hardly think that such can be the case. But as this is but a flourish of trumpets wherewith to herald in a new theory, a mere prelude to introducing on the stage our own view of how matters stood in those days, it will be but fair to notice some of the authorities by which the advocates of the rival theories endeavour to support them; The chief, and perhaps the most respectable, witness tendered in evidence by the Artificialists- if we may be allowed so to designate the favourers of a real and actually existing Lycurgus, in opposition and contradistinction to the Materialists, or gradual developement party—is a very distinct and decidedly favourable dictum, which appears in the concluding chapter of the second. book of the Politics of Aristotle; in which, in so many words, he sets Lycurgus down as an inventor of constitutions in opposition to merę reformers of old abuses, and restorers of ancient customs. Now, though we cannot determine with mathematical accuracy how many authors are required to outweigh one Aristotle, or go the entire swine with Professor Goetling, and balance him against a thousand Neposes; yet so great is our respect for and just confidence in that writer-for we can

not but believe, and that with reason, that his knowledge was most boundless, his accuracy unquestionablethat unless we can satisfy ourselves of the illegitimacy of the passage so relied on by the Artificialists, we will say to them, in the words of Dicaologus,

"We are convinced; Here, wagtails, catch our cloak; we'll be among ye."

But to proceed. The chapter on which this all-powerful dictum is discoverable is the last of the second book of the Treatise on Politics; in which chapter certain general remarks are made on legislators and polity-inventors, and a short, very short, account given of the constitution of Solon, and one or two unknown concocters of laws dismissed in as many words. When we consider the brevity of the dictum, we might almost feel inclined to question the propriety of deducing so long and serious a conclusion from such a minute premise; but in due deference to that modern school of criticism, whereby a word is elevated into a system, and a guiltless article made the narrow basis of a broad theory, we will admit, for argument sake, the authority of the dictum, if really and truly an Aristotelic, and proceed to consider its right and title to so high a position.

On referring to the first chapter of the second book of the Treatise, we discover that the remarks with which this concluding chapter opens are nothing more than a very diluted and watery version of a very concise and purely Aristotelic sentence with which the earlier chapter is graced. This is, to say the very least, a very suspicious commencement. Proceeding onwards, we have an account of the Solonic polity, very imperfect, very erroneous, and couched in such language as no Athenian, to judge from example, and certainly

no Aristotle, would have condescended to use on such a subject.

"Some think," says this would-be Aristotle, "that Solon was a good legislator; some find fault with Solon." Again, we find vouwv noügyor used to signify a fabricator of laws; and αἱ δίκαι τῶν ψευδομαρτύρων instead of ψευδομαρτυριών. * This is a rather suspicious middle; at least it is doubtful. But, to conclude, let us examine this philosopher's actual account of the constitution of Athens, as formed by Solon. He says, or rather is made to say, thus:-"Solon confined all authority to the Euréga and the vagina; or, rather, made those alone eligible to office who were of those classes,-that is to say, of the class of the Pentecosiomedimni, the Zeugitæ, and the third class called that of the knights." Had any one of us made this discovery at school, the probabilities would have been in favour of a speedy application of the ferule. Had any respectable schoolmaster at Athens, much less such a highly reputed and learned doctor in history, philosophy, and the laws, as Aristotle, often indulged himself in such politico-historical vagaries, such indulgence would have gone very far to shut up his school-room, and leave his lecture-room as empty as that of some professor at the University College of London, during the holding of a meeting in favour of some last new reform-bill at Freemasons' Tavern, Exeter Hall, or Coldbath Fields. What would have been the astonishment of Aristotle's hearers, had he at one time informed them that the knights-perhaps the respected sires or uncles of his best pupils were but third-class men, whilst at another lecture, perhaps but a few weeks before, he had placed them in number two, where Solon had always intended them to remain? Yet such is the case. We have already seen how this Aristotle has reduced this respectable body of