a later
date than 413 B.C. betray an attitude towards political life distinct
from that which characterizes his earlier works. The shading-in of the
life of the State into that of the individual defies analysis, and it
were hazardous to affirm what traits of thought ought to be referred to
the genius of the State as distinct from the individual; but it appears
as difficult to imagine _before_ Syracuse, the vehement insistence upon
Justice, the impassioned idealization which characterize Plato,
Socrates, and Demosthenes, as it is difficult _after_ Syracuse to
imagine the political temper of a Pericles or an Anaxagoras.

[6] The Greek orators and philosophers of the fourth century B.C. had
before them a problem not without resemblances to that which confronted
the Hebrew prophets of Judaea in the seventh. Even their most
speculative writings had a practical end, a goal which they considered
attainable by Hellas, or by Athens. The disappearance of Socrates from
the _Laws_, the increased seriousness of the treatment of Sparta and of
Crete, the original and paragon of Lacedaemon, may indicate a
concession to the prejudices of a generation which had grown up since
Aegospotami, and a last effort by Plato to bring his teaching home to
the common life of Athens and of Hellas. So in the England of the
seventeenth century the political writings of Bacon and Hobbes, of
Milton and Harrington, though speculative in form, are most practical
in their aims. Hobbes' first literary effort indeed, his version of
Thucydides, is planned as a warning to England against civil discord
and its ills. This was in 1628--fatal date!

[7] The elder Pitt may be regarded as the first great minister of the
English _people_ as distinguished from men like Thomas Cromwell,
Stratford, or Clarendon, who strictly were ministers of the king. "It
rains gold-boxes," Horace Walpole writes when, in April, 1757. Pitt
was dismissed, and it was these tokens of his popularity with the
merchants of England, not the recognition of his genius by the king,
which led to his return to office in June. The events of the period of
four years and ten months during which this man was dictator of the
House of Commons and of England are so graven on all hearts that a mere
enumeration in order of time suffices to recall moving incidents,
characters, and scenes of epic grandeur:--December 17th, 1756,
Pitt-Devonshire ministry formed, Highland regiments raised, national
mi