s that dwelt in ancient times around and near the
northern shores of the Mediterranean Sea were the first in our continent
to receive from the East the rudiments of art and literature, and the
germs of social and political organizations. Of these nations the
Greeks, through their vicinity to Asia Minor, Phoenicia, and Egypt, were
among the very foremost in acquiring the principles and habits of
civilized life; and they also at once imparted a new and wholly original
stamp on all which they received. Thus, in their religion, they received
from foreign settlers the names of all their deities and many of their
rites, but they discarded the loathsome monstrosities of the Nile, the
Orontes, and the Ganges; they nationalized their creed, and their own
poets created their beautiful mythology. No sacerdotal caste ever
existed in Greece.

So, in their governments, they lived long under hereditary kings, but
never endured the permanent establishment of absolute monarchy. Their
early kings were constitutional rulers, governing with defined
prerogatives. And long before the Persian invasion, the kingly form of
government had given way in almost all the Greek states to republican
institutions, presenting infinite varieties of the blending or the
alternate predominance of the oligarchical and democratical principles.
In literature and science the Greek intellect followed no beaten track,
and acknowledged no limitary rules. The Greeks thought their subjects
boldly out; and the novelty of a speculation invested it in their minds
with interest, and not with criminality.

Versatile, restless, enterprising, and self-confident, the Greeks
presented the most striking contrast to the habitual quietude and
submissiveness of the Orientals; and, of all the Greeks, the Athenians
exhibited these national characteristics in the strongest degree. This
spirit of activity and daring, joined to a generous sympathy for the
fate of their fellow-Greeks in Asia, had led them to join in the last
Ionian war, and now mingling with their abhorrence of the usurping
family of their own citizens, which for a period had forcibly seized on
and exercised despotic power at Athens, nerved them to defy the wrath of
King Darius, and to refuse to receive back at his bidding the tyrant
whom they had some years before driven out.

The enterprise and genius of an Englishman have lately confirmed by
fresh evidence, and invested with fresh interest, the might of the
Persi