f their war-ships, to-morrow on that of a tragic chorus;
now examining with jealous forethought the new harriers to
oligarchical ambition;--now appointing, with nice distinction, to
various service the various combinations of music [220];--now
welcoming in their forum-senate the sober ambassadors of Lacedaemon or
the jewelled heralds of Persia, now voting their sanction to new
temples or the reverent reforms of worship; compelled to a lively and
unceasing interest in all that arouses the mind, or elevates the
passions, or refines the taste;--supreme arbiters of the art of the
sculptor, as the science of the lawgiver,--judges and rewarders of the
limner and the poet, as of the successful negotiator or the prosperous
soldier; we see at once the all-accomplished, all-versatile genius of
the nation, and we behold in the same glance the effect and the
cause:--every thing being referred to the people, the people learned
of every thing to judge. Their genius was artificially forced, and in
each of its capacities. They had no need of formal education. Their
whole life was one school. The very faults of their assembly, in its
proneness to be seduced by extraordinary eloquence, aroused the
emulation of the orator, and kept constantly awake the imagination of
the audience. An Athenian was, by the necessity of birth, what Milton
dreamed that man could only become by the labours of completest
education: in peace a legislator, in war a soldier,--in all times, on
all occasions, acute to judge and resolute to act. All that can
inspire the thought or delight the leisure were for the people.
Theirs were the portico and the school--theirs the theatre, the
gardens, and the baths; they were not, as in Sparta, the tools of the
state--they were the state! Lycurgus made machines and Solon men. In
Sparta the machine was to be wound up by the tyranny of a fixed
principle; it could not dine as it pleased--it could not walk as it
pleased--it was not permitted to seek its she machine save by stealth
and in the dark; its children were not its own--even itself had no
property in self. Sparta incorporated, under the name of freedom, the
worst complexities, the most grievous and the most frivolous
vexations, of slavery. And therefore was it that Lacedaemon
flourished and decayed, bequeathing to fame men only noted for hardy
valour, fanatical patriotism, and profound but dishonourable craft--
attracting, indeed, the wonder of the world, but adv