ancing no claim to
its gratitude, and contributing no single addition to its intellectual
stores. But in Athens the true blessing of freedom was rightly
placed--in the opinions and the soul. Thought was the common heritage
which every man might cultivate at his will. This unshackled liberty
had its convulsions and its excesses, but producing unceasing
emulation and unbounded competition, an incentive to every effort, a
tribunal to every claim, it broke into philosophy with the one--into
poetry with the other--into the energy and splendour of unexampled
intelligence with all. Looking round us at this hour, more than
four-and-twenty centuries after the establishment of the constitution we
have just surveyed,--in the labours of the student--in the dreams of the
poet--in the aspirations of the artist--in the philosophy of the
legislator--we yet behold the imperishable blessings we derive from the
liberties of Athens and the institutions of Solon. The life of Athens
became extinct, but her soul transfused itself, immortal and
immortalizing, through the world.

XVII. The penal code of Solon was founded on principles wholly
opposite to those of Draco. The scale of punishment was moderate,
though sufficiently severe. One distinction will suffice to give us
an adequate notion of its gradations. Theft by day was not a capital
offence, but if perpetrated by night the felon might lawfully be slain
by the owner. The tendency to lean to the side of mercy in all cases
may be perceived from this--that if the suffrages of the judges were
evenly divided, it was the custom in all the courts of Athens to
acquit the accused. The punishment of death was rare; that of atimia
supplied its place. Of the different degrees of atimia it is not my
purpose to speak at present. By one degree, however, the offender was
merely suspended from some privilege of freedom enjoyed by the
citizens generally, or condemned to a pecuniary fine; the second
degree allowed the confiscation of goods; the third for ever deprived
the criminal and his posterity of the rights of a citizen: this last
was the award only of aggravated offences. Perpetual exile was a
sentence never passed but upon state criminals. The infliction of
fines, which became productive of great abuse in later times, was
moderately apportioned to offences in the time of Solon, partly from
the high price of money, but partly, also, from the wise moderation of
the lawgiver. The last