e out for ourselves correct reasonings upon them; far from
accounting discussion an impediment to action, we complain only if we
are not told what is to be done before it becomes our duty to do it.'

"The strenuous exertion of the faculties of the individual in the
service of the State, described in these eloquent words, reflects
itself in the highest productions of Greek art and literature, and is
the source of that 'political' spirit which every one can detect,
alike in the poems of Homer and the sculpture of the Parthenon, as
the inspiring cause of the noblest efforts of imitation.
It prevailed most strongly through the period between the battle of
Marathon and the battle of Chaeronea, and has left its monuments in
such plays as the _Persae_ and _Eumeuides_ of AEschylus, the
_Antigone_ of Sophocles, the _Clouds_ of Aristophanes, the History
of Thucydides and the Orations of Demosthenes, its last embodiment
being perhaps the famous oath of that orator on the souls of those
who risked their lives at Marathon."--_History of English Poetry_,
vol. i., c 2.

In the most brilliant age of Greece, then, and of Greek art and letters,
the civic spirit was the inspiring spirit. But as the Greek cities sank
one by one before the Macedonian power and forfeited their liberties, this
civic spirit died for lack of nourishment and exercise, and literature was
driven to feed on itself--which is about the worst thing that can ever
happen to it, and one of the worst things that can happen to a nation.
The old political education gave place to an 'encyclopaedic' education.
The language fell into the hands of grammarians and teachers of rhetoric,
whose inventions may have a certain interest of their own, but--to quote
Mr. Courthope again--no longer reflect the feelings and energies of free
political life. Roman literature drives home the same, or a similar,
moral. "The greatness of Rome was as entirely civic in its origin as that
of any Greek city, and, like the Greek cities, Rome in the days of her
freedom, and while she was still fighting for the mastery, preserved a
system of political education, both in the hearth and the Senate, which
was suited to her character. Cato, the Censor, according to Plutarch,
'wrote histories for his son, with his own hand, in large characters; so
that without leaving his father's house he might gain a knowledge of the
illus