door of the house Beautiful.

This error was partly the cause and partly the effect of the high
estimation in which the later ancient writers have been held by modern
scholars. Those French and English authors who have treated of the
affairs of Greece have generally turned with contempt from the simple
and natural narrations of Thucydides and Xenophon to the extravagant
representations of Plutarch, Diodorus, Curtius, and other romancers
of the same class,--men who described military operations without ever
having handled a sword, and applied to the seditions of little republics
speculations formed by observation on an empire which covered half
the known world. Of liberty they knew nothing. It was to them a
great mystery--a superhuman enjoyment. They ranted about liberty and
patriotism, from the same cause which leads monks to talk more ardently
than other men about love and women. A wise man values political
liberty, because it secures the persons and the possessions of citizens;
because it tends to prevent the extravagance of rulers, and the
corruption of judges; because it gives birth to useful sciences and
elegant arts; because it excites the industry and increases the comforts
of all classes of society. These theorists imagined that it possessed
something eternally and intrinsically good, distinct from the blessings
which it generally produced. They considered it not as a means but as an
end; an end to be attained at any cost. Their favourite heroes are those
who have sacrificed, for the mere name of freedom, the prosperity--the
security--the justice--from which freedom derives its value.

There is another remarkable characteristic of these writers, in which
their modern worshippers have carefully imitated them--a great fondness
for good stories. The most established facts, dates, and characters are
never suffered to come into competition with a splendid saying, or a
romantic exploit. The early historians have left us natural and simple
descriptions of the great events which they witnessed, and the great men
with whom they associated. When we read the account which Plutarch
and Rollin have given of the same period, we scarcely know our old
acquaintance again; we are utterly confounded by the melo-dramatic
effect of the narration, and the sublime coxcombry of the characters.

These are the principal errors into which the predecessors of Mr Mitford
have fallen; and from most of these he is free. His faults are of a