Remarquez bien que les nez ont ete faits pour
porter des lunettes, aussi avons nous des lunettes. Les jambes sont
visiblement institues pour etre chaussees, et nous avons des chausses.
Les cochons etant faits pour etre manges, nous mangeons du porc toute
l'annee."

At Athens the laws did not constantly interfere with the tastes of the
people. The children were not taken from their parents by that universal
step-mother, the state. They were not starved into thieves, or tortured
into bullies; there was no established table at which every one must
dine, no established style in which every one must converse. An Athenian
might eat whatever he could afford to buy, and talk as long as he could
find people to listen. The government did not tell the people what
opinions they were to hold, or what songs they were to sing. Freedom
produced excellence. Thus philosophy took its origin. Thus were produced
those models of poetry, of oratory, and of the arts, which scarcely fall
short of the standard of ideal excellence. Nothing is more conducive to
happiness than the free exercise of the mind in pursuits congenial to
it. This happiness, assuredly, was enjoyed far more at Athens than at
Sparta. The Athenians are acknowledged even by their enemies to have
been distinguished, in private life, by their courteous and amiable
demeanour. Their levity, at least, was better than Spartan sullenness
and their impertinence than Spartan insolence. Even in courage it may be
questioned whether they were inferior to the Lacedaemonians. The great
Athenian historian has reported a remarkable observation of the great
Athenian minister. Pericles maintained that his countrymen, without
submitting to the hardships of a Spartan education, rivalled all the
achievements of Spartan valour, and that therefore the pleasures and
amusements which they enjoyed were to be considered as so much clear
gain. The infantry of Athens was certainly not equal to that of
Lacedaemon; but this seems to have been caused merely by want of
practice: the attention of the Athenians was diverted from the
discipline of the phalanx to that of the trireme. The Lacedaemonians, in
spite of all their boasted valour, were, from the same cause, timid and
disorderly in naval action.

But we are told that crimes of great enormity were perpetrated by the
Athenian government, and the democracies under its protection. It is
true that Athens too often acted up to the full extent of the laws of