n their harbor." Even Plutarch sees nothing suicidal in all
this voluntary isolating of themselves from the main arteries of
commerce.

"Desirous to complete the conquest of luxury and exterminate the love of
riches, he introduced a third institution, which was wisely enough and
ingeniously contrived. This was the use of public tables, where all were
to eat in common of the same meat, and such kinds of it as were
appointed by law. At the same time they were forbidden to eat at home,
or on expensive couches and tables.... Another ordinance levelled
against magnificence and expense, directed that the ceilings of houses
should be wrought with no tool but the axe, and the doors with nothing
but the saw. Indeed, no man could be so absurd as to bring into a
dwelling so homely and simple, bedsteads with silver feet, purple
coverlets, or golden cups." Thus he smothered art and personal ambition,
two of the most requisite essentials to a people on their onward and
upward trend to civilization and success. "A third ordinance of Lycurgus
was, that they should not often make war against the same enemy, lest,
by being frequently put upon defending themselves, they too should
become able warriors in their turn."

And thus he made them defenceless against their enemies.

"For the same reason he would not permit all that desired to go abroad
and see other countries, lest they should contract foreign manners, gain
traces of a life of little discipline, and of a different form of
government. He forbade strangers, too, to resort to Sparta who could not
assign a good reason for their coming!"

Improvement with Lycurgus means retrogression with us. He wished,
perhaps ignorantly, to arrest the progress of civilization and
substitute a slovenly ideal of his own. His purpose was to cancel the
civilization which the race had gained during thousands of years of
effort, and bring it back to a semi-savagery. But the world was too big
for him. It had things in view which were too great for his small,
hampered mind to have any suspicion of. No doubt he was sincere in his
little, infinitesimal way; but it is a blessing for the world that his
influence was confined to a very small corner of the then civilized
world, and that others of broader views succeeded him to manage the
affairs of states and nations. With all deference to old Plutarch, the
biographer of Lycurgus, we wish to say that however grand the laws of
this man may have been as ideals,