ars since the time of Elizabeth.
There is not the least reason to believe that the principles of
government, legislation, and political economy, were better understood
in the time of Augustus Caesar than in the time of Pericles. In our
own country, the sound doctrines of trade and jurisprudence have
been, within the lifetime of a single generation, dimly hinted, boldly
propounded, defended, systematised, adopted by all reflecting men of all
parties, quoted in legislative assemblies, incorporated into laws and
treaties.

To what is this change to be attributed? Partly, no doubt, to the
discovery of printing, a discovery which has not only diffused knowledge
widely, but, as we have already observed, has also introduced into
reasoning a precision unknown in those ancient communities, in which
information, was, for the most part, conveyed orally. There was, we
suspect, another cause, less obvious, but still more powerful.

The spirit of the two most famous nations of antiquity was remarkably
exclusive. In the time of Homer the Greeks had not begun to consider
themselves as a distinct race. They still looked with something of
childish wonder and awe on the riches and wisdom of Sidon and Egypt.
From what causes, and by what gradations, their feelings underwent a
change, it is not easy to determine. Their history, from the Trojan to
the Persian war, is covered with an obscurity broken only by dim and
scattered gleams of truth. But it is certain that a great alteration
took place. They regarded themselves as a separate people. They had
common religious rites, and common principles of public law, in which
foreigners had no part. In all their political systems, monarchical,
aristocratical, and democratical, there was a strong family likeness.
After the retreat of Xerxes and the fall of Mardonius, national pride
rendered the separation between the Greeks and the barbarians complete.
The conquerors considered themselves men of a superior breed, men who,
in their intercourse with neighbouring nations, were to teach, and
not to learn. They looked for nothing out of themselves. They borrowed
nothing. They translated nothing. We cannot call to mind a single
expression of any Greek writer earlier than the age of Augustus,
indicating an opinion that anything worth reading could be written in
any language except his own. The feelings which sprung from national
glory were not altogether extinguished by national degradation. They
were fon