With the administration of Athenian democracy by Pericles history opens its most resplendent page, the page which should be most resplendent if the historian were competent to do justice to what records of its incidents — unhappily too scanty - have been preserved and recovered. When we consider the marvellous outburst of genius that at this time distinguished Athens, and brought arts suddenly not alone to a great advance, but in fact to absolute perfection, - perfection at least never since surpassed, we cannot but be grateful even to this day that the passion and the power should so have united in Pericles.-W. W. LLOYD.

In brief, I may call the city the school of Greece, and the citizen of Athens is personally best fitted, by variety of talent, for the graceful performance of all the duties of life. — PERICLES.

The ideal of a Grecian education, according to Plato, Isocrates, and Aristotle, combined bodily strength and activity, study, and eloquence, - the qualities of the athlete, the soldier, the scholar, and the And these accomplishments were brought into constant activity by the pursuits and habits of Athenian life. — MAY.

orator.

Athènes, avec son suffrage universel, n'était donc, après tout, qu'une république aristocratique, où tous les nobles avaient un droit égal au gouvernement. DE TOCQUEVILLE.

There has never been another political society in the world, in which the average of the individual citizen stood so high as it did under the Athenian democracy in the days of its greatness. FREEMAN.

Notwithstanding the defects of the social system and moral ideas of antiquity, the practice of the dicastery and the ecclesia raised the intellectual standard of an average Athenian citizen far beyond anything of which there is yet an example in any other mass of men, ancient or modern. MILL.

Nowhere else is to be found a state so small in its origin, and yet so great in its progress; so contracted in its territory, and yet so gigantic in its achievements; so limited in numbers, and yet so immortal in genius. Its dominions on the continent of Greece did not exceed an English county; its free inhabitants never amounted to thirty thousand citizens, and yet these inconsiderable numbers have filled the world with their renown: poetry, philosophy, architecture,

sculpture, tragedy, comedy, geometry, physics, history, politics, almost date their origin from Athenian genius; and the monuments of art with which they have overspread the world still form the standard of taste in every civilized nation on earth. - ALISON.

There seems to be, on the contrary, every reason to believe that, in general intelligence, the Athenian populace far surpassed the lower orders of any community that has ever existed. It must be considered, that to be a citizen was to be a legislator, a soldier, a judge, one upon whose voice might depend the fate of the wealthiest tributary state, of the most eminent public man. The lowest offices, both of agriculture and of trade, were, in common, performed by slaves. The commonwealth supplied its meanest members with the support of life, the opportunity of leisure, and the means of amusement. Books were indeed few, but they were excellent; and they were accurately known. Books, however, were the least part of the education of an Athenian citizen. Let us, for a moment, transport ourselves, in thought, to that glorious city. Let us imagine that we are entering its gates, in the time of its power and glory. A crowd is assembled round a portico. All are gazing with delight at the entablature, for Phidias is putting up the frieze. We turn into another street; a rhapsodist is reciting there; men, women, children, are thronging round him; the tears are running down their cheeks; their eyes are fixed; their very breath is still; for he is telling how Priam fell at the feet of Achilles, and kissed those hands the terrible, the murderous- which had slain so many of his sons. We enter the public place; there is a ring of youths, all leaning forward, with sparkling eyes, and gestures of expectation. Socrates is pitted against the famous Atheist, from Ionia, and has just brought him to a contradiction in terms. But we are interrupted. The herald is crying, "Room for the Prytanes." The general assembly is to meet. The people are swarming in on every side. Proclamation is made, "Who wishes to speak?" There is

a shout, and a clapping of hands, - Pericles is mounting the stand. Then for a play of Sophocles, and away to sup with Aspasia. I know of no modern university which has so excellent a system of education. MACAULAY.

If one of us were transported to Periclean Athens, provided he were a man of high culture, he would find life and manners strangely like our own, strangely modern, as he might term it. The thoughts and

feelings of modern life would be there without the appliances, and the high standard of general culture would more than counterbalance sundry wants in material comfort. For these reasons Greek social life must be far more interesting to general readers than any other phase of ancient history. . . . It was an age of great hurry and prodigious development, when event after event so came crowding upon the people, that they were under the perpetual excitement of some new acquisition or some unexpected danger. So they became a city full of public men, if I may so say, engrossed with state service and with politics, men of little leisure, and of small curiosity in speculating upon the reasons of things, in fact no theorists, but stern men of action, full of earnestness in their lives and allowing themselves little relaxation. I am here speaking of the general tone of Periclean society. The age of Pericles, including the whole period between the battles of Platea and Egospotamos, was an age of rapid political development, possibly also at Athens of literary and certainly of artistic development; but at Athens, and perhaps throughout Greece, one of social and moral stagnation. MAHAFFY.

In strengthening and ornamenting Athens, in developing the full activity of her citizens, in providing temples, religious offerings, works of art, solemn festivals, all of surpassing attraction, — he [Pericles] intended to exalt her into something greater than an imperial city with numerous dependent allies. He wished to make her the centre of Grecian feeling, the stimulus of Grecian intellect, and the type of strong democratical patriotism combined with full liberty of individual taste and aspiration. He wished not merely to retain the adherence of the subject states, but to attract the admiration and spontaneous deference of independent neighbors, so as to procure for Athens a moral ascendency much beyond the range of her direct power. GROTE.

The freedom which gave birth to great events, political changes, and jealousy among the Greeks, planted, as it were in the very production of these effects, the germ of noble and elevated sentiments. As the sight of the boundless surface of the sea, and the dashing of its proud waves upon the rocky shore, expands our views and carries the soul away from, and above, inferior objects, so it was impossible to think ignobly in the presence of deeds so great and men so distinguished. The Greeks, in their palmy days, were a thinking people. WINCKELMANN.

It would be easy to show that the ancient standard of civilization never reached the heights of many modern states. The people were ignorant, vicious, and poor, or degraded to abject slavery, -slavery itself the sum of all injustice and all vice. And even the most illustrious characters, whose names still shine from that distant night with stellar brightness, were little more than splendid barbarians. Architecture, sculpture, painting, and vases of exquisite perfection, attested their appreciation of the beauty of form; but they were strangers to the useful arts, as well as to the comforts and virtues of home. Abounding in what to us are luxuries of life, they had not what to us are its necessaries. CHARLES SUMNER.

With the Athenians, selfishness was the rule of all their actions. They were haughty and quarrelsome with their neighbors; they were cruel to their enemies; they were unfair and ungenerous to their allies; they were unjust to one another. If an oligarchy ruled, they oppressed the people; if the democracy was in the ascendant, they pressed heavily upon the rich they had no consideration, or sense of responsibility towards others, while they squandered the revenues of the state upon their own amusements. Such faults, indeed, were not peculiar to the Athenians who were far more generous and liberal than their Spartan rivals nor to the Greeks. They were the faults of human nature, unregenerated by a pure religion or a high standard of morals, and of an age in which violence and wrong were the law of nations.— MAY.

If any competent judge of moral actions will contemplate their character without prejudice, and unbiassed by their high intellectual endowments, he will find that their private life was unstable and devoid of virtue; that their public life was a tissue of restless intrigues and evil passions; and, what was the worst of all, that there existed to a far greater degree than in the Christian world, a want of moral principle, and a harshness and cruelty in the popular mind. BOECKH.

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Athens, the stately-walled, magnificent!

Proem most beauteous for Alcmæon's race,
Whereon to lay the base

Of sacred song, their steeds' proud ornament!

For what more eminent

Country or home shall I in Grecia name,
Inhabited?

PINDAR. Tr. Cary.

Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts
And eloquence, native to famous wits,
Or hospitable, in her sweet recess,

City or suburban, studious walks and shades.

This was the ruler of the land

When Athens was the land of fame;
This was the light that led the band
When each was like a living flame;
The centre of earth's noblest ring, —
Of more than men the more than king.
He perished, but his wreath was won,-
He perished in his height of fame;
Then sunk the cloud on Athens' sun,
Yet still she conquered in his name.
Filled with his soul, she could not die ;
Her conquest was posterity!

MILTON.

GEORGE CROLY.

During this period the city was adorned with those public buildings, temples, and other works of art which were the glory of the Periclean Age, and which the world has ever since admired.

In history, the great moment is when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty; - and you have Pericles and Phidias, – not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. - EMERSON.

The independence of Greece is to be regarded as the most prominent of the causes, originating in its constitution and government, of its superiority in art. - WINCKELMANN.

Now, we cannot direct art among a people; we can only create an atmosphere favorable to its development. It is the greatest and the imperishable glory of Greece that her civilization admirably understood this principle. — VIOLLET-LE-DUC.