Cimon employed his ample fortune in embellishing the city and adorning the public places with trees. He built the first of those noble porticos, of which we hear so much in Athens, and formed the groves, which in process of time became the celebrated Academy. Formerly it was a piece of waste ground, two miles north of the city: under Cimon's hands it became a park or grove, laid out with shady walks and fountains, and containing open lawns and courses for exercise or recreation. Little thought the gallant soldier, what sort of lessons would be learned a century later in the walks of Academus.

It was Pericles who did the most to foster the genius of his countrymen. It was his wish to make Athens a seat of empire: in this he failed; but he succeeded in making her a seat of knowledge, without aiming at it so directly, as well by his patronage of art and science, as by the whole tenor of his administration. It was his policy to increase the power of the multitude, and to elevate their minds to a sense of their own importance. With this view he heightened the attractions of the theatres, and threw them open to all the citizens, and, while he laboured to render Athens more glorious and more magnificent, he taught the people to consider that this glory, this magnificence, was their own. Thus were the feelings of every Athenian identified with his country; his civic duties ennobled his character, and advanced him as a social and intellectual being. Here then lay a part of the secret-how Athens was enabled to achieve so much as an instructress of men. The topic has been well handled by Lytton Bulwer in his "Rise and Fall of Athens:"

"We cannot but allow the main theory of the system to have been precisely that most favourable to the prodigal exuberance of energy, of intellect, and of genius. Summoned to consultation upon all matters, from the greatest to the least;-compelled to a lively and unceasing interest in all that arouses the mind, or elevates the passions, or refines the taste;-supreme arbiters of the art of the sculptor, as the science of the lawgiver-judges and rewarders of the limner and the poet, as of the successful negociator or the prosperous soldier ;-we see at once the all-accomplished, all-versatile genius of the nation, and we behold at the same glance the effect and the cause:-everything being referred to the people, the peopled learned of everything to judge. Their genius was artificially forced, and in each of its capacities. They had no need of formal education. Their whole life was one school. The very faults of their assembly, in its proneness to be seduced by extraordinary eloquence, aroused the emulation of the orator, and kept constantly awake the imagination of the audience. An Athenian was, by the necessity of birth, what Milton dreamt that man could only become by the labours of completest education: in peace a legislator, in war a soldier-in all times, on all occasions, acute to judge, and resolute to act. All that can inspire the thought or delight the leisure were for the people. Theirs were the portico

and the school-theirs the theatre, the gardens, and the baths; they were not, as in Sparta, the tools of the state--they were the state! Lycurgus made machines, and Solon men. Lacedæmon flourished and decayed, bequeathing to fame men only noted for hardy valour, fanatical patriotism, and profound but dishonourable craft, attracting indeed the wonder of the world, but advancing no claim to its gratitude, and contributing no single addition to its intellectual stores. But in Athens the true blessing of freedom was rightly placed in the opinions of the soul. Thought was the common heritage which every man might cultivate at his will. This unshackled liberty had its convulsions and its excesses, but producing unceasing emulation and unbounded competition, an incentive to every effort, a tribunal to every claim, it broke into philosophy with the one-into poetry with the other-into the energy and splendour of unexampled intelligence with all. Looking round us at this hour, more than four-and-twenty centuries after the establishment of the constitution we have just surveyed-in the labours of the student-in the dreams of the poet -in the aspirations of the artist-in the philosophy of the legislator -we yet behold the imperishable blessings we derive from the liberties of Athens and the institutions of Solon. The life of Athens became extinct, but her soul transfused itself, immortal and immortalizing, through the world."

"As the Romans deified law ”—says the same eloquent writer in the Catholic University Gazette,' who has been already quoted"so the Athenians deified the beautiful. A people so speculative, so imaginative, which throve upon mental activity as other races upon repose, and to whom it came as natural to think, as to a barbarian to smoke or to sleep, such a people were in a true sense born teachers, and merely to live among them was a cultivation of mind. Hence they suddenly took their place in this capacity from the time that they had emancipated themselves from the aristocratic families, with which their history opens. The Athenians felt that a democracy was but the political expression of an intellectual isonomy, and, when they had obtained it, and taken the Beautiful for their Sovereign, instead of Pisistratus, they came forth as the civilizers, not of Greece only, but of the European world.

"A century had not passed from the expulsion of the Pisistratidæ, when Pericles was able to call Athens the education or schoolmistress of Greece. And, ere it had well run out, upon the Athenian misfortunes in Sicily, the old Syracusan, who pleaded in behalf of the prisoners, conjured his fellow-citizens, 'in that they had the gift of Reason,' to have mercy upon those, who had opened their land as a common school to all men; and he asks-To what foreign land will men betake themselves for liberal education, if Athens be destroyed?' And the story is well known, when, in spite of his generous attempt, the Athenian prisoners were set to work in the stone-quarries, how those who could recite passages from Euripides, found the talent

serve them instead of ransom, for their liberation. It was hardly more than the next generation, when her civilization was conveyed by the conquests of Alexander into the very heart of further Asia, and was the life of the Greek kingdom which he founded in the east. She became the centre of a vast intellectual propagandism, and had in her hands the spell of a more wonderful influence than the semibarbarous power which first conquered and then used her. Wherever the Macedonian phalanx held its ground, thither came a colony of her philosophers; Asia Minor and Syria were covered with her schools, while in Alexandria her children, Theophrastus and Demetrius, became the life of the great literary undertakings which have immortalized the name of the Ptolemies."

It was the boast of Pericles, that the Athenians loved virtue and sought to do what was right and good and noble, not from servile feeling, not because they were obliged, not from fear of the law or any penal consequences of acting differently, but because it was their nature so to act, because it was so truly pleasant. Their political bond was good will and generous sentiment. They were loyal citizens, active, hardy, brave, munificent, from their love of what was high, and because the virtuous was the enjoyable, and the enjoyable was the virtuous. While in private and personal matters each Athenian was suffered to please himself, without any tyrannous public opinion to make him feel uncomfortable, the same freedom of will did but unite them together in concerns of national interest, because obedience to the magistrates and the laws was with them a sort of passion; it was their instinct to shrink from dishonour and to repress injustice. They could be splendid in their feasts and spectacles without extravagance, because the crowds whom they attracted from abroad repaid them for the outlay; and such large hospitality did but cherish in them a frank, unsuspicious, and courageous spirit, which better protected them than a pile of state secrets and exclusive laws. Nor did this joyous mode of life relax them, as it might relax a less noble race; for they were warlike without effort, and expert without training, and rich in resources by the gift of nature, and, after their fill of pleasure, were only more gallant in the field, and more patient and enduring on the march. They could love the fine arts and study the sciences without becoming effeminate; debate did not blunt their energy, nor foresight of danger chill their daring; but, as their tragic poet expresses it, "the loves were the attendants upon wisdom, and had their share in the action of every virtue.” Thus boasted Pericles, and orators who succeeded him gave expression to similar opinions.

Such then was the condition of the Athenian mind, such the temper of the people, when the professors of philosophy first appeared among them, and attracted attention by offering to teach a higher and more important knowledge than any which had been taught before. These persons received no direct patronage from the

ruling power of the country, nor from parents or guardians. They did not establish schools, where boys or young men (to speak in modern phraseology) "finished their education." Most parents were deterred by the high fees which the Sophists demanded for their lectures. But among the rising generation there was a spirit of curiosity and inquiry, which could not be idle, an ambition which could not rest, nor endure to remain in ignorance while knowledge was within its reach. And therefore, when persons calling themselves "wise men," and professing to be masters of science and reason and eloquence, began to open their mission, the aspiring young Athenians, unfettered by conventional ideas, became their followers. The excitement they created in Athens is described by Plato in one of his Dialogues. Protagoras came to the bright city with the profession of teaching the political art; and the young flocked around him; not because he promised them entertainment or novelty, such as the theatre might promise; nor because he had any bribe of definite advantage to offer; he engaged to prepare them generally for the business of life, by giving them mental cultivation, and to prepare them better than Hippias or Prodicus, who were at Athens with him. Whether he was really able to do this, is another question; but it is clear, the very promise of knowledge operated as a potent spell upon the minds of the young Athenians.

Let us hear the state of the case from the mouth of Hippocrates himself, the youth, who in his eagerness woke Socrates, himself a young man at the time, while it was yet dark, to tell him that Protagoras was come to Athens. "When we had supped, and were going to bed "he says-" then my brother told me that Protagoras was arrived, and my first thought was to come and see you immediately; but afterwards it appeared to me too late at night. As soon however as sleep had refreshed me, up I got, and came here.". “And I,” continues Socrates, giving an account of the conversation 'knowing his earnestness and excitability, said:-What is that to you? does Protagoras do you any harm? He laughed and said: "That he does, Socrates; because he alone is wise, and does not make me so.' 'Nay,' said I; 'if you give him money enough, he will make you wise too.' 'O heavens'-cried he- that it depended upon that! For I would spare nothing of my own, or of my friends' property either; and I have now come to you for this very purpose, to get you to speak to him in my behalf. For, besides that I am too young, I have never yet seen Protagoras, or heard him speak; for I was but a boy when he came before. However all praise him, Socrates, and say that he is the wisest man to speak. But why do we not go to him, that we may find him at home?""-They went on talking till the light; and then they set out for the house of Callias, where Protagoras, with others of his own calling, were lodged. There they found him pacing up and down the portico, with his host and others, among whom was a son of Pericles on one side of him

while another son of Pericles, with another party, were on the other. A party followed, chiefly of foreigners, whom Protagoras had be witched, like Orpheus, by his voice. On the opposite side of the portico sat Hippias, with a bench of youths before him, asking him questions in physics and astronomy. Prodicus was still in bed, with some listeners on sofas round him. The house is described as quite full of guests. Such is the sketch given us by Plato of this school of Athens; and we learn from him how powerfully it interested the hearers. We see what it was that filled the Athenian lecture-halls and porticos: not the fashion of the day, not the patronage of the great, nor pecuniary prizes, but the reputation of talent and the desire of knowledge-ambition, if you will, personal attachment, but not an influence, political or other, external to the school. "Such Sophists," says Grote, referring to the passage in Plato, “ had nothing to recommend them except superior knowledge and intellectual fame, combined with an imposing personality, making itself felt in the lectures and conversation."

And so the thing went on. The real character of the Sophists we need not trouble ourselves about. Some of them might be mere pretenders, professing to know what they did not know, and to teach what they could not teach. But what we are concerned with is this. There were the élite of the Athenian youth, with a thirst for knowledge, which required to be satisfied. If Protagoras and Prodicus were unable to do what they promised, there were others to come, who were better able to accomplish the task. Accordingly the scene shifts; the Sophists pass from the stage, and those whom history has designated Philosophers begin to play their part. There is still no lack of pupils; and no compulsory discipline, to enforce their attendance. In learning, as in life, the voluntary system, so lauded by Pericles, prevails. It was the method of influence, the action of personality, the play of mind upon mind, which by a spontaneous force kept the schools of Athens going, and made the pulses of foreign intellect keep time with hers.

But of what advantage either to Athens or to the world were these

intellectual acquirements? Did the Athenians possess practical wisdom? or good morals? Were they not in public life rapacious, rash, fickle, tyrannical? in private, sensual and profligate? Was their boasted philosophy anything more than a dream?

With respect to the political state of Athens, I consider that she enjoyed the best constitution in Greece, and, although she committed many errors, she conferred upon her people, during the period of her independence, a greater amount of happiness and security than was to be found anywhere else. In aiming at empire, she did that which all conquering nations have done, and which seems only to be justified by two things; by success, and by making a good use of success. Yet we may fairly say, that the subjects of Athens were as well off under her sovereignty, as they were under that of Persia, or Sparta,