he might see equal causes of justification, both | trious man, if he is not speedily sent into banin the motives and in the results. The first ishment? Is this the boasted intelligence of was absolutely necessary for the defeat of the the masses? Is this the wisdom which demoaristocratic party, and the removal of restric- cratic institutions bring to bear upon public tions on those energies which instantly found affairs? Is this the reward which, by a permathe most glorious vents for action; the second nent law of nature, freedom must ever provide was justified by a similar necessity, that pro- for the most illustrious of its champions? Why duced similar effects. To impartial eyes a is it necessary that great men and beneficent people may be vindicated without traducing statesmen or commanders should invariably those whom a people are driven to oppose. be exiled? The English constitution required In such august and complicated trials the ac- for its continuance the exile neither of Pitt nor cuser and defendant may be both innocent." Fox, of Nelson nor Wellington. The Roman republic, until the fatal period when the authority of the aristocracy was overthrown by the growing encroachments of the plebeians, retained all its illustrious citizens, with a few well-known exceptions, in its own bosom: and the tomb of the Scipios still attests the number of that heroic race, who, with the exception of the illustrious conqueror of Hannibal, the victim, like Themistocles, of democratic jealousy, were gathered to the tomb of their fa thers. There is no necessity in a well-regulated state, where the different powers are duly balanced, of subjecting the illustrious to the ostracism: good government provides against danger without committing injustice.

Here then is the key to the hideous ingratitude of the Athenian people to their two most illustrious benefactors, Aristides and Cimon. They obstructed the Movement Party: they held by the constitution, and endeavoured to bring back a mixed form of government. This heinous offence was, in the eyes of the Athenian democracy, and their apologist, Mr. Bulwer, amply sufficient to justify their banishment: a proceeding, he says, which was right, even although they were innocent of the charges laid against them-as if injustice can in any case be vindicated by state necessity, or the form of government is to be approved which requires for its maintenance the periodical sacrifice of its noblest and most illustrious citizens !

In another place, Mr. Bulwer observes"Themistocles was summoned to the ordeal of the ostracism, and condemned by the majority of suffrages. Thus, like Aristides, not punished for offences, but paying the honourable penalty of rising by genius to that state of eminence, which threatens danger to the equality of republics.

"He departed from Athens, and chose his refuge at Argos, whose hatred to Sparta, his deadliest foe, promised him the securest protection.

Mr. Bulwer has candidly stated the pernicious effect of those most vicious of the many vicious institutions of Athens-the exacting tribute from their conquered and allied states to the relief of the dominant multitude in the ruling city; and the fatal devolution to the whole citizens of the duties and responsibility of judicial power. On the first subject he ob

serves:

"Thus at home and abroad, time and fortune, the occurrence of events, and the happy accident of great men, not only maintained the present eminence of Athens, but promised, to ordinary foresight, a long duration of her glory and her power. To deeper observers, the picture might have presented dim, but prophetic shadows. It was clear that the command Athens had obtained was utterly disproportioned to her natural resources-that her great

"Death soon afterwards removed Aristides from all competitorship with Cimon; according to the most probable accounts he died at Athens; and at the time of Plutarch his monument was still to be seen at Phalerum. His countrymen, who, despite all plausible charges, were never ungrateful except where their lib-ness was altogether artificial, and rested partly erties appeared imperilled, (whether rightly or erroneously our documents are too scanty to prove,) erected his monument at the public charge, portioned his three daughters, and awarded to his son Lysimachus a grant of one hundred minæ of silver, a plantation of one hundred plethra of land, and a pension of four drachmæ a day, (double the allowance of an Athenian ambassador.")

upon moral rather than physical causes, and partly upon the fears and the weakness of her neighbours. A sterile soil, a limited territory, a scanty population—all these—the drawbacks and disadvantages of nature-the wonderful energy and confident daring of a free state might conceal in prosperity; but the first calamity could not fail to expose them to jealous and hostile eyes. The empire delegated to the There can be no doubt that the admission Athenians, they must naturally desire to retain here candidly made by Mr. Bulwer is well- and to increase; and there was every reason founded; and that jealousy of the eminence of to forebode that their ambition would soon extheir great national benefactors, or anxiety to ceed their capacities to sustain it. As the state remove aristocratic barriers to further popular become accustomed to its power, it would learn innovations, was the real cause of that ingra- to abuse it. Increasing civilization, luxury, and titude to their most illustrious benefactors, art, brought with them new expenses, and which has left so dark a stain on the Athenian Athens had already been permitted to indulge character. But can it seriously be argued that with impunity the dangerous passion of exthat constitution is to be approved, and held acting tribute from her neighbours. Dependence up for imitation, which in this manner re- upon other resources than those of the native quires that national services should almost population has ever been a main cause of the invariably be followed by confiscation and ex-destruction of despotisms, and it cannot fail, ile; and anticipates the overthrow of the public sooner or later, to be equally pernicious to the liberties from the ascendency of every illus-republics that trust to it. The resources of

taxation confined to freemen and natives, are aimost incalculable: the resources of tribute wrung from foreigners and dependents, are sternly limited and terribly precarious-they rot away the true spirit of industry in the people that demand the impost-they implant ineradicable hatred in the states that concede it."

the old oligarchy was yet so formidable, it might have been difficult to secure justice to the poorer classes, while the judges were selected from the wealthier. But justice to all classes became a yet more capricious uncertainty when a court of law resembled a popular hustings.

There can be no doubt that these observations are well-founded; and let us beware lest they become applicable to ourselves. Already in the policy of England has been evinced a sufficient inclination to load colonial industry with oppressive duties, to the relief of the dominant island, as the enormous burdens imposed on West India produce, to the entire re-came the judge; and, in offences punishable by lief of the corresponding agricultural produce at home, sufficiently demonstrates. And if the present democratic ascendency in this country should continue unabated for any considerable time, we venture to prophesy, that if no other and more immediate cause of ruin sends the commonwealth to perdition, it will infallibly see its colonial empire break off, and consequently its maritime power destroyed, by the injustice done to, or the burdens imposed on, its colonial possessions, by the impatient ruling multitude at home, who, in any measure calculated to diminish present burdens on themselves, at whatever cost to their colonial dependencies, will ever see the most expedient and popular course of policy.*

The other enormous evil of the Athenian constitution-viz., the exercise of judicial powers of the highest description by a mob of several thousand citizens, is thus described by our author:

"If we intrust a wide political suffrage to. the people, the people at least hold no trust for others than themselves and their posteritythey are not responsible to the public, for they are the public. But in law, where there are two parties concerned, the plaintiff and defendant, the judge should not only be incorruptible, but strictly responsible. In Athens the people be fine, were the very party interested in procuring condemnation; the numbers of the jury prevented all responsibility, excused all abuses, and made them susceptible of the same shameless excesses that characterize self-elected corporations-from which appeal is idle, and ́over which public opinion exercises no control. These numerous, ignorant, and passionate assemblies, were liable at all times to the heats of party, to the eloquence of individuals— to the whims, and caprices, the prejudices, the impatience, and the turbulence, which must ever be the characteristics of a multitude orally addressed. It was evident also that from service in such a court, the wealthy, the eminent, and the learned, with other occupation or amusement, would soon seek to absent themselves. And the final blow to the integrity and respectability of the popular judicature was given at a later period by Pericles, when he instituted a salary, just sufficient to tempt “A yet more pernicious evil in the social the poor and to be disdained by the affluent, state of the Athenians was radical in their con- to every dicast or juryman in the ten ordinary stitution, it was their courts of justice. Pro- courts. Legal science became not the proceeding upon a theory that must have seemed fession of the erudite and the laborious few, specious and plausible to an inexperienced and but the livelihood of the ignorant and idle mulinfant republic, Solon had laid it down as a titude. The canvassing-the cajoling-the principle of his code, that as all men were in-bribery-that resulted from this, the most terested in the preservation of law, so all men vicious, institution of the Athenian democracy might exert the privilege of the plaintiff and are but too evident and melancholy tokens accuser. As society grew more complicated, of the imperfection of human wisdom. Life, the door was thus opened to every species of property, and character, were at the hazard of vexatious charge and frivolous litigation. The a popular election. These evils must have common informer became a most harassing been long in progressive operation; but perand powerful personage, and made one of a haps they were scarcely visible till the fatal fruitful and crowded profession: and in the innovation of Pericles, and the flagrant exvery capital of liberty there existed the worst cesses that ensued allowed the people themspecies of espionage. But justice was not selves to listen to the branding and terrible thereby facilitated. The informer was regarded satire upon the popular judicature, which is with universal hatred and contempt; and it is still preserved to us in the comedy of Aristoeasy to perceive, from the writings of the phanes. great comic poet, that the sympathies of the "At the same time, certain critics and hisAthenian audience were, as those of the Eng-torians have widely and grossly erred in suplish public at this day, enlisted against the posing that these courts of the sovereign man who brought the inquisition of the law to multitude' were partial to the poor, and hostile the hearth of his neighbour. to the rich. All testimony proves that the fact was lamentably the reverse. The defendant was accustomed to engage the persons of rank or influence whom he might number as his friends, to appear in court on his behalf. And property was employed to procure at the bar of justice the suffrages it could command at a political election. The greatest vice of the democratic Heliæa was, that by a fine the wealthy could purchase pardon-by interest

"Solon committed a yet more fatal and incurable error when he carried the democratic principle into judicial tribunals. He evidently considered that the very strength and life of his constitution rested in the Heliæa-a court the numbers and nature of which have been already described. Perhaps, at a time when

How soon has this prophecy been accomplished?

Sept. 5, 1844.

men and treasure: could we credit Diodorus, no less than twenty thousand persons perished in the shock. Thus depopulated, impoverished, and distressed, the enemies whom the cruelty of Sparta nursed within her bosom, resolved to seize the moment to execute their vengeance, and consummate her destruction. Under Pausanias, we have seen before, that the Helots were already ripe for revolt. The death of that fierce conspirator checked, but did not crush, their designs of freedom. Now was the moment, when Sparta lay in ruins— now was the moment to realize their dreams. From field to field, from village to village, the news of the earthquake became the watchword of revolt. Up rose the Helots-they armed themselves, they poured on-a wild and gather ing and relentless multitude resolved to slay, by the wrath of man, all whom that of nature had yet spared. The earthquake that levelled Sparta, rent her chains; nor did the shock create one chasm so dark and wide as that between the master and the slave.

the great could soften law. But the chances | Lacedæmon were wont to hold their bacchana. were against the poor man. To him litigation lian orgies, huge fragments rolled into the was indeed cheap, but justice dear. He had suburbs. The greater portion of the city was much the same inequality to struggle against absolutely overthrown; and it is said, probain a suit with a powerful antagonist, that he bly with exaggeration, that only five houses would have had in contesting with him for an wholly escaped the shock. This terrible calaoffice in the administration. In all trials rest-mity did not cease suddenly as it came; its ing on the voice of popular assemblies, it ever concussions were repeated; it buried alike has been and ever will be found, that, cæteris paribus, the aristocrat will defeat the plebeian." These observations are equally just and luminous; and the concluding one in particular, as to the tendency of a corrupt or corruptible judicial multitude to decide in favour of the rich aristocrat in preference to the poor plebeian, in an author of Mr. Bulwer's prepossessions, highly creditable. The only surprising thing is how an author, who could see so clearly, and express so well, the total incapacity of a multitude to exercise the functions of a judge, should not have perceived, that, for the same reason, they are disqualified from taking an active part to any good or useful purpose in the formation of laws or practical administration of government, except by preserving a vigilant eye on the conduct of others. In fact, the temptations to the poor to swerve from the path of rectitude, or conscience, in the case of government appointments or measures, are just as much the stronger than in the judgment of individuals, as the subjects requiring investigation are more intricate or difficult, the objects of contention more import-spectacles in history-that city in ruins-the ant and glittering, and the wealth which will be expended in corruption more abundant. And there in truth lies the eternal objection to democratic institutions, that, by withdrawing the people from their right province-that of the censors or controllers of government-and vesting in them the perilous powers of actual administration or direction of affairs, they necessarily expose them to such a deluge of flattery or corruption, from the eloquent or wealthy candidates for power, as not merely unfits them for the sober or rational discharge of any public duties, but utterly confounds and depraves their moral feelings; and induces, before the time when it would naturally arrive, that universal corruption of opinion which speedily attaches no other test to public actions but success, and leads men to consider the exercise of public duties as nothing but the means of individual elevation or aggrandizement.

"It is one of the sublimest and most awful

earth still trembling-the grim and dauntless soldiery collected amidst piles of death and ruin; and in such a time, and such a scene, the multitude sensible, not of danger, but of wrong, and rising, not to succour, but to revenge :-all that should have disarmed a feebler enmity, giving fire to theirs; the dreadest calamity their blessing-dismay their hope: it was as if the Great Mother herself had summoned her children to vindicate the longabused, the all-inalienable heritage derived from her; and the stir of the angry elements was but the announcement of an armed and solemn union between Nature and the Oppressed.

"Fortunately for Sparta, the danger was not altogether unforeseen. After the confusion and horror of the earthquake, and while the people, dispersed, were seeking to save their effects, Archidamus, who, four years before, We have given some passages from Mr. had succeeded to the throne of Lacedæmon, Bulwer from which we dissent, or in the prin- ordered the trumpets to sound as to arms. ciples of which we differ. Let us now, in That wonderful superiority of man over matjustice both to his principles and his powers ter which habit and discipline can effect, and of description, give a few others, in which we which was ever so visible amongst the Sparcordially concur, or for which we feel the high- tans, constituted their safety at that hour. est admiration. The first is the description of Forsaking the care of their property, the Sparthe memorable conduct of the Laconian go- tans seized their arms, flocked around their vernment, upon occasion of the dreadful revolt king, and drew up in disciplined array. In of the Helots which followed the great earth-her most imminent crisis, Sparta was thus quake which nearly overthrew Lacedæmon, and rolled the rock of Mount Taygetus into the streets of Sparta

saved. The Helots approached, wild, disorderly, and tumultuous; they came intent only to plunder and to slay; they expected to find “An earthquake, unprecedented in its vio- scattered and affrighted foes-they found a ence, occurred in Sparta. In many places | formidable army; their tyrants were still their throughout Laconia, the rocky soil was rent asunder. From Mount Taygetus, which overhung the city, and on which the women of

lords. They saw, paused, and fled, scattering themselves over the country-exciting all they met to rebellion, and, soon, joined with the

the minuteness of ornament-all the brilliancy of colours;-such as in the interior of Italian churches may yet be seen-vitiated, in the last by a gaudy and barbarous taste. Nor did the Athenians spare any cost upon the works that were, like the tombs and tripods of their heroes, to be the monuments of a nation to distant ages, and to transmit the most irrefragable proof that the power of ancient Greece was not an idle legend.' The whole democracy were animated with the passion of Pericles; and when Phidias recommended marble as a

The incident here narrated of the King of Sparta, amidst the yawning of the earthquake and the ruin of his capital, sounding the trum-cheaper material than ivory for the great stapets to arms, and the Lacedæmonians assembling in disciplined array around him, is one of the sublimest recorded in history. The pencil of Martin would there find a fit subject for its noblest efforts. We need not wonder that a people, capable of such conduct in such a moment, and trained by discipline and habit to such docility in danger, should acquire and maintain supreme dominion in Greece.

The next passage with which we shall gratify our readers, is an eloquent eulogium on a marvellous topic-the unrivalled grace and beauty of the Athenian edifices, erected in the time of Pericles.

tue of Minerva, it was for that reason that ivory was preferred by the unanimous voice of the assembly. Thus, whether it were extravagance or magnificence, the blame in one case, the admiration in another, rests not more with the minister than the populace. It was, indeed, the great characteristic of those works, that they were entirely the creations of the people without the people, Pericles could not have built a temple, or engaged a sculptor. The miracles of that day resulted from the enthusiasm of a population yet young-full of the first ardour for the beautiful-dedicating to the state, as to a mistress, the trophies honourably won, or the treasures injuriously extorted-and uniting the resources of a nation with the energy of an individual, because the toil, the cost, were borne by those who succeeded to the enjoyment and arrogated the glory."

"Then rapidly progressed those glorious fabrics which seemed, as Plutarch gracefully expresses it, endowed with the bloom of a perennial youth. Still the houses of private citizens remained simple and unadorned; still were the streets narrow and irregular; and even centuries afterwards, a stranger entering This is eloquently said: but in searching Athens would not at first have recognised the for the causes of the Athenian supremacy in claims of the mistress of Grecian art. But to taste and art, especially sculpture and architecthe homeliness of her common thoroughfares ture, we suspect the historic observer must and private mansions, the magnificence of her look for higher and more spiritual causes than public edifices now made a dazzling contrast. the mere energy and feverish excitement of The Acropolis that towered above the homes democratic institutions. For, admitting that and thoroughfares of men-a spot too sacred energy and universal exertion are in every for human habitation-became, to use a pro-age the characteristic of republican states, how verbial phrase, 'a city of the gods.' The citizen was everywhere to be reminded of the majesty of the STATE―his patriotism was to be increased by the pride in her beauty-his taste to be elevated by the spectacle of her splendour. Thus flocked to Athens all who throughout Greece were eminent in art. Sculptors and architects vied with each other in adorning the young Empress of the Seas; then rose the masterpieces of Phidias, of Callicrates, of Menesicles, which, even either in their broken remains, or in the feeble copies of imitators less inspired, still command so intense a wonder, and furnish models so immortal. And if, so to speak, their bones and relics excite our awe and envy, as testifying of a love-sociated only with vulgar manners, urban dislier and grander race, which the deluge of time has swept away, what, in that day, must have been their brilliant effect-unmutilated in their fair proportions-fresh in all their lineaments and hues? For their beauty was not limited to the symmetry of arch and column, nor their materials confined to the marbles of Pentellicus and Paros. Even the exterior of the temples glowed with the richest harmony of colours, and was decorated with the purest gold; an atmosphere peculiarly favourable both to the display and the preservation of art, permitted to external pediments and friezes all

did it happen that, in Athens alone, it took so early and decidedly the direction of taste and art? That is the point which constitutes the marvel, as well as the extraordinary perfection which it at once acquired. Many other nations in ancient and modern times have been republican,-Corinth, Tyre, Carthage, Sidon, Sardis, Syracuse, Marseilles, Holland, Switzerland, America,—but where shall we find one which produced the Parthenon or the Apollo Belvidere, the Tragedies of Eschylus or the wisdom of Socrates, the thought of Thucydides or the visions of Plato? How has it happened that those democratic institutions, which in modern times are found to be generally as

cord, or commercial desires, should there have elevated the nation in a few years to the highest pinnacle of intellectual glory-that, instead of Dutch ponderosity, or Swiss slowness, of American ambition, or Florentine discord, re publicanism on the shores of Attica produced the fire of Demosthenes, the grace of Euripides, the narrative of Xenophon, the taste of Phidias? After the most attentive consideration, we find it impossible to explain this marvel of marvels by the agency merely of human causes; and are constrained to ascribe the placing of the eye of Greece on the shores of Attica to the

"And still sacrifice after sacrifice seemed to forbid the battle, when Pausanias, lifting his eyes that streamed with tears, to the temple of Juno, that stood hard by, supplicated the tutelary goddess of Citharon, that if the fates forbade the Greeks to conquer, they might at least fall like warriors. And while uttering this prayer, the tokens waited for Lecame suddenly visible in the victims, and the augurs announced the promise of coming victory. "Therewith, the order of battle rang instant

comparison of Plutarch, the Spartan phalanx suddenly stood forth in its strength, like some fierce animal-erecting its bristles and preparing its vengeance for the foe. The ground broken in many steep and precipitous ridges, and intersected by the Asopus, whose sluggish stream winds over a broad and rushy bed, was unfavourable to the movements of cavalry, and the Persian foot advanced therefore on the Greeks.

same invisible hand which has fixed the won- | bucklers, waited with a stern patience the ders of vision in the human forehead. There time of their leader and of Heaven. Then feli are certain starts in human progress, and more Callicrates, the stateliest and strongest soldier especially in the advance of art, which it is in the whole army, lamenting, not death, but utterly hopeless to refer to any other cause but that his sword was as yet undrawn against the immediate design and agency of the Al- the invader. mighty. Démocratic institutions afford no sort of explanation of them: we see no Parthenons, nor Sophocles, nor Platos in embryo, either in America since its independence, or France during the Revolution, nor England since the passing of the Reform Bill. When we reflect that taste, in Athens, in thirty years after the Persian invasion, had risen up from the infantine rudeness of the Ægina Marbles to the faultless peristyle and matchless sculpture of the Parthenon; that in modern Italy, the art of painting rose in the lifetime of a single in-ly through the army, and, to use the poetical dividual, who died at the age of thirty-eight, from the stiff outline and hard colouring of Pietro Perrugino to the exquisite grace of Raphael: and that it was during an age when the barons to the north of the Alps could neither read nor write, and when rushes were strewed on the floors instead of carpets, that the unrivalled sublimity of Gothic Cathedrals was conceived, and the hitherto unequalled skill of their structure attained: we are constrained to admit that a greater power than "Drawn up in their massive phalanx, the that of man superintends human affairs, and Lacedæmonians presented an almost impenethat, from the rudest and most unpromising trable body-sweeping slowly on, compact and materials, Providence can, at the appointed serried-while the hot and undisciplined vaseason, bring forth the greatest and most ex-lour of the Persians, more fortunate in the alted efforts of human intellect. skirmish than the battle, broke itself in a As a favourable specimen of our author's thousand waves upon that moving rock. Pourpowers of military description, no unimport-ing on in small numbers at a time, they fell ant quality in an historian, we shall gratify our fast round the progress of the Greeks-their readers by his account of the battle of Platea; armour slight against the strong pikes of the most vital conflict to the fortunes of the Sparta-their courage without skill-their species which occurred in all antiquity, and numbers without discipline; still they fought which we have never elsewhere read in so gallantly, even when on the ground seizing graphic and animated a formthe pikes with their naked hands, and with the wonderful agility which still characterizes the Oriental swordsmen, springing to their feet, and regaining their arms, when seemingly overcome; wresting away their enemy's shields, and grappling with them desperately hand to hand.

"As the troops of Mardonius advanced, the rest of the Persian armament, deeming the task was now not to fight but to pursue, raised their standards and poured forward tumultuously, without discipline or order.

Pausanias, pressed by the Persian line, and if not of a timorous, at least of an irresolute, temper, lost no time in sending to the Athenians for succour. But when the latter were on their march with the required aid, they were suddenly intercepted by the auxiliary Greeks in the Persian service, and cut off from the rescue of the Spartans.

"The Spartans beheld themselves thus left unsupported, with considerable alarm. Yet their force, including the Tegeans and Helots, was fifty-three thousand men. Committing himself to the gods, Pausanias ordained a solemn sacrifice, his whole army awaiting the result, while the shafts of the Persian bowmen poured on them near and fast. But the entrails presented discouraging omens, and the sacrifice was again renewed. Meanwhile the Spartans evinced their characteristic fortitude and discipline-not one man stirring from his ranks until the auguries should assume a more favouring aspect; all harassed, and some wounded, by the Persian arrows, they yet, seeking protection only beneath their broad

"Foremost of a band of a thousand chosen Persians, conspicuous by his white charger, and still more by his daring valour, rode Mardonius, directing the attack-fiercer wherever his armour blazed. Inspired by his presence, the Persians fought worthily of their warlike fame, and, even in falling, thinned the Spartan ranks. At length the rash but gallant leader of the Asiatic armies received a mortal wound

his skull was crushed in by a stone from the hand of a Spartan. His chosen band, the boast of the army, fell fighting round him, but his death was the general signal of defeat and flight. Encumbered by their long robes, and pressed by the relentless conquerors, the Persians fled in disorder towards their camp, which was secured by wooden entrenchments, by gates, and towers and walls, Here, fortifying themselves as they best might, they contended successfully, and with advantage, against the Lacedæmonians, who were ill skilled in assault and siege.

"Meanwhile, the Athenians obtained the victory on the plains over the Greeks of Mar