and secondly, her culture, intellectual and æsthetic, was to a most remarkable degree diffused among all her people. In the population of Attica, estimated at half a million, at least three hundred thousand were slaves; they, however, of nearly the same race as their masters, seem to have been generally intelligent, many of them highly educated this class furnished most of the pædagogues. The resident foreigners, almost as numerous as the citizens, were mostly men of wealth and intelligence to this class belonged merchants, lawyers, and nearly all of the great teachers. The populace had their wellknown faults-the juries of four or five hundred were as turbulent as a town meeting, the General Assembly was as tumultuous as our House of Representatives-but every man was competent, in fact as in law, to serve as juror and to vote in the assembly, to weigh arguments and even to criticize style. Witty, appreciative, acquisitive by nature, well-informed on history and on constitutional and international law, refined by situation and surroundings so much talent in proportion to numbers the world has rarely seen assembled. Then, as already remarked, above the general level were many great men, not conspicuous like a mound on a level prairie, or a pyramid in the valley of the Nile, but like Olympus or Parnassus, lifting glittering heads above encircling mountains of no mean height. Such were Solon, Peisistratus, Cleisthenes, Themistocles, Pericles, in state-craft; Miltiades, Cimon, Demosthenes (the soldier), Phormion, Conon, Xenophon, as generals; Æschylus, Sophocles, Thucydides, Euripides, Aristophanes, Demosthenes (the orator), in literature; Socrates and Plato in philosophy; Phidias and Praxiteles in art. I mention only a score of such as were Athenian citizens and lived within a space of six or eight generations. The list might be doubled by adding all who were drawn to Athens from other parts of Greece and helped to adorn their adopted home. It would be quadrupled if we should include all whose names have been handed down with distinction through two and twenty centuries.

Macaulay, speaking of Grecian art and literature, says: "It is a subject in which I love to forget the accuracy of the judge in the veneration of a worshipper and the gratitude of a child. If we consider merely the subtlety of disquisition, the force of imagination, the perfect energy and elegance of expression, which characterize the great works of Athenian genius, we must pronounce them intrinsically most valuable; but what shall we say when we reflect that from hence have sprung, directly or indirectly, all the noblest creations of the human intellect; that from hence were the vast accomplishments and the

brilliant fancy of Cicero; the withering fire of Juvenal; the plastic imagination of Dante; the humour of Cervantes; the comprehension of Bacon; the wit of Butler; the supreme and universal excellence of Shakspeare? All the triumphs of truth and genius over prejudice and power, in every country and in every age, have been the triumphs of Athens. Wherever a few great minds have made a stand against violence and fraud, in the cause of liberty and reason, there has been her spirit in the midst of them; inspiring, encouraging, consoling;by the lonely lamp of Erasmus; by the restless bed of Pascal; in the tribune of Mirabeau; in the cell of Galileo; on the scaffold of Sidney.

"But who shall estimate her influence on private happiness? Who shall say how many thousands have been made wiser, happier and better, by those pursuits in which she has taught mankind to engage; to how many the studies which took their rise from her have been wealth in poverty-liberty in bondage-health in sickness-society in solitude. Her power is indeed manifested at the bar, in the Senate, in the field of battle, in the schools of philosophy. But these are not her glory. Wherever literature consoles sorrow or assuages painwherever it brings gladness to eyes which fail with wakefulness and tears, and ache for the dark house and the long sleep-there is exhibited, in its noblest form, the immortal influence of Athens. Her influence and her glory will still survive-fresh in eternal youth, exempt from mutability and decay, immortal as the intellectual principle from which they derived their origin, and over which they exercise their control."

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So far Macaulay-high praise embodied in glowing language-and yet, as I shall try to show in the sequel, he has not fully brought out the chiefest glory of Athens, her greatest gift to human kind.

Was it not a rare felicity that combined such fertility of genius with so much of popular education? These two do not always go together. Many seem to regard them as even antagonistic. Some talk much about the "mud-sills of society," and, misled by a supposed architectural analogy, maintain that for the top of our social edifice to rear itself aloft and firmly, the bottom strata must be laid very low. Others prate about "diverting to the superior education of the few, money which should go to the common education of the many." They mistake dead uniformity for a living unity. Unity, says the inspired poet, is like the precious ointment poured on Aaron's head, running down upon the beard, and down to the skirts of his long robe, or like the dew gathered on lofty Hermon and descending upon the lower mountains of Zion. Uniformity may be fitly compared to

the broad unbroken level of Sahara. Neither sea nor mountain produces corn, but without both sea and mountain the corn-fields would soon be parched for want of rain. In this day and State where Democrats are ultra-radical and Radicals intensely democratic, there is danger that some modern Moses would pour his horn of oil directly on the skirts of the garment, or try to drag the snows of Hermon at once into the valley, instead of leaving them to melt and trickle down in perennial streams. Euclid reproved the impatience of his royal pupil in the memorable words: "There is, Sire, no royal road to Geometry." You may have heard how his saying was some years ago improved by misquotation: "There is no rail-road to learning." But more recently American labor has graded the slope up by the Pierian Spring and to the very top of Helicon, American skill has bridged the chasm and tunnelled the difficulties and American genius is rapidly completing the superstructure with Steele rails of the uniform length of fourteen weeks. But jesting aside, our American system with its public schools and free tuition from the lowest to the highest grade, has its advantages, but therewith also its danger. It works well in the towns, but not so well in the country districts, whence have ever come two-thirds of our leaders of thought. It aims to impart a practical education to the masses; one can but fear it is not best for the other and equally needful purpose. Lightning on a good conductor passes unseen, unheard, unfelt, into the depository of nature from which it was evoked, but when it meets and overcomes resistance, we have heat, light and noise. So genius may silently waste away, if too highly favoured, but when it has to surmount obstacles, then it is that it flashes and burns and thunders.

I do not, of course, pretend that all the excellence of the Athenians was due to their school system. Far from it. They claimed to be autochthonous, and were unquestionably descended from a long line of noble ancestry, with little or no intermixture of foreign blood. Their land was meet nurse for such a race, with its climate but little warmer than our own, its pure, bracing air, sparkling waters, picturesque ridges, and fertile valleys. There is no spot in Attica, nor, indeed, in Greece at all, from which mountains cannot be seen; nor is there any hilltop which does not command, on one side or the other, a view of the bright blue sea. Look at the extent of coast indented into bays and harbors, observe the chains of islands tempting the frail barks of early navigators, and you see why the people were seafarers, and therefore men of great versatility, adventurous spirit, and extensive information. But they were mountaineers as well as mariners,

and this accounts, in part at least, for their hard common sense, their love of country, and their undying devotion to freedom. Then think for a moment, O, ye ill-fed teachers, of the Athenian food supply. We are now enjoying seaside hospitality, refreshing our wearied frames with salt-water baths, and supplying needful phosphorus to our wasted brains by feasting on the juicy fishes and delicate crabs of Hampton; for next year we have a kind invitation to tone up our exhausted energies with sulphur water, and rehabilitate our worn out nerves on an abundance of savory mountain mutton. The Attic teachers had not, so far as we can learn, an educational association, meeting yearly; nor did they need it as we do, for every day both fish and mutton, both seaside and mountain, were within easy reach. Let us in imagination take ourselves back through the intervening centuries and spend a day in Athens when she was at the height of her glory-say in the autumn of 440 B. C. In the early twilight we debark in the busy harbor and make our way to a barber shop. Here we get the latest news from Marseilles and Syracuse and the newly settled colony at Thurii, from the Euxine and the Hellespont, from the wondrous land of the Nile, from Cyprus and the coast of Asia, especially from Samos, which has just passed an ordinance of secession disrupting what began as a confederacy but had grown into an empire-news brought by merchants lately arrived from every Mediterranean port. We then proceed along the thronged artery, the Broadway, to the upper city, and as the market-place begins to fill we join a crowd that is gathering before a saddler's shop. A sculptor not yet thirty years of age, an ugly man with flat nose and projecting eyes, coarsely clad and barefoot, is putting keen and cutting questions to one or another, showing them that they think they are wise but are not, and so directing their thoughts towards Divine philosophy. Presently we adjourn to the open-air hall of the General Assembly. A motion is pending to send a fleet of sixty sail against revolted Samos. Rival orators discuss it pro and con, and the audience is clamorous; but anon every eye is attentive and every sound is hushed, as one of commanding and haughty mien ascends the bema. He passes in rapid but distinct review the whole case-its past history, its present complications, its future issues; he fortifies his opinion with all the strength of thoughtful logic and adorns it with the graces of studied rhetoric, while his voice rings out so clear that all the ten thousand citizens present catch his every syllable. We make our way next to the Dionysiac Theatre-pardon the poetic license, for of course neither Socrates nor Pericles would be heard on theatre-day-we hear a

spirited contest between a new light that has but recently arisen and the genial master of the ancient stage, now in his prime, producing his chef-d'euvre, Antigone, and gaining by it his election as one of the ten generals. In the afternoon we climb the broad marble stairway that leads to the citadel, not now a fort but a shrine dedicated to high art. We sit under the colossal bronze statue of the tutelary goddess, Athena Promachos. The sun is hasting to get below a bank of gorgeous clouds which seem to rest upon the snowy summit of far-off Cyllene. Nearer, and glowing as if fringed with burnished gold, rise the Ægalean hills, where Xerxes sate to witness his ever-memorable defeat; Cithaeron and Parnes, on our right, present a sharp and jagged outline, while their sides are covered with a sombre robe of pine; Pentelicus, mountain of marble, behind us, glistens with dazzling white; smooth Hymettus, on the left, is dressed in light gray limestone, veiled with the silvery green of wild thyme; a soft purplish hue of indescribable beauty floats over Salamis and Aegina, and the waters between them; from Phalerum comes the ceaseless music of dancing wavelets, from Ilissus the gentle murmur of a water fall, from the olive groves on Cephissus a fragrant breeze laden with the sweet notes of nightingales; while around us is a forest of temples and statues and pictures, the best works of Ietinus the architect, of Phidias the sculptor, and of Polygnotus the painter, made to adorn the "schoolmistress of Greece." How could one who lived amid such scenes fail to have an active mind, a refined taste, an expanded soul?

We might say that all these advantages, to which the Athenians owed their excellence, were a part of their educational influences. Virginia never did a better thing for popular education than when she contracted with Crawford for the Washington monument, if only we would appreciate it. The connection is seen to be yet closer when we reflect that these extra scholastic opportunities enjoyed by one generation are due in no small measure to the education, in its more limited sense, of their predecessors. But lest you should compare this address to a Greek temple, with elaborate portico, running all around and a small dim cell in the centre, I will leave generalities and approach more closely the subject announced.

THE THREE STAGES IN EDUCATION.

Пladeia, i. e. education, or, more accurately, training of children, was divided into three tolerably distinct periods which we may call childhood, boyhood and youth.

1. Up to about eight, sometimes as much as ten years

of age, the