other they were taught to subdue sensuality; by eminent in almost every point of view; whatever a third they were initiated in the art of govern- confers distinction on the human intellect; whatment; and by a fourth in the duties of religion. ever is calculated to inspire wonder, or commuPlato has given a beautiful sketch of this ac-nicate delight. Athens was the pure well-head complished and sublime education. It will be found that nearly the same causes which forwarded the ruin of Egypt, contributed to destroy Persia; a dereliction of those fundamental principles of legislation and morals to which it had been indebted for its long prosperity and grandeur. But be it remembered, that the best humanlaws will not be exempt from the imperfection inseparably bound up with all human things. Let us beware, however, of those innovators who, instead of carefully improving and vigour. ously executing those laws which are already established, adopt no remedies short of destruction; tolerate no improvement short of creation; who are carried away by a wild scheme of visionary perfection, which, if it could any where be found to exist, would not be likely to be found in the projects of men who disdain to avail themselves of ancient experience and progressive wisdom. Thucydides was a politician of another cast; for he declared, that even indifferent laws, vigilantly executed, were superior to the best that were not properly obeyed. Those modern reformists, who affect to be in raptures with the Greek republics, would do well to imitate the deliberation, the slowness, the doubt with which the founder of the Athenian legislation introduced his laws. Instead of those sudden and instantaneous constitutions we have witnessed, which, disdaining the slow growth of moral births, have started at once, full grown, from the brain of the projector, and were as suddenly superseded as rapidly produced; Solon would not suffer a single law to be determined on and accepted till the first charm of novelty was past, and the first heat of enthusiasm had cooled. What would the same capricious theorists say to that reverence with which the Egyptians, above cited, regarded antiquity, example, custom, law, prescription? This sage people considered every political novelty with a jealousy equal to the admiration with which it is regarded by the new school. Trial, proof, experience, was the slow criterion by which they ventured to decide on the excellence of any institution. While, to the licentious innovator, antiquity is ignorance, custom is tyranny, order is intolerance, laws are chains. But the end has corresponded with the beginning. Their baseless fabrics' have fallen to pieces before they were well reared; and have exposed their superficial, but self-sufficient builders, to the just derision of mankind. we CHAP. VII. Greece. of poetry : Hither, as to their fountain, other stars It was the theatre of arms, the cradle of the To be regarded as the masters in learning, the oracle of taste, and the standard of politeness, to the whole civilized world, is a splendid distinction. But it is a pestilent mischief, when the very renown attending such brilliant advantages becomes the vehicle for carrying into other countries the depraved manners by which these pre-eminent advantages are accompanied. This was confessedly the case of Greece with respect to Rome. Rome had conquered Greece by her arms; but whenever a subjugated country contributes, by her vices, to enslave the state which conquered her, she amply revenges herself. But the perils of this contamination do not terminate with their immediate consequences. The ill effects of Grecian manners did not cease with the corruptions which they engendered at Rome. There is still serious danger, lest, while the ardent and high spirited young reader contemplates Greece only through the splendid medium of her heroes and her artists, her poets and her orators; while his imagination is fired with the glories of conquest, and captivated with the charms of literature, that he may lose sight of the disorders, the corruptions, and the crimes, by which Athens, the famous seat of arts and of letters, was dishonoured. May he not be tinctured (allowing for change of circumstances) with something of that spirit which inflamed Alexander, when, as he was passing the Hydas. pes, he enthusiastically exclaimed, 'O Athenians! could you believe to what dangers I expose myself, for the sake of being celebrated by you!" Many of the Athenian vices originated in the very nature of their constitution; in the very spirit of that turbulent democracy which Solon could not restrain, nor the ablest of his successors control. The great founder of their legislation felt the dangers inseparable from the democratic form of government, when he declared, that he had not given them the best laws, but the best which they were able to bear.' In the very establishment of his institutions, he betrayed his distrust of this species of government, by those guards and ramparts which he was so assiduous in providing and multiplying. Knowing him. self to be incapable of setting aside the popular power, his attention was directed to divest it, as much as possible, of its mischiefs, by the entrenchments that he strove to cast about it. His sagacious mind anticipated the ill effects of that republican restlessness, that at length completely overturned the state which it had so often me. naced, and so constantly distracted. WHEN We contemplate Greece, and especially when we fix our eyes on Athens, our admiration This unsettled government, which left the is strongly, I had almost said, is irresistibly ex- country perpetually exposed to the tyranny of cited, in reflecting, that such a diminutive spot the few, and the turbulence of the many, was concentrated within itself whatever is great and I never bound together by any principle of union, by any bond of interest, common to the whole, When this great man questioned his accuser, community, except when the general danger, whether Aristides had ever injured him? He for a time, annihilated the distinction of separate replied, so far from it, that he did not even know interests. The restraint of laws was feeble; the hin, only he was quite wearied out with hearing laws themselves were often contradictory; often him every where called the just. Besides that ill administered; popular intrigues, and tumultu- spirit of envy which is peculiarly alive in deous assemblies, frequently obstructing their ope- mocracies, to have heard this excellent perration. The noblest services were not seldom son calumniated would have been a refreshing rewarded with imprisonment, exile, or assassi- novelty, and have enabled him, to tell a new nation. Under every change, confiscation and thing.' proscription were never at a stand; and the only way of effacing the impression of any revolution which had produced these outrages, was to promote a new one, which engendered in its turn, fresh outrages, and improved upon the antecedent disorders. That passionate fondness for scenic diversions which led the Athenians not only to apply part of the public money to the support of the theatres, and to pay for the admission of the popu lace, but also made it a capital crime to divert this fund to any other service, even to the service of the state, so sacred was this application of it deemed was another concurrent cause of the profligacy of public manners.* The abuses to which this universal invitation to luxury and idleness led; the licentiousness of that purely democratic spirit, which made the lowest classes claim as a right to partake in the diversions of the highest; the pernicious productions of some of the comic poets; the unbounded license introduced by the mask; the voluptuousness of their music, whose extraordinary effects it would be impossible to believe, were they not confirm By this light and capricious people, acute in their feelings, carried away by every sudden gust of passion, as mutable in their opinions as unjust in their decisions, the most illustrious patriots were first sacrificed, and then honoured with statues; their heroes were murdered as traitors, and then reverenced as gods. This wanton abuse of authority, this rash injustice, and fruitless repentance, would be the inevitable consequence of lodging supreme power in the hands of a vain and variable populace, inconstant in their very vices, perpetually vibrating between irretrievable crimes and ineffectual re-ed by the general voice of antiquity: all these grets. That powerful oratory, which is to us so just a subject of admiration, was, doubtless, no inconsiderable cause of the public disorders. And to that exquisite talent, which constitutes one of the chief boasts of Athens, we may look for one principal source of her disorders: Those ancients, whose resistless eloquence When we consider what mighty influence this talent gave to the popular leaders, and what a powerful engine their demagogues possessed, to work upon the passions of the multitude, who composed their popular assemblies; when we reflect on the character of those crowds, on whom this strirring eloquence was exercised, and remember that their opinion decided on the fate of the country all this will contribute to account for the frequency and violence of the public commotions, and naturally explains why that rhetorical genius, which shed so bright a lustre on the country, was, from the nature of the constitution, frequently the instrument of convulsing it. While the higher class, in many of the Greek republics, seemed without scruple to oppress their inferiors, the populace of Athens common. ly exerted the same hostile spirit of resentment against their leaders.-Competition, circumvention, litigation, every artifice of private fraud, every stratagem of personal injustice, filled up the short intervals of foreign wars and public contests. How strikingly is St. Paul's definition of that light and frivolous propensity of the Athenians which led them to pass the day only to hear or tell some new thing,' illustrated by Plu. tarch's relation of the illiterate citizen, who voted Aristides to the punishment of the Ostracism! concurring circumstances induced a depravation of morals of which less enlightened countries do not often present an example. The profane and impure Aristophanes was almost adored, while the virtue of Socrates not only procured him a violent death, but the poet, by making the philosopher contemptible to the populace, paved the way to his unjust sentence by the judges. Nay, perhaps the delight which the Athenians took in the impious and offensively loose wit of this dramatic poet rendered them more deaf to the voice of that virtue which was taught by Plato and of that liberty in which they had once gloried, and which Demosthenes continued to thunder in their ears. Their rage for sensual pleasure rendered them a fit object for the projects of Philip, and a ready prey to the attacks of Alexander. In lamenting, however, the corruptions of the theatre in Athens, justice compels us to acknowledge, that her immortal tragic poets, by their chaste and manly compositions, furnish a noble exception. In no country has decency and purity, and, to the disgrace of Christian countries, let it be added, have morality, and even piety, been so generally prevalent in any theatrical compositions as in what. * Pericles, not being rich enough to supplant his competitor by acts of liberality, procured this law with not, in order to secure their attachment to his person a view to make his court to the people. He scrupled and government, by thus buying them with their own money,' effectually to promote their natural levity and neighbouring nation have been too skilful adepts in the idleness, and to corrupt their morals.-The rulers of a art of corruption, not to admire and eagerly adopt an example so suited to their political circumstances, and an unexampled multitude of theatres have been opened; so congenial to their national frivolity. Accordingly, and in order to allay the discontents of the lower class at the expense of their time and morals, the price of these diversions has been reduced so low as almost to emulate the gratuitous admission of the Athenian populace. -her lofty grave tragedians taught Yet, in paying a just and warm tribute to the moral excellencies of these sublime dramatists, is not an answer provided to that long agitated question, Whether the stage can be indeed made a school of morals? No question had ever a fairer chance for decision than was here afforded. If it be allowed that there never was a more profligate city than Athens; if it be equally indisputable that never country possessed more unexceptionable dramatic poets than Eschylus, Sophocles and Euripides; if the same city thus at once produced the best physicians and the worst patients, what is the result? Do the Athenian annals record that any class or condition of citizens were actually reformed by constantly frequenting, we had almost said, by constantly living in the theatre ? Plutarch, who severely condemns the Athenians, had too just a judgment to censure either the excellence of the poets, or the good taste of the people who admired them. But he blames them for that excessive passion for diversions, 'which,' says he, by setting up a new object of attachment, had nearly extinguished public virtue, and made them more anxious about the fate of a play than about the fate of their country.' while the rulers of so accomplished a people were in general dissolute, tyrannical, oppressive, and unjust; and the people themselves universally sunk into the most degraded state of manners; immersed in the last excess of effeminacy; debased by the most excessive sensuality, fraud, idleness, avarice, gaming, and debauchery? If here and there the eye is relieved, and the feelings are refreshed, with the casual appearance of a Miltiades, a Cimon, an Aristides, a Socrates, a Phocion, or a Xenophon; yet these thinly scattered stars serve less to retrieve the Athenian character, by their solitary lustre, or even by their confluent radiance, than to overwhelm it with disgrace, by the atrocious injustice with which these bright_lumina1ies were treated by their country. The eulogium of the citizen is the satire of the state. While we observe that Greece first became powerful, rich, and great, through the energy of her people, and the vigour of her character, and that this very greatness, power, and riches, have a natural bias towards corruption; that while they happily tend to produce and nourish those arts, which in their just measure are the best embellishments of a nation; yet carried to excess, and misapplied to vicious purposes, tend to weaken and corrupt it; that Athens, by her public and private vices, and by her very refinement in politeness, and her devotedness to the arts, not only precipitated her own ruin, but by the transplantation of those arts, encumbered with those vices, ultimately contributed to ruin Rome also. While we take this retrospect, we, of this highly favoured land, may receive an aw Such were the manners which historians, orators, and poets have consigned to immortal fame! Such were the people for whom our highly educated youth are taught to feel an enthusiastic admiration! Such are the forms of government which have excited the envy, and partly furnish-ful admonition; we may make a most instruced the model to the bloody innovators and frantic politicians of our age! Madly to glory in the dream of liberty, and to be in fact the victim of changing tyrants, but unchanging tyranny. This was the coveted lot of ancient Athens.-This is the object of reverence, eulogy, and infitation to a large portion of modern Europe! In reflecting on the splendid works of genius and of art in Athens, as opposed to the vices of her government, and the licentiousness of her morals, will it be thought an adequate compensation for the corruptions of both, if we grant, as we are disposed to do, in its fullest extent, that unparalleled combination of talents, which delighted and informed the rest of the world? If we allow that this elegance of taste spread so wide, and descended so low, that every individual of an Athenian mob might, as has been triumphantly asserted,† be a just critic of dramatic composition? That the ear of the populace was so nicely tuned and so refined a judge of the delicacies of pronunciation, than an Attic herb-woman could detect the provincial accent of a learned philosopher? Is it even a sufficient compensation, exquisite as we allow the gratification to have been, that the spectator might range among the statues of Lysippus, or the pictures of Apelles, or the critic enjoy the still more intellectual luxury of listening to an oration of Demosthenes, of a scene of Euripides, *See Wortley Montague, on the Rise and Fall of Ancient Republics. See an elegant paper in the Adventurer, in which Come of these triumphs of Athens are asserted. tive comparison of our own situation with respect to a neighbouring nation,-a nation which, under the rapidly-shifting form of every mode of government, from the despotism of absolute monarchy to a republican anarchy, to which the royal tyranny was comparative freedom;-and now again, in the closing scene of this changeful drama, to the heavy subjugation of military despotism, has never ceased to be the object of childish admiration, of passionate fondness, and servile imitation, to too many in our own country; to persons, too, whose rank giving them the greatest stake in it, have most to risk by the assimilation with her manners, and most to lose by the adoption of her principles. And though, through the special Providence and undeserved mercies of God, we have withstood the flood of revolutionary doctrines, let us, taking warning from the resemblance above pointed out, no longer persist, as in the halcyon days of peace, servilely to adopt her language, habits, manners, and corruptions. For now to fill up the measure of our danger, her pictures, and her statues, not the fruits of her own genius-for here the comparison with Athens fails-but the plunder of her usurpation, and the spoils of her injustice, by holding out new baits to our curiosity, and new attractions to our admiration, are in danger of fatally and finally accomplishing the resemblance. May the omen be averted! Among the numberless lessons which we may derive from the study of Grecian history, there is one which cannot be too often inculcated, more especially as it is a fact little relished by many of our more refined wits and politicians,- Christianity has had independently of its influ we mean the error of ascribing to arts, to litera-ence over its real votaries) in improving and ture, and to politeness, that power of softening elevating the general standard of morals, so as and correcting the human heart, which is, in considerably to rectify and raise the conduct truth, the exclusive prerogative of religion. of those who are not directly actuated by its Really to mend the heart, and purify the prin. principles. And, lastly, to say nothing of a pure ciple, is a deeper work than the most finished church establishment, so diametrically the recultivation of the taste has ever been able to ef verse of the deplorably blind and ignorant rites fect. The polished Athenians were among the of Athenian worship,-who can contemplate, most unjust of mankind in their national acts, without thankful heart, that large infusion of and the most cruel towards their allies. They Christianity into our national laws, which has remarkably exemplify the tendency of acting in set them so infinitely above all comparison a body, to lesson each man's individual consci- with the admired codes of Lycurgus and of ousness of guilt or cruelty. This polite people, Solon? in their political capacity, committed, without scruple, actions of almost unparalleled barbarity. CHAP. VIII. Rome. Every reflecting class of British and especi ally of Christian readers will not fail to peruse the annals of this admired republic with sentiments of deep gratitude to heaven for the vast superiority of our own national, civil, social, moral, and religious blessings. And they may enrich the catalogue with that one additional advantage, which Xenophon thought was all that Athens wanted, and which we possess-We are an Island. The sound and sober politician will see most strongly illustrated, in the evils of the Athenian state (though dissimilar in some respects from modern democracy) the blessings of our representative government, and of our deliverance from any approximation towards that mob government, to which universal suf. frage would be the natural and necessary intro-state all pretensions to external consequence and duction. Ir the Romans from being a handful of banditti, rendered themselves in a short period lords of the universe ;-if Rome, from being an ordinary town in Italy, became foremost in genius and in arms, and at length unrivalled in imperial magnificence; let it be remembered that the foundations of this greatness were laid in some of the extraordinary virtues of that republic. The personal frugality of her citizens; the remarkable simplicity of their manners; the habit of transferring from themselves to the splendour; the strictness of her laws, and the The delicate and refined female of our fa- striking impartiality of their execution; that voured country will feel peculiar sensations of inflexible regard to justice, which led them, in thankfulness, in comparing her happy lot with the early ages of the republic-so little was the the degraded state of women in the politest ages doctrine of expediency in repute among themof Greece. Condemned to ignorance, labour, to inflict penalties on those citizens who even and obscurity; excluded from rational inter- conquered by deceit, and not by valour; that course; debarred from every species of intel- vigilant attention to private morals which the lectual improvement or innocent enjoyment; establishment of a eensorship secured, and that they never seem to have been the objects of re- zeal for liberty, which was at the same time supspect or esteem; in the conjugal relation, the ported by her political constitution.—These servile agent, not the endeared companion. causes were the true origin of the Roman greatTheir depressed state was, in some measure, ness. This was the pedestal on which her coconfirmed by illiberal legal institutions; and lossal power was erected; and though she retheir native genius was systematically restrain-mained mistress of the world, even at a time ed from rising above one degraded level. Such was the lot of the virtuous part of the sex. We forbear to oppose to this gloomy picture the profligate renown to which the bold pretensions of daring vice elevated mercenary beauty; nor would we glance at the impure topic, but to rernind our amiable country women, that immodesty in dress, contempt of the sober duties of domestic life, a boundless appetite for pleasure, and a misapplied devotion to the arts, were among the steps which led to this systematic profession of shameless profligacy, and to the establishment of those countenanced corruptions which raised the more celebrated, but infamous, Athenian women To that bad eminence. Every description of men, who know how to estimate public good or private happiness will joyfully acknowledge the visible effect which See Montesquieu Esprit des Loix, vol. ii. p. 3. when these virtues had begun to decline, the first impulse not having ceased to operate, yet a discerning eye might even then perceive her growing internal weakness, and might anticipate her final dissolution. Republican Rome, however, has been much too highly panegyrised. The Romans, had, indeed, a public feeling, to which every kind of private affection gave way; and it is chiefly on the credit of their sacrificing their individual interests to the national cause, that they acquired so high a renown. It may not be unworthy of remark, that the grand fundamental principle of the ancient republics (and though it was still more strikingly manifest in the Grecian, it was in no small degree the case with republican Rome) was dif ferent from that which constitutes the essential principle of the British constitution, and even opposite to it. In the former the public was every thing; the rights, the comforts, the very *Acts of the Apostles, ch. xvii. Their laws and constitution were naturally calculated to promote their public spirit, and to produce their union. Having succeeded in repelling the attacks of the small rival powers, and, by their peculiar fortune, or rather by the designation of Providence, having become the predominating power in Italy, they proceeded to add conquest to conquest, making in the pride of conscious superiority, wars evidently the most unjust. Yet it must not be denied, that the occupation which progressive conquests found for the citizens, communicated a peculiar hardiness to the Roman character, and served to retard the growth both of luxury and faction. That public spirit which might be justified when it applied itself to wars of self-defence, became by degrees little better than the principle of a band of robbers on a great scale; at the best, of honourable robbers, who for the sake of the spoil, agree fairly to co-operate in order to obtain it, and divide it equally when it is obtained. existence of individuals, were as nothing. With | perienced and successful valour kept him awake. us, happily the case is very different, nay even The love of wealth and power, in latter ages, exactly the reverse. The well-being of the carried on what original bravery had begun; whole community is provided for, by effectually till, in the unavoidable vicissitude of human securing the rights, the safety, the comforts of affairs, Rome perished beneath the weight of every individual. Among the ancients, the that pile of glory which she had been so long grossest acts of injustice against private persons rearing." were continually perpetrated and were regarded as beneath account, when they stood in the way of the will, the interests, the aggrandizement, the glory of the state. In our happier country, not the meanest subject can be injured in his person or his possessions. The little stock of the artisan, the peaceful cottage of the peasant, is secured to him by the universal superintend ance, and the strong protection of the public force. The state is justly considered as made up of an aggregate of particular families; and it is by securing the well being of each, that all are preserved in prosperity. We could delight to descant largely on this topic; and surely the contemplation could not but warm the hearts of Britons with lively gratitude to the author of all their blessings, and with zealous attachment to that constitution, which conveys and secures to them the enjoyment of such unequalled happiness! But we dare not expatiate in so wide a field. Let us, however, remark the degree in which the benevolent spirit of Christianity is This public spirit seems to have existed so transfused into our political system. As it was long as there were any objects of foreign ambithe glory of our religion to take the poor under tion remaining, and so long as any sense was her instruction, and to administer her consola-left to foreign danger. Even in the midst of tions to the wretched, so it is the beauty of our constitution that she considers not as below her care, the seats of humble but honest industry; the peaceful dwellings, and quiet employments of the lover of domestic comfort. wisdom, that penetrating policy, which led Montesquieu to observe, that they conquered the world by maxims and principles, seem in reality, to have insured the success of their conquests, almost more than their high national valour, and their bold spirit of enterprize. unlawful and unrelenting war, it is important to bear in mind, that many of the ancient virtues were still assiduously cultivated; the laws were still had in reverence, and, in spite of a corrupt polytheism, and of many and great defects in Again-This vital spirit of our constitution is the morality and the constitution of Rome, this favourable to virtue, as well as congenial with was the salt which, for a time, preserved her. religion, and conducive to happiness. It checks The firmness of character, and deep political that spirit of injustice and oppression which is sagacity of the Romans, seem to have borne an so manifest in the conduct of the ancient re-exact proportion to each other. That foreseeing publics towards all other nations. It tends to diffuse a general sense of moral obligation, a continual reference to the claims of others, and our own consequent obligations; in short, a continual reference to the real rights of man; a term which, though so shamefully abused, and converted into a watch-word of riot and rebellion, yet, truly and properly understood, is of sound meaning and constant application. By princes especially, these rights should ever be kept in remembrance. They were, indeed, never so well secured, as by that excellent injunction of our blessed Saviour, to do to others as we would have them to do to us. And to which the apostle's brief, but comprehensive directions, form an admirable commentary; Honour all men-Love your brethren-Fear God -Honour the king. But to return to the Romans; their very patriotism, by leading them to thirst for universal empire, finally destroyed them, being no less fatal to the morals, than to the greatness of the state. Even their vaunted public spirit partly originated in the necessities of their situation. They were a little state, surrounded by a multitude of other little states, and they had no safety but in union. Necessity first roused the genius of war, and the habits of ex What was it which afterwards plunged Rome into the lowest depths of degradation, and finally blotted her out from among the nations? It was her renouncing those maxims and principles. It was her departure from every virtuous and selfdenying habit. It was the gradual relaxation of private morals. It was the substitution of luxury for temperance, and of a mean and narrow selfishness for public spirit. It was a contempt for the sober manners of the ancient republic, and a dereliction of the old principles of government, even while the forms of that government were retained. It was the introduction of a new philosophy more favourable to sensuality; it was the importation, by her Asiatic proconsuls, of every luxury which could pamper that sensuality. It was, in short, the evils, resulting from those two passions which monopolized their souls, the lust of power, and the lust of gold.-These passions operated on cach other, as * Carlo Denina on the ancient Republics of Italy. |