tinued and oft-repeated success in military enterprises might, indeed, at last have tended to depress the power of the people. The heavy-armed soldier of those days, on whose powers and prowess the fate of the engagement depended, was of much superior rank to the mass of the people, by whom he was paid, and for whom he nominally fought; and his feelings were rather with that class to which he might hope to attain, than with that from which he sprung: as for his inferiors, he despised them. In the naval service, too, the commanders and the marines-if such a term may be applied to those heavyarmed troops which formed part of every ship's complement-were of superior rank, and looked down on the moving power of the ship, the sinews by which the oars were rowed, the crashing stroke given, as a modern manufacturer does on his steamengine, or rather his unfortunate factory children, as mere living machines

the έμψυχα όργανα of Aristotle. When the battle was won, and the rewards distributed among the leaders, these living machines began to clamour for their dues. They had toiled without ceasing for the cause of Athens and of Greece; they had borne the heat and burden of the great day; they too would be rewarded; they would claim to influence that government for whose benefit their energies, their lives, were employed; they would be heard in the agora, and they were heard.

These men, the very lowest dregs of the Piræus-" the bench-tied populace "*-worked gradually and surely to the downfal of Athens. No government could be more uncertain, more inconsistent, more ruinously expensive, than that which naturally resulted from the large admixture of the lowest people among the legislators of the agora. To her own citizens the terrors of that rule were sufficiently great. What must they have been to their allies-to the allies of that nation which regarded them as mere engines for its own aggrandisement, and their treasures and their resources as the legitimate supporters of the frivolities and extravagances of Athens? "The arm of Athens was indeed a long

With this rapid progression of ultra-democratic influence in the constitution of Athens, since the battle of Salamis, so constantly before them, and with a certain knowledge and ofttimes sad experience of the fluctuations to which such a popular voice was liable, what confidence could the states of Greece place in the Athenian nation? Conscious, as they must have been, of the natural restlessness of the Athenian character of the tendency of that people to fly from one proposition to its very opposite-to court one demagogue to-day, and send him is xogaxas to-morrow-they could not confide in their assurances, their protestations, or their proffered friendship. And although they might reverence many among them as the best, the wisest, and ablest men of the æra, they could not trust to the present power or influence of the favourite of the agora, as the same power which set him up but as yesterday might consign him to a cruel death on the morrow. Nothing but continued bribes could keep the populace of Athens in good-humour with their leaders; and though they cared little whether the bribe arose from the confiscation of a rich citizen, or the robbery of a richer ally, proIvided it must be, unless the leader preferred the loss of power, pay, and life. With such vast resources, and more vast desires, with a situation the most suitable for aggression, few could regard Athens in any other light than that of a hotbed of dangerous ambition. In the opponents of this fickle nation, the cold, sober, stoical Spartans, they might perceive much to find fault with, much to condemn; but they could not discover in them that dangerous craving after power which appeared so plainly in their rivals.. They did see them to be situated in a country little fitted for encroachments on them and their territories, and naturally inclined rather to defend what they had acquired than to seek to add to it by further acquisitions. But more than this,

they felt that dependence could be placed on the public faith of the government, and that there would not be on her part capricious or wayward feelings, but such a fixedness of purpose and constancy of principle as the stability and uniformity of her constitution seemed to guarantee. One nation, indeed, may have been, and most probably was, influenced by far different motives, Athens' most bitter and persevering enemy, the state of Corinth. Were Athens overthrown, she might naturally expect, from her bimarine situation, to succeed to her place, and to add to her favourite epithet of rich, that muchdesired one of mighty. Holding in her own hands the key of the Peloponnese, whilst through her two ports she could threaten the whole circuit of its shores with her naval forces, she might well desire to erase the name of Athens from among her rivals, and to reign without an equal on the seas. But the rest of the states of Greece too clearly saw that they would be in no way benefited by this change of power, this shifting of the too dangerous naval supremacy from Athens to Corinth. Reduced

and fettered, so as to be no longer a continued source of fear and danger, they wished that Athens might still remain, in sufficient power to admit of her being balanced, as occasion might require, against any unexpected encroachment of her rival; and sufficiently independent to insure that continuance of good and great men who, in the hour of danger, might once more come forth and lead the united fleets of Greece against the power of some later Xerxes.

We have stated that those fixed and constant principles of thought and action among the Spartans, which were opposed to the restlessness and inconsistency of the Athenians, were the result of that remodelled form of government which Sparta received from her lawgiver, Lycurgus. We wish to shew, that as from the democracy of the Athenians the inconstancy and restless ambition of the people resulted, so did the fixedness of purpose and constancy of principle of the Spartans flow from the aristocratic nature of their constitution.

Respecting the origin and the reputed author of the Spartan polity,

no two opinions can be conceived more diametrically opposed to one another than those which have been dreamed of, entertained, and contended for, by critics of the highest German breed and best authority, in matters classical as well as metaphysico-critical. The one party accord to Lycurgus the merit, not only of introducing and establishing this polity among his countrymen, but also of thinking it out in all its minutiæ. In their eyes it appears as a wondrous and mysterious prodigy of art, claiming their admiration on account of its execution, and the power required for its completion; whilst, to the other side, Lycurgus sinks into "a mere symbol of a developement of gradual change," "an hieroglyphical note of a spontaneous growth," which at the very utmost required only a few touches from the hand of man to bring it to its maturity. Is it possible that either of these theories can be correct? With the right reverend and learned Bishop of St. David's, we can hardly think that such can be the case. But as this is but a flourish of trumpets wherewith to herald in a new theory, a mere prelude to introducing on the stage our own view of how matters stood in those days, it will be but fair to notice some of the authorities by which the advocates of the rival theories endeavour to support them. The chief, and perhaps the most respectable, witness tendered in evidence by the Artificialists- if we may be allowed so to designate the favourers of a real and actually existing Lycurgus, in opposition and contradistinction to the Materialists, or gradual developement party—is a very distinct and decidedly favourable dictum, which appears in the concluding chapter of the second book of the Politics of Aristotle; in which, in so many words, he sets Lycurgus down as an inventor of constitutions in opposition to mere reformers of old abuses, and restorers of ancient customs. Now, though we cannot determine with mathematical accuracy how many authors are required to outweigh one Aristotle, or go the entire swine with Professor Goetling, and balance him against a thousand Neposes; yet so great is our respect for and just confidence in that writer-for we can

Athenians to the third heaven,these very men who in another sentence he has told us were placed by Solon as second among those four classes into which he divided the entire population of Athens.* Now, as we cannot suppose that two sentences so opposite and contradictory, as well to historical truth as to one another, could have emanated from the pen of any philosopher save Lord Brougham, therefore we do not hesitate in rejecting this entire passage, which bears about it such suspicious marks. Midway between this suspicious beginning and ending appears the dictum cited by the Artificialists in support of their theory. It is an old and over-true saying, that "birds of a feather flock together;" and, therefore, since this much-beloved dictum appears in such questionable society, we cannot but suspect it of illegitimacy; and, with all due respect to its German fosterfathers, refuse to admit its claim to such authority, until some one of them can produce a full, true, and particular account of its birth, parentage, and education.

On what, then, do the Naturalists depend? Mainly, if not entirely, on the entire omission of the name of Lycurgus from the account of the Spartan polity, as recorded by Hellenicus; which omission is to outweigh the distinct admissions and assertions to the contrary of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Aristotle, to take three only of the many who have recorded the actual existence of Lycurgus. These writers, far from attributing to that reformer the invention of every thing called Spartan, yet speak of him with such a degree of personality, as to render his existence and his interference matters of undoubted certainty, at least if their information is to be relied on. How congruous, too, are their respective accounts! The father of history speaks in general but expressive terms of the calamitous condition of the country previous to the time of Lycurgus; Thucydides

tells us of a long period of civil feuds preceding the establishment of the Lycurgian polity; whilst Aristotle, with his usual minuteness, relates how, in the reign of Charilaus, the Spartan government was changed from a tyranny to an aristocracy.† However, the improbability of such a form of government, if entirely new, being received so readily and so quietly in a country so disturbed as Lacedæmonia is admitted to have been at that period, may seem to tell in favour of the Naturalists. Is it likely that such writers as we have cited and appealed to would have spoken so distinctly, as it must be admitted they have, of the personal existence of the Spartan legislator, had he been the "mere symbol of a gradual developement," a mere shadow of a man? Few theories have ever been so popular as that of developements; not only have kings, heroes, and legislators, sunk into symbols at the touch of the magic wand of the critic, but the present wondrous form under which we appear on earth has been regarded as a mere developement of the frame of the lowest of the animal race; and even now, it is being seriously debated among the medicals, whether the male sex is not a more perfect developement of the other. With

the reverend professor of geology at Oxford, we say, we cordially hate all developements, and all their attendant vagaries.

When the great Dorian reformer of evils and restorer of the old paths began to consider what course he should pursue to recall his countrymen to the ways and thoughts of their forefathers, he proceeded to investigate the peculiar respective situations of the three great divisions of the inhabitants of the land, the pure Spartans, the provincials, the helots. The objects which he proposed to himself were the uniting together the first of these classes, so that they might keep to themselves and for themselves the entire rule and authority in the land, and yet at the same

time to unite the second class to the former by firm and permanent bonds. When the Dorians made their successful inroad into Laconia, few as were their numbers, a portion of them were contingents of allies who could boast of little, if any, Dorian blood, though connected by some very distant ties with the leaders of the expedition. Their inferiority of birth, however, was such as to forbid their being rewarded equally with their better boon companions in arms. The fighting portion of the invasion concluded, perhaps in one or two engagements, the invaders deemed it necessary to keep, at least for some time, an armed possession of the land which they had wrested from the Achæans. Instead, therefore, of immediately dismissing their allies with the due reward of their services, and most probably too poor to mete out to them any other reward worthy of their acceptance, or sufficient to keep them still as friends, they portioned among them, at a low fixed rent, a part of the lands of the conquered. The return was to be military service,- for the rent was intended rather as a proof of their right as conquerors to the land than as a profit or revenue. Besides these their allies, there was yet another party whom they found it politic, if not necessary, to conciliate, rather than to hazard their being driven to some desperate resistance,—namely, those of the old inhabitants of the land who from their station, birth, and previous property, rendered it more than probable that their influence over the old inhabitants, still numerous, would be a constant source of fear and dan

ger to the new lords. To these, then, a similar bribe of land at a quitrent was offered, and from these two branches of armed farmers and possessors of the provincial lands, the body of the Periæci, or provincials, originated. Without some such twofold origin as this, we are unable to account for that marked difference of degree which cannot fail of being recognised among the members of this class; for, surely, it was no accidental difference, in those times, that some of this class were permitted to fight in line with their Dorian masters, whilst others were reduced to

lighter arms and less noble stations; that some of this class never rose above the rank of subordinates, whilst another could be permitted to rule, as admiral, over the naval contingent of one of the island allies of Sparta. It was a difference neither of abilities nor of accident, as the majority of modern writers would have us suppose, but of birth, of origin. The Laconian provincial tilled his land, paid his quit-rent to his municipality, and rendered his military service to the state; secluded from every political privilege, and governed even in his district or town by a Spartan officer, he bore the heaviest share of the public burdens, and lived in daily fear of being hurried from his farms or his merchandise, his trade or his manufacture, to peril his life in a political quarrel for the benefit of his Dorian masters. It must not, however, be supposed that the cause of war was always foreign to the interests of the provincials; far from it, it would often happen that the fortunes of that class were more deeply involved in the event of the war than those of the Spartans. It may be said that the peculiar principles of the Spartan polity rendered trade and manufactures but a poor recompense for a state of political slavery; luxury indeed, and its ministering arts, were banished from the realm, and the stranger but seldom found entrance into the land: "Yet," says the bishop, "the artificer must have found very profitable employment in the public buildings and festivals, which displayed the piety and magnificence of the state. For Sparta thought nothing too good or too valuable for her gods; and though the Dorian would not disgrace his hands by subordinate acts, he lavished his money on the productions which the industry of the provincials gave birth to; and even in Greece, the names of some of the Laconian artists were not unknown."*

Materially as the subjugation of Laconia ministered to the power, and secured the internal tranquillity, of the Spartan kingdom, the servitude to which the helots were doomed was the main foundation of their masters' power. Had the Dorian lord consented to waste even the