excellence of any inftitution. While, to the licentious innovator, antiquity is ignorance, custom is tyranny, order is intolerance, laws are chains. But the end has correfponded with the beginning. Their "baseless fabrics" have fallen to pieces before they were well reared; and have expofed their fuperficial, but self-sufficient builders, to the just derifion of mankind. CHAP. CHAP. VII. Greece. WHEN We contemplate Greece, and especially when we fix our eyes on Athens, our admiration is strongly, I had almost faid, is irresistibly excited, in reflecting, that fuch a diminutive fpot concentrated within itself whatever is great and eminent in almost every point of view; whatever confers diftinction on the human intellect; whatever is calculated to infpire wonder, or communicate delight, Athens was the. pure well. head of poetry: Hither, as to their fountain, other stars It was the theatre of arms, the cradle of the arts, the school of philofophy, and the pa rent of eloquence. To be regarded as the masters in learning, the oracle of taste, and the standard of politenefs, G 3 litenefs, to the whole civilized world, is a fplendid diftinction. But it is a peftilent mifchief, when the very renown attending fuch brilliant advantages becomes the vehicle for carrying into other countries the depraved manners by which these pre-emi nent advantages are accompanied. This was confeffedly the, cafe of Greece with refpect to Rome Rome had conquered Greece by her arms; but whenever a fubjugated country contributes, by her vices, to enflave the ftate which conquered her, fhe amply revenges herself. But the perils of this contamination do not terminate, with their immediate confequences. The ill effects of Grecian manners did not cease with the corruptions which they engendered at Rome. There is still a ferious danger, left, while the ardent and high-fpirited young reader contemplates Greece only through the fplendid medium of her heroes and her artists, her poets and her orators; while his imagination is fired with the glories of conqueft, and captivated with the charms of literature, that he may lofe fight of the diforders, the corruptions, and the crimes, by which Athens, the famous feat of arts and of letters, was difhonoured. May he not be tinctured (allowing for change of circumstances) with fomething of that fpirit which inflamed Alexander, when, as he was paffing the Hydafpes, he enthusiastically exclaimed, "O Athenians! could you believe to what dangers I expofe myself, for the fake of being cele brated by you!" Many of the Athenian vices originated in the very nature of their conftitution; in the very spirit of that turbulent democracy which Solon could not reftrain, nor the ableft of his fucceffors control. The great founder of their legislation felt the dangers infeparable 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 inftitutions, he betrayed his diftruft of this fpecies of go vernment, by thofe guards and ramparts which he was fo affiduous in providing and multiplying. Knowing himself to be incapable of fetting afide the popular power, his attention was directed to diveft it, as much as poffible, of its mischiefs, by the entrenchments that he ftrove to caft about it. His fagacious mind anticipated the ill effects of that republican reftleffnefs, that at length completely overturned the ftate which it had so often menaced, and fo constantly distracted. This unfettled government, which left the country perpetually expofed to the tyranny of the few, and the turbulence of the many, was never bound together by any principle of union, by any bond of intereft, common to the whole community, except when the general danger, for a time, annihilated the diftinction of feparate interefts. The reftraint of laws was feeble; the laws themselves were often contradictory; often ill adminiftered; popular intrigues, and tumultuous affemblies, frequently obftructing their ope ration. |