DURING the fifty years which immediately preceded the period at which we now arrive Athens had risen from a level little higher than that of many of her neighbour towns to be the chief, the queen, of Hellas. Through an undiscoverable something in her people, through an innate power lying hid within her, through a succession of great men to lead her, through hard work and self-sacrifice, she had shot ahead of all her rivals. And while boundless enterprise, which sent her merchant vessels beyond Ionian and Aigaian Seas, enriched her coffers, she was protected seaward by a navy which had become a match for all the other Grecian states together, and landward by a solid force of soldiers, each of them a self-relying, self-governing citizen, believing the fate of home depended on his own peculiar strength, courage, and obedience; and all this compact mass by sea and land was led by Generals not unworthy of the warriors they commanded. So Athens was become the head of numerous allied, almost dependent, towns and tributary states, whose help she could call upon at need, whose tribute flowed a constant stream to swell her treasury. And all the time that this material prosperity had been increasing, her intellectual, her artistic growth had been as wonderful. It is generally noticed that only in the decline of nations an æsthetic, or subtle, sense of beauty is obtained, and arts are seen to flourish. So true has this been found in other states and peoples that from the one the other may often be inferred. Was this so with Athens? Had not her arts grown with her growth, and flourished in their full perfection as she grew? Was it not peculiar to Athens that they had not to wait until she was decrepit? However this may be, we find that a small town, as it seems to us in our days of unwieldy cities, centres of overpeopled provinces, a fifth-rate municipality, with a population, even at its highest, not much greater than that of many a modern watering-place, had bred amongst her citizens the purest taste, and highest genius, that marks a people as superior to ordinary men. And not in some only of the higher occupations of the mind was she ahead of others: she excelled in all. Her sculptors, her painters, her architects, her orators, her tragedians, her comedians, her statesmen, her philosophers, at that time were the marvel of the world, as it seems they will remain that marvel for all time to come. If it is hard to realize the pre-eminence of Athens in genius, who amongst us hath an imagination large enough to realize her outward show? Who is so vain as to attempt to picture it to others?