Great as is the importance and undoubted the influence of eloquence in modern Europe, it is by no means so considerable as it was in the states of antiquity. This arises in part from the different structure of government in ancient and modern times. We hear nothing of eloquence in Persia, Egypt, or the East. Military power, political address, were then, as they have ever since been in that part of the world, the sole passports to greatness. But it was otherwise in the republics which studded the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Universally, in them, supreme power was lodged in the citizens of a single city, or in them jointly with the landowners in the vicinity, who could with ease attend its public assemblies. Every free citizen had a vote in those assemblies, in which every subject, political, social, and judicial, was discussed and determined. Questions of peace and war, of imposing or taking off taxes, of concluding treaties, of domestic laws, of appointing generals and ambassadors, of providing for the public subsistence, of determining private suits, of criminal punishments, of life and death, were all submitted to those assemblies, debated in their presence, and decided by their suffrages. Political power, personal fame, the direction of the state, the command of its armaments, the decision of its dearest public and private interests, were all to be attained by obtaining a sway in these public assemblies, and could seldom be obtained in any other way. Hence it was that, as has been finely observed, in modern times, the soldier is brave, and the lawyer is eloquent; but in ancient, the soldier was eloquent, and the lawyer was brave. Power of any sort could be attained only by acquiring an ascendency in the popular assemblies; whoever acquired that ascendency was liable to be immediately called to command the fleets or armies of the republic. Whatever opinions may be formed of the tendency of such a system of government, to insure either the wise direction of its civil interests or the successful protection of its military enterprises, there can be but one as to its effect in insuring the highest attention to oratory, by which alone the command of either could be obtained.