Then follow, close on the extract we have just made, some observations upon the famous law of Ostracism, which are well deserving of attention, and which we would willingly quote did our space allow of it. Perhaps it would be difficult, in following out the several applications of this law, to show that it had exactly the beneficial operation which--arguing on the theory of the institution,--is here assigned to it. But, at the very lowest, this much may be said of the law of Ostracism, that it gives to the stronger of two factions a means of deciding the contest without appeal to force, before the contest rose to its maximum of bitterness, and without necessity or excuse for those wholesale banishments which afflicted the republics of Italy. If such an institution had existed in the Florentine republic, we should not have heard of those cruel banishments that Guelph and Ghibelline, Bianchi and Neri, inflicted upon each other; such banishments as that, for instance, in which its great poet Dante was involved. Of one remarkable event, characterising the working of the Athenian government, we do not assent to the view presented to us by Mr Grote. His last published volume brings down the affairs of Greece to the battle of Marathon and the death of Miltiades. In the sentence passed on the hero of Marathon, the operation of a popular government has been often disadvantageously traced; the Athenians have been accused of fickleness and ingratitude. Mr Grote repels the charge. With some observations upon this defence, which forms the conclusion of the fourth and last of the published volumes, we shall bring our own notice to a close. _Ingratitude_, we readily admit, is not the proper word to be used on such an occasion. A citizen serves the state, and is honoured; if he commits a crime against the state he is not, on this account, to go unpunished. His previous services invest him with no privilege to break the laws, or act criminally. What man, capable of doing, a patriotic action, would wish for such a privilege, or dream of laying claim to it? Not gratitude or ingratitude--but justice or injustice--is the issue to be tried between Miltiades and the Athenian assembly. And although Mr Grote is supported, in some measure, by Dr Thirlwall in the judgment he gives on this transaction, we prefer to side here with the opinion expressed by the earlier historian, Mr Mitford: we view the sentence passed on Miltiades not as the triumph of law or justice, but of mere party-spirit, the triumph of a faction gained through the unreasonable anger of the people. Though the extract is rather long, we must, in justice, give the narrative of Mr Grote in his own language.