As this sentiment was universal, animating the minds and guiding the conduct of all the different states, its influence on the improvement of the arts, and on the exertions of their professors, was powerful in the extreme. They were not deemed the lucrative trades of mechanical men, by which some fame and much money might be procured; but the ennobling occupations of the best-deserving citizens, anxiously labouring to exalt the reputation of their country, and to raise her to a more envied eminence among the surrounding and rival republics. And the citizens thus employed were conscious, in addition to the common motives of rivalry generally prevalent at all times among men of spirit engaged in the same pursuits, that not only their individual character, but the fame of their nation, was implicated in their labours; and fired by the warm energy of that recollection, they wrought with a glowing heat, with an ardour of enthusiasm that, in repeated instances, burst forth in the brightest blaze of excellence. For their exertions in their particular arts were not thought, either by themselves or by the public, the mere efforts of competition of sculptors, painters, or architects, with their fellow artists; but trials of merit between adjacent communities, each vain of their present character, each aiming at higher distinction, each hoping for the pre-eminence: to which trials the eminent artists stept forwards the champions of a people, not the combatants in a private contest. Hence with unremitting zeal beauty and grace, strength and spirit, truth and nature, were investigated through all their different forms, were examined with minute attention, were applied with scrupulous accuracy. It little weighed with the professor what his own countrymen, however polished, judged of his work, what impression it made on them, or what plaudits of theirs it called forth: but how it would be received at the Olympic or Isthmian games, at the general assembly of all Greece; where each skilful eye and each intelligent mind would be employed in scrutinizing it without favour or affection, and would compare it as well with the best productions of similar art then known as with the elaborate essays of contemporary artists. Thus whatever of genius, or talents, or skill, or judgment, or industry, each man possessed, was called forth into action by motives the most operative on the human mind, whose power is known and confessed: and the consequence was the rapid and unequalled improvement of the Arts. Improvement which still astonishes, and which we are sometimes inclined to imagine the effort of a superior race of beings to those with whom we converse: but which arose from causes strong and cogent indeed, but natural, and without difficulty discoverable.