Not only in Gymnasia and republics, but even (as may be seen on the former page) in monarchies, speeches enough are made,--not to the people, but still to their _curatores absentes_.[125] Even so is there in monarchies freedom enough, although in despotisms there may be still more of it than in them or in republics. A true despotic state has, like a frozen cask of wine, not lost its _spirit_ (of freedom), but only compressed it from the watery circumference into a fiery point; in such a happy state freedom is distributed merely among the few who are _ripe_ for it, the Sultan and his Bashaws, and that goddess (who is pictured still oftener than the bird Ph[oe]nix) holds herself indemnified, and more and better than that, for the reduced _number_ of her worshippers, by their _worth_ and _ardor_, since her few _epopts_[126] or _initiates_--the Bashaws--enjoy her influence in a measure of which a whole people is never capable. Freedom, like an inheritance, is lessened by the multitude of heirs; and I am convinced that he would be most free who should be free alone. A democracy and an oil-painting are to be put only on a canvas without _knots_ (inequalities), but a despotism is a piece of _relieved_ work,--or something still more rare: despotic freedom lives, like canary-birds, only in _high_ cages; republican liberty, like yellow-hammers, only in _long_ ones. A despot is the _practical reason_ of a whole country; the subjects are just so many impulses contending therewith, which must be overcome. The legislative power, therefore, belongs to him alone (the executive to his favorites);--even mere talented men (like Solon and Lycurgus) held the law-giving power in themselves alone, and were the _magnetic needle_ which _guided_ the ship of state; a despot consists, as their throne-successor, of almost nothing but laws, his own and others at once, and is the magnetic mountain, which draws the ship of state to itself. "To be one's own slave is the hardest slavery," said an old man, at least an ancient and a Latin; but the despot demands of others only the easier kind, and takes upon himself the harder. Another says _Parere scire, par imperio gloria est_;[127] a negro slave, therefore, wins glory and honor as much as a negro king. _Servi pro nullis habentur_;[128] hence it is that political nullities feel so little the pressure of the court atmosphere; whereas despotic realities earn their freedom by the very fact that they know so well how to feel and prize its worth. A republican in the nobler sense, e. g. the Emperor of Persia, whose liberty-cap is a turban and his liberty-tree a throne, fights for freedom behind his military Propaganda and behind his Sans-culottes with an ardor such as the ancient authors demand and depict in the Gymnasia. Nay, we are never justified in denying such enthroned republicans a Brutus's greatness of soul, before we have put them to the proof; and if in history good were delineated more than