Connected with this reciprocal indulgence of individual diversity, was not only the hospitable reception of all strangers at Athens, which Periklês contrasts with the xenêlasy or jealous expulsion practised at Sparta,—but also the many-sided activity, bodily and mental, visible in the former, so opposite to that narrow range of thought, exclusive discipline of the body and never-ending preparation for war, which formed the system of the latter. His assertion that Athens was equal to Sparta, even in her own solitary excellence,—efficiency on the field of battle,—is doubtless untenable; but not the less impressive is his sketch of that multitude of concurrent impulses which at this same time agitated and impelled the Athenian mind,—the strength of one not implying the weakness of the remainder: the relish for all pleasures of art and elegance, and the appetite for intellectual expansion, coinciding in the same bosom with energetic promptitude as well as endurance: abundance of recreative spectacles, yet noway abating the cheerfulness of obedience even to the hardest calls of patriotic duty: that combination of reason and courage which encountered danger the more willingly from having discussed and calculated it beforehand: lastly, an anxious interest as well as a competence of judgment in public discussion and public action, common to every citizen rich and poor, and combined with every man’s own private industry. So comprehensive an ideal of many-sided social development, bringing out the capacities for action and endurance, as well as those for enjoyment, would be sufficiently remarkable, even if we supposed it only existing in the imagination of a philosopher: but it becomes still more so when we recollect that the main features of it at least were drawn from the fellow-citizens of the speaker. It must be taken, however, as belonging peculiarly to the Athens of Periklês and his contemporaries; nor would it have suited either the period of the Persian war, fifty years before, or that of Demosthenês, seventy years afterwards. At the former period, the art, the letters, and the philosophy, were as yet backward, while even the active energy and democratical stimulus, though very powerful, had not been worked up to the pitch which they afterwards reached: at the latter period, although the intellectual manifestations of Athens subsist in full or even increased vigor, we shall find the personal enterprise and energetic spirit of her citizens materially abated. As the circumstances, which I have already recounted, go far to explain the previous upward movement, so those which fill the coming chapters, containing the disasters of the Peloponnesian war, will be found to explain still more completely the declining tendency shortly about to commence. Athens was brought to the brink of entire ruin, from which it is surprising that she recovered at all,—but noway surprising that she recovered at the expense of a considerable loss of personal