We would not be understood as here maintaining a respectable and amiable, but unfounded theory, that the fine arts have never flourished except under popular governments, nor that they ceased with such forms in Greece. In this, more than in any walk of genius, is the active encouragement of the supreme power indispensable to excellence. But never can the arts of taste flourish in true grandeur, where patriotism and popular feeling are not the paramount, or at least the apparently paramount, principles of the times, and source of their peculiar cultivation. The arts themselves must be essentially free; they must likewise derive their quickening inspiration from a national sentiment of interest and of country. Pisistratus and Pericles, we have seen, while rulers of Athens, were but superintendents of the arts, in their application to public purposes, in unison with public will, and in obedience to public approval. Even Phidias prepared with trembling anxiety to receive the award of merit from the voice of his fellow-citizens; and only on the supposition that they were to undergo the ordeal of a close inspection before being placed in their destined situation, can we account for the exquisite finish of the Elgin Marbles, even in parts not exposed to the effects of climate. Only when the purity of this source of honor was contaminated, did art fall, never to rise again. Not till every institution belonging to the republican ages of Greece; not till every sentiment of a generous kind had been trampled upon; not till the Olympic games ceased,--till the physical education and martial exercises of the youth were neglected,--till the arts, separated from national polity, became dependent on the caprice of individuals,--till there was no longer public spirit nor patriotic feeling; not till all that creates and endears the name of country had sunk beneath a foreign yoke or domestic thraldom, did Greece cease to produce artists.