THE "AGE OF PERICLES." With the close of the Persian contest, and the beginning of the Thirty Years' truce, properly begins what has been termed the "Age of Pericles"--the inauguration of a new and important era of Athenian greatness and renown. Having won the highest military honors and political ascendancy, Athens now took the lead in intellectual progress. Themistocles and Cimon had restored to Athens all that of which Xerxes had despoiled it--the former having rebuilt its ruins, and the latter having given to its public buildings a degree of magnificence previously unknown. But Pericles surpassed them both: He was the ruler of the land When Athens was the land of fame; He was the light that led the band When each was like a living flame; The centre of earth's noblest ring, Of more than men the more than king. Yet not by fetter nor by spear His sovereignty was held or won: Feared--but alone as freemen fear; Loved--but as freemen love alone; He waved the sceptre o'er his kind By nature's first great title--mind! --CROLY. Orator and philosopher, as well as statesman and general, Pericles had the most lofty views. "Athens," says a modern writer, "was to become not only the capital of Greece, but the center of art and refinement, and, at the same time, of those democratical theories which formed the beau ideal of the Athenian notions of government." Athens became the center and capital of the most polished communities of Greece; she drew into a focus all the Grecian intellect, and she obtained from her dependents the wealth to administer the arts, which universal traffic and intercourse taught her to appreciate. The treasury of the state being placed in the hands of Pericles, he knew no limit to expenditure but the popular will, which, fortunately for the glories of Grecian art, kept pace with the vast conceptions of the master designer. Most of those famous structures that crowned the Athenian Acropolis, or surrounded its base, were either built or adorned by his direction, under the superintendence of the great sculptor, Phidias. The Parthenon, the Ode'um, the gold and ivory statue of the goddess Minerva, and the Olympian Jupiter--the latter two the work of the great sculptor himself--were alone sufficient to immortalize the "Age of Pericles." Of these miracles of sculpture and of architecture, as well as of the literature of this period, we shall speak farther in a subsequent place. Of the general condition and appearance of Athens during the fourteen years that the Thirty Years' Truce was observed, HAYGARTH gives us the following poetical description: