Foremost among these in literary perfection is Plato, whose speculations on the proper conditions--the internal conditions only--of a _Polity_ in the Hellenic sense will ever remain a monument of genius, though his ideal could hardly lead, or be intended to lead, to practical results. Then we have Xenophon, who in his political romance on the _Education of Cyrus_ stands half-way between the mere philosopher and the practical man of the world. The most instructive of all is Aristotle, who, though he lived to see the old order pass away, and a new departure in the history of the race, nevertheless confined himself to the traditional problems, and composed a special book--his _Politics_--on the virtues and vices of the ordinary Greek polity. The practical side, the necessary steps to reform and strengthen the leading States of Greece, especially in their external policy, and in the face of powerful and dangerous neighbours, we find discussed in the pamphlets of Isocrates and the public speeches of Demosthenes. It is on the proper place of these documents, and the weight assigned to them in modern histories, that I invite the reader's attention. [Sidenote: Sparta ever admired but never imitated.] § 50. I have already mentioned the remarkable fact that though, at every period of this history, Spartan manners and Spartan laws commanded the respect and the admiration of all Greece, though the Spartan constitution had proved stable when all else was in constant flux and change, still no practical attempt was ever made in older Greek history to imitate this famous constitution. It shows, no doubt, in the old Greek legislators, a far keener sense of what was practical or possible that, instead of foisting upon every new or newly emancipated State the ordinances which had succeeded elsewhere as a legitimate, slow, and historic growth, they rather sought to adapt their reforms to the conditions of each State as they found it. They fully appreciated the difference between the normal and the exceptional in legislation. [Sidenote: Practical legislation wiser in Greece than in modern Europe.] The politicians of modern Europe, who are repeating gaily, and without any sense of its absurdity, the experiment of handing over the British parliamentary system to half-civilized and hardly emancipated populations, and who cry injustice and shame upon those who decline to follow their advice--these unhistorical and illogical statesmen might well take lessons from the sobriety of Greek politicians, if their own common-sense fails to tell them that the forest-tree of centuries cannot be transplanted; nay, even the sapling will not thrive in ungrateful soil. [Sidenote: Sparta a model for the theorists.] [Sidenote: A small State preferred.]