which take place in the national character, and partly because causes operating from without necessarily produce some modifications. These states, however, endeavour to retain unchanged a state of things once established and approved; while others, in which from the beginning the opinions of individuals have out-weighed the authority of the whole, admit, in the progress of time, of greater variety, and more innovations, readily take up whatever is offered to them by accident of time and place, or even eagerly seek for opportunities of change. States of this description must soon lose all firmness and character, and fall to pieces from their own weakness; while those which never admit of innovation will at last, after having long stood as ruins in a foreign neighbourhood, yield to the general tide of human affairs, and their destruction is commonly preceded by the most complete anarchy. 2. This description expresses, though perhaps too forcibly, the difference between the Doric and Ionic races. The former had, of all the Grecians, the greatest veneration for antiquity; and not to degenerate from his ancestors was the strongest exhortation which a Spartan could hear:(5) the latter, on the other hand, were in everything fond of novelty, and delighted in foreign communication; whence their cities were always built on the sea, whereas the Dorians generally preferred an inland situation. The anxiety of the Dorians, and the Spartans in particular, to keep up the pure Doric character and the customs of their ancestors, is strongly shown by the prohibition to travel,(6) and the exclusion of foreigners, an institution common both to the Spartans and Cretans, and which has been much misrepresented by ancient authors.(7) It is very possible, as Plutarch thinks, that the severity of these measures was increased by the decline of all morals and discipline, which had arisen among the Ionians from the contrary practice; that race having in the earliest times fallen into a state of the greatest effeminacy and inactivity, from their connexion with their Asiatic neighbours. For how early was the period when the ancient constitution of the Grecian family degenerated among the Ionians into the slavery of the wife! how weak, effeminate, and luxurious do their ancient poets Callinus(8) and Asius(9) represent them! and if the legend describes even the daughters of Neleus, the founder of the colony, as completely destitute of morality,(10) what must have been the condition of this people, when the wives of the Ionians had mixed with Lydian women! The warning voice of such examples might well stimulate the ancient lawgivers to draw in with greater closeness the iron bond of custom.