From the arts the transition is natural to the literature[970] of Greece, which in the historical period necessarily constituted the principal agent in ripening and stamping their peculiar character upon the fruits of education among the people. Literature is in fact the school-mistress of nations. In it so long as it remains entire, we may contemplate the whole character, intellectual and moral, of the race out of whose passions, yearnings, tastes, and energies it may be said to be fashioned. And this, true of all literature, is especially applicable to that of Greece, which more than any other bears the impress of nationality. Every idea, every image, every maxim, every reflection seems to emanate from one source. Nothing is foreign. Neither the inspiration, nor the spirit which regulated it and moulded it into beauty, borrowed a single impulse from anything existing beyond the circle of Hellenic thought. Greece supplied at once the matrix and the materials, the active power and that delicate sense of beauty and perfection which presided over its organisation and rendered it the delight of mankind. Footnote 970: Speaking of the influence of literature on education Plato remarks, that persons accustomed from their infancy to the loftier and purer inspirations of the muse will regard with contempt everything mean or illiberal; whereas they who have always been familiar with low and vulgar compositions will look upon all other literature as tame and insipid.—De Legg. vii. t. viii. p. 30.