among them alone, in the ancient world, painting and sculpture assumed their proper dignity; and in politics and statesmanship, and that art of arts, philosophy, they led the way, and taught mankind the steps by which to arrive at perfection. Footnote 146: According to Hippocrates, the inhabitants of lofty mountains, well watered, are generally hardy and of tall stature, but fierce and ferocious. In saying this, the philosopher describes the Arcadians without naming them. De Aër. et Loc. § 120. Footnote 147: Athen. iv. 74. Footnote 148: Clem. Alex. Strom. i. p. 355. l. 12. Wink. Hist. de l’Art, i. 316. Greece, by the means we have described, was gradually reclaimed from the state of nature, covered with beautiful cities, harbours, docks, temples, palaces adorned with infinite variety of works of art, with sculpture in ivory and gold, with paintings, gems, and vases, which converted her principal cities into so many museums. Her plains, her dells, her mountain recesses were studded with sanctuaries and sacred groves, conferring the external beauty of religion on the whole face of the country. Public roads, branching from numerous capital cities, traversed the land in every direction; bridges spanned her rivers, agriculture covered her hills and plains with harvests, the vine hung in festoons from tree to tree, the foliage of the olive clothed the mountain sides, and a belt of beautiful gardens surrounded every city, town, and village. The primary cause of all this amazing activity has, by philosophers, been sought for in various circumstances of the condition of the Greeks, in the form of their institutions, in the rivalry of so many small communities, in the fact of their being inventors, and the consequent freshness of their pursuits. But although all these circumstances and many others contributed, as we have shown, to expedite the progress of the Greeks in civilisation, they were none of them the fountain head, which lies far beyond our ken. It were in fact as easy to tell why one star differs from another star in glory, as why one nation or one man rises in intellect above his fellows. But we are supplied with a link in the chain which connects the above effects with their cause, by the physical organisation of the Greeks, who possessed the most perfect forms in which humanity ever appeared. Their frame exhibiting all the beauty of which the human body is susceptible, uniting strength with lightness, dignity and elegance with activity, the utmost robustness of health with extreme delicacy of contour, the muscles developed by exercise, and developed over the whole structure alike, suggested the idea of power and indefatigable energy; the stature, generally above the middle size, the free and unembarrassed gait, the features[149] full of beauty, the expression replete with intellect, and the eye flashing with a consciousness of independence:—all these united conferred upon the