From these more general considerations, into which it was perhaps necessary to enter, let us now pass to the picture antiquity has left us of the principal capitals, confining ourselves chiefly to Athens and Sparta, which may be regarded as the representatives of all the rest. The physiognomy of these, like the features of an individual, may in some respects be considered as a key to the character of the inhabitants; a remark which, with great truth, may be applied to all capitals. In the structure of the one, external and internal,[219] there was everywhere visible an effort to embody the principle of beauty, improving the advantages and overcoming the difficulties of position. In the other little could be discovered indicative of imaginative power, of the thirst to create, of the yearning of the mind after the ideal, of the desire of genius to breathe a soul into stone, to live and obtain a perpetuity of existence in the works of its own hands, to gaze on its own beauty reflected on all sides from its own creations as from a concave mirror. At Athens everything public, everything which had reference to the united efforts of the people wore an air of grandeur. The Acropolis inhabited only by the gods appeared worthy to be the dwelling place of immortal beings: all the poetry of architecture was there; it seemed to have owed its birth to a concentration of the best religious spirit of the ancient world, aiming at giving earth a resemblance to heaven; at peopling it with mute deities, speaking only through their beauty and surrounding these representatives of the invisible Olympos with everything most excellent, most valuable, most cherished among men. At Sparta a spirit of calculating economy entered into the very worship of the gods. They seemed, in the manner they lodged and entertained them, to have always had an eye to their common tables and their black broth. Between the temples of Athens and Sparta there was, in fact, the same contrast that now exists between St. Peter’s at Rome and a Calvinistic conventicle. Accordingly, several ancient writers have vied with each other in heaping encomiums upon Athens, which they regarded as at once the most glorious and the most beautiful of cities. Athenæus denominates it the “Museum of Greece;” Pindar, “the stay of Greece;” Thucydides, in his epigram upon Euripides, “the Greece of Greece;” and the Pythian Apollo, “the home and place of council of all Greeks.”[220] By others it was termed “the Opulent;” though the principal part of its riches consisted in the wise and great men whom it produced, and whose achievements covered it with glory. In the same spirit the Arabs call Cairo the “Mother of cities;” and all nations concentrate more or less upon their capital, their affection and their pride. Footnote 219: Dem. Olynth. iii. 9. Palm. Exercit. in Auct. Græc. p. 622. Zander, De Luxu Athen. c. iii. 5, § 6. Footnote 220: Athen. v. 12. Soph. Œdip. Col. 107. seq.