In these haunts, little familiar to our imagination, lay concealed the germs of law, good government, philosophy, the arts, and whatever else has tended to soften and render beautiful the human clay. That this was the case is certain; why it should have been so, we may perhaps be unable satisfactorily to explain; but that is what we shall at least attempt in the present work, and for this purpose, it will at the first glance be apparent, that the most elaborate delineation of the political institutions of Athens must prove altogether insufficient. These were but one among many powerful causes. The principal lay deeper in a combination of numerous circumstances:—a peculiarly perfect and beautiful physical organization; a mind fraught with enthusiasm, force, flexibility, and unrivalled quickness; a buoyancy of temper which no calamity could long depress; consequent, probably, upon this, a strong religious feeling ineradicably seated in the heart; an unerring perception of the beautiful in art and nature; and lastly, the enjoyment of a genial climate, and an atmosphere pure, brilliant, and full of sunshine as their minds. Races of men, though not in precisely the same manner as individuals, yet exhibit, at particular periods of their history, a freshness, a vigour, a disinterestedness, like that of youth; and, because this state of feeling may more than once occur in the course of their career, they seem to spring, like Æson, out of convulsions and apparent dissolution to a state of perfect rejuvenescence. Calamity and suffering purify whole communities as they do individuals. In the boiling and commotion of revolutions the impurities of the national character bubble upwards and are skimmed away by the iron hand of misfortune. These political convulsions are, in fact, so many efforts of nature to expel some disease lurking in the constitution, and which, though the race be immortal, might, if suffered to remain in the frame, produce a lethargy worse than death. This truth we should bear constantly in mind; for among the characteristics of the Athenian constitution, not the least remarkable are the many efforts it made to right itself, and adapt its framework to the changing circumstances of the times.