The great moral which may be drawn from the history of Greece, is one which the patriot in no age or clime should ever forget. In looking over this little system of states, we find uniformly that each displayed genius, energy, and patriotism, while really free and independent; but the moment one was overawed and conquered by its neighbor, it lost its greatness, its patriotism--even its virtue. And when, at last, a great state arose in the north of Greece, and placed a monarch upon its throne, who substituted the obedient spirit of the mercenary soldier and crouching courtier, for the independent genius of liberty and patriotism--who overawed Greece by his armies, and silenced the Council of Amphictyon by his presence--then was it found that the days of Grecian greatness had been numbered, and that the glory of these republics was destroyed forever; then was it seen that the Spartan lost his patriotism, and the Athenian that energy of mind almost creative, which could lead armies and navies to battle and to victory, adorn and enrich the stores of philosophy and literature, agitate the public assemblies from the _Bema_, or make the marble and the canvass breathe. The battle of Cheronea overthrew at the same time the state governments, the liberties, the prosperity, and, worst of all, the virtue and the towering intellect of Greece. With the destruction of the governments of her independent states, Greece lost the great animating principle of her system. Forming but an insignificant subject province of the great Macedonian kingdom, and afterwards of the still greater empire of Rome, her sons preserved for a time the books and the mere learning of their renowned ancestors; but the spirit, the energy, the principle of thought and reflection,--the mind,--were all gone. "For more than ten centuries, (says an eloquent historian) the Greeks of Byzantium possessed models of every kind, yet they did not suggest to them one original idea; they did not give birth to a copy worthy of coming after these masterpieces. Thirty millions of Greeks, the surviving depositaries of ancient wisdom, made not a single step, during twelve centuries, in any one of the social sciences. There was not a citizen of free Athens who was not better skilled in the science of politics than the most erudite scholar of Byzantium; their morality was far inferior to that of Socrates--their philosophy to that of Plato and Aristotle, upon whom they were continually commenting. They made not a single discovery in any one of the physical sciences, unless we except the lucky accident which produced the Greek fire. They loaded the ancient poets with annotations, but they were incapable of treading in their footsteps; not a comedy or a tragedy was written at the foot of the ruins of the theatres of Greece; no epic poem was produced by the worshippers of Homer; not an ode by those of Pindar.