Their highest literary efforts do not go beyond a few epigrams collected in the Greek Anthology, and a few romances. Such is the unworthy use which the depositaries of every treasure of human wit and genius make of their wealth, during an uninterrupted course of transmission for more than a thousand years." And such will always be the destiny of states as soon as they are moulded into one consolidated empire, with a controlling despotism at the centre. But while the states of Greece were thus sinking into insignificance, under the crushing weight of one great consolidated government,--in another part of Europe, almost as small and secluded as Greece, little confederacies or associations of independent states were rapidly developing a literature and a character equal to those of the ancient Greek, and affording perhaps a still more striking and beautiful illustration of the truth of the principles for which I have contended this night. It was Italy that first restored intellectual light to Europe, after the long and gloomy night of ignorance and barbarism, which the Goth, the Vandal and the Hun had shed over the western half of the Roman world. It was Italy which recalled youth to the study of laws and philosophy--created the taste for poetry and the fine arts--revived the science and literature of antiquity, and gave prosperity to commerce, manufactures and agriculture. And what was it, let me ask, which made this small peninsula the cradle of commerce, of the arts, sciences and literature--in one word, of the civilization of modern Europe? It was because the whole of this beautiful and interesting country was dotted over with little republics or democracies, which, like those of Greece, applied their stimulating power to every portion of the soil of Italy. These little states, it is true, were factious, turbulent and revolutionary, but they awakened the genius and stimulated the energies of the whole people.