This was the era of great orators, such as Lysias, Eschines, and Isocrates. Like the shout of Stentor, rousing the prowess of comrades, who, single-handed, rushed upon embattled armies, clad in iron, so awoke mighty eloquence, which shook impassioned democracies, annihilated tyrannies, and fostered all ennobling arts. But the age of criticism came after the age of invention; Aristotle after Sophocles, Longinus after Homer, the Sophists after Pericles. Demosthenes was the last great writer whose works were addressed to the Greeks as a nation. His was the genius of industry, always luminous and constantly at work; like that Indian bird which could not only enjoy the sunshine all day, but secured no ignoble resemblance at night, by hanging glow-worms on the boughs about its nest. Demosthenes was a great orator, and nothing more. He represented a period of civilization which had passed, and therefore his downfall was inevitable. So long as the democratic spirit pervaded the masses he performed prodigies in the tribune; but when the empire of beauty was about to be displaced by the empire of force, he ran away at Cherronea, and without dignity. The eloquence of a great nation, expressed in Pericles, was succeeded by the Phillipics of a great partizan, and when this was silenced, the age of its origin had closed. Pericles was the first to commit his speeches to writing before they were delivered; and, in his pride of universal accomplishment, he signalized the zenith of his country's glory and its decline. In all the progress of Greece up to the splendor of her culmination, originality was sought and exemplified only in some one grand pursuit. The epic bard was not ambitious of rending the ivy destined to adorn the brows of lyric poets; nor did the master of tragedy, with unlaced buskin, stride carelessly over Thalia's stage, to lay irreverent hands on Homer's harp. The historian, studious in private to portray the annals of his country, came not to the Agora to contest honors with the public orator; nor did the latter, with foolish ambition, endeavor to excel the sages who, in the Portico, at the Lyceum, or under plane-trees on the banks of the Ilissus, explained the problems of the universe; but each one made some exalted endeavor the speciality of his life, on it concentrated all the rays of his intellect, and scorned no measure of time or toil requisite to insure absolute perfection in his work. Thoughts so elaborated became never setting stars, to cheer the world, and point unerringly through the cycles of a corrupt taste to ideal excellence. As each growth, minute or majestic, was equally perfect of its kind, though differenced by peculiarity of form and tints, the whole was charmingly blended in that wreath of consummate beauty, which, in the age of Pericles, Greece hung round the constitution of the state, high on the central shrine of the most magnificent temple of her gods. CHAPTER II. ART.