All the institutions of Greece bore the impressive signet of national character. In government, dialect, and invention, despite minor differences, there was a general uniformity which rendered them distinct, not only from Phœnicians or Egyptians, but also from the kindred inhabitants of Lydia, Italy, and Macedonia. Though at the beginning germs were derived from the East, it is not less true that at the time of ripest maturity not the least tinge of foreign influence was discernible in their literature, politics, religion or art. Grecian architecture, especially, like their poetry, was the natural expression of the national mind. It was influenced by the peculiarity of the land in which it originated, and was more than national; it was local, born under the sky of Hellas only, and in no colony did it ever attain the comprehensive beauty which signalized the city of its birth. Sparta might boast of the hard bones and muscles of well-trained athletes, but grace and beauty never entered her walls. The Athenians borrowed materials and suggestions from diverse sources, but their skill was entirely their own. They invented all the component parts of classic architecture, the proportions, characters, and distinctions, with a corresponding nomenclature by which each order and every ornament is still designated. Symmetry, proportion, and decoration; the solidity and gracefulness of nature, relieved by historical sculpture, and illuminated by chromatic splendor, with the perfection of reason interpenetrating and presiding over all, constituted that perfect model of noble simplicity which always attracts and never offends. The Dorians produced the first pure architectural style, and carried it to the highest perfection, without any assistance from the fallen palaces of the Atreidæ. The Æschylean majesty was the highest conception of even that extraordinary people. The Parthenon was the noblest production of the noblest masters, and should be accepted as the highest exemplification of the national skill. The order of columns at Persepolis seems to be the proto-Ionic, as certain pillars have been supposed to be proto-Dorics, but neither, in fact, deserve, in the slightest degree, that admiration which belongs legitimately to those honored names. The temple of the Ilissus was the most ancient monument of the true middle order, and was a significant prelude to those more glorious works destined to immortalize the administration of Pericles when freed from the rivalry of Cimon, the restraints of the Areopagus, and the opposing aristocrats. Within twenty years all the grandest works were executed, and then the point of culmination in that lovely land was forever passed.