The civilization of Greece is borne to us, not upon the shields of her warriors, though they were such as Epaminondas, Miltiades, or Theseus. But in her inventive skill and artistic taste, in her ships and argosies, in her industrial prowess and the freedom consequent thereupon, were the power and wealth which made her the Panopticon of the nations. Freedom of production, and freedom of barter, were the guiding commercial principles under which science and fame grew together and matured the greatest strength. Athens was indebted to the enterprise of her citizens, and not to martial conquest, for her glory. The ships that crowded the gulf of Salamis, were built of wood, purchased from Thrace and Macedonia, and choice material for the furniture of their halls and palaces, from Byzantium. Phrygia supplied them with wool, and imports from Miletus were woven in their looms. The choicest products of Pontus, Cyprus, and the Peloponnesus, did the Athenians obtain; while, for them, from Britain, overland through Gaul, the Carthagenians exported tin, and exchanged with them diversified commodities. Spain yielded them its iron, and the quarries of Hymettus and Pentelicus furnished marble for the adornment of their own lands, and for copious export. As is shown in McCullagh's "Industrial History of Free Nations," they never had an idea that population could outstrip production, or production over supply the population. "If a man were in debt, they did not confine him between stone-walls, useless to himself and his creditors: they provided that he should labor until he had paid back the amount of the debt. It was upon the seas of commercial treaty they learned their lessons of freedom; and thence, too, did those gems of art, which have since been the wonder and the worship of the world, increase and delight. The beauty of their heavens shed an influence over their soul; the tenderness of their scenes, we know, enwove themselves into even the tables, chairs, couches, and drinking vessels. The Grecian moved amid a perpetual retinue of beauties; the painting, the statue, the vase, the temple, all assumed novel forms of elegance. In all this it is not the splendor of Athens which attracts us most, it is that indefatigable genius of enterprise and industry which, from the caves of the Morea, plucked the laurel, and made the wild waves of the Ægean tributary to her wants and her valor." So prevalent was this spirit of free trade and personal enterprise, that ordinary mechanics often gained great power in the republic; as in the person of Cleon, the tanner, who became a worthy successor of Pericles. The port of the great artistic, manufacturing, and commercial emporium, was so thronged with ships from every clime, as to justify the saying of Xenophon, that the dominion of the sea secured to the Athenians the sweets of the world. Nor were their own craft insignificant in size, or any way unworthy of the great people they served. Demosthenes refers to one