of which, however latent, was an historical event as im-
portant as their manifestation in virulent activity, or even
more so.

The most salient manifestation of human activity how-
ever within that period was the marvellous attainment to
unrivalled perfection of the most refined arts and culture
of civilised life,--the acme of the plastic, poetic, and
generally intellectual arts, and the securing of the con-
ditions of continued progress to the abstract sciences and
speculative philosophy.

A material exponent of this full bloom of the best faculties
of man is the single building of the temple of Athene--
the Parthenon; the description of this and all its adjuncts,
together with the actual remains, attest that sculpture
and architecture then reached a perfection that has never
been rivalled since, even singly, not to say conjointly, in
respect of touching the utmost point of which either is
susceptible. The consent of antiquity adjudged the palm
to Pheidias above all other sculptors, and sufficient frag-
ments of his works are preserved to happily attest the
truth and value of such an assignment. If all evidence of
the characteristics of the age were lost but these memorials,
they would be sufficient to indicate a pitch of civilised re-
finement that has never since been surpassed; which may
have been more or less partial and exclusive, but which
to have been reached at all, especially in the midst of a
democracy, is sufficient to preclude despair for the capabili-
ties and progressive hopes of humanity.

And, as if grouped around this central symbol, we have
no insufficient portraitures of the statesmen who prepared for
and perfected such achievements--of Aristides, Themistocles,
Ephialtes, Cimon, Pericles; we have lively delineations of
the Athenians themselves--the demus--so highly and ener-
getically endowed, whatever the defects, the miserable follies,
the shameful faults with which the entire people, as if repre-

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