II.


_THE FEDERAL UNION_.

The great history of Thukydides, which after twenty-three centuries
still ranks (in spite of Mr. Cobden) among our chief text-books of
political wisdom, has often seemed to me one of the most mournful books
in the world. At no other spot on the earth's surface, and at no other
time in the career of mankind, has the human intellect flowered with
such luxuriance as at Athens during the eighty-five years which
intervened between the victory of Marathon and the defeat of
Ægospotamos. In no other like interval of time, and in no other
community of like dimensions, has so much work been accomplished of
which we can say with truth that it is [Greek: ktaema es aei],--an
eternal possession. It is impossible to conceive of a day so distant, or
an era of culture so exalted, that the lessons taught by Athens shall
cease to be of value, or that the writings of her great thinkers shall
cease to be read with fresh profit and delight. We understand these
things far better to-day than did those monsters of erudition in the
sixteenth century who studied the classics for philological purposes
mainly. Indeed, the older the world grows, the more varied our
experience of practical politics, the more comprehensive our survey of
universal history, the stronger our grasp upon the comparative method of
inquiry, the more brilliant is the light thrown upon that brief day of
Athenian greatness, and the more wonderful and admirable does it all
seem. To see this glorious community overthrown, shorn of half its
virtue (to use the Homeric phrase), and thrust down into an inferior