The identity of history is equally intrinsic, the
diversity equally obvious. There is, at the surface,
infinite variety of things; at the centre there is
simplicity of cause. How many are the acts of one man
in which we recognize the same character! Observe the
sources of our information in respect to the Greek
genius. We have the civil history of that people, as
Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Plutarch have
given it; a very sufficient account of what manner of
persons they were and what they did. We have the same
national mind expressed for us again in their
literature, in epic and lyric poems, drama, and
philosophy; a very complete form. Then we have it once
more in their architecture, a beauty as of temperance
itself, limited to the straight line and the square,
--a builded geometry. Then we have it once again in
sculpture, the "tongue on the balance of expression,"
a multitude of forms in the utmost freedom of action
and never transgressing the ideal serenity; like
votaries performing some religious dance before the
gods, and, though in convulsive pain or mortal combat,
never daring to break the figure and decorum of their
dance. Thus of the genius of one remarkable people we
have a fourfold representation: and to the senses what
more unlike than an ode of Pindar, a marble centaur,
the peristyle of the Parthenon, and the last actions
of Phocion?

Every one must have observed faces and forms which,
without any resembling feature, make a like impression