Loved--but as freemen love alone;
He waved the sceptre o'er his kind
By nature's first great title--mind!
--CROLY.

Orator and philosopher, as well as statesman and general, Pericles
had the most lofty views. "Athens," says a modern writer, "was
to become not only the capital of Greece, but the center of art
and refinement, and, at the same time, of those democratical
theories which formed the beau ideal of the Athenian notions
of government." Athens became the center and capital of the most
polished communities of Greece; she drew into a focus all the
Grecian intellect, and she obtained from her dependents the wealth
to administer the arts, which universal traffic and intercourse
taught her to appreciate. The treasury of the state being placed
in the hands of Pericles, he knew no limit to expenditure but
the popular will, which, fortunately for the glories of Grecian
art, kept pace with the vast conceptions of the master designer.
Most of those famous structures that crowned the Athenian Acropolis,
or surrounded its base, were either built or adorned by his
direction, under the superintendence of the great sculptor,
Phidias. The Parthenon, the Ode'um, the gold and ivory statue of
the goddess Minerva, and the Olympian Jupiter--the latter two
the work of the great sculptor himself--were alone sufficient to
immortalize the "Age of Pericles." Of these miracles of sculpture
and of architecture, as well as of the literature of this period,
we shall speak farther in a subsequent place.

Of the general condition and appearance of Athens during the
fourteen years that the Thirty Years' Truce was observed, HAYGARTH