disposition, as to their excellent education: Cujus civitatis spectata ac nobilitata virtus, non solum natura corroborata, verum etiam disciplina putatur.* All this shows of what importance it is to a state, to take care that their youth be brought up in a manner proper to inspire them with a love for the laws of their country. The great maxim of Lycurgus, which Aristotle repeats in express terms, was that as children belong to the state, their education ought to be directed by the state, and the views and interests of the state only considered therein. It was for this reason he desired they should be educated all in common, and not left to the humour and caprice of their parents, who generally, through a soft and blind indulgence, and a mistaken tenderness, enervate at once both the bodies and minds of their children. At Sparta, from their tenderest years, they were inured to labour and fatigue, by the exercises of hunting and racing, and accustomed betimes to endure hunger and thirst, heat and cold; and, what it is difficult to make mothers believe, all these hard and laborious exercises tended to promote their health, and make their constitutions the more vigorous and robust, able to bear the hardships and fatigues of war, for which they were all designed from their cradles.

4. OBEDIENCE.

BUT the most excellent thing in the Spartan education, was its teaching young people so perfectly how to obey. It was from hence the poet Simonides gives that city such a magnificent epithet, which denotes, that they alone knew how to subdue the passions of men, and to render them tractable and submissive to laws, as horses are taught to obey the spur and the bridle, by being broken and managed while they are young. For this reason, Agesilaus advised Xenophon to send his children to Sparta. that they might learn there the noblest and greatest of all sciences, that is, how to command and how to obey.§

5. RESPECT TOWARDS THE AGED.

ONE of the lessons most frequently and strongly inculcated upon the Lacedæmonian youth, was, to bear a great reverence and respect to old men, and to give them proofs of it upon all occasions, by saluting them, by making way for them, and by giving them place in the streets, by rising up to show them honour in all companies and public assemblies; but above all, by receiving their advice, and even their reproofs, with docility and submission. By these characteristics a Lacedæmonian was known wherever he went; if he had behaved otherwise, it would have been looked upon as a reproach to himself, and a dishonour to his country. An old man of Athens going into a theatre once to see a play, none of his own countrymen offered him a seat; but when he came near the place where the Spartan ambassadors and the gentlemen of their retinue were sitting, they all rose up out of reverence to his age, and seated him in the midst of them. Lysander, therefore, had reason to say, that old age had no where so honourable an abode as in Sparta; and that it was an agreeable thing to grow old in that city. T

II. DEFECTS IN THE LAWS OF LYCURGUS.

In order to perceive the defects in the laws of Lycurgus, we have only to compare them with those of Moses, which we know were dictated by more than human wisdom. But my design in this place is not to enter into an exact examination of the particulars, wherein the laws and institutions of Lycurgus are faulty; I shall content myself with making some slight reflections only, which probably may have already occurred to the reader in the perusal of those ordinances, among which there are some with which he will have been justly offended.

Orat. pro Flac. n. 68. † Polyb. 1. viii. Politic. Aauаolugoros, that is to say, Tamer of men. § Μαθησομένος τῶν μαθημάτων τὸ κάλλισον, ἄρχεθαι καὶ ἄρχειν. Plut. in Lacon. Institut. p. 297. Lysandrum Lacedæmonium dicere aiunt solitum, Lacedæmone esse honestissimum domicilium se cetutis.-Cic. de Sen. n. 63. "Ev Aɑxɛðaíμovi xáλiora yngŵoi.—Plut. in Mor. p. 795.

1. The choicE MADE OF THE CHILDREN THAT WERE EIMER TO BE BROUGHT UP OR EXPOSED.

To begin, for instance, with that ordinance relating to the choice they made of their children, which of them were to be brought up, and which exposed to perish; who would not be shocked at the unjust and inhuman custom of pronouncing sentence of death upon all such infants as had the misfortune to be Forn with a constitution that appeared too weak to undergo the fatigues and exercises to which the commonwealth destined all her subjects? Is it then impossible, and without example, that children, who are tender and weak in their infancy, should ever alter as they grow up, and become in time of a robust and vigorous constitution? Or, suppose it was so, can a man no way serve his country but by the strength of his body? Is there no account to be made of his wisdom, pruden, counsel, generosity, courage, magnanimity, and, in a word, of all the qualities that depend upon the mind and the intellectual faculties? Omnino illud honestum quod ex animo excelso magnificoque querimus, animi efficitur,non corporis viribus.* Did Lycurgus himself render less service, or do less honour to Sparta, by establishing his laws, than the greatest generals did by their victories? Agesilaus was of so small a stature, and so mean a figure, that at the first sight of him the Egyptians could not help laughing; and yet, small as he was, he made the great king of Persia tremble upon the throne of half the world.

pre

But, what is yet stronger than all I have said, has any other person a right or power over the lives of men, than he from whom they received them, even God himself? And does not a legislator visibly usurp the authority of God, whenever he arrogates to himself such a power without his commission? That cept of the decalogue, which was only a renovation of the law of nature, Thou shall not kill, universally condemns all those among the ancients, who imagined they had a power of life and death over their slaves, and even over their own children.

2. THEIR CARE CONFINED ONLY TO THE BODY.

THE great defect in the laws of Lycurgus, as Plato and Aristotle have observed, is, that they only tended to form a warlike and martial people. All that legislator's thoughts seemed wholly bent upon, was the means of strengthening the bodies of the people without any regard to the cultivation of their minds. Why should he banish from his commonwealth all arts and sciences, which, pesides many other advantages, have this most happy effect, that they soften our manners, polish our understandings, improve the heart, and render our behaviour civil, courteous, gentle, and obliging; such, in a word, as qualifies us for company and society, and makes the ordinary intercourse of life agreeable? Hence, it came to pass, that there was a degree of roughness and austerity in the temper and behaviour of the Spartans, and many times even something of ferocity; a failing that proceeded chiefly from their education, and that rendered them disagreeable and offensive to all their allies.

3. THEIR BARBAROUS CRUELTY TOWARDS THEIR CHILDREN.

It was an excellent practice in Sparta, to accustom their youth betimes to suffer heat and cold, hunger and thirst, and by many severe and laborious exercises to bring the body into subjection to reason, whose faithful and diligent minister it ought to be in the execution of all her orders and injunctions; which it can never do, if it be not able to undergo all sorts of hardships and fatigues.‡ But was it rational in them to carry their severities so far, as the inhuman treatment we have mentioned? And was it not utterly barbarous and brutal in

*Cicer. 1. i. de Offic. n. 79. Idem, n. 76.

Ornes artes quibus tas puerilis ad humanitatem informari solet.Cic. Orat. pro Arch. Exercendum corpus, et ita afficiendum est, ut obedire consilio rationique possit in exequendis negotia

et laboys tolerando.Lib. i. de Offic. n. 72.

the fathers and mothers, to see the blood trickling from the wounds of their children, nay, even to see them expiring under the lashes, without concern? 4. THE MOTHERS' INHUMANITY.

SOME people admire the courage of the Spartan mothers, who could hear the news of the death of their children slain in battle, not only without tears, but even with a kind of joy and satisfaction. For my part, I should think it much better, that nature should show herself a little more on such occasions, and that the love of one's country should not utterly extinguish the sentiments of maternal tenderness. One of our generals in France, who in the heat of battle was told that his son was killed, seemed by his answer to be much wiser: "Let us at present think," said he, "only of beating the enemy; to-morrow I will mourn for my son."

5. THEIR EXCESSIVE LEISURE.

NOR can I see what excuse can be made for that law, imposed by Lycur gus upon the Spartans, which enjoined the spending so much of their time in idleness and inaction, and following no other business than that of war. He left all the arts and trades entirely to the slaves, and strangers that lived among them; and put nothing into the hands of the citizens, but the lance and the shield. Not to mention the danger there was in suffering the number of slaves that were necessary for tilling the land, to increase to such a degree as to become much greater than that of their masters, which was often an occasion of seditions and riots among them; how many disorders must men necessarily fall into, that have so much leisure upon their hands, and have no daily occupation or regular labour? This is an inconvenience still but too common among our nobility, and which is the natural effect of their faulty education. Except in the time of war, most of our gentry spend their lives in the most useless and unprofitable manner. They look upon agriculture, arts, and commerce, as beneath them, and derogatory to their gentility. They seldom know how to handle any thing but their swords. As for the sciences, they barely acquire just so much as they cannot well be without; and many have not the least knowledge of them, nor any manner of taste for books or reading. We are not to wonder, then, if gaming and hunting, eating and drinking, mutual visits, and frivolous discourse, make up their whole occupation. What a life is this for men that have any parts or understanding!

6. THEIR CRUELTY TOWARDS THE HELOTS.

LYCURGUS would be utterly inexcusable, if he gave occasion, as he is accused of having done, for all the rigour and cruelty exercised towards the Helots in this republic. These Helots were the slaves employed by the Spartans to till the ground. It was their custom not only to make these poor creatures drunk, and expose them before their children, in order to give them an abhorrence for so shameful and odious a vice, but also to treat them with the utmost barbarity, as thinking themselves at liberty to destroy them by any violence or cruelty whatever, under pretence of their being always ready to rebel Upon a certain occasion related by Thucydides, two thousand of these slaves disappeared at once, without any body's knowing what was become of them.* Plutarch pretends, that this barbarous custom was not practised till after the time of Lycurgus, and that he had no hand in it.

7. MODESTY AND DECENCY ENTIRELY Neglected.

BUT the points wherein Lycurgus appears to be most culpable, and which best shows the great enormities and gross darkness in which the Pagans were plunged, is the little regard he showed for modesty and decency, in what concerned the education of girls, and the marriages of young women; which was without doubt the source of those disorders that prevailed in Sparta, as Aristotle

Thucid. lib. iv.

has wisely observed. When we compare these indecent and licentious insti tutions of the wisest legislator that ever profane antiquity could boast, with the sanctity and purity of the evangelical precepts, what a noble idea does it give us of the dignity and excellence of the Christian religion!

Nor will it give us a less advantageous idea of this pre-eminence, if we compare the most excellent and laudable part of the institutions of Lycurgus with the laws of the gospel. It is, we must own, a wonderful thing, that the whole people should consent to a division of their lands, which set the poor upon an equal footing with the rich; and that by a total exclusion of gold and silver they should reduce themselves to a kind of voluntary poverty. But the Spartan legislator, when he enacted these laws, had the sword in his hand; whereas the Christian legislator says but a word, "Blessed are the poor in spirit,” and thousands of the faithful through all succeeding generations renounce their goods, sell their lands and estates, and leave all, to follow Jesus Christ, their Master, in poverty and want.

ARTICLE VIII.

THE GOVERNMENT OF ATHENS. THE LAWS OF SOLON. THE HISTORY OF THAT REPUBLIC, FROM THE TIME OF SOLON TO THE REIGN OF DARIUS THE FIRST.

I HAVE already observed, that Athens was at first governed by kings. But they were such as had little more than the name; for their whole power being confined to the command of the armies, vanished in time of peace. Every man was master in his own house, where he lived in an absolute state of independence. Codrus, the last king of Athens, having devoted himself to death for the public good, his sons Medon and Nileus quarrelled about the succession.* The Athenians took this occasion to abolish the regal power, though it did not much incommode them; and declared, that Jupiter alone was king of Athens, at the very same time that the Jews were weary of their theocracy, that is, having the true God for their king, and would absolutely have a man to reign over them.

Plutarch observes, that Homer, when he enumerated the ships of the confederate Grecians, gives the name of people to none but the Athenians; from whence it may be inferred, that the Athenians even then had a great inclination to a democratical government, and that the chief authority was at that time vested in the people.

In the place of their kings they substituted a kind of governors for life, under the title of archons. But this perpetual magistracy appeared still, in the eyes of this free people, as too lively an image of regal power, of which they were desirous of abolishing even the very shadow; for which reason they first reduced that office to the term of ten years, and then to that of one: and this they did with a view of resuming the authority the more frequently into their own hands, which they never transferred to their magistrates but with regret. Such a limited power as this was not sufficient to restrain those turbulent spirits, who were grown excessively jealous of their liberty and independence, very tender and apt to be offended at any thing that seemed to break in upon their equality, and always ready to take umbrage at whatever had the least appearance of dominion or superiority. Hence arose continual factions and quarrels; there was no agreement or concord among them, either about religion or government.

Athens therefore continued a long time incapable of enlarging her power, it being very happy for her that she could preserve herself from ruin in the midst of those long and frequent dissensions she had to struggle with.

Misfortunes instruct. Athens learned at length, that true liberty consists in a dependence upon justice and reason. This happy subjection could not be established, but by a legislator. She therefore placed her choice upon Draco,

* Codrus was temporary with Saul.

a man of acknowledged wisdom and integrity, for that employment. It does not appear that Greece had, before his time, any written laws.* The first of that kind, then, were of his publishing; the rigour of which, anticipating as it were the Stoical doctrine, was so great, that it punished the smallest offence, as well as the most enormous crimes, equally with death. These laws of Draco, written, says Demades, not with ink, but with blood, had the same fate as usually attends all violent things. Sentiments of humanity in the judges, compassion for the accused, whom they were wont to look upon rather as unfortunate than criminal, and the apprehensions the accusers and witnesses were under of rendering themselves odious to the people, all concurred to produce a remissness in the execution of the laws, which, by that means, in process of time, became as it were abrogated through disuse: and thus an excessive rigour paved the way for impunity.

The danger of relapsing into their former disorders, made them have recourse to fresh precautions; for they were willing to slacken the curb and restraint of fear, but not to break it. In order, therefore, to find out mitigations, which might make amends, for what they took away from the letter of the law, they cast their eyes upon one of the wisest and most virtuous persons of his age, I mean Solon, whose singular qualities, and especially his great meekness, had acquired him the affection and veneration of the whole city.t

His main application had been to the study of philosophy, and especially to that part of it which we call policy, and which teaches the art of government. His extraordinary merit placed him among the first of the seven sages of Greece, who rendered the age we are speaking of so illustrious. These sages often paid visits to each other. One day, that Solon went to Miletus to see Thales, the first thing he said to Thales was, that he wondered why he had never desired to have either wife or children. Thales made him no answer then; but a few days after he contrived, that a stranger should come into their company, and pretend that he had just arrived from Athens, from whence he had set out about ten days before. Solon hearing the stranger say this, asked him, if there was any news at Athens when he came away. The stranger, who had been taught his lesson, replied, that he had heard of nothing but the death of a young gentleman, whom all the town accompanied to the grave; because, as they said, he was the son of the worthiest man in the city, who was then absent. Alas! cried Solon, interrupting the man's story, how much is the poor father of the youth to be pitied! But pray, what is the gentleman's name? I heard his name replied the stranger, but I have forgot it. I only remember that the people talked much of his wisdom and justice. Every answer afforded new matter of trouble and terror to this inquisitive father, who was so justly alarmed. Was it not, said he at length, the son of Solon? The very same, replied the stranger. Solon at these words rent his clothes, and beat his breast, and expressing his sorrow by tears and groans, abandoned himself to the most sensible affliction. Thales, seeing this, took him by the hand, and said to him with a smile, comfort yourself, my friend, all that has been told you is a mere fiction. Now you see the reason why I never married: it is because I am unwilling to expose myself to such trials and afflictions.‡

Plutarch has given us in detail, a refutation of Thales's reasoning, which tends to deprive mankind of the most natural and reasonable attachments in life, in lieu of which the heart of man will not fail to substitute others of an unjust and unlawful nature, which will expose him to the same pains and inconveniences. The remedy, says this historian, against the grief that may arise from the loss of goods, of friends, or of children, is not to throw away our estates, and reduce ourselves to poverty, to make an absolute renunciation of all friendship, or to confine ourselves to a state of celibacy; but, upon all such accidents and misfortunes, to make a right use of our reason.

†A. M. 3400. Ant. J. C. 604.

A. M. 3380. Ant. J. C. 624.

Plut. de Vit. Lycurg. p. 81, 82.