52 * TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



patible with the slightest respect for any language except their 

 own. To the polished Greek every other man was a barbarian. 

 But the elements of permanent greatness were wanting. Greece 

 boasted of great names, but the masses of the people were 

 immersed in slavish ignorance. For them there was no provision. 

 The female sex were maintained in intentional seclusion. It was 

 only by throwing oif the restraints of social and domestic life and 

 becoming openly infamous, that woman could be indulged in the 

 gratification of her- literary tastes, or be allowed to associate with 

 philosophers and men of learning. 



Can we wonder that among such a people, the standard both of 

 public and private morality was always very low ? Gazing on 

 the imperishable memorials of their genius, the mind invests the 

 age of her orators, poets, architects and sculptors, with a glory 

 before which, thoughtlessly, the social blessings of a later age 

 become comparatively dim. We copy her temples and adopt the 

 models of the Grecian republics. But neither the philosophy of 

 Plato, the poetry of Homer, nor the genius of Phidias and Prax- 

 iteles, could redeem the most tasteful nation of antiquity from 

 inevitable destruction. 



Of Rome it may be justly said, that she added little to what 

 she derived from Greece. Athens became during the Augustan 

 age what Edinburgh is to London, the fashionable university of 

 the Roman youth. In Rome, even at the period when Augustus 

 felicitated himself upon the fact, that he found a city built of 

 brick and had left it marble, the study of the fine arts was super- 

 seded by a race of political capitalists not materially difiering 

 from those who add so little to our own social greatness. 



In relation to Social progress, we cannot overlook that the most 

 remarkable feature of the Roman constitution was the early divi- 

 sion of the people into the patrician and plebeian classes, a 

 peculiarity which has found its way into the laws of every modern " 

 European nation. The strangers who gradually added to her 

 population were not admitted to a participation of civic privileges. 

 Those who possessed the exclusive powers of legislation, struggled 

 hard to maintain their hereditary supremacy. In India, the 

 slaves of caste have always silently submitted j to them submis- 



