everywhere, on land and sea—the blue Ægean,
gemmed with the "sparkling Cyclades,"
bearing, like floating flower-baskets, the Isles
of Greece on its calm surface. On the lovely
bay-indented shores of Ionia, where the vines
are trailing in festoons from tree to tree,
lighting the emerald woods with their purple
clusters, sits merry Anacreon, singing of love
and wine in undying strains. Light-hearted
old man, sing on!—until, in luckless hour,
the choking grape-stone end at once thy lays,
thy loves, and thy life! The lofty strains of
Alcæus and Simonides make the Ægean
shores to re-echo their undying hatred of
tyrannic power; while, on her Lesbian isle,
hapless Sappho, weary of a fame that cannot
bring her love, leaps from the cliffs of Leucas
into the sea; but lives for ever in her country's
memory as the Tenth Muse.

Whence came the efflorescence of Grecian
genius, in the age of Pericles? The Persians
had recently been defeated: a handful of
Greeks had overthrown the proud chivalry of
Asia; the thunderbolts of Marathon and
Platæa had hurled the invading myriads from
the Hellenic shores. A shout of exultation
and joy arose over the length and breadth of
the Grecian land. They were free!—they
were a nation! In a single generation Grecian
genius reached its zenith; but in another
century it was over—its lustre was past, its
light dying. Philip of Macedon first struck
down Hellenic liberty on the field of
Chæronea; and blow after blow followed, levelling
the old Greek pride, crushing the life out of
the nation's heart; till at length the haughty
Roman strode in, and laid his mailed grasp
on all. Such were the antecedents of the
heyday of Grecian genius—such were
concomitants of its decline.

Foreign conquest has in all ages been the
great extinguisher of national genius. Let us
imagine a case near home. Suppose an enemy
were suddenly to surprise us. With the first
sound of the enemy's cannon, Genius would
forsake her studies. She could not see the
ideal through the smoke of the foeman's
batteries. In that hour of national degradation
she would hear alone the voice of
Patriotism; but sharing in its fall, would
languish, if not utterly expire. Architecture
would cease to adorn a land no longer our
own; the sculptor would break his chisel,
rather than immortalise the forms of his
tyrants; Poetry, shorn of her many-coloured
beams, would survive only in elegy, or in
degrading effusions in honour of the victorious
invaders. Pride would be crushed from
the nation's heart.

The noble spirit of independence, which is
the accompaniment of all real genius, would
find a place no more in the bosom of slaves.
The old heroic recollections of the nation,
the heritage of centuries of glory, would be
swept at once away. The deeds of our
ancestors would no longer thrill like a trumpet-
call to the heart of the nation, stirring us to
emulate their exploits. Present subjugation,
present degradation, would sweep in like an
obscuring cloud, and hide from us the
inspiring vision of the Past. Take from man
his dignity, his self-respect, and you dry up
the fountains from which genius flows.
Excellence is blasted, though mediocrity may
remain. A slave may do his task—may
sweat his hour in the gangs of the planter or
in the ranks of the despot; but look not
there for genius—that is the divine offspring
of Freedom alone.

Had not the disaster of Moscow broken the
wing of Gallic ambition—had the conquest of
Napoleon been handed down unimpaired to
his successors, we would have had too ample
corroboration of this in our own day. Democracy
in modern Europe has so strengthened
the vitality of nations, that they live through
a thousand perils that would have crushed
the old empires of the world; and it is to
this vitality, and the almost superhuman
vigour with which these nations resist or fling
off the fetters of conquest, that the progress of
civilisation has been unbroken among us since
the days of Charlemagne. It was conquest
that smothered civilisation in the old
universal empires; it was conquest that
successively terminated in each a long career of
improvement. The triumphant processions of
Victory are always closed with the wan and
broken shade of Genius. The grave which
closes over Liberty also hides Genius from
the upper earth.

Pride of country—national egotism—was
far stronger in old times than even now.
The early nations of the world grew up alone
—without intercommunication—without
borrowing anything from their neighbours: each
worked out for itself its own civilisation.
And each accordingly esteemed itself the light
of the world, and all other, barbarians. Each
hated and despised the other; and to be
conquered by the stranger to see their own
glories, their own pride, dashed into the dust,
and a people whom they had despised, lording
it in their palaces, utterly broke the nation's
heart.

Nineveh—whose mighty ruins, after the
lapse of three thousand years, are astonishing
earth's sages—built no more after the rival
standards of Babylon were planted on her
walls; and Babylon the Great, which has
left its name as a byeword of opulence and
splendour, dates its decay from the bloody
nocturnal entry of Cyrus and his Persians.
From the day when the battle of Arbela
struck the diadem from the brow of the
second Darius, and the war-cry of the Greeks
rang through the streets of Persepolis, art
and genius forsook the land of Zoroaster, the
royal cities of Persia began to crumble.
Although stately with edifices, second in beauty
only to those of Greece, thenceforth no hand
was put forth to uphold their splendour;
their environs once made fertile by irrigating
streams, grew parched and flinty deserts; and