The Work will be sent by mail, to any part of the United States, ou the remittance of one year's subscription (six dollars) to the publisher, at Boston, or to any of the agents for the work. ; ARTICLE ORIGINAL PAPERS. I. Continuation and Conclusion of Mr. Campbell's Seventh Lecture : II. The Horseman's Song, from Korner III. The Thompson Papers IV. The Matrimonial Squabble V. Court-day VI. Provincial Ballads, No. II.-The Star of Pomeroy VII. The Spanish Student-An Adventure at Padua, founded on Fact IX. The Small Tour, or Unsentimental Journey X. The Passion Flower XI. Some further Particulars of the Widow and Son of Theobald Wolfe XVIII. Mr. Mark Higginbotham's Case of real Distress XX. Speculations on Steam-Steam-Artillery XXII. Insurance and Assurance XXIII. The Mourner XXIV. Nouvel Almanach des Gourmands XXV. Adventure of a London Traveller. XXVI. Irish Portraits, No. II.-Sir Ignatius Slattery THE NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE will be, from this date, republished by N. HALE, to whom it is requested all communications may be addressed relating to it. The subscriber has transferred to NATHAN HALE all his interest in the American edition of the New Monthly Magazine, together with all claims on account of the same. Subscribers to the Magazine and Agents indebted for it, are requested to remit the sums due to him, he being duly authorized to receive the same. OLIVER EVERETT. BOSTON, Nov. 1, 1824. CONTINUATION AND CONCLUSION OF MR. CAMPBELL'S SEVENTH LECTURE. The Subject-A Sketch of Athens. THE most savage nations, and even brutes, have been known to keep their young from mutual hostility; but the Spartans fomented quarrels amongst their urchins, and had stated days for their kicking and cuffing each other into the Eurotas. Until this, and such like evidence of Spartan ferocity, can be denied, it will be needless for those, who have a hankering prejudice in favour of the memory of that people, to demand, why some ancients have praised them? It lies with the admirers of Sparta, to reconcile her infanticides, and slave murders, and pavements streaming with the blood of children, with the laudatory passages of wise antiquity. There are no human opinions to be weighed against facts; and there are no facts, on record, to redeem from our detestation, a people who had scarcely any thing more to do in the way of monstrosity, than to have eaten their own little ones. Admitting, as we are told, that they respected old age-what should we say of a nation famous for two things: viz. the fondness of parents for their children; and the custom among those children of whipping their old people to death? We should certainly say, that parental affection was there misplaced: and, on the same principle, we may fairly grudge the virtue of filial piety being directed, in Sparta, towards greybeards, who could bear to see their children expiring in torments, or carried home to die of inflamed wounds. Nature, they say, will return, though you expel her with a fork. It is clear that the Lycurgan institutions, stoutly as they warred against human improvement, could not entirely shut it out; though time, in many instances, rather changed than effaced the vices of Sparta. No institutions can eradicate all individual goodness from the human heart; and we certainly hear of some respectable Spartans. The Lacedæmonians had some trade, and several manufactures. Their weapons were famous for temper, and had the preference at all the fairs of the Peloponnesus. Their joinery was also in repute; and the Laconic beds, filled with down from the swans of the Eurotas, were a considerable article of exportation. They were also expert bankers. They had national songs and music, probably of popular influence, though they were regulated by the police. They studied a pithy and compressed style of eloquence; and, as their dialect was the harshest in all Greece, they were wise not to surfeit their hearers with it. They betook themselves to luxury; but never acquired either taste or celebrity in the fine arts. It is in vain that a writer, in the Memoirs of the French Academy of Inscriptions, would persuade us that they had a real literary spirit and character, with this notorious fact staring him, unanswered, in the face, that we scarcely hear of a Lacedæmonian poet, historian, or orator. The reason is plain. Their institutions were illiberal and inhospitable; and we have the direct testimony of Plato, that they were, in general, very ignorant. Athens threw open her gates to foreign genius. Sparta was jealous and severe to strangers, and even circumscribed the travels of her own youth. It would be wasting words to prove, that Sparta might as well have never existed, for any good that she did, either to her cotemporaries or posterity. But if the VOL. IX. No. 51.—1825. 28 world calls itself a debtor to any people, that has supported or added to the stock of human improvement,-in respect of this kind of obligation, Athens is the world's chief creditor. If it should be objected, that even the refined Athenians committed some flagrant acts of injustice; it may be answered, that a wide and deep distinction is to be drawn, between those bad actions which have been common to all societies that ever existed, and those unnatural and heart-hardening institutions, which were happily peculiar to Sparta. Athens treated her weaker neighbours, nearly as all states have, at some time or other, treated the helpless and dependent.* Were a Spartan to revisit the world, and to dispute with a Mohawk Indian about precedency in national refinement, the American could prove to him, that no tribe who ever wielded the tomahawk, was half so unnatural to children as the Spartans. But the reproach of having abused superior power, is one that might be bandied about, pretty freely, among all nations that ever possessed power on the face of the earth. And the proverb which cautions culinary vessels from vituperating the nether blackness of each other, might be applied, by moral analogy, to empires as well as to pots and kettles. By looking at a synopsis of Attic laws, in a very accessible book, "Potter's Greek Antiquities," the reader will see in those laws abundant symptoms of an anxious spirit of equity. Athenian commerce was free from incorporated monopolies; and all merchants were equal in the eye of the law. Solon legislated for trade on certain simple principles, which the philosophers of Europe can scarcely yet hammer into the heads of nations calling themselves enlightened. Industry was encouraged at Athens, and idleness dishonoured. It was forbidden to reproach any useful calling. If the landed proprietor borrowed any money on his lands, he had to set up an inscription, declaring the extent of the mortgage; and there were no entailed estates in Attica, to prevent the repayment of debts to incautious creditors. The police of the Athenians was excellent. Beggary, as late as the time of Socrates, was unknown; and their crimes and punishments were certainly fewer than ours. Orphans were supported at the public expense; and the poor, the sick, and the aged-all that came under the denomination of aduvarot, or helpless, had a daily or monthly allowance from the public. As this allowance, however, like our poor's *The policy of the Athenians was certainly sometimes generous towards other nations. When the oppressed Greeks of Asia Minor implored their assistance, they gave it with alacrity, whilst the Spartans as sullenly refused it. The compilation of Dr. Potter, on the whole very useful, compact, and laudable, is nevertheless defective in failing to distinguish the laws of the Solonian constitution, which continued in force, and those which confessedly grew obsolete. Thus, it is stated by Dr. P. that the manufacture of perfumes and ointments was forbidden at Athens. True, there was such a law; but how completely it grew a dead letter, may be seen from the circumstance of the orator Eschines having had an extensive manufactory of ointments The Athenian poor were not sent to workhouses, but were allowed from the public never less than an obolus a-day, or a penny farthing; and in later and dearer times two oboluses. Either sum sounds but wretchedly to an English ear, for the daily support of a human being. But let us see what a man might probably buy for an obolus at Athens. I believe we shall not materially err in supposing_that money, in ancient Athens, was of ten times the effective value that it is in England at present. It is impossible, no doubt, to apply this estimate to all articles |