for relaxing their endeavours to stave off the assaults of decay. He did not think that men should hasten to perish in youth, because old age and death will overtake them inevitably at some distant day, let them act in the meantime as they please. On the contrary, he is careful to point out the means, which he fondly conceived to be in their power, of preserving the health of the state; that is to say, perpetual concord and union among the citizens. But the question still recurs, how are concord and union to be generated and maintained? In the answer to this consists the chief merit of Plato's system. He grounds everything on the notions of moderation, unmeddling self-command, patience, forbearance, temperance, charity, aversion for novelty, and ineradicable love of country, which shall from infancy have been instilled into the minds of all, fostered by public honours, corroborated by habit, sanctioned by religion. This, therefore, brings us back again to education, which in point of fact is the grand pivot upon which his whole Republic turns, as every state must, in reality, whatever may be its defects or excellencies. Everything depends on the manner of disciplining and instructing youth. Give me the sole direction of the education of a state, and I will convert a republic into a monarchy, or a monarchy into a republic, in the course of thirty years. It is the Archimedean lever that moves the world, as Plato, better than any man, understood. In concluding this outline, which may already be thought too long, I shall, perhaps, be pardoned for advancing

one truth, not sufficiently kept in mind by our contemporaries; and it is this-that, in order to be anything more than a splendid dream, republics must be erected on two pillars, VIRTUE and RELIGION; without which freedom can by no possibility exist, since there is not on earth a good man who would not choose rather the despotism of the Ottoman Sultan, than a commonwealth of irreligious, selfish, base, calculating knaves.

I do not here pause to contrast with the polity which I have slightly sketched, that other more practical scheme of government which, towards the decline of life, Plato brought forward in his "Laws." It has much less originality, and is rather distinguished by an attempt at reconciling lofty theory with practice, by a number of minute details, than for the features which it presents as a whole. But the ancients were partial to those poetical platforms of government, framed by philosophers in their closets, which, without adhering strictly to what might be literally practicable, suggest improvements, and keep alive the desire for them, and faith in their reality, by exhibiting communities moulded at pleasure, conforming to a code of laws intended to approach as nearly as possible to perfection.

Even before Plato's time, Hippodamos, an architect of Miletos, who acquired celebrity in his profession by constructing the Peiræeos, and improving the method of distributing streets, and laying out cities, conceived the plan of an ideal republic, of which Aristotle has preserved an out

line. "Hippodamos," he says, "was ambitious of reaching eminence in all kinds of knowledge, and is the first author who, without any practice in affairs, wrote a treatise concerning the best form of government. His republic consisted of ten thousand men, divided into the three classes of artificers, husbandmen, and soldiers. The territory he likewise divides into three portions; the sacred, destined for the various exigencies of public worship, (church lands;) the common, to be cultivated for the common benefit of the soldiers; and the private, to be separately appropriated by the husbandmen. His laws also were divided into three kinds, because he thought there were only three sorts of injuries; insults, damages, and death. He instituted a court of appeal, composed of select senators. Sentence, he thought, ought not to be passed by votes or ballot; but that each judge should be furnished with a tablet, on which he should write guilty, if he simply condemned, and which he should leave unwritten, if he simply acquitted; but on which, if he found the defendant in some measure guilty, but not to the full extent of the indictment, he should mark this difference, stating how much the culprit should pay, or what punishment he should suffer.

"As the law formerly stood, Hippodamos observed, that in all cases requiring this distinction, the judge, who was bound by oath to observe justice in his decisions, must commit perjury whenever he either simply and positively condemned, or simply and positively acquitted. Hippodamos

also established a law in favour of those whose inventions tended to improve the constitution of the commonwealth; they were to be distinguished by peculiar honours; and the children of those who fell in battle were to be maintained and educated at the public expense. This last regulation, first introduced by the architect of Miletos, has been adopted by Athens and other cities. According to his plan of polity, the magistrates were all of them to be elected by the free and impartial suffrages of their fellow-citizens, consisting of the three classes of men above mentioned: the concerns of the state, the affairs of strangers, the care and management of orphans, formed the three important objects intrusted to their administration."

It will be seen that in the Republic of Hippodamos, more care is bestowed on the material structure of the state, than on the spirit by which it was to be animated. But let us listen to the judgment which Aristotle, who was a severe political critic, passes upon this imaginary commonwealth :— 66 Such," he observes, " are the leading features of the Republic of Hippodamos, in examining which the first difficulty that occurs has reference to his division of the citizens. The husbandmen, the artificers, and the soldiers, are all of them to be members of the state; but the husbandmen, destitute of arms, will maintain a very unequal conflict with the soldiers, if these last should be tempted to enslave them. An association of men, so unequally treated by the legislator, must continually tend to dissolution. The great executive

magistracies, together with every office of military command, devolve of course on the soldiers. Can the two remaining classes be expected to wish the continuance of a government, from whose honours and emoluments they are for ever to be excluded? A revolution, therefore, must speedily take place, unless the military be more powerful than both the husbandmen and the artificers united; and if they actually be so, of what signification is it, that these degraded classes are summoned to give their votes at elections, and mocked with the appellation of citizens? Artificers, subsisting by the fruits of their own labour, are essential to the existence of every city or community. But the class of husbandmen as regulated by Hippodamos, by what tie of utility are they linked to the state? The common lands might be cultivated by the military themselves, which would destroy the distinction between the soldiers and the peasants. They might be cultivated by men destitute of private estates; and this would form a fourth class, distinct from the husbandmen of Hippodamos, who, by a most awkward regulation, are to labour one district, consisting of their private estates, for their own maintenance, and another, consisting of the common lands, for the maintenance of the military; a most useless distinction of property, and most absurd partition of employment, by which much valuable time would be lost, and much unnecessary expense incurred."

He is equally severe upon the judicial regulations of this ancient Utopia, which, he insists, "are