glected, or even prohibited and banished. Among those trading states which were oligarchical in their government, the arts took little root, and never reached above the secondary rank of excellence. Among those commercial states again, which were governed by kings, and yet more constantly among those which were governed by a democracy, they attained the summit of perfection. Among these last, the masterpieces which excite our wonder were for the greater part produced. From these facts we may, I apprehend, extract a proportional scale, by which we may measure the progress, not of the Greeks alone, but of all ancient nations—and even of the moderns themselves. To enter minutely into this part of the subject would require a volume. The justice of my general positions will, I trust, be sufficiently manifest to any one who throws even a hasty glance over the names and the history of the ancient states;—of Achaia, ever poor and ever virtuous, but ever destitute of the arts;—of rude and mountainous Phocis, where even the presence of all the treasures, and all the masterpieces of Delphos, could not work any change on the natural habits of the people;—of Macedon,—of Sparta,—of Crete,—of Thebes;—and above all, of Corinth and of Carthage—two states which, as they were the most favourably situated for commercial speculations, so they gave themselves up with the least restriction to the influence of the pure commercial spirit,—whose legislatures, in short, at no time sought to superadd to their solid prosperity the embellishment and refinement of the arts.
Rome, in fine, which, in spite of the turbulence of her tribunes, was ever governed by the senate, whose proud and haughty spirit loaded the banks of the Tiber with edifices the most extensive and imposing, received with difficulty the painting and the sculpture of the Greeks. Towards the fall indeed of the republic, and under the emperors, these became a subject of amusement and ostentation; but that legislation which had done every thing for their victories, had by no means disposed the spirit of the Romans for the appropriation of the arts, and accordingly the habit of seeing them cultivated by conquered nations, made them view them at all times as the occupation of slaves. Cicero himself found it proper to affect in public a contempt for the arts, as well as for philosophy,[1] although we well know that both formed the chief ornament and delight of his retirement. Sallust—the attic Sallust, in describing the corruption of the army led by Sylla into Greece, places the taste which the soldiers there acquired for the fine arts, in the same rank with their drunkenness and their debauchery.[2] Virgil told the Romans, that to animate brass and marble was an object little worthy their ambition; and Seneca (even in the days of Nero, himself an artist), inspired with some remnant of the spirit of a vir consularis, asks contemptuously by what right the unmanly arts of painting, sculpture, and fiddling, are entitled to the appellation of liberal?
If, on the other hand, we recall to our remembrance those states in which the arts have been carried to the summit of excellence, we shall find every where the confirmation of the same theory. Argos, constantly governed by a democracy, and sharing in the advantages of commerce much less than those states which were her rivals, was as much celebrated as any of them for the excellence of her artists, although far from being distinguished by the number of her monuments. The same was the case at Samos, Sicyon, Rhodes, Agrigentum, and Syracuse, as well as in Athens herself, and her colonies.—Every where we find the arts flourishing most in those commercial states which were governed in the most democratical manner, or where the democracy was scarcely ever interrupted, except by the short-lived reigns of a few princes who owed their elevation altogether to the favour of the people.
Nothing was the product of chance. Every where the state of the arts corresponded to the will of the legislature. It would be in vain to trust to commerce, or even to liberty herself, for carrying them to perfection; commerce and liberty are of use to them, only because they tend to procure for them the particular favour of the legislature,—and it is to that favour alone, however obtained, that they always owe any thing which de-
