Elias Nason, The Life and Times of Charles Sumner: His Boyhood, Education and Public Career.

[104] the art, of Athens still survive, and bear no mean sway upon the earth. Rome, too, yet lives in her jurisprudence, which, next after Christianity, has exerted a paramount influence over the laws of modern states.

But, exalted as these productions may be, it is impossible not to perceive that something of their present importance is derived from the peculiar method in which they appeared; something from the habit of unquestioning the high-flown admiration with regard to them, which has been transmitted through successive generations; and something also from the disposition, still prevalent, blindly to elevate antiquity at the expense of subsequent ages. Without here undertaking to decide the question of the supremacy of Greek or Roman genius, as displayed in individual minds, it would be easy to show that the ancient standard of civilization never reached the heights of many modern states. The people were ignorant, vicious, and poor, or degraded to abject slavery,--slavery itself, the sum of all injustice and all vice. And even the most illustrious characters, whose names still shine from that distant night with stellar brightness, were little more than splendid barbarians. Architecture, sculpture, painting, and vases of exquisite perfection, attested their appreciation of the beauty of form; but they were