uch they did to render both the idea and the reality possible; when we
say that they had not a distressing sense of spiritual unworthiness, we
do not mean that they had no conscience. We mean that their moral and
religious life sat easily on them, like their own graceful drapery,--did
not gall and worry them, like the hair-cloth garment of the monk. They
were free from that dark conception of a devil which lent terror to
life in the Middle Ages; and the morbid self-consciousness which led
mediaeval women to immure themselves in convents would have been to an
Athenian quite inexplicable. They had, in short, an open and childlike
conception of religion; and, as such, it was a sunny conception. Any one
who will take the trouble to compare an idyl of Theokritos with a modern
pastoral, or the poem of Kleanthes with a modern hymn, or the Aphrodite
of Melos with a modern Madonna, will realize most effectually what I
mean.

And, finally, the religion of the Athenians was in the main symbolized
in a fluctuating mythology, and had never been hardened into dogmas. The
Athenian was subject to no priest, nor was he obliged to pin his faith
to any formulated creed. His hospitable polytheism left little room
for theological persecution, and none for any heresy short of virtual
atheism. The feverish doubts which rack the modern mind left him
undisturbed. Though he might sink to any depth of scepticism in
philosophy, yet the eternal welfare of his soul was not supposed to hang
upon the issue of his doubts. Accordingly Athenian society was not
only characterized in the main by freedom of opinion, in spite of the
exceptional cases of Anaxagoras and Sokrates; but there was also none of
that Gothic gloom with which the deep-seated Christian sense of infinite
responsibility for opinion has saddened modern religious life.

In these reflections I have wandered a little way from my principal
theme, in order more fully to show why the old Greek life impresses us
as so cheerful. Returning now to the keynote with which we started,
let us state succinctly the net result of what has been said about the
Athenians. As a people we have seen that they enjoyed an unparalleled
amount of leisure, living through life with but little turmoil and
clatter. Their life was more spontaneous and unrestrained, less
rigorously marked out by uncontrollable circumstances, than the life
of moderns. They did not run so much in grooves. And along with this
we have seen