t internally her mountainous
structure had split up almost the whole of her territory into separate
chambers or wards, predetermining from the first that galaxy of little
republics into which her splintered community threw itself by means of
the strong mutual repulsion derived originally from battlements of
hills, and, secondarily, from the existing state of the military art.
Having these advantages to begin with, reposing upon these foundations,
the Greek civil organization sustained itself undoubtedly through an
astonishing tract of time; before the ship _Argo_ it had commenced;
under the Ottoman Turks it still survived: for even in the Trojan aera,
and in the pre-Trojan or Argonautic aera, already (and perhaps for many
centuries before) the nominal kingdoms were virtually republics, the
princes being evidently limited in their authority by the 'sensus
communis' of the body politic almost as much as the Kings of Sparta were
from the time of Lycurgus to the extinction of the Peloponnesian
independence.

Accidents, therefore, although accidents of a permanent order (being
founded in external nature), gave to Greece a very peculiar advantage.
On her own dunghill her own usages had a tenacity of life such as is
seen in certain weeds (couch-grass, for instance). This natural
advantage, by means of intense local adaptation, did certainly prove
available for Greece, under the circumstances of a hostile invasion.
Even had the Persian invasion succeeded, it is possible that Grecian
civilization would still have survived the conquest, and would have
predominated, as actually it did in Ionia, etc.

So far our views seem to flow in the channel of Mr. Finlay's. But these
three considerations occur:

1st. That oftentimes Greece escaped the ravages of barbarians, not so
much by any quality of her civil institutions, whether better or worse,
as by her geographical position. It is 'a far cry to Loch Awe'; and had
Timon of Athens together with Apemantus clubbed their misanthropies,
joint and several, there would hardly have arisen an impetus strong
enough to carry an enemy all the way from the Danube to the Ilyssus; yet
so far, at least, every European enemy of Thebes and Athens had to
march. Nay, unless Monsieur le Sauvage happened to possess the mouths of
the Danube, so as to float down 'by the turn of tide' through the
Euxine, Bosphorus, Propontis, Hellespont, etc., he would think twice
before he would set off a-gallivanting to t