elf
for action by study; Anaxagoras, Pythoclides, and Damon were his
tutors, and he was early eminent in all the lettered accomplishments
of his time. By degrees, accustoming the people to his appearance in
public life, he became remarkable for an elaborate and impassioned
eloquence, hitherto unknown. With his intellectual and meditative
temperament all was science; his ardour in action regulated by long
forethought, his very words by deliberate preparation. Till his time,
oratory, in its proper sense, as a study and an art, was uncultivated
in Athens. Pisistratus is said to have been naturally eloquent, and
the vigorous mind of Themistocles imparted at once persuasion and
force to his counsels. But Pericles, aware of all the advantages to
be gained by words, embellished words with every artifice that his
imagination could suggest. His speeches were often written
compositions, and the novel dazzle of their diction, and that
consecutive logic which preparation alone can impart to language,
became irresistible to a people that had itself become a Pericles.
Universal civilization, universal poetry, had rendered the audience
susceptible and fastidious; they could appreciate the ornate and
philosophical harangues of Pericles; and, the first to mirror to
themselves the intellectual improvements they had made, the first to
represent the grace and enlightenment, as Themistocles had been the
first to represent the daring and enterprise, of his time, the son of
Xanthippus began already to eclipse that very Cimon whose qualities
prepared the way for him.

XI. We must not suppose, that in the contests between the
aristocratic and popular parties, the aristocracy were always on one
side. Such a division is never to be seen in free constitutions.
There is always a sufficient party of the nobles whom conviction,
ambition, or hereditary predilections will place at the head of the
popular movement; and it is by members of the privileged order that
the order itself is weakened. Athens in this respect, therefore,
resembled England, and as now in the latter state, so then at Athens,
it was often the proudest, the wealthiest, the most high-born of the
aristocrats that gave dignity and success to the progress of
democratic opinion. There, too, the vehemence of party frequently
rendered politics an hereditary heirloom; intermarriages kept together
men of similar factions; and the memory of those who had been the
martyrs or the her