t it is thoroughly brutalized; we may challenge either to show
us a single master-piece of intellect, whether in the way of analysis or
of construction,--but none can they show.

Even in a military sense, the forces which Democracy could marshal,
either in ancient Greece or in modern America, were more than a match
for the corresponding oligarchical factions. Athens, like New England,
was a commercial centre, and therefore a prominent naval power; and this
naval prominence, in each instance, was so great as to give a decisive
superiority over a non-commercial rival. Sparta used her influence and
power to establish oligarchic institutions in the various provinces
of Greece, which generally corresponded to our Territories,--in which
latter the South has, with an equally unworthy zeal, been for several
years seeking to establish her peculiar institutions. Epidamnus proved
a Grecian Kansas. As in our own country, the hostile factions refrained
from war as long as human nature would allow; but, once engaged in
it, it became a vital struggle, that could be terminated only by the
exhaustion of one of the parties.

Athens was the stronger: why, then, did she not conquer her rival? With
equal pertinence we might ask, Why have not we, who are the stronger,
subjugated the South? The answer to both questions is the same.
Political prejudice overmasters patriotism. Neither ourselves nor the
ancient Athenians appear to have the remotest idea of the importance of
the cause for which we are contending. To us, as to them, the avenue
to future glory lies through the blood-red path of war, of desperate,
unrelenting war. Nothing else, no compromise, no negotiations of any
sort, would suffice. This the Athenians never realized; this _we_ do not
seem to understand. Among ourselves, as among them, the peace-party--a
party in direct sympathy with the aims and purposes of the
enemy--blusters and intrigues. President Lincoln meets with the same
embarrassments in connection with this party that Pericles met in his
campaigns against Sparta: it was his coming into power that precipitated
the violence of war; his determined action against all sympathizers
with the enemy draws down upon him the intensified wrath of these
sympathizers; the generals whom he sends into the field, if, like
Alcibiades, they are characterized by any spirit in their undertakings,
are trammelled with political entanglements and rendered useless, while
some slow, half-braine