her bosom, and then sent back
to the business of life, the youth of the Western world for a long
thousand years. Seated on the verge of the continent, the city seemed
hardly suited for the duties of a central metropolis of knowledge; yet
what it lost in convenience of approach, it gained in its neighborhood
to the traditions of the mysterious East, and in the loveliness of the
region in which it lay. Hither, then, as to a sort of ideal land,
where all the archetypes of the great and the fair were found in
substantial being, and all departments of truth explored, and all
diversities of intellectual power exhibited; where taste and
philosophy were majestically enthroned as in a royal court; where
there was no sovereignty but that of mind, and no nobility but that of
genius; where professors were rulers and princes did homage,--hither
flocked continually from the very corners of the _orbis terrarum_, the
many-tongued generation, just rising or just risen into manhood, in
order to gain wisdom.

[Footnote 7: From Volume III of the "Historical Sketches."]

Pisistratus[8] had at an early age discovered and nursed the infant
genius of his people, and Cimon,[9] after the Persian war, had given
it a home; that war had established the naval supremacy of Athens; she
had become an imperial state; and the Ionians, bound to her by the
double chain of kindred and of subjection, were importing into her
both their merchandise and their civilization. The arts and philosophy
of the Asiatic Court were easily carried across the sea, and there
was Cimon, as I have said, with his ample fortune, ready to receive
them with due honor. Not content with patronizing their profession, he
built the first of those noble porticoes, of which we hear so much in
Athens, and he formed the groves, which in process of time formed the
celebrated academy. Planting is one of the most graceful, as in Athens
it was one of the most beneficent, of employments. Cimon took in hand
the wild wood, pruned and drest it, and laid it out with handsome
walks and welcome fountains. Nor, while hospitable to the authors of
the city's civilization, was he ungrateful to the instruments of her
prosperity. His trees extended their cool, umbrageous branches over
the merchants who assembled in the Agora, for many generations.

[Footnote 8: Pisistratus flourished from 605 B.C. until 527. He was a
friend of Solon, but usurped supreme power in 560; was twice expelled
and then restor