ity will one day, it is to be hoped, see a structure
arise--grand, and simple, and yet ornate. For if the fitness of things
be a rule for our expectation, we may safely prophesy that some future
age will possess a History of Greece which will be to all other
histories what the Grecian temple is to all other temples; which shall
be itself a temple worthy of the memory of the most extraordinary people
that have yet appeared upon the earth.

Mr Grote has done in the history of Greece what Dr Arnold did in that of
Rome: he has at once excluded the early legends entirely from the class
of historical records. The outcry which we sometimes hear against that
scepticism which has resulted from later and more severe investigations
into the nature of historical evidence, and the loss thereby sustained
of many a popular tale, is--need we insist upon it?--mere childishness.
It is never found that we lose any thing by truth, and certainly not
here. The popular tale, legend, or myth, may be displaced entirely from
the records of the past, (for what it contains, or may be supposed to
contain, of fact or event;) but it remains with us in its true character
of fable, as the offspring of the teeming invention and the ready faith
of an unlettered generation; and, in this character, is more thoroughly
understood by our present race of thinkers, and more vividly
appreciated, than it ever was before. But shall we believe _nothing_ of
it?--surely something, must be true,--is the whole legend to be lost? To
such exclamations we answer, that the whole legend, instead of being
lost, is regained, is restored to us. While you doubt of its true
nature, and strive to make it speak the language of history, you can
never see the legend itself,--never clearly understand it,--never gather
from it the curious knowledge it is able to reveal of our own species.
If, instead of looking askance at the bold inventions of past times,
with a half faith and a half denial, busied with tricks of
interpretation, and teased with ever-recurring incredulity, you embrace
it cordially as the genuine product of an imaginative age, redolent of
the marvellous, you will, as such, gather from it a far higher and more
profitable instruction than could be extracted from some supposed
historic fact which it is thought to conceal, and which is received as
credible on the very ground that it resembles a host of similar facts
already well established.

We heartily approve and appla