intellectual condition
of the people of Athens. He has been in Athens all the time, but how
very different have the Athenians become! And unless he were under the
guidance of some more powerful thinker than ordinarily wields the pen of
history, he might be little aware of the change. Mr Grote points it out
with great distinctness.

At the first of these epochs, it is but a barbarous people, with
qualities which bode something better--that bear the name of Athenians.
Amongst the laws of Solon, is one which forbids "the sale of daughters
or sisters into slavery by fathers or brothers!" A law is enacted
against the exportation of all produce of the soil of Attica except
olive oil, and to enforce this commercial or non-commercial regulation,
"the archon was bound, on pain of forfeiting a hundred drachms, to
pronounce solemn curses against every offender!" The superstitious or
religious feelings, if we must honour them by the latter name, are rude
and violent in the extreme--give rise to frenzy amongst the people,--the
women especially,--and call for or admit of human sacrifice. _Both_ the
artifices by which Pisistratus on two several occasions succeeded in
obtaining the tyranny, indicate a people in the very first stages of
civilisation. But what shall be said of the second or grosser of these
artifices?--his entrance into Athens in a chariot with a tall damsel by
his side, personating Minerva, _visibly_ under the protection of the
goddess.

It is worth observing, that the same class of historians who are given
to extract with an unauthorised boldness a prosaic fact from a poetic
legend, are also the slowest and most reluctant in understanding the
more startling facts which meet them on historic ground, in their simple
and full significance. They are bold before the fable, they are timid
before the fact. Nor is this surprising. In both cases they are on the
search for incidents analogous to those which the ordinary course of
life or of history has made familiar to their imagination. They see
these with an exuberant faith where they do not exist, and will see
nothing _but_ these when something of a far different nature is actually
put before them. Mr Grote, who refused to tread at all on the insecure
ground of the legend, meets this narrative of the second entry of
Pisistratus into Athens upon the level ground of history, and sees it in
its simple form, and sees the people in it. Dr Thirlwall, on the
contrary, who would re