morals. The Roman Cincinnatus was proud of his birth, and, probably, much the prouder for his poverty. It is not at this degenerate day at all essential to the glory of a great general, that he should have a great estate.

EFFECTUAL as for some ages this policy of Lycurgus was, time and the revolution of human affairs at length gradually subverted it. The depressed classes of the state slowly rose from the ground, and from the feet of the aristocracy, and claimed and took their station in society.

It may be supposed, the Spartans exacted at first from the Helots who cultivated the soil as large a part of the produce as they possibly could. It was easier to require than to get much; indeed, by requiring too much, they would get nothing. Despair would baffle rapacity. It is also to be conceded, that the proportion once fixed must remain fixed. This, ancient writers inform us, was the case. Now, as the Spartans were a body continually diminishing, their power to extort must have declined with their numbers. Time also must have made great changes in the value of the rents, though payable in kind. Accordingly, we are told, that most of the Spartan families fell into poverty, and many of the Helots became very rich. Their rise to some share of political and personal importance was the necessary con

sequence.

Ir was only one hundred and thirty years after Lycurgus, that the operation of these principles was made manifest, and their progress accelerated, by the establishment of the ephori. These five annual magistrates resembled the Roman tribunes of the people, were elected by the mass of the nation, and in fact were often selected from the dregs of the people. At first their power and their pretensions were moderate; but, as the aristocracy continued to decline, and the democracy, whose favourites and champions they were, made haste to raise itself, they gradually subverted the original system of the government, and engrossed its powers.

They deposed kings, and exercised the functions of sovereignty themselves.

HENCE it is, that all antiquity bewails the decay of Spartan virtue. The citizens had not declined from virtue, for the Spartan morals were ever bad; but the aristocracy had fallen from power. Polybius assures us, that the institutions of Lycurgus were admirably adapted to Sparta, while it was content to remain a small state, and refrained from ambitious wars to conquer Greece and Asia. Their degeneracy is dated from the time when Lysander took Athens, and when Agesilaus made his expedition against the Persian king. Sparta was then filled with rich spoils, and corruption entered, they say, with riches. The labouring classes had always loved property, but were deprived, as much as possible, by Lycurgus of all chances to amass it. The governing class had not, until these wars, enjoyed many opportunities to get it, nor had it then become an object of personal influence and consideration.

BUT too much influence seems to be allowed to these victories. In a very early age, the Lacedæmonians, after an obstinate and long protracted contest, had subdued Messene, a state little less considerable than their own, and made slaves of the people. The property was the booty of the conquerors; yet they maintained their laws for many hundred years after that event. The Romans were conquerors from the days of Romulus, if we except the peaceful reign of Numa; yet the greatest boasts of Roman simplicity and virtue, of love of country and contempt of wealth, are made in the very crisis of their most dangerous wars with Pyrrhus and the Samnites, which gave them the dominion of Italy.

HAD the Lacedæmonians abstained from wars of ambition, they would have changed, or, as it is the fashion to term it, degenerated. The wars of Lysander and Agesilaus furnish'ed the occasions, but were not the causes of the change. When property and power, once a Spartan monopoly, had passed into other hands, the change was inevitable.

SPARTAN equality has been the everlasting boast of declamation. It was not Lycurgus's view to make his nobles better, but to raise them higher than other men; and that they might to the end of time be sustained at that point of elevation, he contrived to sink all other classes to servitude or insignificance. The nobles were a sort of perpetual garrison for Sparta. Lycurgus did not intend to train all the inhabitants to be nobles.

HAVING made this accurate distinction of orders in the state, and removed, as far as human wisdom could do it, all the causes that might revive their rivalships and struggles, he may be pronounced the friend of the independence and of the tranquillity of his country, but without excessive absurdity, he cannot be allowed to be the founder of equal liberty. The Lacedæmonians had all the liberty, and most of the virtues and vices of a camp, which is always quiet, and generally has reason to be, as long as subordination is maintained.

Is it wonderful, then, that a state, thus admirably organized for its own peculiar purposes, was able, for so many centuries, to preserve itself unsubdued by its hostile neighbours? or that the aristocracy, who engrossed all political power, as well as the command of armies, should be able so long to hinder the excluded orders of the state from obtain ing a share in the government of it?

58

AMERICAN LITERATURE.

FEW speculative subjects have exercised the passions

more or the judgment less, than the inquiry, what rank our country is to maintain in the world for genius and literary attainments. Whether in point of intellect we are equal to Europeans, or only a race of degenerate creoles; whether our artists and authors have already performed much and promise every thing; whether the muses, like the nightingales, are too delicate to cross the salt water, or sicken and mope without song, if they do, are themes upon which we Americans are privileged to be eloquent and loud. It might, indeed, occur to our discretion, that, as the only admissible proof of literary excellence is the measure of its effects, our national claims ought to be abandoned as worthless the moment they are found to need asserting.

NEVERTHELESS, by a proper spirit and constancy in praising ourselves, it seems to be supposed, the doubtful title of our vanity may be quieted, in the same manner as it was once believed, the currency of the continental paper could, by a universal agreement, be established at par with specie. Yet, such was the unpatriotick perverseness of our citizens, they preferred the gold and silver for no better reason than because the paper bills were not so good. And now it may happen, that, from spite or envy, from want of attention or the want of our sort of information, foreigners will dispute the claims of our pre-eminence in genius and literature, notwithstanding the great convenience and satisfaction we should find in their acquiescence.

In this unmanageable temper or indocile ignorance of Europe, we may be under the harsh necessity of submitting our pretensions to a scrutiny; and, as the world will judge of the matter with none of our partiality, it may be discreet to

anticipate that judgment, and to explore the grounds upon which, it is probable, the aforesaid world will frame it. And after all we should suffer more pain than loss, if we should in the event be stripped of all that does not belong to us; and, especially, if by a better knowledge of ourselves we should gain that modesty, which is the first evidence, and, perhaps, the last of a real improvement. For no man is less likely to increase his knowledge than the coxcomb, who fancies he has already learned out. An excessive national vanity, as it is the sign of mediocrity, if not of barbarism, is one of the greatest impediments to knowledge.

Ir will be useless and impertinent to say, a greater proportion of our citizens have had instruction in schools, than can be found in any European state. It may be true, that neither France nor England can boast of so large a portion of their population, who can read and write, and who are versed in the profitable mystery of the rule of three. This is not the footing upon which the inquiry is to proceed. The question is not, what proportion are stone blind, or how many can see, when the sun shines, but what geniuses have arisen among us, like the sun and stars to shed life and splendour on our hemisphere.

THIS state of the case is no sooner made, than all the firefly tribe of our authors perceive their little lamps go out of themselves, like the flame of a candle when lowered into the mephitick vapour of a well. Excepting the writers of two able works on our politicks, we have no authors. To enter the lists in single combat against Hector, the Greeks did not offer the lots to the nameless rabble of their soldiery; all eyes were turned upon Agamemnon and Ajax, upon Diomed and Ulysses. Shall we match Joel Barlow against Homer or Hesiod? Can Thomas Paine contend against Plato? Or could Findley's history of his own insurrection vie with Sallust's narrative of Catiline's? There is no scarcity of spelling-book-makers, and authors of twelve cent pamphlets; and we have a distinguished few, a sort of literary nobility, whose