but practically they sometimes produce the most momentous
effects.  Thus it has been in the present case.  Historians have,
almost without exception, confined themselves to the public
transactions of states, and have left to the negligent
administration of writers of fiction a province at least equally
extensive and valuable.

All wise statesmen have agreed to consider the prosperity or
adversity of nations as made up of the happiness or misery of
individuals, and to reject as chimerical all notions of a public
interest of the community, distinct from the interest of the
component parts.  It is therefore strange that those whose office
it is to supply statesmen with examples and warnings should omit,
as too mean for the dignity of history, circumstances which exert
the most extensive influence on the state of society.  In
general, the under current of human life flows steadily on,
unruffled by the storms which agitate the surface.  The happiness
of the many commonly depends on causes independent of victories
or defeats, of revolutions or restorations,--causes which can be
regulated by no laws, and which are recorded in no archives.
These causes are the things which it is of main importance to us
to know, not how the Lacedaemonian phalanx was broken at
Leuctra,--not whether Alexander died of poison or by disease.
History, without these, is a shell without a kernel; and such is
almost all the history which is extant in the world.  Paltry
skirmishes and plots are reported with absurd and useless
minuteness; but improvements the most essential to the comfort of
human life extend themselves over the world, and introduce
themselves into every cottage, before any annalist can
condescend, from the dignity of writing about generals and
ambassadors, to take the least notice of them.	Thus the progress
of the most salutary inventions and discoveries is buried in
impenetrable mystery; mankind are deprived of a most useful
species of knowledge, and their benefactors of their honest fame.
In the meantime every child knows by heart the dates and
adventures of a long line of barbarian kings.  The history of
nations, in the sense in which I use the word, is often best
studied in works not professedly historical.  Thucydides, as far
as he goes, is an excellent writer; yet he affords us far less
knowledge of the most important particulars relating to Athens
than Plato or Aristophanes.  The little treatise of Xenophon on
Domestic Economy contains more historical information than all
the seven books of his Hellenics.  The same may be said of the
Satires of Horace, of the Letters of Cicero, of the novels of Le
Sage, of the memoirs of Marmontel.  Many others might be
mentioned; but these sufficiently illustrate my meaning.

I would hope that there may yet appear a writer who may despise
the present narrow limits, and assert the rights of history over
every part of her natural domain.  Should such a writer engage in
that enterprise, in which I cannot but consider Mr Mitford as
having failed, he will record, indeed, all that is interesting
and important in military and political transactions; but he will
not think anything too trivial for the gravity of history which
is not too trivial to promote or diminish the happiness of man.
He will portray in vivid colours the domestic society, the
manners, the amusements, the conversation of the Greeks.  He will
not disdain to discuss the state of agriculture, of the
mechanical arts, and of the conveniences of life.  The progress
of painting, of sculpture, and of architecture, will form an
important part of his plan.  But, above all, his attention will
be given to the history of that splendid literature from which
has sprung all the strength, the wisdom, the freedom, and the
glory, of the western world.

Of the indifference which Mr Mitford shows on this subject I will
not speak; for I cannot speak with fairness.  It is a subject on
which I love to forget the accuracy of a judge, in the veneration
of a worshipper and the gratitude of a child.  If we consider
merely the subtlety of disquisition, the force of imagination,
the perfect energy and elegance of expression which characterise
the great works of Athenian genius, we must pronounce them
intrinsically most valuable; but what shall we say when we
reflect that from hence have sprung directly or indirectly, all
the noblest creations of the human intellect; that from hence
were the vast accomplishments and the brilliant fancy of Cicero;
the withering fire of Juvenal; the plastic imagination of Dante;
the humour of Cervantes; the comprehension of Bacon; the wit of
Butler; the supreme and universal excellence of Shakspeare?  All
the triumphs of truth and genius over prejudice and power, in
every country and in every age, have been the triumphs of Athens.
Wherever a few great minds have made a stand against violence and
fraud, in the cause of liberty and reason, there has been her
spirit in the midst of them; inspiring, encouraging, consoling;--
by the lonely lamp of Erasmus; by the restless bed of Pascal; in
the tribune of Mirabeau; in the cell of Galileo; on the scaffold
of Sidney.  But who shall estimate her influence on private
happiness?  Who shall say how many thousands have been made
wiser, happier, and better, by those pursuits in which she has
taught mankind to engage:  to how many the studies which took
their rise from her have been wealth in poverty,--liberty in
bondage,--health in sickness,--society in solitude?  Her power is
indeed manifested at the bar, in the senate, in the field of
battle, in the schools of philosophy.  But these are not her
glory.	Wherever literature consoles sorrow, or assuages pain,--
wherever it brings gladness to eyes which fail with wakefulness
and tears, and ache for the dark house and the long sleep,--there
is exhibited, in its noblest form, the immortal influence of
Athens.

The dervise, in the Arabian tale, did not hesitate to abandon to
his comrade the camels with their load of jewels and gold, while
he retained the casket of that mysterious juice which enabled him
to behold at one glance all the hidden riches of the universe.
Surely it is no exaggeration to say that no external advantage is
to be compared with that purification of the intellectual eye
which gives us to contemplate the infinite wealth of the mental
world, all the hoarded treasures of its primeval dynasties, all
the shapeless ore of its yet unexplored mines.	This is the gift
of Athens to man.  Her freedom and her power have for more than
twenty centuries been annihilated; her people have degenerated
into timid slaves; her language into a barbarous jargon; her
temples have been given up to the successive depredations of
Romans, Turks, and Scotchmen; but her intellectual empire is
imperishable.  And when those who have rivalled her greatness
shall have shared her fate; when civilisation and knowledge shall
have fixed their abode in distant continents; when the sceptre
shall have passed away from England; when, perhaps, travellers
from distant regions shall in vain labour to decipher on some
mouldering pedestal the name of our proudest chief; shall hear
savage hymns chaunted to some misshapen idol over the ruined dome
of our proudest temple; and shall see a single naked fisherman
wash his nets in the river of the ten thousand masts;--her
influence and her glory will still survive,--fresh in eternal
youth, exempt from mutability and decay, immortal as the
intellectual principle from which they derived their origin, and
over which they exercise their control.





End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of The Miscellaneous Writings
and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Volume I.

