mother; and it was thought the readiest way to lighten the state of future incumbrance.

Those infants that were born without any capital defects, were adopted as children of the state, and delivered to their parents to be nursed with severity and hardship. From their tenderest age they were accustomed to make no choice in their eating, nor to be afraid in the dark, or when left alone; not to be peevish or fretful, to walk barefoot, to lie hard at nights, to wear the same clothes winter and summer, and to fear nothing from their equals. At the age of seven years they were taken from their parents, and delivered over to the classes for a public education. Their discipline there was little else than an apprenticeship to hardship, self-denial and obedience. In these classes, one of the boys, more advanced and experienced than the rest, presided as captain to govern and chastise the refractory. Their very sports and exercises were regulated according to the exactest discipline, and made up of labor and fatigue. They went barefoot, with their heads shaved, and fought with one another naked. While they were at table it was usual for the masters to instruct the boys, by asking them questions concerning the nature of moral actions, or the different merits of the most noted men of the time. The boys were obliged to give a quick and ready answer, which was to be accompanied with their reasons in the concisest manner, for a Spartan's language was as sparing as his money was ponderous and bulky. All ostentatious learning was banished from this simple commonwealth, their only study was to obey, their only pride was to suffer hardship. Every art was practised to harden them against adventitious danger. There was yearly a custom of whipping them at the altar of Diana, and the boy that bore this punishment with the greatest fortitude, came off victorious. This was inflicted publicly before the eyes of their parents and in the presence of the whole city; and many were known to expire under the severity of the discipline, without uttering a single groan. Even their own fathers, when they saw them covered with blood and wounds, and ready to expire, exhorted them to persevere to the end with constancy and resolution. Plutarch, who says that he has seen several children expire under this cruel treatment, tells us of one who having stolen a fox, and hid it under his coat, chose rather to let it tear his very bowels than discover the theft.

Every institution seems tending to harden the body and sharpen the mind for war. In order to prepare them for

stratagems and sudden incursions, the boys were permitted to steal from each other: but if they were caught in the fact, they were punished for their want of dexterity. Such a permission, therefore, was little better than a prohibition of theft, since the punishment followed, as at present, in case of detection. In fact by this institution, negligence in the possessor was made justly liable to the loss of the possessions, a consideration which has not been sufficiently attended to by subsequent legislators.

At twelve years old, the boys were removed into other classes, of a more advanced kind. There, in order to crush the seeds of vice, which at that time began to appear, their labor and discipline were increased with their age. There they had their instructor from among the men, called Pædonomus, and under him the Irens, young men selected from their own body, to exercise a more constant and immediate command over them. They had now their skirmishes between parties, and their mock fights between larger bodies. In these they often fought with hands, feet, teeth, and nails, with such obstinacy, that it was common to see them lose their eyes, and often their lives before the fray determined. Such was the constant discipline of the minority, which lasted till the age of thirty, before which they were not permitted to marry, to go into the troops, or to bear any office in the state.

With regard to the virgins, their discipline was equally strict with the former. They were inured to a constant course of labor and industry until they were twenty years old, before which time they were not considered marriageable. They had also their peculiar exercises. They ran, wrestled, pitched the bar, and performed all these feats naked before the whole body of the citizens. Yet this was thought no way indecent, as it was supposed that the frequent view of the person would rather check than excite any looser appetite. An education so manlike did not fail to produce in the Spartan women corresponding sentiments. They were bold, frugal, and patriotic, filled with a sense of honor, and a love of military glory. Some foreign women in conversation with the wife of Leonidas saying, that the Spartan women alone knew how to govern the men, she boldly replied, "The Spartan women alone bring forth men.'

A mother was known to give her son, who was going to battle, his shield, with this remarkable advice: Return with it, or return upon it. Implying, that rather than throw

it from him in flight, he should be borne upon it dead to his finds in Sparta.

Another, hearing that her son was killed in fighting for his country, she answered without any emotion, It is for that I brought him into the world.' After the battle of Leuctra, the parents of those who died in the action, went to the temples to thank the gods, that their sons had done their duty, while those whose children survived that dreadful day, seemed inconsolable.

Yet it must not be concealed, that in a city where the women were inspired with such a passion for military glory, they were not equally remarkable for connubial fidelity. In fact, there was no law against adultery, and an exchange of husbands was often actually practised among them. This was always by the mutual consent of parties, which removed the tedious ceremonies of a divorce. One reason assigned for allowing this mutual liberty, was not so much to gratify licen tious desire, as to improve the breed of citizens, by matching such as were possessed of mutual inclination. In fact, in many of the laws of Lycurgus he seems to admit that private vices may become public benefits, and this among the number. Besides these constitutional regulations, there were many other general maxims laid down, that obtained the force of laws among them. They were forbid to exercise any mechanic art. The chief occupations of the Spartans were bodily exercises or hunting.. The Helotes who had lost their liberty some centuries before, and who had been condemned to perpetual slavery, tilled their lands for them, receiving for their labor a bare subsistence. The citizens thus possessed of competence and leisure, were mostly in company in large common halls, where they met and conversed together. They passed little of their time alone, being accustomed to live like bees, always together, always attentive to their chiefs and leaders. The love of their country and the public good was their predominant passion: and all self-interest was lost in the general wish for the welfare of the community. Pedaratus having missed the honor of being chosen of the three hundred who had a certain rank in the city, converted his disappointment into joy, that there were three hundred better men in Sparta, than he.

Among the maxims of their legislator, it was forbidden them to make frequent war upon the same enemies. By this inhibition they were restrained from lasting and immoderate resentment, they were in no danger of teaching their discipline to those they made war upon, and all their allianees were thus more frequently renewed.

Whenever they had broken and routed the enemies they never pursued them farther than was necessary to make themselves sure of victory. They thought it sufficiently glorious to overcome, and were ashamed of destroying an enemy that yielded or fled. Nor was this without answering some good purposes; for an enemy, conscious that all who resisted were put to the sword, often fled, as they were convinced that such a conduct was the surest means of obtaining safety. Thus valor and generosity seemed the ruling motives of this new institution. Arms were their only exercise, and their life was much less austere in the camp than in the city. The Spartans were the only people in the world to whom the time of war was a time of ease and refreshment: because then the severity of their manners was relaxed, and the men were indulged in greater liberties. With them the first and most inviolable law of war was never to turn their backs on the enemy, however disproportioned in force, nor to deliver up their arms until they resigned them with life. When the poet Archilochus came to Sparta he was obliged to quit the city for having asserted in one of his poems, that it was better for a man to lose his arms than his life. Thus resolved upon conquest or death, they went calmly forward with all the confidence of success, sure of meeting a glorious victory, or, what they valued equally, a noble death.

Thus depending upon their valor alone for safety, their legislator forbid walling the city. It was his maxim that a wall of men was preferable to a wall of bricks, and that confined valor was scarce preferable to cowardice. Indeed a city, in which were thirty thousand fighting men, stood in little need of walls to protect it; and we have scarce an instance in history, of their suffering themselves to be driven to their last retreats. War and its honors was their employment and ambition. Their Helotes or slaves, tilled their grounds, and did all their servile drudgery. These unhappy men were in a manner bound to the soil; it was not lawful to sell them to strangers, or to make them free. If at any time their increase became inconvenient, or created a suspicion in their fierce masters, there was a diabolical cryptia, or secret act, by which they were permitted to destroy them. From this barbarous severity, however, Lycurgus is acquitted by Plutarch; but it is plain, that his institutions were not sufficient to restrain the people from such baseness and cruelty. It was by this abominable act allowed for several companies of young men to go out of the city by day, and, concealing themselves in the thickets, to rush out in the night

upon their slaves, and kill all they could find in their way. Thucydides relates, that two thousand of these slaves disap peared at once without ever after being heard of. It is truly amazing, how a people like the Spartans, renowned for lenity to the conquered, for submission to their superiors, for reverence to old age, and friendship for each other, should yet be so horribly brutal to those beneath them, to men that ought to be considered in every respect as their equals, as their countrymen, and only degraded by an unjust usurpation. Yet nothing is more certain than their cruel treatment; they were not only condemned to the most servile occupations, but often destroyed without reason. They were frequently made drunk and exposed before the children, in order to deter them from so brutal a species of debauchery.

Such was the general purport of the institutions of Lycurgus, which, from their tendency, gained the esteem and admiration of all the surrounding nations. The Greeks were ever apt to be dazzled rather with splendid than useful virtues; and praised the laws of Lycurgus, which at best were calculated to make men more war-like than happy, and to substitute insensibility to enjoyment. If considered in a political light the city of Lacedæmon was but a military garrison, supported by the labor of a numerous peasantry that were slaves. The laws, therefore, by which they were governed, are not much more rigorous than many of the military institutions of modern princes. The same labor, the same discipline, the same poverty, and the same subordination, is found in many of the garrisoned towns of Europe that prevailed for so many centuries in Sparta. The only difference that appears to me between a soldier of Lacedæmon, and a soldier in garrison at Gravelines, is, that the one was permitted to marry at thirty, and the other is obliged to continue single all his life: the one lives in the midst of a civilized country, which he is supposed to protect; the other lives in the midst of a number of civilized states, which he had no inclination to offend. War is equally the trade of both and a campaign is frequently a relaxation from the more rigorous confinement of garrison duty.

When Lycurgus had thus completed his military institution, and when the form of government he had established seemed strong and vigorous enough to support itself, his next care was to give it all the permanence in his power. He, therefore, signified to the people that something still remained for the completion of his plan, and that he was under the necessity of going to consult the oracle at Delphos for its ad