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THE ABTS IN CONNEXION WITH THE STATE. 235tions, did not end with those artists.Theygood care to that fondness.perpetuatehad taken tooWhen the Grecianshad lost almost every thing else, they were still proud oftheir works of art. This excited even in the Romans re"and admiration.spectThese works of art, these statues,these pictures/' says Cicero, 1 " delight the Greeks beyondevery thing.From their complaints 2 you may learn, thatthat is most bitter to them, which to us appears perhapstrivial and easy to be borne. Of all acts of oppression and injustice, which foreigners and allies in these times have beenobliged to endure, nothing has been more hard for the Grecians to bear, than this plundering of their temples and cities "We ! have thus far endeavoured to consider Greece fromall the points,in which she made herself gloriousas a nation.Who is we it, may finally ask, that conferred upon her immortality ? Was it her generals and men of power alone ;or was it equally her sages, her poets, and her artists ? Thevoice of ages has decided ;and posterity justly places theimages of these heroes of peace by the side of those of3warriors and kings.CHAPTER XVLCAUSES OF THE FALL OF GEEECE.THE melancholy task of explainingthe causes which led tothe fall of Greece, has been facilitated by the preceding investigations.Most of them will occur to the reader ;wehave only to illustrate them somewhat more at large,andarrange them in a manner to admit of being distinctly comprehended at a single view.4If the constitutions of the individual Grecian states weredefective, the constitution of the whole Grecian system was1sCicero in Yerrem, iL IF. 59.Of the robberies of Yerres.* See Yisconti, Iconographie ancienne. Paris, 18 11.* See Drmnann's carefully written History of the Decline of the GrreciaaStates. Berlin, 1815. To have occasioned such works is the highest ^easerefor the author* So too in reference to the thirteenth chapter I may cite,Betters Demosthenes as a Statesman and Orator. 2 vols. 1815. The besthistorical and critical introduction to the study of Demosthenes.