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818 ON THE RISE, PROGRESS, ETC.of a higher order be added, should men have taught themselves to rise from the particular to the general, from factsto principles,the pathisopened for political speculation.It was thus that it arose and perfected itselfamong theGreeks, where external causes were so many and so various.And in support of this view itsopposite was sufficientlyproved during the middle ages, throughout which it as W7impossible that any traces of such speculations should appear.The feudal systems, strictly so called, admitted of nofree citizenships, and allowed no varieties of government.That which was dignified by the name of freedom, was ingeneral nothing but a contest of the nobility against theirprinces, which if it failed, begot a despotism ;if it succeeded,was the signalof club-law and anarchy.Amid such scenes as these, there \vas little room for political speculation, even if the total absence of philosophicalideas had not rendered it impossible.Among those countries in which itmight have been expected to give the earliest signs of life, Italy was undoubtedly the first all the; ordinary causes appear to have unitedhere a number of small states arose near each other republican constitutions were established political partieswere every where at work and at variance ;and with allthis, the arts and sciences were in the full splendour of theirrevival.The appearance of Italy in the fifteenth century recallsmost fully the picture of ancient Greece. And yet in Italypolitical theories were as few, as in Greece they had beenmany a 1 result both unexpected and difficult to explain.Still, however, I think that this phenomenon may be in agreat part accounted for, if we remember that there neverwas a philosophical system of character or influence whichprospered under the sky of Italy. No nation of civilizedEurope has given birth to so few theories as the Italiannone has had less genius for such pursuits. The history ofthe Roman philosophy, a mere echo of the Grecian, provesthis of its earlier ages, nor was it otherwise in its later.At the revival of science Plato and Aristotle were thechief and only guides, and even when the trammels of thissuperstition had been broken through, Italy produced nooriginal minds whose life and works formed an era in phi-