never ceased to be incomparable craftsmen and subtle thinkers, the nobler elements which made them artists and originators in all departments of intellect gradually failed them.

These generalisations are supported by the history of their two foremost peoples. The Athenians and Ionians always claimed to be sons of the soil—that is, to have received but a slight intermixture of Northern blood; hence they provide the artists, the traders, and the sailors of Greece. The Spartans, on the other hand, belonged to the Dorian race, the last-comers, and probably the farthest-comers, or the most northerly, of all the invading peoples. They show us the power of discipline, they are the land-warriors, they honour old age, and they do not seclude their women. But as foreigners in an alien land they are the first to decay, and their fall is far more sudden and complete. They give us no art but music and lyric song. From this fact