despair. Attica, almost the only loyal state, had been overrun; the
old men, women, and children had fled to the neighbouring islands, or
to the Peloponnese. Athens itself had been destroyed; and while
young Sophocles was dancing round the trophy at Salamis, the
Acropolis was still a heap of blackened ruins.

But over and above their valour, over and above their loyalty, over
and above their exquisite aesthetic faculty, these Athenians had a
resilience of self-reliant energy, like that of the French--like that
of the American people after the fire of Chicago; and Athens rose
from her ashes to be awhile, not only, as she had nobly earned by
suffering and endurance, the leading state in Greece, but a mighty
fortress, a rich commercial port, a living centre of art, poetry,
philosophy, such as this earth has never seen before or since.

On the plateau of that little crag of the Acropolis some eight
hundred feet in length, by four hundred in breadth--about the size
and shape of the Castle Rock at Edinburgh--was gathered, within forty
years of the battle of Salamis, more and more noble beauty than ever
stood together on any other spot of like size.

The sudden relief from crushing pressure, and the joyous
consciousness of well-earned honours, made the whole spirit-nature of
the people blossom out, as it were, into manifold forms of activity,
beauty, research, and raised, in raising Greece, the whole human race
thenceforth.

What might they not have done--looking at what they actually did--for
the whole race of man?