Writings of Hugh Swinton Legaré Volume 2; consisting of a diary of Brussels, and journal of the Rhine extracts from his private and diplomatic ... and Southern reviews. Prefaced by a memoi - Tapa blanda

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1845 Excerpt: ... PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. 'The Public Economy of Athens, in four books; 10 which is added a dissertation on the Silver-Mines of Laurion. Translated from the German of AugusTus Boecku. London. 1828. In his preface to this work, (which was first published at Berlin in 1817,) Professor Boeckh, as we are informed by the translator, pronounced the knowledge of the ancient history of Greece to be still in its infancy. The observation, we have no doubt at all, is perfectly just. It is but of late years, and first and principally in the universities of Germany, that the researches of scholars have been directed by the spirit of a distinguishing and comprehensive philosophy. They have made dicoveries in fields of inquiry which one would have thought exhausted long ago. They have poured out a flood of light upon every controverted point, and, on the other hand, have shaken many an established dogma, and exposed many a consecrated error. They were not content to learn their lessons by rote, with implicit acquiescence as was the fashion even with very erudite men, a century ago. They took it for granted, or to speak more properly, they reasonably concluded, from what the genius and judgments of the ancients had done in every variety of intellectual achievement, that what appears incongruous and absurd in their institutions or their conduct and opinions, is not so in reality, that the presumption against our knowledge is stronger than against their sense, and that we ought to have a care how we indulge our supercilious fancies with regard to such men, lest we incur the old censure of the damnat quod non intelligit. It is quite inconceivable to those, who have not looked narrowly into such matters, what a revolution this school of philosophical erudition has brought abo...