Their whole life was one school.

The very faults of their assembly, in its proneness to be seduced by extraordinary eloquence, aroused the emulation of the orator, and kept constantly awake the imagination of the audience.

An Athenian was, by the necessity of birth, what Milton dreamed that man could only become by the labours of completest education: in peace a legislator, in war a soldier,--in all times, on all occasions, acute to judge and resolute to act.

All that can inspire the thought or delight the leisure were for the people.
Theirs were the portico and the school--theirs the theatre, the gardens, and the baths; they were not, as in Sparta, the tools of the state--they were the state! Lycurgus made machines and Solon men.

In Sparta the machine was to be wound up by the tyranny of a fixed principle; it could not dine as it pleased--it could not walk as it pleased--it was not permitted to seek its she machine save by stealth and in the dark; its children were not its own--even itself had no property in self.