Nightly along the plain are yet heard by superstition the neighings of chargers and the rushing shadows of spectral war [291].

And still, throughout the civilized world (civilized how much by the arts and lore of Athens!) men of every clime, of every political persuasion, feel as Greeks at the name of Marathon.

Later fields have presented the spectacle of an equal valour, and almost the same disparities of slaughter; but never, in the annals of earth, were united so closely in our applause, admiration for the heroism of the victors, and sympathy for the holiness of their cause.

It was the first great victory of OPINION! and its fruits were reaped, not by Athens only, but by all Greece then, as by all time thereafter, in a mighty and imperishable harvest,--the invisible not less than the actual force of despotism was broken.

Nor was it only that the dread which had hung upon the Median name was dispelled--nor that free states were taught their pre-eminence over the unwieldy empires which the Persian conquerors had destroyed,--a greater lesson was taught to Greece, when she discovered that the monarch of Asia could not force upon a petty state the fashion of its government, or the selection of its rulers.