This is closely, and indeed inseparably, connected with another of his eccentric tastes, a marked partiality for Lacedaemon, and a dislike of Athens.

Mr Mitford's book has, I suspect, rendered these sentiments in some degree popular; and I shall, therefore, examine them at some length.
The shades in the Athenian character strike the eye more rapidly than those in the Lacedaemonian: not because they are darker, but because they are on a brighter ground.

The law of ostracism is an instance of this.

Nothing can be conceived more odious than the practice of punishing a citizen, simply and professedly, for his eminence;--and nothing in the institutions of Athens is more frequently or more justly censured.

Lacedaemon was free from this.