In the first place, in order properly to understand the specific analogy which we now proceed to develop and apply to the case in hand, it is absolutely necessary that the reader should fix Hellas in his mind’s eye as the counterpart of Christendom.  Let it be understood, then, that all that preceded Hellenism in the ancient world was but the vestibule of its magnificent temple, and that the sole function of the Roman Empire, which came afterwards, was to tide the world over from Hellenic realities to the more sublime realities of Christianity.  The mighty deeds of Egyptian conquerors, the imperial splendors of Persian dynasties,—­these were but miniature gems that gilded the corridors and archways in the propylaea of ancient civilization; and on the other side, the brilliancy of the Caesars was not that of an original sun in the heavens, since, in one half of their course, they did but reflect the sunset glories of Greece, and, in the other, the rising glories of Christianity.  From Macedonia, then, in the North, southward to the sea, and from the heroic age to the Battle of Pydna, (168 B.C.,) extended, in space and time, the original and peculiar splendors of antiquity.

But two of the Hellenic States were consecrated to a special office of glory.  These two were Athens and Sparta; and the sublime mission which it was allotted them to fulfil in history was this, that they, within limited boundaries, should concentrate all ante-Christian excellence,—­that these two States, opposite in their whole character, should, through the conflict between their antagonistic elements, test the strength and worthiness of ante-Christian principles.  Precisely in the same relation to Christendom stands America, with her two opposite types of civilization arrayed against each other in mortal conflict.  Here must be tested the merits of modern civilization, just as in Peloponnesus and Attica were tested those of the old; here, too, must be tested the strength even of Christianity as a practical power in the political world.  Where Ionic and Doric Greece stood twenty-three centuries ago, stand today the Northern and Southern sections of this country; they hold between them, as did their Hellenic prototypes, the heritage of laborious ages, and to their eyes alone have the slowly growing fruits of time seemed ready, from very ripeness, to fall into the lap of man.  In either case, Hellenic or American, we look upon generations totally different in circumstance from those which came before them,—­generations, freed not only from the despotic tutelage of Nature, (from whom they exact tribute, instead of, as formerly, paying it to her,) but also from the still more galling tutelage of ignorance and of the social necessities imposed by ignorance,—­generations which, in either the ancient or modern instance, stand representatively for the whole race, and by necessity, since they only could fairly be said, unimpeded by external conditions, perfectly to represent themselves.  It matters