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The Dorian Measure.

tune. He is also said to have first mixed Greek and Asiatic music. Another consequence of the Dorian music and dance was the sculpture of Greece, which took its ideal character from the Dorians, who had Apollo for model, and the unveiled human form, beheld with a chaste delight in the gymnasium, for their school of art. Their love for proportion, harmony, and regularity, rather than for luxuriance of ornament and glitter, is also exemplified in their architecture, which betrays a certain relation to the sculpture of the nation and era. Thus the Dorian measure came to characterize their artistic eye, as well as ear and limb, and the body received its highest education; almost reminding one of the sublime image of Milton, who speaks of the time when, by the natural ascension of matter,—

———"bodies shall at last all turn to spirit,
Improved by tract of time, and, wing'd, ascend
Ethereal."

But the music of the Dorians comprehended their moral and intellectual culture, which was very much the same in both sexes. We may infer a natural education of the affections, and that discipline which precludes selfishness in its grossest form, from the fact, that the family spirit was free and genial. The Dorian called his wife, mistress; and it was no unmeaning title; for women enjoyed a real influence in the management of their families, and as mothers. "Aristotle speaks," says Müller, "of their influence on the government, in the time of the ascendency of Sparta: it increased," he says, "still more when a large part of the landed property fell into the hands of women." He adds, that, "little as the Athenians esteemed their own women, they involuntarily revered the heroines of Sparta; and this feeling is sometimes apparent even in the coarse jests of Aristophanes." Again, "In general, it may be remarked, that, while among the Ionians women were merely considered in an inferior and sensual light, and though the Æolians allowed their feelings a more elevated tone, as is proved by the amatory poetesses of Lesbos,—the Dorians, as well at Sparta as in the South of Italy, were almost the only nation who esteemed the higher