Book Description

The question which suggests itself after reading even this effort of Mr. Church's to interest children of a younger age than those for whom he has usually written, is whether children will, after all, enjoy his book as much as those who read it to them. We can answer for it that very few children will read Mr. Church's very taking account of the domestic life of Athens and Sparta at about the time of the Peloponnesian War with the same keen interest as that which it has excited in the present reviewer, who, having forgotten a good deal of what Mr. Church brings out so pleasantly, and never having known some of it, has followed the story of these three inheritors of the traditions of Marathon and Salamis with as eager a sympathy as if he were making acquaintance with that most fascinating of histories for the first time. We could have spared, indeed, a little of the chapter on "Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic," which reminded us painfully of Miss Edgeworth's "Harry and Lucy," and Mrs. Barbauld's "Tutor, George, and Harry." But the narrative given to the children by survivors of the battles of Marathon aud Salamis, the death of Hylax and of Sciton, the fragments of the Odyssey introduced into the story, the picture of the merchant-ships in the Peiraus, the account of Spartan manners and customs, the reminiscences of the old Messenian woman who could not forgive the Spartans for their victory, and the glimpse of the Isthmian games, seem to us as full of the unique charm of Greek romance and legend as any modern book on ancient Greece we have ever seen. And yet it is not quite easy to say what is the essence of that charm. Partly, perhaps, it consists in the lightness of the life,-the ease with which everything passes, even in Sparta, and still more in Athens,-birth, and education, and marriage, and work, and death, all seeming to pass as easily as they pass quickly, and without any of that burden of heavy responsibility and anxiety with which the modern life is loaded. Take this description, for instance, of the death of old Sciton, the survivor of Marathon, in the presence of his master and his children, and the physician who, after reviving his failing vitality, records the old man's will.... -The Spectator, Volume 61 [1889]