become the slaves of the enemy." Our author, in describing such scenes, delights to indulge in the feelings excited by contrasting the present with the past, and the past with the present. The whole of the succeeding description of Sparta is in this style; its once proud monuments and temples are contrasted with its remaining ruins; of which, instead of "a giant-wreck," scarcely sufficient survives to add dignity to its fall. Its once stern and haughty sons, who, stamped in one rough and colossal mould, exhibited little of the moral varieties which diversify more polished nations, appear with new advantages beside that "second race," who arose "when glory's noon went by," and who tamely drank that bitter cup of slavery, which their forefathers would have perished rather than have tasted. The heavens shine with their ancient splendour, the various plants and flowers of the classic age survive indigenous to the spot; but man, and almost all his boasted works, have perished; and Lacedemon, once the pride of Greece and of the world, is now no more.

"Home of Leonidas! thy halls are low,
From their cold altars have thy Lares fled,
O'er thee unmark'd the sun-beams fade or glow,
And wild flowers wave, unbent by human tread;
And midst thy silence, as the grave's profound,

A voice, a step would seem as some unearthly sound." (P. 29.) Alluding to the celebrated reeds of antiquity, which still continue to adorn the banks of the Eurotas, and to the rose-laurels, which still bloom over the grave of Sparta, our author deduces the same affecting inference to which we have just adverted. The idea conveyed in the last line of the stanza is inexpressibly touching.

"Oh! thus it is with man-a tree, a flower,
While nations perish, still renews its race,
And o'er the fallen records of his power
Spreads in wild pomp, or smiles in fairy grace.
The laurel shoots when those have past away
Once rivals for its crown, the brave, the free;
The rose is flourishing o'er beauty's clay,

The myrtle blows when love hath ceased to be;
Green waves the bay when song and bard are fled,

And all that round us blooms, is blooming o'er the dead." (P. 30.) We shall give but one or two short extracts more before we conclude. It requires, indeed, but a few lines to tell the tale of ages:" we have said all, when we say that the mosque and the minaret have usurped the place of antique grandeur and beauty, and that the despotism of an ignorant and rapacious government has chilled every generous feeling into a death-like inaction. We therefore pass by several of the cities and states alluded to by our author:

"But thou, fair Attica! whose rocky bound
All art and nature's richest gifts enshrined,
Thou little sphere, whose soul-illumined round
Concentrated each sunbeam of the mind;
Who, as the summit of some Alpine height
Glows earliest, latest, with the blush of day,
Didst first imbibe the splendours of the light,
And smile the longest in its lingering ray;
Oh! let us gaze on thee, and fondly deem
The past awhile restored, the present but a dream.
"Let Fancy's vivid hues awhile prevail-
Wake at her call-be all thou wert once more!
Hark, hymns of triumph swell on every gale!
Lo, bright processions move along thy shore!
Again thy temples, 'midst the olive-shade,
Lovely in chaste simplicity arise;

And graceful monuments, in grove and glade,
Catch the warm tints of thy resplendent skies;
And sculptured forms, of high and heavenly mien,
In their calm beauty smile, around the sun-bright scene.

66

Again renew'd by thought's creative spells,

In all her pomp thy city, Theseus! towers:
Within, around, the light of glory dwells
On art's fair fabrics, wisdom's holy bowers.
There marble fanes in finish'd grace ascend,
The pencil's world of life and beauty glows;
Shrines, pillars, porticoes, in grandeur blend,
Rich with the trophies of barbaric foes;

And groves of platane wave, in verdant pride,

The sage's blest retreats, by calm Ilissus' tide." (P. 36, 37.)

The effect of a Grecian sky upon the fine architecture of the Parthenon is most expressively described; though we must just remark in passing, that to use the term "sanctity," or others of kindred import, as our author does more than once, in reference to a heathen temple, is unbecoming a Christian poet; and indeed, throughout every description of Greek or Roman scenery, a religious care should be observed not to suffer the sublime or picturesque circumstances connected with Pagan worship to convey a feeling derogatory to the honour of "the great and only Potentate.' The mode in which the original writers speak of their fabled deities is no guide or apology for those who seriously believe that the whole system, picturesque as it was, and associated as it may be in the mind of every scholar with images of beauty, was still injurious and degrading to man, and at war with the eternal Majesty of heaven. We could wish that both at school, at college, and in the lectureroom of the artist, the Christian tyro were more emphatically

taught, that though a classical thesis demands classical allusion and imagery, he is by no means to compromise those higher principles which render heathenism, under all its forms, a subject of the deepest commiseration. The man of taste may glow with the utmost ardour of classical emotion, without attaching, either in thought or expression, the remotest idea of toleration to the classical system. The thing, especially in a youthful or illbalanced mind, is difficult, but it is not impossible; and indeed, were there no mode of enjoying Greek and Roman ideas and allusions, without adopting in some measure the feelings in which they originated, we must, as consistent Christians, banish from our schools and libraries the whole treasury of academic lore, and never venture again to cast our eyes upon the exquisite forms of an antique statue. Our reprehensions, therefore, apply only to those persons who suffer their taste to be so much at variance with their professed system of religion that they are almost glad that heathen temples were built, and heathen deities invented, merely because, by means of them, a little gratification has accrued to the lovers of architecture and design. But we are wandering from our poet, whose description of the effect of the pure light which falls on the Parthenon, we were about to

extract.

"Fair Parthenon! thy Doric pillars rise

In simple dignity, thy marble's hue

Unsullied shines, relieved by brilliant skies,
That round thee spread their deep ethereal blue;
And art o'er all thy light proportions throws
The harmony of grace, the beauty of repose.

"And lovely o'er thee sleeps the sunny glow,
When morn and eve in tranquil splendour reign,
And on thy sculptures, as they smile, bestow
Hues that the pencil emulates in vain.
Then the fair forms by Phidias wrought, unfold
Each latent grace, developing in light,
Catch from soft clouds of purple and of gold,
Each tint that passes, tremulously bright;
And seem indeed whate'er devotion deems,

While so suffused with heaven, so mingling with its beams."

(P. 38.)

The mention of the Parthenon naturally brings back to the poet's mind the "bright age of Pericles," when, as our readers know, Phidias discarded the stiff, dry formality of the ancient sculpture, and invented a style uniting truth, grandeur, and refinement; a style at once beautiful and sublime, and combining every ideal grace with every natural perfection.. The masterpieces of his art having survived the very cities which they

adorned, had fallen, in lapse of time, into the hands of barbarous conquerors, who felt no interest in the monuments of the soil which they invaded, and were totally unaffected by the produc tions of an art, which a servile nation never yet learned to appreciate. The "sphere of sovereign beauty," to which Phidias "led the way," was far above the conception of a race of gross fanatics, who without remorse mutilated the finest statues, and even pounded them for mortar to patch up some miserable house or garden wall. No reasonable man, therefore, can grieve that the most valuable part of what remained has been removed to the British soil, which, amidst all the disorders of modern Europe, has been to the world a friendly asylum, in which persecution, whether as applied to men or to marbles, ceases to exert its power. The fact of the British Parliament having acceded, after mature deliberation, to the purchase in question, is the best exculpation of Lord Elgin's proceedings; and though we should not think it proper to do a little wrong, even with a view of doing a great right, and much less of merely purchasing a gratification; yet upon a review of all the circumstances attending the transaction, we are sincerely glad to see the Phidian marbles deposited on British ground, and forming, as they now do, an unequalled school of art for the rising talent of our native sculptors. We can, however, at the same time indulge with our author the feelings which a traveller must necessarily experience at seeing the Parthenon thus dismantled of its long-cherished honours.

"Lone are thy pillars now-each passing gale
Sighs o'er them as a spirit's voice, which moan'd
That loneliness, and told the plaintive tale
Of the bright synod once above them throned.
Mourn, graceful ruin! on thy sacred hill,
Thy gods, thy rites, a kindred fate have shared:
Yet art thou honour'd in each fragment still,

That wasting years and barbarous hands had spared;
Each hallow'd stone, from rapine's fury borne,

Shall wake bright dreams of thee in ages yet unborn.". (P.46.)

That such "bright dreams" will indeed be awakened we have no doubt; and, with all the supposed bad taste that attaches to this country, we are fully convinced that a few years will witness a flourishing school of British sculptors. Nor have we faith in the corrupt opinion that taste and genius, of the highest order, may not be fostered as well in Great Britain, as under serener skies and more glowing suns.

The advantages derived to France from its gallery in the Louvre have been too evident not to excite the attention of other nations. Buonaparte, it is well known, found it expedient to

give no less a sum than 12,000,000 of livres (500,000l. sterling) for the Borghese collection alone; the value affixed to the celebrated Torso of Michael Angelo, in the Louvre, was 300,000 francs (12,000l. sterling); and one single length, measuring six feet, of the frieze of the Parthenon, of which the Elgin collection possesses nearly two hundred and fifty feet, was estimated, in the Paris collection, at more than 3,000l. of English money.

We fully enter into our author's description of these works of art, which is in general correct and spirited, though with an occasional mixture of della crusca lines and thoughts,

We are fully alive to the value of the Elgin marbles, as works designed and directed by the greatest of sculptors, and doubtless executed in part, if not almost every where finished, by his own hand; works which, after being admired and venerated for more than seven hundred years by the ancient world, have survived to us, corroded indeed by time and mutilated by accident, yet still μορφη αμίμητα εργα και χαριτι. Their number and extent adds exceedingly to the general effect: we are transported at once into the ruins of a spacious temple, amidst the vast masses brought from the utmost verge of the European continent, and which had for ages adorned a far distant scene. This allusion adds to the whole collection a solemn interest, which cannot be excited by individual specimens, however exquisitely wrought, or connected with whatever local operations. The mind of the spectator invests them with an air of romantic interest, when it is considered that they were sculptured more than two thousand years ago; that they have been exposed not only to the ordinary vicissitudes of nature, but to innumerable casualties of a still more formidable kind; that they constituted a part of the property of men, who, though they knew nothing of their value, yet from feelings of ignorance and jealousy, could not be induced, without a thousand arts and bribes, to suffer their removal; and, if we add to the whole, that even when removed, they were to be carried by manual labour for several miles, from Athens to the Piræus, in a country without roads or machinery, in order to be transported to England; in their way to which one of the vessels was shipwrecked, and for a considerable time its valuable cargo lost, and in the end recovered only by inconceivable labour, and at an overwhelming expense;-with such reflections, it is impossible to view these prodigies of ancient art without deep regard, even independently of that intrinsic merit which rendered their preservation a matter of such anxious importance. Happily, they are now in a situation where they are not likely for ages to meet with the destruction that awaited them under their Turkish possessors; or with that dispersion to which the collections of private individuals are ever liable, and which would have materially