was defiant, as if leading the Athenian army to battle: the right hand raised and thrown back held the spear about to be cast in the Greek fashion; the left was protected by a round Greek shield; the crest of the Grecian helmet caught the sun's rays, and was distinctly visible to sailors many miles at sea. its banks covered with flowers, which as champion and protector of Athens, were often woven into wreaths for Minerva Promachus. The attitude prizes in the public games and competitions. Among the latter were the contests of musical composers and rival musical societies or choruses. To the successful competitors monuments of marble were erected, and these became so numerous as to form a little curved avenue known as the Street of Tripods. The contests took place in the Theatre of Bacchus, and one only of the monuments has survived, that universally known as the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates. The Propylea served as the fortified gateway to a military citadel, and as the solemn portal of a religious sanctuary. They shared with the Parthenon the This is circular, and stands east and distinction of being typical buildings of a little south of the Acropolis. Another ancient relic which time has spared is the octagon Tower of the Winds, upon each of whose eight faces is sculptured a winged figure floating through the air; each represents a wind, each is highly symbolical; beneath these are eight sun-dials, and inside the tower was a water-clock. At the extreme south-east of the town, and across the river, lies the Stadium or racecourse; now a grassgrown hollow, its slopes were once lined with white marble seats. It is, however, of the Acropolis and its buildings that we desire now to speak. It is an oblong, isolated rock with a flat top and steep sides in the midst of the ancient city, but a little outside the modern capital which has sprung up to the east and north of it. It rises one hundred and fifty feet above the nearest slopes, but considerably more above the general level of the plain. the Doric style; the little Temple of Unwinged Victory stood in front, somewhat to the south. What meaning does "the Doric style" convey to us? Most of us would say, sturdy columns planted on a terrace; a heavy but elaborate entablature; a rather low triangular space (tympanum), in a gable end filled with sculpture above; behind the columns a plain wall (cella) - all these in cold white marble, all more or less frigid, dignified, and to the lovers of the picturesque almost repellent, wanting in color. Very different was the reality! All ancient buildings were profusely colored; all ancient styles involved the use of color; all ancient monuments were surrounded with statues and hung with offerings made of the precious metals - gold, silver, and bronze-besides wood-carving and ivory. Again, let us quote Bishop Wordsworth. He calls it "the splendid froutispiece of the Athenian citadel. . . . In length it is between three and Let us," he proceeds, "conceive such four hundred yards, or about a thou-a restitution of this fabric as its survivsand feet by half that distance in ing fragments suggest, let us imagine breadth. It was both the citadel and it restored to its pristine beauty; let it the treasure-house of the city; as a rise once more in the full dignity of its citadel it was walled and fortified, the youthful stature, let all its architectural approach was from the west, and decorations be fresh and perfect," not through a splendid double gateway in cold, bare surfaces, but "let their called the Propylaa. On the wind- mouldings be again brilliant with glowswept summit stood the Parthenon, the ing tints of red and blue, let the coffers Temple of Pallas (Minerva); at the of its soffits be again spangled with northern side the Erechtheum, and at stars and the white marble antæ be the north-eastern corner towered the fringed over as they once were with gigantic bronze statue of the goddess delicate embroidery of ivy leaf; let it be such a lovely day as the present day | feet. There is some doubt as to the of November--and then let the bronze details of this kind of work; it is posvalves of the Propylea be suddenly sible that over a foundation of woodflung open, and all the splendors of the a wooden figure of Pallas-ivory may interior of the Acropolis burst suddenly have been laid, and then gold, or that upon the view." some parts only of the exterior may have been of gold, the hair and the drapery being in thin, chased plates of that metal. By some it has been suggested that ivory was used for the head, neck, hands, and feet only. The Parthenon, designed by Ictinus in the age of Pericles (about 448 B.C.), is impressive still, aud, owing to the dry climate, in excellent preservation. It would be almost perfect in fact but for the breach made in it in the seven- How was this interior lighted? Some teenth century. The Turks had used have thought by a species of clearit as a powder magazine; the Vene- story, and much "learned lumber" tians, under Morosini, bombarded has been imported into the question. Athens; a shot struck the building, To little purpose, however, for, like the powder blew up, and some of the side columns were shattered. The minor details, the statuary of its western tympanum, the details of the frieze, have disappeared; some are destroyed, some figure-usefully? in the British Museum as the Elgin Marbles. But take it for all in all, the temple has been well preserved. most ancient buildings, it was either entirely hypæthral, open to the sky, or, more probably, partly so; a velarium or thick awning being drawn over the opening to shield the temple from a very hot sun, and perhaps from the rare downfalls of rain. The gold and ivory statue of Minerva Parthenos stood just inside the western doors of the building, and in the Opisthodomus or western of the two chambers of the interior; here, also, the treasure of the city was kept, under her special care, as all good Athenians believed. The remains of color found on the building indicate that light blue and deep red figured largely on the external entablature; whether the shafts of the columns remained in their native hue, or were stained a light lemon color, is uncertain; it is believed, however, that the capitals were gilded. Although grandly placed on a windswept terrace, and visible for miles around, the Parthenon is not very large. Compared to the great Ionic Temple of Diana at Ephesus of a later date, or to the tremendous Corinthian remains at Baalbec and Palmyra, it might almost be called small; it would have become utterly dwarfed by the mighty Temple of Jupiter - Doric, like itself, but earlier—at Agrigentum. It is two hundred and twenty-eight feet long by one hundred broad outside; so large and boldly designed is the ambu- From bronze nails under the trilatory between the columns and the glyphs garlands hung on festal days; walls that even this moderate space is shields captured in battle were suscontracted to one hundred and forty-pended on the eastern front and perfive feet by sixty-three within. It is haps elsewhere; the groundwork or peripteral, that is to say, surrounded by a colonnade; eight columns (octastyle) across the end porticoes and seventeen down each side, with an inner range of columns at each end. Within stood a second statue, by Pheidias, of Minerva. It was of the material known as chryselephantine, that is to say, partly of ivory and partly of gold, and though not on the scale of the immense bronze figure outside, rose to the respectable stature of thirty-nine field of the tympana, behind the statuary, was blue. The wall behind the columns was not an expanse of bare marble, but painted with heroic figures of the deeds of gods and men; all around were statues of bronze, silver, and even gold, whilst the city at its feet and other temples added to the mass of color, the bright sun of southern Greece flooding the entire picture with light an extraordinary scene! Not its least remarkable feature must 66 have been the quick, eager, restless their often tasteless buildings "with crowd of Athenians themselves; the the maugled remains of Greek archicaptives, the traders of neighboring tecture." They employed Greeks to nations, the slaves; everywhere life build their temples and palaces, but and movement, everywhere the crit- the Greeks in that atmosphere of vulical, curious ways of a people always gar profusion degenerated rapidly. intent upon seeing or hearing some Perhaps the worst injury that Rome new thing." inflicted upon Greece was when she Close to the Parthenon on the north- produced Vitruvius. The harm done ern side of the rock stood the Erech-by this man was not confined to his theum, so called; more correctly styled own age; it has descended like a the Temple of Minerva Polias. The stream of poison through every subbuilding proper, or cella, is about sequent generation, and warped and ninety feet long, with an irregular transept at its western end, and three porticoes; one of these in place of columns had the famous Caryatides, or female figures. To see these, it is not necessary to go to Athens; they were reproduced by Mr. Inwood for the new church of St. Pancras in the Euston Road. The Erechtheum was more sacred than the Parthenon. In one of its three chambers grew the sacred olivetree; in another, sacred to Pandrosus, bubbled up a salt spring said to be the work of Neptune when he asserted his claim to the Athenian soil; here was an altar to Hercean Jove; but more sacred, more jealously guarded than all these, was the small statue of Minerva, made of olive wood, in its easternmost chamber. This was the figure to which the great Panathenaic procession wended its way, and over which the sacred veil or peplos was thrown at that solemn festival. Its artist was unknown. The name, perhaps, was concealed from motives of policy, to give greater importance to it; it was even said to have fallen from heaven. Under the Caryatid portico, three of whose six figures are intact, was the reputed burial-place of Cecrops, the original builder of the city. The intellectual influence of Athens long survived the loss of her independence; the Greeks conquered their conquerors; that stolidum genus, who appropriated the arts of the nations they subdued as coolly as they annexed their territory. In the process the arts suffered, and it has been bitterly but truly said of them that they adorned perverted the artistic judgment of mankind. It seems as if, unable themselves to continue the beautiful works of the brilliant people they had subdued, the Romans had resolved to render all such work for the future impossible. This, at any rate, has been the effect of Vitruvius's teaching. It is to him mainly that we owe the popular theory of "orders" of architecture; assumed systems of building which he attributes to the Greeks, but which they never heard of. At certain periods, we may admit, we find a fashion prevailing; columns are of a particular form; and the chief decorative features, such as the capitals, certain proportions, interspacings, and general principles, appear so often as almost to amount to a law. But when ancient examples are carefully looked into, the exceptions are found to be so numerous as to upset the rule. The plain facts of the case are that men like Callicrates and Ictinus would have scorned such a limitation of their powers as to build according to rule. The only law they recognized was the law of taste, and so far from regulating their temple by conventional rules, there is strong evidence to prove that they were at this very time meditating a step forward in art which involved a revolution. The Parthenon is considered the finest example of the Doric order; the internal columns, however, those inside the cella, are Ionic, and if designed a few years later it seems to be unquestionable that the whole building would have been of the light and graceful form which is covered by that name. Stuart and Revett, it may be mentioned, whose magnificent work on | order." In the Temple of Jupiter the "Antiquities of Athens," under- Olympius at Agrigentum the Doric coltaken for the Dilettanti Society," was umns have bases, and these, too, are the cause of the so-called Classical Re- moulded. vival in the last century, think that the interior had two ranges of columns, and consequently three aisles, of which the two outer ones were roofed, whilst the central nave was partly open to the sky. In the temple at Sunium the columns have each sixteen flutings; in those of the temple at Paestum there are twentyfour, and the list may be extended indefinitely. It is pleasant to think that so much of Athens has been spared to our own day. In its dry atmosphere the buildings mellow a little but do not decay. Speaking of the Theseum, Bishop Wordsworth says: rich mellow hue which, under the softening touch of time, the marble has assumed, the temple looks as if it had been formed by fairy hands, not from the bed of a rocky mountain, but from the golden light of an Athenian sunset. If even the severe and stately Parthenon be found on examination to exhibit such freedom of treatment, we need not be surprised if the Erechtheum, which is Ionic, should show it still more. When that style superseded We have now lodged near it - almost the sterner Doric, it seemed as if the beneath its shade-for more than two greatest of the arts had passed from months. Such is the integrity of its strucgrave to gay. The new building style ture, and the distinctness of its details, was said to be derived from Asiatic that it requires no description beyond that sources but what early art is not? which a few glances might supply . . . In Here, if anywhere, on the Acropolis of certain states of the atmosphere the loveliAthens, we should expect to find "theness of its coloring is such that, from the Greek orders" perfect to the minutest detail, but "the sculptured necking," says Wilkins, "of the columns of this temple has been observed in no other instance of the Ionic order." Here we see the influence of Vitruvius plainly at work; we might add that of Something of this outdoor life, this Palladio and Vignola as well, for all incessant movement, these brilliant three preceded Wilkins with lanterns, effects of atmosphere; something, too, which just gave enough light to lead of great porticoes and stately columns, him into the quagmire where we find of statues of bronze and marble under him. For if the theory of an "order" a brilliant sun, may be seen in the capbe worth anything at all, such details ital of a neighboring country. After must be fixed and universal-which all, was not Athens the Paris of the they certainly were not. Owing to its ancient world? peculiar shape the Erechtheum has three differing sets of columns; the spaces, or inter-columniations are different in each, to suit them to the three different levels which would slightly affect their appearance to the eye of a spectator. Three more instances of the freedom of Greek art may be allowed us. In the choragic monument of Lysicrates, one of the earliest examples of the Corinthian style, the flutings of the columns end in a sort of leaf, whilst the space below the commencement of the capital is filled with a circlet of simple but graceful foliage, "quite unlike the usual arrangements of this From Temple Bar. THEODORE DE BANVILLE. AMONG the early pioneers in the Romantic movement begun and carried on by Victor Hugo, with whom we may spend many a pleasant, idle hour, the first place must be given to Théodore de Banville, who, born in 1823, published his earliest volume of poems, "Les Cariatides," in 1841, and takes his place naturally as head of those whom we may call the Second Romantics. He comes from that central district of France called the Bour is in spirit and metre a vorite master, Ronsard, "De l'Election Sources, fraïches fontaines, bonnaise, and in the volume of "Sou- | Georges venirs" published a few years ago, he faithful echo of the verses of his fatells us with the facile grace so characteristic of all he writes in prose or poetry, something of his ancestors, and of his happy childhood passed in the midst of a smiling and fertile country. His great-grandfather le petit homme rouge, as he always calls him, full of amiable caprices, and of an originality altogether fantastic-had a property near Moulins, where he enjoyed life, shooting, fishing, and snaring birds, and entertaining anybody who came to see him with frank hospitality. We have amusing stories of how this ancestor pleased himself by assuming the costume of a brigand, stopping travellers on the road, and carrying them off by force to his house, where he threw off his disguise, and treated them so royally that they were loth to depart. The portrait also of his grandfather, and of the domestic happiness he enjoyed, is drawn with a tenderness of sentiment and delicacy of touch, that shows the picture must have impressed young Théodore very much to be reproduced so many years after with such love and care. Rien qu'à ma voix ! By this fountain Théodore often slept There too was that little service-tree which the little Zélie, his mother, had taken such affection for in her childish wanderings, that her father was determined to buy the property, solely to gratify her heart's desire. O sorbier centenaire, Dont trois coups de tonnerre Le front chenu! M. Huet began life as a judge at Paris, and was the author of several law-books which brought him considerable reputation, but chancing to go to Moulins, he met the lady with whom he was to spend the rest of his life. He at once gave up his career at Paris, After the death of M. Huet, his and bought a little place at Moulins, grandmother's only happiness during where the two passed long years in an the few years she survived him was in ideal life of mutual love and satisfac- having Théodore and his sister Zélie tion, knowing no desires beyond what as much with her as possible. To this each could satisfy. Later on he gained a name throughout the Bourbonnaise for defending prisoners, but he always refused to be drawn far from his home, where a little daughter-Zélie, the mother of our poet-had arrived to complete his happiness. For Zélie M. Huet bought the property FontGeorges, where later on her son Théodore passed some of the happiest hours of his life, and which he has immortalized so often in such charming poems. One of these the ode "A la Font sister Théodore wrote one of his ode- Te souvient-il de ce jardin sauvage Il était triste et rempli de mystères, |