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termined by a square pivot of olive wood. I have seen one of these pivots in the possession of M. Fauvel.

The roses, the plinths, the mouldings, the astragals, all the details of the edifice exhibit the same perfection. The lines of the capital, and the fluting of the columns of the Parthenon, are so sharp, that you would be tempted to suppose that the entire column had passed through a lathe. No turner's work in ivory can be more delicate than the Ionic ornaments of the temple of Erectheus: and the cariatides of the Pandroseum are perfect models. If, after viewing the edifices of Rome, those of France appeared coarse to me, now, since I have seen the monuments of Greece, the structures of Rome seem barbarous in their turn: not even excepting the Pantheon, with its disproportionate pediment. The comparison may be easily made at Athens, where the Grecian architecture is often placed quite close to the architecture of Rome.

I had fallen into a common error respecting the monuments of the Greeks: I had an idea that they were perfect as a whole, but deficient in grandeur. I have shewn that the genius of the architects has given in proportional grandeur to these monuments, what they may want in size; and Athens moreover is full of prodigious works. The Athenians, a people neither rich nor numerous, raised gigantic piles: the stones of the Pnyx. are absolutely masses of rock; the Propylaa were an immense

undertaking, and the marble slabs with which they were covered surpassed in dimensions any thing of the kind that was ever seen. The height of the columns of the Temple of Jupiter Olympus perhaps exceeds sixty feet, and the whole temple was half a mile in circumference; the walls of Athens, including those of the three harbours, extended over a space of near nine leagues;* the walls which connected the city with the Piræus were so broad, that two chariots might run abreast upon them, and were flanked with square towers at intervals of fifty paces. The Romans themselves never erected fortifications of greater magnitude.

By what fatality do these master-pieces of antiquity, which the moderns come so far and with such fatigue to admire, partly owe their destruction to the moderns? The Parthenon existed entire in 1687: the Christians first converted it into a church; and the Turks, from jealousy of the Christians, changed it in their turn into a mosque. Amidst the illumination of science that pervaded the seventeenth century, the Venetians came and cannonaded the monuments of the age of Pericles:

* Two hundred stadia, according to Dio Chrysostom. + Every body knows how the Coliseum at Rome was des troyed, and also the Latin pun on the subject of Barberini and Barbarians. Some historians suspect the Knights of Rhodes of having demolished the celebrated tomb of Mausolus; it was, to be sure, for the defence of Rhodes, and to fortify the island against the Turks; but if this be an excuse for the knights, the destruction of that wonder of the world is not the less une fortunate for us.

they fired red hot balls on the Propylæa and the temple of Minerva: a ball fell upon the latter, penetrated the roof, set fire to some barrels of gunpowder, and blew up part of an edifice which did less honor to the false gods of Greece than to human genius.* The town being taken, Morosini, with a view to embellish Venice with the spoils of Athens, attempted to remove the statues from the pediment of the Parthenon, and broke them to pieces. Another modern came, out of love to the arts, to accomplish the work of destruction which the Venetians had begun.†

In this work I have had occasion to make frequent mention of the name of Lord Elgin. To him we are indebted, as I have observed, for a perfect knowledge of the Pnyx, and the tomb of Agamemnon: he still keeps an Italian in Greece, who is engaged in prosecuting his researches, and

*The invention of fire-arms is a fatal circumstance for the arts. Had the barbarians been acquainted with gunpowder, not a Grecian or Roman edifice would have been left standing; they would have blown u up the very Pyramids had it been only to seek for hidden treasures. One year of war among us destroys more buildings than an age of fighting did among the ancients. Thus it would seem, that among the moderns every thing opposes the perfection of the art; their climate, their manners, their customs, their dress, and even their very discoveries.

+ They mounted their battery, composed of six pieces of cannon and four mortars, on the Pnyx. It is scarcely conceivable how it happened that at so short a distance they could avoid destroying all the edifices of the citadel. See Fanelli's Ateno. Attica, and the Introduction to this work.

who, when I was at Athens, had just discovered some antiques which I did not see. But Lord Elgin has counterbalanced the merit of his laudable efforts by ravaging the Parthenon. He was desirous of removing the basso relievos of the frieze. The Turkish workmen employed in the execution of this design first broke the architrave, and threw down the capitals; and then, instead of taking out the metopes by the grooves, the barbarians thought it the shortest way to break the cornice. The temple of Erectheus has been robbed of the corner column, so that it is now found necessary to support with a pile of stones the whole entablature, which is nodding to its fall.

The English, who have been at Athens since the visit of Lord Elgin, have themselves deplored these fatal effects of an inconsiderate love of the arts. We are told that Lord Elgin has asserted, in excuse of himself, that he had merely followed our example. The French, it is true, have stripped Italy of its statues and pictures; but they have mutilated no temples for the sake of the basso relievos: they have only imitated the Romans who

* They were discovered in a sepulchre; I believe that of a child. Among other curiosities found on this occasion was an unknown game, the principal piece of which, if I remember rightly, was a ball of polished steel. I rather think there is some allusion to this game in Athenæus. The war between France and England prevented M. Fauvel from applying in my behalf to Lord Elgin's agent, so that I had not an opportunity of seeing the antique toys which consoled an Athenian boy in his tomb.

plundered Greece of her master-pieces of painting and sculpture. The monuments of Athens, torn from the places to which they were adapted, will not only lose part of their relative beauty, but their intrinsic beauty will be materially diminished. It is nothing but the light that sets off the delicacy. of certain lines and certain colours: consequently, as this light is not to be found beneath an English sky, these lines and these colours will disappear or become invisible. For the rest, I will acknowledge. that the interest of France, the glory of our country, and a thousand other reasons might call for the removal of the monuments conquered by our arms; but the fine arts themselves, as belonging to the side of the vanquished and the number of the captives, have perhaps a just right to deplore their transplantation.

We passed the whole morning in the examination of the citadel. The Turks had formerly stuck the minaret of a mosque to the portico of the Parthenon. We ascended by the half-destroyed staircase of this minaret; we seated ourselves on a broken part of the frieze of the temple, and looked around us. We had Mount Hymettus on the east; the Pentelicus on the north; the Parnes on the north-west; the Mounts Icarus, Cordyalus, or Ægalæa on the west, and beyond the former was perceived the summit of the Citharon; and to the south-west and south appeared the sea, the Piræus, the coasts of Salamis, Ægina, Epidaurus, and the citadel of Corinth,