Morosini

the admiring but unskilful connoisseur. wished to carry off the chariot and horses of Athena as a trophy; but his attempt to lower them from their place only resulted in a fall which shattered them to pieces.

From this time on the work of destruction was slow but sure. The fanatical or wanton destruction of the Turks and the indifference or powerlessness of the

Greeks combined with the acquisitive curiosity of Frank travellers to deface or carry away such of the sculptures as were accessible. But a new era began with the visit of Stuart and Revett to Athens in 1751; for their careful drawings of the monuments of Athens, and especially of the Parthenon, may be said to have laid the foundation of a systematic and scientific study in addition to attracting the attention of educated men in the West to the architecture and sculpture that Athens

still had to show. A not unnatural consequence was the notion of transferring bodily some portion of these treasures to a place where they would meet with better protection and appreciation. The Marquis de ChoiseulGouffier, a worthy successor of de Nointel as French ambassador to the Porte, took up this scheme; and at his direction, Fauvel, the French consul at Athens, actually had some pieces of sculpture removed from the building. But it was reserved for Lord Elgin to carry out the scheme. When he was appointed ambassador to the Porte in 1799, his attention was called to the imminent danger of destruction under which the Athenian sculptures lay; and he accordingly despatched the Italian artist, Lusieri, with a staff of assistants, to draw and make casts. In 1801 the defeat of the French in Egypt left England paramount in the Levant, and Lord Elgin took advantage of the opportunity to obtain a firman authorising him to pull down extant buildings where necessary, and to remove sculpture from them. The first result of this was the demolition of the Turkish houses which we see in Stuart's drawing1 surrounding the Parthenon, and the discovery in their foundation of many fragments of the pediments and of other sculptures; but the permission was also interpreted to allow the removal of sculpture from the Parthenon itself, and, as a consequence, a great part of the sculpture which was still left on the building came to be carried off to England. The abuse that 1 See p. 261.

was showered on Lord Elgin for this proceeding by Byron and others, mainly on sentimental grounds, will not bear the test of sober criticism. The only shadow of justification that can be found for it lies in the fact that Lusieri's workmen, though they did no damage to the sculpture, were not so careful of the building as they might have been; in particular, they threw down some blocks of cornice to get out the southwestern metopes. But they left on the building such sculpture as appeared to be adequately protected from the weather or other damage; and a comparison of the casts they took at the time with the present condition of the sculptures left behind shows that they erred, if at all, in taking away too little and not too much. After many delays and difficulties the Elgin Marbles were brought to England,' and finally acquired by the British Government to be deposited in the British Museum, in 1816.

A study of the Parthenon must take into account the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum, and scattered fragments of its sculpture in the Louvre, Copenhagen, and elsewhere, as well as the building itself on the Acropolis, and such portions of its decoration as are preserved in the Acropolis Museum. With the help

1 One of the ships chartered by Lord Elgin was wrecked off Cerigo, but its whole cargo was recovered at great expense. Of course the ship laden with sculpture, discovered by divers off Cerigo in 1901, has nothing to do with this. It was a Roman ship with a cargo of miscellaneous bronze and marble statues. The proposed identification, which unfortunately gained some currency, could not have been thought possible by any one acquainted with the facts.