Alone and friendless on the magic shore,
Whose arts and arms but live in poet's lore;
Oft as the matchless dome I turn'd to scan,
Sacred to Gods, but not secure from man,
The past return'd, the present seem'd to cease,
And Glory knew no clime beyond her Greece.

Hours roll'd along, and Dian's orb on high
Had gain'd the centre of her softest sky,
And yet unwearied still my footsteps trod
O'er the vain shrine of many a vanish'd god:
But chiefly, Pallas! thine; when Hecate's glare
Check'd by the columns, fell more sadly fair
O'er the chill marble, where the startling tread
Thrills the lone heart, like echoes from the dead.

Long had I mused and treasured every trace
The wreck of Greece recorded of her race,
When lo!-a giant-form before me strode,
And Pallas hail'd me in her own abode.

Yes-'twas Minerva's self-but ah! how changed
Since o'er the Dardan field in arms she ranged!
Not such as erst by her divine command,
Her form appear'd from Phidias' plastic hand.
Gone were the terrors of her awful brow,
Her idle ægis bore no Gorgon now;
Her helm was deep indented, and her lance
Seem'd weak and shaftless e'en to mortal glance:
The olive branch, which still she deign'd to clasp,
Shrunk from her hand and withered in her grasp.

And ab! though still the brightest of the sky,
Celestial tears bedew'd her large blue eye;
Round her rent casque her owlet circled slow;
And mourn'd his mistress with a shriek of wo.

"Mortal!" ('twas thus she spoke)" that blush of shame Proclaims thee Briton-once a noble name

First of the mighty, foremost of the free,
Now honour'd less by all, but least by me;
Chief of thy foes shall Pallas still be found:
Seek'st thou the cause? Oh, Mortal! look around,
Lo! here, despite of war and wasting fire,
I saw successive tyrannies expire;

'Scaped from the ravage of the Turk and Goth,
Thy country sends a spoiler worse than both.
Survey this vacant violated fane,

Recount the relics torn that yet remain;

These Cecrops placed-this Pericles adorn'd—
That Hadrian rear'd when drooping Science mourn'd.
What more I owe, let gratitude attest.

Know, Alaric and Elgin did the rest

That all may learn from whence the plunderer came
Th' insulted wall sustains his hated name,*
For Elgin's fame thus grateful Pallas pleads;
Below, his name; above, behold his deeds.
Be ever hail'd with equal honour here,
The Gothic monarch, and the British peer.
Arms gave the first his right, the last had none,
But basely stole what less barbarians won:
So, when the lion quits his fell repast,
Next prowls the wolf, the filthy jackal last;

*It is related by a late oriental traveller that when the wholesale spoliator visited Athens, he caused his own name, with that of his wife, to be inscribed on a pillar of one of the principal temples: this inscription was executed in a very conspicuous manner, and deeply engraved in the marble, at a very considerable elevation. Notwithstanding which precautions, some person (doubtless inspired by the patron-goddess) has been at the pains to get himself raised up to the requisite height, and has obliterated the name of the laird, but left that of the lady untouched. The traveller in question accompanied this story by a remark, that it must have cost some labour and contrivance to get at the place, and could only have been effected by much zeal and determination.

Flesh, limbs, and blood, the former make their own,
The last base brute securely knaws the bone.
Yet still the Gods are just, and crimes are crost:
See here, what Elgin won, and what he lost.
Another name with his pollutes my shrine:
Behold, where Dian's beams disdain to shine-
Some retribution still might Pallas claim,
When Venus half-aveng'd Minerva's shame."*

She ceased awhile, and thus I dared reply,
To sooth the vengeance kindling in her eye:-
Daughter of Jove! in Britain's injured name,
A true-born Briton may the deed disclaim.
Frown not on England-England owns him not:-
Athena! no-the plunderer was a Scot.f
Ask'st thou the difference? from fair Phile's towers
Survey Boeotia:--Caledonia's ours-

"And well I know within that murky land
Hath Wisdom's goddess never held command;
A barren soil, where nature's germs confin'd
To stern sterility can stint the mind;

Where thistle well betrays the niggard earth,
Emblem of all to whom the land gives birth;
Each genial influence nurtured to resist
A land of liars, moutebanks and mist,

Each breeze from foggy mount and marshy plain
Dilutes with drivel every drizzly brain,
Till burst at length, each wat'ry head o'erflows,
Foul as their soil and frigid as their snows;

*The portrait of sir Wm. D' Avenant illustrates this line.

The plaster wall on the west side of the temple of Minerva-polias bears the following inscription, cut in very deep characters:

"Quod non fecerunt Goli,

Hoc fecerunt Scoti."

Hobhouse's Travels in Greece, &c. p. 345.

Ten thousand schemes of petulance and pride
Despatch her reckoning children far and wide:
Some east, some west, some-every where but north
In quest of lawless gain, they issue forth—
And thus accursed be the day and year
She sent a Pict to play the felon here,
Yet Caledonia claims some native worth,-
And dull Boutia gave a Pindar birth.
So may her few, the letter'd and the brave,
Bound to no clime, and victors o'er the grave,
Shake off the mossy slime of such a land,
And shine like children of a happier strand.
As once of yore in some obnoxious place,
Ten names (if found) had saved a wretched race."

"Mortal! (the blue-eyed maid resumed once more}
Bear back my mandate to thy native shore;
To turn my counsels far from lands like thine,
Though fallen, alas! this vengeance yet is mine:
Hear, then, in silence, Pallas' stern behest,
Hear and believe, for time will tell the rest:
First on the head of him who did the deed
My curse shall light, on him and all his seed;
Without one spark of intellectual fire,

Be all his sons as senseless as their sire:
If one with wit the parent breed disgrace,
Believe him bastard of a better race:

Still with his hireling artists let him prate,
And Folly's praise repay for Wisdom's hate.*

"Nor will this conduct [the sacrilegious plunder of ancient edifices] appear wonderful in men, either by birth, or by habits and grovelling passions, barbarians, (i.e. Goths) when in our own times, and almost before our own eyes, persons of rank and education have not hesitated to disfigure the most ancient and the most venerable monuments of Grecian architec ture; to tear the works of Phidias and Praxiteles from their original position, and demolish fabrics, which time, war, and barbarism, had respected during twenty centuries. The French, whose rapacity the voice of

Long of their patron's gusto let them tell,
Whose noblest native gusto-is to sell:

To sell, and make (may shame record the day)
The state receiver of his pilfer'd prey!

Meantime, the flattering feeble dotard West,
Europe's worst dauber, and poor Britian's best,
With palsied hand shall turn each model o'er,
And own himself an infant of four score*_
Be all the bruisers call'd from all St. Giles,
That Art and Nature may compare their styles:

Europe has so loudly and so justly censured, did not incur the guilt of dismantling ancient edifices: they spared the walls, and contented themselves with statues and paintings, and even these they have collected and arranged in halls and galleries for the inspection of travellers of all nations; while, if report does not deceive us, our plunderers have ransacked the temples of Greece to sell their booty to the highest bidder, or, at best, to piece the walls of some obscure old mansion with fragments of Parian marble and of attic sculpture." (Eustace's Classical Tour through Italy, p. 158.) "But alas! all the monuments of Roman magnificence, all the remains of Grecian taste, so dear to the artist, the historian, the antiquary; all depend on the will of an arbitrary sovereign, and that will is influenced too often by interest or vanity, by a nephew, or a sycophant. Is a new palace to be erected (at Rome) for an upstart family? the Coliseum is stripped to furnish materials. Does a foreign minister wish to adorn the bleak walls of a northern castle with antiques? the temples of Theseus or Minerva must be dismantled, and the works of Phidias or Praxiteles be torn from the shattered frieze -That a decrepid uncle, wrapt up in the religious duties of his age and station should listen to the suggestions of an interested nephew, is natural; and that an oriental despot should undervalue the master-pieces of Grecian art, is to be expected; though in both cases the consequences of such weakness are much to be lamented; but that the minister of a nation, famed for its knowledge of the language, and its veneration for the monuments of ancient Greece, should have been the prompter and the instrument of these destructions, is almost incredible. Such rapacity is a crime against all ages and all generations: it deprives the past of the trophies of their genius and the title deeds of their fame; the present of the strongest inducements to exertion, the noblest exhibitions that curiosity can contemplate; the future, of the master-pieces of art, the models of imitation. To guard against the repetition of such depredations is the wish of every man of genius, the duty of every man in power, and the common interest of every civilized nation." (Ibid. p. 269.) ***This attempt to transplant the temple of Vesta from Italy to England may, perhaps, do honour to the late lord Bristol's patriotism, or to his magnificence; but it cannot be considered as an indication of either taste or judgment." (Ibid. p. 419.)

Mr. West on seeing the " Elgin collection" (I suppose we shall hear of the Aber-show and Jack Shephard's collection) declared bimself a mere "Tyro in art."

VOL. VI.-P