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corner of the room attracted my attention, and casting my eyes in that direction, I perceived a knot of sophists wrangling fiercely about some new refutation of the well-known syllogistic puzzle-Epimenides said all Cretans were liars ;-but Epimenides was himself a Cretan-therefore Epimenides was a liar-therefore the Cretans were not liars-therefore Epimenides was not a liar. Not one of them cast a glance at the surpassing marbles, or the distinguished living characters by whom they were surrounded, and I soon found that all the realities of existence were hidden from their eyes by a dense cloud of pedantry. To them the glories of nature and art were absolutely extinct; they lived in an atmosphere of quibbles; and while, in their perpetual and childish warfare, they were chopping at each other's heads with logic, and pelting one another with words, they would have been simply contemptible and ridiculous, had they not at the same time endeavoured, with a pestilent subtlety, to jumble right and wrong, virtue and vice, and thus confound all the elements of the moral world in one indistinguishable chaos.

What a volume of wit sparkles in the countenance of that young man, who is listening to their jargon with a sneering smile. Jibes and jeers, jokes, ridicule and burlesque, seem to be flickering in every corner of his mouth: angry sarcasm, and indignant rebuke, glimmer through the flashes of his eyes, tempered only by those gentler emanations from the muse within, which would have made him the brightest poet of his age, had not the follies and vices of Athens compelled him

to become its severest comic satirist. I learnt from my communicative statue, that this was Aristophanes, watching both Socrates and the sophists, that he might burlesque them in his comedy of the Clouds; and that his two companions were Eupolis and Cratinus, the comic poets; who, in their calumnious wantonness, scrupled not to affirm that Phidias received female visitors in his house, under pretext of exhibiting his sculptures, but with the real intention of affording a cover for intrigues, and acting as a pander to Pericles.-Pyrilampes was also pointed out to me; who, because he had a collection of curious birds, particularly peacocks, was reported, upon the same scandalous authority, to purchase them merely that they might be bestowed as presents upon those women who granted their favours to Pericles.

And who is that handsome youth, said I, whose splendid armour, sparkling with steel and gold, is fashioned with such exquisite taste, and so happily adapted to display the symmetry of his fine figure ?-"That is Alcibiades,” was the reply: "he has visited the Palæstra this morning, merely as an excuse for appearing here in all the graces of his military costume; but the perfumes with which he is scented, and the affected lisp, which affords him an excuse for disclosing his white teeth, show that he has been contemplating other conquests than those which are to be achieved by arms. And yet in war no one more dauntless and hardy, as he fully proved at the battle of Delium, where he saved the life of Socrates, as Socrates had saved his at the fight of Potidæa.

At some distance from this Athenian Exquisite stood Critias, and a party of rival sculptors and statuaries, endeavouring not to see the most obvious merits in the works before them, and shrugging up their shoulders at the infatuation of Pericles, in patronising an artist guilty of such gross blunders as they had already detected. In fact, they had discovered that -the wheel of Minerva's car wanted a linch-pin, while there were no marks for nails in one of the horse's shoes!

Three figures now approached me, whom I found to be Agatharchus, Parrhasius, and Zeuxis, the painters, the former of whom was vaunting the celerity and ease with which he finished his pieces. "If I boast," replied Zeuxis, "it shall be of the slowness with which I finish mine." Discovering from their conversation that they were all employed in decorating the walls of the Parthenon, I could not help reflecting ́upon the nobler destiny of the sculptor, whose immortal productions can be sent down unimpaired to the lowest posterity; while the most exquisite painters cannot hope to leave any evidence of their skill after the lapse of a very few centuries, and must content themselves, like the artists before me, with the shadowy perpetuation of a name.

Seated upon a stool, in front of the principal group, I observed two venerable-looking men, each resting his chin upon a staff, while his hands were concealed by an ample beard. These were Sophocles and Euripides, the tragic writers, who agreed in pronouncing the composition before them defective, because it did

not contain the fates or the furies, whose presence they had been accustomed to consider indispensable in their own productions." Look attentively," said my marble communicant, "at that broad-shouldered figure, in the philosopher's robes, conversing with two young men. It is Plato; and his companions are Xenophon and Thucydides, the historians; names which require no illustration, as they are assuredly destined to immortality."

Apart from the rest of the visitants, I distinguished a man of peculiarly sly expression, surveying the whole scene from the corners of his eyes, yet apparently wishing to assume an appearance of unconcern and indifference. This I found to be Damon, the deepest politician of Athens, the bosom-friend and counsellor of Pericles; who, in order to avoid the jealousy of the turbulent democracy, concealed his interference in state affairs, under the cloak of a professor of music. In this capacity, he had procured the Odeum to be built; where prizes were annually distributed to the best musical performers. He was conversing with Ictinus and Callicrates, the builders of the Parthenon, the latter of whom had just declared that it had already cost a thousand talents, and that he hoped the gold mines of Lauzium would hold out until it was completed-when a dislocation occurred in my ideas, which, without dissipating my reverie altogether, transferred it to modern times, and to the mutilated Theseus of the British Museum. As I gazed with intense admiration upon its back-that back, the sight of

which Canova declared to be well worth a journey from Rome-I could not help exclaiming, “With what delight must the ancients, with their exquisite relish for sculpture, have pored upon this chef-d'œuvre of Phidias!"

"Alas!” replied the figure, "you forget that, although now the noblest fragment left, I then occupied, as a deified hero, but a very subordinate station among the deities of his majestic group. My recumbent posture was destined to fill up the angle of one pediment, as the Ilissus did of the other; and there was nothing but the celebrated horse's head between my figure and the extremity of the building. This back, over which sculptors and anatomists now hang enraptured, might as well have been an unchiselled block; it was turned to the wall of the building, never meant to be seen; and, in fact, no human eyes rested upon it for more than twenty-two centuries, when violence tore it from its position, and exhibited it to the applauses of the world. It was thus elaborately wrought, because it would have been held sacrilege to dedicate any thing imperfect to the gods; and because, in the exuberant opulence of his art, Phidias could afford to be extravagant, and throw away a masterpiece upon a blind wall. Judge hence of the superior majesty, of the more celestial grace and sublimity, by which the central figures were made glorious to the eyes; but judge not, even from them, of the pinnacle to which Phidias could exalt his art. All these were fashioned for exposure to the injuries of the weather,

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