some of their most ancient works of defence, and which it has been customary to denominate Cyclopian, but without much propriety. (P. vii.) In the sixth century before Christ Athens attained a high degree of splendor and civilisation under the ambitious, but humane, enlightened and patriotic Pisistratus, who, and his sons, fixed the muses there by establishing a public library and editing the works of Homer. Our author is not very willing to believe that, as Herodotus (ix. 13.) relates, all the streets and public buildings of Athens had been completely ruined by the Persians, and subsequently renewed from their foundations. It appears according to Pausanias, that there still remained at Athens, at a late period, several monuments of an age anterior to the Persian war.' (P. xii.) The barbarians probably directed their vengeance against the works of defence, and some of the most important public edifices. We may believe that they so completely destroyed the great Temple of Minerva, that Themistocles did not scruple to use its ruins in repairing the Acropolis; but of the Odeium, the Erectheium, Lenæum, Anaceium, the Temples of Venus, Vulcan and Apollo Pythius, the destruction was confined to the roofs and combustible parts only; so that they were probably left, together with a great number of the smaller fanes and heroa, in such a state that it was not difficult to restore them. The new buildings which rose at Athens in the half century of her highest renown and riches, may be divided into those erected under the administrations of Themistocles, of Cimon, and of Pericles.' (P. xii.) Among these were the Temple of Theseus, the Pocile, the Dionysiac theatre, the Stoæ, Gymnasia, and others. Pericles completed the military works which Themistocles had conceived and Cimon partly executed; but we must regard as his chief work the entire construction, from their foundations, of those magnificent buildings, the mystic Temple of Eleusis, the Parthenon, and the Propylæa; in all which we are at a loss whether most to admire the rapidity or the perfection of the execution.' (P. xiv.) In the first century before Christ the military importance of Athens expired with the destruction of the Peiraic fortifications by Sylla; and within the next century her navy was almost extinct, and the maritime city was reduced to a cluster of habitations round each of the ports.

'But the respect which the arms or the political influence of Athens could no longer command, was still paid to the recollection of her former glory to her having been from the æra of the battle of Marathon almost the sole depository of the science and literature of Greece, and to her still continuing to be the school in which were found the most

skilful artists, and the best productions in architecture, sculpture and painting.' (P. xxii.)

The Romans (even in some degree Sylla himself) treated Athens with filial respect and indulgence; Julius Cæsar, Antony, Augustus, Germanicus, and others protected, favored or embellished the city-but Hadrian is conspicuous among her illustrious benefactors. Athens was most splendid in the age of the Antonines, when she exhibited the accumulated magnificence of eight or ten centuries, and whilst the Pericleian monuments were still unimpaired. Plutarch describes the works of Ictinus, Mnesicles, and Phidias, which had been already exposed to the attacks of six hundred winters, as still possessing all their original freshness. Not many years after Plutarch Greece was explored by another writer, to whom we chiefly owe our knowledge of its ancient topography, and of the treasures which it contained in various productions of the arts of design. The classical reader will anticipate our allusion to Pausanias; concerning whose age, travels and compositions, Col. Leake offers many curious and interesting observations, and an estimate of his excellencies and defects compared with those of Strabo. It appears (from p. xxxviii.) that Greece Proper did not suffer so much from Roman spoliation as either Sicily or Asiatic Greece. Impressed with veneration for a common religion, the Romans respected Athens as almost sacred; they regarded her as the mother of learning and the arts; and as they advanced in Grecian civilisation an opinion prevailed among the opulent at Rome that their education was incomplete without the study of Greek literature, and a residence at Athens.' (P. xliii.) The only Roman emperors who took from Greece the productions of art, are Caligula and Nero; but Pliny informs us that there still remained at Athens, after Nero's spoliation, three thousand statues: few were probably taken from that city; for superstition rendered him afraid to visit a place reputed the abode of those Furies, whose vengeance he dreaded on account of the same crime for which they had tormented Orestes. In overthrowing Pagan temples and destroying statues, the early Christians appear to have almost confined their excesses within the Asiatic provinces; Athens was particularly favored by the Byzantine emperorsConstantine gloried in being appointed σrparnyos of that city; the schools of philosophy and literature were protected-the Church of Athens, though said to have been founded by St. Paul, was still one of the most obscure in Greece; but little opposition was made to Polytheism in its strong hold; from the spirit of tolerance inherent in the Athenian religion,

which gave a hospitable reception to the deities of all nations (even to those whose names were unknown), the Christians of Athens were exempted from those persecutions under which the church was generally found to florish; and they had no provocation to acts of violence when the Christian religion at length obtained the ascendancy. Their priests took quiet possession of the magnificent temples of the Athenian mythology; and every thing ensured as well to the ancient religion as to the philosophy of Athens, a tranquil and gradual downfal. Nor probably was there in any part of Greece that violent hostility of the Christians against the emblems of Paganism which, whether caused by bigotry or the love of plunder, distinguished the Christians in some parts of Asia.' (P. iv.) Although Athens was twice taken by the Goths, its buildings and works of art appear to have suffered but little injury from those barbarians, and at the close of the fourth century the emblems of Paganism still remained there unmolested.

'It was probably about the year 420 of the Christian æra, in the reign of the younger Theodosius, that the truth of the Christian religion, aided by imperial edicts and example, effected the complete abolition of Paganism at Athens, and in the surrounding parts of Greece. The Parthenon and the Temple of Theseus having been protected from the injuries of time by their solidity and excellent construction, and having escaped all the effects of barbarous fanaticism, were at length, with all their external decorations still uninjured, converted into Christian churches. The slow and gradual conversion of the Greeks had the natural effect of blending the rites of the two religions, and of introducing many of the ancient ceremonies and customs of Paganism into the church; and we are not surprised to find that the Christians chose for the converted temple the saint most resembling the Pagan deity to whom it had before been sacred. Thus the Parthenon, which had derived its name from the virginity of Minerva, became sacred to the Panhagia, or Virgin mother of Christ; and the warrior St. George supplied the place of the hero Theseus in the Theseium.' (P. Ixiv.)

Our author does not think that the Iconoclasts directed much of their fury against the ancient statues-their dispute was wholly a Christian quarrel-the Church was no longer jealous of the Pagan superstition, but the Iconoclasts destroyed the images of Christ and the saints; and pictures rather than statues.

But we must hasten to the final degradation of Athens, which in June, 1456, became subject to the Turks, and three years after was visited by the Sultan Mehmet:

'Obliged at last to bend her neck to the yoke of the Oriental barba→ rians, who for more than nineteen centuries had been kept at a distance

by the effects of Grecian superiority in all that makes a nation powerful, Athens has ever since considered herself fortunate in receiving the orders and protection of the Sultan, through the mediation of a black eunuch slave, the guardian of the tyrant's women. This envied privilege was granted by Mehmet himself; who, having expressed the highest admiration at the beauty of the situation, the magnificence of the ancient buildings, the strength of the citadel, and the convenience of the harbors, thought the whole district not unworthy of becoming an appanage of his harem.' (P. lxxxi.)

Athens seems to have emerged from the dark ages nearly in its present state with a population of eight or ten thousand, soon after piracy, the natural curse of the Levant seas, had resumed its reign, and had reduced the maritime commerce of Athens to its state in the heroic ages.' (P. lxxxiv.) Such was the obscurity which hung over Athens two hundred and fifty years ago, though Greek literature had already been cultivated in several parts of Europe with success, that its existence as an inhabited place was hardly known, nor was it suspected that any monuments still bore witness to its ancient magnificence. But in 1464 the Venetians surprised and plundered the city; the tranquillity of which was again interrupted by the same nation two centuries after. In 1687 Francisco Morosini, afterwards Doge, besieged it with 8000 infantry, and 870 horse; a battery of cannon was erected on the hill of the Pnyx; mortars were placed at the eastern foot of the Acropolis:-the fire was principally directed against the Propylæa; and to the explosion of a Turkish magazine

we may probably attribute the destruction of a beautiful little temple of Victory without wings, the frieze of which is now in the British Museum; for nothing but a few fragments of the temple have been found by any traveller who has visited Athens since the siege; and we know from Spon and Wheler that, a few years before the siege, it was complete, and used as a powder magazine.' (P. lxxxvii.)

The Parthenon, also, where the Turks had collected much combustible ammunition, suffered from a shell, which caused such an explosion as reduced to ruins all the middle of the Temple, and precipitated to the ground all the statues of the eastern pediment. The Pasha was soon after killed, and the Turks capitulated. Morosini himself began to remove the statues from the Parthenon: but in lowering the Car of Victory, with its horses of the natural size, and of the most admirable workmanship, which he wished to display at Venice as a monument of his conquest, the engineers by some mismanagement let it fall to the ground, where it was,

according to the testimony of an eye witness, broken to pieces. The destruction of those horses was so complete, that no remains of

them have been discovered among the other fragments found at the foot of the western pediment, and conveyed to England by Lord Elgin.' (P. xciv.)

The Venetians after a short time resolved to abandon their conquest; they evacuated the Acropolis, and the Turks again became masters of Athens.

Until the middle of the seventeenth century, Europe possessed but little accurate information concerning the city of Minerva-our limits will not allow us to notice all the accounts of Athens which Col. Leake enumerates. Dr. Spon, a learned antiquary of Lyons, published in 1674 the description of that place, which he had received from Père Babin, a Jesuit. In the same year, a young artist named Carrey was left at Athens by the Marquis de Nointel, and employed for six weeks in delineating the pediments and metopes of the Parthenon, some buildings, ancient friezes and other objects, His drawings are now in the National Library at Paris, and copies have been presented to the British Museum. The Earl of Winchelsea and Mr. Vernon visited Athens in 1675; when, also, was published, Guillet's work, describing the pretended travels of his brother, La Guilletière; which our author regards as a mere romance, constructed with ingenuity and some degree of learning, on information acquired by Guillet from the missionaries and the printed account of Père Babin. In 1676, Sir George Wheler and Dr. Spon examined the antiquities of Athens; which, for an interval of ninety years, appear to have excited but little interest. At length,

An English artist studying at Rome, perceived that he was not yet at the fountain-head of true taste in architecture, and determined to proceed to Athens with a view of making such a stay there as would enable him to bring away drawings of all the principal remains of antiquity. Stuart having engaged Revett, another architect, to join him, they proceeded to Athens in the year 1751, where they remained during the greater part of three years. The first part of the result of their labors was published in 1761; soon after which a further knowlege of Greece and of its remains of antiquity, was obtained by a private society in London, which has done more for the improvement of the arts by researches into the existing remains of the ancients than any government in Europe.' (P. civ.)

By the Dilettanti Society (in 1764) Mr. Revett, Mr. Pars and Dr. Chandler were engaged to travel in Greece. But since their time many alterations have occurred in Athens; the city has been surrounded with a wall, in erecting which two ancient columns were demolished, and an inscribed architrave removedthe Temple of Triptolemus, which Chandler saw, has been almost completely destroyed--other remnants have disappeared, some VOL. XXVII. Cl. Jl. NO. LIV.

U