national library, more than any others, are intended to be read. I shall perhaps take another opportunity of describing the zoological and ornithological treasures of London, and at present consider the British Museum merely as the sanctuary in which the last mutilated gods of Greece have found an asylum, or, as some will have it, a prison; for the author of Childe Harold is not the only one who has attacked Lord Elgin on this subject. I must confess that when I first beheld, under the gloomy sky of Great Britain, those spoils of unhappy Greece, and among others the Caryatis of the Pandroseum, I could very willingly have repeated the imprecations which Lord Byron puts into the mouth of Minerva. I recollected the grief of the Disdar of Athens when he saw the clumsy workmen of the Scottish lord break one of the metopes of the Parthenon: he took his pipe from his mouth, dropped a tear, and cast a supplicating look on il Signor Lusieri.

The grief of Athens on being deprived of her treasures, even extended, if we may believe the poets, to the lifeless marble. The little temple of the Pandrosium was still in good preservation, and as the story goes, the five sisters of the Caryatis, now held captives in the British Museum, shed tears, and uttered a cry of lamentation in the middle of the night.

But, without having recourse to Lord Elgin's defence, is it not natural, at sight of these ruins, to consider the question under another point of view? Regarding these fragments as the only existing

testimonies of the glory of Phidias, can it be denied that Lord Elgin has the merit of having saved them from utter destruction? How could the Greeks, like Micah, claim the idols of their forefathers, when they had ceased to defend them against barbarians? Let the poet and the lover of art heap all their imprecations on the heads of Omar's descendants, who, like the incendiary by whom the treasures of Alexandria were destroyed, find no text in the Koran in favour of the productions of genius.

It is impossible to be otherwise than deeply affected in the presence of these marbles, which, outliving the gods whose attributes they were, are still, after the mutilations of fifteen centuries, the objects of enthusiastic admiration to every artist and friend of the Muses. Grecian sculpture arose under the chisel of Phidias, and grew to a perfection which his successors have despaired of attaining. Rome celebrated her triumphs and adorned her temples with the statues of Greece. The mistress of the world may have possessed a Homer in her Virgil, a Herodotus in her Livy, a Pindar in her Horace, a Menander in her Terence, and a Demosthenes in her Cicero, but she could never boast a Phidias: and since modern Italy gave birth to Christian sculptors, from Michel Angelo up to the great Canova, Phidias has always been the master.

The sculptures of the British Museum, in their present state, are intelligible only to the eyes of the sculptor and the painter. The mass of ob

servers view them only as shapeless fragments of stone, while the imagination of the artist fills up the parts which time has destroyed. When the question of voting a sum of money for the purchase of the Elgin gallery was discussed in Parliament, the opinions of eminent artists respecting these spoils of the temple of Minerva were collected together. It is curious to compare the manner in which each expresses his admiration.

Mr. West, then president of the Royal Academy, declared, that if he had seen those emanations of genius in his youth, the feeling he entertained of their perfection would have animated all his labours, and would have led him to infuse more character, expression, and life into his historical compositions.

The present president, Sir Thomas Laurence, expressed his opinion that the statues brought to England by Lord Elgin were superior to the Apollo, because he conceived that they unite beauty of composition and grandeur of form with a more perfect and correct imitation of Nature than is to be found in the Apollo. He particularly admired, in the Elgin marbles, the correct representation of that harmonious variety produced in the human form by the alternate repose and motion of the muscles.

Canova declared that Lord Elgin deserved to have altars raised to him as the saviour of the arts, and considered himself fortunate in having visited London, were it only for the opportunity of seeing those master-pieces.

In the opinion of Mr. Nollekins, the Theseus is only equal to the Apollo. Flaxman and Chantry were not quite so decided as to the object of their preference; while Westmacott and Rossi declared they knew of nothing superior to these admirable fragments.

This united expression of admiration and applause was interrupted only by the discordant voice of an amateur, like the harsh cry of a gosling disturbing the melody of the swans.

Mr. Payne Knight regarded these statues merely as copies executed by students in the age of Adrian, and tortured certain expressions of Plutarch to prove that Lord Elgin and the Royal Academy had been imposed upon. But his opinions were scouted; and it was suspected that his affected contempt proceeded from feelings of jealousy; for such has hitherto been the poverty of the national galleries of England, or so valuable are the stores of private collections, that Mr. Payne Knight began to fear lest the importance of his cabinet of antiquities might be diminished by the Athenian sculptures. This trait seems to me characteristic of the vanity of English amateurs in general. Unluckily for Mr. Payne Knight an anecdote was related of him, which strongly reminds one of the excellent trick played by Edie Ochiltree on the Laird of Monkbarns. Some years previously, Mr. Knight had purchased an antique cameo representing Flora. For this he paid £250, the sum at which he estimated the horse's head in the Elgin gallery, a precious mo.

nument of art, and the object which I must confess most forcibly struck me when I visited the collection in the British Museum. As long as the dominion of Bonaparte interrupted the communication between England and the continent, Mr. Knight's Flora was regarded as authentic; but on the establishment of peace, an Italian artist, Signor Petrucci, came to England, and discovered that the pretended cameo was a modern production. This Mr. Knight denied; but Petrucci persisted in his assertion; and the amateur became furiously indignant. At length Petrucci was forced, in self-defence, to confess what he has since attested on oath before a magistrate, that he himself executed the antique cameo, which he sold for the sum of twenty scudi to Signor Borelli, of whom Mr. Payne Knight had been lucky enough to purchase it for £250.

Among the Greeks, with whom there existed a close connection between the productions of sculpture and architecture, the Elgin marbles were held as an integral part of the Parthenon; and they furnish models of the three great classes of ancient sculpture, in the statues of the pediments, the alto-relievos of the metopes, and the basso-relievos of the frize.

One of the pediments represented the birth of Minerva, and the other her dispute with Neptune. The figure to which the name of Theseus has been assigned, is, in M. Visconti's opinion, a Hercules. It is a young god reclining on one of the rocks of Olympus, over which a lion's skin and