THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS.

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tered Cyclades. Cape Sunium is a dangerous place for mariners, and is interesting to Englishmen as being the scene of Falconer's "Shipwreck."

To this description by a recent traveller, (in Blackwood's Magazine,) we may, not inappropriately, add Lord Byron's beautiful verses.

"Where'er we tread, 'tis haunted, holy ground;

No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould,

But one vast realm of wonder spreads around,
And all the muses' tales seems truly told,
Till the sense aches with gazing to behold
The scenes our earliest dreams have dwelt upon :
Each hill and dale, each deepening glen and wold
Defies the power which crush'd thy temples gone;

Age shake's Athena's tower, but spares gray Marathon."

The Acropolis, or old Cecropian citadel of Athens, is a steep rock which rises abruptly from the plain: it was surrounded with walls. The north-west side, which was less steep than the others, and consequently the most exposed to danger in the event of an attack from the enemy, was defended by the Pelasgic, or Nine-gate Cyclopian wall, built by the Pelasgi. The southern part of this wall, after its reerection by Cimon, bore the name of Cimonium, or Cimon's wall, the height of which in some parts rises to sixty feet. The greater part of the existing walls, although disfigured by repairs, executed at different periods, appears still to consist of the original works of Themistocles and Cimon; the centre of the north side even exhibits manifest marks of haste, as several parts of former buildings are here incorporated with the wall itself. The western side of the Acropolis, by which alone the citadel could be approached, was, under the administration of Pericles, strengthened and beautified by a magnificent ascent of steps and the famous Propyloa, with five gates or openings and two wings. The Propyloa were built of Pentelic marble in the short space of five years, under the direction of the architect Mnesicles. Their erection began under the Archon Euthymenes, in the fourth year of the eightyfifth Olympiad, and, according to Heliodorus, cost 2012 talents. The front or centre consisted of six fluted Doric columns supporting a pediment, and approached by four steps. The columns were twenty-nine feet high. Behind this portico six Ionic columns in a double row and parallel formed a vestibule, of which the ceiling rested on triple lengths of marble beams; on these latter rested the slabs of the ceiling, which was variously decorated. During the time of the Roman emperors equestrian statues of Augustus and Agrippa were erected before the Propyloa. This beautiful

work has suffered greatly since the dominion of the Turks. The eastern part was destroyed by an explosion of gunpowder. The west front, according to Spon, was entire in 1676; the upper part of it has now disappeared. Immediately in front of the right or southern wing of the Propyloa was the temple of Unwinged Victory; to the left a small Pinacothek. But it was on the highest platform of the Acropolis, and scarcely three hundred feet from the Propyloa, that its greatest ornament stood. This was the Parthenon, the temple of the virgin goddess Minerva, the tutelary deity of Athens, and from whom (Athene) the city derived its name. This celebrated temple was built of Pentelic marble, under the superintendence of Callicrates, Ictinus, and Carpion from the first year of the eighty-third Olympiad to the third year of the eighty-fifth. It was adorned with the finest sculptures of Phidias. After having withstood the test of ages it was destined to suffer grievously during the wars between the Turks and the Venetians; and what the wars had spared disappeared under the unscrupulous enthusiasm of antiquarians. Lord Elgin brought to England the remains of the sculptures, with several of the metopes and a part of the frieze, which form the Elgin collection in the British Museum. Lord Elgin has been severely attacked by the Hellenists, and by none more severely than by Lord Byron, for removing these remarkable sculptures from their original site; and could it have been foreseen that they could have remained on the Acropolis with safety, the interest with which the scholar and artist would have contemplated them would doubtless have been greatly enhanced. The Parthenon is considered as the finest specimen of the Greek Doric style, and notwithstanding its ruined state is the theme of the most enthusiastic admiration to all travellers. Thus beautiful in itself, its beauties rise in conjunction with the matchless scenery around it. The interior or shrine contained the celebrated statue of Minerva (thirty-nine feet high) by Phidias. The golden ornaments were valued at forty to forty-four talents, taken at the latter valuation, about £120,000. Since the erection of Greece into a kingdom many fragments and fallen columns have been excavated and replaced; and attempts have been made to restore the structure. The inhabitants of Edinburgh vindicate for their city the title of the northern or modern Athens, and an edifice was begun at Calton Hill, in the year 1823, which was intended to be an exact model of the Parthenon; but there is little prospect of its completion.

To the north of the Parthenon was the Erectheium, a building, or perhaps more correctly speaking, a combination of buildings, which contained the temple of Minerva, Polias, (the real Erectheium or Cecropium,) and the Pandrosium. This sanctuary contained the holy olive-tree of Minerva, the sacred salt-spring, the oldest wooden image of Minerva, and other sacred relics; it was likewise the scene of the oldest and holiest religious ceremonies, myths, and recollections of the Athenians.