thought exaggerated and refined. These very marble skeletons declare, that at the heart of the false faiths of unillumined times, there was a core of substantial religion, consisting partly of those fragments of primitive revelation which tradition preserved, even while it was slowly distorting them, and partly also of the memory of many a divine interposition to save or judge, which the heathen world saw, and was allowed to understand. For

When the One, ineffable of name,

Of nature indivisible, withdrew
From mortal adoration or regard,

Not then was Deity engulfed, nor man,
The rational creature, left to feel the weight

Of his own reason, without sense or thought

Of higher reason and a purer will,

To benefit and bless, through mightier power.

This core of real divinity encased in all the old forms of heathenism, though graciously meant for a lantern to heathen feet, is of course seen most clearly and appreciated most correctly by a Christian ; and, with the works of the Alexandrian fathers before one, it might be laid bare and examined in the seclusion of an Oxford quadrangle. But I felt as if I never thoroughly understood the Greek paganism till it spoke out among the echoing solitudes of the marble-headed Acropolis. I had now seen its different humors, so to speak, embodied in the ravine of Lebadea, the sounding

terraces of Delphi, the basin of Iero, and the temples of Athens.

If a man lingers about the Parthenon till his eye is accustomed to the ground, and his imagination becomes able to refit the shattered forms, he begins to see and understand the spirit of Greek paganism. There is no mixture of light and shade, no halfconcealing, half-revealing, as in the symbolical cathedrals of the Christian faith. There are no rays of divine darkness running alongside of the rays of light, and sinking into the ground beneath the Altar at the east. All is open to the unbounded blue ether above and the vertical rays of a noonday sun, and the trembling visitations of the unimpeded moon-beams, a very house of light, unstained by painted glass, undarkened by vaulted roofs, unintercepted by columns and arches, and with the instantaneous perception of unity unmarred by the cruciform shape. It is clear, distinct, cheerful grandeur, a very triumph of definite beauty. And, as the temple is, so was the faith; and such the art, and such the literature of Greece. In all there is the same shrinking from romance, which is a blending of light and shade, a veneration of gloom amounting, where the Gospel is known, to the consecration of suffering and woe. The cave of Trophonius, the oak-gloom of Dodona, the voiceful rocks of shadowy Parnassus,―these are removed from the great cities, and are places for occasional pilgrimage, because the want of them was but occasional to the 002

Greek. Infinitely as most northerns, we children of mists, clouds, woods, and weeping rain, may prefer the beauty of mystery and indefiniteness, that is, romantic beauty, still we may feel a keen pleasure in definite beauty, so mightily triumphant as it is in the Parthenon and Olympeion and the gorgeous Propylæa, if gorgeousness can be predicated of a splendor pure even to severity. Anything elaborate, except in details of workmanship, would have offended the Greek in a religious edifice. His alacrity of thought was such, that even symbolical religion must be presented to him in delicate hints, where the symbols were few, pure and simple. It must not be wrought out before him. Yet with that alacrity he had depth also. And all this is really impressed upon the temples. It is definite beauty, shapely vastness, instantaneously recognized unity, cheerful grandeur.

I am sure classical architecture would not in any length of time force me to break the natural allegiance which, from climate, descent, and religion, I owe to Gothic; but I never shall forget the electrical effect produced upon me by seeing the blue sky between the two columns of the steps of the Propylæa. The shape, the tallness which made the space seem narrow, the straight hard line which made the form so definite, all startled my eye with its firm and stable symmetry, after I had been so long accustomed to the bending, reverently swerving lines of a cathedral, and to the bold and trustful

swing of the Gothic arch, throwing itself from pillar to pillar, with its half-circle, as imperfect as a Christian truth here below, whose other half is in Heaven. Yet, the evening before, the glowing west through Hadrian's arch-how different it was from the same bright sky through the columns of the Propylæa. I felt as if I had been surprised into a confession, and, as in my dream at Lebadea, I was pleasingly bewildered between two sorts of beauty, and the two provinces of great truths typified by those separate beauties. I felt as if I had been surprised into a confession of preference for `classical beauty. But the arch of Hadrian, by a quick admonition, saved me from attributing to the Greek religion too much of a fixedness, and from forgetting that exquisite pliability, whereby the classical spirit, in art, taste, faith, and morals, touches upon and for a moment mixes with the spirit of romance, its gentle awe and soul-chastening shadows. I turned round to the Acropolis, that old, immortal rock, and could have addressed it, as the representative of Greece, in the sublime words of the great doctor and prophet of romantic philosophy among ourselves, teaching out of Spenser's holy chair.

"Triumphant o'er this pompous show

Of art, this palpable array of sense,
On every side encountered; in despite
Of the gross fictions, chanted in the streets
By wandering rhapsodists; and in contempt
Of doubt and bold denials hourly urged

Amid the wrangling schools-a SPIRIT hung,
Beautiful region! o'er thy towns and farms,
Statues and temples and memorial tombs;
And emanations were perceived; and acts
Of immortality in nature's course,
Exemplified by mysteries, that were felt
As bonds, on grave philosopher imposed
And armed warrior; and in every grove
A gay or pensive tenderness prevailed,
When piety more awful had relaxed!"

It may be asked, if there were all this divinity and truth and more than mortal wisdom embodied in the Greek paganism, and pervading their art and literature, why did not the Church refil the empty form of Greek civilization, and give Greece a second epoch of greatness, as she did to Italy? Among other reasons this may be assigned, that in the Greek intellect and faith the first Christian element was wanting, namely, fear.

But enough of heathen Athens; let us descend from the Acropolis, and muse awhile this evening on the Areopagus. It is another lovely evening, the charm of this land: and now a balmy coolness has succeeded to the burning day, and there is fragrance from the cut hay beyond the Pnyx which is most refreshing. Here let us muse on Christian Athens. It is true, and perhaps the reason urged above may account for this also, that Athens stands not foremost among the cities whose names are honorable in

• Wordsworth, Excursion, book iv.