very opposite direction, cultivating spirit only so far as it served to embellish and to reproduce form. In this they attained perfection, and to surpass them in sculpture is after all impossible; we can only try to equal them, and to learn from what they have left us, to produce other combinations. In this spirit we ought to study the nine figures from the eastern pediment of the Parthenon, in the British Museum. What forms, what exquisite drapery! The finest tissue of pliable stuff is reproduced in hard Pentelic marble. The drapery disguises, and at the same time reveals, the beautiful forms of the human frame. Softness and sensationalism were equally avoided by Pheidias and his school. The study of anatomy was not yet degraded to coarse realism. It was not yet the aim of Greek sculptors to distort the human body so as to exhibit expanded muscles, over-strained sinews, and swelling veins, as expressions of pain, grief, distress, or contortions of the death-agony. Anatomy served Pheidias as a mould, into which he poured his beautiful conceptions--the spiritualised forms of gods and men. Katharsis was the principle of his school. The very heights of perfection were reached by Pheidias, Polykletus, and Alkemenes. Gods and goddesses were the subjects of their chisels. They were not only the high-priests of art--but inspired prophets, to whom divine beauty was revealed in all its brightness and splendour. The existence of the Greek State was suddenly shaken to its very foundation. Internal dissensions weakened the safety of the citizens; sophistry destroyed philosophy, and mannerism grasped Greek art, dragged it down from its heights of idealised beauty and hurled it into the abyss of sensational realism. The best specimen of this school is the frieze from the temple of Apollo at Bassæ, near Phigalia in Arkadia. (Found 1812, now in the British Museum.) It represents Kentaurs fighting with Amazons. The old Indian Ghandarvas, the moist and heavy clouds that hinder the sun from breaking forth in all his glory, and are conquered by his fiery shafts, became in time monsters, half-men, half-horses, fighting against loveliness and civilisation. The Amazons in this instance represent fair Greece rushing into civil strife. Passion is predominant in action and expression. Amazons are dragged by the hair and by the legs from their horses; a Kentaur is seen biting a warrior in the shoulder. Bold naturalism and vulgar realism go hand-in-hand in these sculptures. How sensitive art is--how faithfully it reflects the social condition of a nation! and the feelings by which the artists were pervaded may be studied in this frieze. The nude is treated with exquisite truthfulness, but there is heaviness in the sudden, too violent movements. Action and expression lose the balance of the symmetrical. The women are common; their drapery floating and yet stiff, deranged for the sake of effect. The artists worked no more with love and security. The political party