the many violent scenes of which Athens has since been the theatre. Some art critics have--more especially of late years--decried the workmanship of these marbles, and have argued that they could not possibly have been the work of Phidias. It is beyond doubt, however, that they display Greek art at a splendid and mature stage of development, and their value to the British nation is simply beyond price. The subject of this sketch was destined to achieve a higher and less dubious reputation than that of his father. Being only a second son, he was not born heir-apparent to the family title and estates, and his education was completed before--in consequence of the death of his elder brother and of his father--he succeeded to the peerage. At the age of fourteen he went to Eton, from which seat of learning he in due time passed to Christ Church, Oxford. Here he formed one of a group of young men, many of whom have since attained high distinction in political life. Among them we find the names of William Ewart Gladstone, the late Duke of Newcastle (the friend and guardian of the Prince of Wales upon the occasion of his visit to this country in 1860), Sidney Herbert, James Ramsay (afterwards Earl of Dalhousie, son of a former Governor-General of Canada), Lord Canning, Robert Lowe, Edward Cardwell, and Roundell Palmer--now Lord Selborne. Between young Bruce and two of these--Ramsay and Canning--an uncommonly warm intimacy prevailed; and it is a somewhat curious coincidence that they lived to be the three successive rulers of India during the transition period of British Government there. Ramsay, then Lord Dalhousie, was the last Governor before the breaking out of the Mutiny; Canning was the over-ruler of the Mutiny; and Bruce, as Lord Elgin, was the first who went out as Viceroy after the Indian Empire was brought under the government of the Crown.