Books by Mr. Story. POEMS. I. PARCHMENTS AND PORTRAITS. II. MONOLOGUES AND LYRICS. 2 vols. 16mo, $2.50. HE AND SHE; or, A POET’S PORTFOLIO. 18mo, illuminated vellum, $1.00. FIAMMETTA. A Novel. 16mo, $1.25. ROBA DI ROMA. New Revised Edition, from new plates. With Notes. 2 vols. 16mo, $2.50. CONVERSATIONS IN A STUDIO. 2 vols. 16mo, $2.50. EXCURSIONS IN ART AND LETTERS. 16mo, $1.25. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. BOSTON AND NEW YORK. EXCURSIONS IN ART AND LETTERS BY WILLIAM WETMORE STORY D.C.L. (OXON.) COMM. CORONA ITALIA, OFF. LEG. D’HONNEUR, ETC. [Illustration] BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY The Riverside Press, Cambridge 1893 Copyright, 1891, BY WILLIAM WETMORE STORY. _All rights reserved._ THIRD EDITION. _The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._ Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. CONTENTS. PAGE MICHEL ANGELO 1 PHIDIAS, AND THE ELGIN MARBLES 49 THE ART OF CASTING IN PLASTER AMONG THE ANCIENT GREEKS AND ROMANS 115 A CONVERSATION WITH MARCUS AURELIUS 190 DISTORTIONS OF THE ENGLISH STAGE AS INSTANCED IN “MACBETH” 232 EXCURSIONS IN ART AND LETTERS. MICHEL ANGELO. The overthrow of the pagan religion was the deathblow of pagan Art. The temples shook to their foundations, the statues of the gods shuddered, a shadow darkened across the pictured and sculptured world, when through the ancient realm was heard the wail, “Pan, great Pan is dead.” The nymphs fled to their caves affrighted. Dryads, Oreads, and Naiads abandoned the groves, mountains, and streams that they for ages had haunted. Their voices were heard no more singing by shadowy brooks, their faces peered no longer through the sighing woods; and of all the mighty train of greater and lesser divinities and deified heroes to whom Greece and Rome had bent the knee and offered sacrifice, Orpheus alone lingered in the guise of the Good Shepherd. Christianity struck the deathblow not only to pagan Art, but for a time to all Art. Sculpture and Painting were in its mind closely allied to idolatry. Under its influence the arts slowly wasted away as with a mortal disease. With ever-declining strength they struggled for centuries, gasping as it were for breath, and finally, almost in utter atrophy, half alive, half dead,—a ruined, maimed, deformed presence, shorn of all their glory and driven out by the world,—they found a beggarly refuge and sufferance in some Christian church or monastery.