"Know, first, that heav'n, and earth's contracted frame, And flowing waters, and the starry flame, And both the radiant lights, one common soul Inspires and feeds--and animates the whole. This active mind, infused through all the space, Unites and mingles with the mighty mass. Hence men and beasts the breath of life obtain, And birds of air, and monsters of the main. Th' ethereal vigor is in all the same; And ev'ry soul is fill'd with equal flame-- As much as earthy limbs, and gross allay Of mortal members subject to decay, Blunt not the beams of heav'n and edge of day. From this coarse mixture of terrestrial parts, Desire and fear by turns possess their hearts, And grief and joy: nor can the grovelling mind, In the dark dungeon of the limbs confined, Assert the native skies, or own its heav'nly kind: Nor death itself can wholly wash their stains; But long-contracted filth ev'n in the soul remains. "The relics of invet'rate vice they wear And spots of sin obscene in ev'ry face appear. For this are various penances enjoin'd; And some are hung to bleach upon the wind, Some plunged in waters, others purged in fires, Till all the dregs are drain'd, and all the rust expires. All have their ma'nes, and those manes bear: The few, so cleansed, to these abodes repair, And breathe, in ample fields, the soft Elysian air. Then are they happy, when by length of time The scurf is worn away of each committed crime; No speck is left of their habitual stains, But the pure ether of the soul remains. But, when a thousand rolling years are past (So long their punishments and penance last), Whole droves of minds are, by the driving god, Compell'd to drink the deep Lethe'an flood, In large forgetful draughts to steep the cares Of their past labors and their irksome years, That, unrememb'ring of its former pain, The soul may suffer mortal flesh again." --Trans. by DRYDEN. * * * * * IV. ARCHITECTURE. In architecture and sculpture Greece stands pre-eminently above all other nations. The first evidences of the former art that we discover are in the gigantic walls of Tiryns, Mycenæ, and other Greek cities, constructed for purposes of defence in the very earliest periods of Greek history, and generally known by the name of Cyclo'pean, because supposed by the early Greeks to have been built by those fabled giants, the Cyclo'pes. Ye cliffs of masonry, enormous piles, Which no rude censure of familiar time Nor record of our puny race defiles, In dateless mystery ye stand sublime, Memorials of an age of which we see Only the types in things that once were ye. Whether ye rest upon some bosky knoll, Your feet by ancient myrtles beautified, Or seem, like fabled dragons, to unroll Your swarthy grandeurs down a bleak hill-side, Still on your savage features is a spell That makes ye half divine, ineffable.