The material standard and symbol of that, by this subtle subconscious distillation, had always been the Acropolis, and on this crystalline January afternoon, it was mine to hurry along a tawdry Parisian boulevard, set with pepper trees, to see on one side the columns of the temple of Zeus, and on the other the circular Shrine of the Winds. On the right, as I knew well, I should soon pass the theatre of Dionysus and not turn aside for that even, and then would come the stoa of Asclepius and a great Roman colonnade, and for none of these had I a glance or a thought to spare, for over the sheer southern wall of the Acropolis there rose the south-west angle of the Parthenon. And then, with a reverence that was as sincere as love itself and not less ardent, I mounted the steps of the Propylæa, with the rebuilt shrine on the right of that fairy-presence, the Wingless Victory, who shed her pinions because for all time she was to abide in Athens; and on the left was the great bastion wall stained to an inimitable russet by the winds from Salamis, and between the great Doric columns I passed, and there in front was a bare scraped hill-top, and glowing in the sunset was the west front of the Parthenon, that serene abiding presence, set for a symbol of what Athens stood for, and, no less, of the eternal yearning of man for the glorious city of God. Behind rose the violet crown of hills, Hymettus and Pentelicus and Parnes. “Holy, holy, holy!” was the first message of it, and then like the dawn flowing down the cliffs of the Matterhorn, it illuminated all that on earth had the power to be kindled at its flame. Like the Sphinx it articulated its unanswerable riddle, and by its light it revealed the solution, and by its light it hid it again. The architect who had planned it, the sculptor who had decorated it, the hands that had builded it and formed the drums of its columns into monoliths of translucent stone had thrown themselves into the furnace of the creation that transcended all the wit and the cunning of its creators. They raised but a fog or a smoke of human endeavour, and from outside, no less than from the heart of their love, there dawned for them and for us the light invisible. Whatever love of beauty was in their souls was transcended and translated into stone; the glory of jubilant youth and of ridden stallions, of maidens who wove the mantle of the goddess, of priests and of the hierarchy of gods was but part of some world-offering to the austere and loving and perfect presence which they had instinctively worshipped, and, as in some noble trance, had set in symbol there. With what wonder must they have beheld the completed work of their hands, and, in their work, the indwelling of the power that was its consecration.