30 When I revisited Athens in the spring of 1889, the National Museum, which is a fine and spacious building, was quite an orderly museum, and it was easy to see and enjoy the works of art preserved in it. The archaic things were, moreover (as in the Acropolis), placed by themselves; so were the tombs, and so were most of the portrait busts. All that was still wanting was a good and complete catalogue. 31 These panegyrics—_λόγοι ἐπιτάφιοι_ they were called—were a favorite exercise of Greek literary men. There are five classical ones still extant—that mentioned, that in the _Menexenus_ of Plato, that of Hypereides, and those ascribed (justly) to Lysias and (falsely) to Demosthenes. That of Hypereides, very mutilated as it is, seems to me the finest next to that of Thucydides. But they are all built upon the same lines, showing even here that strict conservatism in every branch of Greek art which never varied, for variety’s sake, from a type once recognized as really good. 32 Roubillac’s monuments in Westminster Abbey, which excited the admiration of his contemporaries, are the best example I know of degradation in public taste on this question. 33 I did, indeed, see one relief at Athens, in which the relatives are represented as rushing forward in agony, as it were to delay the departure of the fainting figure. It is right that this exception should be noted, as it shows that they understood what violent grief was, and yet avoided representing it as a rule. 34 I fancy, from the unity of type shown in many of them, that they may even have been designed by the artist without regard to the special case, and purchased by the family of the deceased ready made. The figures upon them do not seem to me personal likenesses. 35 In the _Adonais_, Shelley affords a curious contrast to the somewhat morbid prominence of the poet in the case before us. The self-effacement of Shelley has centred all our interest on his lost friend. 36 He also supposed that the tower was Frankish, and built long before the Venetian conquest. But here he was wrong. The stones inside the tower, when taken down, showed clear traces of gun-powder, as was clearly shown in a learned refutation of his views, printed at Athens. 37 Other specimens are preserved in the little Turkish house on the Acropolis, and should be noted by the visitor, who may easily pass them by. 38 I speak, of course, of the copies of these famous statues which are to be seen in the Vatican Museum.