rock, and watched the ruins at every hour of the day, and in the brightness of a moonlight night—to those who have dwelt among them, and meditated upon them with love and awe—there first come back the remembered glories of Athens’s greatness, when Olympian Pericles stood upon this rock with careworn Phidias, and reckless Alcibiades with Pious Nicias and fervent Demosthenes with caustic Phocion—when such men peopled the temples in their worship, and all the fluted pillars and sculptured friezes were bright with scarlet, and blue, and gold. And then the glory of remembered history casts its hue over the war-stained remnants. Every touch of human hand, every fluting, and drop, and triglyph, and cornice recalls the master minds which produced this splendor; and so at last we tear ourselves from it as from a thing of beauty, which even now we can never know, and love, and meditate upon to our hearts’ content. Nothing is more vexatious than the reflection, how lately these splendid remains have been reduced to their present state. The Parthenon, being used as a Greek church, remained untouched and perfect all through the Middle Ages. Then it became a mosque, and the Erechtheum a seraglio, and in this way survived with little damage till 1687, when, in the bombardment by the Venetians under Morosini, a shell dropped into the Parthenon, where the Turks had their powder stored, and blew out the whole centre of the building. Eight or nine pillars at each side have been thrown down, and have left a large gap, which so severs the front and rear of the temple, that from the city below they look like the remains of two different buildings. The great drums of these pillars are yet lying there, in their order, just as they fell, and some money and care might set them all up again in their places; yet there is not in Greece the patriotism or even the common sense to enrich the country by this restoration, matchless in its certainty as well as in its splendor.