A walk of five or six miles under the shadows of the tall walls of Hippodamus and Callicrates to view the greater architectural glories of the city of Athens in the time of Pericles will doubtless repay us. While this queen city of the ancient world is enrobed in many triumphs of the builder’s art, we will probably pass them all by for the time being to examine more carefully the gems that stand forth from the Acropolis, glittering under the blue Grecian sky like white jewels in the proud city’s coronet. This magnificent citadel, protected by Pelasgian walls and dedicated to the pagan deity Minerva, could be entered but upon one side, the western, where the massive gate or vestibule of the Propylæa occupied the centre. Fragments of this great gate still give evidence to the modern traveller of its former stately splendor. “Here,” says Bishop Wordsworth, “above all places at Athens, the mind of the traveller enjoys an exquisite pleasure. It seems as if this portal had been spared in order that our imagination might send through it, as through a triumphal arch, all the glories of Athenian antiquity in visible parade. It was this particular point in the localities of Athens which was most admired by the Athenians themselves; nor is this surprising; let us conceive such a restitution of this fabric as its surviving fragments will suggest—let us imagine it restored to its pristine beauty—let it rise once more in the full dignity of its youthful nature—let all its architectural decorations be fresh and perfect—let their mouldings be again brilliant with their glowing tints of red and blue—let the coffers of its soffits be again spangled with stars, and the marble antæ be fringed over as they were once with delicate embroidery of ivy-leaf ... and then let the bronze valves of these five gates of the Propylæa be suddenly flung open and all the splendors of the interior of the Acropolis burst upon the view.” If this imaginative restoration of the sublimities of the Propylæa is not sufficient to excite some interest in the building and the slave-born architect who was its creator, let the glowing words of Symonds be added, which refer not only to the grand vestibule itself, but to the Panathenaic processions which were wont to pass its gates.