As we take our stand in this room, and gaze round us at these grand fragments--for, alas! fragments only are they now--our mind strives to restore the mutilated forms of these marble "men and women of more than mortal mould," that seem to repose or move before us in their grand statuesque dignity. And, broken and damaged as they indeed have become by time and exposure, many without heads, or hands, or feet, yet we cannot gaze upon them and consider them attentively without feeling more and more impressed by their heroic proportions and stately attitudes. We may well feel that we are justified in this impression, when we learn that these sculptured fragments are the remains of what is universally considered to have been, when perfect, the finest work of the best masters at the time of the highest development of Greek art. Let us turn for a moment from the large figures that occupy the centre of the Elgin Room, to the bas-relief of smaller figures that seem to follow each other with living and rapid movement round the whole length of the walls of the room; horsemen on prancing steeds, charioteers in their chariots, animals driven to sacrifice, maidens bearing vases, succeed each other in quick succession; and the conclusion dawns upon us that this must surely have been intended to represent some stately procession, held in honour of those central heroic figures. We ask, Whence come these people of stone? Who were they meant for? What are they supposed to be doing or celebrating? Let us first devote a few words as to the place whence they came. They must carry us to Athens, and, with them to lead us, we must travel back through the long ages to the world's golden youth in Greece--Greece, whose poetry speaks to us from wood, and cave, and ocean--whose mythic heroes are associated with the stars themselves. Turn our thoughts, then, to Greece, and to Athens, its pearl of cities, of which our own Milton writes so lovingly-- "Behold Where, on the Ægean shore, a city stands, Built nobly; pure the air and light the soil-- Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts And eloquence." "What time the nightingale Trills her thick warbled notes the summer long" to Plato in the gardens of the Academe, and the bees murmured on the fragrant slopes of Mount Hymettus, as they gathered their sweet honey from its scented flowers, in times long past and gone. We refer to the time of Plato and Socrates, when, under Pericles, "wisest of rulers," the arts of poetry and sculpture sprang into glorious perfection, and the great name of Pheidias rose.