"The Romans, in their best era of taste, copied their Grecian instructors in that appropriate character of embellishment which explained, at a glance, the use of their respective buildings; but, in their latter ages, they declined from this original purity; and it is the fragments of that corruption, in which they lost the characteristic precision of the Greeks, that we have seen of late years employed upon many of our buildings. The want of mental reflection in employing the orders of architectures with a rational precision as to character, produces the same sort of deficiency which we find in an historical picture; where, although each figure, in correct proportion, be well drawn, with drapery elegantly folded, yet, not being employed appropriately to the subject, affords no satisfaction to the spectator. "The Greeks were in architecture what they were in sculpture; and it is to them you must look for the original purity of both. We feel rejoiced, that the exertions recently made by a noble personage to enrich our studies in both of these departments of art are such, that we may say, London has become the Athens for study. It is the mental power displayed in the Elgin marbles that I wish the juvenile artist to notice. Look at the equestrian groups of the young Athenians in this collection, and you will find in them that momentary motion which life gives on the occasion to the riders and their horses. The horse we perceive feels that power which the impulse of life has given to his rider; we see in him the animation of his whole frame; in the fire of his eyes, the distention of his nostrils, and in the rapid motion of his feet, yielding to the guidance of his rider, or in the speeding of his course: they are, therefore, in perfect unison with the life in each. At this moment of their animation, they appear to have been turned into stone by some majestic power, and not created by the human hand. The single head of the horse, in the same collection, seems as if it had, by the same influence, been struck into marble, when he was exerting all the energy of his motion. "These admirable sculptures, which now adorn our city, are the union of Athenian genius and philosophy, and illustrate my meaning respecting the mental impression which is so essentially to be given to works of refined art. It was this point which the Grecian philosophers wished to impress on the minds of their sculptors, not to follow their predecessors the Egyptians in sculpture, who represented their figures without motion, although nearly perfect in giving to them the external form. 'It is the passions,' said they, 'with which man is endowed, that we wish to see in the movements of your figures.' This advice of the philosophers was felt by the sculptors, and the Athenian marbles are the faithful records of the efficacy of that advice.