[Illustration: Plan of the Greek Court.] We enter the court through the central opening. This portion represents part of a Greek _agora_, or forum, which was used as a market, and also for public festivals, for political and other assemblies. Around the frieze in this central division are the names of the poets, artists, and philosophers of Greece, and of their most celebrated patrons, the list commencing immediately above the place of entrance with old blind Homer, and finishing with Anthemius, the architect of Saint Sophia at Constantinople. The names, it will be remarked, are inserted in the Greek characters of the period at which the various persons lived. The monograms within the chaplets on the frieze are formed of the initial letters of the Muses, the Graces, the Good and the Wise. The colouring of this court, with its blue, red, and yellow surfaces, blazoned with gold, produces an excellent effect. It is the object of the decorators to give to the whole of the architectural specimens in the Crystal Palace those colours which there is reason to know, or to believe they originally possessed; to restore them, in fact, as far as possible, to their pristine state, in order that the imagination of the spectator may be safely conducted back in contemplation to the artistic characteristics of distant and distinctive ages. In this court are arranged sculptures and models of temples. Amongst the former will be recognised many of the finest statues and groups of the Greek school, the Laocoon (16); the Farnese Juno (6); the Dione (3); the Genius of Death (24); the well-known Discobolus (4) from the Vatican; the Ariadne, also from the Vatican (27); the Sleeping or Barberini Faun (19); and, in the centre, the unrivalled Venus of Milo, which affords perhaps the most perfect combination of grandeur and beauty in the female form (1). We make our way round this court, beginning at the right hand. After examining the collection, we pass between the columns into the small side court (next to Egypt), answering to a stoa of the Agora. Around the frieze are found the names of the great men of the Greek colonies, arranged in chronological order. The visitor has here an opportunity of contrasting the architecture and sculpture of the Egyptians with those of the Greeks. On one side of him is an Egyptian wall inclining inwards, with its angular pictorial decorations, and the passive colossal figures guarding the entrances. On the other side are the beautiful columns and bold cornice of the Greek Doric, surrounded by statues characterised by beauty of form and refined idealised expression. In this division will also be found the busts of the Greek Poets, arranged in chronological order, commencing on the right-hand side from the Nave: these form a portion and the commencement of the Portrait Gallery of the Crystal Palace.