With testimony so absolute from an ear-witness, the Memnon is no fable. Silent that voice has been through many centuries, yet we may well believe that in older days, ere time had worked its inevitable changes, the sounds heard were in resemblance more truly vocal; and although then mysterious to hearers, now under science such musical vibrations are easy of explanation as a natural phenomenon. The wonder-inspiring statue is still seated there, “moulded in colossal calm,” looking across that desert-destined land which remaineth for ever, as Shelley named it,— “a desolation deified.” Seeking an example of Apollo’s lyre, as it existed when Greek art was at its highest period, I found it, I think, in a marble relief carved by the hand of Praxiteles; it is an authentic witness of the form of the lyre in his day, and it seems to carry out the description given of the lyre discovered by Lord Elgin (see page 319). The artist gives a representation of the lyre as he saw it, and as no doubt used in the worship of the ever-youthful Sun-God. This marble is in the National Museum at Athens. It was found at Mantinea, in Arcadia, and it represents the contest of Apollo and Marsyas; Apollo on the lyre and Marsyas on the flutes, or double pipes. The marble has been finely photographed by the well-known M. Rhomaides, of Athens, an enthusiast in his art. I copy this for the Apollo; the quiet dignity of the seated figure is remarkable. According to proportionate relation, the instrument may be estimated as being about twenty-six or twenty-seven inches in height, and the acting length of the strings about eighteen or twenty inches, the frame about two inches deep, with the interior hollow, so that although the strings should be only plucked by the fingers, the instrument we should expect would give a good and a rich resonance. The strings, seven in number, being each tuned separately by their rollers or rings. The Apollo lyre was the nursling of the Greeks, never absent from the Greek life; present in the home and in the temple, heard in the green meadows, and upon the mountain-side, and by the sapphire sea, gladdening the heart at household feasts, and inspiring the voice on the great days of rejoicing. Those vast processions carved upon marble friezes speak to us of an existent life when to the people Apollo was “an evident god”; days when through the shaded valleys, and along the terraced mountain-sides, young men and maidens with dance and song made a delighted way,— “touched piously the Delphic lyre,” and to the sacrificial altar eager throngs pressed onward and upward,—as in his word-magic Keats pictures it;— “with trumpets blown Of triumph calm, and hymns of festival, Voices of soft proclaim, and silver stir Of strings on hollow shells, ... ... and the mysterious priest, Leading that heifer lowing at the skies, And all her silken flanks with garlands drest.”