We have observed that Hermes were the first sculptured productions of Greece. These most abounded at Athens, where, for a long time, the word Hermoglyph was the only term in use to designate a sculptor of any kind. But soon after the Persians had despoiled that city of her ancient monuments, she acquired immense resources, by which, under the guidance of superlative taste, she soon arose to be the head of the national confederacy, and most splendid abode of art. Architects and sculptors, painters, lapidaries, and workers in precious metals vied with each other in adorning the lettered empress of earth and sea. The monuments of Ictinus, Phidias, Callicrates, and Mnesicles arose, surrounded with kindred glories, thenceforth to become masterpieces for the emulation of mankind. What was especially needed, was something that would mold all surrounding elements of beauty into one perfect and homogeneous whole, like the unity of diversified expressions in the opera, and this was gloriously realized in the perfected temple. Appropriate material was quarried from Paros and Pentelicus, which when wrought into graceful and sublime forms, stood on the terraced height in serene majesty, and glowed through the sparkling atmosphere with enhanced splendor borrowed from harmonized colors and burnished gold. In Greece, history and art from the beginning, were closely allied. The breastplates, helmets, and shields, as well as altars, temples, and tombs, were all made to glorify an honored ancestry, through the blandishments of material art. Homer and Hesiod brightened the dawn of national renown, as they sang the artistic triumphs of Vulcan, embossed on the weapons which Hercules and Achilles bore. The arcades of nature, and the canopied walks which architecture so magnificently provided, were transformed into vast galleries, all aglow with brilliantly harmonized tints; and a wanderer the most remote from the metropolis, still found the annals of his country embodied in marble, and each great personage strongly characterized by the sculptor's chisel. Every subordinate democracy had its Prytancum, Odeon, Pnyx, Gymnasium, and Theatres; and when Athens usurped pre-eminent control, her citizens were proud to erect public monuments worthy of her ambition, and whose dazzling magnificence should reconcile the other states to her supremacy. So greatly was this the passion of the people themselves, that when Pericles proposed to exonerate them from debts incurred by the immense works of his administration, if he might be permitted to inscribe them with his own name, the proposition was rejected at once, and every responsibility was cheerfully accepted as their own.