inspires us with a wish that we could endure with a fortitude like that we see. Beauty was latent in Periclean Greeks, like fire in crystal, which, however brilliant when excited, habitually rests in quiet, and robs not its abode of either purity or strength. They were as full of emotion as of heroism, and, as Agamemnon, after the victory, poured tears on the funeral pyre, they were never braver than at the very time they wept. Winkleman suggests, that beauty with the ancients was the balance of expression, and, in this respect, the groups of Niobe and Laocoon are the best examples; the one in the sublime and serious, the other in the learned and ornamental style. But the glory of Athens, as a single figure, and marking the highest culmination, was Minerva, of the Parthenon. Above all others she bore the charms of celestial youth, under the expression of severest virtue. Doubtless no more glorious contrast could be found to the stiff and conventional uncouthness of the Memnonian statues, than was produced in that fine realization of cultivated intellect invested with invincible power. The spirit of the beautiful was embodied in her whose masculine wisdom was tempered with feminine grace, the severity of dominion softened into elegance, and the sedateness of philosophy dissolved in the fervor of patriotic enthusiasm. Her majestic form of ivory rose forty feet in the dazzled air, draped in robes and ornaments of gold. At her feet lay a shield, covered with exquisite sculpture, representing, on the convex side, the Amazonian war, the Athenian leader being the portrait of Pericles, and on the concave side were giants warring against heaven. On her golden sandals were depicted the battle of the Centaurs. By special decree the Athenians forbade Phidias from inscribing his name on this, the divinest Pallas of his creation, in order that they might share equally among themselves the honor of an undertaking which the people in common had conceived and sustained.