The grandest inspiration came from Marathon, and was exemplified in that glorious art which best expressed the manliness of the Grecian race, and rose highest in the republic in its freest hour. From the battle of Salamis to Pericles, scarcely fifty years elapsed, in which brief period art had advanced from eastern archaism to the most refined western excellence, from the rude carving of Selinus to the consummate sculptures of the Parthenon. The finest group of antiquity is preserved to us from the western front of that magnificent temple. Notwithstanding the variety of the figures, there is not one which is inert, or which represents a perpendicular line. In the centre are Neptune, with the trident in his left hand, and Minerva, with the spear in her right, with their chariots and attendants. The goddess of wisdom wields the strongest hand, and the sculptor has so adroitly managed the composition, as to place Neptune in the way of his own horses, while Minerva is allowed free passage in her nobler career. This pediment, looking down upon the mighty metropolis, and the Ægean bathing its western brim, bore a record and prophecy of high significance to him who approached by land or sea. Cimon ornamented the public squares of Athens from his private fortune; and Pericles added markets, halls, gymnasia, and temples, all of which he caused to be adorned with innumerable statues by superior masters. The crowded wonders of the Acropolis, in particular, seemed to the astonished visitor, one great offering, the aggregate of national enthusiasms expressed in transcendant art. Toward this subordinate Olympus, a gigantic flight of steps conducted through the Propylæa, which opened its fivefold gates of bronze to a world of men and gods in precious forms, peopling marble halls, and adorning brilliant shrines. Here, for the temple of Polias, Phidias erected that statue of Minerva whose brazen helmet gleamed far off to greet the mariner as he doubled the Sunian promontory; and that other Pallas, named the Lemnian beauty; and a third, the "immortal maid," and protectress of the Parthenon, to whose colossal fascinations of ivory and gold allusion has already been made. So much were that democratic people animated with the passion of Pericles, which themselves had mainly inspired, that when Phidias recommended marble as being a cheaper material than ivory for the gigantic figure required, it was for that very reason that ivory was unanimously preferred. Miracles indeed abounded on every hand, and as the great patron and perfecter of them all, stood there the incarnation of his age, each masterpiece attested the culmination of that glorious star which blazed in tranquil beauty while he lived, and paled in tempest when he died. The outward decline of Greece was strangely sudden, and left a blank which has never been filled; but the empire of her inner spirit can never perish, so long as heroism may