Winckelmann, no doubt, passed under review a great number of Egyptian and Greek statues; we have, however, added in more recent times the closer acquaintance of the Aeginetan sculptures, no less than those masterworks which in part are ascribed to Pheidias and in part we must recognize as creations of his age and under his supervision. In a word we have secured a more intimate knowledge of a number of sculptures, whether single statues or reliefs, which, in their relation to the severity of the ideal style, are referable to the age in which Greek art was at its fullest bloom. For these astonishing monuments of Greek sculpture, as is well known, we are indebted to the efforts of Lord Elgin, who, as English ambassador to Turkey, had a number of statues and reliefs of the greatest beauty taken from the Parthenon at Athens and other towns to England. People have blamed such acquisitions and called them temple robbery. Lord Elgin has, however, as a matter of fact, really rescued these works of art for Europe and preserved them from complete destruction. Such an enterprise deserves its true recognition. Moreover, it is due to this circumstance that the interest of all connoisseurs and friends of art have been directed to an epoch and a mode of presentation, which, in the exceptionally consistent severity of its style, constitutes the true greatness and height of the Ideal. What the general verdict has highly estimated in the works of this epoch is not the charm and grace of form and pose, not the elegance of expression which already, as in the times subsequent to Pheidias, makes an external appeal and distinctly aims at pleasing the spectator, nor yet the delicacy and boldness of the elaboration; rather the general chorus of praise is concentrated upon the expression of self-subsistency and essential repose in these figures, and more especially has this note of admiration been most emphatic by virtue of the free vitality, the absolute transfusion of and command over the purely natural and material aspect, a command by which the artist moulds the marble, makes it alive and endows it with a soul. And we may add that when all has been said that can be said in such praise the figure of the reclining river-god remains as most emphatically its object, which is one of the finest examples of antique art we have recovered.