and whilst the climate and soot of Blooms- | far more injurious to them than the clibury are slowly affecting their crumbling mate of the Acropolis. The climate of surface, the pure air of the Acropolis the Acropolis is certainly the very best would preserve them longer by centuries. for their preservation that Europe could Athens is now a far more central archæo-afford; and the climate of Bloomsbury is logical school than London; and the art certainly one of the worst. Every one students of the world would gain im- knows that the marvellous Pentelic marmensely if the ornaments of the Parthenon ble resists in the Attic air the effect of could be seen again together and beneath exposure for very long periods whilst its the shadow of the Parthenon itself. The surface is intact. When the surface is Parthenon marbles are to the Greek na-gone and the cracks begin to pass deep tion a thousand times more dear and into the substance, the deterioration of more important than they ever can be to the marble goes on rapidly. Go to our the English nation, which simply bought Museum and observe the cruel scars that them. And what are the seventy-four have eaten in parallel lines the breast and years that these dismembered fragments ribs of the River God (Ilissus). Night and have been in Bloomsbury when compared day those scars are being subtly filled with the two thousand two hundred and with London soot. It is no doubt true forty years wherein they stood on the that the antique marbles are occasionally Acropolis? washed and cleaned. But at what a cost, and at what a risk! The stock argument for retaining the marbles in London is that they are safe here, and nobody knows what might happen at Athens. In one sense, we trust they are safe in London; but they stand in the heart of a great city, and no man can absolutely say that the Museum might not be destroyed in some great fire in Bloomsbury. As to political or riotous commotions, they are по more to be dreaded in Athens than they are in London. Whilst Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and Rome have been the scenes of fearful street battles within fifty years, there has been nothing of the kind at Athens since the establishment of the kingdom. And, even if there were, it is inconceivable that either a street fight or a fire could touch the Acropolis. One might as well say that a row in the Canongate at Edinburgh might destroy the colonnade on Calton Hill. Even a bombardment of the city of Athens would not touch the Acropolis, except with direct malice aforethought. Of course the man in Pall Mall or in the club armchair has his sneer ready: Are you going to send all statues back to the spot where they were found? That is all nonsense. The Elgin marbles stand upon a footing entirely different from all other statues. They are not statues; they are architectural parts of a unique building, the most famous in the world; a building still standing, though in a ruined state, which is the national symbol and palladium of a gallant people, and which is a place of pilgrimage to civ ilized mankind. When civilized man makes his pilgrimage to the Acropolis and passes through the Propylæa, he notes the exquisite shrine of Nike Apteros, with part of its frieze intact and the rest of the frieze filled up in plaster, because the original is in London. He goes on to the Erechtheion, and there he sees that one of the lovely Caryatides who support the cornice is a composition cast, because It may be taken for certain that the Mu- the original is in London. He goes on to seum now standing on the summit of the the Parthenon, and there he marks the Acropolis is a spot ideally protected by pediments which Lord Elgin wrecked and nature from any conceivable risk of fire, left a wreck stripped of their figures; he accidental injury, civil or foreign war. sees long bare slices of torn marble, One can only wish that the contents of whence the frieze was gutted out, and the the Louvre, the National Gallery, and the sixteen holes where the two ambassadors Vatican were anything like as safe. And wrenched out the Metopes. We English it so happens that this ideally safe spot | have wrung off and hold essential parts of for preserving priceless relics is the very a great national building, which bears spot where a glorious genius and a won-wreckage on its mangled brow, and which, derful people placed them two thousand like Edipus at Colonus, holds up to view the hollow orbs out of which we tore the very eyes of Pheidias. When Lord Elgin committed this dread. ful havoc, he may have honestly thought that he was preserving for mankind these precious relics. The Turks took no heed of them, and the few Greeks could only | Chapter House, had been carried off, durmutter their feeble groan in silence. But ing the occupation of the country by a everything is now changed. To the Greek foreign enemy, by an amateur with a fine nation now the ruins on the Acropolis are taste for antiques, and a good nose for a far more important and sacred than are bargain, to put into his "collection?" any other national monuments to any other The case is far stronger than this; for people. They formed the outward and the Elgin marbles are not statues, or visible sign of the national existence and tombs; they form indispensable parts of re-birth. But for the glorious traditions the most symmetrical building ever raised of Athens, of which these pathetic ruins by man. are the everlasting embodiment, Greece would never have attracted the sympathy of the civilized world and would not have been assisted to assert herself as a free State. At the foundation of it, Corinth, astride on both seas on her isthmus, had many superior claims as a capital. The existence of the Acropolis made any cap-form their claims to sympathy as a people, ital but Athens impossible, as it makes Greece herself incorporated on the base of her ancient glory. Naturally, the antiques found in Greece form a far more important interest to the whole nation than they can to a nation which has simply purchased or 66 con. veyed" them. No people in the world are so intensely jealous of their national memorials as the Greeks of to-day. They the symbol of their traditional past, their peculiar claim to a unique interest, and no doubt much of what Demetrius the silversmith and Alexander the coppersmith told their fellow citizens was the practical value of Diana of the Ephesians. At a Thus to free Greece the Acropolis is the great national symbol; more than the Forum and the Palatine are to Rome, more than the Duomo and the Palazzo Vec-moderate computation the ruins and the chio are to Florence, more than Notre Dame and the Louvre are to Paris, more than the Abbey, Westminster Hall, and the Tower are to London. Rome, Florence, Paris, London, have scores of historic monuments and national memorials; and they all have many other centuries of ancient history and many other phases of national achievement. Athens has only one; Greece is centred round Athens; and ancient Athens means the Acropolis and its surroundings. We profess to be proud of our Tower and Abbey and our national monuments. To the patriotic Athenian of to-day the Acropolis represents Tower, Abbey, St. Stephen's, Westminster Hall, Domesday Book, Magna Carta, and all our historic memorials together. He has nothing else; and the sight day and night of that vast, lonely, towering mass of ruin, with its weird but silent message from the past, produces on the subtle imagination of a sensitive people an effect infinitely deeper than even our Abbey produces on a Londoner. And every morning and evening that the Athenian raises his eyes to his Abbey he sees the scars where, in a time of national humiliation, a rich Englishman wrenched off slices of the building to place in his collection at home. What would be the feelings of an Englishman if he saw the Abbey gutted within this century, and knew that the shrine of the Confessor, the tombs of the kings, the altar screen, the chair and sword, and the Purbeck columns from the transepts and the museums are worth 100,000l. a year to the Greek people. They have made stringent laws not only to keep every fragment of antiquity in the country, but to keep every fresh discovery in the very district and spot where it is found. We need not discuss the policy of this. A very strong government recently found it impossible to move the Hermes of Praxiteles from Olympia to Athens. And no doubt the ruins of Olympia are now worth a new railway to the modern inhabitants of Elis. Greece is now quite full of museums. In Athens alone there are seven or eight, of which three are principal and distinct national collections. These, at any rate, are as suitable, as well kept, and as accessible as are the museums of any capital in the world. They are year by year, and almost month by month, increasing in value and importance. With excellent judgment the Greeks have resolved to form a special museum on the rock of the Acropolis, conveniently sunk in the southeastern angle, in which is placed every fragment recovered, not in situ, from any building raised on the Acropolis itself. This museum, small as it is, is already to the art-student one of the most indispensable in existence. Here are the exquisite reliefs of Nike; here are all the detached fragments which have been recovered from the Parthenon, from pediments, metopes, and frieze; here too are the archaic figures from the temples destroyed by Xerxes before Salamis. The last feature alone places this little museum in the front rank of the collections of the world for purposes of studying the history of art. For the history of glyptic art, the Acropolis has within the last twenty years become the natural rendezvous of the student. The Greeks, Germans, English, and French have founded special schools of archæology, and other nations have formed less formal centres of study. The result is that Athens is now become a school of archæology, far more important in itself, and far more international in character, than London is or ever can be. By what right, except that of possession, do we continue to withhold from the students and pilgrims who flock to the Acropolis from all parts of the civilized world substantive portions of the unique building which they come to study, those decorations of it which lose half their artistic interest and their historic meaning when separated from it by four thousand miles of sea? The most casual amateur, as well as the mere tiro in art, can at once perceive how greatly the Pheidian sculp. tures gain when they can be seen in the Attic sunlight, alongside of the architectural frame for which they were made, and at least under the shadow of the building of which they form part. The ruined colonnades are necessary to explain the carvings; and the carvings give life and voice to the ruined colonnades. These demigods seem to pine and mope in the London murk; in their native sunlight the fragments seem to breathe again. On the Acropolis itself every fragment from Pheidias's brain seems as sacred and as venerable as if it were the very bones of a hero. In a London museum they are objects of curious interest like the Dodo or the Rosetta stone-most instructive and of intense interest - but they are not relics, such as make the spot whereon we stand sacred in our eyes, as do the tombs of the Edwards or the graves of the poets in our Abbey. In the British Museum the excellent directors, feeling how much the genius loci affects these Elgin marbles, have placed models, casts, and various devices to explain to the visitor the form of the Acropolis and the place of those carvings in the Parthenon. They try to bring the Acropolis into our Elgin room at Bloomsbury, instead of sending the contents of the Elgin room to the Acropolis! One might as well imagine that the tombs of the kings in our Abbey had been carried off to put in a museum in St. Petersburg, and that the Russian keeper of the antiquities had set up a model of the Abbey beside them, in order to give the Muscovite public a faint sense of the genius loci. It is enough to make the cheek of an honest Englishman burn when he first sees the ghastly rents which British (North British) taste tore out of this temple, and then passes into the humble museum below where the remnants are preserved. They are not so important as our Elgin trophies, but they are very important - beautiful, unique, and quite priceless. And then come long ranges of casts - the originals in London—and so the whole series is maimed and disfigured. In the case of at least one metope the Acropolis Museum possesses one half, the other half of which is in London. So that of a single group, the invention of a consummate genius, and the whole of which is extant, London shows half in marble and half in plaster cast, and the Acropolis shows the other half in marble and the rest in plaster. Surely it were but decent, if he honestly respect great art, that the original should be set up as a whole. But it seems that in the nineteenth century we show our profound veneration for a mighty genius by splitting one of his works into two and exhibiting the fragments severed at opposite corners of Europe, as mediæval monks thought their country's honor consisted in exhibiting here a leg and here an arm of some mythical patron saint. No one in his senses would talk about restoring the Parthenon, and no one dreams of replacing the marbles in the pediments. What might be done is to replace the northern frieze of Nike Apteros, and restore the Caryatid to her sisters beneath the cornice of Erechtheion. The difference between the effect of the Pheidian fragments as seen in Bloomsbury and that of the Pheidian fragments as seen on the Acropolis is one that only ignorance and vulgarity could mistake. Who would care for the virgins, saints, and "Last Judgments" from the portals of Amiens, Reims, or Chartres, if they were stuck on pedestals and catalogued at Bloomsbury, with or without cork models of the cathedral? The notion that the interests of art demand the retention of parts of a great building in a foreign country is a mere bit of British Philistinism and art gabble. The true interests of art demand that the fragments which time and man have spared of the most interesting building in the world should be seen together, seen in their native sky and under all the complex associations of that most hallowed spot. One might as well argue that the interests of art would be served if Michael Angelo's "Last Judgment were stripped off the Sistine wall, cut up into square blocks, and hung in gold frames in Trafalgar Square. It is idle now to reopen the story of the original plunder. British self-complacency has long been content with the old maxim-fieri non debuit, factum valet. Happily the English name and our national literature has cleared itself of offence by a noble protest which will outlive the name both of Elgin and of Herostratus. Byron said not one word too much. But since the days of Byron and Lord Elgin everything has changed. Athens is now a city as regularly governed, as much frequented, and nearly as large as Florence or Venice. The Greek nation, small as it is, is as much entitled to honorable consideration as Holland, Belgium, Denmark, or Switzerland. The familiar sneers of Pall Mall and Fleet Street about Greek democracy and the Hellenic blood have nothing to do with the matter. Greece is now a friendly nation with a regular government. It has also within twenty years become a settled country, open to all men, and one of the great centres of art study for the civilized world. To Greece the Acropolis is more important than are Malta and Gibraltar to England. The question is how long this country, in an ignorant assumption of "the interests of art," will continue to inflict a wholly disproportionate humiliation on a small but sensitive and otherwise friendly people. How the restoration could be managed it is not worth discussing here. Obviously by some kind of international treaty. The bulk of the Parthenon, of course, is now on the Acropolis. But London holds the most precious remnants from both pediments. Paris, it seems, has one of the south metopes, some fragments from the west pediment, and a small section of the east frieze. London has fifteen metopes, out of the original ninety-two. What remains of the rest are still in situ, or in the Acropolis Museum. London has the larger part of the south, north, and east frieze; the remainder is on the Acropolis, except a section at Paris. Happily the noble west frieze remains nearly perfect in situ. Thus the Acropolis now con. tains: (I) All that remains of the building itself. (2) Some grand fragments from both pediments. (3) All that remains of ninety-two me. topes, except sixteen. (4) About one-third of what exists of the frieze.* The question is, how can all these sections be reunited on the Acropolis? Obviously by an international treaty, in which France, for reasons that need not be stated, would willingly join. She would be proud to lay down her petty fragments on the altar of Athene, for the pleasure of seeing Albion disgorge. The Greeks would accept any terms: Hoc Ithacus velit, et magno mercentur Atridæ. It would not consist with our honor to make a paltry bargain. Let the thirty-five thousand pieces of silver (or was it gold ?) that we paid to milord perish with him. We shall restore the Parthenon marbles much as we restored the Ionian Islands and Heligoland to their national owners, because we value the good name of England more than unjust plunder. If the barkers of Pall Mall and the opposition rags have to be quieted, let us give them to munch a commercial treaty. A little free trade with England would satisfy the growlers, and would do the Greeks permanent good. But let us have no higgling. Let us do the right thing with a free hand. Is it too much to hope that such a treaty may be made by the Englishman whom the world knows as the lover of Homer, and whom the Hellenes of to-day always associate with their country and their hopes? He earned the gratitude of Greeks, the thanks of England, and the respect of honest men everywhere when he restored the western islands to their own countrymen. Let him earn a more enduring and touching gratitude by replacing on the sublime rock wherein centre so many of the memories of mankind those inimitable marbles which Pericles and Pheidias set up there in a supreme moment of the world's history. It is a cruel mockery, in the name of "high art," to leave them scattered about the galleries of Europe. FREDERIC HARRISON. • These proportions are stated roughly, for the general argument, and not with archæological pretensions. I know that the archeologists bark and growl at a lay interloper, like the street dogs of Constantinople at a strange cur. From The Asiatic Quarterly Review. LIFE AMONG THE DRUSES IN 1845 AND 1882. I. strictly enjoined by it to assimilate themselves outwardly to whatever religion may be prevailing and victorious, and inwardly maintain a secret deadly hatred to its believers, with a firm grasp on their own A TEN years' residence in the Lebanon, tenets. Their places of worship are from '45 to '55, before its inhabitants had called khalwat, which means secluded, come into much contact with Europeans, and are really secret and secluded houses, and while they still preserved intact their which are jealously guarded from all inown ways, gave me much insight into the trusion. What is done in the secrecy of home-life and customs of both Druses those meetings has never come to light, as and Maronites, into which two great sec-it would be certain death to any one who tions the inhabitants of the Lebanon are would dare to divulge it. divided. There were to be found a few Mohammedan villages, and a sprinkling of Greek Christians here and there; but the two great factions, which had possessed themselves of the Lebanon, and kept it in a constant state of disorder and tumult, were, as has been said, these two. They were, at the time of which I speak, and are still to this day, always in a state of feud with each other; and their internal dissensions too often culminate in entire districts being laid waste, and whole villages burnt, on the path of the victorious party, sometimes on the one side and sometimes on the other. The Druse religion divides its adhe rents into two parts: the "U'kkál," and the "Juhhál," which, literally interpreted, means the wise or reasonable, from a'kl, reason, and the ignorant or foolish, from jehl, folly. There are many degrees of initiation, and it is only those who have reached the highest degree that may know all the mys terious secrets of their religion; and these exact the most abject, unquestioning obedience from all others, and are looked up to with the greatest awe and reverence. A very few women are allowed to be enrolled among the ranks of the "initiated," in the lower degrees; but the cases are very rare indeed (though I was told that in isolated instances they did exist) that the higher degrees are permitted to them. The Maronites, so named after their teacher and head, Mar Maroon, are descendants of the ancient inhabitants, who, being already Christians, submitted to the Roman Church at the first Crusade in the twelfth century. They never had much It is easy to distinguish the " U'kkál," of a martial spirit, and in their battles or initiated, from the "Juhhál," or uninwith the Druses are generally beaten initiated. Everything about them betokens almost every engagement, even though in point of numbers the advantage may be on their side, thus proving themselves far inferior both in courage and tactics. They live chiefly in the northern part of the Lebanon, from the Dog River, near Beyrout, to Tripoli, but are found also all over the Lebanon and the Anti-Lebanon, with a few in the larger cities of Syria. The Druses are the descendants of what were supposed to be the remnants of the old Canaanites, and are (so-called) Arabs, who took possession in 821 of the Metten, a part of Mount Lebanon which was then an empty waste, and which recommended itself to them as being most difficult of access to intruders. They afterwards adopted the tenets of Hakim-bi-amr-illah (governor by the command of God), as taught by his adherent, Mohammed - ibn - Ismail-el-Darázy, from whom they have taken their name of Druses. To enter into the peculiar doctrines of their religion is not the object of this paper. Suffice it to say, that they are the burden of a mystery; and the higher they ascend in the scale of degrees in initiation, the more deeply imbued is the whole person, countenance, figure, and dress with the consciousness of a weight, a something to be kept secret at all hazards. From the moment they begin the coveted degrees, the whole person commences to undergo a change, which grows insidiously upon them. The Druses, as a race, are of middle height, strong and well built, with fine, open countenances, full of fire and intelligence. I do not think I ever saw a particularly tall or stout person among them; but every movement of their lithe, wiry figures gives an impression of great energy and perseverance. They often make strong professions of warm, undying friendship; but it needs only one glance into their restless, burning eyes to feel sure that they can be bitter foes, and are exceedingly suspicious of every one outside their own nation. That they are of the same origin as the Bedouins of the desert, and of the de |