News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1891-11-26

| clear morning IN 1903 IL TOSe O6IOIe
me in the glory it had when Pericles
ordered it and Ictinus planned it and
! Phidias chiseled it and ProtOgines
painted it and Pausanias described it.
| Its gates, which were carefully guarded
by the ancients, open to let you in, and
you ascend by sixty marble steps the
propyaa, which Epaminodas wanted
to transfer to Thebes, but permission,
| | am glad to say, could not be granted
for the removal of this architectural
miracle.
In the days when ten cents would dc
more than a dollar now, the building
cost two million three hundred thou
sand dollars. See its five Ornamented
gates, the keys intrusted to an officer
for only one day lest the temptation to
go in and inappropriate the treasures
be too great for him; its ceiling a
| mingling of blue and scarlet and green,
| and the walls abloom with pictures ut
most in thought and coloring. Yonder
is temple to a goddess called Victory
Without Wings"
So many of the triumphs of the world
had been followed by defeat that the
Greeks wished in marble to indicate
that victory for Athens had come never
again. to fly away, and hence this tenn
pie to Victory Without Wings"-a
temple of marble, snow white and gilt
tering. Yonder, behold the pedestal
of Agrippa, twenty-seven feet high and
! mt no no 10
wonder of all the hill is the Parthenon.
In days when money was ten times
more valuable than now it cost
four million six hundred thousand
dollars. 1t is Doric grandeur,
having forty-six columns, each col
umn thirty-four feet high and six feet
two inches in diameter Wondrous in
DENOMINATIONS! Painted porticoes,
architraves tinged with ocher, shields
of gold hung up, lines of most delicate
curve, figures of horses and men and
women and gods, oxen on the way to
sacrifice, statues of the deities Dlony-
| sius, PrometheuS, Hermes, Demeter,
Zeus, Hera, Poseidon; in one frieze
twelve divinities; centaurs i'll battle;
weaponry from Marathon; chariot of
night; chariot of the morning; horses
of the sun, the fates, the furies; statue
of Jupiter holding in his right hand the
thunderboIt; silver footed chair in
which XerXes watched the battle of
Salamis only few miles away.
MINERVA IN FULL ARMoR.
Here is the colossal statue of Minerva
in full arInor, eyes of gray colored
stone, figure of a Sphinx, on her head,
griffins by her side (Which are lions
with eagles beak), spear in one hand,
statue of liberty in the other, a shield
carved with battle scenes, and even the
slippers sculptured and tied on with
thongs of gold. Far out at sea the
sailors saw this statue of Minerva rising
high above all the temples, glitterin3
in the sun. Here are statues of eques-
TRANS. statue of lioness, and there are
the Graces and yonder a horse in
bronze
There is a statue said in the time of
Augustus to have of its own accord
turned around from east to west and
spit blood; statues made out of shields
conquered in battle; statue of Apollo,
the expeller of locusts; statue of An
acreon, drunk and singing; statue of
Olympodorus, a Greek, memorable for
the fact that he was cheerful when
others were cast down, trait worthy
of sculpture. But walk on and around
the Acropolis, and yonder you see a
statue Of Hygeia, and the statue of
Theseus fighting the Minotaur, and the
statue of Hercules Staying serpents.
No wonder that Petronius said it was
easier to find a god than man in
Athens. Oh, the Acropolis. The most
of its temples and statues made from
the marble quarries of Mount Penteli-
cum, little way from the city
| have here on my table a block of
the Parthenon made out of this marble,
and on it is the sculpture of Phidias. /
brought it from the Acropolis. This
specimen has on it the dust of ages,
and the marks of explosion and battle,
but you can get from it some idea of
the delicate luster of the Acropolis
when it was covered with mountain
Of this marble cut into all the exquisite
shapes that genius could contrive and
striped with silver and aflame with
gold The Acropolis in the morning
light of those ancients must have shone
as though it were an aerolite cast off
from the MONDAY sun. The temples
must have looked like petrified foam.
The whole Acropolis must have seemed
like the white breakers of the great
ocean of time.
TIL APOSTLE PAUL ON MARS HILL.
But we cannot stop longer here, for
there is hill near by of more interest,
though it has not one chip of marble to
suggest statue or a temple. We has
ten down the Acropolis to ascend the
Areopagus or Mars Hill, as it is called.
1t took only about three minutes to
walk the distance, and the two hill
tops are so near that what | said in re-
ligious discourse on Mars Hill was heard
distinctly by some Eaglish gentlemen
on the Acropolis. This Mars Hill is
rough pile of rock fifty feet high 1t
was famous long before New Tesla
ment times
The Persians easily and terribly as.
saulted the AcropOlis from this hilltop.
Here assembled the court to try crimi-
nails It was held in the nighttime, sc
that the faces of the judges could not
be seen, nor the faces of the lawyers
who made the plea, and So instead OF
a trial being one of emotion, it must
have been one of cool justice; but there
was one occasion on this hill menora-
BILE above all others.
A little man, physically weak. and
his rhetoric described by himself as
contemplate, had by his sermons
rocked Athens with commotion, and he
was summoned either by writ of law or
hearty invitation to come upon that
pulpit of rock and give a specimen of
his theology. All the wiseacres of Ath-
ems turned out and turned up to hear
him. The more venerable of them sat
in an amphitheater the granite seats
of which are still visible, but the other
people swarmed on all sides of the hill
and at the base of il to hear this man,
whom some called a fanatic and others
called a madcap and others a bias
phemer and Others styled coDtemptu-
ously, This fellow"
Paul arrived in answer to the writ or
invitation, and confronted them and
gave them the biggest dose that NOR
tails ever took. He was so built that
nothing could scare him, and as for Ju-
piter and Athena, the god and the
goddess whose images were in full sight
on the adjoining hill, he had not so