The united opinion. [volume] (Bradford, Vt.) 1881-1970, 1891-11-27

CToWueu uoIc otobosoV osSuspcoeuA'
and sculpture than In any other plac
under the whole heavens. original!
a fortress, afterward a congregation O
temples and statues and pillars, thei
ruins an enchantment from which NJ
observer ever breaks. No wonder tina
Aristides thought it the center OF al
things-Greece, the center OF the world
Attica, the center Of Greece; Athens
the center of Attica, and the Acropolii
the center of Athens. Earthquakes
have shaken it; Verres plundered IT,
Lord Elgin, the English ambassador
at Constantinople, got permission OF the
sultan to remove from the Acropolil
fallen pieces Of the building, but hi
took from the building to England the
finest statues, removing them at an ex
pense of eight hundred thousand dol
lars. A storm overthrow many of the
statues of the Acropolis. Morosini, the
general, attempted to remove from q
pediment the sculptured car and horses
Of Victory, but the clumsy machinery
dropped it, and all was lost.
The Turks turned the building into
a powder magazine where the Venetian
guns dropped a fire that by explosion
sent the columns flying in the air and
falling cracked and splintered. But
after all that time and storm and war
and iconoclasm have effected, the
Acropolisis the monarch of all ruins, and
before it bow the learning, the genius,
the poetry, the art, the history of the
ages. saw it as it was thousands of
years ago. had read so much about
it and dreamed so much about it, that
I needed no magician's wand to re-
store it.
At one wave of my hand on that
clear morning in 1889 it rose before
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
propyl@a, which Epaminodas wanted
to transfer to Thebes, but permission,
I am glad to say, could not be granted
for the removal of this architectural
miracle.
In the days when ten cents would do
more than dollar now, the building
cost two million three hundred thou
sand dollars. See it's five ornamented
gates, the keys intrusted to an officer
for only one day lest the temptation to
60 in and misappropriate the treasures
be too great for him; it's 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 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
twelve square. But the overshadowing
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. It is a Doric grandeur,
having forty-six columns, each col
umn thirty-four feet high and six feet
two inches in diameter. Wondrous in
tercolumniationsl Painted porticoes,
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 Diony-
sius, Prometheus, Hermes, Demeter,
zeus, Hera, Poseidon; in one frieze
twelve divinities; centaurs in battle;
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
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 armor, 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
nigh above all the temples, glittering
IN the sun. Here are statues of eques-
;rians, statue of a lioness, and there are
he Graces and yonder a horse in
bronze.
There is statue said in the time of
Augustus to have of its own accord
;urned around from east to west and
pit blood; statues made out of shields
in battle; statue of Apollo,
he expeller of locusts; statue of An
acraon DRINK and SINGING. Statua of