The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1897-03-30

there would have been no Milton. The
modern wits, who are now or have been
ont on the divine mission OF making the
world laugh at the right time, can De
traced back to Aristophanes, the Athenl-
an, and many Of the jocosites that are
now taken as new had their suggestions
twenty-three hundred years ago in the
fifty-four comedies Of that master OF mer-
riment. Grecian mythology has been the
richest mine from which orators and es-
sayists have drawn their illustrations
and painters the themes for their canvas,
and although now an exhausted mine,
Grecian mythology has done work that
nothing else could have accomplished;
Boreasl representing the north wind;
Sis. -phus, rolling the stone up the hill,
only to have the same thing to do over
again: Tantalus, with fruits above him
that he could not reach: Achilles, with
his arrows; Icarus. with his waxen wings,
flying too near the sun; the Centanrs,
half man and half beast; Orpheus, with
his Tyre; Atlas, with the world on his
back, all these and more have helped
literature from the graduates speech on
commencement day to Rufus Choates
eulogium on Daniel Webster at Dart
mouth. Tragedy and comedy were born
in the festivals Of Dionysius at Athens.
The lyric and elegiac and epic poetry Of
Greece five hundred years before Christ
has it's echoes in the Tennysons, Longfel-
lows, and Byrants of eighteen and nine
teen hundred years after Christ. There
is not an effective pulpit or editorial
chair or professors room or cultured
parlor or intelligent farmhouse to-day in
America or Europe that could not appro-
priately employ Paul's ejaculation and
say, 4 am debtor to the Greeks
.'The fact is this, Paul had got much
OF his oratorical power of expression
from the Greeks. That he had studied
their literature was evident, when stand
ing in the presence Of an audience OF
Greek scholars on Mars Hill, which
oyerlooks Athens, he dared to quote
from one OF their own Greek poets, eith-
err Cleanthus or Aratus, declaring, As
certain also Of your own poets have said,
s'for we are also his offspring And
he made accurate quotation, Cleanthus,
one of the poets, having written:
t'For we thine offspring are. All things
that creep
Are but the echo of the voice divine"
; And Aratus, one OF their own poets,
had written:
ssDoth care perplex? Is lowering danger
nigh?
We are his offspring, and to Jove we fly"
sit was rather a risky thing for Paul
to attempt to quote extemporaneously
from a poem in a language foreign to his,
and before Greek scholars, but Paul did
it without stammering, and then &C
knowledged before the most distin-
guished audience on the planet his in
debtedness to the Greeks, crying out in
his grafton, :As one of your own poets
has said
ARCHITECTURE'S INSPIRATION.
Furthermore, all the civilized world.
like Paul, is indebted to the Greeks for
architecture. The world before the time
of the Greeks had built monoliths, ODE
lisks, cromlechs, sphfnyes and pyramids,
but they were mostly monumental to the
dead whom they failed to memorabilia.
We are not certain even OF the names
of those in whose commenforation the
pyramids are built. But Greek architect
ure did most for the living. Ignoring
Egyptian precedents, and borrowing
nothing from other nations, Greek archi-
lecture carved it's own columns, set it's
own pediments, adjusted its own en-
tablatures. rounded it's own mOuldfngs.
and carried out as never before the three
qualities OF right building, called by an
old author "frmatas, utilitas, venustas,
namely, frmness, usefulness, beauty.
Although the Parthenon on the Acrop-
oils of Athens is only wreck OF the
storms and earthquakes and lombard
ments Of many centuries, and although
Lord Elgin took from one side OF that
building, at an expense OF $25O.OOO, two
shiploads Of sculpture, one shipload &c.
ing down in the Mediterranean and the
other shnpload now to be found in the
British Museum, the ParthenOn. though
IN comparative ruins. has been an in
spira tion to all architects of centuries
past, and will be an inspiration all the.
time from now until the world itself is
a temple ruin. Oh! that Parthenon-
One never gets over having once seen 1T.
It. looks like wrecked eternity. But
what 1t have been when it stood as its
architect, Ictinus, built 1t out Of Penteli-
can marble, white as NJ It Blanc at noon
day, and as overwhelming. Height above
height. Overlapping the august and ma
a statue of Pallas Promachus in bronze,
so tall and flashing that sailors far out
at sea beheld the plume of her helmet.
Without the aid of her Eternal God 1t
never could have been planned, and with
out the aid Of God the chisels and trowels
never could have constructed it. There
is not a fine church building in all the
world or a properly constructed court
house, or beautiful art gallery, or an
appropriate auditorium, or a tasteful
home, which. because of that ParthenOn,
whether it's style or some other style be
adopted, is not directly or indirectly in
debted to the Greeks.
''But there is another art in my mind
the most fascinating, elevating, and in
spring Of all arts, and the nearest to the
divine-for which all the world owes a
debt to'the Hellenes that will never be
paid / mean sculpture. At least 600
years before Christ the Greeks perpetu-
ated the human race and form in terra
Gotta and marble. What a blessing to
the human family that men and women,
nightly useful, who could live only with
in century, may be perpetuated Tor
..s,Nx