of Hellenic Art, we can apply them to all our actual needs,—­learning from the Greeks themselves to preserve our independence, and at the same time to be duly novel and unrestrained according to circumstances.”  These are certainly noble sentiments; and one cannot but wish, that, when, in 1830, Klenze was called upon to prepare plans for the grand Walhalla of Bavaria, he had remembered his sublime theory and worked up to its spirit, instead of recalling the Parthenon in his exterior and the Olympian temple of Agrigentum in his interior.  The last effort of this distinguished artist was the building of three superb palaces for the museum of the Emperor at St. Petersburg, finished in 1851.

The seed thus planted fell upon good ground and brought forth a hundred-fold.  Then, throughout Germany, the scholastic formalism of the old Renaissance began to fall into disrepute, and a finer feeling for the eloquence of pure lines began to show itself.  The strict limitations of the classic orders were no longer recognized as impassable; a sentiment of artistic freedom, a consciousness of enlarged resources, a far wider range of form and expression, were evident in town and country, in civil and ecclesiastical structures; and with all this delightful and refreshing liberty was mingled that peculiar refinement of line which was revived from Greece and was the secret of this change.  It was not over monumental edifices alone that this calm and thoughtful spirit was breathed, but the most playful fancies of domestic architecture derived from it an increased grace and purity, and the study of Love moved over them, elegant and light-footed as Camilla.

  “The flower she touched on dipped and rose,
  And turned to look at her.”

This revival of Hellenic principles is now infusing life into modern German designs; and so well are these principles beginning to be understood, that architects do not content themselves with the mere reproduction of that narrow range of motives which was uttered in the temples of heroic Greece, but, under these new impulses, they gather in for their use all that has been done in ancient or modern Italy, in the Romanesque of Europe, in the Gothic period, in Saracenic or Arabic Art, in all the expressions of the old Renaissance.  By the very necessity of the Greek line, they are rendered catholic and unexcluding in their choice of forms, but fastidious and hesitating in their interpretation of them into this new language of Art.  Thus the good work is going on in Germany, and architecture lives there, thanks to those two illustrious pilgrims who brought back from the land of epics, not only the scallop-shells upon their shoulders, but in their hearts the consecration of Ideal Beauty.