blemish, local or national.  I of course knew before I went there that Greece had created science, art, and philosophy, but the means of measurement were wanting.  The sight of the Acropolis was like a revelation of the Divine, such as that which I experienced when, gazing down upon the valley of the Jordan from the heights of Casyoun, I first felt the living reality of the Gospel.  The whole world then appeared to me barbarian.  The East repelled me by its pomp, its ostentation, and its impostures.  The Romans were merely rough soldiers; the majesty of the noblest Roman of them all, of an Augustus and a Trajan, was but attitudinising compared to the ease and simple nobility of these proud and peaceful citizens.  Celts, Germans, and Slavs appeared as conscientious but scarcely civilised Scythians.  Our own Middle Ages seemed to me devoid of elegance and style, disfigured by misplaced pride and pedantry, Charlemagne was nothing more than an awkward German stableman; our chevaliers louts at whom Themistocles and Alcibiades would have laughed.  But here you had a whole people of aristocrats, a general public composed entirely of connoisseurs, a democracy which was capable of distinguishing shades of art so delicate that even our most refined judges can scarcely appreciate them.  Here you had a public capable of understanding in what consisted the beauty of the Propylon and the superiority of the sculptures of the Parthenon.  This revelation of true and simple grandeur went to my very soul.  All that I had hitherto seen seemed to me the awkward effort of a Jesuitical art, a rococo mixture of silly pomp, charlatanism, and caricature.

These sentiments were stronger as I stood on the Acropolis than anywhere else.  An excellent architect with whom I had travelled would often remark that to his mind the truth of the gods was in proportion to the solid beauty of the temples reared in their honour.  Judged by this standard, Athens would have no rival.  What adds so much to the beauty of the buildings is their absolute honesty and the respect shown to the Divinity.  The parts of the building not seen by the public are as well constructed as those which meet the eye; and there are none of those deceptions which, in French churches more particularly, give the idea of being intended to mislead the Divinity as to the value of the offering.  The aspect of rectitude and seriousness which I had before me caused me to blush at the thought of having often done sacrifice to a less pure ideal.  The hours which I passed on the sacred eminence were hours of prayer.  My whole life unfolded itself, as in a general confession, before my eyes.  But the most singular thing was that in confessing my sins I got to like them, and my resolve to become classical eventually drove me into just the opposite direction.  An old document which I have lighted upon among my memoranda of travel contains the following:—­

Prayer which I said on the Acropolis when I had succeeded in understanding the perfect beauty of it.