the glorious monuments of antiquity that have reached us of the proud nineteenth century, none have so noble a significance as the broken marbles collected in this room.  The contemplative man, seeing their perfect beauties, asks himself in their presence many puzzling questions.  But perhaps the first that rises in the mind is wonder at the contrast between the development of art and the poorness of science in this splendid antiquity.  No steam then to wield the hammer; only the most limited knowledge of the earth:  the west an indescribable region of harmony and glory; the world a flat surface; fearful mariners hugging the shore close at home, and trusting to the stars; and England a savage place where wolves rent the air at night; and a heathen mythology the faith of the most civilised people of the earth.  Under these barbarous circumstances, the poetry that dwells in the heart of all people who cultivate some affinity to nature, fashioned the mould of a Phidias for the people of Athens.  A man with a stern soul, an eye large and grand, a frame built to realise the soul’s tasks—­we see this Phidias of the Greeks as he hovered about the foundations of the Parthenon, when the name of Pericles was every Greek’s watchword, four centuries and a half before our Christian era.  The man appears to have been of colossal parts in every way.  Versed in history, a poet given to study fables (as all poets are), keen in sifting the subtleties of geometry, a passionate reader of Homer; this was indeed the sculptor of the gods!  Of the high estimation in which the sculptures of the Parthenon should be held, it is superfluous to say more than all writers on art have agreed in saying.  Here we have master-pieces, beyond which the sculptors of the many ages that have passed away since Phidias laboured at his Jupiter in the Olympian grove have never reached.  High praise this to say of a man who has been twenty-two centuries in his grave, that he accomplished in the utmost perfection those ideals to which his imitators have vainly aspired.  It appears that Phidias had his troubles, knew the force of a frown from men in power, and in exile produced his master-piece.  Whether he died in disgrace and by foul means are points upon which the dust of ages has settled for ever.  We know thus much of him and no more.  But the visitor who has probably been more impressed with the contents of the Elgin Saloon than with the massive coarseness of the Egyptian antiquities, will be glad to hear a few general words—­an authoritative summing up of the matter from a pen more clearly authorised to touch the subject than ours can be.  A brief summary, a terse description, analytical and picturesque, of a field of speculation or a region of wonder, systematises the spectator’s impression, and with the view of fastening the proper contemplation of these master-pieces upon the visitor’s mind, we quote a few pointed sentences on the sculptures of the Elgin Saloon, from the pen of Sir Henry Ellis.