“These marbles, chiefly ornamental, belong to one edifice dedicated to the guardian deity of the city, raised at the time of the greatest political power of the state, when all the arts which contribute to humanise life were developing their beneficial influence.  Many of the writers of Athens, whose works are the daily textbooks of our schools, saw in their original perfection the mutilated marbles which we still cherish and admire.  The Elgin collection has presented us with the external and material forms, in which the art of Phidias gave life and reality to the beautiful mythi which veiled the origin of his native city, and perpetuated in groups of matchless simplicity the ceremonies of the great national festival.  The lover of beauty and the friend of Grecian learning will here find a living comment on what he reads; and as in the best and severest models of antiquity we always discover something new to admire, so here we find fresh beauties at every visit, and learn how infinite in variety are simplicity and truth, and how every deviation from these principles produces sameness and satiety.  It is but just that those who feel the value of this collection should pay a tribute of thanks to the nobleman to whose exertions the nation is indebted for it; and the more so as he was made the object of vulgar abuse by many pretended admirers of ancient learning.  If Lord Elgin had not removed these marbles, there is no doubt that many of them would long since have been totally destroyed; and it was only after great hesitation, and a certain knowledge that they were daily suffering more and more from brutal ignorance and barbarism, that he could prevail on himself to employ the power he had obtained to remove them to England.  These marbles may be considered in two ways; first, as mere specimens of sculpture; and secondly, as forming part of the history of a people.  As specimens of sculpture they serve as excellent studies to young artists, whose taste is formed and chastened by the simplicity and truth of the models presented to them.  The advantage of studying the ancients in this department of art rests pretty nearly on the same grounds as those which may be given for our study of their written models.  Modern times produce excellence in every department of human industry, and our knowledge of nature, the result of continued accumulations, needs not now the limited experience of former ages.  The sciences founded on demonstration, though they may trace their origin to the writings of the Greeks, have advanced to a state in which nothing would be gained by constantly recurring to the ancient condition of knowledge.  But it is not so with those arts which belong to the province of design; they require a different discipline, and the faculties which they employ may have received a more complete development two thousand years ago, under favourable circumstances, than they have now.  Their perfection depends on circumstances over which we have little control:  they cannot, in our opinion,