OR their temples the Greeks sought a sun-bright eminence like the Acropolis at Athens or Corinth. On these they erected fanes surrounded with columns, usually hypæthral, or open at the roof, with a simple but imposing façade, or an entire peristyle, a low gable resting upon a row of pillars and presenting above the entablature that long-based triangle, called the pediment, which was enriched with statues and sculptured ornaments descriptive or symbolical of the gods and heroes of their brilliant mythology of nature.

The climax of architectural effect was reached in Athens when the Doric temple of Phidias was perched upon the Acropolis. I suppose no inscription does justice to the Parthenon and its circumjacent structures: history must be summoned to our aid if we would duly appreciate them; and when we remember that Pericles, who has given his name to a halcyon age in the world's history, ordered the erection of the temple as we now restore it in fancy; that the immortal Phidias directed the work and designed the ornaments; that Callicrates and Ictinus built it of white marble; we obtain a glimpse of the reciprocal bearings of history and artthe glories of the age of Pericles, the creative genius of Phidias, the consummate skill of the master-builders, the splendid capabilities

of Pentelican marble and the ready intelligence of the Athenian people. It has been justly said that "Athens could not have built a Parthenon without Pentelicus near at hand."

The Parthenon was in full view from the Areopagus, or Hill of Mars, where the wise men of Athens held their sessions: the famous speeches of world-renowned orators, pronounced from the Pnyx, re-echoed among its columns; it is replete with the history of pagan Greece, and yet we chiefly like to think of it in another historic connection. It is when the great apostle to the Gentiles stood on Mars' Hill and his splendid eloquence thundered through its peristyle and was illustrated by the features and ornaments of the temple itself.

Turning to his right as he spoke, he pointed to the Parthenon when he told them that God, who created the world and all that it contained, "dwelt not in temples made with hands." He had in view the beautiful columns of the peristyle, the exuberant sculptures of the tympanum and the colossal figure of Pallas Athena, in ivory and gold, the work of Phidias, rising more than forty feet from the floor, with the surrounding statues of deities and demigods, when he said, "Forasmuch as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think (as) you in your blind devotion do) that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device." The conclusion was not flattering, but startling,

that if God had winked at the times of ignorance-considered by his audience as the period of greatest light and gloryduring which that temple was built and an altar erected to the Unknown God, He now, by the voice of his humble, persecuted apostle, called on men everywhere to repent. Such is the Christian lesson drawn from the Parthenon.

One word more. We find an epitome of Grecian architecture and of Grecian history in the Parthenon and its surrounding structures. It was columnar, it was low, it was massive and yet graceful, it was open, it was full of chaste decoration. Founded on correct principles which have challenged the criticism of succeeding ages, and planned with great mathematical exactitude, it combined beauty, fitness and strength; and the Grecian type, notwithstanding the decline of Grecian power and the rise of other systems, is still accepted as a model for splendid structures in all parts of the world.

It does not need the reconstructive finger of a Cuvier or an Agassiz in art to restore on paper the wonders of the Acropolis as they clustered there in uninjured completeness in the days of Pericles and long after.

Thus restored, it is almost a synopsis of the Grecian annals. The Western view would present, on the left, at the foot, those Pelasgian walls which take us far beyond the domain of authentic history, to an anteHellenic period which is full of fable and conjecture. In the precipitous side is the cave of Pan, above which is the temple of Poseidon Erectheus. Upon the steep front are the Propylæa and the Temple of Victory, which mark the pride of Grecian conquests; and crowning the whole is the Parthenon

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"I owe you, sir, an apology for not having acceded before to the desire you were kind enough to intimate more than once to see me; but, really, my health has been so feeble that I did not dare to hazard the excitement of so interesting an interview. Besides, sir," he added, with some pleasantry, wonderful and fascinating eloquence your has mesmerized so large a portion of our people wherever you have gone, and even some of our members of Congress," waving his hand toward the two or three gentlemen who were present, "that I feared to come under its influence, lest you might shake my faith in some principles in regard to the foreign policy of this government which I have long and constantly cherished.

"And in regard to this matter you will allow me, I hope, to speak with that sincerity and candor which becomes the interest the subject has for you and for myself, and which is due to us both as the votaries of freedom.

"I trust you will believe me, too, when I tell you that I entertain the liveliest sympathies in every struggle for liberty in Hungary and in every country, and in this I believe I express the universal sentiment of my countrymen. But, sir, for the sake of my country, you must allow me to protest against the policy you propose to her. Waiving the grave and momentous question of the

right of one nation to assume the executive power among nations for the enforcement of international law, or of the right of the United States to dictate to Russia the character of her relations with the nations around her, let us come at once to the practical consideration of the matter.

"You tell us yourself, with great truth and propriety, that mere sympathy, or the expression of sympathy, cannot advance your purposes. You require 'material aid.' And indeed it is manifest that the mere declarations of the sympathy of Congress or of the President or of the public would be of little avail, unless we were prepared to enforce those declarations by a resort to arms, and unless other nations could see that preparation and determination upon our part.

"Well, sir, suppose that war should be the issue of the course you propose to us. Could we then effect anything for you, ourselves or the cause of liberty? To transport men and arms across the ocean in sufficient numbers and quantities to be effective against

Russia and Austria would be impossible. It is a fact which perhaps may not be generally known that the most imperative reason with Great Britain for the close of her last war with us was the immense cost of the transportation and maintenance of forces and munitions of war in such a distant theatre, and yet she had not perhaps more than thirty thousand men upon this continent at any time. Upon land Russia is invulnerable to us, as we are to her; upon the ocean a war between Russia and this country would result in mutual annoyance to commerce, but probably in little else. I learn recently that her war marine is superior to that of any nation in Europe, except, perhaps, Great Britain. Her ports are few, her commerce limited, while we, on our part, would offer as a prey to her cruisers a rich and extensive commerce.

"Thus, sir, after effecting nothing in such a war, after abandoning our ancient policy of amity and non-intervention in the affairs of other nations, and thus justifying them in abandoning the terms of forbearance and non-interference which they have hitherto preserved toward us--after the downfall, perhaps, of the friends of liberal institutions in Europe-her despots, imitating and provoked by our fatal example, may turn upon us in the hour of our weakness and exhaustion, and with an almost equally irresistible force of reason and of arms they may say to us,

You have set us the example: You have quit your own to stand on foreign ground; you have abandoned the policy you professed in the day of your weakness to interfere in the affairs of the people upon this continent in behalf of those principles the supremacy of which you say is necessary to your pros

perity, to your existence. We, in our own turn, believing that your anarchical doctrines are destructive of, and that monarchical principles are essential to, the peace, security and happiness of our subjects, will obliterate the bed which has nourished such noxious weeds: we will crush you as the propagandists of doctrines so destructive of the peace and good order of the world.'

"The indomitable spirit of our people might, and would, be equal to the emergency, and we might remain unsubdued even by so tremendous a combination; but the consequences to us would be terrible enough. You must allow me, sir, to speak thus freely, as I feel deeply, though my opinion may be of but little import, as the expression of a dying man. Sir, the recent melancholy subversion. of the republican government of France, and that enlightened nation voluntarily placing its neck under the yoke of despotism, teach us to despair of any present success for liberal institutions in Europe. They give They give us an impressive warning not to rely upon others for the vindication of our principles, but to look to ourselves, and to cherish with more care than ever the security of our institutions and the preservation of our policy and principles.

son of the world cannot resist. But if we should involve ourselves in the tangled web of European politics, in a war in which we could effect nothing, and if in that struggle Hungary should go down and we should go

down with her, where then would be the last hope of the friends of freedom throughout the world? Far better is it for ourselves, for Hungary and for the cause of liberty that, adhering to our wise, pacific system and avoiding the distant wars of Europe, we should keep our lamp burning brightly on this Western shore as a light to all nations than to hazard its utter extinction amid the ruins of fallen or falling republics in Europe."

I

HENRY CLAY.

THE ART OF STORY-TELLING.

HAVE often thought that a story-teller is born, as well as a poet. It is, I think, certain that some men have such a peculiar cast of mind that they cast of mind that they see things in another light than men of grave dispositions. Men of a lively imagination and a mirthful temper will represent things to their hearers in the same manner as they themselves were affected with them; and whereas serious spirits might perhaps have been disgusted at the sight of some odd occurrences in life, yet the very same occurrences shall please them in a well-told story, where the disagreeable. parts of the images are concealed and those only which are pleasing exhibited to the fancy. Story-telling is therefore not an art, but what we call a "knack;" it does not so much subsist upon wit as upon humor; and I will add that it is not perfect without proper gesticulations of the body, which naturally attend such merry emotions of the mind. I

know very well that a certain gravity of countenance sets some stories off to advantage, where the hearer is to be surprised in the end. But this is by no means a general rule, for it is frequently convenient to aid and assist by cheerful looks and whimsical agitations. I will go yet farther, and affirm that the success of a story very often depends upon the make of the body and the formation of the features of him who relates it. I have been of this opinion ever since I criticised upon the chin of Dick Dewlap. I very often had the weakness to repine at the prosperity of his conceits, which made him pass for a wit with the widow at the coffeehouse and the ordinary mechanics that frequent it; nor could I myself forbear laughing at them most heartily, though upon examination I thought most of them very flat and insipid. I found, after some time, that the merit of his wit was founded upon the shaking of a fat paunch and the tossing up of a pair of rosy jowls. Poor Dick had a fit of sickness which robbed him of his fat and his fame at once, and it was full three months before he regained his reputation, which rose in proportion to his floridity. He is now very jolly and ingenious, and hath a good constitution for wit.

Those who are thus adorned with the gifts of nature are apt to show their parts with too much ostentation. I would therefore advise I would therefore advise all the professors of this art never to tell stories but as they seem to grow out of the subject-matter of the conversation, or as they they serve to illustrate or enliven it. Stories that are very common are generally irksome, but may be aptly introduced provided they be only hinted at and mentioned by way of allusion. Those that are altogether new should,

never be ushered in without a short and pertinent character of the chief persons concerned, because by that means you may make the company acquainted with them; and it is a certain rule that slight and trivial accounts of those who are familiar to us administer more mirth than the brightest points of wit in unknown characters. A little circumstance in the complexion or dress of the man you are talking of sets his image before the hearer if it be chosen aptly for the story. Thus I remember Tom Lizard, after having made his sisters merry with an account of a formal old man's way of complimenting, owned very frankly that his story would not have been worth one farthing if he had made the hat of him whom he represented one inch narrower. Besides the marking distinct characters and selecting pertinent circumstances, it is likewise necessary to leave off in time and end smartly, so that there is a kind of drama in the forming of a story; and the manner of conducting and pointing it is the same ast in an epigram. It is a miserable thing, after one hath raised the expectation of the company by humorous characters and a pretty conceit, to pursue the matter too far. There is no retreating; and how poor is it for a story-teller to end his relation by saying, "That's all!"

As the choosing of pertinent circumstances is the life of a story, and that wherein humor principally consists, so the collectors of impertinent particulars are the very bane and opiates of conversation. Old men are great. transgressors this way. Poor Ned Poppyhe's gone!-was a very honest man, but was so excessively tedious over his pipe that he was not to be endured. He knew so exactly what they had for dinner, when such a thing