Raised on the Acropolis

The Greek people have raised on the Acropolis itself a national museum, where every fragment of the ancient work that once adorned it, is religiously preserved. The collection is unique, incomparable, of inestimable value, and is constantly being increased. It derives its peculiar impressiveness from the fact that these priceless relics still remain on the sacred citadel of Athene, under the shadow of the mighty temple of which they formed part. The Parthenon gains a new charm by their presence; whilst the statues gain a fresh power by being within its precinct. Pheidias, Ictinus, Pericles, acquire each a new dignity in our eyes, as we contemplate the ruin and its adornments on the ever-consecrated spot where such amazing genius laboured and thought.

We go to our own Museum, and we are wont to plume ourselves on the diplomacy and taste of the eminent per-sonage who secured these treasures. We say they are now safe, carefully preserved, and accessible to every one. Perhaps it was wrong to steal them, but now that it is done, it cannot be mended. In the meantime the British public can study High Art at its leisure. But there is something above High Art daily ephesus tours, and that is national honour, and international morality.

Sophocles and Pheidias

And when, in the enthusiasm of a first visit to the city of Plato, Sophocles, and Pheidias, we behold the empty pediments which we have wrecked, and the blank spaces out of which our national representative tore metopes and frieze, when we see the terra-cotta Caryatid, which is forced to do duty for her whom we have ravished from the temple of Erechtheus — it is not so easy to repeat the robber sophism: having plundered, it is best to keep the plunder. One day the conscience of England will revive, and she will rejoice to restore the outraged emblems of Hellenic art to the glorious sky, where only they are at home, on that immortal rock, and beneath the shadow of the sublime temple, which a supreme genius made them to ennoble. And our eloquent discourses about Art will gain by being sweetened with honesty and good manners.