O attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!

When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou says't, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,"--that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.' --From the Ode on a Grecian Urn,' by Keats.

This inhabitants seem to look with THE older the world gets, the more loving eyes and humble hearts to the customs and taste of the ancients. Like old men who live mostly in the past, thinking but little of what events are stirring around them, or what may be still to come, the modern connoisseur prefers trusting to the recognized laws of art as it existed amongst its generators, to indulging in romantic dreams of what we may one day achieve. Certain laws that obtained amongst the Greeks with regard to the beautiful exist still for us, and in vain would it be for even a Burke to try to give us new ones. Dreamers, like Hogarth with his line of beauty,' have arisen since, but they have not proved law-givers. Still art lives and moves and derives its being from the old Greeks.

What their painting was we cannot say; we can only conjecture from the perfection they arrived at in other branches that it must have been equally admirable. What their sculpture was every art student knows. Who has not gazed at those splendid torsos, headless busts, and armless figures, and been marvellously moved? It is impossible to describe what one feels when contemplating these marbles, and it is equally impossible to tell

why we are so much moved, and yet it is true-undeniably true—that many persons on first beholding these wonderful remains of ancient art have actually wept.

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The perfection of harmony is in these mutilated marbles, a harmony without restraint, and far removed from the cold, unimpassioned rules of 'proportion,' which we are taught by moderns to regard as a necessary element in works of art. This harmony, with its entire freedom from all perceptible machine like regularity, distinguishes not only Greek sculpture, but all Greek art whatsoever, and it pervaded the home and the domestic life of the Greeks. Their love of congruity and fitness was seen not only in their public life, and in the doings of the outer world, but in the daily round' of their common task;' in their dress, their wearing ornaments, and their domestic utensils. This is the sort of harmony that we all need, that we all ought to want, and this is within the reach of every house-father and house-mother, and it has an influence on ourselves and those we live amongst not to be repudiated or despised, a telling though secret influence. We often acknowledge in words, though, alas, seldom by deeds, how strong an influence one life, however insignificant, has upon another, for evil or for good, and it is a painful side of the question, and one that we cannot avoid shuddering at, when we think what an effect is produced upon an entire household, when the mistress, mother, and wife, does not cultivate her taste, and will buy her bonnet in oblivion

of her walking dress, and directly afterwards purchase gloves regardless of her bonnet's hue; when she will wear silver filigree ornaments at the same time as she dons her cookingapron, and permits her darling youngest to sport in the mud in a coral necklace and dirty print pinafore; when she will allow the beer to be put on the table in elegant cut glass jugs and place hot-house flowers in common mugs; when she will persistently and 'on principle' allow every object that comes daily and hourly into contact with the eyes of her husband, children and servants to be of the ugliest pattern and the clumsiest shape.

Well might Gladstone say that 'as a people we are, in the business of combining beauty with utility, singularly uninstructed, unaccomplished, maladroit, unhandy.' Who can tell what influence for evil the ugly things in commonplace homes may have upon those who daily see them, and who can tell what bright thoughts and pure ideas may be engendered in a home where the most useful thing is also shapely, and where ugliness has not set its stamp upon the articles we most frequently handle.

Simplicity is in itself a beauty, and in the dress both of the men and the women amongst the Greeks, simplicity was a leading characteristic. Their dresses can be explained and understood by us now, as easily as if they were at present in fashion, which I fear could not be said of some costumes in wearing now-a-days, and which are really beyond all knowing of them, wonderful.' In future times if ever our successors return to simplicity of apparel they will find some difficulty in understanding what manner dress the women of the 19th century did wear.

of

Let us begin with the costume of the men of ancient Greece. Their raiment consisted of an undergarment or vest with or without sleeves and a flowing cloak, not altogether unlike a Scotch plaid, only much more volum.

inous, in appearance and also in the manner it was worn. The material and colour of each garment differed according to the rank of the wearer. White was the full dress colour of those of noble or princely birth; purple was considered a military col

our.

In winter the favourite colours were puce, scarlet, violet and crimson, and the robes of the richest colours were imported from Egypt and Sidon.

The outer robe was often magnificently embroidered with gold, and must have been a very handsome and striking garment. The vest, too, was similarly ornamented, often with delicate flowery patterns. Embroidery was also displayed on the sandals of the rich. The Greeks, in their love of the beautiful, appealed apparently to all the senses, for they loved delicate perfumes of all kinds, many of which came from Syria. Their clothes were kept in perfume, and they also used rose water to their beards. They wore their hair, which was generally of a light colour, below the ears, and some times they rejoiced in ringlets. A round cap, the shape of the head, and almost exactly like the round hat worn by the English peasantry at the present time was worn by some, and the lower classes had caps of fur and hair.

These last simplified their costume by keeping to the vest alone, the material of which was generally of goatskin. They also wore buskins of hide, which came half-way up the leg. Gloves were also in use, but were regarded as protections for the hands when rough work was to be done, rather than for show.

There seems to have been little room for foppish display amongst the young Greeks, no jewellery being worn with the single exception of the more or less handsome clasp of gold and gems employed to fasten the flowing mantle, and yet we can imagine that the young Athenian, with his richly coloured vest and embroidered cloak, from which delicious scents were faintly suggested rather than actually perceived, as he

walked forth cane in hand and with carefully arranged hair, to enjoy some thrilling performance of Sophocles, or a laughable piece by Aristophanes, must have been a great swell in his way, and no doubt was regarded with all due admiration and envy by the Athenian sans culottes of that day.

The ladies of Greece were as simple in their costume as were the men, their garments, however, varying slightly in different countries and at different epochs. In Athens, the centre of civilization-the Athens of Pericles-the women confined themselves to a long tunic reaching to the ground, open at the throat and sleeveless, and a full over garment belted in at the waist. Of course, this dress could be of the simplest description, merely consisting of the plainest materials, and yet retain its gracefulness, or it admitted of being enriched to the highest degree by means of embroidery and costly textures.

White was most used by the higher classes, and it must have set off to advantage their beauties of face and form, for the Athenian women in their youth were remarkably slender of figure.

It is not difficult to call up to the mental view a vivid picture of a beautiful Grecian woman in her home life. We can imagine her seated on a softly and richly cushioned chair in a latticed aviary in an Athenian house, in which may be seen birds that live only in countries of the South; she is bending gracefully over her peacocks, which are feeding from her hand. Let us imagine what she would be like.

Her light hair is drawn back trom off the low forehead and tied in its place, and ornamented with a delicate piece of cyclamen or a branch of berries from the arbutus ; her long tunic or chiton touching the ground, the over-dress clasped at the shoulders with a golden ornament, and belted in at the waist with a zone of gold set with emeralds.

Her sandals are exquisitely jewelled, for the women were vainer of their

sandals and bestowed more thought upon them than on almost any other part of their dress, and their feet must have looked very beautiful glittering in and out of their long, full robes. What a number of delightful pictures one could paint in fancy of those Athenian homes and their inmatestheir fires of cedar-wood, how fragrant they must have been !—their gardens blooming with cyclamen and oleander, and shaded by olive trees, their very food had something more artistic and ideal than ours. Kid, locusts, white pineseed from the cone, quail, with every variety of sweet and aromatic herb. The employment of the women too, was picturesque. Whether they were botanizing, or embroidering, working at tapestry, spinning, weav ing, or studying the medicinal properties of herbs, there is an indescribable charm about all they do.

To return to their dress, besides those articles of apparel we have mentioned, they had as an occasional garment a half-mantle, flowing in folds down the back, and fastened in front of each shoulder by a clasp. Perfumes were freely used, the Athenians seeming to have had a great love for sweet scents of all descriptions. Not only their clothing, but their limbs were scented, fragrant oils being used after bathing, and a lady, when dressed and moving about her house or garden, wafted delicious gales of perfume before her. Veils were often worn both in and out of doors; they usually covered the back of the hair, and were taken off when active movement was required. The texture of the veil varied very much; sometimes it was quite transparent, and sometimes of richly coloured material. Flowers and ornaments of gold were also worn in the hair, and embroidered fillets to fasten it up securely, and to give a finish to the whole dress. Sometimes, also, a tiar of folded linen was placed on the head, and no doubt each Athenian consulted her mirror, if she was fortunate enough to possess one, and had

her own way of decorating her hair to suit her features, and no one fashion prevailed entirely to the exclusion of all others.

The women of Greece, as do those of Europe in our own day, indulged more freely in the display of jewellery than the men. Ornaments of gold, set with precious stones, adorned the hair, ear-rings were also worn, though not very generally. They had necklaces of gold and amber, bracelets of great beauty and costliness, zones for the waist, which were frequently inlaid with gems, ankle belts, and, above all, jewelled sandals of every description, but they never disfigured themselves with nose or lip rings as was customary among the Hebrew and Syrian

women.

The Greeks excelled in cutting gems and stones, as we may see by the gems themselves which yet remain to us-thanks to their indestructibility, and by the reproductions of them in plaster casts in so many public and private collections. It would well repay any one to visit the Normal School in Toronto for the purpose of studying the casts of the Poniatowski gems, some of which are of great beauty and delicacy, more especially the series illustrative of the life of the goddess Ceres. These gems were probably used for rings which were introduced in the time of Alexander the Great, and many of the stones remain for us still to admire the extrinsic value which they derived from the labour of the lapidary not running the same risk as did the art, lavished upon ornaments of gold and silver, of being sacrificed to the melting pot for the mere intrinsic value of the material.

Ornamental art in private life was chiefly confined to the dress of the individual, the houses of the Greeks being small and wholly insignificant, and totally unfit for decorative purposes. Occasionally a house was frescoed on the outside, but this was rare and considered an innovation. Everything around inclined them to

be large hearted and public spirited; it was their theatres, their temples and their markets that they made lasting and admirable, not their homes. In their eyes art was degraded by being employed to satisfy their private vanity, so their dwelling-houses and gardens were left unadorned with pillars, and statues, and paintings, depending on the innate taste of their inmates to make them pleasing to the eye.

The millionaire of these days did not drudge early and late in the prime of his life in order that in his old age he might have accumulated enough riches to build him a palace, and his palace being obtained, give unheard of prices for paintings and porcelains to adorn it. He did not shut himself up in his own domain and there indulge in a private chapel, a private concert-room, а private theatre. Strange to say he could enjoy noble works of art when they were not his alone, by the divine right of possession, but were public property; he could revel in beauty that was visible to the most vulgareye, and could appreciate the drama, which his own wealth had put upon the stage, at the same time that it was being enjoyed by the lowest citizen in Athens. It does not seem to have done him any harm, nor do we hear anything about the statues being chipped and bits being carried away, or the frescoes being spoiled by the mob of ancient Athens. It is more than likely that no such sacrilege occurred, as owing to the fact that the noblest works that Grecian genius produced were attainable to daily and hourly inspection, the public eye was turned to admire, and the public taste raised to endeavour to imitate them.

Leaving the often described temples and public buildings whose perfect beauty every one is acquainted with, either from models or pictures, there remains but little other ornamental art to mention, for the vases of such wonderful and delightful shapes that