NOTWITHSTANDING that in a late Number of the Magazine we called the attention of our readers to the proposal of restoring the Parthenon in the National Monument for Scotland, we have no scruple in again adverting to the subject, being convinced that it is one in which a great portion of our readers take a lively interest, and that its importance is such as to demand a large share of the public attention. The embellishment of the metropolis, indeed, is becoming now a matter of national interest. From all quarters we find strangers flocking to our city, and vying with each other in praises of the grandeur of its situation, and the rising beauty of its edifices. Yet a few years of public spirit and exertion, such as those which have just terminated, and Edinburgh may vie with any metropolis in Europe in the splendour of its architectural embellishment.

From what has been done in those years, indeed, we are disposed to augur most favourably of the future embellishment of the city. The Advocates' Library, with the great stair leading to it, will form one of the most splendid rooms in Europe the celebrated gallery in the Colonna Palace at Rome not excepted. The vista of Waterloo Place, with some defects, presents a magnificent instance of architectural ornament, and does equal honour to the correct taste and sound discretion of the very eminent architect by whom it was designed. The University promises to throw into the shade every building in Britain in the exquisite beauty of its interior apartments; and the traveller who enters the great museum is transported to the regions of classical taste, and feels that the taste which formed the superb hall in Dioclesian's baths, and modelled the glorious dome of the Pantheon, yet lives in our northern regions; and that the same name, which is so honourably distinguished among the philosophers of the age, is destined to be associated also with the greatest triumphs and most splendid productions of art.

The continuance of this taste, and the progressive improvement of our public edifices, is a subject of interest not merely to the citizens of this meVOL. VI.

tropolis, but to the whole inhabitants of the empire. There is nothing which contributes so much to uphold the fortunes of a city, or to improve the taste of its inhabitants, as the existence of great models of art within its walls. To this day, travellers are attracted from the most parts of the world, by the beauty of the edifices which have survived the political decay of Athens. The cities of Florence and Naples owe almost all their present celebrity and prosperity to the magnificent models of art which they contain, and the Piazza St Marco of Venice upholds the fortunes of the city amidst the utter ruin of her commercial and political greatness. We are informed by Gibbon, that Rome itself, the mistress of the world, would have sunk under the accumulated disasters which followed the wars of Belisarius and Narses, and have been converted into a perfect desert, but for the sanctity of the tomb of St Peter, and the interest which the beautiful ruins with which it abounded created on the revival of the arts. The importance of such public edifices was well understood by Bonaparte; and every body knows, that the great works which he executed in every part of the empire, but especially at Paris, contributed as much to establish his popularity as the lustre of his foreign conquests.

Now, in the eventual desertion of this city by the higher ranks of the nobility and gentry who have hitherto made it their residence, and in the risk which it runs of degenerating into a provincial town, and ceasing to be eminent either in science or art, it is a matter of the last importance to establish some great and permanent objects of attraction, which may survive the fluctuating taste of fashion, and counterbalance the strong propensity which draws every thing that is distinguished, either in genius or manners, to our southern metropolis. Such an object Nature has given to her people, in the matchless beauty of its situation, and the admirable quality of the quarries by which the city is surrounded. These circumstances have given Edinburgh the means of obtaining architectural ornament to a degree infinitely beyond any other city in the empire, and if properly improved by S

the public spirit and taste of the inhabitants, promise to combine with the eminence of its university in making it the northern capital of science and of art.

But towards the attainment of this great and most desirable object, which we wish in the most earnest manner to press upon the attention of the leading men in the country, it is absolutely necessary that the great mo dels of ancient art should be established amongst us, and that the public taste should be formed on those perfeet edifices which the genius of ancient Greece has bequeathed to the succeeding generations of men. In this respect there is a wide difference, which has never been sufficiently attended to, between the progress of literature or poetry and the improvement of art. In literature and science the works of ancient genius are in every body's hands, and the taste of succeeding generations is formed upon the incessant study and habitual influence of the most perfect works of former times. It is thus that Homer and Virgil laid the foundation of the immortal works of Milton and Tasso; and it is from the unceasing influence which their beauties have exercised upon succeeding times, that the present eminence of the age in poetry and eloquence has arisen. But, in the fine arts, the models of antiquity are fixed to one place, and their influence is wholly unfelt by nations a little removed from their vicinity. No art of printing there exists to perpetuate and multiply the glorious achievements of the human mind, or to imbue distant nations with the sublime ideas and perfect taste by which they were at first created: And if this is true in general of the fine arts, most of all is it true of architecture; for though the art of engraving can extend to a great degree the taste for painting, beyond the sphere of those who have seen the originals, yet it is matter of universal observation, that such copies give no conception of architectural beauty, or of the proportions on which it depends. Universally, therefore, in modern times, the revival of art, and the improvement of taste, have been in the neighbourhood of the remains of ancient genius. It was from the study of the great statues of antiquity, that Raphael and Michael Angelo corrected the stiffness of their early manner, and

brought the art of painting to perfection in the space of a single generation. It was in the same spot, and from the influence of the same causes, that the sublime conceptions of Dominichino and the Caraccis arose. Michael Angelo, we are told, boasted that he would build the Pantheon in the air; and in the dome of St Peters, there remains a monument of the force of his genius, chastened by the incessant study of that matchless edifice. The superb architecture of Sansuvino and Palladio is formed entirely on the study of the Colyseum of Rome; and the Piazza St Marco would not have stood aloof from every thing else in architectural beauty, had not the minds of its authors been imbued by the study of ancient symmetry. Nor is it to be forgotten, that the art of sculpture has been revived in modern times from the same causes; and that it is in Rome, amidst the remains of ancient art, that the genius of the north has been compelled to seek the spark by which the fire of Grecian genius could alone be rekindled.

This is the real cause of that singular phenomenon in the present condition of mankind-that while England and France have outstripped all other nations in the career of knowledge, of eloquence, and of philosophy, and while there exists in this country far more wealth for the encouragement of art than ever was before accumulated in modern Europe-yet both nations are so decidedly inferior to the Italians in the arts that address themselves to the imagination; and that the same nation who justly pride themselves upon their acknowledged superiority in every department of human genius, should still be compelled to borrow, from a people whom they despise, the rules and the models of the fine arts. The solution of this extraordinary problem, so unlike any thing else which we know of human affairs, is to be found in the absence of those models of ancient art, upon which the taste of modern Italy has been formed, and without which all the efforts of genius, like the wanderings of the Israelites who had lost their celestial guide, leads yet farther from the promised land.

When we earnestly wish to impress upon the public attention, therefore, the propriety of selecting the Parthenon as the model for the National

Monument, we do it, not from any blind partiality for ancient art, or from any propensity to undervalue the genius of contemporary artists, but from a sober survey of the causes which have led to the eminence of art in other states, and by which the celebrity of our own literature and poetry has been created. We cannot forget that the works of antiquity were restored, and their spirit diffused over Europe, before the Jerusalem Delivered, or the Paradise Lost, were written. It is from a wish to obtain similar advantages for the arts in this country, that we press so earnestly for the restoration of the most perfect edifice of antiquity in the National Monument, It is just because we have the highest opinion of the genius of our own artists, that we would wish to give them the immense advantage of having the finest monument of ancient art continually before their eyes. It is by such habitual contemplation, more than by the hurried impression of a transient visit, that the spirit of ancient excellence is to be inhaled; and could they obtain in this way the advantages which the Italian artists have derived from the study of the Pantheon and the Colyseum, we have not the slightest doubt that the genius of this country would rival the architecture as it has long done the poetry of Italy.

Such a measure would be the same service to the arts in this country, that the restoration of Virgil and Cicero were to the poetry and eloquence of Europe. It is not to be forgotten, that till such an edifice is erected, the influence of the magnificent ruins of Athens is as much lost, towards forming the public taste in this country, as the Eneid or the orations of Cicero would have been had they still remained undiscovered amidst the rubbish of the monastic libraries: And were it accomplished, we are sanguine enough to imagine, that the genius of Britain would make the same addition to the simplicity of the Grecian original, that the fancy of Tasso or Milton did to the poetry of Greece and Rome.

But if the present opportunity be suffered to escape, it is impossible to say when an opportunity may again occur of adorning our northern metropolis with this matchless edifice, or of transferring to its inhabitants the taste which grew up in Athens round the

works of Phidias. Centuries may revolve before another similar opportunity occurs; and never, perhaps, in the future history of this country, will it fall to the lot of its inhabitants to erect a building in which public feeling will be so deeply and universally interested. Greater and more beneficial consequences, therefore, may be anticipated from the adoption of this measure, at this time and on this occasion, than on any other that may occur in the future history of the country.

It is of the utmost moment, moreover, to give a proper impulse to the public mind when it is in a state of excitation, and when extraneous events have already occasioned a rapid progress in its exertions. The progress of art does not resemble the slow and unceasing advancement of science or philosophy, which gathers new additions from every year which passes-but consists in sudden starts, followed by long intervals of slumber or decay. The arts of Grecian sculpture and architecture rose to absolute perfection in the forty years which elapsed between the burning of Athens by Xerxes, and the building of the Parthenon; and the art of painting in modern times was brought from a state of infancy, to the greatest excellence which it has since attained, during the lifetime of Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci. These brilliant epochs in both countries were succeeded by long intervals of time, in which the arts were stationary or retrograde, and during which they fell into a slumber from which they have never yet been awakened. Now there is reason to hope, that in this country we are now in that state of excitation and progress which is the forerunner of perfection in the fine arts. Like the Athenian republic after the Persian war, we have just terminated, with unexampled glory, a contest of unparalleled duration and interest; and like them, the vigour and public spirit, which was called forth during the struggle which had preceded, in the defence of the state, is now turned towards its embellishment and decoration:-Like the Italian republics, the treasures of ancient art are now newly opened to the higher classes among our people, so long excluded from them by the events of the war, and our nobility return from the classical scenes of Athens and Rome

with minds fraught with the magnificence of their ruined edifices. In the rapid increase of the splendour of this metropolis since the termination of the war, we discern the influence of the same causes which made Athens rise in imperishable splendour from the ashes of the Persian invasion, and filled Florence with the noble edifices with which, as Sismondi has observed, the first years of the establishment of her liberty, and the glorious triumphs of the " year of victories," was followed !*

Now, then, is the critical moment, when so many causes have prepared the minds of our people for distinction in the fine arts, and given so strong an impulse both to the vigour and the taste of the public mind, to aid this effort by transferring to our city the most perfect monument of ancient art, and giving to our inhabitants the advantages which the united genius of Phidias and Pericles conferred upon the Athenian people. It is not in every age that such extraordinary talents are given to mankind, or in which circumstances exist capable of calling them into action. Like the genius of Raphael, or Newton, or Tasso, the powers of Phidias burst all the ordinary barriers of human advancement, and attained a perfection, in a few years, which the subsequent efforts of men have sought in vain to rival. It is this perfection which we wish to seize it is these powers of which we seek to avail ourselves; and it is just because this moment seems more favourable to the rise of Scottish genius in the fine arts, than any other that perhaps may ever arise, that we would now communicate to it the extraordinary and unequalled advantages which this measure would confer. If the measures be postponed, it may come when the tide is turned, and when these consequences can no longer follow its adoption.

It appears, moreover, in a peculiar manner expedient to erect, in this island, some unexceptionable model, which may give our artists and our people an opportunity of estimating the value, and feeling the magnificence of the DORIC ORDER. Of every other species of architecture we have great and splendid examples amongst us. York and Durham cathedrals stand

Hist. de Rep. Ital, 3, 242.

unrivalled in the grandeur of Gothic taste-St Paul's rivals, in so far as the exterior goes, "the sun of the Vatican;-the dome of St Peter's, the most glorious structure that ever has been applied to the use of religion ;"+— the Louvre, and the Place Louis XV. surpass every other edifice in the world in the peculiar style in which they are built; and the front of Whitehall, and of several noblemen's seats in England, convey some idea of the gorgeous magnificence of the Venetian architecture. But of the Doric temples, of that order which the taste of Phidias selected as most appropriate for public edifices of triumph or gratitude, we have no examples on this side of the Alps. Except in the simple but sublime structure of the Brandenberg gate at Berlin, there is no instance of an attempt even to adopt this order in a building of any description in any modern capital. The traveller must go to Pestum, or traverse the ruins of Agrigentum and Attica, before he can see an example even of the buildings which have immortalized the name of the Grecian artists; for it is hardly necessary to observe, that no conception of the beauty of the Doric order can be formed from the porticoes of Covent-Garden, or the Court-Room of Glasgow, where both the situation and the buildings to which they are applied are totally unsuited to that species of architecture.

Now there never before was, perhaps there may never occur again, an opportunity of erecting in this island an edifice of precisely the same description, and destined to exactly the same purpose, as the Parthenon of Athens. This celebrated temple, dedicated to Minerva, the tutelary deity of the city, and erected after the glorious termination of the Persian war, was, under the name of a temple, in fact the NATIONAL MONUMENT OF ATHENS. There is something very remarkable in this coincidence. The taste and genius of Phidias, unrivalled perhaps in the subsequent history of the world, selected this building as the most appropriate for an edifice which was to combine national gratitude with religious devotion, and to awaken in the mind the joint emotions of exultation at past success, and gratitude to the celestial power by whose protecting in

+ Gibbon, 12, 430.