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In what class do you hold the draped figures, of which there are large frag

been communicated not only among phy- copies, or only acknowledged inferior sicians, but among artists all over Greece; works. and in the Laocoon the divisions are Do you reckon Lord Elgin's Marmuch more numerous. bles of greater value, as never having Do you observe any considerable dif. been touched by any modern hand? ference in the conformation of the horses, Yes. between the Metopes and the Procession ?--It is to be recollected, both in the Metopes and the Procession, that differ- ments?—They are fine specimens of exent hands have been employed upon ecution; but in other respects I do not them, so that it is difficult, unless I had esteem them very highly, excepting the them before me, to give a distinct opinion, Iris and a fragment of the Victory. particularly as the horses in the metopes have not horses' heads; I do not think I can give a very decided opinion upon it, but in general the character appears to ne very much the same.

Should you have judged the metopes and the frieze to be of the same age, if they had not come from the same temple? Yes, undoubtedly I should.

Have you ever looked at this Collection, with a view to its value in money? I never have; but I conceive that the value in money must be very considerable, judging only from the quantity of sculpture in it; the question never occurred to me before this morning, but it appears to me that there is a quantity of labour equal to three or four of the greatest public monuments that have lately been erected; and I think it is said either in Chandler's Inscriptions or in Stuart's Athens, that the Temple cost a sum equal to 500,0001.

Have you seen the Greek Marbles lately deposited in the British Museum?

Yes.

In what class do you place those, as compared with the basso-relievos of Lord Elgin's collection?-With respect to the excellence of workmanship, the metopes and the basso-relievos of Procession are very superior to those in the Museum, though the composition of the others is exquisite.

Which do you think the greatest antiquity?Lord Elgin's; the others I take to be nearly twenty years later.

In what rate do you class these Marbles, as compared with Mr. Townley's collection?—I should value them more, as being the ascertained works of the first artists of that celebrated age; the greater part of Mr. Townley's Marbles, with some few exceptions, are perhaps

Do you consider those to be of the same antiquity?—I do.

Be pleased to account for the difference in their appearance ?—I think sculpture at that time made a great stride. Phidias having had the advantage of studying painting, first gave a great freedom to his designs-that freedom he was able to execute, or to have executed, with great ease in small and flat works; but as the proportions of the particular drawings of the figures were not so well understood generally as they were a few years afterwards, there are some disproportions and inaccuracies in the larger figures: the necessary consequences of executing great works when the principles of an art are not well established.

Do you recollect two figures that are sitting together with the arms over each other?-Yes.

Is your low estimation of the draped figures applicable to those?-My opinion may be incorrect, and it may be more so by not having the figures before me ; but I meant my observation to apply to all the draped figures.

Were the proportions of those statues calculated to have their effect at a particular distance ?—I believe not; I do not believe the art had arrived at that nicety.

You have remarked probably those parts particularly of the Neptune and some of the Metopes, that are high in perfection, from having been preserved from the weather?-I have remarked those that are in the best condition.

Did you ever see any statue higher finished than those parts, or that could convey an idea of high finish more completely to an artist ?-I set out with saying that the execution is admirable.

In those particular parts have not you observed as high a finish as in any

statue that ever you saw ?—Yes; and in province, to find provisions and maintain some places a very useless finish, in my the army longer. Ney foresaw the imopinion. possibility of it, and urged the folly of Do you think the Theseus and the such a measure strongly. Though (said Neptune of equal merit, or is one supe- be) Wellington dare not attack you with rior to the other?-Chevalier Canova, the Anglo-Portuguese army, you will fall when I conversed with him on the subject, a prey to hunger, and the army will be seemed to think they were equal; I think destroyed; if, however, you insist on gothe Ilissus is very inferior.

You think the Ilissus is inferior to the Theseus? Extremely inferior; and I am convinced if I had had an opportunity of considering it with Chevalier Canova, he would have thought so too.

ing, I plainly tell you I will not obey your orders, and will give it you under my hand and seal; arrest me, if you please. Ney did so, and returned to Paris; Massena pursued his original plan, and after losing a great number of troops from privations, he was at length obliged to retire into Spain. Ney has been heard highly to extol Wellington for the measures he took in destroying every thing throughout the country that could afford either food or shelter to the enemy, without which he would infallibly have been beaten. The miracle was, that the French could remain

Can you inform the Committee whether the climate of England is likely to have a different effect upon the statues, from the climate from which they were brought; and whether it would be possible, by keeping them under cover, to prevent the effect of the climate ?-Entirely. You know the bas relief in the eight months in face of the English, with, Townley Collection of Bacchus and to make use of Wellington's own words, Icarus? Yes.

What do you consider the workmanship of that, comparatively with any of Lord Elgin's bas reliefs?—Very inferior.

For the Monthly Magazine.
PARISIAN ANECDOTES of 1816.

ON

MARSHAL NEY.

nothing but the ground they stood upon. Much and ardently did they wish to attack his Grace, but resting quietly in the impenetrable fastnesses of Torres Vedras, he would not trust the campaign to the fate of arms.

SIR ROBERT WILSON.

Sir Robert, during his imprisonment, N the memorable retreat from Por- lost no occasion of annoying the officers tugal, Marshal Ney commanded the of the French government, who were sent rear guard, and had to maintain several to him to interrogate him as to the affair severe conflicts with the English troops. of Lavalette. Having communicated to On retreating through Pombal, the mo- him the determination of the court to put ment the English entered the town, him on his trial, they requested him to by way of bravado, the bells were address a letter to the Juge Instructeur, ordered to be rung, and every kind of nominating the person he would wish for rejoicing to be displayed; even, it is said, to the burning of Massena and Ney in effigy.

his counsel. He simply wrote, " I have to beg you, sir, to be good enough to give me the address of the honourable M. Dupin, who defended the estimable Marshal Ney."

Ney, being made acquainted with the fact, instantly turned round, drove the British out at the point of the bayonet, The prison of La Force, in which the and set fire to the town. He then wrote three illustrious English are confined, is a letter to Lord Wellington, stating, that the debtors' prison of Paris; there was he was sorry to have been compelled to there confined for debt a poor man, with do what he had done, but he felt it neces- a large family, under very distressing cirsary to prove to his lordship, that it was cumstances; his debt amounted to one hunger, and that only, and not his lord- hundred Napoleons, and Sir Robert ship, that obliged the French army to generously paid it, and gave him fifty Naretreat out of Portugal. poleons more (upwards of 401.) to set him Massena hoped, by going into anothe, up in business.

3 U

MON. MAG. No. 285.

EXECUTION BY THE GUILlotine. writer who cites that Life of Homer The first essay of the French guillotine which is ascribed to Herodotus, is Clemens was on a sheep; the axe was then Alexandrinus: Plato did not know that square, and the poor sheep was sadly life. Of course Homer flourished bemangled, and obliged to be dispatched tween Hesiod and Herodotus; and his by the knife; by making the edge diago- biographer, between Plato and Clenal the decapitation is perfect and instan- mens.

taneous.

This biography, then, is an AlexanThe sentence, name, and description, drian forgery in the name of Herodotus : of the person, with the sum he is cast in and it is so glaringly a bookseller's spefor the expences of the trial, is printed culation, that all the poems uttered at and hawked about the streets on the day Alexandria in Homer's name, such as of execution. One lately took place in the Batrachomyomachia, are officiously presence of the writer. The execution quoted in it; and anecdotes are conwas announced, as above, to take place trived to account for their having been at four o'clock, on the Place de Greve. written. All those anecdotes, connected Before that hour at least twenty thou- with the advertisement of surreptitious sand persons were collected from all poems, are to be received with peculiar parts, from the Conciergerie, the prison, mistrust. where he was to leave as the clock struck From Homer's writings, and especifour, to the Place de Greve. The ally from the Odyssey, it is clear that he guillotine was placed in the centre of the had travelled much about the Archipeplace, and the ground kept by the horse lago, particularly by sea. Still in the gendarmes at a quarter before four. The description of the Spartan territory (see Rapporteur drove up in a hackney coach the 581st. and following verses, of the to certify the execution: a few minutes second book of the Iliad,) one may disafter four, a cart, containing the culprit cern a precision of topography, characand his confessor, slowly approached; it was guarded by mounted gendarmes. On arriving at the Place de Greve the trumpet was sounded, and all present obliged to pull off their hats (though it rained hard,) before the majesty of justice. The culprit seemed more dead than alive; he could neither get out of the cart, nor ascend the scaffold, without aid. His coat was only thrown loosely over his shoulders, and his shirt also had been slipped off; he was laid down and lifted forward, the place for the head being like the hole in a pair of stocks, and not a block: the axe of the guillotine, fixed in a heavy block, falls about eight feet, and works in a groove just beyond the support of the neck. All being prepared, the executioner loosens the cord, the axe falls, and the head disappears in an instant; it, as well as the body, falls into a case, which is closed up directly, and carried off in the cart, so that scarcely any blood is seen.

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teristic of local residence. Sparta was eminent at a more early period than Athens; Lycurgus long preceded Solon. Hence Sparta had, in some degree, acquired the lead, or sway, in Greece, before the Athenians were at all competitors for it. The Spartan language was termed Greek; and the Attic or Ionic, or Doric, was insulted with the humiliating name of a dialect. This earlier civilization of Sparta renders it naturally probable, that Homer may have flourished there; and, as he chose a national theme, the rape of Helen, wife of the king of Sparta, it is the more evident that he kept in view a Lacedæmonian audience. The kings of Sparta, according to Pausanias (lib. III.,) derived their pedigree from the son of Agamemnon, and their inheritance from the daughters of Tyndarus.

Now let us turn to a remarkable passage in Plutarch's Biography of Lycur gus, which well deserves to be transcribed at length, on account of the reflections which it is adapted to excite in a speculative mind. "Among the friends gained by Lycurgus in Crete, was Thales, whom he could induce to go and settle in Sparta. Thales was famed for wisdom and poli

tical ability. He was also a bard, who, To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. under colour of exercising his art, per- SIR,

formed as great things as the most excel-T has always been a subject of surlent lawgivers: for his songs were so many prise to me, that the English nation, persuasives to obedience and unanimity, celebrated for the number of elegant and as by means of melody and number scholars and acute critics which it has they had great grace and power, they produced, should have been remarkable softened insensibly the manners of the for its corrupt pronunciation of the Latin auditors, drew them off from the animos- language; and, although this error has ities which then prevailed, and united been pointed out by almost every writer them in zeal for excellence and virtue. on the subject of Roman literature, yet I From Crete, Lycurgus passed into Ana- have never heard that our universities or tolia; where, apparently, he met with public schools have in any degree alterHomer's poems, which were preserved by ed their faulty pronunciation. If the the posterity of Cleophylus. Observing few following observations may induce that many moral sentences, and much any of your readers to enquire further political knowledge, were intermixed into this subject, my design will be fully with that poet's stories, which had an answered. irresistible charm, he collected them into one body. He transcribed them with pleasure, in order to take them home with him for this glorious poetry was not yet fully known in Greece; only some particular pieces were in a few hands, as they happened to be dispersed. Lycurgus was the first who made them collectively known."

A. In the pronunciation of this letter, the English differ from almost all the nations of the Continent, and, I believe I may safely add, from the ancient Romans; by them, in every instance, it was sounded open and broad. Cicero calls it "litera aperta;" and Dion.Halicarn. describes it as the most sounding of all the vowels, and directs it to be pronounced with the mouth as open as possible; in many ancient inscriptions it was written with a reduplication, as Paastores, Faato, which could never have been intended to express the close and compressed sound of our A.

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Chad, in all probability, a similar pronunciation to the Greek K; indeed Suidas calls this letter, Kaтña Pwμaixov. The English are certainly wrong in attributing to it the soft sound of their before the vowels E and I, leaving no means of distinguishing words commencing with c and s before these vowels: thus we say, Cado and Sedo, each word having exactly the same sound.

So far Plutarch. Now, when the high panegyric is observed, which is here bestowed on the poetry of Thales, who is said to have performed as great things as the most celebrated lawgiver; when it is recollected that this Thales was the personal friend of Lycurgus, and accompanied him from Crete to the plain of Troy, and from the plain of Troy to Sparta; when it is recollected that Lycurgus was so anxious an enthusiast of poetry, as to have collected and edited poems which remain to us;-it is plainly impossible that the poems of Thales can have totally perished. Lycurgus would not have neglected the reputation of such a friend. Consequently, the poems col- Dr. Warner, in his Metronariston, lected by Lycurgus, and edited by him, observes, "C and G were by the Roare those of Thales. Homer then is but mans always pronounced hard, that is, the assumed name of the author, who as the Greek K and r, before all vowels; thought to secure a greater illusion among which sound of them it would have been his readers by representing himself as well if we had retained; for, had this cotemporary with the incidents related. been done, the inconvenience of many Homer is the eyeless antique mask worn equivocal sounds, and much appearance by Thales, as Ossian by Macpherson. of irregularity, would have been avoided." And who can avoid detecting a latent E. It is the opinion of Dr. MiddleCretan in the poet, who places heaven on ton, that the true pronunciation of this mount Ida? We may venture therefore vowel agrees with ours in the words to talk of the Iliad of Thales. ventus, contemnere, &c.

G. This consonant, as Dr. Warner Mumpsimus for your new Sumpsihas remarked, was always sounded hard before all vowels.

I. the pronunciation of this letter, by the Romans, very nearly approached to that of E with us. In ancient inscriptions the letter E was frequently used for it, as Deana for Diana, which plainly indicates its sound to have been far different from our I. Of the consonant I or. J, our pronunciation is certainly wrong, for here again we enter into the same sort of confusion as in the letter C, calling Adjicio, Adgicio, and with a notable perverseness, gesta jesta. Middleton rightly remarks, that J should be sounded like our Yin York, and Young, Adyicio, and not Adgicio.

mus.'

May 21, 1816.

WHO

66

Φιλομάθης.

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For the Monthly Magazine. PROSPECTUS of a SOCIETY for rendering available the STATUTES to sue and defend in FORMA PAUPERIS.' HOEVER has had much experience in matters of litigation, must have frequently witnessed with pain many cases in which the valuable rights of individuals have been sacrificed or surrendered, through the mere inability of sustaining the expence of a legal contest with a wealthy antagonist. That this is an evil of the first magnitude, both to individuals and the community, Q, G, and C, are frequently found in will hardly be disputed; because the ancient inscriptions used one for the security of every man's rights and propother : this seems, according to our erty is the first principle of the social present pronunciation of the Latin, a compact-the only reasonable foundamost improbable circumstance; but tion of the love of our country-and the when we consider how they were sound- difference between a state of freedom and ed by the Romans, the change appears a state of tyranny. natural enough. Q had not the soft That the expensiveness of law prosounds of that letter with us, but more of ceedings has enormously increased withthe French Q, hence Quæstio (pronoun- in the last twenty years, is too notorious ced in this way,) Cæstio (with the C to be denied; it may, therefore, fairly hard,) and Gestio (the G also being be inferred, that the evil has greatly inhard,) have not a dissimilar sound. This creased. Taxes or stamps on law prointerchange of letters could never have ceedings, (for which we may thank Mr. taken place had they been pronounced Pitt and his present successors) are the in the manner of our modern scholars. most indefensible of all taxes; seeing it T had, I believe, the same enuncia- is most preposterous to tax a man for tion by the Romans which we give it at getting his own. The practice of the present, although in one situation, when law in the United States of America it immediately precedes I, we completely presents a striking contrast, where, I change its character, transforming it, by understand, judgment and execution can some strange metamorphosis, into sh, as be obtained at an expence of only thirty. in the word Palatium, calling it Palashi shillings. That such a state of things um; no one, I think, will attempt to menaces the cause of liberty itself, is not justify this. dubious, being not only a private injury, I am much afraid these few remarks but a public mischief, inasmuch as that may not carry conviction; and, even if community must be declining, by the they do, that no one will be found har- most insidious corruption and depravity, dy enough to brave the ridicule attached where a continually increasing proportion to the least innovation of old established of its members are deprived of the first us asages this, unfortunately is not the element of its union. Liberty can never of reforms ; and the old story of the flow as the life blood of the body politic, monk is not inapplicable to the present where the stream of justice is obstructed. times, who, being accustomed to read As the natural consequence of such a Mumpsimus in his breviary, instead of disorder is uneasiness and discontent, so Sumpsimus, and, being told of his error, its effects on public morals is most banereplied, "Yes, yes, you may be very ful, when it can be considered possible right, but I shall not change my old that wrong may be adjudged to be right.

age

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