ELGIN MARBLES, a celebrated collection of ancient sculptures, brought from Greece by Thomas, seventh earl of Elgin, and acquired from him by the nation for the British museum in 1816, at the sum of £35,000.
These sculptures adorned certain buildings on the Acropolis of Athens; the chief portions, which are from the Parthenon or temple of Minerva, were designed by Phidias, and executed by him, or under his superintendence. They consist of-1. Portions of several of the statues that were placed in the e. and w. tympana or pediments, the most important of which are the Theseus or Hercules, Ilissus or river-god, upper portions of the torsos of Neptune and Minerva, Iris, torso of Cecrops, Ceres, and Proserpine, the Fates, heads of the horses of Hyperion, and one of the horses of Night. Of all these. the Theseus, and the head of the horse of Night, are the-most perfect, the former want ing only the hands' and feet and part of the nose, while even thc surface of the latter is very little injured. But however mutilated, the greatness in style of these magnificent works is clearly manifest, and from the merest fragment valuable instruction in art may be obtained. 2. Fifteen metopes, executed in high relief, representing the battle of the Centaurs and Lapithw. A metope is the interval betweent he triglyphs on a Doric frieze —in the Parthenon there were 92, 14 on each front, and 32 on each flank of the temple— and on every metope, a Centaur engaged in conflict with one of the Lapithw is represented in a style of the highest excellence in point of spirit and truthfulness. 3. A large portion of the frieze of the outer walls of the cella. This remarkable work represents the solemn procession to the temple of Minerva during the Panathenic festival, and has never been equaled for elegance of composition and the variety and gracefulness of the figures. It is executed in low relief, in order to adapt it to the light, for placed within the colon nade, it received its light between the columns, and by reflection, from the pavement below. This exquisite frieze occupied, slab after slab, a space of 524 ft. in length. The remains of it in the British museum on slabs and fragments of marble arc to the extent of upwards of 249 ft., besides 76 ft. in plaster casts.
Although the Elgin marbles are now acknowledged to be the most precious collec tion existing of specimens of Greek art in its purest state, yet it was only after very con siderable hesitation that government consented to purchase them, and then the sum awarded was not only far short of anything like a fair value, if indeed a value could be put on such treasures, but lord Elgin was left largely out of pocket after all his exer tions. Again, from petty jealousy, some of the connoisseurs of the day, who had
earned a sort of reputation from their collections—of whom Mr. Payne Knight may stand for the type—made strong efforts to underrate these great works; while others, like lord Byron, from feelings apparently generous, but quite mistaken, because not based on fact, heaped obloquy on lord Elgin, and opposed their acquisition. But it has been clearly proved that lord Elgin, so far from destroying, has saved these masterpieces from destruction. It was not to be expected but that foreigners would grudge this country such an acquisition, but certainly it is remarkable that such opinions should have been expressed in this country. The view adopted by a foreigner, who has devo ted much attention to the subject, M. Viardot, author of Les hfusees d'Europe, may be accepted as that generally taken abroad; and it is very different from that at one time so pertinaciously maintained by many in this country. M. Viardot remarks: " It is said that, to justify the appropriation of the Lahore diamond, the English allege that if they have taken it, it was merely to prevent its appropriation by others. They may give the s'me excuse for their appropriation of the marbles of the Parthenon. No doubt, lord Elgin has carried them off; and the Greeks of the present day, seeing the old temple of their Acropolis despoiled of all its ornaments, have a good right to curse the spoiler. But when we think of the devastation these works have so often experienced, the total destruction of the principal statues, and the shameful mutilation of the others, and the risk these last ran of being entirely destroyed in their turn—when we consider that these precious relics of art are conserved in a place of surety, and placed in the center of artistic Europe, one loses the desire and almost the right to charge the English with piracy and robbery. For my part, if, in the course of my long devotion to the marbles of Phidias, a regret has come to trouble the ardent pler.sure of my admiration, it was, that the robber of these marbles was not a Frenchman, and their resting-place the museum of Paris.' — Visconti:40n the Sculptures in the Collection of the Earl of Elgin (John Murray, London, 1816), Library of Entertaining Knowledge—British Museum, (London, Charles Knight).