During my residence in London some few years ago, my countryman Chevalier Brönsted, who has published the best work ever written on the Akropolis, told me, that one day when he was studying in the British Museum, a bluff-faced citizen's wife from the city of London, who had been looking at the mutilated and headless figures, came up and asked him "if those stones yonder were called the Elgin Marbles, and if it was for them that Parliament had paid 50,000 pounds sterling?"

On his answering in the affirmative, the cockney lady broke forth: "Bless my soul! Have we not living people enough in this country with broken limbs, legs and arms, and they needs must bring dead ones hither from abroad and pay such a vast sum of money for them too!"

Since the arrival of king Otho every care has been taken of the Ruins by the Greek government; some four or five columns have already been raised on their bases and we still hope we may all to see the day of the partial restoration of the Parthenon.

This, we are happy to say, has already been the case with the third monument of the Akropolis, the Erechtheion or Ionic temple of Minerva Polias.

That small but magnificent building, with its three porticoes, the most perfect model of the Ionic order of architecture, was erected by the Athenians from fear of the wrath of Neptune, the Sea God, for their having chosen Minerva as their patron

ess.

They, therefore, contrived ingeniously to propitiate the terrible God of the Waters, by consecrating the same temple to him and to Minerva, at the Sepulchre of Kekrops, the king, who had been a witness to the great contest. Thus they built a most beautiful triple temple, richly decorated with paintings, gildings and a vast number of statues, placed on a pediment of black marble. These details are now explained by numerous inscriptions lately discovered and published. Yet, the most interesting part of the Erechtheion is the Portico of the Karyatids, or virgins carrying baskets on their heads, and thus supporting the entablature instead of columns.

The historical origin of the Karyatids is very remarkable. Karya was a small town on the northern frontier of Lakonia, the still existing ruins of which we visited in 1843. Its inhabitants being Lakonians, nourished that deep-rooted hatred, to the overbearing Dorians of Sparta, which prompted them, according to the rather doubtful statement of Vitruvius, to conspire with the Persians against the Greeks during the first Persian war.

The Spartans, irritated at their treachery, stormed the city, slew with the sword all the male citizens, and carried off the women as slaves. These elegant female statues were then introduced in architecture as supporters of the architrave and called Karyatids, or women from Karyæ.

This beautiful idea is executed in the most perfect style. The Athenian virgins wear the long, modest Attic dress, holding with one hand their garment, the other hanging down at their side. Of the six, one maiden is now a prisoner in a dark corner of the British Museum.

At the time she was carried away by Lord Elgin, it was a belief among the Athenian women in the city below, that they, during nights, could hear the five remaining sisters weeping and bewailing her loss.

On a marble beam of this monument we still may read the well known lines of Lord Byron :

"Oh Athens! scarce escaped from Turk and Goth,

Hell sends a paltry Scotchman worse than both!"'

The Erechtheion is the only antique building at Athens which suffered during the late war.

Ghouras, the Greek commander of the Akropolis, had placed his beautiful wife and children beneath the northern portico, and had taken the precaution of heaping earth over the marble roof, to prevent the Turkish shells from doing harm.

But during a dark night, when he passed the round among the outposts of the castle, he was shot, and during the confusion the Turks began the fire from all their batteries.

A ball having struck the corner column of the portico, it fell, carrying along with it another column and the whole entablature. Thus the northern side of this splendid building,

sinking down with the shock of earthquake, buried beneath its ruins the unhappy widow of Ghouras and all her children.

From every part of the Akropolis we enjoy the most delightful prospects: northward, the city of Athens, spread out in the plain below; on the east, the great temple-ruins of the Olympian Jove, with the high and picturesque mountains of Pentelikon and Hymettos in the distance; south and west, the sea, the islands of Salamis and Egina, and the snow-capped ridges of the distant Peloponnesus.

Beautiful as is this grand and classical panorama in the golden light of morning, or in the purple and violet tints of evening, yet the moonlight scenery of the Akropolis is still more impressive.

At the national festival in Athens, in June, 1835, when young king Otho was declared of age, and took the government of Greece into his own hands, the whole city was on the move.

Reviews of the troops, Olympian games of the Greek youths, horse-races and equestrian combats of the Palikars or Greck warriors, throwing the jerrid or Turkish javelin, had continued during the day in the presence of the King, and the picturesque concourse of the happy, thoughtless multitude, who fancied that the twelve millions of a foreign loan would never be at an end.

At sunset, bonfires were lighted on the Akropolis, and the city was brilliantly illuminated with thousands of lamps, while the Bengal fires from the terrace of the Russian and French embassies threw a dazzling light over the huge masses of the Olympeion and the splendid temple of Theseus.

It had been announced in the programme that the court, the ambassadors, and the high society in Athens, would ascend to the Castle hill, and many picturesque groups of Greek warriors were therefore placed around the bonfires to heighten their wonderful effect.

But the wise and wary ministers of state, and the jovial military men of Bavaria found themselves, in the meantime, so comfortably enjoying the more substantial pleasures of the royal table, and the mass of the Greeks themselves were so busy with their fire-works, with their dancing and carousing in the city below, that the wonders of the Akropolis were entirely forgotten.

Thus, then, it happened, that the two Danish architects and myself, were the only happy mortals who enjoyed the grandest and most brilliant spectacle imagination can conceive.

The first blazing pile had been placed on the north-west, before the entrance to the Propylæa, where it diffused a lurid light over the high pedestal, the columns, the battlements, and the huge Gothic tower of the Crusaders. Albanian warriors, in their snowwhite kilts and glittering arms, with torches in their hands, were wandering up and down the ruinous batteries, every moment changing the light and shades.

It was a warm and lovely summer-night, and high on the pure and dark blue heaven arose the full moon in all her glory. Ascending across the batteries to the interior platform of the castle, we met with several large fires, lighted along the northwest side of the Parthenon, which threw a brilliant glare on the peristyle and the sharp corners of the fazade, and made it appear as if old Kekrops and his wife had become animated with life and were saluting us from their exalted throne.

All those numerous unpleasant spots and splinters on the time-worn columns, occasioned by the Turkish balls and shells during the last siege, which, in the day-time, chequer and disfigure the noble front of the temple, had now vanished in the oblique illumination of the brilliant flames, or the mellow moonlight.

Farther on, the gigantic Virgins of the Erechtheion emerged from the deep shade in the combined light of the ruddy fire and the pale moon, as supernatural beings from another world, while in the depth below, the plain, the distant city of Athens, beneath the influence of the illumination, appeared as an immense lake, reflecting the twinkling of the stars above.

We have seen the cupola of St. Peter in Rome, blazing with thousands of lamps. We have seen the vast galleries of the Vatican, with all their statuary lit up by torches, and the huge vaults of the Colliseum, in the glare of the fire piles, become transformed into the infernal circles of Dante. We have, from the summit of Mount Olivet, beheld Jerusalem sleeping in the silvery moon-beams of a Syrian sky, and the Bazars and Mosques of Damascus irradiant with oriental fireworks-all magnificent

sights, never to be forgotten. But none of them can be compared to the inexpressible beauty and the quite marvellous effect of an illumination, combined with the moonlight scenery on the temples of the Akropolis.

Lancaster, Pa.

A. L. K.

ART. II.-QUESTIONS CONCERNING THE CHURCH.

How is the German Reformed Church related to other Churches?

1. Her relation to the Roman Catholic Church may be compared to the relation of a disobedient child to his unrighteous mother. The child is disobedient, because many erroneous doctrines and dangerous practices of his deluded mother have become apparent to him in the light of the gospel. He feels it his imperative duty to resist her unjust demands; for the mouth of eternal Truth has told him: "He that loves father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me." "We must obey God rather than men." In divine Revelation he has discovered to his soul's rejoicing, that living faith in Christ, worshipping the Father in Spirit and in Truth, and placing oneself under the directing influence of the Holy Ghost, is the only proper and sure way to everlasting life. So it was with our Reformation forefathers. But their mother-Church had constructed a different way of salvation. Not Christ, but the Church was the first and principal object of her faith, and not the Church of our Redeemer in its gospel simplicity, but the Church of Rome with all her corruptions. Whilst the primitive Church fathers justly held that: "Extra ecclesiam nulla salus," (out of the Church there is no salvation,) the Papacy proclaimed and insisted: That: "Extra ecclesiam romano-Catholicam nulla salus," (out of the Roman Catholic Church there is no