Elgin Marbles

“ Overbeck, Gr. Plast., 3rd ed., II., p. 91. These works all repeat an erroneous order of the two groups of No. 8, which spoils the symmetry of the frieze; cf. Murray, II., p. 333. An independent and more accurate publication is that in Mus. Marbles, IX., pls. 22-26, taken from the Elgin casts. See also Ellis, Elgin Marbles, II., pp. 79-87. The British Museum also possesses a careful series of drawings from the sculptures, by Lord Elgin's artist, Lusieri. Report of the Elgin Committee, appendix, p. xli.; Wolters, No. 1328.
253
430. ”

“ For this reason the whole effect of Greek and Gothic carving is different. The figures in the Elgin marbles, though often reining their steeds for an instant in the air, seem frozen for ever at that perfect instant. But a mass of mediaeval carving seems actually a sort of bustle or hubbub in stone. Sometimes one cannot help feeling that the groups actually move and mix, and the whole front of a great cathedral has the hum of a huge hive. ”

“ In Henry Crabb Robinson's Diary (vol. ii. p. 195) there is an interesting account of the poet's visit to the British Museum, to see the Elgin marbles, etc. See also the Autobiography of B. R. Haydon, where, in a letter to the artist, Wordsworth says, "I am not surprised to hear that Canova expressed himself highly pleased with the Elgin marbles: a man must be senseless as a clod, or as perverse as a fiend, not to be enraptured with them" (vol. i. p. 325) .—Ed. ”

“ Such cultivation, however, was at best a very limited and incomplete preparation, and did not preserve him from the tourist's weariness of galleries. He had wished in London that the Elgin marbles had all been reduced to lime. There was something pictorial in his genius, but painting was slower to give up its secrets to him than sculpture, which, being a more abstract art and simpler in intention, as well as nearer to the living form, made the easier appeal to him. ”

“ The Apollo and other antiques are not equally simple and severe. The limbs have too much an appearance of being cased in marble, of making a display of every recondite beauty, and of balancing and answering to one another, like the rhymes in verse. The Elgin Marbles are harmonious, flowing, varied prose. In a word, they are like casts after the finest nature. Any cast from nature, however inferior, is in the same style. Let the French and English sculptors make casts continually. ”

“ Mr Flaxman thinks that sculpture has very greatly improved within these last twenty years, and that his opinion is not singular—because works of such prime importance as the Elgin Marbles could not remain in any country without a consequent improvement of the public taste, and the talents of the artist.—See the Evidence given in reply to Interrogatories from the Committee on the Elgin Marbles. ”

“ It is interesting to note that in the report of the artists who passed on the value of the Elgin marbles a statement was incorporated to the effect that the back muscles of the Heracles represented the finest example of physiological art known to the world of that day. Another most interesting group of sculptures, the three Fates, is seen near by in the west end of the east room. ”

“ That Wordsworth knew the Elgin marbles—where the half-recumbent Ilissus, a torso, is one of the finest pieces of the pediment—is certain. There is a reproduction of it in his nephew's (the late Bishop of Lincoln's) book on Greece. ”

“ They generally pine and die in our climate, or they are dead before their arrival; but we cannot be certain that they were never alive. There is a sort of unending frieze or scroll of decorative designs unrolled ceaselessly before the British public, about a hen-pecked husband, which is indistinguishable to the eye from an actual self-repeating pattern like that of the Greek Key, but which is imported as if it were as precious and irreplaceable as the Elgin Marbles. ”

“ Behind the warrior is a boy carrying a large 328 shield; behind the seated figure is a woman standing with her right hand raised to her chin.
Inscribed: Σώσιππος.—Athens? Elgin Coll.
Pentelic marble; height, 2 feet; diameter, 11 inches. Dodwell, Tour, I., p. 455; Mus. Marbles, IX., pl. 31, fig. 3; Synopsis No. 230 (239) ; Ellis, Elgin Marbles, II., p. 165; C.I.G., 1008; C.I.A., II., 4156; Greek Inscriptions in Brit. Mus., CXXVII.
693. ”

“ Excited groups dot the school-yard and cottage-grounds every recess and playtime, and cries of "No inchin's!", "My taw!", "Pickin's on me!", "No back-killin's!", "I beat, but you git the goes!" fill the air. Marbles is such a quiet and genteel game, comparatively speaking, and with so much less menace to life and limb than preceding ones, that I encourage and forward it in every way, and sincerely hope it will last out the term. The boys seem most unfortunate, however, about losing their marbles, and are constantly asking for extra work in order to buy more. ”

“ Edwin handed over the ten marbles even before the other boat had arrived at the bridge.
“Here,” he said. “And you may as well have these, too,” adding five more to the ten, all he possessed. They were not the paltry marble of to-day, plaything of infants, but the majestic “rinker,” black with white spots, the king of marbles in an era when whole populations practised the game. Edwin looked at them half regretfully as they lay in the Sunday’s hands. They seemed prodigious wealth in those hands, and he felt somewhat as a condemned man might feel who bequeaths his jewels on the scaffold. ”

“ But Ernest wanted some one to play with. Every night in his dreams he played with the marble child. And at church on Sunday the marble child still held out its hands, farther than before.
'Come along then,' Ernest said to it, in that voice with which heart speaks to heart; 'come and sit with me behind the red curtains. Come!'
The marble child did not look at him. Its head seemed to be bent farther forward than ever before.
When it came to the second hymn Ernest had an inspiration. All the rest of the churchful, sleepy and suitable, were singing,—
'The roseate hues of early dawn. ”

“ George Elgood regarded her with puzzled, adoring eyes.
“I haven’t the least idea what you are talking about, but what does it matter? What does anything matter, except that we love each other, and are the happiest creatures on earth? Business, indeed! Why need we trouble ourselves to talk about business? Margot, do you know that you have a dimple in the middle of your cheek? The most beautiful dimple in the world!”
Margot shook her head at him with a pretence of disapproval, smiling the while, so as to show off the dimple to the best advantage. ”

“ But if he does feel—How jolly it would be if he could come out and sit in my pew, or if I could creep under the font beside him. If he would move a little there would be just room for me.'
The first time that Ernest ever saw the marble child move was on the hottest Sunday in the year. The walk across the fields had been a breathless penance, the ground burned the soles of Ernest's feet as red-hot ploughshares the feet of the saints. The corn was cut, and stood in stiff yellow stocks, and the shadows were very black. ”

“ We do not need the keeper’s scissors and so forth when we are free, for old Mother Nature looks after those things for us.”
MARCH 7: The Marbles “The Marbles,” said daddy, “were very proud because they had been used so much by boys and girls—especially by boys.
“Then, too, the Elves had played marbles, as years before they had found out about them and thought they were lots of fun to play with.
“‘You are nothing but an ordinary Marble,’ said one large and very blue Marble to a little Marble.
“‘But I am useful for playing. And I joggle along and roll much better than you do. You are so big. ”

“ And if Lot's wife could be turned into a pillar of salt, why should not a marble child turn into a real one? It was all quite plain to Ernest, but he did not tell any one: because he had a feeling that it might not be easy to make it plain to them.
'That child does n't look quite the thing,' said Aunt Emmeline at breakfast. ”

“ Its face was raised, but its back bowed under a weight—the weight of the font, for the other child was of marble and knelt always in the church, Sundays and weekdays. There had been once three marble figures holding up the shallow basin, but two had crumbled or been broken away, and now it seemed that the whole weight of the superimposed marble rested on those slender shoulders.
The child who was not marble was sorry for the other. He must be very tired.
The child who was not marble,—his name was Ernest,—that child of weary eyes and bored brain, pitied the marble boy while he envied him. ”

“ Grahame, your and my daughter, Margaret Claverhouse, is now the eldest female representative of our name in your family, and from this moment it will be so understood. Margaret we will retire.”
She rose as she spoke, motioning to Margaret to follow her example.
As she did so, Evangeline flung herself wildly at her feet.
“Have mercy, madam!” she cried. “Helen is still your child. She is my sister—my dear sister. Oh, in mercy, do not discard her! She is our own flesh and blood. You are her mother. Oh, in the face of God, do not forget that though she may have erred—she is but human. ”

“ It is true some forms are more pleasant than are others, and that is true really in all marbles, so that the student should not spend much time in trying to do something which is considered an inferiority in the sienna marble itself. The most pleasing forms are clumps of darker color overrun with veinings and intervals of lighter tone also veined, but usually with much lighter toned veins than the set occupying the darker clumps. ”

“ Elgin, one of the finest of our northern towns, occupies the centre of a richly fossiliferous district, which wants only better sections to rank it among the most interesting in the kingdom. An undulating platform of Old Red Sandstone, in which we see, largely developed in one locality, the lower formation of the Coccosteus, and in another, still more largely, the upper formation of the Holoptychius Nobilissimus, forms, if I may so speak, the foundation deposit of the district,—the true geologic plane of the country ”

“ Alec and Oliver enjoyed a good deal of popularity, and it was Stella’s boast that if Lorne didn’t go out much it needn’t be supposed he wasn’t asked. It was an accepted state of things in Elgin that young men might be invited without their sisters, implying an imperturbability greater than London’s, since London may not be aware of the existence of sisters, while Elgin knew all sorts of more interesting things about them. The young men were more desirable than the young women ”

“ Grahame was occupied with her kinsman, and Margaret exclusively with the Duke, alternately flattering him and deferring with the profoundest attention and deference to his observations, so that he felt quite sure that if she did not possess the beauty of many he had seen, she had wonderful discrimination. Malcolm was silently drinking to Lotte, pledging her mentally every time the bottle came round, and Evangeline, still and retiring as ever, was thinking about her sister Helen, and perhaps the young pleasant-faced gentleman, who had lost a sister, too. ”

“ It will be well to state here that the descriptions which are given is for marbling in oil, as that is by far the best way of imitating marble, therefore the proper allowance must be made for water color work of quicker drying, and therefore it will require considerable speed in conducting the marbling operations, giving the operator but little time to do his work in he cannot possibly produce as good work as he can in oil. Only rather plain figured marbles should be attempted by the students in distemper work. ”

“ There, in a corner of a modern drawing-room, with a glimpse of a London street between the curtain folds, Margot and George Elgood found the Eden which is discovered afresh by all true lovers. Such moments are too sacred for intrusion; they live enshrined in memory until the end of life. ”

“ Brian, a relative of hers, who is the dryest, boniest person you can imagine, but at the same time the slyest woman I have ever seen. She also brought with her a kind of protector, a Mr. Thomas Elgin, also a relation of hers, a most extraordinary man, stiff like a poker, but evidently a dangerous man, who never opens his mouth except when he eats. He is a famous hand at small-swords, however, and snuffs his candle, nine times out of ten, at a distance of thirty yards. This Mr. Thomas Elgin, whom the world calls familiarly Sir Thorn, and Mrs. Brian, always stay with Miss Sarah. ”

“ Lorne told his mother afterward that he thought, in that embarrassing circumstance, of Mrs Leveret and Mrs Delarue, and they laughed consumedly together over his discomforture; but what he felt at the moment was not the humour of the situation. To be the very first and solitary arrival is nowhere esteemed the happiest fortune, but in Elgin a kind of ridiculous humiliation attached to it, a greed for the entertainment, a painful unsophistication. A young man of Elgin would walk up and down in the snow for a quarter of an hour with the thermometer at zero to escape the ignominy of it ”

“ Mr Elgood was going to fall in love with Ron at first sight, and prove himself all that was wise, and kind, and helpful. Delightful optimism of youth, which is worth more than all the wisdom of maturer years!
Margot set about her preparations unhampered by the financial troubles which befall less fortunate girls. Her father was lavishly generous to his favourite daughter, supplementing her dress allowance by constant gifts. It was one of his greatest pleasures in life to see his pretty Margot prettily attired, a pleasure in which the young lady herself fully concurred. ”