d with acanthus-leaves; but no shell had suggested the Ionic
volute, no acanthus-leaf had suggested the Corinthian foliage. The vast
columns, with the sudden tapering, the overhanging capitals, the stern,
square abacus, all betoken the infancy of art. But it is an infancy like
that of their own Herakles; the strength which clutched the serpent in
his cradle is there in every stone. Later improvements, the improvements
of Attic skill, may have added grace; the perfection of art may be found
in the city which the vote of the divine Assembly decreed to Athene; but
for the sense of power, of simplicity without rudeness, the city of
Poseidon holds her own. Unlike in every detail, there is in these
wonderful works of early Greek art a spirit akin to some of the great
churches of Romanesque date, simple, massive, unadorned, like the
Poseidonian Doric.

And they show, too, how far the ancient architects were from any slavish
bondage to those minute rules which moderns have invented for them. In
each of the three temples of Paestum differences both of detail and of
arrangement may be marked, differences partly of age, but also partly of
taste. And some other thoughts are brought forcibly upon the mind. Here
indeed we feel that the wonders of Hellenic architecture are things to
kindle our admiration, even our reverence; but that, as the expression
of a state of things which has wholly passed away, nothing can be less
fit for reproduction in modern times.

And again, we may be sure that the admiration and reverence which they
may awaken in the mind of the mere classical purist is cold beside that
which they kindle in the mind which can give them their true place in
the history of art. The temples of Paestum are great and noble from any
point of view. But they become greater and nobler as we run over the
successive steps in the long series by which their massive columns and
entablatures grew into the tall clusters and soaring arches of
Westminster and Amiens.

VII

SICILIAN SCENES

PALERMO[34]

BY WILL S. MONROE

While not one of the original Hellenic city-states, Palermo has a superb
location on the northern shores of the central island of the central
sea; its harbor is guarded by the two picturesque cliffs and the fertile
plain that forms the "compagne" is hemmed in by a semicircular cord of
rugged mountains. "Perhaps there are few spots upon the surface of the
globe more beautiful than Palermo," writes Art