ghtingale, a constant guest, trills her clear note
in the covert of green glades, dwelling amid the wine-dark ivy and the
God's inviolate bowers, rich in berries and fruit, unvisited by sun,
unvexed by wind of any storm; where the reveller Dionysus ever walks the
ground, companion of the Nymphs, and, fed by heavenly dew, the narcissus
blooms morn by morn with fair clusters, crown of the great Goddess from
of yore, and the crocus blooms with golden beam. Nor fail the sleepless
founts whence the waters of Cephisus wander, but each day with stainless
tide he moveth over the land's swelling bosom for the giving of quick
increase."

Yet here, too, so far as the charm is not merely sensuous, Nature is but
the background for the passing of the bright Gods to whom humanity owes
progress and delights. There is nothing awesome, nothing pride-abasing,
in nature to the Hellene as to the Hebrew.

When we come to deal with art, whether plastic art or the art of
letters, there stands out the same difference of spirit. And on all
sides it is admitted that in this region Hellenism reached nearly to
perfection. It is scarcely worth while here to descant upon the work of
Phidias or Sophocles, and to analyse its excellence. In the domain of
art the word 'Hellenic' implies absolute truth of form, absolute truth
of taste, grace and elegance. It means the selecting and simplifying of
essentials into an ideal shape; and therefore it implies the absence of
all superfluity, incongruousness, bombast, extravagance or
purposelessness. The Parthenon and the statue of the grey-eyed goddess
standing up in faultless symmetry against the clear blue sky of Attica;
Plato's _Apology of Socrates_ breathing serene and lucid thought in
language lucid and serene--these are the types of art as understood by
the Hellenic spirit. We nowadays prate much of real and ideal. The Greek
combined them without prating. The anatomy of a Grecian statue is
anatomically true in proportion and in pose, while the whole figure is
none the less of an ideal beauty which could rarely have existed outside
the imagination. To the French the word _emphase_ has come to mean, not
emphasis, but fustian. To the Greeks, with their love of measure, their
instinctive avoidance of the "too much," _emphase_ in letters or other
arts was irritating and distressful. Mr. Andrew Lang selects a sentence
of Macaulay: "Even the wretched phantom who still bore the imperial
title stooped to pay this i