itizen, the
gold embroidered shoes upon her feet, and the gold net, which looped
back, from her forehead to her neck, hair the colour and gloss of which
were hardly distinguishable from that of the metal itself, such as
Athene herself might heaven vied for tint, and mass, and ripple. Her
features, arms, and hands were of the severest and grandest type of old
Greek beauty, at once showing everywhere the high development of the
bones, and covering them with that firm, round, ripe outline, and waxy
morbidezza of skin, which the old Greeks owed to their continual use
not only of the bath and muscular exercise, but also of daily unguents.
There might have seemed to us too much sadness in that clear gray eye;
too much self-conscious restraint in those sharp curved lips; too much
affectation in the studied severity of her posture as she read, copied,
as it seemed, from some old vase or bas-relief. But the glorious grace
and beauty of every line of face and figure would have excused, even
hidden those defects, and we should have only recognised the marked
resemblance to the ideal portraits of Athene which adorned every panel
of the walls.

She has lifted her eyes off her manuscript; she is looking out with
kindling countenance over the gardens of the Museum; her ripe curling
Greek lips, such as we never see now, even among her own wives and
sisters, open. She is talking to herself. Listen!

'Yes. The statues there are broken. The libraries are plundered. The
alcoves are silent. The oracles are dumb. And yet--who says that the old
faith of heroes and sages is dead? The beautiful can never die. If the
gods have deserted their oracles, they have not deserted the souls who
aspire to them. If they have ceased to guide nations, they have not
ceased to speak to their own elect. If they have cast off the vulgar
herd, they have not cast off Hypatia. ...............

'Ay. To believe in the old creeds, while every one else is dropping away
from them.... To believe in spite of disappointments.... To hope against
hope.... To show oneself superior to the herd, by seeing boundless
depths of living glory in myths which have become dark and dead
to them.... To struggle to the last against the new and vulgar
superstitions of a rotting age, for the faith of my forefathers, for
the old gods, the old heroes, the old sages who gauged the mysteries of
heaven and earth--and perhaps to conquer--at least to have my reward!
To be welcomed into the cel