d, as
plaster, clay, and wood. Later they worked ivory, and began to
understand the value of metals in statuary; and about five centuries
before the Christian era, marble was used by sculptors for detached
figures. In the infancy of Greek art, when sculptors were gradually
acquiring the skill to fashion their creations out of the most durable
material, many combinations of wood, stone, and metal were used, which
would sadly shock the modern sculptor's eye;--wooden figures burnished
with gold, and with painted vermilion faces, were fashioned in the age
of Phidias; and it is believed by some, that this immortal sculptor
helped to produce a statue of Jupiter, the face of which was of ivory
and gold, and the body of gypsum and clay. Phidias may be fairly
acknowledged as the first great Greek sculptor, of whose career and
whose works we have indisputable accounts. He founded, and represents
all the excellencies of the highest school of Greek art. The sculptors
who came after him, as Lysippus the favourite of the great Alexander,
paid greater regard to graces of detail and to finish; but of those
sublime effects, those forms of gods in human shape which really
impress the modern spectator with their almost superhuman beauty,
Phidias was the creator. The sculptures known to the public as the
Townley collection, are sculptures generally of a more modern date
than those in the Elgin and Phigaleian Saloons. The collection has
undoubtedly many specimens of the rudest eras of Greek art: but its
most striking groups, to the general visitor, will be undoubtedly
those finished statues and compositions which represent the ages when
Greece was a great European power, and that subsequent period when the
Greek sculptors plied their chisels under the patronage of Roman
conquerors. In this room the visitor will once more remark, how large
a proportion of these priceless relics have been gleaned from ancient
sepulchres. Even as he enters the room, he may perceive on the right,
the front of a tomb from Athens, carved in high relief; and on the
left, the front of another tomb, also sculptured, from Delos.

The room is divided into compartments which the visitor should examine
in their regular order of rotation. He will begin therefore, of course
with the

FIRST DIVISION.

Before the first pilaster let the visitor notice at once a small
seated statue of Cybele or Fortune, from Athens, presented to the
nation by J.S. Gaskoin, Esq. Other rema