plan; and one Theodore, a Calmouk, who during several years
at Rome, had shown himself equal to the first masters in the design of
the human figure.

After much difficulty, Lord Elgin obtained permission from the Turkish
government to establish these six artists at Athens, where they
systematically prosecuted the business of their several departments
during three years, under the general superintendence of Lusieri.

Accordingly every monument, of which there are any remains in Athens,
has been thus most carefully and minutely measured, and from the rough
draughts of the architects (all of which are preserved), finished
drawings have been made by them of the plans, elevations, and details of
the most remarkable objects; in which the Calmouk has restored and
inserted all the sculpture with exquisite taste and ability. He has
besides made accurate drawings of all the bas-reliefs on the several
temples, in the precise state of decay and mutilation in which they at
present exist.

Most of the bassi rilievi, and nearly all the characteristic features of
architecture in the various monuments at Athens, have been moulded, and
the moulds of them brought to London.

Besides the architecture and sculpture at Athens, all similar remains
which could be traced through several parts of Greece have been measured
and delineated with the most scrupulous exactness, by the second
architect Ittar.

In the prosecution of this undertaking, the artists had the
mortification of witnessing the very _willful devastation to which all
the sculpture, and even the architecture, were daily exposed on the part
of the Turks and travelers_: the former equally influenced by mischief
and by avarice, the latter from an anxiety to become possessed, each
according to his means, of some relic, however small, of buildings or
statues which had formed the pride of Greece. The Ionic temple on the
Ilyssus which, in Stuart's time, about the year 1759, was in tolerable
preservation, had so entirely disappeared, that its foundation was no
longer to be ascertained. Another temple near Olympia had shared a
similar fate within the recollection of many. The temple of Minerva had
been converted into a powder magazine, and was in great part shattered
from a shell falling upon it during the bombardment of Athens by the
Venetians, towards the end of the seventeenth century; and even this
accident has not deterred the Turks from applying the beautiful temple
of Neptune a