of the Parthenon without the metal
bridles on the horses, for which the holes in the marble remain;
isolation, secondly, from the architectural group of which, with most
careful estimate of distance and point of observation, that frieze,
for instance, was designed to be a part; isolation, thirdly, from the
clear Greek skies, the poetical Greek life, in our modern galleries.
And if one here or there, in looking at these things, bethinks
himself of the required substitution; if he endeavours mentally to
throw them back into that proper atmosphere, through which alone they
can exercise over us all the magic by which they charmed their
original spectators, the effort is not always a successful one,
within the grey walls of the Louvre or the British Museum.

And the circumstance that Greek sculpture is presented to us in such
falsifying isolationart is the age of
the hero as smith.

There are in Homer two famous descriptive passages in which this
delight in curious metal-work is very prominent; the description in
the Iliad of the shield of Achilles* and the description of the house
of Alcinous in the Odyssey.*  The shield of Achilles is part of the
suit of armour which Hephaestus makes for him at the request of
Thetis; and it is wrought of variously  metals, woven into a
great circular composition in relief, representing the world and the
life in it.  The various activities of man are recorded in this
description in a series of idyllic incidents with such complete
freshness, liveliness, and variety, that the reader from time to time
may well forget himself, and fancy he is reading a mere description
of the incidents of