STATUE OF PROMACHUS-PARTHENON.

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Proceeding a little further, we have, on our left, raised on a high base, a huge statue of bronze, the labour of Phidias. It is seventy feet in height, and looks towards the west, upon the Areopagus, the Agora, and the Pnyx, and far away over the Ægæan Sea. It is armed with a long spear and oval shield, and bears a helmet on its head; the point of the lance, and the crest of the casque, appearing above the loftiest building of the Acropolis, are visible to the sailor who approaches Athens from Sunium.

This is MINERVA PROMACHUS, the Champion of Athens, who looking down from her lofty eminence in the citadel, seems by her attitude and her accoutrements to promise protection to the city beneath her, and to bid defiance to its enemies.

Passing onward to the right, we arrive in front
of the great marble Temple, which
stands on the most elevated ground
of the Acropolis. We see eight Doric
columns of huge dimensions elevated
on a platform, ascended by three
steps at its western front. It has the
same number on the east, and seven-
teen on each side. At either end,
above the eight columns, is a lofty
pediment extending to a length of
eighty feet, and furnished with nearly
twenty figures of superhuman size.

The
group which we see before us, at
the western end, represents the con-
test of Minerva with Neptune, for
the soil of Athens; the other, above
the eastern front, exhibits the birth
of the Athenian Goddess.

Beneath the cornice which ranges on all sides of the Temple, is the frieze, divided into compartments by

an alternating series of triglyphs and of metopes, the latter of which are ninety-two in number,-fourteen on either front, and thirty-two on each flank: