And Pericles caused it to be built; and this, his marble utterance, is now a lame sentence, with half its sense left out. ... Here is the Temple of Victory. Within are the basreliefs of the Victories arriving in the hurry of their glorious errands. Something so they tumbled in upon us when Sherman conquered the Carolinas, and Sheridan the Valley of the Shenandoah, when Lee surrendered, and the glad President went to Richmond. One of these Victories is untying her sandal, in token of permanent abiding. Yet all of them have trooped away long since, scared by the hideous havoc of barbarians. And the bas-reliefs, their marble shadows, have all been battered and mutilated into the saddest mockery of their original tradition. The statue of Wingless Victory, that stood in the little temple, has long been absent and unaccounted for. But the only Victory that the Parthenon now can seize or desire is this very Wingless Victory, the triumph of a power that retreats not — the power of Truth. I give heed to all that is told me in a dreary and desolate manner. It is true, no doubt,--this was, and this, and this; but what I see is, none the less, emptiness,--the
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Athens came too, full of hospitable feeling.
There were visits, deputations, committee meetings, all day long, and in the evening parties and receptions.
Spite of all this, her first impression of Athens was melancholy.
She was oppressed and depressed at sight of the havoc wrought by Time and war upon monuments that should have been sacred.
Speaking of the Parthenon, she exclaims:--
Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York. 1916.
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