LECTURES. 49 
of the oldest Greek statues, pointing out how in the mode of sitting 
or standing, and in the arrangement of the masses of hair, the 
Greeks follow Egypt. The wonderful series of archaic statues 
unearthed upon the Acropolis at Athens showed the Greek genius 
breaking through the trammels of tradition, and step by step giving 
life and character to the stiff models; all the essentials still remaining 
the same, so that we see no wild revolt, but growth and progress. 
The quiet restraint of this early work has a charm quite its own, and 
suggests far more power in reserve than does the refined and finished 
technique of Praxiteles and the last great Attic school. The high 
importance of this Acropolis series was pointed out; how, as it was 
Xerxes who knocked them down, we are able to put an exact date, 
B.C. 480, later than which they cannot be; and how they are an 
almost continuous series from the rude and almost burlesque green 
bearded monster to the sweet and delicate pensiveness of the latest 
heads. Next came statues of the grand age, the Elgin Marbles of 
Pheidias ; and lastly the Hermes of Praxiteles, where the art is just 
on the verge of decline, when technique was to take the place of genius. 
A SuMMER HOo.ipay IN SyRiA. 
The lecturer described how amid the tears of his friends and the 
jubilation of his enemies he started out for Syria in August, and found 
that the country instead of being a happy hunting ground of all the 
diseases under the sun, was simply delightful, though rather hot. A 
description was given of the great rocks of Lebanon, and of the 
scanty remains of the famous cedars; where for the first, and let us 
hope the last time in his life, he received from a lady of the land an 
offer of marriage. Baalbec was next shown, with its gigantic building- 
stones, each containing as many cubic feet as a respectable house. 
Then Damascus, with its historic straight street, the scene of St. 
Paul’s escape, and the so-called House of Naaman. The Albana is 
there still. Mount Hermon followed, the summit of which was 
photographed for the first time by the lecturer. After a description 
of some small adventures with scorpions and other venomous beasts, 
and a night when the military guard of the traveller fell out and would 
have killed each other, like the Midianites of old, we came to the 
plain of Esraeldon, with Gilboa, Endor, and Jesreel: a short sketch 
of its battles was given. Then through Samaria and Shechen (where a 
visit was paid to the Samarian High Priest) to Jericho, Jerusalem, 
and Hebron. 
