THE COURSE OF HISTORY 257 



Quite to the front of the pictures sits a primitive 

 Euclid marking geometric figures with a rod in 

 the soft earth. The rivulet is now crossed by a 

 bridge of stone slabs on which a "little boy blue" 

 is drawing with red ocher a human figure, just 

 such as may be seen today on the paved sidewalks 

 of Manhattan. Another child is gathering 

 flowers, while the mother stands near, a dignified, 

 matronly figure with spindle in hand. Beneath a 

 shady tree a rustic Tityrus is playing on his oaten 

 pipe to the dancing girls. Religion, too, occupies 

 its proper place, for set conspicuously upon an 

 eminence overlooking the little village by the bay, 

 a stately temple rises. Plain shafts support the 

 roof. In its early simplicity was manifest a 

 purer worship than when in later days the hills 

 were crowned with temples, and false gods and 

 goddesses were numberless as the vices of the 

 men who conceived and made them. Thus Poly- 

 theism was to take the place of the first mono- 

 theisitic religion. Yet this was never to be 

 wholly lost at any period. 



But a transformation now passes over the scene. 

 "The Consummation of Empire" is the new 

 theme. There to the right we recognize the dis- 

 tant hill, with its balanced boulder untouched by 

 the hand of men. Through the landscape flows 

 the broad water of the bay, and on both sides 

 monuments, palaces, temples and public edifices, 

 Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, crowd upward from the 



