I landed
because it was a sight to see, and I thought an hour or so would be
better than to miss it altogether. But when I climbed that hill and
set my foot within that majestic ruin, something awful clutched at my
heart. I could not get my breath. The tears came into my eyes, and all
at once I was helpless in the grasp of the most powerful emotion which
ever has come over me in all Europe. I could not understand it, for I
came in an idle mood, no more interested in it than in scores of other
wonders I was thirsting to see; Luxor, Karnak, Philae, Denderah--all
of those invited me quite as much as the Acropolis, but here I was
speechless with surprise at my own emotion, I can imagine that such
violence of feeding might turn a child into a woman, a boy into a man.
All at once I saw the whole of Greek art in its proper setting. The
Venus of Milo was no longer in the Louvre against its red background,
where French taste has placed it, the better to set it off. Its cold,
proud beauty was here again in Greece; the Hermes at Olympia; the
Wingless Victory from the temple of Nike Apteros, made wingless that
victory might never depart from Athens; the lovelier Winged Victory
from the Louvre, with her electric poise, the most exhilarating, the
most inspiring, the most intoxicating Victory the world has ever
known, was loosed from her marble prison, and was again breathing the
pure air of her native hills.
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