the people shouted xaupe Anunteo, Hail Ceres! After these followed women called isopopo, who carried baskets, in which were sesamum, carded wool, grains of salt, a serpent, pomegranates, reeds, ivy boughs, certain cakes, &c. The fifth was called 'H τwv λaμñadwv nepa, the torch day; because on the following night the people ran about with torches in their hands. It was usual to dedicate torches to Ceres, and contend who should offer the biggest, in commemoration of the travels of the goddess, and of her lighting a torch in the flames of mount Etna. The sixth day was called Iaryos, from Iacchus, the son of Jupiter and Ceres, who accompanied his mother in her search after Proserpine, with a torch in his hand. From that circumstance his statue had a torch in his hand, and was carried in solemn procession from the Ceramicus to Eleusis. The statue, with those that accompanied it, called Iakɣaywyol, was crowned with myrtle. In the way nothing was heard but singing and the noise of brazen kettles as the votaries danced along. The way through which they issued from the city was called Iɛpa odog, the sacred way; the resting place was Iɛpa oven, from a fig-tree, which grew in the neighbourhood. They also stopped on a bridge over the Cephisus, where they derided those that passed by. After they had passed this bridge, they entered Eleusis by a place called μυτική είσοδος, the mystical entrance. On the seventh day there were sports, in which the victors were rewarded with a measure of barley, as that grain had been first sown in Eleusis. The eighth day was called Enidav pwv nμɛpa, because once sculapius at his return from Epidaurus to Athens was initiated by the repetition of the less mysteries. It became customary, therefore, to celebrate them a second time upon this, that such as had not hitherto been initiated might be lawfully admitted. The ninth and last day of the festival was called Inuoxoai, earthen vessels, because it was usual to fill two such vessels with wine; one placed towards the east, and the other towards the west, which, after the repetition of some mystical words, were both thrown down, and the wine being spilt on the ground was offered as a libation. The story of Ceres and Proserpine, the foundation of the Eleusinian mysteries, was partly verbally delivered, and partly represented in allegorical show. Proserpine was gathering flowers when she was stolen by Pluto. Hence the procession of the holy basket, which was placed on a car dragged along by oxen, and followed by a train of females, some carrying the mystic chests, shouting, Hail, Ceres! At night a procession was made with lighted torches, to commemorate the goddess searching for her daughter. A measure of barley, the grain which it was believed she had given, was the reward of the victors in the gymnastic exercises; and the transaction at the temple had a reference to the legend. Some, however, have supposed the principal rites at this festival to have been obscene and abominable, and that thence proceeded all the mysterious secrecy. They were carried from Eleusis to Rome in the reign of Adrian, where they were observed with the same ceremonies as before, though perhaps with more licentiousness. They lasted about

1800 years, and were at last abolished by the emperor Theodosius.

ÉLEUSIS, the modern Lefchimo, was, in ancient geography, a town of Attica, between Megara and the Piræus, and celebrated for the festivals of Ceres; rites not finally extinguished in Greece until the invasion of Alaric the Goth. Eleusis, on the overthrow of its goddesses and the cessation of its mysteries, became soon an obscure place, without character or riches. For some ages, however, it was not entirely forsaken. The port was small and of a circular form; the stones of one pier were seen by Chandler above water, and the corresponding side was traced. About half a mile from the shore he found a long hill which divided the plain. In the side next the sea were traces of a theatre, and on the top cisterns cut in the rock. In the way to it some masses of wall and rubbish, partly ancient, were standing, he says; and beyond some other ruins a long broken aqueduct crossed to the mountains. The Christian pirates had infested the place so much, that in 1676 it was abandoned. It is now a small village at the eastern extremity of the rocky brow, on which was once a castle, and is inhabited by a few Albanian families, employed in the culture of the plain. The mystic temple at Eleusis was planned by Ictinus, the architect of the Parthenon. Pericles was overseer of the building. It was of the Doric order; the cell so large as to admit the company of a theatre. The columns on the pavement within, and their capitals, were raised by Coræbus. Metagenes, of Xypete, added the architraves and the pillars above them, which sustained the roof. Another completed the edifice. This was a temple in antis, or without exterior columns, which would have occupied the room required for the victims. The aspect was changed to Prostylos, under Demetrius, the Phalerian; Philo, a famous architect, erecting a portico, which gave dignity to the fabric, and rendered the entrance more commodious. The site was beneath the brow, at the east end, and encompassed by the fortress. Some marbles, which are uncommonly massive, and some pieces of the columns, remain on the spot. The breadth of the cell is about 150 feet; the length, including the pronaos and portico, is 216 feet; the diameter of the columns, which are fluted six inches from the bottom of the shafts, is six feet and more than six inches. The temple was a decastyle, or had ten columns in the front, which was to the east. The peribolus, or enclosure, which surrounded it on the north-east and on the south side, measures 387 feet in length from north to south, and 328 feet in breadth from east to west. On the west side it joined the angles of the west end of the temple in a straight line. Between the west wall of the enclosure and temple and the wall of the citadel was a passage of forty-two feet six inches wide, which led to the summit of a high rock at the north-west angle of the enclosure, on which are visible the traces of a temple in antis, in length seventy-four feet six inches from north to south, and in breadth from the east to the wall of the citadel, to which it joined on the west, fifty-four feet. It was perhaps that sacred to Triptolemus.

This spot commands a very extensive view of the plain and bay. About three-fourths of the cottages are within the precincts of the mystic temple, and the square tower stands on the ruined wall of the enclosure. At a small distance from the north end of the enclosure is a heap of marble, consisting of fragments of the Doric and Ionic orders, remains, it is likely, of the temples of Diana Propylea and of Neptune, and of the Propyleum or gateway. Wheeler saw some large stones carved with wheat ears and bundles of poppy. Near it is the bust of a colossal statue of excellent workmanship, maimed, and the face disfigured; the breadth at the shoulders, as measured by Pococke, five feet and a half; and the basket on the head above two feet deep. It probably represented Proserpine. In the heap are two or three inscribed pedestals; and on one are a couple of torches, crossed. Another cross seems to have belonged to the statue of a lady, who was hierophant or priestess of Proserpine, and had covered the altar of the goddess with silver. A well in the village was perhaps that called Callichorus, where the women of Eleusis were accustomed to dance in honor of Ceres. A tradition prevails, that, if the broken statue be removed, the fertility of the land will cease. The modern town does not contain more than thirty houses.

ELEUTHERIA, a festival, celebrated at Platea, in honor of Jupiter Eleutherius, or the assertor of liberty, by delegates from almost all the cities of Greece. Its institution originated in this:- After the victory obtained by the Grecians, under Pausanias, over Mardonius the Persian general, in Platæa, an altar and statue were erected to Jupiter Eleutherius, who had freed the Greeks from the tyranny of the barbarians. It was further agreed upon in a general assembly, by the advice of Aristides, the Athenian, that deputies should be sent every fifth year, from the different cities of Greece, to celebrate Eleutheria, festivals of liberty. The Platæans celebrated also an anniversary festival in memory of those who had lost their lives in that famous battle on the sixteenth of the month Mæmacterion, a procession was made with a trumpeter at the head, sounding a signal for battle. After him followed chariots loaded with myrrh, garlands, and a black bull, and certain free young men, as no signs of servility were to appear during the solemnity, because they in whose honor the festival was instituted had died in the defence of their country. They carried libations of wine and milk in large-eared vessels, with jars of oil, and precious ointments. Last of all appeared the chief magistrate, who, though not permitted at other times to touch iron, or wear garments of any color but white, yet appeared clad in purple, and, taking a water pot out of the city chamber, proceeded through the middle of the town, with a sword in his hand, towards the sepulchres. There he drew water from a neighbouring spring, and washed and anointed the monuments, after which he sacrificed a bull upon pile of wood, invoking Jupiter and infernal Mercury, and inviting to the entertainment the souls of those happy heroes who had perished In the defence of their country. After this he

filled a bowl with wine, saying, I drink to those who lost their lives in the defence of the liberties of Greece. There was also a festival of the same name observed by the Samians in honor of the god of love. Slaves also, when they obtained their liberty, kept a holiday, which they called eleutheria.

ELF, n. s. & v. a. ELF'IN, n. s. & adj. ELF'ISH, adj. ELF'-LOCK, n. s. ELF'-QUEEN, EL'VISH, adj. Skinner derives the

Sax. ælfe; Goth. and Teut. alf; Swed. alfwar; Brit. eilf; Belg. (alve ; à Gr. επιάλτης οι εφίαλτης, says Minshen, incubus, the night-mare. Saxon word from ahleopan, Saxon, to leap. The male of a fairy; a spirit of the woods or mountains; a demon; a dwarf. To elf is to entangle or ravel the hair as elves were supposed to do; and elf-locks are hair so ravelled. Elfin is a diminutive of elf; or, as an adjective, synonymous with elfish, and signifies of or belonging to elves.

In olde dayes of the King Artour,
Of which that Bretons spoken gret honour
All was this lond fulfilled of Faerie;
The Elf-quene with hire joly compagni
Danced ful oft in many a grene mede.

Chaucer. Cant. Tales.
Now when that idle dream was to him brought,
Unto that elfin knight he bade him fly,
Where he slept soundly.

Spenser.
Through this house give glimmering light,
By the dead and drowsy fire;
Every elf, and fairy sprite,
Hop as light as bird from briar.

Shakspeare.

ELF ARROWS, in natural history, a name given to the flints anciently fashioned into arrowheads, and still found fossile in Scotland, America, and several other parts of the world: they were believed to be shot by fairies, and that cattle were sometimes killed by them.

ELGIN or ELGYN, a royal borough of Scotland, and formerly a bishop's see, is situated on the river Lossie, about six miles north of the Spey. The name is probably derived from Helgy, general of the army of Sigurd, the Norwegian earl of Orkney, who, about 927, conquered Caithness, Sutherland, Ross, and Moray. It is said that he built a town in the south of Moray, which it is probable was Elgin. Many Norwegian princes were also named Helgy, and the inscription upon the town seal is, S. commune civitatis de Helgyn,' engraved in Saxon characters, in a style earlier than the middle of the sixteenth century. In the reign of William the Lion, Elgin had a royal fort. Its most ancient charter in the archives is from Alexander II. in 1234, granting a guild to the burgesses with extensive privileges. Elgin is a good town, and has many of the houses built over piazzas; but, excepting its great cattle fairs, has little trade. It is principally remarkable for its ecclesiastical antiquities. The cathedral, now in ruins, has been formerly a very magnificent pile. The west door is richly ornamented. The choir is very beautiful, and has a fine light gallery running round it. At the cast end are two rows of narrow windows, in an excellent Gothic taste. The chapter house is an octagon; the roof supported by a fine single column with neat carvings of coats of arms round the capital. There is still a tower on each side of this cathedral; but that in the centre, with the spire and whole roof, are fallen in; and form awful fragments, mixed with the battered monuments of knights and prelates. The cathedral was founded by Andrew de Moray, in 1224, on a piece of land granted by Alexander II.; and his remains were deposited in the choir, under a tomb of blue marble, in 1244. The great tower was built principally by John Innes, bishop of this see, as appears by the Latin inscription cut on one of the great pillars. At the west end of the town are to be seen the ruins of an ancient castle, in which Edward Bruce surprised an English garrison early in the fourteenth century. Elgin is a royal borough, and unites with Banff, Cullen, Inverary, and Kintore, in returning a member to parliament. The burgesses resident in the town are alone eligible to the magistracy. Sixty-three miles and a half north-west fron Aberdeen, and 144 north from Edinburgh. Population between 3000 and 4000. The parish of Elgin is about ten miles in length and six in 1readth. Population of the town and parish,

4602.

ELGIN MARBLES. These admirable works of

ancient art, recently purchased by the public of the earl of Elgin, are derived chiefly from the temple of Minerva, in the Acropolis at Athens, originally known as the Hecatompedon, or of an hundred feet, on account of its breadth; and Parthenon, or Temple of the Virgin, from the character of its patroness. This edifice was erected under the administration of Pericles, by Phidias, and artists and architects employed under him, about B. C. 500. It was wholly built of white marble, and the plan was that which is technically called octastyle peripteral; that is to say, it was an oblong colonnade, having eight columns in the porticos, front and back, and fifteen down each side, exclusive of those at the angles; within the columns, at about the distance of nine feet, was the wall of the cella, or interior of the temple; and this cella was a peristyle, that is, it had a row of columns forming an internal colonnade; this colonnade in the Parthenon seems to have supported a gallery.

The interior was divided into two parts: that towards the east, or front, was the place of worship, and occupied about two-thirds of the length-here stood the statue of the goddess; the division to the west was called the opisthodomos, and it was here that the public treasures were kept.

The pediments or triangular spaces over the portico, were adorned with groups of statues. Pausanias says, the pediment of the front, or entrance, represented the birth of Minerva; and that of the back the Contest of Minerva and Neptune for Attica.' Att. c. 24. The Acropolis is entered from the westward, and, of course, the west end of the temple is that which first presents itself to the observer; and the east end was, at the earliest modern period when we have any record of it, shut in and built round with Turkish houses: from these two circumstances it has happened that travellers mistook the west for the front, and the east for the back, and they, therefore, erroneously applied what Pausanias had said of the one to the other, and, having once fallen into this error, they went on, moulding, by their own ingenious fancies, the remains of the groups of the several pediments into some kind of consistency with his relation.

So obstinately long-lived was this error, that though the ingenious and accurate Stuart, in the second volume of his beautiful and valuable Survey of Athens, establishes, beyond all doubt, that the principal front and entrance were to the eastward (as indeed was the case in all ancient temples), yet, from not consulting the original Greek, he adopts, as to the subject of the sculptures of the pediments, the common error, and argues as if Pausanias had said the west instead of the entrance, which is his real expression. This point has been, of late, fully explained and decided by the work of the Chevalier Visconti on the Elgin marbles, London, 1816.

The height of the statues in the pediments varied in size, according to the increasing height of the cornice under which they were placed, from about seven feet to twelve; but as the pediment at each angle came, of course, to a point, erect figures of even the lowest stature could not be introduced; but the artist overcame this

difficulty with admirable skill, for the statues nearest the angles were recumbent, with their feet towards the angles; next came sitting figures, then figures in higher attitudes, and lastly, towards the centre, the chief figures of the composition upright and at full length. The next portion of the temple which we are to examine is the entablature, which surmounted the entire colonnade. The frieze of this entablature was composed of the well known Doric architectural ornaments called triglyphs, and of sculptured ornaments called metopes, placed alternately, the triglyph being over the centres of each column and of each intercolumniation, and the metopes occupying the intervals; each of these metopes consisted of a block of marble about three feet square, representing in hold high-relief the combat of a Lapitha with a Centaur. This subject was, on account of Theseus, who had overcome the Centaurs, one of national interest with the Athenians, and it seems to have been a very favorite subject in all sculptures of this period. It was depicted, as Pliny tells us, on the sandals of Minerva in the temple; it ornamented, as we still see, the frieze of the temple of Theseus, and it was again introduced in the frieze of the temple of Phigalia, which was built by Ictinus, one of the architects employed under Phidias on the Parthenon.

Another part of the Parthenon to which we must direct the attention of our readers is the frieze of the cella, or interior; this was an uninterrupted series of sculpture in blocks of marble about three feet high, that ran round the upper part of the wall, which, as we before stated, was about nine feet within the external row of columns; this frieze, with peculiar taste and judgment, represented, in very low-relief, the Panathenaic Procession, the highest festival of the Athenians, the solemnity in which the whole people conveyed, in solemn pomp, to this very temple, the sacred veil that was to be suspended over the statue of the goddess within.

These are the three classes of sculptures which adorned the exterior of the temple, and have alone come down to posterity; and it may not be here improper, though it is somewhat premature, to observe that the perfect statue of the pediment, the high-relief of the metope, and the low-relief of the frieze, include the only three species of which the art of sculpture is capable. In the pediments, which not only admitted, but required, on account of the situation as well as of the subjects, the boldest and noblest efforts of his art, Phidias represented divinities and heroes in full wrought statues of the colossal size, grouped with all the variety of attitude, expression, and sentiment. In the metopes, which, from their situation between the triglyphs, and their distance from the eye, ran the risk of being indistinct, he employed the highest relief of which there is any instance extant; in fact these groups are almost statues, and adhere to the blocks of marble by a very slight contact but in the wall of the cell, which was surrounded by the ambulatory, this high-relief would have had two ill effects-it would have jetted out unpleasantly over the heads of the spectators, and prevented their having a perfect view of its composition, and as the only

light by which it could be seen was reflected. broken, and unequal (being admitted through the intercolumniations), the violent shadows of a high-relief would have perplexed and defeated the artist's design; for this situation, therefore, he employed relief so very low, that though it is the most exquisite and striking work of the ancient chisel, and though it expresses action, light, and shade in the highest perfection, it does not, in any part, project above an inch, and, in truth, exhibits all the force of relief with all the smoothness and delicacy of a drawing.

These details will at once prepare our readers to see how this great artist joined to the most fertile fancy, the truest taste, and the most perfect architectural science; and to understand the important acquisitions to our English school of sculpture, which the following list of the Elgin marbles presents.

We now, therefore, insert an abstract of the official catalogue, drawn up from the notes of the learned Visconti, of all the articles of the Elgin collection; and afterwards insert various testimonies to their value both as antiques and as works of art.

From the Parthenon there are ninety-two pieces, of which six statues or fragments of statues are stated to be from the eastern pediment, five from the western pediment, and six, the places of which (Report 71) are not ascertained. Of the metopes in high-relief there are fourteen. Of the frieze of the cell, in low-relief, there are, in all, fifty-two pieces, viz. twelve from the east end, fourteen from the north side, one from the west, fourteen from the east, and ten whose places are not ascertained.

Lord Elgin has also obtained a variety of other articles of considerable curiosity and value, which are stated in the same document, and are included in his lordship's offer to the public, viz. From the Temple of Victory there are four pieces of high-relief. From the triple Temple of Erectheus, Minerva Polias, and Pandrosa, eighteen architectural specimens.-Seven architectural Doric specimens from the Propylea, Parthenon, &c.-Three pieces from the theatre of Bacchus.-Thirteen detached heads or fragments of heads.-Thirty-five detached pieces of various sculpture.-Eleven marble and three bronze urns; and some hundreds of vases, dug up in or near Athens. One of the bronze urns was found in what is called the tomb of Aspasia. -Eight altars.-Thirteen sepulchral pillars or cippi.-Forty-four casts in plaster of Paris of the friezes of the Parthenon, the temple of Theseus, and the Choraic monument of Lysicrates.

In a collection so extensive, there must be a great variety in the worth and beauty of the articles; though there is scarcely one that is not in a high degree curious and interesting: but it is to the sculptures of the Parthenon that the collection owes its chief reputation and most transcendant value. Before the splendor of their beauty every thing else fades away, and, compared with them, this crowd of minor antiquities appears almost worthless. But, at the head of all, in excellence, the best judges have placed two statues, one of which occupied the left corner of the eastern, and the other the same place