SOME OF THE SPOILS.
One of the most beautiful of the ruined shrines of the Acropolis is the "Temple of Wingless Victory;" so-called because the statue of the goddess was represented without wings, in the fond hope that Victory would never fly away from the Athenian capital. Most of the beautiful statues which adorned this building were carried off to the British Museum seventy years ago, and some were ruined in the process of removal. One exquisite portion of the frieze, which had for twenty centuries stood forth resplendent over the historic city, was carelessly dropped and broken into atoms. A Greek who was standing near, watching this shameful devastation, brushed away a tear, and with a sob exclaimed pathetically: "Telos!" (That is the end of it!) and turned away.
No one has condemned the plunder of the Acropolis more trenchantly than Byron, in the lines:
"Cold is the heart, fair Greece! that looks on thee,
Nor feels as lovers o'er the dust they loved;
Dull is the eye that will not weep to see
Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed
By British hands, which it had best behooved