But even pictures are popular compared with statues. How often do you look a second time at any of the statues in the streets and squares of your town? Perhaps that is not to be wondered at, for the chances are that most of them are pretty bad. But in our museums and galleries there are, if not originals, at least copies, of some of the most beautiful statues that the mind and hand of man have ever created, and yet very few of us seem to care anything for them. If you want a quiet, empty place in a museum or gallery, you are pretty safe to go to the sculpture room. If you do go there, you come away as soon as possible, remembering only that you saw a lot of battered, broken figures, headless, armless, or legless, and probably that almost the only complete statue in the lot was a horrible thing that the catalogue called the Laocoön, representing a big man and his two sons writhing in agony in the coils of two great serpents. Statues, and especially Greek statues, don't interest you.

Yet I want to take the risk of wearying you, and to tell you something about the beauty of these poor battered fragments which are all that remains of the great art of the most artistic race that ever lived on earth. For nothing nobler or more beautiful was ever created by the hand of man than some of these poor waifs and strays from a great nation; and you will never know how splendid a man was the Greek at his best until you have come really to see them and to love them. The whole soul and heart of Greece was expressed in these figures of carven marble and molten bronze as nowhere else.

For the Greek really loved art, and had no greater pleasure than to see it around him on every side. He didn't mind living in a very plain and simple house, even though he were a rich and famous man; he didn't mind living on plain fare that you and I would turn up our noses at; but he simply had to have his city as beautiful as skill and money could make it. Money was never grudged for that. A million and a half to make a noble gateway to the houses of the gods on the Acropolis, a hundred and fifty thousand pounds' worth of gold to adorn the ivory statue of the Virgin-Goddess—that was money well spent. A sumptuous house and luscious food—well, that only gave pleasure to himself, and only to the lower part of him; but a noble picture, or statue, or temple was a glory to his city in the eyes of the world, and a delight to thousands of his fellow-citizens every day of their lives. So the Greek voted for the picture or the statue, and was content to live plainly himself, so that he and his townsmen might have beauty before their eyes wherever they went, and the fame of their city be increased among men. Can you imagine people like that? I dare say we know many things that they were densely ignorant of; but they knew and loved things that we would be all the better of knowing and loving too.

I wonder if we can ever realize how beautiful a city such as Athens must have been in the days of its glory. Art was everywhere, not huddled into dull galleries as with us, but set out in the streets and squares, on the hills and in the shrines, where everyone could see it under the blue southern sky. For hundreds of years each generation tried to surpass the ones before it in adding to the beauty of their city, till Athens must have been a perfect storehouse of wonders that would be worth countless millions to-day—if they could be got. Pictures in all the pillared halls where the citizens walked and talked and transacted business—statues everywhere, in street and wayside shrine, and high on the broad gable ends of every temple, sculpture in relief, high or low, along the temple walls, round the altars, on the tombstones. It was said once in scorn that in Athens it was easier to find a god than a man. That was when Athens had fallen from her glory, for in her great days her men were worthy of the figures of the gods they reared. But it helps you to understand how full the city was of all the best that art could do. Rome may have been greater and more gorgeous; but I fancy that Athens was incomparably the most beautiful city that the sun has ever shined upon.

So now let us look for a few minutes at one or two of the best things that have been saved out of the wreck. I can only show you a few, and so we shall not have time to look at any of the quaint but beautiful figures that come from the days when Greek art was in its childhood, just finding out what it wished to say and how to say it, still less to trouble ourselves with Dying Gladiators and Fighting Persians and such-like things from the days when art had grown over-ripe and was beginning to decay—wonderfully clever though they may be. All that we are to see must be of the best time—that wonderful 200 years from 500 to 300 when Greece was great in everything. Here, then, first of all, is the famous bronze Charioteer who was dug up a few years ago between the theatre and the temple at Delphi. In all likelihood he was dedicated by Anaxilas, tyrant of Rhegium, in memory of a victory in some chariot-race at the games, and very possibly the figure is a likeness of the tyrant himself in charioteer's garb. He stands stark and erect in his long flowing robe, the one hand that remains still holding the reins, the brown eyes, inlaid in coloured paste, looking steadily ahead along the course, the whole figure tensely gathered up in expectation of the start. Perhaps he is just a little stiff, and a little over-exact, for the art that created him is only beginning to find itself, and does not dare to be supple and flexible as yet; but all the promise of a brilliant day is in this dignified figure of art's morning, with the freshness and dew of youth upon it. The sculptor who imagined and executed this stately piece of work was already a great artist, though there were greater to follow, and though he worked nearly 2,500 years ago.

And now, if you want to see what a Greek athlete looked like in the very moment when he was putting forth all his strength and skill, look at this copy of what is probably the most famous athletic statue of all time—Myron's Diskobolos or Disk-Thrower. The athlete is just at the very top of his swing, the whole body pivoting on the right foot, the left arm swung across the right knee to preserve the balance, the right arm, with the heavy disk in the hand, thrown back to its fullest extension. All the strength of the lithe, sinewy figure is on the strain for the moment; another instant, and it will be relaxed, as the arm swings forward again, and the disk goes whirling through the air. No instantaneous photograph of a golfer in his swing or a runner in his stride ever gave a more perfect picture of the athlete in the very moment of his highest tension. Myron lived and worked a very long time ago, but I don't think anyone could teach him very much even to-day of what a well-trained human body should look like.