sidence of ten years in Athens, he never had the curiosity to proceed
as far as Sunium (now Cape Colonna),[208] till he accompanied us in our
second excursion. However, his works, as far as they go, are most
beautiful: but they are almost all unfinished. While he and his patrons
confine themselves to tasting medals, appreciating cameos, sketching
columns, and cheapening gems, their little absurdities are as harmless
as insect or fox-hunting, maiden-speechifying, barouche-driving, or any
such pastime; but when they carry away three or four shiploads of the
most valuable and massy relics that time and barbarism have left to the
most injured and most celebrated of cities: when they destroy, in a vain
attempt to tear down, those works which have been the admiration of
ages, I know no motive which can excuse, no name which can designate,
the perpetrators of this dastardly devastation. It was not the least of
the crimes laid to the charge of Verres, that he had plundered Sicily,
in the manner since imitated at Athens. The most unblushing impudence
could hardly go farther than to affix the name of its plunderer to the
walls of the Acropolis; while the wanton and useless defacement of the
whole range of the basso-relievos, in one compartment of the temple,
will never permit that name to be pronounced by an observer without
execration.

On this occasion I speak impartially: I am not a collector or admirer of
collections, consequently no rival; but I have some early prepossession
in favour of Greece, and do not think the honour of England advanced by
plunder, whether of India or Attica.

Another noble Lord [Aberdeen] has done better, because he has done less:
but some others, more or less noble, yet "all honourable men," have done
_best_, because, after a deal of excavation and execration, bribery to
the Waywode, mining and countermining, they have done nothing at all. We
had such ink-shed, and wine-shed, which almost ended in bloodshed![209]
Lord E.'s "prig"--see Jonathan Wild for the definition of
"priggism"[210]--quarrelled with another, _Gropius_[211] by name (a very
good name too for his business), and muttered something about
satisfaction, in a verbal answer to a note of the poor Prussian: this
was stated at table to Gropius, who laughed, but could eat no dinner
afterwards. The rivals were not reconciled when I left Greece. I have
reason to remember their squabble, for they wanted to make me their
arbitrator.