To the scholar and the man of refined and cultivated mind, the associations connected with Grecian architecture are of the most delightful character. They transport him back, in imagination, to the choicest days of classic literature and art, when the disciples of the wisest and best of Athens listened to eloquent discourses that were daily delivered from her grove-embowered porticoes. When her temples were designed by a Phidias, and her architecture encouraged and patronized by a Pericles; when, in short, all the splendor of Pagan mythology, and the wisdom of Greek philosophy, were combined to perfect the arts and sciences of that period, and the temples dedicated to the Olympian Jove or the stately Minerva, were redolent with that beauty, which the Greeks worshipped, studied, and so well knew how to embody in material forms.
