Memorandum on the subject of the Earl of Elgin's pursuits in Greece (London, 1811)

M

will never acquire the glory of possessing the arts,
in any but a subordinate degree. It is my wish,
therefore, as it has been my endeavour, that the-
supreme excellence of those works of sculpture
should become the means, and act as an incentive
to that improvement amongst us, by which we may
gratify the ambition of all honourable minds, and
be remembered amongst the lovers of art and our
country in a distant posterity, as those who have
opened the avenues of excellence, and have rightly
known and valued them. Let us, my Lord, justify
ourselves, at least, by our intentions. In whatever
estimation the arts of the present day shall be held
by those of future ages, your Lordship must be
•remembered by the present, and be recorded by
those to come, as a benefactor, who has conferred
obligations, not only on a profession, but upon
a nation ; and as having rescued from the devasta-
tion of ignorance, and the unholy rapine of bar-
barism, those unrivalled works of genius, to be
preserved in the bosom of your country, which
a few centuries more might have consigned to
oblivion.

'■ To your Lordship I have to return my sincere
thanks, for the means you have afforded më of
adding my name to that of Phidias, by arranging
his figures in my own compositions, and adapting
them to subjects) by which my sketches may .be