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    gratification abroad and in public . There is an illustration in the < Odyssey / which is rather remarkable . While Ulysses and his friends were slaughtering his wife's suitors , one of the party dived

    beneath the * genial board , ' and ensconced himself very comfortably in the reeking hide of the newly-slain ox which had been roasted for dinner , till , the combat being over , he threw off his wrapping garment , and again made his appearance . I have tnore than once in Southern America dined in a somewhat

    similar fashion ; but it would be thought rather strange in civilized England , amongst sculptors and painters of eminence . Had private enjoyment , and the refinement of luxury , prevailed in Greece , as they now do in England , it is likely that her great artists would never have arisen to such eminence . One of the

    strongest examples of enthusiasm in art , that I recollect , was in that dreary city of the mountain desert , named Potosi , situate on the extreme verge of vegetation . An old Spanish friar had taken upon himself , many years previous , the charge of architect , in the construction of a cathedral , after the fashion of the Jesuits of the last century . His drawings were of his own making , after

    the Saracenic school . His means were , a small toll upon all the wheat brought into the town on llamas and asses ; his workmen and labourers , the miserable , uncultivated Indians ; his material , the rocks of the neighbouring mountain ; and his scaffold-poles , some of them ninety feet high , were formed of small sticks not more than twelve feet in length , such as llamas and asses could

    carry . They were bound together in several thicknesses , with thongs of llama skin , till they had obtained the requisite length . Year after year this old man had toiled on ^ superintending the labour day by day , and constantly working with his own hands to show his dull workmen their business ; yet his energy never slackened , notwithstanding the consciousness that his labour

    would ultimately be wasted , while he beheld the inhabitants of the city daily diminishing in number , and feeling assured that a time must come , ere many years were over , that it would be abandoned , by the silver mines , which had given rise to its erection , becoming valueless . He was a remarkable old man , of middling stature , thin and pale , with a lofty forehead and piercing eyes , dressed in a gray robe of coarse baise , girdled at the waist with

    the cord of San Francisco ; no appearance of shirt , bare legs , and sandals of raw hide . He had been twenty-five years occupied with his labour , and his only anxiety was , as his means every year were lessening , that he should not live to finish it . Poor old man ! It was impossible to help liking him , forlorn as he looked , and with every spark of bigotry , which he might have once possessed , buried in his enthusiasm for the art , and the work to which he had devoted his existence . With tears in his eyes , he pointed out to me a small portion of the building which he had taken the precaution to finish , in order that , if he died ,

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    4 On the State of the Fine Arts in England .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1833, page 4, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2606/page/4/