Few men there are who having once visited Greece do not contrive to visit it again. And yet when the returned traveller meets the ordinary friend who asks him where he has been, the next remark is generally, “Dear me! have you not been there before? How is it you are so fond of going to Greece?” There are even people who imagine a trip to America far more interesting, and who at all events look upon a trip to Spain as the same kind of thing—southern climate, bad food, dirty inns, and general dis

I may anticipate for a moment here, and say that even now the face of Athens is turned, as of old, to the East. Her trade and her communications are through the Levant. Her chief intercourse is with Constantinople, and Smyrna, and Syra, and Alexandria. This curious parallel between ancient and modern geographical attitudes in Greece is, no doubt, greatly due to the now bygone Turkish rule. In addition to other contrasts, Mohammedan rule and Eastern jealousy—long unknown in Western Europe—first j

It was our fortune to come into Greece by night, with a splendid moon shining upon the summer sea. The varied outlines of Sunium on the one side, and Ægina on the other, were very clear, but in the deep shadows there was mystery enough to feed the burning impatience to see it all in the light of common day; and though we had passed Ægina, and had come over against the rocky Salamis, as yet there was no sign of Peiræus. Then came the light on Psyttalea, and they told us that the harbor was right

Here, again, we feel the want of some stronger government—some despotic assertion of a law of gravitation to a common centre—to counteract the strong centrifugal forces acting all through Greek society. The old autonomy of the Greeks—that old assertion of local independence which was at once their greatness and their ruin—this strong instinct has lasted undiminished to the present day. They seem even now to hate pulling together, as we say. They seem always ready to assert their individual right

But the Venetians were not content with their exploit. They were, about this time, when they held possession of most of Greece, emulating the Pisan taste for Greek sculptures; and the four fine lions standing at the gate of the arsenal at Venice still testify to their zeal in carrying home Greek trophies to adorn their capital. Morosini wished to take down the sculptures of Phidias from the eastern pediment, but his workmen attempted it so clumsily that the figures fell from their place, and wer

But unfortunately all this sacerdotal prominence is probably the work of the later restorers of the theatre. For after having been first beautified and adorned with statues by Lycurgus (in Demosthenes’s time), it was again restored and embellished by Herodes Atticus, or about his time, so that the theatre, as we now have it, can only be called the building of the second or third century after Christ. The front wall of the stage, which is raised some feet above the level of the empty pit, is ador

On this side of Attica also, with the exception of the Thriasian plain and of Eleusis, there extends outside Mount Parnes a wild mountainous district, quite alpine in character, which severs Attica from Bœotia, not by a single row of mountains, or by a single pass, but by a succession of glens and defiles which at once explain to the classical student, when he sees them, how necessary and fundamental were the divisions of Greece into its separate districts, and how completely different in charac

All these remarks are even more strongly exemplified by the beautiful country which lies between Pentelicus and Hymettus, and which is now covered with forest and brushwood. We passed through this vale one sunny morning on our way to visit Marathon. There is, indeed, a road for some miles—the road to the quarries of Pentelicus—but a very different one from what the Athenians must have had. It is now a mere broad track, cut by wheels and hoofs in the sward; and wherever the ruts become too deep t

This is one of the numerous instances in which a single glance at the locality sets right an historical statement that has eluded suspicion for ages. The fort of Phyle, like that of Eleutheræ, of which I shall speak, and like those of Messene and of Orchomenus, is built of square blocks of stone, carefully cut, and laid together without a particle of rubble or cement, but so well fitted as to be able to resist the wear of ages better than almost any other building. I was informed by M. Émile Bur

After some hours’ riding, we suddenly came upon a deep vista in the mountains on our left—such another vista as there is behind Coronea, but narrower, and inclosed on both sides with great and steep mountains. And here we found the cause of the cultivation of the upper plain—here was the town of Lebadea (Livádia), famed of old for the august oracle of Trophonius—in later days the Turkish capital of the province surrounding. To this the roads of all the neighborhood converge, and from this a smal

The old priests of Delphi, who were the first systematic road-builders among the Greeks, had made a careful way from Thebes into Phocis, for the use of the pilgrims thronging to their shrine. It appears that, by way of saving the expense of paving it all, they laid down or macadamized in some way a double wheel-track or fixed track, upon which chariots could run with safety; but we hear from the oldest times of the unpleasantness of two vehicles meeting on this road, and of the disputes that too

The whole town, like most others in Greece, even in the Arcadian highlands, is full of half-built and just finished houses, showing a rapid increase of prosperity, or perhaps a return of the population from country life into the towns which have always been so congenial to the race. But if the latter be the fact, there yet seems no slackening in the agriculture of the country, which in the Morea is strikingly diligent and laborious, reaching up steep hillsides, and creeping along precipices, win

How, then, did the false notion of our Arcadia spring up in modern Europe? How is it that even our daily papers assume this sense, and know it to be intelligible to the most vulgar public? The history of the change from the historical to the poetical conception is very curious, and worth the trouble of explaining, especially as we find it assumed in many books, but accounted for in none. It appears that from the oldest days the worship of Pan had its home in Arcadia, particularly about Mount Mæn

These were our reflections as we passed up the gulf on a splendid summer evening, the mountains of Arcadia showing on their snowy tops a deep rose color in the setting sun. And passing by Ægion and Sikyon, we came to anchor at the harbor of Lechæum. There was a public conveyance which took the traveller across the isthmus to Kenchreæ, where a steamboat was in readiness to bring him to Athens. But with the usual absurdity of such services, no time was allowed for visiting Corinth and its Acropoli

Of course, the whole population came down to see us. They were apparently as idle, and as ready to be amused, as the inhabitants of an Irish village. But they are sadly wanting in fun. You seldom hear them make a joke or laugh, and their curiosity is itself curious from this aspect. After a good deal of bargaining we agreed for a set of mules and ponies to bring us all the way round the Morea, to Corinth if necessary, though ultimately we were glad to leave them at Kyparissia, at the opposite si

When we first visited the place it was in the afternoon of a splendid summer’s day; the fields were yellow and white with stubbles or with dust, and the deep gray shadow of a passing cloud was the only variety in the color of the upper plain. For here there are now no trees, the corn had been reaped, and the land asserted its character as very thirsty Argos. But as we ascended to higher ground, the groves and plantations of the lower plain came in sight, the splendid blue of the bay began to fra

Now a great reaction is setting in. Instead of the dreadful Hopf, we have the fascinating Gregorovius, whose Mediæval Athens clothes even dry details with the hue of fancy; the sober Murray’s Guide includes Mt. Athos and its wonders as part of its task. Recent travellers, and the students at the Foreign Schools of Athens, tell us of curious churches and their frescoes, and now Mr. Schultz, of the British school, has undertaken to reproduce them with his pencil. Following the example of Pullen, w