To chill the overlightness of my heart.

Round me are hills whose summits seem to reel

In the unsteady atmosphere of night,

Clothed in soft gloom, like raven's plumage: there
'Mid the strong folds of ether, and the zones
Of mighty clasping winds that gird with chains
The naked precipice and leaning peak.
Great things and glorious pomps are going on

Up in the birth-place of the storms and calms;
Where light and darkness fetch their utmost powers
To meet and clash in war unspeakable.

And now and then throughout the quiet night
Fragments of breezes with a liquid fail

Drop to the lowlands, whisper in the reeds,
And are drawn in beneath the silver lake,
Bearing, it may be, messages and words
Of wondrous import from the lines arrayed
Upon the unseen steeps.

But hark! the owls

Shout from the firs on Wansfell, and the eye
May trace those sailing pirates of the night,
Stooping their dusky prows to cleave the gloom,
Leaving a momentary wake behind,

As with white wing they part the darksome air.

The scene was changed indeed, and night, wonderful night, was working far other spells. There were no mountains with cold, clear, black outline, no firs swathed in mantles of kindled mist, no sobbing winds and stars struggling through the rents of cloud. But the pale outline of the highlands that run round the gulf of Nauplia was on one side wavering and indistinct, on the other the smooth and luminous fields of the open Mediterranean, and our

wake was dancing with phosphoric bubbles. There was little sleep among us foreigners on board, but a happy, wakeful silence. One thought, one word, one look, in every mind, from every tongue, on every face, -the morning sight of Athens!

At day-break, and while everything on deck was wet with the heavy dew, we saw the pale green Salamis, and dropped anchor in the Piræus. But our enthusiasm lost us the day; it was wasted in hurry and excitement, while our minds were surrendered to an inundation of vague and joyous sensations, which left no distinct or profitable impressions behind. To say what thoughts we had at Piræus, on the olive-screened road from thence to Athens, between the desolate columns of Olympian Zeus, beneath the Propylæa, by the divine Parthenon, and old walls of the Acropolis, upon the bema of the Pnyx, and stone steps of the Areopagus, would be to indite a mere rhapsody, a chain of exaggerated epithets which would leave no character to anything. The day came to a close in Athens; we had laid hold of nothing, realized nothing, in a true sense, enjoyed nothing. But the tranquillity of evening brought with it soberness, and with soberness came wisdom, and with wisdom pleasure. We went out in the starry twilight, and found the little shrunken pools of Ilyssus, and drank from them; and when we saw the pale blue sky of the early night through the weather-colored columns of Olympian Zeus, a ruin most glorious, we could have dreamed we were

at Palmyra: for we had already seen camels browsing between Athens and Piræus. Even yet Athens was quite as much a dream as Palmyra, but when beneath Hadrian's Gate we were saluted by a Greek with the old 'Eorépa, the dream was realized. From our lofty apartment, a glorious scene presented itself by night, more than equalling the one at Venice: Athens is below gleaming with irregular lights, the moon, Sir Patrick Spence's moon, "the new moon with the auld moon in her arms," hanging over Salamis and Egina, with one large star by her side, the Acropolis standing out sharp, bold and dark against the night sky, with a star twinkling among the columns of the Parthenon, and Hymettus with clear and liquid outline beyond. Here, as in some other very famous localities, faith and sight forego their usual offices. Sight brings doubt, and destroys faith with a very trouble of unbelief. Of what use truly in moral unbelief would a visible miracle be? It would but feed the profane craving for fresh proof. Am I not surrounded by a thousand visible proofs of Athens, and yet I am bewildered? I demand a sign. Those sixteen stone steps on Mars' Hill-has the sandal of the wonder-working Paul left no trace behind? Where the murmur of the people rose as he explained the faith, is there no sound now more ghostly than the wind waving the barley-fields? We must leave Athens then, and visit it a second time, when we can make it a familiar place, and ponder on its ruins with a solemn, unexcited pleasure.

The road from Athens to Marathon lies over the For some time after

rocky foot of Pentelicus.

leaving Athens it is very uninteresting; but the poor village of Marousi nestles pleasantly among leafy gardens and flowery lanes. Beyond, the stony ground was overgrown with pines, arbutus, lentiscus, and many other evergreen and blossoming shrubs, and the whole soil was carpeted with pale pink and white gumcistus. A most aromatic smell rose from the shrubs, and the "odorous undergrowth" of Attie sage and thyme. Nearly the whole way it was as if we were in a conservatory. After leaving the few houses which form the village of Stamata, we crossed Mount Anathema. It is a defile of wild beauty. The ragged pines, the strange foliage, the masses of yellow cytisus, the giant heaths, and wildernesses of lentiscus and oleander were around us; and at our feet lay the flat plain of immortal Marathon, whose eastern edge the brilliant blue sea was gently laving without a billow or a murmur. Beyond was the fine outline of Euboea. We rode over the plain, mounted the Persians' grave, and idled on the shore. Upon the actual plain of Marathon with the sixth book of Herodotus in hand, the barley-fields and quiet shore and scattered olives, tenanted by very nations of little pigeons, soon gave place to a more stirring There Hippias coughed, and married his mother, the earth of Attica, with that strange bridal pledge, a tooth. There was the sacred precinct of Hercules, where the Athenians stood under arms, and

scene.

the Plateans came to their aid all in a body, the whole arm-bearing multitude of that little patriot state. There stood the wise Miltiades, and there he reasoned with the modest, self-distrusting Callimachus. There in front of the precinct rose the sacrificial smoke: nay, the herald's voice was yet almost audible, when in front of the five-deep lines he stood, and cried, ἅμα τε Αθηναίοισι γίνεσθαι τὰ ἀγαθὰ καὶ Πλαταιεύσι : and the bold sons of Athens shuddered even at the fashion of the Medish vestments.

But a truce to classical remembrances: we are entering the low vine-clad convent which is to be our home for the night, and the priest is descending from the small chapel on the hill, where he has been saying the afternoon prayers, and the little boy who makes the responses is with him. He leads a happy life, yon old priest. From sunrise to sunset, except at prayer times, he smokes a cherry-stick pipe, and is happy. He threatens the cattle with evil eye, and the people with anathema, and kids are brought him, and he is fed, and paid, and feared, and the cherry-stick pipe never goes out, and he sits under the shade of the convent fig-tree, and he gazes on Marathon always. The green lizard on the wall beside the tank is not happier than the long-bearded convent priest. But what if more be required of the one than of the other? Then it is not so well!

Nature's most fearful and most sweet sounds blend