in many faiths, both beautiful and foul! O poor humanity! how weary was thy going, how long and toilsome was thy pilgrimage! Thou wanderedst unsteadily till the Flood, and the few rays of illuminating grace, which shone here and there amid the tents of the patriarchs, did but serve to bring out more sadly thy general darkness. Thou wert wearied in the house of bondage, thou didst lose heart in the broad wilderness, thou wert untrue to thy judges, rebellious against thy kings, deaf to thy prophets, petulant in thy captivity. Oh, poor humanity! loaded as thou wert with thy tremendous curse, the thunders of justice rolling about thy head, and the hail of God's wrath pelting pitilessly upon thee, surely thou wert a sight to have stirred the grief of Angels. They told thee, poor, footsore, fainthearted pilgrim! they told thee there were rims of light lying on the tops of the mountains of prophecy, like the dawning of a better day; but thy back was bowed down with thy curse, thou couldst not lift up thyself to look at mountain-tops. They told thee there were beautiful feet of sweet preachers there, shod with the peaceful preparation of good news; what mattered that to thee? Thine eyes

were bleared with perpetual weeping; how couldst thou discern the peaceful sandals and the beautiful feet? Poor humanity! thou wanderedst on, with all thy children, to the Cæsar's taxing, murmuring to thyself, Slavery, slavery; ever a slave, in all things a slave.' Oh! little didst thou know of Him Who

looked like any other child: Whose feeble cry was not heard amid the noise of that taxation. Yet was there not a mysterious thrill that night through all the human race? Were not the stars larger and brighter than heretofore? Were not Angels heard singing? What ailed thee, poor, wasted humanity! that thou leapedst? What ailed thy curse-stricken children, that they, too, skipped like young rams? Why standest thou, poor humanity! gazing up into heaven? When faith divides the blue before thine eyes, what glorified form is that thou seest, and thy lips move like Hannah's in the temple, and thine eyes are as the eyes of one drunk with new wine? What aileth thee! O sinful humanity? And the Churches of the world rise up and answer with a voice, like the voice of many waters; the Churches of the world make answer: God is Man. The curse is dead, and we are carrying it out to its burial. Humanity is throned above the Angels. Man's nature, with the marks of the five gracious and blessed Wounds, receives the adoration of all Heaven, and is hymned by the prostrate multitudes of the celestial hierarchy.""

The next morning at sun-rise the Serpent of Epidaurus was becalmed off the island of Ankistri; but soon after, a light wind carried us past the cluster of islets called Pentenesia, which lay on our left, while on the right we ran under the island and town of Egina. Northwards we saw Megara on the mainland; and after coasting Salamis, we entered Piræus

a little before noon. We found Athens in high holy-day, keeping the Feast of St. George the Martyr, the patron Saint of England. In our calendar it falls on the twenty-third of April; the Greeks, however, have not adopted the new style, but, with the Russians, adhere to the old: so that, making an allowance of twelve days, St. George's Feast would fall rightly on the fifth of May.

In the evening we mounted the Acropolis, and went to the top of the Parthenon to see the sun set. He had just got behind the hill before we gained the summit of the temple. But the scene was very magnificent. The whole west was one flood of the most glowing saffron light, in which Salamis, Egina, the mountains of the Morea, and the hills of the Isthmus stood up with misty veils, the pale purple of which was strong or weak according to their distance. As the sun sank lower, the saffron light passed away, and flushes of deepest red light were strewn ἐν ἐσλοῦ Πέλοπος πτυχαῖς, ἐν βάσσαισιν Ισθμοῦ. The sea was a rich purple. On the other side stood Hymettus in a soft rosy light, giving beauty even to his sterile declivity: and a pure and holy brightness seemed almost to clothe the wonderful columns of the Parthenon itself. As we descended we saw a most striking view. The columns of the glorious Propylæa were in a full golden lustre, and between the two front pillars, and tall regal pillars they are, was framed a picture of great interest, and, from its coloring, of exceeding loveliness:-the Piræus with

the deep green olive-groves (for so they looked in the evening) and waving corn about it, its purple bay and the ships, the glistening silver line upon the sea beyond, the end of Salamis, and the mountain back-ground of the Morea. It faded very soon, but we had caught the vision at its full splendor. O wonderful region of dream and enchantment, how long will the light and splendor of this Greek evening haunt my recollection! Old Greece, with all her hills and bays, with all her gods and arts, will to me repose for ever in the radiant bosom of an unfading sun-set: the glorious decay, which the tributary homage of the barbarians has arrested for

ever.

We revisited the temple of Jupiter Olympius, by the bed of the Ilyssus. It appeared more wonderful, more glorious than ever. I could not at first see, as every one else seemed to do, the decided superiority of the Parthenon over all other things in Athens, though it was clear that the Parthenon, the Propylæa, and the Olympeion stood quite by themselves in point of eminent grandeur and exquisite beauty. On the first visit to Athens the Olympeion was my favorite building. Now the Propylæa was contending with it for the palm. Yet, on the other hand, the Olympeion was very grand that night. The moon-beams were lying all along the top of Hymettus, though her orb was not yet visible. The low wind made a slight moaning among the sixteen lofty columns, and rustled among the barley fields

close by and if you turned your back upon the temple, there was the jagged line of the Acropolis clear and sharp against the sky, and under Hadrian's gate you might see the houses of Athens, and the light of the still blushing west, framed within the broad arch. The Olympeion, like many a Gothic cathedral, was six hundred years in building. It was begun by Pisistratus, and not completed till the reign of the emperor Hadrian. Its splendor in its original state must have been quite overwhelming. It is glorious now to see the sixteen columns, sixty feet high, standing on a platform between the Acropolis and Hymettus, close upon the shrunken waters of old Ilyssus. What then must have been the effect of one hundred and twenty columns of the same height, in the perfect form of a Greek temple?

Hadrian's gate, which stands within a few hundred yards of the Olympeion, once separated two distinct cities, the Athens of Theseus and the Athens of Hadrian. It is a curious proof how incompetent a single mind, with whatever power, genius, or wealth it may be backed up, is to do time's work, or turn by one strong twist the custom of centuries. And Hadrian was but a finished gentleman, a travelled coxcomb. All that is Athens now is the Athens of Theseus; of the Athens of Hadrian nothing whatever remains but the sixteen superb columns of the Olympeion, an edifice, not Hadrian's merely, but whose foundations rested in the bosom of a far greater antiquity. The Roman Athens has vanished, and