seconds as we stood in a row at the side of the vessel; after which we were forbidden to communicate with the land until nine o'clock the next morning, when the health officer at the Piræus would examine us in like manner, and would give us pratique upon the payment of our fees. This is a much easier and pleasanter mode of keeping quarantine than that of entering the Lazaretto on shore; it is an invention of the Austrian Lloyd Steam Company, of which their boats enjoy a monopoly.

It was no privation not to go on shore at Syra, for the town, which reaches from the sea to the summit of a cone-like hill, looked exceedingly steep and barren, and hot and dreary. The bells at evening were the only pleasant feature of the place; their sound rolled sweetly down the hills and over the waters.

At five the next morning we sailed into the beautiful harbour of the Piræus, between the pedestals where once stood the lions that guarded the entrance to the port of Athens. I strained my eyes to catch a view of the Parthenon, but it was hardly visible through the clouds of dust that filled the scorching air. The quarantine over, in an hour we were riding in this hot cloud of powdered marble, past the temple of Theseus, the Pnyx and the Acropolis.

Of all places in the Levant, Athens is the worst for a summer residence. The heat is even more intense and melting here than at Beyrout, and there is no covered bazaar or seaside balcony where he can take refuge. Macadamized roads, built of a friable stone, and seldom moistened by showers, throw up immense quantities of dust as the fierce scorching winds sweep over the plain; while the white stone of the streets and of the houses, relieved by no shade, and the naked faces of the surrounding mountains reflect and multiply the sun's rays like a combination of mirrors, in whose focus the luckless sight-seer must always stand. It is only in the early morning and at evening that one can go about the streets with comfort or safety.

Yet the interior of some houses is always cool, and the Hotel d'Angleterre afforded a quiet and shady retreat in the sultry noon; at evening a refreshing breeze springs up and the nights are passable.

It almost spoils one for a visit to Athens to have seen Thebes and Baalbec. But as Baalbec made its own impression, even after Karnak, so did the Parthenon assert its individual life and power and majesty above them both. From the southern extremity of the vast plain upon which Athens lay, rises abruptly toward the sea the rugged rocky summit 200 feet high, which was fortified as the Acropolis. Upon its western face a long flight of marble steps with successive rows of columns and gateways formed the propyla, leading to the temples that crowned the top; these were, upon the north the Erectheum, a small triple temple of most exquisite finish, having Ionic and Corinthian columns. upon opposite faces, and a row of Caryatides upon a third: and on the south the Parthenon-one grand and lofty cella of marble, facing east and west, and surrounded on all sides with a portico of majestic Doric pillars. The purity of the marble, the fine proportions of each column and of the whole structure, the delicate adjustment of waving lines, the finished workmanship of the columns and of the frieze, comhine to make this work the miracle of art. The whole group of the Acropolis, as it anciently stood, with the beautiful little temple of "Minerva unwinged" that faced the propyla on the right, was doubtless the most imposing in the world; but now its effect is marred by the walls and towers of the Venetians and the Turks, which hinder its being seen from any one point, and which also hinder from the summit the prospect of the plain below. As it is, the whole group does not equal in extent and grandeur the one temple of Karnak-though, of course, far surpassing that in finish of details-and there is no one feature of it that compares with the six Corinthian columns at Baalbec.

The columns of the temple of Jupiter on the plain below would vie with these if they had a higher position. The ruins of this latter temple were to me the wonder of Athens. One of the sixteen remaining columns was blown down by a tempest last autumn, and now lies in eighteen huge blocks, separated at the original seams, and folded one upon another like a row of children's blocks overthrown in sport. Taking this as a measure, the grandeur of the upright pillars grows immensely upon the eye.

But more interesting to me than these splendid works of art, were the Pynx and Mars' Hill, whence the eloquence of Demosthenes and of Paul had poured forth upon the noblest themes of patriotism and of religion. These are lesser elevations adjacent to the Acropolis, and separated from each other by a small ravine, each commanding views of the Ægean sea, and of the Athenian plain, of Hymettus, of Pentelicus, and of Salamis. These are spots to be visited again and again-especially at early morning and in the setting sun-for the inspirations of nature, of genius, of art, of eloquence, of patriotism, of liberty and of religion that linger still amid the ruins of the past.

I greatly enjoyed the ascent of Pentelicus, which lies some ten miles north of Athens. We started at four in the morning, in a carriage which conveyed us over a good road to the foot of the mountain, where we found horses in waiting for the ascent, which requires an hour and a half. About one third of the way up is the quarry worked by the old Athenians, from which the blocks and pillars of the Parthenon were hewn. How wonderful the genius, and how › great the labour and the skill that transferred the once solid contents of this now enormous chasm to crown the Acropolis with the majestic pile that glitters before us in the morning sun! It was a rare thing thus to look upon the marble mountain in the rough, and in so near a view to see the most perfect structure in the

world wrought from that self-same marble. Yet, how much more marvellous the making of the marble mountain than the mere shaping of its fragments into a thing of art.

Toward the last the ascent of Pentelicus-in all nearly 4,000 feet-becomes quite steep, and with such a wind as we encountered it was necessary to dismount and to cling to bushes for support. From the summit the view is extensive and imposing. The Ægean sea lay at our feet like a sea of molten silver; to the left the plain of Marathon stretched out before us with the long arm of the sea encircling it in distinct perspective; on the right was the plain of Athens with its isolated Acropolis, and beyond, the harbour of the Piræus and the Bay of Salamis setting in toward Eleusis; before us was Hymettus, still famous for its honey; then came into view the islands of the Egean, and the outline of the Morea, from the isthmus of Corinth to the farthest southern horizon; on the north and west lowered the hills that cluster around Parnassus as their king. Within one view were embraced the grandest natural features of Greece, and the sublimest scenes of Athenian history. I felt satisfied with mountain scenery when I reflected that within one year, I had stood upon the highest passes of the Alps, upon the crater of Vesuvius, upon the tops of Sinai, the Mount of Olives, and Mount Carmel, had crossed Lebanon, and now had ascended Pentelicus. Had the urgent invitation of the missionaries at Oroomiah to visit their station (accompanied with an offer to meet me half way) been received two months earlier, I might have added Ararat to the group.

A ride to Eleusis is a favourite excursion from Athens. Passing out of the city by Plato's Academy, which is still planted with a beautiful grove surrounding the fragments of ancient pillars, you ride along the lovely vale of Daphne, where the mountains shut

in closer and closer upon you till you strike the bay of Salamis; and coasting along this, among luxuriant vineyards and groves of oleanders, at times traversing a fragment of the old Via Sacra that still shows the grooves of chariot wheels, at times falling upon a column, a statue, or the fragment of a temple on the road-side, you come at length to the ancient wall of the harbour of Eleusis, and near by discover the gigantic blocks of the temple of Ceres, whose mysterious and indecent rites once drew hither in a grand yearly procession the pride and pomp and the multitudinous population of Athens. Here you may speculate upon the fall of nations as you see perched among the very ruins of this Sacra Sacrorum the miserable huts of the present Albanian villagers. But you cannot forget the associations of Salamis; and as you ride homeward at sunset and see the bay tinged with crimson as once it was tinged with blood, and mark a meteor shooting athwart the sky, you feel the melancholy contrast between the present and the past, as though the brightest blaze of human glory were but the setting sun and the shooting star, soon to be lost in night.

T.

LEYDEN:

A TALE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

Chapter I.

In a small room belonging to one of the tall and gloomy houses which formed, three hundred years ago, the back streets of a large and populous continental town, sat a group of four persons. One, a venerable man, whose locks were whitened with the snows of more than sixty winters, but the lustre of his eye was undimmed, and though his expansive brow was crossed by many a wrinkle, it was the hand of care, rather than that of time, which had trained them there. He was listening earnestly and reverently to a young girl who read aloud from a large book on a table before her. Two