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+Project Gutenberg's Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII
+ Italy and Greece, Part Two
+
+Author: Various
+
+Editor: Francis W Halsey
+
+Release Date: August 16, 2006 [EBook #19061]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SEEING EUROPE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Janet Blenkinship and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ [Illustration: THE PARTHENON]
+
+
+ SEEING EUROPE
+
+ WITH FAMOUS
+ AUTHORS
+
+
+ SELECTED AND EDITED
+
+ WITH
+ INTRODUCTIONS, ETC.
+
+ BY
+
+ FRANCIS W. HALSEY
+
+ _Editor of "Great Epochs in American History"
+ Associate Editor of "The World's Famous Orations"
+ and of "The Best of the World's Classics," etc._
+
+
+ IN TEN
+
+ VOLUMES
+
+ ILLUSTRATED
+
+ Vol. VIII
+
+ ITALY, SICILY, AND GREECE
+
+ PART TWO
+
+
+ FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
+ NEW YORK AND LONDON
+
+
+
+
+ COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY
+ FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
+ [_Printed in the United States of America_]
+
+
+
+
+ CONTENTS OF VOLUME VIII
+
+ Italy, Sicily, and Greece--Part Two
+
+
+ IV. THREE FAMOUS CITIES
+
+ PAGE
+
+ IN THE STREETS OF GENOA--By Charles Dickens 1
+
+ MILAN CATHEDRAL--By Hippolyte Adolphe Taine 4
+
+ PISA'S FOUR GLORIES--By Hippolyte Adolphe Taine 7
+
+ THE WALLS AND "SKYSCRAPERS" OF PISA--By Janet Ross and
+ Nelly Erichson 11
+
+
+ V. NAPLES AND ITS ENVIRONS
+
+
+ IN AND ABOUT NAPLES--By Charles Dickens 18
+
+ THE TOMB OF VIRGIL--By Augustus J. C. Hare 24
+
+ TWO ASCENTS OF VESUVIUS--By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 26
+
+ ANOTHER ASCENT--By Charles Dickens 31
+
+ CASTELLAMARE AND SORRENTO--By Hippolyte Adolphe Taine 37
+
+ CAPRI--By Augustus J. C. Hare 42
+
+ POMPEII--By Percy Bysshe Shelley 45
+
+
+ VI. OTHER ITALIAN SCENES
+
+
+ VERONA--By Charles Dickens 52
+
+ PADUA--By Theophile Gautier 55
+
+ FERRARA--By Theophile Gautier 59
+
+ LAKE LUGANO--By Victor Tissot 62
+
+ LAKE COMO--By Percy Bysshe Shelley 64
+
+ BELLAGIO ON LAKE COMO--By W. D. M'Crackan 66
+
+ THE REPUBLIC OF SAN MARINO--By Joseph Addison 69
+
+ PERUGIA--By Nathaniel Hawthorne 73
+
+ SIENA---By Mr. and Mrs. Edwin H. Blashfield 75
+
+ THE ASSISSI OF ST. FRANCIS--By Hippolyte Adolphe Taine 78
+
+ RAVENNA--By Edward A. Freeman 80
+
+ BENEDICTINE SUBIACO--By Augustus J. C. Hare 83
+
+ ETRUSCAN VOLTERRA--By William Cullen Bryant 86
+
+ THE PAESTUM OF THE GREEKS--By Edward A. Freeman 88
+
+
+ VII. SICILIAN SCENES
+
+
+ PALERMO--By Will S. Monroe 91
+
+ GIRGENTI--By Edward A. Freeman 93
+
+ SEGESTE--By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 97
+
+ TAORMINA--By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 99
+
+ MOUNT AETNA--By Will S. Monroe 101
+
+ SYRACUSE--By Rufus B. Richardson 104
+
+ MALTA--By Theophile Gautier 107
+
+
+ VIII. THE MAINLAND OF GREECE
+
+
+ ARRIVING IN ATHENS--THE ACROPOLIS--By J. P. Mahaffy 112
+
+ A WINTER IN ATHENS HALF A CENTURY AGO--By Bayard Taylor 119
+
+ THE ACROPOLIS AS IT WAS--By Pausanias 122
+
+ THE ELGIN MARBLES--By J. P. Mahaffy 127
+
+ THE THEATER OF DIONYSUS--By J. P. Mahaffy 130
+
+ WHERE ST. PAUL PREACHED--By J. P. Mahaffy 134
+
+ FROM ATHENS TO DELPHI ON HORSEBACK--By Bayard Taylor 136
+
+ CORINTH--By J. P. Mahaffy 140
+
+ OLYMPIA--By Philip S. Marden 143
+
+ THE TEMPLE OF ZEUS AT OLYMPIA AS IT WAS--By Pausanias 146
+
+ THERMOPYLAE--By Rufus B. Richardson 152
+
+ SALONICA--By Charles Dudley Warner 155
+
+ FROM THE PIERIAN PLAIN TO MARATHON--By Charles Dudley Warner 157
+
+ SPARTA AND MAINA--By Bayard Taylor 160
+
+ MESSENIA--By Bayard Taylor 164
+
+ TIRYNS AND MYCENAE--By J. P. Mahaffy 169
+
+
+ IX. THE GREEK ISLANDS
+
+ A TOUR OF CRETE--By Bayard Taylor 175
+
+ THE COLOSSAL RUINS AT CNOSSOS--By Philip S. Marden 179
+
+ CORFU--By Edward A. Freeman 182
+
+ RHODES--By Charles Dudley Warner 185
+
+ MT. ATHOS--By Charles Dudley Warner 189
+
+
+
+
+ LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+ VOLUME VIII
+
+
+ FRONTISPIECE
+
+
+ THE PARTHENON
+
+
+ PRECEDING PAGE 1
+
+
+ VENICE: SANTA MARIA DEL SALUTE
+
+ FEEDING THE DOVES IN FRONT OF ST. MARK'S
+
+ VENICE: STATUE OF COLLEONI
+
+ PALACE IN ST. MARK'S PLACE
+
+ GONDOLA ON THE GRAND CANAL
+
+ GENERAL VIEW OF FLORENCE
+
+ PALACE OF THE DUKES OF ESTE, FERRARA
+
+ LAKE LUGANO
+
+ TITIAN'S BIRTHPLACE AT CADORE
+
+ THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS
+
+ VERONA: TOMB OF THE SCALIGERS
+
+ MILAN CATHEDRAL
+
+ BAPTISTERY, CATHEDRAL, AND LEANING TOWER OF PISA
+
+
+ FOLLOWING PAGE 96
+
+
+ CITY AND BAY OF NAPLES WITH VESUVIUS
+
+ IN THE DISTANCE
+
+ TEMPLE OF THESEUS AT ATHENS
+
+ PALERMO, SICILY, FROM THE SEA
+
+ GREEK THEATER, SEGESTA, SICILY
+
+ TEMPLE OF CONCORD, GIRGENTI, SICILY
+
+ TEMPLE OF JUNO, GIRGENTI, SICILY
+
+ AMPHITHEATER AT SYRACUSE, SICILY
+
+ GREEK TEMPLE AT SEGESTA, SICILY
+
+ HARBOR OF SYRACUSE, SICILY
+
+ THE SO-CALLED "SHIP OF ULYSSES," OFF CORFU
+
+ TEMPLE OF THE OLYMPIAN ZEUS AT ATHENS
+
+ THE PLAIN BELOW DELPHI
+
+ THE ROAD NEAR DELPHI
+
+ ENTRANCE TO THE STADIUM AT OLYMPIA
+
+ THRONE OF MINOS IN CRETE
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: VENICE: SANTA MARIA DEL SALUTE]
+
+[Illustration: FEEDING THE DOVES IN FRONT OF ST. MARK'S
+(See Vol. VII for article on these doves)]
+
+[Illustration: VENICE: STATUE OF COLLEONI
+Courtesy John C. Winston Co.]
+
+[Illustration: PALACE IN ST. MARK'S PLACE, VENICE
+(Base of the old Campanile at the right)]
+
+[Illustration: GONDOLA ON THE GRAND CANAL, VENICE]
+
+[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF FLORENCE]
+
+[Illustration: PALACE OF THE DUKES OF ESTE. FERRARA]
+
+[Illustration: LAKE LUGANO]
+
+[Illustration: TITIAN'S BIRTHPLACE AT CADORE
+(Cadore is in the Italian part of the Dolomites)]
+
+[Illustration: THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS, VENICE]
+
+[Illustration: TOMB OF THE SCALIGERS AT VERONA]
+
+[Illustration: MILAN CATHEDRAL
+(See Vol. VII for article on Milan Cathedral)]
+
+[Illustration: BAPTISTERY, CATHEDRAL, AND LEANING TOWER OF PISA
+(See Vol. VII for article on Pisa)]
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THREE FAMOUS CITIES
+
+
+
+
+IN THE STREETS OF GENOA[1]
+
+BY CHARLES DICKENS
+
+
+The great majority of the streets are as narrow as any thoroughfare can
+well be, where people (even Italian people) are supposed to live and
+walk about; being mere lanes, with here and there a kind of well, or
+breathing-place. The houses are immensely high, painted in all sorts of
+colors, and are in every stage and state of damage, dirt, and lack of
+repair. They are commonly let off in floors, or flats, like the houses
+in the old town of Edinburgh, or many houses in Paris....
+
+When shall I forget the Streets of Palaces: the Strada Nuova and the
+Strada Baldi! The endless details of these rich palaces; the walls of
+some of them, within, alive with masterpieces by Vandyke! The great,
+heavy, stone balconies, one above another, and tier over tier; with here
+and there, one larger than the rest, towering high up--a huge marble
+platform; the doorless vestibules, massively barred lower windows,
+immense public staircases, thick marble pillars, strong dungeon-like
+arches, and dreary, dreaming, echoing vaulted chambers; among which the
+eye wanders again, and again, and again, as every palace is succeeded by
+another--the terrace gardens between house and house, with green arches
+of the vine, and groves of orange-trees, and blushing oleander in full
+bloom, twenty, thirty, forty feet above the street--the painted halls,
+moldering and blotting, and rotting in the damp corners, and still
+shining out in beautiful colors and voluptuous designs, where the walls
+are dry--the faded figures on the outsides of the houses, holding
+wreaths, and crowns, and flying upward, and downward, and standing in
+niches, and here and there looking fainter and more feeble than
+elsewhere, by contrast with some fresh little Cupids, who on a more
+recently decorated portion of the front, are stretching out what seems
+to be the semblance of a blanket, but is, indeed, a sun-dial--the steep,
+steep, up-hill streets of small palaces (but very large palaces for all
+that), with marble terraces looking down into close by-ways--the
+magnificent and innumerable churches; and the rapid passage from a
+street of stately edifices, into a maze of the vilest squalor, steaming
+with unwholesome stenches, and swarming with half-naked children and
+whole worlds of dirty people--make up, altogether, such a scene of
+wonder; so lively, and yet so dead; so noisy, and yet so quiet; so
+obtrusive, and yet so shy and lowering; so wide-awake, and yet so fast
+asleep; that it is a sort of intoxication to a stranger to walk on, and
+on, and on, and look about him. A bewildering phantasmagoria, with all
+the inconsistency of a dream, and all the pain and all the pleasure of
+an extravagant reality!...
+
+In the streets of shops, the houses are much smaller, but of great size
+notwithstanding, and extremely high. They are very dirty; quite
+undrained, if my nose be at all reliable; and emit a peculiar fragrance,
+like the smell of very bad cheese, kept in very hot blankets.
+Notwithstanding the height of the houses, there would seem to have been
+a lack of room in the city, for new houses are thrust in everywhere.
+Wherever it has been possible to cram a tumble-down tenement into a
+crack or corner, in it has gone. If there be a nook or angle in the wall
+of a church, or a crevice in any other dead wall, of any sort, there you
+are sure to find some kind of habitation; looking as if it had grown
+there, like a fungus. Against the Government House, against the old
+Senate House, round about any large building, little shops stick close,
+like parasite vermin to the great carcass. And for all this, look where
+you may; up steps, down steps, anywhere, everywhere; there are irregular
+houses, receding, starting forward, tumbling down, leaning against their
+neighbors, crippling themselves or their friends by some means or other,
+until one, more irregular than the rest, chokes up the way, and you
+can't see any further.
+
+
+
+
+MILAN CATHEDRAL[2]
+
+BY HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
+
+
+The cathedral, at the first sight, is bewildering. Gothic art,
+transported entire into Italy at the close of the Middle Ages,[3]
+attains at once its triumph and its extravagance. Never had it been seen
+so pointed, so highly embroidered, so complex, so overcharged, so
+strongly resembling a piece of jewelry; and as, instead of coarse and
+lifeless stone, it here takes for its material the beautiful lustrous
+Italian marble, it becomes a pure chased gem as precious through its
+substance as through the labor bestowed on it. The whole church seems to
+be a colossal and magnificent crystallization, so splendidly do its
+forests of spires, its intersections of moldings, its population of
+statues, its fringes of fretted, hollowed, embroidered and open
+marblework, ascend in multiple and interminable bright forms against the
+pure blue sky.
+
+Truly is it the mystic candelabra of visions and legends, with a hundred
+thousand branches bristling and overflowing with sorrowing thorns and
+ecstatic roses, with angels, virgins, and martyrs upon every flower and
+on every thorn, with infinite myriads of the triumphant Church springing
+from the ground pyramidically even into the azure, with its millions of
+blended and vibrating voices mounting upward in a single shout,
+hosannah!...
+
+We enter, and the impression deepens. What a difference between the
+religious power of such a church and that of St. Peter's at Rome! One
+exclaims to himself, this is the true Christian temple! Four rows of
+enormous eight-sided pillars, close together, seem like a serried hedge
+of gigantic oaks. Their strange capitals, bristling with a fantastic
+vegetation of pinnacles, canopies, foliated niches and statues, are like
+venerable trunks crowned with delicate and pendent mosses. They spread
+out in great branches meeting in the vault overhead, the intervals of
+the arches being filled with an inextricable network of foliage, thorny
+sprigs and light branches, twining and intertwining, and figuring the
+aerial dome of a mighty forest. As in a great wood, the lateral aisles
+are almost equal in height to that of the center, and, on all sides, at
+equal distances apart, one sees ascending around him the secular
+colonnades.
+
+Here truly is the ancient Germanic forest, as if a reminiscence of the
+religious groves of Irmensul. Light pours in transformed by green,
+yellow and purple panes, as if through the red and orange tints of
+autumnal leaves. This, certainly, is a complete architecture like that
+of Greece, having, like that of Greece, its root in vegetable forms. The
+Greek takes the trunk of the tree, drest, for his type; the German the
+entire tree with all its leaves and branches. True architecture,
+perhaps, always springs out of vegetal nature, and each zone may have
+its own edifices as well as plants; in this way oriental architectures
+might be comprehended--the vague idea of the slender palm and of its
+bouquet of leaves with the Arabs, and the vague idea of the colossal,
+prolific, dilated and bristling vegetation of India.
+
+In any event I have never seen a church in which the aspect of northern
+forests was more striking, or where one more involuntarily imagines long
+alleys of trunks terminating in glimpses of daylight, curved branches
+meeting in acute angles, domes of irregular and commingling foliage,
+universal shade scattered with lights through colored and diaphanous
+leaves. Sometimes a section of yellow panes, through which the sun
+darts, launches into the obscurity its shower of rays and a portion of
+the nave glows like a luminous glade. A vast rosace behind the choir, a
+window with tortuous branchings above the entrance, shimmer with the
+tints of amethyst, ruby, emerald and topaz like leafy labyrinths in
+which lights from above break in and diffuse themselves in shifting
+radiance. Near the sacristy a small door-top, fastened against the wall,
+exposes an infinity of intersecting moldings similar to the delicate
+meshes of some marvelous twining and climbing plant. A day might be
+passed here as in a forest, in the presence of grandeurs as solemn as
+those of nature, before caprices as fascinating, amid the same
+intermingling of sublime monotony and inexhaustible fecundity, before
+contrasts and metamorphoses of light as rich and as unexpected. A mystic
+reverie, combined with a fresh sentiment of northern nature, such is the
+source of Gothic architecture.
+
+
+
+
+PISA'S FOUR GLORIES[4]
+
+BY HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
+
+
+There are two Pisas--one in which people have lapsed into ennui, and
+live from hand to mouth since the decadence, which is in fact the entire
+city, except a remote corner; the other is this corner, a marble
+sepulcher where the Duomo, Baptistery, Leaning Tower and Campo-Santo
+silently repose like beautiful dead beings. This is the genuine Pisa,
+and in these relics of a departed life, one beholds a world.
+
+In 1083 in order to honor the Virgin, who had given them a victory over
+the Saracens of Sardignia, they [the Pisans] laid the foundations of
+their Duomo. This edifice is almost a Roman basilica, that is to say a
+temple surmounted by another temple, or, if you prefer it, a house
+having a gable for its facade which gable is cut off at the peak to
+support another house of smaller dimensions. Five stories of columns
+entirely cover the facade with their superposed porticos. Two by two
+they stand coupled together to support small arcades; all these pretty
+shapes of white marble under their dark arcades form an aerial
+population of the utmost grace and novelty. Nowhere here are we
+conscious of the dolorous reverie of the medieval north; it is the fete
+of a young nation which is awakening, and, in the gladness of its recent
+prosperity, honoring its gods. It has collected capitals, ornaments,
+entire columns obtained on the distant shores to which its wars and its
+commerce have led it, and these ancient fragments enter into its work
+without incongruity; for it is instinctively cast in the ancient mold,
+and only developed with a tinge of fancy on the side of finesse and the
+pleasing. Every antique form reappears, but reshaped in the same sense
+by a fresh and original impulse.
+
+The outer columns of the Greek temple are reduced, multiplied and
+uplifted in the air, and from a support have become an ornament. The
+Roman or Byzantine dome is elongated and its natural heaviness
+diminished under a crown of slender columns with a miter ornament, which
+girds it midway with its delicate promenade. On the two sides of the
+great door two Corinthian columns are enveloped with luxurious foliage,
+calyxes and twining or blooming acanthus; and from the threshold we see
+the church with its files of intersecting columns, its alternate courses
+of black and white marble and its multitude of slender and brilliant
+forms, rising upward like an altar of candelabra. A new spirit appears
+here, a more delicate sensibility; it is not excessive and disordered as
+in the north, and yet it is not satisfied with the grave simplicity, the
+robust nudity of antique architecture. It is the daughter of the pagan
+mother, healthy and gay, but more womanly than its mother.
+
+She is not yet an adult, sure in all her steps--she is somewhat awkward.
+The lateral facades on the exterior are monotonous; the cupola within
+is a reversed funnel of a peculiar and disagreeable form. The junction
+of the two arms of the cross is unsatisfactory and so many modernized
+chapels dispel the charm due to purity, as at Sienna. At the second
+glance however all this is forgotten, and we again regard it as a
+complete whole. Four rows of Corinthian columns, surmounted with
+arcades, divide the church into five naves, and form a forest. A second
+passage, as richly crowded, traverses the former crosswise, and, above
+the beautiful grove, files of still smaller columns prolong and
+intersect each other in order to uphold in the air the prolongation and
+intersection of the quadruple gallery. The ceiling is flat; the windows
+are small, and for the most part, without sashes; they allow the walls
+to retain the grandeur of their mass and the solidity of their position;
+and among these long, straight and simple lines, in this natural light,
+the innumerable shafts glow with the serenity of an antique temple....
+
+Nothing more can be added in relation to the Baptistery or the Leaning
+Tower; the same ideas prevail in these, the same taste, the same style.
+The former is a simple, isolated dome, the latter a cylinder, and each
+has an outward dress of small columns. And yet each has its own distinct
+and expressive physiognomy; but description and writing consume too much
+time, and too many technical terms are requisite to define their
+differences. I note, simply, the inclination of the Tower. Some suppose
+that, when half constructed, the tower sank in the earth on one side,
+and that the architects continued on; seeing that they did continue
+this deflection was only a partial obstacle to them. In any event, there
+are other leaning towers in Italy, at Bologna, for example; voluntarily
+or involuntarily this feeling for oddness, this love of paradox, this
+yielding to fancy is one of the characteristics of the Middle Ages.
+
+In the center of the Baptistery stands a superb font with eight panels;
+each panel is incrusted with a rich complicated flower in full bloom,
+and each flower is different. Around it a circle of large Corinthian
+columns supports round-arch arcades; most of them are antique and are
+ornamented with antique bas-reliefs; Meleager with his barking dogs, and
+the nude torsos of his companions in attendance on Christian mysteries.
+On the left stands a pulpit similar to that of Sienna, the first work of
+Nicholas of Pisa (1260), a simple marble coffer supported by marble
+columns and covered with sculptures. The sentiment of force and of
+antique nudity comes out here in striking features. The sculptor
+comprehended the postures and torsions of bodies. His figures, somewhat
+massive, are grand and simple; he frequently reproduces the tunics and
+folds of the Roman costume; one of his nude personages, a sort of
+Hercules bearing a young lion on his shoulders, has the broad breast and
+muscular tension which the sculptors of the sixteenth century admired.
+
+The last of these edifices, the Campo-Santo, is a cemetery, the soil of
+which, brought from Palestine, is holy ground. Four high walls of
+polished marble surround it with their white and crowded panels.
+Inside, a square gallery forms a promenade opening into the court
+through arcades trellised with ogive windows. It is filled with funereal
+monuments, busts, inscriptions and statues of every form and of every
+age. Nothing could be simpler and nobler. A framework of dark wood
+supports the arch overhead, and the crest of the roof cuts sharp against
+the crystal sky. At the angles are four rustling cypress trees,
+tranquilly swayed by the breeze. Grass is growing in the court with a
+wild freshness and luxuriance. Here and there a climbing flower twined
+around a column, a small rosebush, or a shrub glows beneath a gleam of
+sunshine. There is no noise; this quarter is deserted; only now and then
+is heard the voice of some promenader which reverberates as under the
+vault of a church. It is the veritable cemetery of a free and Christian
+city; here, before the tombs of the great, people might well reflect
+over death and public affairs.
+
+
+
+
+THE WALLS AND "SKYSCRAPERS" OF PISA[5]
+
+BY JANET ROSS AND NELLY ERICHSON
+
+
+Few cities have preserved their medieval walls with such loving care as
+Pisa. The circuit is complete save where the traveler enters the city;
+and there, alas, a wide breach has been made by the restless spirit of
+modernity. But once past the paltry barrier and the banal square, with
+its inevitable statue of Victor Emanuel, that take the place of the old
+Porta Romana, one quickly perceives that the city is a walled one.
+Glimpses of battlements close the vistas of the streets, and green
+fields peep through the open gates, marking that abrupt transition
+between town and country peculiar to a fortified city.
+
+The walls are best seen from without. An admirable impression of them
+can be had on leaving the city by the Porta Lucchese. Turning to the
+left, after passing a crucifix overshadowed by cypresses, we come to the
+edge of a stretch of level marshy meadows, gaily pied in spring with
+orchids and grape hyacinths. Above our heads the high air vibrates with
+the song of larks. Before us is the long line of the city walls. Strong,
+grim and gray, they look with nothing to break the outline of square
+battlements against the sky, but that majestic groups of domes and
+towers for whose defense they were built. At the angle of the wall to
+the right is a square watch-tower, backed by groups of cypresses that
+rise into the air like dark flames. Its little windows command the flat
+plain as far as the horizon. How easy to imagine the warning blast of
+the warder's trumpet as he caught sight of a distant enemy, and the wall
+springing into life at the sound. Armed men buckling on their harness
+would swarm up ladders to the battlements, the catapult groan and squeak
+as its lever was forced backward, and at the sharp word of command the
+first flight of arrows would be loosed.
+
+But the dream fades, and we pass on to the angle of the wall where the
+cypresses stand. From the picturesque Jews' cemetery, to which access is
+easy, the structure of the walls can be studied in detail because the
+hand of the restorer has been perforce withheld within its gates. The
+wall is some forty feet high, built of stone from the Pisan hills,
+weathered for the most part to a grayish hue. The masonry of the lower
+half is good. The blocks of stone are large and well laid. Those of the
+upper half are smaller and the masonry is in places careless and
+irregular. The red brick battlements are square. At short intervals
+there are walled-up gateways, round-headed or ogival in form, and the
+whole surface is rent and patched. Centuries of war and earthquakes,
+rain and fire, have given it a pleasant irregularity, the record of
+violent and troublous times.
+
+The city can be reentered by the Porta Nuova, only a few yards to the
+left of the cemetery. So venerable do these battered walls look that we
+need the full evidence of history to realize that they had more than one
+predecessor. The memory even of the first walls of Pisa, an ancient city
+when Rome was young, has been lost. The earliest record of which we know
+anything appears on a map of the ninth century drawn by one Bonanno; a
+map, we should rather say professing to be of the ninth century, for
+churches of the thirteenth century are marked upon it, so it must either
+have been made, or the churches inserted, then....
+
+The ancient walls were practically swept away by the prosperity of Pisa.
+Beside the Balearic Islands she had conquered Carthage, the Lipari
+Islands, Elba, Corsica, and Palermo, and her galleys poured their spoils
+into the Pisan port. She traded with the East, and was successful in
+commerce as in war. Her inhabitants increased rapidly. They could no
+longer be penned within the narrow limits of the old wall, but
+overflowed in all directions beyond it. Not only was the Borgo thickly
+populated, but a whole new region called Forisportae, sprang up.
+
+So masked was the wall by houses, built into it and huddling against it
+both on the outside and the inside, that it seems to have been actually
+invisible. So much so that contemporary chroniclers spoke of Pisa as
+without walls, and attributed her safety to the valor of her citizens
+and the multitude of her towers. The ancient wall was evidently so
+hidden and decayed that Pisa must be regarded as a defenseless city in
+the twelfth century. It is curious that her citizens should have
+neglected their own safety at a time when they were masters of
+fortification and defense; when their fame in these arts had reached as
+far as Egypt and Syria, and when the Milanese came to them to beg for
+engineers....
+
+The external appearance of an Italian city in the twelfth century was so
+unlike anything we are accustomed to in modern times that a strong
+effort of the imagination is needed to conceive it. Seen from a distance
+the walls enclosed, not houses, but a forest of tall square shafts,
+rising into the sky like the crowded chimney stacks in a manufacturing
+town but far more thickly set together. The city appeared, to use a
+graphic contemporary metaphor, like a sheaf of corn bound together by
+its walls.
+
+[Illustration: PANEL IN THE CATHEDRAL, SHOWING PART OF THE MEDIEVAL WALL
+AND TOWERS OF PISA]
+
+San Gimignano, tho most of its towers have perished long ago, helps us
+to imagine faintly what Italian towns were like in the days of Frederick
+Barbarossa or his grandson Frederick II. For most of the houses were
+actually towers, long rectangular columns, vying with each other in
+height and crowded close together on either side of the narrow, airless,
+darkened streets. Sometimes they were connected with one another by
+wooden bridges, and all were furnished with wooden balconies used in
+defensive and offensive warfare with their neighbors.
+
+Cities full of towers were common all over southern France and central
+Italy, but Tuscany had more than any other state, and those of Pisa were
+the most famous of all. The habit of building and dwelling in towers
+rather than in houses may have arisen from the difficulty of expanding
+laterally within an enclosed city; but a stronger reason may be found in
+the dangers and uncertainty of life in a period when a man might be
+attacked at any moment by his fellow-citizen, as well as by the enemy of
+the state. It was a distinct military advantage to overlook one's
+neighbor, who might be an enemy; and towers rose higher and higher. The
+spirit of emulation entered, and rich nobles gloried in adding tower to
+tower and in looking down on all rivals.
+
+But whatever the cause of their existence, they were picturesque, and
+must have presented a gallant sight on the eve of a high festival. The
+tall shafts were tinged with gold by the western sun, their battlements
+crowned with three fluttering banners--the eagle of the Emperor, the
+white cross of the Commune, and the device of the People--looking as tho
+a cloud of many-colored butterflies were hovering over the city.
+
+Again, how dramatic the scene when the city was rent by one of the
+perpetually recurring faction-fights. Light bridges with grappling-irons
+were thrown from tower to tower, doors and windows were barricaded,
+balconies and battlements lined with men in shining mail, bearing the
+fantastic device of their leader on helm and shield. Mangonels, or
+catapults, huge engines stationed on the roofs of the towers, sent
+masses of stone hurtling through the air, whistling arbelast bolts and
+clothyard shafts flew in thick showers, boiling oil or lead rained down
+on the heads of those who ventured down to attack the doors, and arrows,
+with Greek fire attached, were shot with nice aim into the wooden
+balconies and bridges. Vile insults were hurled where missiles failed to
+strike. The shouts and shrieks of the combatants were mingled with the
+crash of a falling tower or with the hissing of a fire-arrow. Where
+those struck, a red glow arose and a thick cloud of smoke enveloped the
+defenders.
+
+Altho it is evident that towers were very numerous in Pisa, it is
+difficult to arrive at their precise number. The chroniclers differ
+greatly in their estimates. Benjamin da Tudela, for instance, says that
+there were 10,000 in the twelfth century; while Marangone puts the
+number at 15,000 and Tronci at 16,000. These are round numbers such as
+the medieval mind loved, but we have abundant evidence that they are not
+much exaggerated. An intarsia panel in the Duomo, shows how closely the
+towers were packed together, while the mass of legislation relating to
+them was directed against abuses that could only have arisen if their
+number was very large.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+NAPLES AND ITS ENVIRONS
+
+
+
+
+IN AND ABOUT THE CITY[6]
+
+BY CHARLES DICKENS
+
+
+So we go, rattling down-hill, into Naples. A funeral is coming up the
+street, toward us. The body, on an open bier, borne on a kind of
+palanquin, covered with a gay cloth of crimson and gold. The mourners,
+in white gowns and masks. If there be death abroad, life is well
+represented too, for all Naples would seem to be out of doors, and
+tearing to and fro in carriages. Some of these, the common Vetturino
+vehicles, are drawn by three horses abreast, decked with smart trappings
+and great abundance of brazen ornament, and always going very fast. Not
+that their loads are light; for the smallest of them has at least six
+people inside, four in front, four or five more hanging behind, and two
+or three more, in a net or bag below the axle-tree, where they lie
+half-suffocated with mud and dust.
+
+Exhibitors of Punch, buffo singers with guitars, reciters of poetry,
+reciters of stories, a row of cheap exhibitions with clowns and
+showmen, drums, and trumpets, painted cloths representing the wonders
+within, and admiring crowds assembled without, assist the whirl and
+bustle. Ragged lazzaroni lie asleep in doorways, archways, and kennels;
+the gentry, gaily drest, are dashing up and down in carriages on the
+Chiaja, or walking in the Public Gardens; and quiet letter-writers,
+perched behind their little desks and inkstands under the Portico of the
+Great Theater of San Carlo, in the public street, are waiting for
+clients.
+
+Why do the beggars rap their chins constantly, with their right hands,
+when you look at them? Everything is done in pantomime in Naples, and
+that is the conventional sign for hunger. A man who is quarreling with
+another, yonder, lays the palm of his right hand on the back of his
+left, and shakes the two thumbs--expressive of a donkey's ears--whereat
+his adversary is goaded to desperation. Two people bargaining for fish,
+the buyer empties an imaginary waistcoat pocket when he is told the
+price, and walks away without a word, having thoroughly conveyed to the
+seller that he considers it too dear. Two people in carriages, meeting,
+one touches his lips, twice or thrice, holding up the five fingers of
+his right hand, and gives a horizontal cut in the air with the palm. The
+other nods briskly, and goes his way. He has been invited to a friendly
+dinner at half-past five o'clock, and will certainly come.
+
+All over Italy, a peculiar shake of the right hand from the wrist, with
+the forefinger stretched out, expresses a negative--the only negative
+beggars will ever understand. But, in Naples, those five fingers are a
+copious language. All this, and every other kind of out-door life and
+stir, and maccaroni-eating at sunset, and flower-selling all day long,
+and begging and stealing everywhere and at all hours, you see upon the
+bright sea-shore, where the waves of the Bay sparkle merrily....
+
+Capri--once made odious by the deified beast Tiberius--Ischia, Procida,
+and the thousand distant beauties of the Bay, lie in the blue sea
+yonder, changing in the mist and sunshine twenty times a day; now close
+at hand, now far off, now unseen. The fairest country in the world, is
+spread about us. Whether we turn toward the Miseno shore of the splendid
+watery amphitheater, and go by the Grotto of Posilipo to the Grotto del
+Cane and away to Baiae, or take the other way, toward Vesuvius and
+Sorrento, it is one succession of delights. In the last-named direction,
+where, over doors and archways, there are countless little images of San
+Gennaro, with this Canute's hand stretched out, to check the fury of the
+burning Mountain, we are carried pleasantly, by a railroad on the
+beautiful Sea Beach, past the town of Torre del Greco, built upon the
+ashes of the former town destroyed by an eruption of Vesuvius, within a
+hundred years; and past the flat-roofed houses, granaries, and maccaroni
+manufacturies; to Castellamare, with its ruined castle, now inhabited by
+fishermen, standing in the sea upon a heap of rocks.
+
+Here, the railroad terminates; but, hence we may ride on, by an unbroken
+succession of enchanting bays, and beautiful scenery, sloping from the
+highest summit of Saint Angelo, the highest neighboring mountain, down
+to the water's edge--among vineyards, olive-trees, gardens of oranges
+and lemons, orchards, heaped-up rocks, green gorges in the hills--and by
+the bases of snow-covered heights, and through small towns with
+handsome, dark-haired women at the doors--and pass delicious summer
+villas--to Sorrento, where the poet Tasso drew his inspiration from the
+beauty surrounding him. Returning, we may climb the heights above
+Castellamare, and looking down among the boughs and leaves, see the
+crisp water glistening in the sun; and clusters of white houses in
+distant Naples, dwindling, in the great extent of prospect, down to
+dice. The coming back to the city, by the beach again, at sunset; with
+the glowing sea on one side, and the darkening mountain (Vesuvius), with
+its smoke and flame, upon the other, is a sublime conclusion to the
+glory of the day.
+
+That church by the Porta Capuna--near the old fisher-market in the
+dirtiest quarter of dirty Naples, where the revolt of Masaniello
+began--is memorable for having been the scene of one of his earliest
+proclamations to the people, and is particularly remarkable for nothing
+else, unless it be its waxen and bejeweled Saint in a glass case, with
+two odd hands; or the enormous number of beggars who are constantly
+rapping their chins there, like a battery of castanets. The cathedral
+with the beautiful door, and the columns of African and Egyptian granite
+that once ornamented the temple of Apollo, contains the famous sacred
+blood of San Gennaro or Januarius, which is preserved in two phials in a
+silver tabernacle, and miraculously liquefies three times a year, to the
+great admiration of the people. At the same moment, the stone (distant
+some miles) where the Saint suffered martyrdom, becomes faintly red. It
+is said that the officiating priests turn faintly red also, sometimes,
+when these miracles occur.
+
+The old, old men who live in hovels at the entrance of these ancient
+catacombs, and who, in their age and infirmity, seem waiting here, to be
+buried themselves, are members of a curious body, called the Royal
+Hospital, who are the official attendants at funerals. Two of these old
+specters totter away, with lighted tapers, to show the caverns of
+death--as unconcerned as if they were immortal. They were used as
+burying-places for three hundred years; and, in one part, is a large pit
+full of skulls and bones, said to be the sad remains of a great
+mortality occasioned by a plague. In the rest, there is nothing but
+dust. They consist, chiefly, of great wide corridors and labyrinths,
+hewn out of the rock. At the end of some of these long passages, are
+unexpected glimpses of the daylight, shining down from above. It looks
+as ghastly and as strange; among the torches, and the dust, and the dark
+vaults; as if it, too, were dead and buried.
+
+The present burial-place lies out yonder, on a hill between the city and
+Vesuvius. The old Campo Santo with its three hundred and sixty-five
+pits, is only used for those who die in hospitals, and prisons, and are
+unclaimed by their friends. The graceful new cemetery, at no great
+distance from it, tho yet unfinished, has already many graves among its
+shrubs and flowers, and airy colonnades. It might be reasonably objected
+elsewhere, that some of the tombs are meretricious and too fanciful; but
+the general brightness seems to justify it here; and Mount Vesuvius,
+separated from them by a lovely slope of ground, exalts and saddens the
+scene.
+
+If it be solemn to behold from this new City of the Dead, with its dark
+smoke hanging in the clear sky, how much more awful and impressive is
+it, viewed from the ghostly ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii!
+
+Stand at the bottom of the great market-place of Pompeii, and look up
+the silent streets, through the ruined temples of Jupiter and Isis, over
+the broken houses with their inmost sanctuaries open to the day, away to
+Mount Vesuvius, bright and snowy in the peaceful distance; and lose all
+count of time, and heed of other things, in the strange and melancholy
+sensation of seeing the Destroyed and the Destroyer making this quiet
+picture in the sun. Then, ramble on, and see, at every turn, the little
+familiar tokens of human habitation and everyday pursuits, the chafing
+of the bucket-rope in the stone rim of the exhausted well; the track of
+carriage-wheels in the pavement of the street; the marks of
+drinking-vessels on the stone counter of the wine-shop; the amphorae in
+private cellars, stored away so many hundred years ago, and undisturbed
+to this hour--all rendering the solitude and deadly lonesomeness of the
+place, ten thousand times more solemn, than if the volcano, in its fury,
+had swept the city from the earth, and sunk it in the bottom of the sea.
+
+
+
+
+THE TOMB OF VIRGIL[7]
+
+BY AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE
+
+
+A road to the right at the end of the Chiaja, leads to the mouth of the
+Grotto of Posilipo, above which those who do not wish to leave their
+carriages may see, high on the left, close above the grotto, the ruined
+columbarium known as the Tomb of Virgil. A door in the wall, on the left
+of the approach to the grotto, and a very steep staircase, lead to the
+columbarium, which is situated in a pretty fruit-garden.
+
+Virgil desired that his body should be brought to Naples from
+Brundusium, where he died, B.C. 19, and there is every probability that
+he was buried on this spot, which was visited as Virgil's burial-place
+little more than a century after his death by the poet Statius, who was
+born at Naples, and who describes composing his own poems while seated
+in the shadow of the tomb. If further confirmation were needed of the
+story that Virgil was laid here, it would be found in the fact that
+Silius Italicus, who lived at the same time with Statius, purchased the
+tomb of Virgil, restored it from the neglect into which it had fallen,
+and celebrated funeral rites before it.
+
+The tomb was originally shaded by a gigantic bay-tree, which is said to
+have died on the death of Dante. Petrarch, who was brought hither by
+King Robert, planted another, which existed in the time of Sannazaro,
+but was destroyed by relic-collectors in the last century. A branch was
+sent to Frederick the Great by the Margravine of Baireuth, with some
+verses by Voltaire. If from no other cause, the tomb would be
+interesting from its visitors; here Boccaccio renounced the career of a
+merchant for that of a poet, and a well-known legend, that St. Paul
+visited the sepulcher of Virgil at Naples, was long commemorated in the
+verse of a hymn used in the service for St. Paul's Day at Mantua.
+
+The tomb is a small, square, vaulted chamber with three windows. Early
+in the sixteenth century a funeral urn, containing the ashes of the
+poet, stood in the center, supported by nine little marble pillars. Some
+say that Robert of Anjou removed it, in 1326, for security to the Castel
+Nuovo, others that it was given by the Government to a cardinal from
+Mantua, who died at Genoa on his way home. In either event the urn is
+now lost.
+
+It is just beneath the tomb that the road to Pozzuoli enters the famous
+Grotto of Posilipo, a tunnel about half a mile long, in breadth from 25
+to 30 feet, and varying from about 90 feet in height near the entrance,
+to little more than 20 feet at points of the interior. Petronius and
+Seneca mention its narrow gloomy passage with horror, in the reign of
+Nero, when it was so low that it could only be used for foot-passengers,
+who were obliged to stoop in passing through.
+
+In the fifteenth century King Alphonso I. gave it height by lowering the
+floor, which was paved by Don Pedro di Toledo a hundred years later. In
+the Middle Ages the grotto was ascribed to the magic arts of Virgil. In
+recent years it has been the chief means of communication between Naples
+and Baiae, and is at all times filled with dust and noise, the
+flickering lights and resounding echoes giving it a most weird effect.
+However much one may abuse Neapolitans, we may consider in their favor,
+as Swinburne observes, "what a terror this dark grotto would be in
+London!"
+
+
+
+
+TWO ASCENTS OF VESUVIUS[8]
+
+BY JOHANN WOLGANG VON GOETHE
+
+
+At the foot of the steep ascent, we were received by two guides, one
+old, the other young, but both active fellows. The first pulled me up
+the path, the other Tischbein[9]--pulled I say, for these guides are
+girded round the waist with a leathern belt, which the traveler takes
+hold of, and being drawn up by his guide, makes his way the easier with
+foot and staff. In this manner we reached the flat from which the cone
+rises; toward the north lay the ruins of the summit.
+
+A glance westward over the country beneath us, removed, as well as a
+bath could, all feeling of exhaustion and fatigue, and we now went round
+the ever-smoking cone, as it threw out its stones and ashes. Wherever
+the space allowed of our viewing it at a sufficient distance, it
+appeared a grand and elevating spectacle. In the first place, a violent
+thundering toned forth from its deepest abyss, then stones of larger and
+smaller sizes were showered into the air by thousands, and enveloped by
+clouds of ashes. The greatest part fell again into the gorge; the rest
+of the fragments, receiving a lateral inclination, and falling on the
+outside of the crater, made a marvelous rumbling noise. First of all the
+larger masses plumped against the side, and rebounded with a dull heavy
+sound; then the smaller came rattling down; and last of all, drizzled a
+shower of ashes. All this took place at regular intervals, which by
+slowly counting, we were able to measure pretty accurately.
+
+Between the summit, however, and the cone the space is narrow enough;
+moreover, several stones fell around us, and made the circuit anything
+but agreeable. Tischbein now felt more disgusted than ever with
+Vesuvius, as the monster, not content with being hateful, showed an
+inclination to become mischievous also.
+
+As, however, the presence of danger generally exercises on man a kind of
+attraction, and calls forth a spirit of opposition in the human breast
+to defy it, I bethought myself that, in the interval of the eruptions,
+it would be possible to climb up the cone to the crater, and to get back
+before it broke out again. I held a council on this point with our
+guides under one of the overhanging rocks of the summit, where, encamped
+in safety, we refreshed ourselves with the provisions we had brought
+with us. The younger guide was willing to run the risk with me; we
+stuffed our hats full of linen and silk handkerchiefs, and, staff in
+hand, we prepared to start, I holding on to his girdle.
+
+The little stones were yet rattling around us, and the ashes still
+drizzling, as the stalwart youth hurried forth with me across the hot
+glowing rubble. We soon stood on the brink of the vast chasm, the smoke
+of which, altho a gentle air was bearing it away from us, unfortunately
+veiled the interior of the crater, which smoked all round from a
+thousand crannies. At intervals, however, we caught sight through the
+smoke of the cracked walls of the rock. The view was neither instructive
+nor delightful; but for the very reason that one saw nothing, one
+lingered in the hope of catching a glimpse of something more; and so we
+forgot our slow counting. We were standing on a narrow ridge of the
+vast abyss; of a sudden the thunder pealed aloud; we ducked our heads
+involuntarily, as if that would have rescued us from the precipitated
+masses. The smaller stones soon rattled, and without considering that we
+had again an interval of cessation before us, and only too much rejoiced
+to have outstood the danger, we rushed down and reached the foot of the
+hill together with the drizzling ashes, which pretty thickly covered
+our heads and shoulders....
+
+The news [two weeks later] that an eruption of lava had just commenced,
+which, taking the direction of Ottajano, was invisible at Naples,
+tempted me to visit Vesuvius for the third time. Scarcely had I jumped
+out of my cabriolet at the foot of the mountain, when immediately
+appeared the two guides who had accompanied us on our previous ascent. I
+had no wish to do without either, but took one out of gratitude and
+custom, the other for reliance on his judgment--and the two for the
+greater convenience. Having ascended the summit, the older guide
+remained with our cloaks and refreshment, while the younger followed me,
+and we boldly went straight toward a dense volume of smoke, which broke
+forth from the bottom of the funnel; then we quickly went downward by
+the side of it, till at last, under the clear heaven, we distinctly saw
+the lava emitted from the rolling clouds of smoke.
+
+We may hear an object spoken of a thousand times, but its peculiar
+features will never be caught till we see it with our own eyes. The
+stream of lava was small, not broader perhaps than ten feet, but the way
+in which it flowed down a gentle and tolerably smooth plain was
+remarkable. As it flowed along, it cooled both on the sides and on the
+surface, so that it formed a sort of canal, the bed of which was
+continually raised in consequence of the molten mass congealing even
+beneath the fiery stream, which, with uniform action, precipitated right
+and left the scoria which were floating on its surface. In this way a
+regular dam was at length thrown up, in which the glowing stream flowed
+on as quietly as any mill-stream. We passed along the tolerably high
+dam, while the scoria rolled regularly off the sides at our feet. Some
+cracks in the canal afforded opportunity of looking at the living
+stream, from below, and as it rushed onward, we observed it from above.
+
+A very bright sun made the glowing lava look dull; but a moderate steam
+rose from it into the pure air. I felt a great desire to go nearer to
+the point where it broke out from the mountain; there my guide averred,
+it at once formed vaults and roofs above itself, on which he had often
+stood. To see and experience this phenomenon, we again ascended the
+hill, in order to come from behind to this point. Fortunately at this
+moment the place was cleared by a pretty strong wind, but not entirely,
+for all round it the smoke eddied from a thousand crannies; and now at
+last we stood on the top of the solid roof (which looked like a hardened
+mass of twisted dough), but which, however, projected so far outward,
+that it was impossible to see the welling lava.
+
+We ventured about twenty steps further, but the ground on which we stept
+became hotter and hotter, while around us rolled an oppressive steam,
+which obscured and hid the sun; the guide, who was a few steps in
+advance of me, presently turned back, and seizing hold of me, hurried
+out of this Stygian exhalation.
+
+After we had refreshed our eyes with the clear prospect, and washed our
+gums and throat with wine, we went round again to notice any other
+peculiarities which might characterize this peak of hell, thus rearing
+itself in the midst of a Paradise. I again observed attentively some
+chasms, in appearance like so many vulcanic forges, which emitted no
+smoke, but continually shot out a steam of hot glowing air. They were
+all tapestried, as it were, with a kind of stalactite, which covered the
+funnel to the top, with its knobs and chintz-like variation of colors.
+In consequence of the irregularity of the forges, I found many specimens
+of this sublimation hanging within reach, so that, with our staves and a
+little contrivance, we were able to hack off a few, and to secure them.
+I saw in the shops of the dealers in lava similar specimens, labeled
+simply "Lava"; and I was delighted to have discovered that it was
+volcanic soot precipitated from the hot vapor, and distinctly exhibiting
+the sublimated mineral particles which it contained.
+
+
+
+
+ANOTHER ASCENT[10]
+
+BY CHARLES DICKENS
+
+
+No matter that the snow and ice lie thick upon the summit of Vesuvius,
+or that we have been on foot all day at Pompeii, or that croakers
+maintain that strangers should not be on the mountain by night, in such
+unusual season. Let us take advantage of the fine weather; make the best
+of our way to Resina, the little village at the foot of the mountain;
+prepare ourselves, as well as we can, on so short a notice, at the
+guide's house, ascend at once, and have sunset half-way up, moonlight at
+the top, and midnight to come down in!
+
+At four o'clock in the afternoon, there is a terrible uproar in the
+little stable-yard of Signor Salvatore, the recognized head guide, with
+the gold band round his cap; and thirty under-guides who are all
+scuffling and screaming at once, are preparing half-a-dozen saddled
+ponies, three litters, and some stout staves, for the journey. Every one
+of the thirty quarrels with the other twenty-nine, and frightens the six
+ponies; and as much of the village as can possibly squeeze itself into
+the little stable-yard, participates in the tumult, and gets trodden on
+by the cattle.
+
+After much violent skirmishing, and more noise than would suffice for
+the storming of Naples, the procession starts. The head guide, who is
+liberally paid for all the attendants, rides a little in advance of the
+party; the other thirty guides proceed on foot. Eight go forward with
+the litters that are to be used by and by; and the remaining
+two-and-twenty beg. We ascend, gradually, by stony lanes like rough
+broad flights of stairs, for some time. At length, we leave these, and
+the vineyards on either side of them, and emerge upon a bleak, bare
+region where the lava lies confusedly, in enormous rusty masses; as if
+the earth had been plowed up by burning thunder-bolts. And now, we halt
+to see the sunset. The change that falls upon the dreary region and on
+the whole mountain, as its red light fades, and the night comes on--and
+the unutterable solemnity and dreariness that reign around, who that has
+witnessed it, can ever forget!
+
+It is dark, when after winding, for some time, over the broken ground,
+we arrive at the foot of the cone, which is extremely steep, and seems
+to rise, almost perpendicularly, from the spot where we dismount. The
+only light is reflected from the snow, deep, hard, and white, with which
+the cone is covered. It is now intensely cold, and the air is piercing.
+The thirty-one have brought no torches, knowing that the moon will rise
+before we reach the top. Two of the litters are devoted to the two
+ladies; the third, to a rather heavy gentleman from Naples, whose
+hospitality and good-nature have attached him to the expedition, and
+determined him to assist in doing the honors of the mountain. The rather
+heavy gentleman is carried by fifteen men; each of the ladies by
+half-a-dozen. We who walk, make the best use of our staves; and so the
+whole party begin to labor upward over the snow--as if they were toiling
+to the summit of an antediluvian Twelfth-cake.
+
+We are a long time toiling up; and the head guide looks oddly about him
+when one of the company--not an Italian, tho an habitue of the mountain
+for many years: whom we will call, for our present purpose, Mr. Pickle
+of Portici--suggests that, as it is freezing hard, and the usual footing
+of ashes is covered by the snow and ice, it will surely be difficult to
+descend. But the sight of the litters above, tilting up, and down, and
+jerking from this side to that, as the bearers continually slip, and
+tumble, diverts our attention, more especially as the whole length of
+the rather heavy gentleman is, at that moment, presented to us
+alarmingly foreshortened, with his head downward.
+
+The rising of the moon soon afterward, revives the flagging spirits of
+the bearers. Stimulating each other with their usual watchword,
+"Courage, friend! It is to eat maccaroni!" they press on, gallantly, for
+the summit.
+
+From tingeing the top of the snow above us with a band of light, and
+pouring it in a stream through the valley below, while we have been
+ascending in the dark, the moon soon lights the whole white mountain
+side, and the broad sea down below, and tiny Naples in the distance, and
+every village in the country round. The whole prospect is in this lovely
+state, when we come upon the platform on the mountain-top--the region of
+fire--an exhausted crater formed of great masses of gigantic cinders,
+like blocks of stone from some tremendous waterfall, burned up; from
+every chink and crevice of which, hot, sulfurous smoke is pouring out;
+while, from another conical-shaped hill, the present crater, rising
+abruptly from this platform at the end, great sheets of fire are
+streaming forth; reddening the night with flame, blackening it with
+smoke, and spotting it with red-hot stones and cinders, that fly up into
+the air like feathers, and fall down like lead. What words can paint the
+gloom and grandeur of this scene!
+
+The broken ground; the smoke; the sense of suffocation from the sulfur;
+the fear of falling down through the crevices in the yawning ground; the
+stopping, every now and then, for somebody who is missing in the dark
+(for the dense smoke now obscures the moon); the intolerable noise of
+the thirty; and the hoarse roaring of the mountain; make it a scene of
+such confusion, at the same time, that we reel again. But, dragging the
+ladies through it, and across another exhausted crater to the foot of
+the present volcano, we approach close to it on the windy side, and then
+sit down among the hot ashes at its foot, and look up in silence;
+faintly estimating the action that is going on within, from its being
+full a hundred feet higher, at this minute, than it was six weeks ago.
+
+There is something in the fire and roar, that generates an irresistible
+desire to get nearer to it. We can not rest long, without starting off,
+two of us on our hands and knees, accompanied by the head guide, to
+climb to the brim of the flaming crater, and try to look in. Meanwhile,
+the thirty yell, as with one voice, that it is a dangerous proceeding,
+and call to us to come back; frightening the rest of the party out of
+their wits.
+
+What with their noise, and what with the trembling of the thin crust of
+ground, that seems about to open underneath our feet and plunge us in
+the burning gulf below (which is the real danger, if there be any); and
+what with the flashing of the fire in our faces, and the shower of
+red-hot ashes that is raining down, and the choking smoke and sulfur; we
+may well feel giddy and irrational, like drunken men. But, we contrive
+to climb up to the brim, and look down, for a moment, into the hell of
+boiling fire below. Then, we all three come rolling down; blackened, and
+singed, and scorched, and hot, and giddy; and each with his dress alight
+in half-a-dozen places.
+
+You have read, a thousand times, that the usual way of descending, is,
+by sliding down the ashes; which, forming a gradually-increasing ledge
+below the feet, prevent too rapid a descent. But, when we have crossed
+the two exhausted craters on our way back, and are come to this
+precipitous place, there is (as Mr. Pickle has foretold) no vestige of
+ashes to be seen; the whole being a smooth sheet of ice.
+
+In this dilemma, ten or a dozen of the guides cautiously join hands, and
+make a chain of men; of whom the foremost beat, as well as they can, a
+rough track with their sticks, down which we prepare to follow. The way
+being fearfully steep, and none of the party--even of the thirty--being
+able to keep their feet for six paces together, the ladies are taken out
+of their litters, and placed, each between two careful persons; while
+others of the thirty hold by their skirts, to prevent their falling
+forward--a necessary precaution, tending to the immediate and hopeless
+dilapidation of their apparel. The rather heavy gentleman is abjured to
+leave his litter too, and be escorted in a similar manner; but he
+resolves to be brought down as he was brought up, on the principle that
+his fifteen bearers are not likely to tumble all at once, and that he is
+safer so, than trusting to his own legs.
+
+In this order, we begin the descent; sometimes on foot, sometimes
+shuffling on the ice; always proceeding much more quietly and slowly
+than on our upward way; and constantly alarmed by the falling among us
+of somebody from behind, who endangers the footing of the whole party,
+and clings pertinaciously to anybody's ankles. It is impossible for the
+litter to be in advance, too, as the track has to be made; and its
+appearance behind us, overhead--with some one or other of the bearers
+always down, and the rather heavy gentleman with his legs always in the
+air--is very threatening and frightful. We have gone on thus, a very
+little way, painfully and anxiously, but quite merrily, and regarding it
+as a great success--and have all fallen several times, and have all been
+stopt, somehow or other, as we were sliding away when Mr. Pickle of
+Portici, in the act of remarking on these uncommon circumstances as
+quite beyond his experience, stumbles, falls, disengages himself, with
+quick presence of mind, from those about him, plunges away head
+foremost, and rolls, over and over, down the whole surface of the cone!
+
+Giddy, and bloody, and a mere bundle of rags, is Pickle of Portici when
+we reach the place where we dismounted, and where the horses are
+waiting; but, thank God, sound in limb! And never are we likely to be
+more glad to see a man alive and on his feet, than to see him
+now--making light of it too, tho sorely bruised and in great pain. The
+boy is brought into the Hermitage on the Mountain, while we are at
+supper, with his head tied up; and the man is heard of, some hours
+afterward. He, too, is bruised and stunned, but has broken no bones; the
+snow having, fortunately, covered all the larger blocks of rock and
+stone, and rendered them harmless.
+
+
+
+
+CASTELLAMARE AND SORRENTO[11]
+
+BY HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
+
+
+The sky is almost clear. Only above Naples hangs a bank of clouds, and
+around Vesuvius huge white masses of smoke, moving and stationary. I
+never yet saw, even in summer at Marseilles, the blue of the sea so
+deep, bordering even on hardness. Above this powerful lustrous azure,
+absorbing three-quarters of the visible space, the white sky seems to be
+a firmament of crystal. As we recede we obtain a better view of the
+undulating coast, embraced in one grand mountain form, all its parts
+uniting like the members of one body. Ischia and the naked promontories
+on the extreme end repose in their lilac envelop, like a slumbering
+Pompeiian nymph under her veil. Veritably, to paint such nature as this,
+this violet continent extending around this broad luminous water, one
+must employ the terms of the ancient poets, and represent the great
+fertile goddess embraced and beset by the eternal ocean, and above them
+the serene effulgence of the dazzling Jupiter.
+
+We encounter on the road some fine faces with long elegant features,
+quite Grecian; some intelligent noble-looking girls, and here and there
+hideous mendicants cleaning their hairy breasts. But the race is much
+superior to that of Naples, where it is deformed and diminutive, the
+young girls there appearing like stunted, pallid grisets. The railroad
+skirts the sea a few paces off and almost on a level with it. A harbor
+appears blackened with lines of rigging, and then a mole, consisting of
+a small half-ruined fort, reflecting a clear sharp shadow in the
+luminous expanse. Surrounding this rise square houses, gray as if
+charred, and heaped together like tortoises under round roofs, serving
+them as a sort of thick shell.
+
+On this fertile soil, full of cinders, cultivation extends to the shore
+and forms gardens; a simple reed hedge protects them from the sea and
+the wind; the Indian fig with its clumsy thorny leaves clings to the
+slopes; verdure begins to appear on the branches of the trees, the
+apricots showing their smiling pink blossoms; half-naked men work the
+friable soil without apparent effort; a few square gardens contain
+columns and small statues of white marble. Everywhere you behold traces
+of antique beauty and joyousness. And why wonder at this when you feel
+that you have the divine vernal sun for a companion, and on the right,
+whenever you turn to the sea, its flaming golden waves.
+
+With what facility you here forget all ugly objects! I believe I passed
+at Castellamare some unsightly modern structures, a railroad station,
+hotels, a guard-house, and a number of rickety vehicles hurrying along
+in quest of fares. This is all effaced from my mind; nothing remains but
+impressions of obscure porches with glimpses of bright courts filled
+with glossy oranges and spring verdure, of esplanades with children
+playing on them and nets drying, and happy idlers snuffing the breeze
+and contemplating the capricious heaving of the tossing sea.
+
+On leaving Castellamare the road forms a corniche[12] winding along the
+bank. Huge white rocks, split off from the cliffs above, lie below in
+the midst of the eternally besieging waves. On the left the mountains
+lift their shattered pinnacles, fretted walls, and projecting crags, all
+that scaffolding of indentations which strike you as the ruins of a line
+of rocked and tottering fortresses. Each projection, each mass throws
+its shadow on the surrounding white surfaces, the entire range being
+peopled with tints and forms.
+
+Sometimes the mountain is rent in twain, and the sides of the chasm are
+lined with cultivation, descending in successive stages. Sorrento is
+thus built on three deep ravines. All these hollows contain gardens,
+crowded with masses of trees overhanging each other. Nut-trees, already
+lively with sap, project their white branches like gnarled fingers;
+everything else is green; winter lays no hand on this eternal spring.
+The thick lustrous leaf of the orange-tree rises from amid the foliage
+of the olive, and its golden apples glisten in the sun by thousands,
+interspersed with gleams of the pale lemon; often in these shady lanes
+do its glittering leaves flash out above the crest of the walls. This is
+the land of the orange. It grows even in miserable court-yards,
+alongside of dilapidated steps, spreading its luxuriant tops everywhere
+in the bright sunlight. The delicate aromatic odor of all these opening
+buds and blossoms is a luxury of kings, which here a beggar enjoys for
+nothing.
+
+I passed an hour in the garden of the hotel, a terrace overlooking the
+sea about half-way up the bank. A scene like this fills the imagination
+with a dream of perfect bliss. The house stands in a luxurious garden,
+filled with orange and lemon-trees, as heavily laden with fruit as those
+of a Normandy orchard; the ground at the foot of the trees is covered
+with it. Clusters of foliage and shrubbery of a pale green, bordering on
+blue, occupy intermediate spaces. The rosy blossoms of the peach, so
+tender and delicate, bloom on its naked branches. The walks are of
+bright blue porcelain, and the terrace displays its round verdant
+masses overhanging the sea, of which the lovely azure fills all space.
+
+I have not yet spoken of my impressions after leaving Castellamare. The
+charm was only too great. The pure sky, the pale azure almost
+transparent, the radiant blue sea as chaste and tender as a virgin
+bride, this infinite expanse so exquisitely adorned as if for a festival
+of rare delight, is a sensation that has no equal. Capri and Ischia on
+the line of the sky lie white in their soft vapory tissue, and the
+divine azure gently fades away surrounded by this border of brightness.
+
+Where find words to express all this? The gulf seemed like a marble vase
+purposely rounded to receive the sea. The satin sheen of a flower, the
+soft luminous petals of the velvet orris with shimmering sunshine on
+their pearly borders, such are the images that fill the mind, and which
+accumulate in vain and are ever inadequate. The water at the base of
+these rocks is now a transparent emerald, reflecting the tints of topaz
+and amethyst; again a liquid diamond, changing its hue according to the
+shifting influences of rock and depth; or again a flashing diadem,
+glittering with the splendor of this divine effulgence.
+
+
+
+
+CAPRI[13]
+
+BY AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE
+
+
+The Island of Capri (in the dialect of the people Crapi), the ancient
+Capreae, is a huge limestone rock, a continuation of the mountain range
+which forms the southern boundary of the Bay of Naples. Legend says that
+it was once inhabited by a people called Teleboae, subject to a king
+called Telon. Augustus took possession of Capreae as part of the
+imperial domains, and repeatedly visited it. His stepson Tiberius (A.D.
+27) established his permanent residence on the island, and spent the
+latter years of his life there, abandoning himself to the voluptuous
+excesses which gave him the name of Caprineus....
+
+The first point usually visited in Capri is the Blue Grotto (Grotta
+Azzurra), which is entered from the sea by an arch under the wall of
+limestone cliff, only available when the sea is perfectly calm. Visitors
+have to lie flat down in the boat, which is carried in by the wave and
+is almost level with the top of the arch. Then they suddenly find
+themselves in a magical scene. The water is liquid sapphire, and the
+whole rocky vaulting of the cavern shimmers to its inmost recesses with
+a pale blue light of marvelous beauty. A man stands ready to plunge into
+the water when the boats from the steamers arrive, and to swim about;
+his body, in the water, then sparkles like a sea-god with phosphorescent
+silver; his head, out of the water, is black like that of a Moor.
+Nothing can exaggerate the beauty of the Blue Grotto, and perhaps the
+effect is rather enhanced than spoiled by the shouting of the boatmen,
+the rush of boats to the entrance, the confusion on leaving and reaching
+the steamers.
+
+That the Grotta Azzurra was known to the Romans is evinced by the
+existence of a subterranean passage, leading to it from the upper
+heights, and now blocked up; it was also well known in the seventeenth
+century, when it was described by Capraanica. There are other beautiful
+grottoes in the cliffs surrounding the island, the most remarkable being
+the natural tunnel called the Green Grotto (Grotta Verde), under the
+southern rocks, quite as splendid in color as the Grotta Azzurra
+itself--a passage through the rocks, into which the boat glides (through
+no hole, as in the case of the Grotta Azzurra) into water of the most
+exquisite emerald. The late afternoon is the best time for visiting this
+grotto. Occasionally a small steamer makes the round of the island,
+stopping at the different caverns.
+
+On landing at the Marina, a number of donkey women offer their services,
+and it will be well to accept them, for the ascent of about one mile, to
+the village of Capri is very hot and tiring. On the left we pass the
+Church of St. Costanzo, a very curious building with apse, cupola, stone
+pulpit, and several ancient marble pillars and other fragments taken
+from the palaces of Tiberius.
+
+The little town of Capri, overhung on one side by great purple rocks,
+occupies a terrace on the high ridge between the two rocky promontories
+of the island. Close above the piazza stands the many-domed ancient
+church, like a mosque, and so many of the houses--sometimes of dazzling
+whiteness, sometimes painted in gay colors--have their own little domes,
+that the appearance is quite that of an oriental village, which is
+enhanced by the palm-trees which flourish here and there. In the piazza
+is a tablet to Major Hamill, who is buried in the church. He fell under
+French bayonets, when the troops of Murat, landing at Orico, recaptured
+the island, which had been taken from the French two years and a half
+before (May, 1806) by Sir Sidney Smith.
+
+Through a low wide arch in the piazza is the approach to the principal
+hotels. There is a tiny English chapel. An ascent of half an hour by
+stony donkey-paths leads from Capri to the ruins called the Villa
+Tiberiana, on the west of the island, above a precipitous rock 700 feet
+high, which still bears the name of Il Salto....
+
+The visitor who lingers in Capri may interest himself in tracing out the
+remains of all the twelve villas of Tiberius. A relief exhibiting
+Tiberius riding a led donkey, as modern travelers do now, was found on
+the island, and is now in the museum at Naples. Capri has a delightful
+winter climate, and is most comfortable as a residence. The natives are
+quite unlike the Neapolitans, pleasant and civil in their manners, and
+full of courtesies to strangers. The women are frequently beautiful.
+
+
+
+
+POMPEII[14]
+
+BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
+
+
+We have been to see Pompeii, and are waiting now for the return of
+spring weather, to visit, first, Paestum, and then the islands; after
+which we shall return to Rome. I was astonished at the remains of this
+city; I had no conception of anything so perfect yet remaining. My idea
+of the mode of its destruction was this: First, an earthquake shattered
+it, and unroofed almost all its temples, and split its columns; then a
+rain of light small pumice-stones fell; then torrents of boiling water,
+mixed with ashes, filled up all its crevices. A wide, flat hill, from
+which the city was excavated, is now covered by thick woods, and you see
+the tombs and the theaters, the temples and the houses, surrounded by
+the uninhabited wilderness.
+
+We entered the town from the side toward the sea, and first saw two
+theaters; one more magnificent than the other, strewn with the ruins of
+the white marble which formed their seats and cornices, wrought with
+deep, bold sculpture. In the front, between the stage and the seats, is
+the circular space, occasionally occupied by the chorus. The stage is
+very narrow, but long, and divided from this space by a narrow enclosure
+parallel to it, I suppose for the orchestra. On each side are the
+consuls' boxes, and below, in the theater at Herculaneum, were found two
+equestrian statues of admirable workmanship, occupying the same place
+as the great bronze lamps did at Drury Lane. The smallest of the
+theaters is said to have been comic, tho I should doubt. From both you
+see, as you sit on the seats, a prospect of the most wonderful beauty.
+
+You then pass through the ancient streets; they are very narrow, and the
+houses rather small, but all constructed on an admirable plan,
+especially for this climate. The rooms are built round a court, or
+sometimes two, according to the extent of the house. In the midst is a
+fountain, sometimes surrounded with a portico, supported on fluted
+columns of white stucco; the floor is paved with mosaic, sometimes
+wrought in imitation of vine leaves, sometimes in quaint figures, and
+more or less beautiful, according to the rank of the inhabitant. There
+were paintings on all, but most of them have been removed to decorate
+the royal museums. Little winged figures, and small ornaments of
+exquisite elegance, yet remain. There is an ideal life in the forms of
+these paintings of an incomparable loveliness, tho most are evidently
+the work of very inferior artists. It seems as if, from the atmosphere
+of mental beauty which surrounded them, every human being caught a
+splendor not his own.
+
+In one house you see how the bed-rooms were managed; a small sofa was
+built up, where the cushions were placed; two pictures, one representing
+Diana and Endymion, the other Venus and Mars, decorate the chamber; and
+a little niche, which contains the statue of a domestic god. The floor
+is composed of a rich mosaic of the rarest marbles, agate, jasper, and
+porphyry; it looks to the marble fountain and the snow-white columns,
+whose entablatures strew the floor of the portico they supported. The
+houses have only one story, and the apartments, tho not large, are very
+lofty. A great advantage results from this, wholly unknown in our
+cities.
+
+The public buildings, whose ruins are now forests, as it were, of white
+fluted columns, and which then supported entablatures, loaded with
+sculptures, were seen on all sides over the roofs of the houses. This
+was the excellence of the ancients. Their private expenses were
+comparatively moderate; the dwelling of one of the chief senators of
+Pompeii is elegant indeed, and adorned with most beautiful specimens of
+art, but small. But their public buildings are everywhere marked by the
+bold and grand designs of an unsparing magnificence. In the little town
+of Pompeii (it contained about twenty thousand inhabitants), it is
+wonderful to see the number and the grandeur of their public buildings.
+Another advantage, too, is that, in the present case, the glorious
+scenery around is not shut out, and that, unlike the inhabitants of the
+Cimmerian ravines of modern cities, the ancient Pompeiians could
+contemplate the clouds and the lamps of heaven; could see the moon rise
+high behind Vesuvius, and the sun set in the sea, tremulous with an
+atmosphere of golden vapor, between Inarime and Misenum.
+
+We next saw the temples. Of the temples of Aesculapius little remains
+but an altar of black stone, adorned with a cornice imitating the scales
+of a serpent. His statue, in terra-cotta, was found in the cell. The
+temple of Isis is more perfect. It is surrounded by a portico of fluted
+columns, and in the area around it are two altars, and many ceppi for
+statues; and a little chapel of white stucco, as hard as stone, of the
+most exquisite proportion; its panels are adorned with figures in
+bas-relief, slightly indicated, but of a workmanship the most delicate
+and perfect that can be conceived.
+
+They are Egyptian subjects, executed by a Greek artist, who has
+harmonized all the unnatural extravagances of the original conception
+into the supernatural loveliness of his country's genius. They scarcely
+touch the ground with their feet, and their wind-uplifted robes seem in
+the place of wings. The temple in the midst raised on a high platform,
+and approached by steps, was decorated with exquisite paintings, some of
+which we saw in the museum at Portici. It is small, of the same
+materials as the chapel, with a pavement of mosaic, and fluted Ionic
+columns of white stucco, so white that it dazzles you to look at it.
+
+Thence through the other porticos and labyrinths of walls and columns
+(for I can not hope to detail everything to you), we came to the Forum.
+This is a large square, surrounded by lofty porticos of fluted columns,
+some broken, some entire, their entablatures strewed under them. The
+temple of Jupiter, of Venus, and another temple, the Tribunal, and the
+Hall of Public Justice, with their forest of lofty columns, surround the
+Forum. Two pedestals or altars of an enormous size (for, whether they
+supported equestrian statues, or were the altars of the temple of Venus,
+before which they stand, the guide could not tell), occupy the lower end
+of the Forum. At the upper end, supported on an elevated platform,
+stands the temple of Jupiter. Under the colonnade of its portico we sat
+and pulled out our oranges, and figs, and bread, and medlars (sorry
+fare, you will say), and rested to eat.
+
+Here was a magnificent spectacle. Above and between the multitudinous
+shafts of the sun-shining columns was seen the sea, reflecting the
+purple heaven of noon above it, and supporting, as it were, on its line
+the dark lofty mountains of Sorrento, of a blue inexpressibly deep, and
+tinged toward their summits with streaks of new-fallen snow. Between was
+one small green island. To the right was Capreae, Inarime, Prochyta, and
+Misenum. Behind was the single summit of Vesuvius, rolling forth volumes
+of thick white smoke, whose foam-like column was sometimes darted into
+the clear dark sky, and fell in little streaks along the wind. Between
+Vesuvius and the nearer mountains, as through a chasm, was seen the main
+line of the loftiest Apennines, to the east.
+
+The day was radiant and warm. Every now and then we heard the
+subterranean thunder of Vesuvius; its distant deep peals seemed to shake
+the very air and light of day, which interpenetrated our frames with the
+sullen and tremendous sound. This sound was what the Greeks beheld
+(Pompeii, you know, was a Greek city). They lived in harmony with
+nature; and the interstices of their incomparable columns were portals,
+as it were, to admit the spirit of beauty which animates this glorious
+universe to visit those whom it inspired. If such is Pompeii, what was
+Athens? What scene was exhibited from the Acropolis, the Parthenon, and
+the temples of Hercules, and Theseus, and the Winds? The island and the
+AEgean sea, the mountains of Argolis, and the peaks of Pindus and
+Olympus, and the darkness of the Boeotian forests interspersed?
+
+From the Forum we went to another public place; a triangular portico,
+half enclosing the ruins of an enormous temple. It is built on the edge
+of the hill overlooking the sea. That black point is the temple. In the
+apex of the triangle stands an altar and a fountain, and before the
+altar once stood the statue of the builder of the portico. Returning
+hence, and following the consular road, we came to the eastern gate of
+the city. The walls are of an enormous strength, and enclose a space of
+three miles. On each side of the road beyond the gate are built the
+tombs. How unlike ours! They seem not so much hiding-places for that
+which must decay, as voluptuous chambers for immortal spirits. They are
+of marble, radiantly white; and two, especially beautiful, are loaded
+with exquisite bas-reliefs. On the stucco-wall that encloses them are
+little emblematic figures, of a relief exceedingly low, of dead and
+dying animals, and little winged genii, and female forms bending in
+groups in some funereal office. The high reliefs represent, one a
+nautical subject, and the other a Bacchanalian one.
+
+Within the cell stand the cinerary urns, sometimes one, sometimes more.
+It is said that paintings were found within, which are now, as has been
+everything movable in Pompeii, removed, and scattered about in royal
+museums. These tombs were the most impressive things of all. The wild
+woods surround them on either side; and along the broad stones of the
+paved road which divides them, you hear the late leaves of autumn shiver
+and rustle in the stream of the inconstant wind, as it were, like the
+step of ghosts. The radiance and magnificence of these dwellings of the
+dead, the white freshness of the scarcely-finished marble, the
+impassioned or imaginative life of the figures which adorn them,
+contrast strangely with the simplicity of the houses of those who were
+living when Vesuvius overwhelmed them.
+
+I have forgotten the amphitheater, which is of great magnitude, tho much
+inferior to the Coliseum. I now understand why the Greeks were such
+great poets; and, above all, I can account, it seems to me, for the
+harmony, the unity, the perfection, the uniform excellence, of all their
+works of art. They lived in a perpetual commerce with external nature,
+and nourished themselves upon the spirit of its forms. Their theaters
+were all open to the mountains and the sky. Their columns, the ideal
+types of a sacred forest, with its roof of interwoven tracery, admitted
+the light and wind; the odor and the freshness of the country penetrated
+the cities. Their temples were mostly upaithric; and the flying clouds,
+the stars, or the deep sky, were seen above.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+OTHER ITALIAN SCENES
+
+
+
+
+VERONA[15]
+
+BY CHARLES DICKENS
+
+
+I had been half afraid to go to Verona, lest it should at all put me out
+of conceit with Romeo and Juliet. But, I was no sooner come into the old
+Market-place, than the misgiving vanished. It is so fanciful, quaint,
+and picturesque a place, formed by such an extraordinary and rich
+variety of fantastic buildings, that there could be nothing better at
+the core of even this romantic town; scene of one of the most romantic
+and beautiful of stories.
+
+It was natural enough, to go straight from the Market-place, to the
+House of the Capulets, now degenerated into a most miserable little inn.
+Noisy vetturini and muddy market-carts were disputing possession of the
+yard, which was ankle-deep in dirt, with a brood of splashed and
+bespattered geese; and there was a grim-visaged dog, viciously panting
+in a doorway, who would certainly have had Romeo by the leg, the moment
+he put it over the wall, if he had existed and been at large in those
+times. The orchard fell into other hands, and was parted off many years
+ago; but there used to be one attached to the house--or at all events
+there may have been--and the Hat (Cappello), the ancient cognizance of
+the family, may still be seen, carved in stone, over the gateway of the
+yard. The geese, the market-carts, their drivers, and the dog, were
+somewhat in the way of the story, it must be confessed; and it would
+have been pleasanter to have found the house empty, and to have been
+able to walk through the disused rooms. But the Hat was unspeakably
+comfortable; and the place where the garden used to be, hardly less so.
+Besides, the house is a distrustful, jealous-looking house as one would
+desire to see, tho of a very moderate size. So I was quite satisfied
+with it, as the veritable mansion of old Capulet, and was
+correspondingly grateful in my acknowledgments to an extremely
+unsentimental middle-aged lady, the Padrona of the Hotel, who was
+lounging on the threshold looking at the geese.
+
+From Juliet's home, to Juliet's tomb, is a transition as natural to the
+visitor, as to fair Juliet herself, or to the proudest Juliet that ever
+has taught the torches to burn bright in any time. So, I went off, with
+a guide, to an old, old garden, once belonging to an old, old convent, I
+suppose; and being admitted, at a shattered gate, by a bright-eyed woman
+who was washing clothes, went down some walks where fresh plants and
+young flowers were prettily growing among fragments of old wall, and
+ivy-covered mounds; and was shown a little tank, or water-trough, which
+the bright-eyed woman--drying her arms upon her 'kerchief--called "La
+tomba di Giulietta la sfortunata." With the best disposition in the
+world to believe, I could do no more than believe that the bright-eyed
+woman believed; so I gave her that much credit, and her customary fee in
+ready money. It was a pleasure, rather than a disappointment, that
+Juliet's resting-place was forgotten. However consolatory it may have
+been to Yorick's Ghost, to hear the feet upon the pavement overhead,
+and, twenty times a day, the repetition of his name, it is better for
+Juliet to lie out of the track of tourists, and to have no visitors but
+such as come to graves in spring-rain, and sweet air, and sunshine.
+
+Pleasant Verona! With its beautiful old palaces, and charming country in
+the distance, seen from terrace walks, and stately, balustraded
+galleries. With its Roman gates, still spanning the fair street, and
+casting, on the sunlight of to-day, the shade of fifteen hundred years
+ago. With its marble-fitted churches, lofty towers, rich architecture,
+and quaint old quiet thoroughfares, where shouts of Montagues and
+Capulets once resounded.
+
+ And made Verona's ancient citizens
+ Cast by their grave, beseeming ornaments,
+ To wield old partisans.
+
+With its fast-rushing river, picturesque old bridge, great castle,
+waving cypresses, and prospect so delightful, and so cheerful! Pleasant
+Verona! In the midst of it, in the Piazza di Bra--a spirit of old time
+among the familiar realities of the passing hour--is the great Roman
+Amphitheater. So well preserved, and carefully maintained, that every
+row of seats is there, unbroken. Over certain of the arches, the old
+Roman numerals may yet be seen; and there are corridors, and staircases,
+and subterranean passages for beasts, and winding ways, above ground and
+below, as when the fierce thousands hurried in and out, intent upon the
+bloody shows of the arena. Nestling in some of the shadows and hollow
+places of the walls, now, are smiths with their forges, and a few small
+dealers of one kind or other; and there are green weeds, and leaves, and
+grass, upon the parapet. But little else is greatly changed.
+
+When I had traversed all about it, with great interest, and had gone up
+to the topmost round of seats, and turning from the lovely panorama
+closed in by the distant Alps, looked down into the building, it seemed
+to lie before me like the inside of a prodigious hat of plaited straw,
+with an enormously broad brim and a shallow crown; the plaits being
+represented by the four-and-forty rows of seats. The comparison is a
+homely and fantastic one, in sober remembrance and on paper, but it was
+irresistibly suggested at the moment, nevertheless.
+
+
+
+
+PADUA[16]
+
+BY THEOPHILE GAUTIER
+
+
+Padua is an ancient city and exhibits a rather respectable appearance
+against the horizon with its bell-turrets, its domes, and its old walls
+upon which myriads of lizards run and frisk in the sun. Situated near a
+center which attracts life to itself, Padua is a dead city with an
+almost deserted air. Its streets, bordered by two rows of low arcades,
+in nowise recall the elegant and charming architecture of Venice. The
+heavy, massive structures have a serious, somewhat crabbed aspect, and
+its somber porticos in the lower stories of the houses resemble black
+mouths which yawn with ennui.
+
+We were conducted to a big inn, established probably in some ancient
+palace, and whose great halls, dishonored by vulgar uses, had formerly
+seen better company. It was a real journey to go from the vestibule to
+our room by a host of stairways and corridors; a map of Ariadne's thread
+would have been needed to find one's way back. Our windows opened upon a
+very pleasant view; a river flows at the foot of the wall--the Brenta or
+the Bacchiglione, I know not which, for both water Padua. The banks of
+this watercourse were adorned with old houses and long walls, and trees,
+too, overhung the banks; some rather picturesque rows of piles, from
+which the fishermen cast their lines with that patience characteristic
+of them in all countries; huts with nets and linen hanging from the
+windows to dry, formed under the sun's rays a very pretty subject for a
+water-color.
+
+After dinner we went to the Cafe Pedrocchi, celebrated throughout all
+Italy for its magnificence. Nothing could be more monumentally classic.
+There are nothing but pillars, columnets, ovolos, and palm leaves of the
+Percier and Fontain kind, the whole very fine and lavish of marble.
+What was most curious was some immense maps forming a tapestry and
+representing the different divisions of the world on an enormous scale.
+This somewhat pedantic decoration gives to the hall an academic air; and
+one is surprized not to see a chair in place of the bar, with a
+professor in his gown in place of a dispenser of lemonade.
+
+The University of Padua was formerly famous. In the thirteenth century
+eighteen thousand young men, a whole people of scholars, followed the
+lessons of the learned professors, among whom later Galileo figured, one
+of whose bones is preserved there as a relic, a relic of a martyr who
+suffered for the truth. The facade of the University is very beautiful;
+four Doric columns give it a severe and monumental air; but solitude
+reigns in the class-rooms where to-day scarcely a thousand students can
+be reckoned....
+
+We paid a visit to the Cathedral dedicated to Saint Anthony, who enjoys
+at Padua the same reputation as Saint Januarius at Naples. He is the
+"genius loci," the Saint venerated above all others. He used to perform
+not less than thirty miracles each day, if Casanova[17] is to be
+believed. Such a performance fairly earned for him his surname of
+Thaumaturge, but this prodigious zeal has fallen off greatly.
+Nevertheless, the reputation of the saint has not suffered, and so many
+masses are paid for at his altar that the number of the priests of the
+cathedral and of days in the year are not sufficient. To liquidate the
+accounts, the Pope has granted permission, at the end of the year, for
+masses to be said, each, one of which is of the value of a thousand; in
+this fashion Saint Anthony is saved from being bankrupt to his faithful
+devotees.
+
+On the place which adjoins the cathedral, a beautiful equestrian statue
+by Donatello, in bronze, rises to view, the first which had been cast
+since the days of antiquity, representing a leader of banditti:
+Gattamelata, a brigand who surely did not deserve that honor. But the
+artist has given him a superb bearing and a spirited figure with his
+baton of a Roman emperor, and it is entirely sufficient....
+
+One thing which must not be neglected in passing through Padua is a
+visit to the old Church of the Arena, situated at the rear of a garden
+of luxuriant vegetation, where it would certainly not be conjectured to
+be located unless one were advised of the fact. It is entirely painted
+in its interior by Giotto. Not a single column, not a single rib, nor
+architectural division interrupts that vast tapestry of frescoes. The
+general aspect is soft, azure, starry, like a beautiful, calm sky;
+ultramarine dominates; thirty compartments of large dimensions,
+indicated by simple lines, contain the life of the Virgin and of her
+Divine Son in all their details; they might be called illustrations in
+miniature of a gigantic missal. The personages, by naive anachronisms
+very precious for history, are clothed in the mode of the times in which
+Giotto painted.
+
+Below these compositions of the purest religious feeling, a painted
+plinth shows the seven deadly sins symbolized in an ingenious manner,
+and other allegorical figures of a very good style; a Paradise and a
+Hell, subjects which greatly imprest the minds of the artists of that
+epoch, complete this marvelous whole. There are in these paintings weird
+and touching details; children issue from their little coffins to mount
+to Paradise with a joyous ardor, and launch themselves forth to go to
+play upon the blossoming turf of the celestial garden; others stretch
+forth their hands to their half-resurrected mothers. The remark may also
+be made that all the devils and vices are obese, while the angels and
+virtues are thin and slender. The painter wishes to mark the
+preponderance of matter in the one class and of spirit in the other.
+
+
+
+
+FERRARA[18]
+
+BY THEOPHILE GAUTIER
+
+
+Ferrara rises solitary in the midst of a flat country more rich than
+picturesque. When one enters it by the broad street which leads to the
+square, the aspect of the city is imposing and monumental. A palace with
+a grand staircase occupies a corner of this vast square; it might be a
+court-house or a town hall, for people of all classes were entering and
+departing through its wide doors....
+
+The castle of the ancient dukes of Ferrara, which is to be found a
+little farther on, has a fine feudal aspect. It is a vast collection of
+towers joined together by high walls crowned with a battlement forming
+a cornice, and which emerge from a great moat full of water, over which
+one enters by a protected bridge. The castle, built wholly of brick or
+of stones reddened by the sun, has a vermilion tint which deprives it of
+its imposing effect. It is too much like a decoration of a melodrama.
+
+It was in this castle that the famous Lucretia Borgia lived, whom Victor
+Hugo has made such a monster for us, and whom Ariosto depicts as a model
+of chastity, grace and virtue; that blonde Lucretia who wrote letters
+breathing the purest love, and some of whose hair, fine as silk and
+shining as gold, Byron possest. It was there that the dramas of Tasso
+and Ariosto and Guarini were played; there that those brilliant orgies
+took place, mingled with poisonings and assassinations, which
+characterized that learned and artistic, refined and criminal, period of
+Italy.
+
+It is the custom to pay a pious visit to the problematical dungeon in
+which Tasso, mad with love and grief, passed so many years, according to
+the poetic legend which grew up concerning his misfortune. We did not
+have time to spare and we regretted it very little. This dungeon, a
+perfectly correct sketch of which we have before our eyes, consists only
+of four walls, ceiled by a low arch. At the back is to be seen a window
+grated by heavy bars and a door with big bolts. It is quite unlikely
+that in this obscure hole, tapestried with cobwebs, Tasso could have
+worked and retouched his poem, composed sonnets, and occupied himself
+with small details of toilet, such as the quality of the velvet of his
+cap and the silk of his stockings, and with kitchen details, such as
+with what kind of sugar he ought to powder his salad, that which he had
+not being fine enough for his liking. Neither did we see the house of
+Ariosto, another required pilgrimage. Not to speak of the little faith
+which one should place in these unauthenticated traditions, in these
+relics without character, we prefer to seek Ariosto in the "Orlando
+Furioso," and Tasso in the "Jerusalem Delivree" or in the fine drama of
+Goethe.
+
+The life of Ferrara is concentrated on the Plaza Nuova, in front of the
+church and in the neighborhood of the castle. Life has not yet abandoned
+this heart of the city; but in proportion as one moves away from it, it
+becomes more feeble, paralysis begins, death gains; silence, solitude,
+and grass invade the streets; one feels that one is wandering about a
+Thebes peopled with ghosts of the past and from which the living have
+evaporated like water which has dried up. There is nothing more sad than
+to see the corpse of a dead city slowly falling into dust in the sun and
+rain. One at least buries human bodies.
+
+
+
+
+LAKE LUGANO[19]
+
+BY VICTOR TISSOT
+
+
+On emerging from the second tunnel,[20] beyond a wild and narrow gorge,
+there lies suddenly before us, as in a gorgeous fairyland or in the
+landscape of a dream, the blue expanse of Lake Lugano, with its setting
+of green meadows and purple mountains, with the many-colored village
+spires, and the great white fronts of the hotels and villas. Oh, what a
+wonderful picture!
+
+We feel as if we were going down into an enchanted garden that has been
+hidden by the great snowy walls of the Alps. The air is full of the
+perfume of roses and jessamine. The hedges are in flower, butterflies
+are dancing, insects are humming, birds are singing. Up above, in the
+mountain, is snow, ice, winter, and silence; here there is sunshine,
+life, joy, love--all the living delights of spring and summer. Golden
+harvests are shining on the plains, and the lake in the distance is like
+a piece of the sky brought down to earth.
+
+Lugano is already Italy, not only because of the richness of the soil
+and the magnificence of the vegetation, but also as regards the
+language, the manners, and the picturesque costumes. In each valley the
+dress is different; in one place the women wear a short skirt, an apron
+held in by a girdle, and a bright colored bodice; in another they wear a
+cap above which is a large shady hat; in the Val Maroblio they have a
+woolen dress not very different from that of the Capuchins.
+
+The men have not the square figure, the slow, heavy walk of the people
+of Basle and Lucerne; they are brisk, vigorous, easy; and the women have
+something of the wavy suppleness of vine branches twining among the
+trees. These people have the happy, childlike joyousness, the frank
+good-nature, of those who live in the open air, who do not shut
+themselves up in their houses, but grow freely like the flowers under
+the strong, glowing sunshine.
+
+At every street corner sellers are sitting behind baskets of
+extraordinary vegetables and magnificent fruit; and under the arcades
+that run along the houses, big grocers in shirt sleeves come at
+intervals to their shop doors to take breath, like hippopotami coming
+out of the water for the same purpose. In this town, ultramontane in its
+piety, the bells of churches and convents are sounding all day long, and
+women are seen going to make their evening prayer together in the
+nearest chapel.
+
+But if the fair sex in Lugano are diligent in frequenting the churches,
+they by no means scorn the cafes. After sunset the little tables that
+are all over the great square are surrounded by an entire population of
+men and women. How gay and amusing those Italian cafes are! full of
+sound and color, with their red and blue striped awnings, their advance
+guard of little tables under the shade of the orange-trees, and their
+babbling, stirring, gesticulating company. The waiters, in black vests
+and leather slippers, a corner of their apron tucked up in their belt,
+run with the speed of kangaroos, carrying on metal plates syrups of
+every shade, ices, sweets in red, yellow, or green pyramids. Between
+seven and nine o'clock the whole society of Lugano defiles before you.
+There are lawyers with their wives, doctors with their daughters,
+bankers, professors, merchants, public officials, with whom are
+sometimes misted stout, comfortable, jovial-looking canons, wrapping
+themselves in the bitter smoke of a regalia, as in a cloud of incense.
+
+
+
+
+LAKE COMO[21]
+
+BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
+
+
+We have been to Como, looking for a house. This lake exceeds anything I
+ever beheld in beauty, with the exception of the arbutus islands of
+Killarney. It is long and narrow, and has the appearance of a mighty
+river winding among the mountains and the forests. We sailed from the
+town of Como to a tract of country called the Tremezina, and saw the
+various aspects presented by that part of the lake. The mountains
+between Como and that village, or rather cluster of villages, are
+covered on high with chestnut forests (the eating chestnuts, on which
+the inhabitants of the country subsist in time of scarcity), which
+sometimes descend to the very verge of the lake, overhanging it with
+their hoary branches. But usually the immediate border of this shore is
+composed of laurel-trees, and bay, and myrtle, and wild fig-trees, and
+olives which grow in the crevices of the rocks, and overhang the
+caverns, and shadow the deep glens, which are filled with the flashing
+light of the waterfalls. Other flowering shrubs, which I can not name,
+grow there also. On high, the towers of village churches are seen white
+among the dark forests.
+
+Beyond, on the opposite shore, which faces the south, the mountains
+descend less precipitously to the lake, and altho they are much higher,
+and some covered with perpetual snow, there intervenes between them and
+the lake a range of lower hills, which have glens and rifts opening to
+the other, such as I should fancy the abysses of Ida or Parnassus. Here
+are plantations of olive, and orange, and lemon trees, which are now so
+loaded with fruit, that there is more fruit than leaves--and vineyards.
+This shore of the lake is one continued village, and the Milanese
+nobility have their villas here. The union of culture and the untameable
+profusion and loveliness of nature is here so close, that the line where
+they are divided can hardly be discovered.
+
+But the finest scenery is that of the Villa Pliniana; so called from a
+fountain which ebbs and flows every three hours, described by the
+younger Pliny, which is in the courtyard. This house, which was once a
+magnificent palace, and is now half in ruins, we are endeavoring to
+procure. It is built upon terraces raised from the bottom of the lake,
+together with its garden, at the foot of a semicircular precipice,
+overshadowed by profound forests of chestnut. The scene from the
+colonnade is the most extraordinary, at once, and the most lovely that
+eye ever beheld. On one side is the mountain, and immediately over you
+are clusters of cypress-trees, of an astonishing height, which seem to
+pierce the sky.
+
+Above you, from among the clouds, as it were, descends a waterfall of
+immense size, broken by the woody rocks into a thousand channels to the
+lake. On the other side is seen the blue extent of the lake and the
+mountains, speckled with sails and spires. The apartments of the
+Pliniana are immensely large, but ill-furnished and antique. The
+terraces, which overlook the lake, and conduct under the shade of such
+immense laurel-trees as deserve the epithet of Pythian, are most
+delightful.
+
+
+
+
+BELLAGIO ON LAKE COMO[22]
+
+BY W. D. M'CRACKEN
+
+
+The picture of the promontory of Bellagio is so beautiful as a whole
+that the traveler had better stand off for awhile to admire it at a
+distance and at his leisure. Indeed it is a question whether the lasting
+impressions which we treasure of Bellagio are not, after all, those
+derived from across the lake, from the shore-fronts of Tremezzo,
+Cadenabbia, Menaggio, or Varenna.
+
+A colossal, conquering geological lion appears to have come up from the
+south in times immemorial, bound for the north, and finding further
+progress stopt by the great sheet of water in front of him, seems to
+have halted and to be now crouching there with his noble head between
+his paws and his eyes fixt on the snow-covered Alps. The big white house
+on the lion's neck is the Villa Serbelloni, now used as the annex of a
+hotel, and the park of noble trees belonging to the villa forms the
+lion's mane. Hotels, both large and small, line the quay at the water's
+edge; then comes a break in the houses, and stately Villa Melzi is seen
+to stand off at one side. Villa Trotti gleams from among its bowers
+farther south; on the slope Villa Trivulzio, formerly Poldi, shows
+bravely, and Villa Giulia has cut for itself a wide prospect over both
+arms of the lake. At the back of this lion couchant, in the middle
+ground, sheer mountain walls tower protectingly, culminating in Monte
+Grigna.
+
+The picture varies from hour to hour, from day to day, and from season
+to season. Its color-scheme changes with wind and sun, its sparkle comes
+and goes from sunrise to sunset; only its form remains untouched through
+the night and lives to delight us another day. As the evening wears on,
+lights appear one by one on the quay of Bellagio, until there is a line
+of fire along the base of the dark peninsula. The hotel windows catch
+the glare, the villas light their storied corridors, and presently
+Bellagio, all aglow, presents the spectacle of a Venetian night mirrored
+in the lake.
+
+By this time the mountains have turned black and the sky has faded. It
+grows so still on the water that the tinkle of a little Italian band
+reaches across the lake to Cadenabbia, a laugh rings out into the quiet
+air from one of the merry little rowboats, and even the slight clatter
+made by the fishermen, in putting their boats to rights for the night
+and in carrying their nets indoors, can be distinguished as one of many
+indications that the day is done.
+
+When we land at Bellagio by daylight, we find it to be very much of a
+bazaar of souvenirs along the water-front, and everybody determined to
+carry away a keepsake. There is so much to buy--ornamental olive wood
+and tortoise-shell articles, Como blankets, lace, and what may be
+described in general terms as modern antiquities. These abound from shop
+to shop; even English groceries are available. Bellagio's principal
+street is suddenly converted at its northern end into a delightful
+arcade, after the arrangement which constitutes a characteristic charm
+of the villages and smaller towns on the Italian lakes; moreover, the
+vista up its side street is distinctly original. This mounts steeply
+from the waterside, like the streets of Algiers, is narrow and
+constructed in long steps to break the incline.
+
+
+
+
+THE REPUBLIC OF SAN MARINO[23]
+
+BY JOSEPH ADDISON
+
+
+The town and republic of St. Marino stands on the top of a very high and
+craggy mountain. It is generally hid among the clouds, and lay under
+snow when I saw it, though it was clear and warm weather in all the
+country about it. There is not a spring or fountain, that I could hear
+of, in the whole dominions; but they are always well provided with huge
+cisterns and reservoirs of rain and snow water. The wine that grows on
+the sides of their mountain is extraordinarily good, much better than
+any I met with on the cold side of the Apennines.
+
+This mountain, and a few neighboring hillocks that lie scattered about
+the bottom of it, is the whole circuit of these dominions. They have
+what they call three castles, three convents, and five churches and can
+reckon about five thousand souls in their community.[24] The
+inhabitants, as well as the historians who mention this little republic,
+give the following account of its origin. St. Marino was its founder, a
+Dalmatian by birth, and by trade a mason. He was employed above thirteen
+hundred years ago in the reparation of Rimini, and after he had finished
+his work, retired to this solitary mountain, as finding it very proper
+for the life of a hermit, which he led in the greatest rigors and
+austerities of religion. He had not been long here before he wrought a
+reputed miracle, which, joined with his extraordinary sanctity, gained
+him so great an esteem, that the princess of the country made him a
+present of the mountain, to dispose of at his own discretion. His
+reputation quickly peopled it, and gave rise to the republic which calls
+itself after his name.
+
+So that the commonwealth of Marino may boast, at least, of a nobler
+original than that of Rome, the one having been at first an asylum for
+robbers and murderers, and the other a resort of persons eminent for
+their piety and devotion. The best of their churches is dedicated to the
+saint, and holds his ashes. His statue stands over the high altar, with
+the figure of a mountain in its hands, crowned with three castles, which
+is likewise the arms of the commonwealth. They attribute to his
+protection the long duration of their state, and look on him as the
+greatest saint next the blessed virgin. I saw in their statute-book a
+law against such as speak disrespectfully of him, who are to be punished
+in the same manner as those convicted of blasphemy.
+
+This petty republic has now lasted thirteen hundred years,[25] while all
+the other states of Italy have several times changed their masters and
+forms of government. Their whole history is comprised in two purchases,
+which they made of a neighboring prince, and in a war in which they
+assisted the pope against a lord of Rimini. In the year 1100 they bought
+a castle in the neighborhood, as they did another in the year 1170. The
+papers of the conditions are preserved in their archives, where it is
+very remarkable that the name of the agent for the commonwealth, of the
+seller, of the notary, and the witnesses, are the same in both the
+instruments, tho drawn up at seventy years' distance from each other.
+Nor can it be any mistake in the date, because the popes' and emperors'
+names, with the year of their respective reigns, are both punctually set
+down. About two hundred and ninety years after this they assisted Pope
+Pius the Second against one of the Malatestas, who was then, lord of
+Rimini; and when they had helped to conquer him, received from the pope,
+as a reward for their assistance, four little castles. This they
+represent as the flourishing time of the commonwealth, when their
+dominions reached half-way up a neighboring hill; but at present they
+are reduced to their old extent....
+
+The chief officers of the commonwealth are the two capitaneos, who have
+such a power as the old Roman consuls had, but are chosen every six
+months. I talked with some that had been capitaneos six or seven times,
+tho the office is never to be continued to the same persons twice
+successively. The third officer is the commissary, who judges in all
+civil and criminal matters. But because the many alliances, friendships,
+and intermarriages, as well as the personal feuds and animosities, that
+happen among so small a people might obstruct the course of justice, if
+one of their own number had the distribution of it, they have always a
+foreigner for this employ, whom they choose for three years, and
+maintain out of the public stock. He must be a doctor of law, and a man
+of known integrity. He is joined in commission with the capitaneos, and
+acts something like the recorder of London under the lord mayor. The
+commonwealth of Genoa was forced to make use of a foreign judge for many
+years, while their republic was torn into the divisions of Guelphs and
+Ghibelines. The fourth man in the state is the physician, who must
+likewise be a stranger, and is maintained by a public salary. He is
+obliged to keep a horse, to visit the sick, and to inspect all drugs
+that are imported. He must be at least thirty-five years old, a doctor
+of the faculty, and eminent for his religion and honesty, that his
+rashness or ignorance may not unpeople the commonwealth. And, that they
+may not suffer long under any bad choice, he is elected only for three
+years.
+
+The people are esteemed very honest and rigorous in the execution of
+justice, and seem to live more happy and contented among their rocks and
+snows, than others of the Italians do in the pleasantest valleys of the
+world. Nothing, indeed, can be a greater instance of the natural love
+that mankind has for liberty, and of their aversion to an arbitrary
+government, than such a savage mountain covered with people, and the
+Campania of Rome, which lies in the same country, almost destitute of
+inhabitants.
+
+
+
+
+PERUGIA[26]
+
+BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
+
+
+We pursued our way, and came, by and by, to the foot of the high hill on
+which stands Perugia, and which is so long and steep that Gaetano took a
+yoke of oxen to aid his horses in the ascent. We all, except my wife,
+walked a part of the way up, and I myself, with J----[27] for my
+companion, kept on even to the city gate, a distance, I should think, of
+two or three miles, at least. The lower part of the road was on the edge
+of the hill, with a narrow valley on our left; and as the sun had now
+broken out, its verdure and fertility, its foliage and cultivation,
+shone forth in miraculous beauty, as green as England, as bright as only
+Italy.
+
+Perugia appeared above us, crowning a mighty hill, the most picturesque
+of cities; and the higher we ascended, the more the view opened before
+us, as we looked back on the course that we had traversed, and saw the
+wide valley, sweeping down and spreading out, bounded afar by mountains,
+and sleeping in sun and shadow. No language nor any art of the pencil
+can give an idea of the scene....
+
+We plunged from the upper city down through some of the strangest
+passages that ever were called streets; some of them, indeed, being
+arched all over, and, going down into the unknown darkness, looked like
+caverns; and we followed one of them doubtfully, till it opened, out
+upon the light. The houses on each side were divided only by a pace or
+two, and communicated with one another, here and there, by arched
+passages. They looked very ancient, and may have been inhabited by
+Etruscan princes, judging from the massiveness of some of the foundation
+stones. The present inhabitants, nevertheless, are by no means princely,
+shabby men, and the careworn wives and mothers of the people, one of
+whom was guiding a child in leading-strings through these antique
+alleys, where hundreds of generations have trod before those little
+feet. Finally we came out through a gateway, the same gateway at which
+we entered last night.
+
+The best part of Perugia, that in which the grand piazzas and the
+principal public edifices stand, seems to be a nearly level plateau on
+the summit of the hill; but it is of no very great extent, and the
+streets rapidly run downward on either side. J---- and I followed one of
+these descending streets, and were led a long way by it, till we at last
+emerged from one of the gates of the city, and had another view of the
+mountains and valleys, the fertile and sunny wilderness in which this
+ancient civilization stands.
+
+On the right of the gate there was a rude country path, partly overgrown
+with grass, bordered by a hedge on one side, and on the other by the
+gray city wall, at the base of which the tract kept onward. We followed
+it, hoping that it would lead us to some other gate by which we might
+reenter the city; but it soon grew so indistinct and broken, that it was
+evidently on the point of melting into somebody's olive-orchard or
+wheat-fields or vineyards, all of which lay on the other side of the
+hedge; and a kindly old woman of whom I inquired told me (if I rightly
+understood her Italian) that I should find no further passage in that
+direction. So we turned back, much broiled in the hot sun, and only now
+and then relieved by the shadow of an angle or a tower.
+
+
+
+
+SIENA[28]
+
+BY MR. AND MRS. EDWIN H. BLASHFIELD
+
+
+That admirers of minute designs and florid detail could appreciate
+grandeur as well, no one can doubt who has seen the plans of the Sienese
+cathedral. Its history is one of a grand result, and of far grander, tho
+thwarted endeavor, and it is hard to realize to-day, that the church as
+it stands is but a fragment, the transept only, of what Siena willed.
+From the state of the existing works no one can doubt that the brave
+little republic would have finished it had she not met an enemy before
+whom the sword of Monteaperto was useless. The plague of 1348 stalked
+across Tuscany, and the chill of thirty thousand Sienese graves numbed
+the hand of master and workman, sweeping away the architect who planned,
+the masons who built, the magistrates who ordered, it left but the
+yellowed parchment in the archives which conferred upon Maestro Lorenzo
+Maitani the superintendence of the works.
+
+The facade of the present church is amazing in its richness, undoubtedly
+possesses some grand and much lovely detail, and is as undoubtedly
+suggestive, with its white marble ornaments upon a pink marble ground,
+of a huge, sugared cake. It is impossible to look at this restored
+whiteness with the sun upon it; the dazzled eyes close involuntarily and
+one sees in retrospect the great, gray church front at Rheims, or the
+solemn facade of Notre Dame de Paris. It is like remembering an organ
+burst of Handel after hearing the florid roulades of the mass within the
+cathedral.
+
+The interior is rich in color and fine in effect, but the northerner is
+painfully imprest by the black and white horizontal stripes which,
+running from vaulting to pavement, seem to blur and confuse the vision,
+and the closely set bars of the piers are positively irritating. In the
+hexagonal lantern, however, they are less offensive than elsewhere,
+because the fan-like radiation of the bars above the great gilded
+statues breaks up the horizontal effect. The decoration of the
+stone-work is not happy; the use of cold red and cold blue with gilt
+bosses in relief does much to vulgarize, and there is constant sally in
+small masses which belittles the general effect. It is evident that the
+Sienese tendency to floridity is answerable for much of this, and that
+having added some piece of big and bad decoration, the cornice of papal
+head, for instance, they felt forced to do away with it or continue it
+throughout.
+
+But this fault and many others are forgotten when we examine the detail
+with which later men have filled the church. Other Italian cathedrals
+possess art-objects of a higher order; perhaps no other one is so rich
+in these treasures. The great masters are disappointing here. Raphael,
+as the co-laborer of Pinturicchio, is dainty, rather than great, and
+Michelangelo passes unnoticed in the huge and coldly elaborate
+altar-front of the Piccolomini. But Marrina, with his doors of the
+library; Barili, with his marvelous casing of the choir-stalls;
+Beccafumi, with his bronze and neillo--these are the artists whom one
+wonders at; these wood-carvers and bronze-founders, creators of the
+microcosmic detail of the Renaissance which had at last burst
+triumphantly into Siena.
+
+This treasure is cumulative, as we walk eastward from the main door,
+where the pillars are a maze of scroll-work in deepest cutting, and by
+the time we reach the choir the head fairly swims with the play of light
+and color. We wander from point to point, we finger and caress the
+lustrous stalls of Barili, and turn with a kind of confusion of vision
+from panel to panel; above our heads the tabernacle of Vecchietta, the
+lamp bearing angels of Beccafumi make spots of bituminous color, with
+glittering high-lights, strangely emphasizing their modeling; from these
+youths, who might be pages to some Roman prefect, the eye travels upward
+still further, along the golden convolutions of the heavily stuccoed
+pilasters to the huge, gilded cherubs' heads that frame the eastern
+rose....
+
+It is incredible that these frescoes are four hundred years old. Surely
+Pinturicchio came down from his scaffolding but yesterday. This is how
+the hardly dried plaster must have looked to pope and cardinal and
+princes when the boards were removed, and when the very figures on these
+walls--smart youths in tights and slashes, bright-robed scholars,
+ecclesiastics caped in ermine, ladies with long braids bound in nets of
+silk--crowded to see themselves embalmed in tempera for curious
+after-centuries to gaze upon.
+
+
+
+
+THE ASSISSI OF ST. FRANCIS[29]
+
+BY HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
+
+
+On the summit of an abrupt height, over a double row of arcades, appears
+the monastery; at its base a torrent plows the soil, winding off in the
+distance between banks of boulders; beyond is the old town prolonging
+itself on the ridge of the mountain. We ascend slowly under the burning
+sun, and suddenly, at the end of a court surrounded by slender columns,
+enter within the obscurity of the cathedral. It is unequalled; before
+having seen it one has no idea of the art and the genius of the Middle
+Ages. Append to it Dante and the "Fioretti" of St. Francis, and it
+becomes the masterpiece of mystic Christianity.
+
+There are three churches, one above the other, all of them arranged
+around the tomb of St. Francis. Over this venerated body, which the
+people regard as ever living and absorbed in prayer at the bottom of an
+inaccessible cave, the edifice has arisen and gloriously flowered like
+an architectural shrine. The lowest is a crypt, dark as a sepulcher,
+into which the visitors descend with torches; pilgrims keep close to the
+dripping walls and grope along in order to reach the grating.
+
+Here is the tomb, in a pale, dim light, similar to that of limbo. A few
+brass lamps, almost without lights, burn here eternally like stars lost
+in mournful obscurity. The ascending smoke clings to the arches, and the
+heavy odor of the tapers mingles with that of the cave. The guide trims
+his torch; and the sudden flash in this horrible darkness, above the
+bones of a corpse, is like one of Dante's visions. Here is the mystic
+grave of a saint who, in the midst of corruption and worms, beholds his
+slimy dungeon of earth filled with the supernatural radiance of the
+Savior.
+
+But that which can not be represented by words is the middle church, a
+long, low spiracle supported by small, round arches curving in the
+half-shadow, and whose voluntary depression makes one instinctively
+bend his knees. A coating of somber blue and of reddish bands starred
+with gold, a marvelous embroidery of ornaments, wreaths, delicate
+scroll-work, leaves, and painted figures, covers the arches and ceilings
+with its harmonious multitude; the eye is overwhelmed by it; a
+population of forms and tints lives on its vaults; I would not exchange
+this cavern for all the churches of Rome!
+
+On the summit, the upper church shoots up as brilliant, as aerial, as
+triumphant, as this is low and grave. Really, if one were to give way to
+conjecture, he might suppose that in these three sanctuaries the
+architect meant to represent the three worlds; below, the gloom of death
+and the horrors of the infernal tomb; in the middle, the impassioned
+anxiety of the beseeching Christian who strives and hopes in this world
+of trial; aloft, the bliss and dazzling glory of Paradise.
+
+
+
+
+RAVENNA[30]
+
+BY EDWARD A. FREEMAN
+
+
+With exceptions, all the monuments of Ravenna belong to the days of
+transition from Roman to Medieval times, and the greater part of them
+come within the fifth and sixth centuries. It was then that Ravenna
+became, for a season, the head of Italy and of the Western world. The
+sea had made Ravenna a great haven: the falling back of the sea made her
+the ruling city of the earth. Augustus had called into being the port of
+Caesarea as the Peiraieus of the Old Thessalian or Umbrian Ravenna.
+Haven and city grew and became one; but the faithless element again fell
+back; the haven of Augustus became dry land covered by orchards, and
+Classis arose as the third station, leaving Ravenna itself an inland
+city.
+
+Again has the sea fallen back; Caesarea has utterly perished; Classis
+survives only in one venerable church; the famous pine forest has grown
+up between the third haven and the now distant Hadriatic. Out of all
+this grew the momentary greatness of Ravenna. The city, girded with the
+three fold zone of marshes, causeways, and strong walls, became the
+impregnable shelter of the later Emperors; and the earliest Teutonic
+Kings naturally fixt their royal seat in the city of their Imperial
+predecessors. When this immediate need had passed away, the city
+naturally fell into insignificance, and it plays hardly any part in the
+history of Medieval Italy. Hence it is that the city is crowded with the
+monuments of an age which has left hardly any monuments elsewhere.
+
+In Britain, indeed, if Dr. Merivale be right in the date which he gives
+to the great Northern wall, we have a wonderful relic of those times;
+but it is the work, not of the architect, but of the military engineers.
+In other parts of Europe also works of this date are found here and
+there; but nowhere save at Ravenna is there a whole city, so to speak,
+made up of them. Nowhere but at Ravenna can we find, thickly scattered
+around us, the churches, the tombs, perhaps the palaces, of the last
+Roman and the first Teutonic rulers of Italy. In the Old and in the New
+Rome, and in Milan also, works of the same date exist; but either they
+do not form the chief objects of the city, or they have lost their
+character and position through later changes. If Ravenna boasts of the
+tombs of Honorius and Theodoric, Milan boasts also, truly or falsely, of
+the tombs of Stilicho and Athaulf. But at Milan we have to seek for the
+so-called tomb of Athaulf in a side-chapel of a church which has lost
+all ancient character, and the so-called tomb of Stilicho, tho placed in
+the most venerable church of the city, stands in a strange position as
+the support of a pulpit.
+
+At Ravenna, on the other hand, the mighty mausoleum of Theodoric, and
+the chapel which contains the tombs of Galla Placidia, her brother, and
+her second husband, are among the best known and best preserved
+monuments of the city. Ravenna, in the days of its Exarchs, could never
+have dared to set up its own St. Vital as a rival to Imperial St.
+Sophia. But at St. Sophia, changed into the temple of another faith, the
+most characteristic ornaments have been hidden or torn away, while at
+St. Vital Hebrew patriarchs and Christian saints, and the Imperial forms
+of Justinian and his strangely-chosen Empress, still look down, as they
+did thirteen hundred years back, upon the altars of Christian worship.
+Ravenna, in short, seems, as it were, to have been preserved all but
+untouched to keep up the memory of the days which were alike Roman,
+Christian, and Imperial.
+
+
+
+
+BENEDICTINE SUBIACO[31]
+
+BY AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE
+
+
+One of the excellent mountain roads constructed by Pius IX. leads
+through a wild district from Olevano to Subiaco. A few miles before
+reaching Subiaco we skirt a lake, probably one of the Simbrivii Lacus
+which Nero is believed to have made by damming up the Anio. Here he
+fished for trout with a golden net, and here he built the mountain villa
+which he called Sublaqueum--a name which still exists in Subiaco.
+
+Four centuries after the valley had witnessed the orgies of Nero, a
+young patrician of the family of the Anicii-Benedictus, or "the blessed
+one," being only fourteen at the time, fled from the seductions of the
+capital to the rocks of Mentorella, but, being followed thither, sought
+a more complete solitude in a cave above the falls of the Anio. Here he
+lived unknown to any except the hermit Romanus, who daily let down food
+to him, half of his own loaf, by a cord from the top of the cliff. At
+length the hiding-place was revealed to the village priest in a vision,
+and pilgrims flocked from all quarters to the valley. Through the
+disciples who gathered around Benedict, this desolate ravine became the
+cradle of monastic life in the West, and twelve monasteries rose amid
+its peaks under the Benedictine rule....
+
+Nothing can exceed the solemn grandeur of the situation of the convent
+dedicated to St. Scholastica, the sainted sister of St. Benedict, which
+was founded in the fifth century, and which, till quite lately, included
+as many as sixteen towns and villages among its possessions. The scenery
+becomes more romantic and savage at every step as we ascend the winding
+path after leaving St. Scholastica, till a small gate admits us to the
+famous immemorial Ilex Grove of St. Benedict, which is said to date from
+the fifth century, and which has never been profaned by ax or hatchet.
+Beyond it the path narrows, and a steep winding stair, just wide enough
+to admit one person at a time, leads to the platform before the second
+convent, which up to that moment is entirely concealed. Its name, Sacro
+Speco, commemorates the holy cave of St. Benedict.
+
+At the portal, the thrilling interest of the place is suggested by the
+inscription--"Here is the patriarchal cradle of the monks of the West
+Order of St. Benedict." The entrance corridor, built on arches over the
+abyss, has frescoes of four sainted popes, and ends in an ante-chamber
+with beautiful Umbrian frescoes, and a painted statue of St. Benedict.
+Here we enter the all-glorious church of 1116, completely covered with
+ancient frescoes. A number of smaller chapels, hewn out of the rock, are
+dedicated to the sainted followers of the founder. Some of the paintings
+are by the rare Umbrian master Concioli. A staircase in front of the
+high altar leads to the lower church. At the foot of the first flight of
+steps, above the charter of 1213, setting forth all its privileges, is
+the frescoed figure of Innocent III., who first raised Subiaco into an
+abbacy; in the same fresco is represented Abbot John of Tagliacozzo,
+under whom (1217-1277) many of the paintings were executed.
+
+On the second landing, the figure of Benedict faces us on a window with
+his finger on his lips, imposing silence. On the left is the coro, on
+the right the cave where Benedict is said to have passed three years in
+darkness. A statue by Raggi commemorates his presence here; a basket is
+a memorial of that lowered with his food by St. Romanus; an ancient bell
+is shown as that which rang to announce its approach. As we descend the
+Scala Santa trodden by the feet of Benedict, and ascended by the monks
+upon their knees, the solemn beauty of the place increases at every
+step. On the right is a powerful fresco of Death mowing down the young
+and sparing the old; on the left, the Preacher shows the young and
+thoughtless the three states to which the body is reduced after death.
+Lastly, we reach the Holy of Holies, the second cave, in which Benedict
+laid down the rule of his order, making its basis the twelve degrees of
+humility. Here also an inscription enumerates the wonderful series of
+saints, who, issuing from Subiaco, founded the Benedictine Order
+throughout the world.
+
+
+
+
+ETRUSCAN VOLTERRA[32]
+
+BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
+
+
+For several miles before reaching Volterra, our attention was fixt by
+the extraordinary aspect of the country through which we were passing.
+The road gradually ascended, and we found ourselves among deep ravines
+and steep, high, broken banks, principally of clay, barren, and in most
+places wholly bare of herbage, a scene of complete desolation, were it
+not for a cottage here and there perched upon the heights, a few sheep
+attended by a boy and a dog grazing on the brink of one of the
+precipices, or a solitary patch of bright green wheat in some spot where
+the rains had not yet carried away the vegetable mold.
+
+In the midst of this desolate tract, which is, however, here and there
+interspersed with fertile spots, rises the mountain on which Volterra is
+situated, where the inhabitants breathe a pure and keen atmosphere,
+almost perpetually cool, and only die of pleurisies and apoplexies;
+while below, on the banks of the Cecina, which in full sight winds its
+way to the sea, they die of fevers. One of the ravines of which I have
+spoken--the "balza," they call it at Volterra--has plowed a deep chasm
+on the north side of this mountain, and is every year rapidly
+approaching the city on its summit. I stood on its edge and looked down
+a bank of soft, red earth five hundred feet in height. A few rods in
+front of me I saw where a road had crossed the spot in which the gulf
+now yawned; the tracks of the last year's carriages were seen reaching
+to the edge on both sides. The ruins of a convent were close at hand,
+the inmates of which, two or three years since, had been removed by the
+Government to the town for safety....
+
+The antiquities of Volterra consist of an Etruscan burial-ground, in
+which the tombs still remain, pieces of the old and incredibly massive
+Etruscan wall, including a far larger circuit than the present city, two
+Etruscan gates of immemorial antiquity, older, doubtless, than any thing
+at Rome, built of enormous stones, one of them serving even yet as an
+entrance to the town, and a multitude of cinerary vessels, mostly of
+alabaster, sculptured with numerous figures in "alto relievo." These
+figures are sometimes allegorical representations, and sometimes embody
+the fables of the Greek mythology. Among them are many in the most
+perfect style of Grecian art, the subjects of which are taken from the
+poems of Homer; groups representing the besiegers of Troy and its
+defenders, or Ulysses with his companions and his ships. I gazed with
+exceeding delight on these works of forgotten artists, who had the
+verses of Homer by heart--works just drawn from the tombs where they had
+been buried for thousands of years, and looking as if fresh from the
+chisel.
+
+
+
+
+THE PAESTUM OF THE GREEKS[33]
+
+BY EDWARD A. FREEMAN
+
+
+Few buildings are more familiar than the temples of Paestum; yet the
+moment when the traveler first comes in sight of works of untouched
+Hellenic skill is one which is simply overwhelming. Suddenly, by the
+side of a dreary road, in a spot backed indeed by noble mountains, but
+having no charm of its own, we come on these works, unrivaled on our
+side of the Hadriatic and the Messenian strait, standing in all their
+solitary grandeur, shattered indeed, but far more perfect than the mass
+of ruined buildings of later days. The feeling of being brought near to
+Hellenic days and Hellenic men, of standing face to face with the
+fathers of the world's civilization, is one which can never pass away.
+Descriptions, pictures, models, all fail; they give us the outward form;
+they can not give us the true life.
+
+The thought comes upon us that we have passed away from that Roman world
+out of which our own world has sprung into that earlier and fresher and
+brighter world by which Rome and ourselves have been so deeply
+influenced, but out of which neither the Roman nor the modern world can
+be said to spring. There is the true Doric in its earliest form, in all
+its unmixed and simple majesty. The ground is strewed with shells and
+covered with acanthus-leaves; but no shell had suggested the Ionic
+volute, no acanthus-leaf had suggested the Corinthian foliage. The vast
+columns, with the sudden tapering, the overhanging capitals, the stern,
+square abacus, all betoken the infancy of art. But it is an infancy like
+that of their own Herakles; the strength which clutched the serpent in
+his cradle is there in every stone. Later improvements, the improvements
+of Attic skill, may have added grace; the perfection of art may be found
+in the city which the vote of the divine Assembly decreed to Athene; but
+for the sense of power, of simplicity without rudeness, the city of
+Poseidon holds her own. Unlike in every detail, there is in these
+wonderful works of early Greek art a spirit akin to some of the great
+churches of Romanesque date, simple, massive, unadorned, like the
+Poseidonian Doric.
+
+And they show, too, how far the ancient architects were from any slavish
+bondage to those minute rules which moderns have invented for them. In
+each of the three temples of Paestum differences both of detail and of
+arrangement may be marked, differences partly of age, but also partly of
+taste. And some other thoughts are brought forcibly upon the mind. Here
+indeed we feel that the wonders of Hellenic architecture are things to
+kindle our admiration, even our reverence; but that, as the expression
+of a state of things which has wholly passed away, nothing can be less
+fit for reproduction in modern times.
+
+And again, we may be sure that the admiration and reverence which they
+may awaken in the mind of the mere classical purist is cold beside that
+which they kindle in the mind which can give them their true place in
+the history of art. The temples of Paestum are great and noble from any
+point of view. But they become greater and nobler as we run over the
+successive steps in the long series by which their massive columns and
+entablatures grew into the tall clusters and soaring arches of
+Westminster and Amiens.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+SICILIAN SCENES
+
+
+
+
+PALERMO[34]
+
+BY WILL S. MONROE
+
+
+While not one of the original Hellenic city-states, Palermo has a superb
+location on the northern shores of the central island of the central
+sea; its harbor is guarded by the two picturesque cliffs and the fertile
+plain that forms the "compagne" is hemmed in by a semicircular cord of
+rugged mountains. "Perhaps there are few spots upon the surface of the
+globe more beautiful than Palermo," writes Arthur Symonds. "The hills on
+either hand descend upon the sea with long-drawn delicately broken
+outlines, so delicately tinted with aerial hues at early dawn or beneath
+the blue light of a full moon the panorama seems to be some fabric of
+fancy, that must fade away, 'like shapes of clouds we form,' to nothing.
+Within the cradle of these hills, and close upon the tideless water,
+lies the city. Behind and around on every side stretches the famous
+Conco d'Oro, or golden shell, a plain of marvelous fertility, so called
+because of its richness and also because of its shape; for it tapers to
+a fine point where the mountains meet, and spreads abroad, where they
+diverge, like a cornucopia. The whole of this long vega is a garden,
+thick with olive-groves and orange trees, with orchards of nespole and
+palms and almonds, with fig-trees and locust-trees, with judas-trees
+that blush in spring, and with flowers as multitudinously brilliant as
+the fretwork of sunset clouds."
+
+During the days of Phoenician and Carthagenian supremacy Palermo was a
+busy mart--a great clearing-house for the commerce of the island and
+that part of the Mediterranean. But during the days of the Saracens it
+became not only a very busy city but also a very beautiful city. The
+Arabian poets extolled its charms in terms that sound to us exceedingly
+extravagant. One of them wrote: "Oh how beautiful is the lakelet of the
+twin palms and the island where the spacious palace stands. The limpid
+waters of the double springs resemble liquid pearls, and their basin is
+a sea; you would say that the branches of the trees stretched down to
+see the fishes in the pool and smile at them. The great fishes in those
+clear waters, and the birds among the gardens tune their songs. The ripe
+oranges of the island are like fire that burns on boughs of emerald; the
+pale lemon reminds me of a lover who has passed the night in weeping for
+his absent darling. The two palms may be compared to lovers who have
+gained an inaccessible retreat against their enemies, or raise
+themselves erect in pride to confound the murmurs and the ill thoughts
+of jealous men. O palms of two lakelets of Palermo, ceaseless,
+undisturbed, and plenteous days for ever keep your freshness."
+
+With the coming of the Normans Palermo enjoyed even greater prosperity
+than had been experienced under the liberal rule of the Saracens. This
+was the most brilliant period in the history of the city. The population
+was even more mixed than during Moslem supremacy. Besides the Greeks,
+Normans, Saracens, and Hebrews, there were commercial colonies of Slavs,
+Venetians, Lombardians, Catalans, and Pisans.
+
+The most interesting public monuments at Palermo date from the Norman
+period; and while many of the buildings are strikingly Saracenic in
+character and recall similar structures erected by the Arabs in Spain,
+it will be remembered that the Normans brought no trained architects to
+the island, but employed the Arabs, Greeks, and Hebrews who had already
+been in the service of the Saracen emirs. But the Arab influence in
+architecture was dominant, and it survived well into the fourteenth
+century.
+
+
+
+
+GIRGENTI[35]
+
+BY EDWARD A. FREEMAN
+
+
+The reported luxury of the Sikeliot cities in this age is, in the
+double-edged saying of Empedocles, connected with one of their noblest
+tastes. They built their houses as if they were going to live for ever.
+And if their houses, how much more their temples and other public
+buildings? In some of the Sikeliot cities, this was the most brilliant
+time of architectural splendor. At Syracuse indeed the greatest
+buildings which remain to tell their own story belong either to an
+earlier or to a later time. It is the theater alone, as in its first
+estate a probable work of the first Hieron, which at all connects itself
+with our present time. But at Akragas[36] and at Selinous the greatest
+of the existing buildings belong to the days of republican freedom and
+independence. At Akragas what the tyrant began the democracy went on
+with. The series of temples that line the southern wall are due to an
+impulse which began under Theron and went on to the days of the
+Carthaginian siege.
+
+Of the greatest among them, the temple of Olympian Zeus, this is
+literally true. There can be little doubt that it was begun as one of
+the thank-offerings after the victory of Himera, and it is certain that
+at the coming of Hannibal and Hamilkon it was still so far imperfect
+that the roof was not yet added. It was therefore in building during a
+time of more than seventy years, years which take in the whole of the
+brilliant days of Akragantine freedom and well-being.
+
+To the same period also belong the other temples in the lower city,
+temples which abide above ground either standing or in ruins, while the
+older temples in the akropolis have to be looked for underneath
+buildings of later ages. It was a grand conception to line the southern
+wall, the wall most open to the attacks of mortal enemies, with this
+wonderful series of holy places of the divine protectors of the city. It
+was a conception due, we may believe, in the first instance, to Theron,
+but which the democracy fully entered into and carried out. The two best
+preserved of the range stand to the east; one indeed occupies the
+southeastern corner of the fortified enclosure.
+
+Next in order to the west comes the temple which bears a name not
+unlikely, but altogether impossible and unmeaning, the so-called temple
+of Concord. No reasonable guess can be made at its pagan dedication; in
+the fifteenth century of our era it followed the far earlier precedent
+of the temples in the akropolis. It became the church of Saint Gregory,
+not of any of the great pontiffs and doctors of the Church, but of the
+local bishop whose full description as Saint Gregory of the Turnips can
+hardly be written without a smile. The peristyle was walled up, and
+arches were cut through the walls of the cella, exactly as in the great
+church of Syracuse. Saint Gregory of Girgenti plays no such part in the
+world's history as was played by the Panagia of Syracuse; we may
+therefore be more inclined to extend some mercy to the Bourbon king who
+set free the columns as we now see them. When he had gone so far, one
+might even wish that he had gone on to wall up the arches. In each of
+the former states of the building there was a solid wall somewhere to
+give shelter from the blasts which sweep round this exposed spot. As the
+building now stands, it is, after the Athenian house of Theseus and
+Saint George, the best preserved Greek temple in being. Like its fellow
+to the east, it is a building of moderate size, of the middle stage of
+Doric, with columns less massive than those of Syracuse and Corinth,
+less slender than those of Nemea.
+
+Again to the west stood a temple of greater size, nearly ranging in
+scale with the Athenian Parthenon, which is assigned, with far more of
+likelihood than the other names, to Herakles. Save one patched-up column
+standing amid the general ruin, it has, in the language of the prophet,
+become heaps. All that is left is a mass of huge stones, among which we
+can see the mighty columns, fallen, each in its place, overthrown, it is
+clear, by no hand of man but by those powers of the nether world whose
+sway is felt in every corner of Sicilian soil.
+
+These three temples form a continuous range along the eastern part of
+the southern wall of the city. To the west of them, parted from them by
+a gate, which, in Roman times at least, bore, as at Constantinople and
+Spalato, the name of Golden, rose the mightiest work of Akragantine
+splendor and devotion, the great Olympieion itself. Of this gigantic
+building, the vastest Greek temple in Europe, we happily have somewhat
+full descriptions from men who had looked at it, if not in the days of
+its full glory, yet at least when it was a house standing up, and not a
+ruin. As it now lies, a few fragments of wall still standing amid
+confused heaps of fallen stones, of broken columns and capitals, no
+building kindles a more earnest desire to see it as it stood in the days
+of its perfection.
+
+[Illustration: CITY AND BAY OF NAPLES WITH VESUVIUS IN THE DISTANCE
+ Courtesy International Mercantile Marine Co.]
+
+[Illustration: TEMPLE OF THESEUS AT ATHENS]
+
+[Illustration: PALERMO, SICILY, FROM THE SEA
+Courtesy L. C. Page & Co.]
+
+[Illustration: GREEK THEATER AT SEGESTA, SICILY]
+
+[Illustration: TEMPLE OF CONCORD, GIRGENTI, SICILY]
+
+[Illustration: TEMPLE OF JUNO AT GIRGENTI, SICILY]
+
+[Illustration: AMPHITHEATER AT SYRACUSE, SICILY]
+
+[Illustration: GREEK TEMPLE AT SEGESTA, SICILY
+ Courtesy L. C. Page & Co.]
+
+[Illustration: HARBOR OF SYRACUSE, SICILY
+ Courtesy L. C. Page & Co.]
+
+[Illustration: THE SO-CALLED "SHIP OF ULYSSES" OFF CORFU
+ Courtesy Houghton, Mifflin Co.]
+
+[Illustration: TEMPLE OF THE OLYMPIAN ZEUS AT ATHENS
+Courtesy Houghton, Mifflin Co.]
+
+[Illustration: THE PLAIN BELOW DELPHI
+Courtesy Houghton, Mifflin Co.]
+
+[Illustration: THE ROAD NEAR DELPHI
+Courtesy Houghton, Mifflin Co.]
+
+[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE STADIUM AT OLYMPIA
+Courtesy Houghton, Mifflin Co.]
+
+[Illustration: THRONE OF MINOS IN CRETE
+(Minoan civilization in Crete antedates the Homeric age--perhaps by many
+centuries) Courtesy Houghton, Mifflin Co.]
+
+
+
+
+SEGESTE[37]
+
+BY JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
+
+
+The temple of Segeste was never finished; the ground around it was never
+even leveled; the space only being smoothed on which the peristyle was
+to stand. For, in several places, the steps are from nine to ten feet in
+the ground, and there is no hill near, from which the stone or mold
+could have fallen. Besides, the stones lie in their natural position,
+and no ruins are found near them.
+
+The columns are all standing; two which had fallen, have very recently
+been raised again. How far the columns rested on a socle is hard to say;
+and without an engraving it is difficult to give an idea of their
+present state. At some points it would seem as if the pillars rested on
+the fourth step. In that case to enter the temple you would have to go
+down a step. In other places, however, the uppermost step is cut
+through, and then it looks as if the columns had rested on bases; and
+then again these spaces have been filled up, and so we have once more
+the first case. An architect is necessary to determine this point.
+
+The sides have twelve columns, not reckoning the corner ones; the back
+and front six, including them. The rollers on which the stones were
+moved along, still lie around you on the steps. They have been left in
+order to indicate that the temple was unfinished. But the strongest
+evidence of this fact is the floor. In some spots (along the sides) the
+pavement is laid down; in the middle, however, the red limestone rock
+still projects higher than the level of the floor as partially laid; the
+flooring, therefore, can not ever have been finished. There is also no
+trace of an inner temple. Still less can the temple have ever been
+overlaid with stucco; but that it was intended to do so, we may infer
+from the fact that the abaci of the capitals have projecting points
+probably for the purpose of holding the plaster. The whole is built of a
+limestone, very similar to the travertine; only it is now much fretted.
+The restoration which was carried on in 1781, has done much good to the
+building. The cutting of the stone, with which the parts have been
+reconnected, is simple, but beautiful.
+
+The site of the temple is singular; at the highest end of a broad and
+long valley, it stands on an isolated hill. Surrounded, however, on all
+sides by cliffs, it commands a very distant and extensive view of the
+land, but takes in only just a corner of the sea. The district reposes
+in a sort of melancholy fertility--every where well cultivated, but
+scarce a dwelling to be seen. Flowering thistles were swarming with
+countless butterflies, wild fennel stood here from eight to nine feet
+high, dry and withered of the last year's growth, but so rich and in
+such seeming order that one might almost take it to be an old
+nursery-ground. A shrill wind whistled through the columns as if through
+a wood, and screaming birds of prey hovered around the pediments.
+
+
+
+
+TAORMINA[38]
+
+BY JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
+
+
+When you have ascended to the top of the wall of rocks [at Taormina],
+which rise precipitously at no great distance from the sea, you find two
+peaks, connected by a semicircle. Whatever shape this may have had
+originally from Nature has been helped by the hand of man, which has
+formed out of it an amphitheater for spectators. Walls and other
+buildings have furnished the necessary passages and rooms. Right across,
+at the foot of the semicircular range of seats, the scene was built, and
+by this means the two rocks were joined together, and a most enormous
+work of nature and art combined.
+
+Now, sitting down at the spot where formerly sat the uppermost
+spectators, you confess at once that never did any audience, in any
+theater, have before it such a spectacle as you there behold. On the
+right, and on high rocks at the side, castles tower in the air--farther
+on the city lies below you; and altho its buildings are all of modern
+date, still similar ones, no doubt, stood of old on the same site. After
+this the eye falls on the whole of the long ridge of AEtna, then on the
+left it catches a view of the sea-shore, as far as Catania, and even
+Syracuse, and then the wide and extensive view is closed by the immense
+smoking volcano, but not horribly, for the atmosphere, with its
+softening effect, makes it look more distinct, and milder than it
+really is.
+
+If now you turn from this view toward the passage running at the back of
+the spectators, you have on the left the whole wall of the rocks between
+which and the sea runs the road to Messina. And then again you behold
+vast groups of rocky ridges in the sea itself, with the coast of
+Calabria in the far distance, which only a fixt and attentive gaze can
+distinguish from the clouds which rise rapidly from it.
+
+We descended toward the theater, and tarried awhile among its ruins, on
+which an accomplished architect would do well to employ, at least on
+paper, his talent of restoration. After this I attempted to make a way
+for myself through the gardens to the city. But I soon learned by
+experience what an impenetrable bulwark is formed by a hedge of agaves
+planted close together. You can see through their interlacing leaves,
+and you think, therefore, it will be easy to force a way through them;
+but the prickles on their leaves are very sensible obstacles. If you
+step on these colossal leaves, in the hope that they will bear you, they
+break off suddenly; and so, instead of getting out, you fall into the
+arms of the next plant. When, however, at last we had wound our way out
+of the labyrinth, we found but little to enjoy in the city; tho from the
+neighboring country we felt it impossible to part before sunset.
+Infinitely beautiful was it to observe this region, of which every point
+had its interest, gradually enveloped in darkness.
+
+
+
+
+MOUNT AETNA[39]
+
+BY WILL S. MONROE
+
+
+By the ancients AEtna was supposed to be the prison of the mighty chained
+giant Typhon, the flames proceeding from his breath and the noises from
+his groans; and when he turned over earthquakes shook the island. Many
+of the myths of the Greek poets were associated with the slopes of AEtna,
+such as Demeter, torch in hand, seeking Persephone, Acis and Galatea,
+Polyphemus and the Cyclops.
+
+AEtna was once a volcano in the Mediterranean and in the course of ages
+it completely filled the surrounding sea with its lava. A remarkable
+feature of the mountain is the large number of minor cones on its
+sides--some seven hundred in all. Most of these subsidiary cones are
+from three to six thousand feet in height and they make themselves most
+strongly felt during periods of great activity. The summit merely serves
+as a vent through which the vapors and gases make their escape. The
+natural boundaries of AEtna are the Alcantara and Simeto rivers on the
+north, west, and south, and the sea on the east.
+
+The most luxurious fertility characterizes the gradual slopes near the
+base, the decomposed volcanic soil being almost entirely covered with
+olives, figs, grapes, and prickly pears. Higher up is the timber zone.
+Formerly there was a dense forest belt between the zone of cultivated
+land and the tore of cinders and snow; but the work of forest
+extermination was almost completed during the reign of the Spanish
+Bourbons. One may still find scattered oak, ilex, chestnut, and pine
+interspersed with ferns and aromatic herbs. Chestnut trees of surprizing
+growth are found on the lower slopes. "The Chestnut Tree of the Hundred
+Horses," for which the slopes of AEtna are famous, is not a single tree
+but a group of several distinct trunks together forming a circle, under
+whose spreading branches a hundred horses might find shelter.
+
+Above the wooded zone AEtna is covered with miniature cones thrown up by
+different eruptions and regions of dreary plateau covered with scoriae
+and ashes and buried under snow a part of the year. While the upper
+portions of the volcano are covered with snow the greater portion of the
+year, AEtna does not reach the limit of perpetual snow, and the heat
+which is emitted from its sides prevents the formation of glaciers in
+the hollows. One might expect that the quantities of snow and rain which
+fall on the summit would give rise to numerous streams. But the small
+stones and cinders absorb the moisture, and springs are found only on
+the lower slopes. The cinders, however, retain sufficient moisture to
+support a rich vegetation wherever the surface of the lava is not too
+compact to be penetrated by roots. The surface of the more recent lava
+streams is not, as might be supposed, smooth and level, but full of
+yawning holes and rents.
+
+The regularity of the gradual slopes is broken on the eastern side by
+the Valle del Bove, a vast amphitheater more than three thousand feet in
+depth, three miles in width, and covering an area of ten square miles.
+The bottom of the valley is dotted with craters which rise in gigantic
+steps; and, when AEtna is in a state of eruption, these craters pour
+forth fiery cascades of lava. The Monte Centenari rise from the Valle
+del Bove to an elevation of 6,026 feet. At the head of the valley is the
+Torre del Filosofo at an altitude of 9,570 feet. This is the reputed
+site of the observatory of Empedocles, the poet and philosopher, who is
+fabled to have thrown himself into the crater of AEtna to immortalize his
+name.
+
+The lower slopes of AEtna--after the basin of Palermo--include the most
+densely populated parts of Sicily. More than half a million people live
+on the slopes of a mountain that might be expected to inspire terror.
+"Towns succeed towns along its base like pearls in a necklace, and when
+a stream of lava effects a breach in the chain of human habitations, it
+is closed up again as soon as the lava has had time to cool." As soon as
+the lava has decomposed, the soil produces an excellent yield and this
+tempts the farmer and the fruit grower to take chances. Speaking of the
+dual effect of AEtna, Freeman says: "He has been mighty to destroy, but
+he has also been mighty to create and render fruitful. If his fiery
+streams have swept away cities and covered fields, they have given the
+cities a new material for their buildings and the fields a new soil rich
+above all others."
+
+
+
+
+SYRACUSE[40]
+
+BY RUFUS B. RICHARDSON
+
+
+The ruins of Syracuse are not to the casual observer very imposing. But
+even these ruins have great interest for the archeologist. There is, for
+example, an old temple near the northern end of Ortygia, for the most
+part embedded in the buildings of the modern city, yet with its east end
+cleared and showing several entire columns with a part of the architrave
+upon them. And what a surprize here awaits one who thinks of a Doric
+temple as built on a stereotyped plan! Instead of the thirteen columns
+on the long sides which one is apt to look for as going with a
+six-column front, here are eighteen or nineteen, it is not yet quite
+certain which. The columns stand less than their diameter apart, and the
+abaci are so broad that they nearly touch.
+
+So small is the inter-columnar space that archeologists incline to the
+belief that in this one Doric temple there were triglyphs only over the
+columns, and not also between them as in all other known cases.
+Everything about this temple stamps it as the oldest in Sicily. An
+inscription on the top step, in very archaic letters, much worn and
+difficult to read, contains the name of Apollo in the ancient form....
+The inscription may, of course, be later than the temple; but it is in
+itself old enough to warrant the supposition that the temple was
+erected soon after the first Corinthian colonists established themselves
+in the island. While the inscription makes it reasonably certain that
+the temple belonged to Apollo, the god under whose guiding hand all
+these Dorians went out into these western seas, tradition, with strange
+perversity, has given it the name of "Temple of Diana." But it is all in
+the family.
+
+Another temple ruin on the edge of the plateau, which begins about two
+miles south of the city, across the Anapos, one might also easily
+overlook in a casual survey, because it consists only of two columns
+without capitals, and a broad extent of the foundations from which the
+accumulated earth has been only partially removed. This was the famous
+temple of Olympian Zeus, built probably in the days of Hiero I., soon
+after the Persian war, but on the site of a temple still more venerable.
+One seeks a reason for the location of this holy place at such a
+distance from the city. Holm, the German historian of Sicily, argues
+with some plausibility that this was no mere suburb of Syracuse, but the
+original Syracuse itself. In the first place, the list of the citizens
+of Syracuse was kept here down at least to the time of the Athenian
+invasion. In the second place, tradition, which, when rightly consulted,
+tells so much, says that Archias, the founder of Syracuse, had two
+daughters, Ortygia and Syracusa, which may point to two coordinate
+settlements, Ortygia and Syracuse; the latter, which was on this temple
+plateau, being subsequently merged in the former, but, as sometimes
+happens in such cases, giving its name to the combined result.
+
+Besides these temple ruins there are many more foundations that tell a
+more or less interesting story. Then there are remains of the ancient
+city that can never be ruined--for instance, the great stone quarries,
+pits over a hundred feet deep and acres broad, in some of which the
+Athenian prisoners were penned up to waste away under the gaze of the
+pitiless captors; the Greek theater cut out of the solid rock; the great
+altar of Hiero II., six hundred feet long and about half as broad, also
+of solid rock. Then there is a mighty Hexapylon, which closed the
+fortifications of Dionysius at the northwest at the point where they
+challenged attack from the land side. With its sally-ports and rock-hewn
+passages, some capacious enough to quarter regiments of cavalry, showing
+holes cut in the projecting corners of rock, through which the
+hitch-reins of the horses were wont to be passed, and its great
+magazines, it stands a lasting memorial to the energy of a tyrant. But
+while this fortress is practically indestructible, an impregnable
+fortress is a dream incapable of realization. Marcellus and his stout
+Romans came in through these fortifications, not entirely, it is true,
+by their own might, but by the aid of traitors, against whom no walls
+are proof.
+
+One of the stone quarries, the Latomia del Paradiso, has an added
+interest from its association with the tyrant who made himself hated as
+well as feared, while Gelon was only feared without being hated. An
+inner recess of the quarry is called the "Ear of Dionysius," and
+tradition says that at the inner end of this recess either he or his
+creatures sat and listened to the murmurs that the people uttered
+against him, and that these murmurs were requited with swift and fatal
+punishment. Certain it is that a whisper in this cave produces a
+wonderful resonance, and a pistol shot is like the roar of a cannon; but
+that people who had anything to say about the butcher should come up
+within ear-shot of him to utter it is not very likely. Historians are
+not quite sure that the connection of Dionysius with this recess is
+altogether mythical, but that he shaped it with the fell purpose above
+mentioned is not to be thought of, as the whole quarry is older than his
+time, and was probably, with the Latomia dei Cappuccini, a prison for
+the Athenians.
+
+
+
+
+MALTA[41]
+
+BY THEOPHILE GAUTIER
+
+
+The city of Valetta, founded in 1566, by the grand master whose name it
+bears, is the capital of Malta. The city of La Sangle, and the city of
+Victoria, which occupy two points of land on the other side of the
+harbor of the Marse, together with the suburbs of Floriana and Burmola,
+complete the town; encircled by bastions, ramparts, counterscarps,
+forts, and fortifications, to an extent which renders siege impossible!
+If you follow one of the streets which surround the town, at each step
+that you take, you find yourself face to face with a cannon. Gibraltar
+itself does not bristle more completely with mouths of fire. The
+inconvenience of these extended works is, that they enclose a vast
+radius, and demand to defend them, in case of attack, an enormous
+garrison; always difficult to maintain at a distance from the mother
+country.
+
+From the height of the ramparts, one sees in the distance the blue and
+transparent sea, broken into ripples by the breeze, and dotted with
+snowy sails. The scarlet sentinels are on guard from point to point, and
+the heat of the sun is so fierce upon the glacis, that a cloth stretched
+upon a frame and turning upon a pivot at the top of a pole, forms a
+shade for the soldiers, who, without this precaution, must inevitably be
+roasted on their posts....
+
+The city of Valetta, altho built with regularity, and, so to speak, all
+in one "block," is not, therefore, the less picturesque. The decided
+slope of the ground neutralizes what the accurate lines of the street
+might otherwise have of monotony, and the town mounts by degrees and by
+terraces the hillside, which it forms into an amphitheater. The houses,
+built very high like those of Cadiz, terminate in flat roofs that their
+inhabitants may the better enjoy the sea view. They are all of white
+Maltese stone; a sort of sandstone easy to work, and with which, at
+small expense, one can indulge various caprices of sculpture and
+ornamentation. These rectilinear houses stand well, and have an air of
+grandeur, which they owe to the absence of (visible) roofs, cornices,
+and attics. They stand out sharply and squarely against the azure of the
+heavens, which their dazzling whiteness renders only the more intense;
+but that which chiefly gives them a character of originality is the
+projecting balcony hung upon each front; like the "moucharabys" of the
+East, or the "miradores" of Spain.
+
+The palace of the grand masters--to-day the palace of the
+government--has nothing remarkable in the way of architecture. Its date
+is recent, and it responds but imperfectly to the idea one would form of
+the residence of Villiers de I'lle Adam, of Lavalette, and of their
+warlike ancestors. Nevertheless, it has a certain monumental air, and
+produces a fine effect upon the great Place, of which it forms one
+entire side. Two doorways, with rustic columns, break the uniformity of
+the long facade; while an immense balcony, supported by gigantic
+sculptured brackets, encircles the building at the level of the first
+floor, and gives to the edifice the stamp of Malta. This detail, so
+strictly local in its character, relieves what might be heavy and flat
+in this architecture; and this palace, otherwise vulgar, becomes thus
+original. The interior, which I visited, presents a range of vast halls
+and galleries, decorated with pictures representing battles by sea and
+land, sieges, and combats between Turkish galleys and the galleys of the
+"Religion." ...
+
+To finish with the knights, I turned my steps toward the Church of St.
+John--the Pantheon of the Order. Its facade, with a triangular porch
+flanked by two towers terminating in stone belfries, having for ornament
+only four pillars, and pierced by a window and door, without sculpture
+or decoration, by no means prepares the traveler for the splendor
+within.
+
+The first thing which arrests the sight is an immense arch, painted in
+fresco, which runs the whole length of the nave. This fresco, unhappily
+much deteriorated by time, is the work of Matteo Preti, called the
+Calabrese; one of those great second-rate masters, who, if they have
+less genius, have often more talent than the princes of the art. What
+there is of science, facility, spirit, expression, and abundant
+resource, in this colossal picture, is beyond description.
+
+Each section of the arch contains a scene from the life of St. John, to
+whom the church is dedicated, and who was the patron of the Order.
+These sections are supported, at their descent, by groups of
+captives--Saracens, Turks, Christians, and others--half naked, or clad
+in the remains of shattered armor, and placed in positions of
+humiliation or constraint, who form a species of barbaric caryatides
+strikingly suited to the subject. All this part of the fresco is full of
+character, and has a force of coloring very rare in this species of
+picture. These solid and massive effects give additional strength to the
+lighter tone of the arch, and throw the skies into a relief and distance
+singularly profound. I know no similar work of equal grandeur except the
+ceiling by Fumiana in the Church of St. Pantaleone at Venice,
+representing the life, martyrdom, and apotheosis of that saint. But the
+style of the decadence makes itself less felt in the work of the
+Calabrese than in that of the Venetian. In recompense of this gigantic
+work, the artist had the honor, like Carravaggio, to be made a Knight
+of the Order.
+
+The pavement of the church is composed of four hundred tombs of knights,
+incrusted with jasper, porphyry, verd-antique, and precious stones of
+various kinds, which should form the most splendid sepulchral mosaics
+conceivable. I say should form, because at the moment of my visit, the
+whole floor was covered with those immense mats, so constantly used for
+carpeting the southern churches--a usage which is explained by the
+absence of pews or chairs, and the habit of kneeling upon the floor to
+perform one's devotions. I regretted this exceedingly; but the crypt and
+the chapel contain enough sepulchral wealth to offer some atonement.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE MAINLAND OF GREECE
+
+
+
+
+ON ARRIVING IN ATHENS--THE ACROPOLIS[42]
+
+BY J. P. MAHAFFY
+
+
+There is probably no more exciting voyage, to any educated man, than the
+approach to Athens from the sea. Every promontory, every island, every
+bay, has its history. If he knows the map of Greece, he needs no
+guide-book or guide to distract him; if he does not, he needs little
+Greek to ask of any one near him the name of this or that object; and
+the mere names are sufficient to stir up all his classical
+recollections. But he must make up his mind not to be shocked at "AEgina"
+or "Phalrum," and even to be told that he is utterly wrong in his way of
+pronouncing them.
+
+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 AEgina on the other, were very clear, but in the deep shadows
+there was mystery enough to feed the burning impatience of seeing all in
+the light of common day; and tho we had passed AEgina, and had come over
+against the rocky Salamis, as yet there was no sign of Peiraeus. Then
+came the light on Psyttalea, and they told us that the harbor was right
+opposite. Yet we came nearer and nearer, and no harbor could be seen.
+
+The barren rocks of the coast seemed to form one unbroken line, and
+nowhere was there a sign of indentation or of break in the land. But
+suddenly, as we turned from gazing on Psyttalea, where the flower of the
+Persian nobles had once stood in despair, looking upon their fate
+gathering about them, the vessel had turned eastward, and discovered to
+us the crowded lights and thronging ships of the famous harbor. Small it
+looked, very small, but evidently deep to the water's edge, for great
+ships seemed touching the shore; and so narrow is the mouth, that we
+almost wondered how they had made their entrance in safety. But we saw
+it some weeks later, with nine men-of-war towering above all its
+merchant shipping and its steamers, and among them crowds of ferryboats
+skimming about in the breeze with their wing-like sails. Then we found
+out that, like the rest of Greece, the Peiraeus was far larger than it
+looked.
+
+It differed little, alas! from more vulgar harbors in the noise and
+confusion of disembarking; in the delays of its custom-house; in the
+extortion and insolence of its boatmen. It is still, as in Plato's day,
+"the haunt of sailors, where good manners are unknown." But when we had
+escaped the turmoil, and were seated silently on the way to Athens,
+almost along the very road of classical days, all our classical notions,
+which had been seared away by vulgar bargaining and protesting,
+regained their sway.
+
+We had sailed in through the narrow passage where almost every great
+Greek that ever lived had some time passed; now we went along the line,
+hardly less certain, which had seen all these great ones going to and
+fro between the city and the port. The present road is shaded with great
+silver poplars, and plane trees, and the moon had set, so that our
+approach to Athens was even more mysterious than our approach to the
+Peiraeus. We were, moreover, perplexed at our carriage stopping under
+some large plane trees, tho we had driven but two miles, and the night
+was far spent. Our coachman would listen to no advice or persuasion. We
+learned afterward that every carriage going to and from the Peiraeus
+stops at this half-way house, that the horses may drink, and the
+coachman take "Turkish delight" and water. There is no exception made to
+this custom, and the traveler is bound to submit. At last we entered the
+unpretending ill-built streets at the west of Athens....
+
+We rose at the break of dawn to see whether our window would afford any
+prospect to serve as a requital for angry sleeplessness. And there,
+right opposite, stood the rock which of all rocks in the world's history
+has done most for literature and art--the rock which poets, and orators,
+and architects, and historians have ever glorified, and can not stay
+their praise--which is ever new and ever old, ever fresh in its decay,
+ever perfect in its ruin, ever living in its death--the Acropolis of
+Athens.
+
+When I saw my dream and longing of many years fulfilled, the first rays
+of the rising sun had just touched the heights, while the town below was
+still hid in gloom. Rock, and rampart, and ruined fanes--all were
+colored in uniform tints; the lights were of a deep rich orange, and the
+shadows of dark crimson, with the deeper lines of purple. There was no
+variety in color between what nature and what man had set there. No
+whiteness shone from the marble, no smoothness showed upon the hewn and
+polished blocks; but the whole mass of orange and crimson stood out
+together into the pale, pure Attic air. There it stood, surrounded by
+lanes and hovels, still perpetuating the great old contrast in Greek
+history, of magnificence and meanness--of loftiness and lowness--as well
+in outer life as in inward motive. And, as it were in illustration of
+that art of which it was the most perfect bloom, and which lasted in
+perfection but a day of history, I saw it again and again, in sunlight
+and in shade, in daylight and at night, but never again in this perfect
+and singular beauty....
+
+I suppose there can be no doubt whatever that the ruins on the Acropolis
+of Athens are the most remarkable in the world. There are ruins far
+larger, such as the Pyramids, and the remains of Karnak. There are ruins
+far more perfectly preserved, such as the great Temple at Paestum. There
+are ruins more picturesque, such as the ivy-clad walls of medieval
+abbeys beside the rivers in the rich valleys of England. But there is no
+ruin all the world over which combines so much striking beauty, so
+distinct a type, so vast a volume of history, so great a pageant of
+immortal memories. There is, in fact, no building on earth which can
+sustain the burden of such greatness, and so the first visit to the
+Acropolis is and must be disappointing.
+
+When the traveler reflects how all the Old World's culture culminated in
+Greece--all Greece in Athens--all Athens in its Acropolis--all the
+Acropolis in the Parthenon--so much crowds upon the mind confusedly that
+we look for some enduring monument whereupon we can fasten our thoughts,
+and from which we can pass as from a visible starting-point into all
+this history and all this greatness. And at first we look in vain. The
+shattered pillars and the torn pediments will not bear so great a
+strain; and the traveler feels forced to admit a sense of
+disappointment, sore against his will. He has come a long journey into
+the remoter parts of Europe; he has reached at last what his soul had
+longed for many years in vain; and as is wont to be the case with all
+great human longings, the truth does not answer to his desire. The pang
+of disappointment is all the greater when he sees that the tooth of time
+and the shock of earthquake have done but little harm. It is the hand of
+man--of reckless foe and ruthless lover--which has robbed him of his
+hope....
+
+Nothing is more vexatious than the reflection, how lately these splendid
+remains have been reduced to their present state. The Parthenon, being
+used as a Greek church, remained untouched and perfect all through the
+Middle Ages. Then it became a mosque, and the Erechtheum a seraglio, and
+in this way survived without damage till 1687, when, in the bombardment
+by the Venetians under Morosini, a shell dropt into the Parthenon, where
+the Turks had their powder stored, and blew out the whole center of the
+building. Eight or nine pillars at each side have been thrown down, and
+have left a large gap, which so severs the front and rear of the temple,
+that from the city below they look like the remains of two different
+buildings. The great drums of these pillars are yet lying there, in
+their order, just as they fell, and some money and care might set them
+all up again in their places; yet there is not in Greece the patriotism
+or even the common sense to enrich the country by this restoration,
+matchless in its certainty as well as in its splendor.
+
+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 in Venice still testify to their zeal in
+carrying home Greek trophies to adorn their capital.
+
+In its great day, and even as Pausanias saw it, the Acropolis was
+covered with statues, as well as with shrines. It was not merely an Holy
+of Holies in religion; it was also a palace and museum of art. At every
+step and turn the traveler met new objects of interest. There were
+archaic specimens, chiefly interesting to the antiquarian and the
+devotee; there were the great masterpieces which were the joint
+admiration of the artist and the vulgar. Even all the sides and slopes
+of the great rock were honeycombed into sacred grottos, with their
+altars and their gods, or studded with votive monuments. All these
+lesser things are fallen away and gone; the sacred eaves are filled with
+rubbish, and desecrated with worse than neglect. The grotto of Pan and
+Apollo is difficult of access, and when reached, an object of disgust
+rather than of interest. There are left but the remnants of the
+surrounding wall, and the ruins of the three principal buildings, which
+were the envy and wonder of all the civilized world.
+
+The beautiful little temple of Athena Nike, tho outside the
+Propylaea--thrust out as it were on a sort of great buttress high on the
+right--must still be called a part, and a very striking part, of the
+Acropolis. It is only of late years that it has been cleared of rubbish
+and modern stone-work, thus destroying, no doubt, some precious traces
+of Turkish occupation which the fastidious historian may regret, but
+realizing to us a beautiful Greek temple of the Ionic Order in some
+completeness. The peculiarity of this building, which is perched upon a
+platform of stone, and commands a splendid prospect, is that its tiny
+peribolus, or sacred enclosure, was surrounded by a parapet of stone
+slabs covered with exquisite reliefs of winged Victories, in various
+attitudes. Some of these slabs are now in the Museum of the Acropolis,
+and are of great interest--apparently less severe than the school of
+Phidias, and therefore later in date, but still of the best epoch, and
+of marvelous grace. The position of this temple also is not parallel
+with the Propylaea, but turned slightly outward, so that the light
+strikes it at moments when the other building is not illuminated. At the
+opposite side is a very well-preserved chamber, and a fine colonnade at
+right angles with the gate, which looks like a guard-room. This is the
+chamber commonly called the Pinacotheca, where Pausanias saw pictures or
+frescoes by Polygnotus.
+
+
+
+
+A WINTER IN ATHENS HALF A CENTURY AGO[43]
+
+BY BAYARD TAYLOR
+
+
+Our sitting-room fronted the south (with a view of the Acropolis and the
+Areopagus), and could be kept warm without more labor or expense than
+would be required for an entire dwelling at home. Our principal anxiety
+was, that the supply of fuel, at any price, might become exhausted. We
+burned the olive and the vine, the cypress and the pine, twigs of rose
+trees and dead cabbage-stalks, for aught I know, to feed our one little
+sheet-iron stove. For full two months we were obliged to keep up our
+fire, from morning until night. Know ye the land of the cypress and
+myrtle, where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine? Here it
+is, with almost snow enough in the streets for a sleighing party, with
+the Ilissus frozen, and with a tolerable idea of Lapland, when you face
+the gusts which drive across the Cephissian plain.
+
+As the other guests were Greek, our mode of living was similar to that
+of most Greek families. We had coffee in the morning, a substantial
+breakfast about noon, and dinner at six in the evening. The dishes were
+constructed after French and Italian models, but the meat is mostly
+goat's flesh. Beef, when it appears, is a phenomenon of toughness.
+Vegetables are rather scarce. Cow's milk, and butter or cheese
+therefrom, are substances unknown in Greece. The milk is from goats or
+sheep, and the butter generally from the latter. It is a white, cheesy
+material, with a slight flavor of tallow. The wine, when you get it
+unmixed with resin, is very palatable. We drank that of Santorin, with
+the addition of a little water, and found it an excellent beverage....
+
+Except during the severely cold weather, Athens is as lively a town as
+may be. One-fourth of the inhabitants, I should say, are always in the
+streets, and many of the mechanics work, as is common in the Orient, in
+open shops. The coffee-houses are always thronged, and every afternoon
+crowds may be seen on the Patissia Road--a continuation of Eolus
+Street--where the King and Queen take their daily exercise on horseback.
+The national costume, both male and female, is gradually falling into
+disuse in the cities, altho it is still universal in the country. The
+islanders adhere to their hideous dress with the greatest persistence.
+With sunrise the country people begin to appear in the streets with
+laden donkeys and donkey-carts, bringing wood, grain, vegetables, and
+milk, which they sell from house to house....
+
+Venders of bread and coffee-rolls go about with circular trays on their
+heads, calling attention to their wares by loud and long-drawn cries.
+Later in the day, peddlers make their appearance, with packages of cheap
+cotton stuffs, cloth, handkerchiefs, and the like, or baskets of pins,
+needles, buttons, and tape. They proclaim loudly the character and price
+of their articles, the latter, of course, subject to negotiation. The
+same custom prevails as in Turkey, of demanding much more than the
+seller expects to get. Foreigners are generally fleeced a little in the
+beginning, tho much less so, I believe, than in Italy....
+
+The winter of 1857-58 was the severest in the memory of any inhabitant.
+For nearly eight weeks, we had an alternation of icy north winds and
+snow-storms. The thermometer went down to 20 degrees of Fahrenheit--a
+degree of cold which seriously affected the orange-, if not the
+olive-trees. Winter is never so dreary as in those southern lands, where
+you see the palm trees rocking despairingly in the biting gale, and the
+snow lying thick on the sunny fruit of the orange groves. As for the
+pepper trees, with their hanging tresses and their loose, misty foliage,
+which line the broad avenues radiating from the palace, they were
+touched beyond recovery. The people, who could not afford to purchase
+wood or charcoal, at treble the usual price, even tho they had hearths,
+which they have not, suffered greatly. They crouched at home, in cellars
+and basements, wrapt in rough capotes, or hovering around a mangal, or
+brazier of coals, the usual substitute for a stove. From Constantinople
+we had still worse accounts. The snow lay deep everywhere; charcoal sold
+at twelve piastres the oka (twenty cents a pound), and the famished
+wolves, descending from the hills, devoured people almost at the gates
+of the city. In Smyrna, Beyrout, and Alexandria, the winter was equally
+severe, while in Odessa it was mild and agreeable, and in St.
+Petersburg there was scarcely snow enough for sleighing. All Northern
+Europe enjoyed a winter as remarkable for warmth as that of the South
+for its cold. The line of division seemed to be about the parallel of
+latitude 45 degrees. Whether this singular climatic phenomenon extended
+further eastward, into Asia, I was not able to ascertain. I was actually
+less sensitive to the cold in Lapland, during the previous winter, with
+the mercury frozen, than in Attica, within the belt of semi-tropical
+productions.
+
+
+
+
+THE ACROPOLIS AS IT WAS[44]
+
+BY PAUSANIAS
+
+
+To the Acropolis there is only one approach; it allows of no other,
+being everywhere precipitous and walled off. The vestibules have a roof
+of white marble, and even now are remarkable for both their beauty and
+size. As to the statues of the horsemen, I can not say with precision
+whether they are the sons of Xenophon, or merely put there for
+decoration. On the right of the vestibules is the shrine of the Wingless
+Victory. From it the sea is visible; and there AEgeus drowned himself, as
+they say. For the ship which took his sons to Crete had black sails, but
+Theseus told his father (for he knew there was some peril in attacking
+the Minotaur) that he would have white sails if he should sail back a
+conqueror. But he forgot this promise in his loss of Ariadne. And AEgeus,
+seeing the ship with black sails, thinking his son was dead, threw
+himself in and was drowned. And the Athenians have a hero-chapel to his
+memory. And on the left of the vestibules is a building with paintings;
+and among those that time has not destroyed are Diomedes and
+Odysseus--the one taking away Philoctetes's bow in Lemnos, the other
+taking the Palladium from Ilium. Among other paintings here is AEgisthus
+being slain by Orestes; and Pylades slaying the sons of Nauplius that
+came to AEgisthus's aid. And Polyxena about to have her throat cut near
+the tomb of Achilles. Homer did well not to mention this savage act....
+
+And there is a small stone such as a little man can sit on, on which
+they say Silenus rested, when Dionysus came to the land. Silenus is the
+name they give to all old Satyrs. About the Satyrs I have conversed with
+many, wishing to know all about them. And Euphemus, a Carian, told me
+that sailing once on a time to Italy he was driven out of his course by
+the winds, and carried to a distant sea, where people no longer sail.
+And he said that here were many desert islands, some inhabited by wild
+men; and at these islands the sailors did not like to land, as they had
+landed there before and had experience of the natives; but they were
+obliged on that occasion. These islands he said were called by the
+sailors Satyr-islands; the dwellers in them were red-haired, and had
+tails at their loins not much smaller than horses....
+
+And as regards the temple which they call the Parthenon, as you enter it
+everything portrayed on the gables relates to the birth of Athene, and
+behind is depicted the contest between Poseidon and Athene for the soil
+of Attica. And this work of art is in ivory and gold. In the middle of
+her helmet is an image of the Sphinx--about whom I shall give an account
+when I come to Boeotia--and on each side of the helmet are griffins
+worked. These griffins, says Aristus the Proconnesian, in his poems,
+fought with the Arimaspians beyond the Issedones for the gold of the
+soil which the griffins guarded. And the Arimaspians were all one-eyed
+men from their birth; and the griffins were beasts like lions, with
+wings and mouth like an eagle. Let so much suffice for these griffins.
+But the statue of Athene is full length, with a tunic reaching to her
+feet; and on her breast is the head of Medusa worked in ivory, and in
+one hand she has a Victory four cubits high, in the other hand a spear,
+and at her feet a shield; and near the spear a dragon which perhaps is
+Erichthonius. And on the base of the statue is a representation of the
+birth of Pandora--the first woman, according to Hesiod and other poets;
+for before her there was no race of women. Here too I remember to have
+seen the only statue here of the Emperor Adrian; and at the entrance one
+of Iphicrates, the celebrated Athenian general.
+
+And outside the temple is a brazen Apollo said to be by Phidias; and
+they call it Apollo, Averter of Locusts, because when the locusts
+destroyed the land the god said he would drive them out of the country.
+And they know that he did so, but they don't say how. I myself know of
+locusts having been thrice destroyed on Mount Sipylus, but not in the
+same way; for some were driven away by a violent wind that fell on them,
+and others by a strong light that came on them after showers, and others
+were frozen to death by a sudden frost. All this came under my own
+notice.
+
+There is also a building called the Erechtheum, and in the vestibule is
+an altar of Supreme Zeus, where they offer no living sacrifice, but
+cakes without the usual libation of wine. And as you enter there are
+three altars: one to Poseidon (on which they also sacrifice to
+Erechtheus according to the oracle), one to the hero Butes, and the
+third to Hephaestus. And on the walls are paintings of the family of
+Butes. The building is a double one; and inside there is sea-water in a
+well. And this is no great marvel; for even those who live in inland
+parts have such wells, as notably Aphrodisienses in Caria. But this well
+is represented as having a roar as of the sea when the south wind blows.
+And in the rock is the figure of a trident. And this is said to have
+been Poseidon's proof in regard to the territory Athene disputed with
+him.
+
+Sacred to Athene is all the rest of Athens, and similarly all Attica;
+for altho they worship different gods in different townships, none the
+less do they honor Athene generally. And the most sacred of all is the
+statue of Athene in what is now called the Acropolis, but was then
+called the Polis (city) which was universally worshiped many years
+before the various townships formed one city; and the rumor about it is
+that it fell from heaven. As to this I shall not give an opinion,
+whether it was so or not. And Callimachus made a golden lamp for the
+goddess. And when they fill this lamp with oil it lasts for a whole
+year, altho it burns continually night and day. And the wick is of a
+particular kind of cotton flax, the only kind indestructible by fire.
+And above the lamp is a palm tree of brass reaching to the roof and
+carrying off the smoke. And Callimachus, the maker of this lamp, altho
+he comes behind the first artificers, yet was remarkable for ingenuity,
+and was the first who perforated stone, and got the name of
+"Art-Critic," whether his own appellation or given him by others.
+
+In the temple of Athene Polias is a Hermes of wood (said to be a votive
+offering of Cecrops), almost hidden by myrtle leaves. And of the antique
+votive offerings worthy of record, is a folding-chair, the work of
+Daedalus, and spoils taken from the Persians--as a coat of mail of
+Masistius, who commanded the cavalry at Plataea, and a scimitar said to
+have belonged to Mardonius. Masistius we know was killed by the Athenian
+cavalry; but as Mardonius fought against the Lacedaemonians and was
+killed by a Spartan, they could not have got it at first hand; nor is it
+likely that the Lacedaemonians would have allowed the Athenians to carry
+off such a trophy. And about the olive they have nothing else to tell
+but that the goddess used it as a proof of her right to the country,
+when it was contested by Poseidon. And they record also that this olive
+was burnt when the Persians set fire to Athens; but tho burnt, it grew
+the same day two cubits.
+
+And next to the temple of Athene is the temple of Pandrosus; who was the
+only one of the three sisters who didn't peep into the forbidden chest.
+Now the things I most marveled at are not universally known. I will
+therefore write of them as they occur to me. Two maidens live not far
+from the temple of Athene Polias, and the Athenians call them the
+"carriers of the holy things"; for a certain time they live with the
+goddess, but when her festival comes they act in the following way, by
+night: Putting upon their heads what the priestess of Athene gives them
+to carry (neither she nor they know what these things are), these
+maidens descend, by a natural underground passage, from an inclosure in
+the city sacred to Aphrodite of the Gardens. In the sanctuary below they
+deposit what they carry, and bring back something else closely wrapt up.
+And these maidens they henceforth dismiss, and other two they elect
+instead of them for the Acropolis.
+
+
+
+
+THE ELGIN MARBLES[45]
+
+BY J. P. MAHAFFY
+
+
+Morosini[46] 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 were dashed to pieces on the ground.
+
+An observing traveler[47] was present when a far more determined and
+systematic attack was made upon the remaining ruins of the Parthenon.
+While he was traveling in the interior, Lord Elgin had obtained his
+famous firman from the Sultan, to take down and remove any antiquities
+or sculptured stones he might require, and the infuriated Dodwell saw a
+set of ignorant workmen, under equally ignorant overseers, let loose
+upon the splendid ruins of the age of Pericles. He speaks with much good
+sense and feeling of this proceeding. He is fully aware that the world
+would derive inestimable benefit from the transplanting of these
+splendid fragments to a more accessible place, but he can not find
+language strong enough to express his disgust at the way in which the
+thing was done.
+
+Incredible as it may appear, Lord Elgin himself seems not to have
+superintended the work, but to have left it to paid contractors, who
+undertook the job for a fixt sum. Little as either Turks or Greeks cared
+for the ruins, he says that a pang of grief was felt through all Athens
+at the desecration, and that the contractors were obliged to bribe
+workmen with additional wages to undertake the ungrateful task. Dodwell
+will not even mention Lord Elgin by name, but speaks of him with disgust
+as "the person" who defaced the Parthenon. He believes that had this
+person been at Athens himself, his underlings could hardly have behaved
+in the reckless way they did, pulling down more than they wanted, and
+taking no care to prop up and save the work from which they had taken
+the support.
+
+He especially notices their scandalous proceeding upon taking up one of
+the great white marble blocks which form the floor or stylobate of the
+temple. They wanted to see what was underneath, and Dodwell, who was
+there, saw the foundation--a substructure of Peiraeic sandstone. But when
+they had finished their inspection they actually left the block they had
+removed, without putting it back into its place. So this beautiful
+pavement, made merely of closely-fitting blocks, without any artificial
+or foreign joinings, was ripped up, and the work of its destruction
+began. I am happy to add that, tho a considerable rent was then made,
+most of it is still intact, and the traveler of to-day may still walk on
+the very stones which bore the tread of every great Athenian.
+
+The question has often been discust, whether Lord Elgin was justified in
+carrying off this pediment, the metopes, and the friezes, from their
+place; and the Greeks of to-day hope confidently that the day will come
+when England will restore these treasures to their place. This is, of
+course, absurd, and it may fairly be argued that people who would
+bombard their antiquities in a revolution are not fit custodians of them
+in the intervals of domestic quiet. This was my reply to an old Greek
+gentleman who assailed the memory of Lord Elgin with reproaches.
+
+I confess I approved of this removal until I came home from Greece, and
+went again to see the spoil in its place in our great museum. Tho there
+treated with every care--tho shown to the best advantage, and explained
+by excellent models of the whole building, and clear descriptions of
+their place on it--notwithstanding all this, it was plain that these
+wonderful fragments lost so terribly by being separated from their
+place--they looked so unmeaning in an English room, away from their
+temple, their country and their lovely atmosphere--that one earnestly
+wished they had never been taken from their place, even at the risk of
+being made a target by the Greeks or the Turks. I am convinced, too,
+that the few who would have seen them, as intelligent travelers, on
+their famous rock, would have gained in quality the advantage now
+diffused among many, but weakened and almost destroyed by the wrench in
+associations, when the ornament is severed from its surface, and the
+decoration of a temple exhibited apart from the temple itself. We may
+admit, then, that it had been better if Lord Elgin had never taken away
+these marbles. Nevertheless, it would be absurd to send them back. But I
+do think that the museum on the Acropolis should be provided with a
+better set of casts of the figures than those which are now to be seen
+there. They look very wretched, and carelessly prepared....
+
+
+
+
+THE THEATER OF DIONYSUS[48]
+
+BY J. P. MAHAFFY
+
+
+Some ten or twelve years ago, a very extensive and splendidly successful
+excavation was made when a party of German archeologists laid bare the
+Theater of Dionysus--the great theater in which AEschylus, Sophocles,
+and Euripides brought out their immortal plays before an immortal
+audience. There is nothing more delightful than to descend from the
+Acropolis, and rest awhile in the comfortable marble arm-chairs with
+which the front row of the circuit is occupied. They are of the pattern
+usual in the sitting portrait statues of the Greeks--very deep, and with
+a curved back, which exceeds both in comfort and in grace any chairs
+made by modern workmen.[49] Each chair has the name of a priest
+inscribed on it, showing how the theater among the Greeks corresponded
+to our cathedral, and this front row to the stalls of canons and
+prebendaries.
+
+But unfortunately all this sacerdotal prominence is probably the work of
+the later restorers of the theater. For after having been first
+beautified and adorned with statues by Lycurgus (in Demosthenes' time),
+it was again restored and embellished by Herodes Atticus, or about his
+time, so that the theater, 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 adorned with a row of very elegant sculptures, among which one--a
+shaggy old man, in a stooping posture, represented as coming out from
+within, and holding up the stone above him--is particularly striking.
+Some Greek is said to have knocked off, by way of amusement, the heads
+of most of these figures since they were discovered, but this I do not
+know upon any better authority than ordinary report. The pit or center
+of the theater is empty, and was never in Greek days occupied by seats,
+but a wooden structure was set up adjoining the stage, and on this the
+chorus performed their dances, and sang their odes. But now there is a
+circuit of upright slabs of stone close to the front seat, which can
+hardly have been an arrangement of the old Greek theater. They are
+generally supposed to have been added when the building was used for
+contests of gladiators or of wild beasts; but the partition, being not
+more than three feet high, would be no protection whatever from an
+evil-disposed wild beast.
+
+All these later additions and details are, I fear, calculated to detract
+from the reader's interest in this theater, which I should indeed
+regret--for nothing can be more certain than that this is the veritable
+stone theater which was built when the wooden one broke down, at the
+great competition of AEschylus and Pratinas; and tho front seats may have
+been added, and slight modifications introduced, the general structure
+can never have required alteration.
+
+It is indeed very large, tho I think exaggerated statements have been
+made about its size. I have heard it said that the enormous number of
+30,000 people could fit into it--a statement I think incredible; for it
+did not to me seem larger than, or as large as, other theaters I have
+seen, at Syracuse, at Megalopolis, or even at Argos. But, no doubt, all
+such open-air enclosures and sittings look far smaller than covered
+rooms of the same size. This is certain, that any one speaking on the
+stage, as it now is, can be easily and distinctly heard by people
+sitting on the highest row of seats now visible, which can not, I fancy,
+have been far from the original top of the house. And we may doubt that
+any such thing were possible when 30,000 people, or a crowd approaching
+that number, were seated. We hear, however, that the old actors had
+recourse to various artificial means of increasing the range of their
+voices. Yet there is hardly a place in Athens which forces back the mind
+so strongly to the old days, when all the crowd came jostling in, and
+settled down in their seats, to hear the great novelties of the year
+from Sophocles or Euripides. No doubt there were cliques and cabals and
+claqueurs, noisy admirers and cold critics, the supporters of the old,
+and the lovers of the new, devotees and sceptics, wondering foreigners
+and self-complacent citizens. They little thought how we should come,
+not only to sit in the seats they occupied, but to reverse the judgments
+which they pronounced, and correct with sober temper the errors of
+prejudice, of passion, and of pride.
+
+
+
+
+WHERE PAUL PREACHED TO THE ATHENIANS[50]
+
+BY J. P. MAHAFFY
+
+
+It was on this very Areopagus, where we are now standing, that these
+philosophers of fashion came into contact with the thorough earnestness,
+the profound convictions, the red-hot zeal of the Apostle Paul. The
+memory of that great scene still lingers about the place, and every
+guide will show you the exact place where the Apostle stood, and in what
+direction he addrest his audience. There are, I believe, even some
+respectable commentators who transfer their own estimate of St. Paul's
+importance to the Athenian public, and hold that it was before the court
+of the Areopagus that he was asked to expound his views. This is more
+than doubtful. The "blases" philosophers, who probably yawned over their
+own lectures, hearing of a new lay preacher, eager to teach and
+apparently convinced of the truth of what he said, thought the novelty
+too delicious to be neglected, and brought him forthwith out of the
+chatter and bustle of the crowd, probably past the very orchestra where
+Anaxagoras' books had been proselytizing before him, and where the stiff
+old heroes of Athenian history stood, a monument of the escape from
+political slavery.
+
+It is even possible that the curious knot of idlers did not bring him
+higher than this platform, which might well be called part of Mars'
+Hill. But if they chose to bring him to the top, there was no hindrance,
+for the venerable court held its sittings in the open air, on stone
+seats; and when not thus occupied, the top of the rock may well have
+been a convenient place of retirement for people who did not want to be
+disturbed by new acquaintances, and the constant eddies of new gossip in
+the market-place.
+
+It is, however, of far less import to know on what spot of the Areopagus
+Paul stood, than to understand clearly what he said, and how he sought
+to conciliate as well as to refute the philosophers who, no doubt,
+looked down upon him as an intellectual inferior. He starts naturally
+enough from the extraordinary crowd of votive statues and offerings, for
+which Athens was remarkable above all other cities of Greece. He says,
+with a slight touch of irony, that he finds them very religious indeed,
+so religious that he even found an altar to a God professedly unknown,
+or perhaps unknowable....
+
+Thus ended, to all appearance ignominiously, the first heralding of the
+faith which was to supplant all the temples and altars and statues with
+which Athens had earned renown as a beautiful city, which was to
+overthrow the schools of the sneering philosophers, and even to remodel
+all the society and the policy of the world. And yet, in spite of this
+great and decisive triumph of Christianity, there was something
+curiously prophetic in the contemptuous rejection of its apostle at
+Athens. Was it not the first expression of the feeling which still
+possesses the visitor who wanders through its ruins, and which still
+dominates the educated world--the feeling that while other cities owe
+to the triumph of Christianity all their beauty and their interest,
+Athens has to this day resisted this influence; and that while the
+Christian monuments of Athens would elsewhere excite no small attention,
+here they are passed by as of no import compared with its heathen
+splendor?
+
+There are very old and very beautiful little churches in Athens,
+"delicious little Byzantine churches," as Renan calls them. They are
+very peculiar, and unlike what one generally sees in Europe. They strike
+the observer with their quaintness and smallness, and he fancies he here
+sees the tiny model of that unique and splendid building, the cathedral
+of St. Mark at Venice. But yet it is surprizing how little we notice
+them at Athens. I was even told--I sincerely hope it was false--that
+public opinion at Athens was gravitating toward the total removal of
+one, and that the most perfect, of these churches, which stands in the
+middle of a main street, and so breaks the regularity of the modern
+boulevard!
+
+
+
+
+FROM ATHENS TO DELPHI ON HORSEBACK[51]
+
+BY BAYARD TAYLOR
+
+
+We left Athens on the 13th of April, for a journey to Parnassus and the
+northern frontier of Greece. It was a teeming, dazzling day, with light
+scarfs of cloud-crape in the sky, and a delicious breeze from the west
+blowing through the pass of Daphne. The Gulf of Salamis was pure
+ultramarine, covered with a velvety bloom, while the island and Mount
+Kerata swam in transparent pink and violet tints. Crossing the sacred
+plain of Eleusis, our road entered the mountains--lower offshoots of
+Cithaeron, which divide the plain from that of Boeotia....
+
+We climbed the main ridge of the mountains; and, in less than an hour,
+reached the highest point--whence the great Boeotian plain suddenly
+opened upon our view. In the distance gleamed Lake Capais, and the hills
+beyond; in the west, the snowy top of Parnassus, lifted clear and bright
+above the morning vapors; and, at last, as we turned a shoulder of the
+mountain in descending, the streaky top of Helicon appeared on the left,
+completing the classic features of the landscape....
+
+As we entered the plain, taking a rough path toward Plataea, the fields
+were dotted, far and near, with the white Easter shirts of the people
+working among the vines. Another hour, and our horses' hoofs were upon
+the sacred soil of Plataea. The walls of the city are still to be traced
+for nearly their entire extent. They are precisely similar in
+construction to those of OEnoe--like which, also, they were
+strengthened by square towers. There are the substructions of various
+edifices--some of which may have been temples--and on the side next the
+modern village lie four large sarcophagi, now used as vats for treading
+out the grapes in vintage-time. A more harmless blood than once curdled
+on the stones of Plataea now stains the empty sepulchers of the heroes.
+We rode over the plain, fixt the features of the scene in our memories,
+and then kept on toward the field of Leuktra, where the brutal power of
+Sparta received its first check. The two fields are so near, that a part
+of the fighting may have been done upon the same ground....
+
+I then turned my horse's head toward Thebes, which we reached in two
+hours. It was a pleasant scene, tho so different from that of two
+thousand years ago. The town is built partly on the hill of the
+Cadmeion, and partly on the plain below. An aqueduct, on mossy arches,
+supplies it with water, and keeps its gardens green. The plain to the
+north is itself one broad garden to the foot of the hill of the Sphinx,
+beyond which is the blue gleam of a lake, then a chain of barren hills,
+and over all the snowy cone of Mount Delphi, in Euboea. The only
+remains of the ancient city are stones; for the massive square tower,
+now used as a prison, can not be ascribed to an earlier date than the
+reign of the Latin princes....
+
+The next morning we rode down from the Cadmeion, and took the highway to
+Livadia, leading straight across the Boeotian plain. It is one of the
+finest alluvial bottoms in the world, a deep, dark, vegetable
+mold--which would produce almost without limit, were it properly
+cultivated. Before us, blue and dark under a weight of clouds, lay
+Parnassus; and far across the immense plain the blue peaks of Mount
+Oeta. In three hours we reached the foot of Helicon, and looked up at
+the streaks of snow which melt into the Fountain of the Muses....
+
+As we left Arachova, proceeding toward Delphi, the deep gorge opened,
+disclosing a blue glimpse of the Gulf of Corinth and the Achaian
+mountains. Tremendous cliffs of blue-gray limestone towered upon our
+right, high over the slope of Delphi, which ere long appeared before us.
+Our approach to the sacred spot was marked by tombs cut in the rock. A
+sharp angle of the mountain was passed; and then, all at once, the
+enormous walls, buttressing the upper region of Parnassus, stood
+sublimely against the sky, cleft right through the middle by a terrible
+split, dividing the twin peaks which gave a name to the place. At the
+bottom of this chasm issue forth the waters of Castaly, and fill a stone
+trough by the road-side. On a long, sloping mountain-terrace, facing the
+east, stood once the town and temples of Delphi, and now the modern
+village of Kastri.
+
+As you may imagine, our first walk was to the shrine of the Delphic
+oracle, at the bottom of the cleft between the two peaks. The hewn face
+of the rock, with a niche, supposed to be that where the Pythia sat upon
+her tripod, and a secret passage under the floor of the sanctuary, are
+all that remain. The Castalian fountain still gushes out at the bottom,
+into a large square enclosure, called the Pythia's Bath, and now choked
+up with mud, weeds, and stones. Among those weeds, I discerned one of
+familiar aspect, plucked and tasted it. Watercress, of remarkable size
+and flavor! We thought no more of Apollo and his shrine, but delving
+wrist-deep into Castalian mud, gathered huge handfuls of the profane
+herb, which we washed in the sacred front, and sent to Francois for a
+salad....
+
+As the sun sank, I sat on the marble blocks and sketched the immortal
+landscape. High above me, on the left, soared the enormous twin peaks of
+pale-blue rock, lying half in the shadow of the mountain slope upheaved
+beneath, half bathed in the deep yellow luster of sunset. Before me
+rolled wave after wave of the Parnassian chain, divided by deep lateral
+valleys, while Helicon, in the distance, gloomed like a thunder-storm
+under the weight of gathered clouds. Across this wild, vast view, the
+breaking clouds threw broad belts of cold blue shadow, alternating with
+zones of angry orange light, in which the mountains seemed to be heated
+to a transparent glow. The furious wind hissed and howled over the piles
+of ruin, and a few returning shepherds were the only persons to be seen.
+And this spot, for a thousand years, was the shrine where spake the
+awful oracle of Greece.
+
+
+
+
+CORINTH[52]
+
+BY J. P. MAHAFFY
+
+
+The gulf of Corinth is a very beautiful and narrow fiord, with chains of
+mountains on either side, through the gaps of which you can see far into
+the Morea on one side, and into Northern Greece on the other. But the
+bays or harbors on either coast are few, and so there was no city able
+to wrest the commerce of these waters from old Corinth, which held the
+keys by land of the whole Peloponnesus, and commanded the passage from
+sea to sea. It is, indeed, wonderful how Corinth did not acquire and
+maintain the first position in Greece.
+
+But as soon as the greater powers of Greece decayed and fell away, we
+find Corinth immediately taking the highest position in wealth, and even
+in importance. The capture of Corinth, in 146 B.C., marks the
+Roman conquest of all Greece, and the art-treasures carried to Rome seem
+to have been as great and various as those which even Athens could have
+produced. No sooner had Julius Caesar restored and rebuilt the ruined
+city, than it sprang at once again into importance, and among the
+societies addrest in the Epistles of St. Paul, none seems to have lived
+in greater wealth or luxury. It was, in fact, well-nigh impossible that
+Corinth should die. Nature had marked out her site as one of the great
+thoroughfares of the old world; and it was not till after centuries of
+blighting misrule by the wretched Turks that she sank into the hopeless
+decay from which not even another Julius Caesar could rescue her.
+
+The traveler who expects to find any sufficient traces of the city of
+Periander and of Timoleon, and, I may say, of St. Paul, will be
+grievously disappointed. In the middle of the wretched straggling modern
+village there stand up seven enormous rough stone pillars of the Doric
+Order, evidently of the oldest and heaviest type; and these are the only
+visible relic of the ancient city, looking altogether out of place, and
+almost as if they had come there by mistake. These pillars, tho
+insufficient to admit of our reconstructing the temple, are in
+themselves profoundly interesting. Their shaft up to the capital is of
+one block, about twenty-one feet high and six feet in diameter. It is to
+be observed, that over these gigantic monoliths the architrave, in which
+other Greek temples show the largest blocks, is not in one piece, but
+two, and made of beams laid together longitudinally. The length of the
+shafts (up to the neck of the capital) measures about four times their
+diameter, on the photograph which I possess; I do not suppose that any
+other Doric pillar known to us is so stout and short.
+
+Straight over the site of the town is the great rock known as the
+Acro-Corinthus. A winding path leads up on the southwest side to the
+Turkish drawbridge and gate, which are now deserted and open; nor is
+there a single guard or soldier to watch a spot once the coveted prize
+of contending empires. In the days of the Achaean League it was called
+one of the fetters of Greece, and indeed it requires no military
+experience to see the extraordinary importance of the place.
+
+Next to the view from the heights of Parnassus, I suppose the view from
+this citadel is held the finest in Greece. I speak here of the large and
+diverse views to be obtained from mountain heights. To me, personally,
+such a view as that from the promontory of Sunium, or, above all, from
+the harbor of Nauplia, exceeds in beauty and interest any bird's-eye
+prospect. Any one who looks at the map of Greece will see how the
+Acro-Corinthus commands coasts, islands, and bays. The day was too hazy
+when we stood there to let us measure the real limits of the view, and I
+can not say how near to Mount Olympus the eye may reach in a suitable
+atmosphere. But a host of islands, the southern coasts of Attica and
+Boeotia, the Acropolis of Athens, Salamis and AEgina, Helicon and
+Parnassus, and endless AEtolian peaks were visible in one direction;
+while, as we turned round, all the waving reaches of Arcadia and
+Argolis, down to the approaches toward Mantinea and Karytena, lay
+stretched out before us. The plain of Argos, and the sea at that side,
+are hidden by the mountains. But without going into detail, this much
+may be said, that if a man wants to realize the features of these
+coasts, which he has long studied on maps, half an hour's walk about the
+top of this rock will give him a geographical insight which no years of
+study could attain.
+
+
+
+
+OLYMPIA[53]
+
+BY PHILIP S. MARDEN
+
+
+Olympia, like Delphi, is a place of memories chiefly. The visible
+remains are numerous, but so flat that some little technical knowledge
+is needed to restore them in mind. There is no village at the modern
+Olympia at all--nothing but five or six little inns and a railway
+station--so that Delphi really has the advantage of Olympia in this
+regard. As a site connected with ancient Greek history and Greek
+religion, the two places are as similar in nature as they are in general
+ruin. The field in which the ancient structures stand lies just across
+the tiny tributary river Cladeus, spanned by a footbridge.
+
+Even from the opposite bank, the ruins present a most interesting
+picture, with its attractiveness greatly enhanced by the neighboring
+pines, which scatter themselves through the precinct itself and cover
+densely the little conical hill of Kronos close by, while the grasses of
+the plain grow luxuriantly among the fallen stones of the former temples
+and apartments of the athletes. The ruins are so numerous and so
+prostrate that the non-technical visitor is seriously embarrassed to
+describe them, as is the case with every site of the kind.
+
+All the ruins, practically, have been identified and explained, and
+naturally they all have to do with the housing or with the contests of
+the visiting athletes of ancient times, or with the worship of tutelary
+divinities. Almost the first extensive ruin that we found on passing the
+encircling precinct wall was the Prytaneum--a sort of ancient training
+table at which victorious contestants were maintained gratis--while
+beyond lay other equally extensive remnants of exercising places, such
+as the Palaestra for the wrestlers. But all these were dominated,
+evidently, by the two great temples, an ancient one of comparatively
+small size sacred to Hera, and a mammoth edifice dedicated to Zeus,
+which still gives evidence of its enormous extent, while the fallen
+column-drums reveal some idea of the other proportions. It was in its
+day the chief glory of the enclosure, and the statue of the god was even
+reckoned among the seven wonders of the world. Unfortunately this
+statue, like that of Athena at Athens, has been irretrievably lost. But
+there is enough of the great shrine standing in the midst of the ruins
+to inspire one with an idea of its greatness; and, in the museum above,
+the heroic figures from its two pediments have been restored and set up
+in such wise as to reproduce the external adornment of the temple with
+remarkable success.
+
+Gathered around this central building, the remainder of the ancient
+structures having to do with the peculiar uses of the spot present a
+bewildering array of broken stones and marbles. An obtrusive remnant of
+a Byzantine church is the one discordant feature. Aside from this the
+precinct recalls only the distant time when the regular games called all
+Greece to Olympia, while the "peace of God" prevailed throughout the
+kingdom. Just at the foot of Kronos a long terrace and flight of steps
+mark the position of a row of old treasuries, as at Delphi, while along
+the eastern side of the precinct are to be seen the remains of a portico
+once famous for its echoes, where sat the judges who distributed the
+prizes. There is also a most graceful arch remaining to mark the
+entrance to the ancient stadium, of which nothing else now remains.
+
+Of the later structures on the site, the "house of Nero" is the most
+interesting and extensive. The Olympic games were still celebrated, even
+after the Roman domination, and Nero himself entered the lists in his
+own reign. He caused a palace to be erected for him on that
+occasion--and of course he won a victory, for any other outcome would
+have been most impolite, not to say dangerous. Nero was more fortunately
+lodged than were the other ancient contestants, it appears, for there
+were no hostelries in old Olympia in which the visiting multitudes could
+be housed, and the athletes and spectators who came from all over the
+land were accustomed to bring their own tents and pitch them roundabout,
+many of them on the farther side of the Alpheios.
+
+
+
+
+THE TEMPLE OF ZEUS AT OLYMPIA AS IT WAS[54]
+
+BY PAUSANIAS
+
+
+Many various wonders may one see, or hear of, in Greece; but the
+Eleusinian mysteries and Olympian games seem to exhibit more than
+anything else the Divine purpose. And the sacred grove of Zeus they have
+from old time called Altis, slightly changing the Greek word for grove;
+it is, indeed, called Altis also by Pindar, in the ode he composed for a
+victor at Olympia. And the temple and statue of Zeus were built out of
+the spoils of Pisa, which the people of Elis razed to the ground, after
+quelling the revolt of Pisa, and some of the neighboring towns that
+revolted with Pisa. And that the statue of Zeus was the work of Phidias
+is shown by the inscription written at the base of it: "Phidias the
+Athenian, the son of Charmides, made me."
+
+The temple is a Doric building, and outside it is a colonnade. And the
+temple is built of stone of the district. Its height up to the gable is
+sixty-eight feet, and its length 2,300 feet. And its architect was
+Libon, a native of Ellis.
+
+And the tiles on the roof are not of baked earth; but Pentelican marble,
+to imitate tiles. They say such roofs are the invention of a man of
+Naxos called Byzes, who made statues at Naxos with the inscription:
+"Euergus of Naxos made me, the son of Byzes, and descended from Leto,
+the first who made tiles of stone."
+
+This Byzes was a contemporary of Alyattes the Lydian, and Astyages (the
+son of Cyaxares), the king of Persia. And there is a golden vase at each
+end of the roof, and a golden Victory in the middle of the gable. And
+underneath the Victory is a golden shield hung up as a votive offering,
+with the Gorgon Medusa worked on it. The inscription on the shield
+states who hung it up, and the reason why they did so. For this is what
+it says: "This temple's golden shield is a votive offering from the
+Lacedaemonians at Tanagra and their allies, a gift from the Argives, the
+Athenians, and the Ionians, a tithe offering for success in war."
+
+The battle I mentioned in my account of Attica, when I described the
+tombs at Athens. And in the same temple at Olympia, above the zone that
+runs round the pillars on the outside, are twenty-one golden shields,
+the offering of Mummius the Roman general, after he had beaten the
+Achaeans and taken Corinth, and expelled the Dorians from Corinth. And on
+the gables in bas-relief is the chariot race between Pelops and
+OEnomaus; and both chariots in motion. And in the middle of the gable
+is a statue of Zeus; and on the right hand of Zeus is OEnomaus with a
+helmet on his head; and beside him his wife Sterope, one of the
+daughters of Atlas. And Myrtilus, who was the charioteer of OEnomaus,
+is seated behind the four horses. And next to him are two men whose
+names are not recorded, but they are doubtless OEnomaus's grooms,
+whose duty was to take care of the horses....
+
+The carvings on the gables in front are by Paeonius of Mende in Thracia;
+those behind by Alcamenes, a contemporary of Phidias and second only to
+him as statuary. And on the gables is a representation of the fight
+between the Lapithae and the Centaurs at the marriage of Pirithous.
+Pirithous is in the center, and on one side of him is Eurytion trying to
+carry off Pirithous's wife, and Caeneus coming to the rescue, and on the
+other side Theseus laying about among the Centaurs with his battle-ax;
+and one Centaur is carrying off a maiden, another a blooming boy.
+Alcamenes has engraved this story, I imagine, because he learned from
+the lines of Homer that Pirithous was the son of Zeus, and knew that
+Theseus was fourth in descent from Pelops. There are also in bas-relief
+at Olympia most of the Labors of Hercules. Above the doors of the temple
+is the hunting of the Erymanthian boar, and Hercules taking the mares
+of Diomede the Thracian, and robbing Geryon of his oxen in the island of
+Erytheia, and supporting the load of Atlas, and clearing the land of
+Elis of its dung....
+
+The image of the god is in gold and ivory, seated on a throne. And a
+crown is on his head imitating the foliage of the olive tree. In his
+right hand he holds a Victory in ivory and gold, with a tiara and crown
+on his head; and in his left hand a scepter adorned with all manner of
+precious stones, and the bird seated on the scepter is an eagle. The
+robes and sandals of the god are also of gold; and on his robes are
+imitations of flowers, especially of lilies. And the throne is richly
+adorned with gold and precious stones, and with ebony and ivory. And
+there are imitations of animals painted on it, and models worked on it.
+There are four Victories like dancers, one at each foot of the throne,
+and two also at the instep of each foot; and at each of the front feet
+are Theban boys carried off by Sphinxes, and below the Sphinxes, Apollo
+and Artemis shooting down the children of Niobe. And between the feet of
+the throne are four divisions formed by straight lines drawn from each
+of the four feet.
+
+In the division nearest the entrance there are seven models--the eighth
+has vanished no one knows where or how. And they are imitations of
+ancient contests, for in the days of Phidias the contests for boys were
+not yet established. And the figure with its head muffled up in a scarf
+is, they say, Pantarcas, who was a native of Elis and the darling of
+Phidias. This Pantarces won the wrestling-prize for boys in the 86th
+Olympiad. And in the remaining divisions is the band of Hercules
+fighting against the Amazons. The number on each side is twenty-nine,
+and Theseus is on the side of Hercules. And the throne is supported not
+only by the four feet, but also by four pillars between the feet. But
+one can not get under the throne, as one can at Amyclae, and pass inside;
+for at Olympia there are panels like walls that keep one off.
+
+At the top of the throne, Phidias has represented above the head of Zeus
+the three Graces and three Seasons. For these too, as we learn from the
+poets, were daughters of Zeus. Homer in the Iliad has represented the
+Seasons as having the care of Heaven, as a kind of guards of a royal
+palace. And the base under the feet of Zeus (what is called in Attic
+"thranion") has golden lions engraved on it, and the battle between
+Theseus and the Amazons--the first famous exploit of the Athenians
+beyond their own borders. And on the platform that supports the throne
+there are various ornaments round Zeus, and gilt carving--the Sun seated
+in his chariot, and Zeus and Hera; and near is Grace. Hermes is close to
+her, and Vesta close to Hermes. And next to Vesta is Eros receiving
+Aphrodite, who is just rising from the sea and being crowned by
+Persuasion. And Apollo and Artemis, Athene and Hercules, are standing
+by, and at the end of the platform Amphitrite and Poseidon, and Selene
+apparently urging on her horse. And some say it is a mule and not a
+horse that the goddess is riding upon; and there is a silly tale about
+this mule.
+
+I know that the size of the Olympian Zeus both in height and breadth has
+been stated; but I can not bestow praise on the measurers, for their
+recorded measurement comes far short of what any one would infer from
+looking at the statue. They make the god also to have testified to the
+art of Phidias. For they say that when the statue was finished, Phidias
+prayed him to signify if the work was to his mind; and immediately Zeus,
+struck with lightning that part of the pavement where in our day is a
+brazen urn with a lid.
+
+And all the pavement in front of the statue is not of white but of black
+stone. And a border of Parian marble runs round this black stone, as a
+preservative against spilled oil. For oil is good for the statue at
+Olympia, as it prevents the ivory being harmed by the dampness of the
+grove. But in the Acropolis at Athens, in regard to the statue of Athene
+called the Maiden, it is not oil but water that is advantageously
+employed to the ivory; for as the citadel is dry by reason of its great
+height, the statue being made of ivory needs to be sprinkled with water
+freely. And when I was at Epidaurus, and inquired why they use neither
+water nor oil to the statue of AEsculapius, the sacristans of the temple
+informed me that the statue of the god and its throne are over a well.
+
+
+
+
+THERMOPYLAE[55]
+
+BY RUFUS B. RICHARDSON
+
+
+We took Thermopylae at our leisure, passing out from Lamia over the
+Spercheios on the bridge of Alamana, at which Diakos, famous in ballad,
+resisted with a small band a Turkish army, until he was at last captured
+and taken to Lamia to be impaled....
+
+It may be taken as a well-known fact that the Spercheios has since the
+time of Herodotus made so large an alluvial deposit around its mouth
+that, if he himself should return to earth, he would hardly recognize
+the spot which he has described so minutely. The western horn, which in
+his time came down so near to the gulf as to leave space for a single
+carriage-road only, is now separated from it by more than a mile of
+plain. Each visit to Thermopylae has, however, deepened my conviction
+that Herodotus exaggerated the impregnability of this pass. The mountain
+spur which formed it did not rise so abruptly from the sea as to form an
+impassable barrier to the advance of a determined antagonist. It is of
+course difficult ground to operate on, but certainly not impossible.
+
+The other narrow place, nearly two miles to the east of this, is still
+more open, a fact that is to be emphasized, because many topographers,
+including Colonel Leake, hold that the battle actually took place
+there, as the great battle between the Romans and Antioches certainly
+did. This eastern pass is, to be sure, no place where "a thousand may
+well be stopt by three," and there can not have taken place any great
+transformation here since classical times, inasmuch as this region is
+practically out of reach of the Spercheios, and the deposit from the hot
+sulfur streams, which has so broadened the theater-shaped area enclosed
+by the two horns, can hardly have contributed to changing the shape of
+the eastern horn itself.
+
+Artificial fortification was always needed here; but it is very
+uncertain whether any of the stones that still remain can be claimed as
+parts of such fortification. It is a fine position for an inferior force
+to choose for defense against a superior one; but while it can not be
+declared with absolute certainty that this is not the place where the
+fighting took place, yet the western pass fits better the description of
+Herodotus. Besides this, if the western pass had been abandoned to the
+Persians at the outset the fact would have been worth mentioning.
+
+As to the heroic deed itself, the view that Leonidas threw away his own
+life and that of the four thousand, that it was magnificent but not
+strategy, not war, does not take into account the fact that Sparta had
+for nearly half a century been looked to as the military leader of
+Greece. It was audacious in the Athenians to fight the battle of
+Marathon without them, and they did so only because the Spartans did not
+come at their call. Sparta had not come to Thermopylae in force, it is
+true; but her king was there with three hundred of her best men. Only
+by staying and fighting could he show that Sparta held by right the
+place she had won. It had to be done. "So the glory of Sparta was not
+blotted out."
+
+One may have read, and read often, the description of the battle in the
+school-room, but he reads it with different eyes on the spot, when he
+can look up at the hillock crowned with a ruined cavalry barrack just
+inside the western pass and say to himself: "Here on this hill they
+fought their last fight and fell to the last man. Here once stood the
+monuments to Leonidas, to the three hundred, and to the four thousand."
+
+The very monuments have crumbled to dust, but the great deed lives on.
+We rode back to Lamia under the spell of it. It was as if we had been in
+church and been held by a great preacher who knows how to touch the
+deepest chords of the heart. Euboea was already dark blue, while the
+sky above it was shaded from pink to purple. Tymphrestos in the west was
+bathed in the light of the sun that had gone down behind it. The whole
+surrounding was most stirring, and there was ever sounding in our hearts
+that deep bass note: "What they did here."
+
+
+
+
+SALONICA[56]
+
+BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER
+
+
+The city of Salonica lies on a fine bay, and presents an attractive
+appearance from the harbor, rising up the hill in the form of an
+amphitheater. On all sides, except the sea, ancient walls surround it,
+fortified at the angles by large, round towers and crowned in the
+center, on the hill, by a respectable citadel. I suppose that portions
+of these walls are of Hellenic, and perhaps, Pelasgic date, but the most
+are probably of the time of the Latin crusaders' occupation, patched and
+repaired by Saracens and Turks. We had come to Thessalonica on St.
+Paul's account, not expecting to see much that would excite us, and we
+were not disappointed. When we went ashore we found ourselves in a city
+of perhaps sixty thousand inhabitants, commonplace in aspect, altho its
+bazaars are well filled with European goods, and a fair display of
+Oriental stuffs and antiquities, and animated by considerable briskness
+of trade. I presume there are more Jews here than there were in Paul's
+time, but Turks and Greeks, in nearly equal numbers, form the bulk of
+the population.
+
+In modern Salonica there is not much respect for pagan antiquities, and
+one sees only the usual fragments of columns and sculptures worked into
+walls or incorporated in Christian churches. But those curious in early
+Byzantine architecture will find more to interest them here than in any
+place in the world except Constantinople. We spent the day wandering
+about the city, under the guidance of a young Jew, who was without
+either prejudices or information. On our way to the Mosque of St.
+Sophia, we passed through the quarter of the Jews, which is much cleaner
+than is usual with them. These are the descendants of Spanish Jews, who
+were expelled by Isabella, and they still retain, in a corrupt form, the
+language of Spain. In the doors and windows were many pretty Jewesses;
+banishment and vicissitude appear to agree with this elastic race, for
+in all the countries of Europe Jewish women develop more beauty in form
+and feature than in Palestine. We saw here and in other parts of the
+city a novel head-dress, which may commend itself to America in the
+revolutions of fashion. A great mass of hair, real or assumed, was
+gathered into a long, slender, green bag, which hung down the back and
+was terminated by a heavy fringe of silver. Otherwise, the dress of the
+Jewish women does not differ much from that of the men; the latter wear
+a fez or turban, and a tunic which reaches to the ankles, and is bound
+about the waist by a gay sash or shawl.
+
+The Mosque of St. Sophia, once a church, and copied in its proportions
+and style from its namesake in Constantinople, is retired, in a
+delightful court, shaded by gigantic trees and cheered by a fountain. So
+peaceful a spot we had not seen in many a day; birds sang in the trees
+without disturbing the calm of the meditative pilgrim. In the portico
+and also in the interior are noble columns of marble and verd-antique,
+and in the dome is a wonderfully quaint mosaic of the Transfiguration.
+We were shown also a magnificent pulpit of the latter beautiful stone
+cut from a solid block, in which it is said St. Paul preached. As the
+Apostle, according to his custom, reasoned with the people out of the
+Scriptures in a synagogue, and this church was not built for centuries
+after his visit, the statement needs confirmation; but pious ingenuity
+suggests that the pulpit stood in a subterranean church underneath this.
+I should like to believe that Paul sanctified this very spot with his
+presence; but there is little in its quiet seclusion to remind one of
+him who had the reputation when he was in Thessalonica of one of those
+who turn the world upside down.
+
+
+
+
+FROM THE PIERIAN PLAIN TO MARATHON[57]
+
+BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER
+
+
+At early light of a cloudless morning we were going easily down the Gulf
+of Thermae or Salonica, having upon our right the Pierian plain; and I
+tried to distinguish the two mounds which mark the place of the great
+battle near Pydna, one hundred and sixty-eight years before Christ,
+between AEmilius Paulus and King Perseus, which gave Macedonia to the
+Roman Empire. Beyond, almost ten thousand feet in the air, towered
+Olympus, upon whose "broad" summit Homer displays the ethereal palaces
+and inaccessible abode of the Grecian gods. Shaggy forests still clothe
+its sides, but snow now, and for the greater part of the year, covers
+the wide surface of the height, which is a sterile, light-colored rock.
+The gods did not want snow to cool the nectar at their banquets.
+
+This is the very center of the mythologic world; there between Olympus
+and Ossa is the Vale of Tempe, where the Peneus, breaking through a
+narrow gorge fringed with the sacred laurel, reaches the gulf, south of
+ancient Heracleum. Into this charming but secluded retreat the gods and
+goddesses, weary of the icy air, or the Pumblechookian deportment of the
+court of Olympian Jove, descended to pass the sunny hours with the
+youths and maidens of mortal mold; through this defile marks of
+chariot-wheels still attest the passage of armies which flowed either
+way, in invasion or retreat; and here Pompey, after a ride of forty
+miles from the fatal field of Pharsalia, quenched his thirst.
+
+At six o'clock the Cape of Posilio was on our left, we were sinking
+Olympus in the white haze of morning, Ossa, in its huge silver bulk, was
+near us, and Pelion stretched its long white back below. The sharp cone
+of Ossa might well ride upon the extended back of Pelion, and it seems a
+pity that the Titans did not succeed in their attempt. We were leaving,
+and looking our last on the Thracian coasts, once rimmed from Mt. Athos
+to the Bosphorus with a wreath of prosperous cities. What must once
+have been the splendor of the AEgean Sea and its islands, when every
+island was the seat of a vigorous state, and every harbor the site of a
+commercial town which sent forth adventurous galleys upon any errand of
+trade or conquest!...
+
+We ascended Mt. Pentelicus. Hymettus and Pentelicus are about the same
+height--thirty-five hundred feet--but the latter, ten miles to the
+northeast of Athens, commands every foot of the Attic territory; if one
+should sit on its summit and read a history of the little state, he
+would need no map.
+
+Up to the highest quarries the road is steep, and strewn with broken
+marble, and after that there is an hour's scramble through bushes and
+over a rocky path. From these quarries was hewn the marble for the
+Temple of Theseus, the Parthenon, the Propylae, the theaters, and other
+public buildings, to which age has now given a soft and creamy tone; the
+Pentelic marble must have been too brilliant for the eye, and its
+dazzling luster was, no doubt, softened by the judicious use of color.
+Fragments which we broke off had the sparkle and crystalline grain of
+loaf-sugar, and if they were placed upon the table one would
+unhesitatingly take them to sweeten his tea. The whole mountain-side is
+overgrown with laurel, and we found wild flowers all the way to the
+summit....
+
+We looked almost directly down upon Marathon. There is the bay and the
+curving sandy shore where the Persian galleys landed; here upon a spur,
+jutting out from the hill, the Athenians formed before they encountered
+the host in the plain, and there--alas! it was hidden by a hill--is the
+mound where the one hundred and ninety-two Athenian dead are buried. It
+is only a small field, perhaps six miles along the shore and a mile and
+a half deep, and there is a considerable marsh on the north and a small
+one at the south end. The victory at so little cost, of ten thousand
+over a hundred thousand, is partially explained by the nature of the
+ground; the Persians had not room enough to maneuver, and must have been
+thrown into confusion on the skirts of the northern swamp, and if over
+six thousand of them were slain, they must have been killed on the shore
+in the panic of their embarkation. But still the shore is broad, level,
+and firm, and the Greeks must have been convinced that the gods
+themselves terrified the hearts of the barbarians, and enabled them to
+discomfit a host which had chosen this plain as the most feasible in all
+Attica for the action of cavalry.
+
+
+
+
+AN EXCURSION TO SPARTA AND MAINA[58]
+
+BY BAYARD TAYLOR
+
+
+As we approached Sparta, the road descended to the banks of the Eurotas.
+Traces of the ancient walls which restrained the river still remain in
+places, but, in his shifting course, he has swept the most of them away,
+and spread his gravelly deposits freely over the bottoms inclosed
+between the spurs of the hills. Toward evening we saw, at a distance,
+the white houses of modern Sparta, and presently some indications of the
+ancient city. At first, the remains of terraces and ramparts, then the
+unmistakable Hellenic walls, and, as the superb plain of the Eurotas
+burst upon us, stretching, in garden-like beauty, to the foot of the
+abrupt hills, over which towered the sun-touched snows of Taygetus, we
+saw, close on our right, almost the only relic of the lost ages--the
+theater. Riding across the field of wheat, which extended all over the
+scene of the Spartan gymnastic exhibitions, we stood on the proscenium
+and contemplated these silent ruins, and the broad, beautiful landscape.
+It is one of the finest views in Greece--not so crowded with striking
+points, not so splendid in associations as that of Athens, but larger,
+grander, richer in coloring. Besides the theater, the only remains are
+some masses of Roman brickwork, and the massive substructions of a small
+temple which the natives call the tomb of Leonidas....
+
+We spent the night in a comfortable house, which actually boasted of a
+floor, glass windows, and muslin curtains. On returning to the theater
+in the morning, we turned aside into a plowed field to inspect a
+sarcophagus which had just been discovered. It still lay in the pit
+where it was found, and was entire, with the exception of the lid. It
+was ten feet long by four broad, and was remarkable in having a division
+at one end, forming a smaller chamber, as if for the purpose of
+receiving the bones of a child. From the theater I made a sketch of the
+valley, with the dazzling ridge of Taygetus in the rear, and Mistra, the
+medieval Sparta, hanging on the steep sides of one of his gorges. The
+sun was intensely hot, and we were glad to descend again, making our way
+through tall wheat, past walls of Roman brickwork and scattering blocks
+of the older city, to the tomb of Leonidas. This is said to be a temple,
+tho there are traces of vaults and passages beneath the pavement which
+do not quite harmonize with such a conjecture. It is composed of huge
+blocks of breccia, some of them thirteen feet long.
+
+I determined to make an excursion to Maina. This is a region rarely
+visited by travelers, who are generally frightened off by the reputation
+of its inhabitants, who are considered by the Greeks to be bandits and
+cut-throats to a man. The Mainotes are, for the most part, lineal
+descendants of the ancient Spartans, and, from the decline of the Roman
+power up to the present century, have preserved a virtual independence
+in their mountain fastnesses. The worship of the pagan deities existed
+among them as late as the eighth century. They were never conquered by
+the Turks, and it required considerable management to bring them under
+the rule of Otho....
+
+Starting at noon, we passed through the modern Sparta, which is well
+laid out with broad streets. The site is superb, and in the course of
+time the new town will take the place of Mistra. We rode southward, down
+the valley of the Eurotas, through orchards of olive and mulberry. We
+stopt for the night at the little khan of Levetzova. I saw some cows
+pasturing here, quite a rare sight in Greece, where genuine butter is
+unknown. That which is made from the milk of sheep and goats is no
+better than mild tallow. The people informed me, however, that they make
+cheese from cow's milk, but not during Lent. They are now occupied with
+rearing Paschal lambs, a quarter of a million of which are slaughtered
+in Greece on Easter Day. The next morning, we rode over hills covered
+with real turf, a little thin, perhaps, but still a rare sight in
+southern lands. In two hours we entered the territory of Maina, on the
+crest of a hill, where we saw Marathonisi (the ancient Gythium), lying
+warm upon the Laconian Gulf. The town is a steep, dirty, labyrinthine
+place, and so rarely visited by strangers that our appearance created
+quite a sensation....
+
+A broad, rich valley opened before us, crossed by belts of poplar and
+willow trees, and inclosed by a semicircle of hills, most of which were
+crowned with the lofty towers of the Mainotes. In Maina almost every
+house is a fortress. The law of blood revenge, the right of which is
+transmitted from father to son, draws the whole population under its
+bloody sway in the course of a few generations. Life is a running fight,
+and every foe slain entails on the slayer a new penalty of retribution
+for himself and his descendants for ever.
+
+Previous to the revolution most of the Mainote families lived in a state
+of alternate attack and siege. Their houses are square towers, forty or
+fifty feet high, with massive walls, and windows so narrow that they
+may be used as loopholes for musketry. The first story is at a
+considerable distance from the ground, and reached by a long ladder
+which can be drawn up so as to cut off all communication. Some of the
+towers are further strengthened by a semicircular bastion, projecting
+from the side most liable to attack. The families supplied themselves
+with telescopes, to look out for enemies in the distance, and always had
+a store of provisions on hand, in case of a siege. Altho this private
+warfare has been supprest, the law of revenge exists.
+
+From the summit of the first range we overlooked a wild, glorious
+landscape. The hills, wooded with oak, and swimming in soft blue vapor,
+interlocked far before us, inclosing the loveliest green dells in their
+embraces, and melting away to the break in Taygetus, which yawned in the
+distance. On the right towered the square, embrasured castle of Passava
+on the summit of an almost inaccessible hill--the site of the ancient
+Las. Far and near, the lower heights were crowned with tall, white
+towers.
+
+
+
+
+MESSENIA[59]
+
+BY BAYARD TAYLOR
+
+
+The plain of Messenia is the richest part of the Morea. Altho its groves
+of orange and olive, fig and mulberry, were entirely destroyed during
+the Egyptian occupation, new and more vigorous shoots have sprung up
+from the old stumps and the desolated country is a garden again,
+apparently as fair and fruitful as when it excited the covetousness of
+the Spartan thieves. Sloping to the gulf on the south, and protected
+from the winds on all other sides by lofty mountains, it enjoys an
+almost Egyptian warmth of climate. Here it was already summer, while at
+Sparta, on the other side of Taygetus, spring had but just arrived, and
+the central plain of Arcadia was still bleak and gray as in winter. As
+it was market-day, we met hundreds of the country people going to
+Kalamata with laden asses....
+
+We crossed the rapid Pamisos with some difficulty, and ascended its
+right bank, to the foot of Mount Evan, which we climbed, by rough paths
+through thickets of mastic and furze, to the monastery of Vurkano. The
+building has a magnificent situation, on a terrace between Mount Evan
+and Mount Ithome, overlooking both the upper and lower plains of the
+Pamisos--a glorious spread of landscape, green with spring, and touched
+by the sun with the airiest prismatic tints through breaks of heavy
+rain-clouds. Inside the courts is an old Byzantine chapel, with
+fleurs-de-lis on the decorations, showing that it dates from the time of
+the Latin princes. The monks received us very cordially, gave us a
+clean, spacious room, and sent us a bottle of excellent wine for dinner.
+
+We ascended Ithome and visited the massive ruins of Messene the same
+day. The great gate of the city, a portion of the wall, and four of the
+towers of defense, are in tolerable condition. The name of Epaminondas
+hallows these remains, which otherwise, grand as they are, do not
+impress one like the cyclopean walls of Tiryns. The wonder is, that they
+could have been built in so short a time--eighty-five days, says
+history, which would appear incredible, had not still more marvelous
+things of the kind been done in Russia.
+
+The next day, we rode across the head of the Messenian plain, crossed
+the Mount Lycaeus and the gorge of the Neda, and lodged at the little
+village of Tragoge, on the frontiers of Arcadia. Our experience of
+Grecian highways was pleasantly increased by finding fields plowed
+directly across our road, fences of dried furze built over it, and
+ditches cutting it at all angles. Sometimes all trace of it would be
+lost for half a mile, and we were obliged to ride over the growing crops
+until we could find a bit of fresh trail.
+
+The bridle-path over Mount Lycaeus was steep and bad, but led us through
+the heart of a beautiful region. The broad back of the mountain is
+covered with a grove of superb oaks, centuries old, their long arms
+muffled in golden moss, and adorned with a plumage of ferns. The turf at
+their feet was studded with violets, filling the air with delicious
+odors. This sylvan retreat was the birthplace of Pan, and no more
+fitting home for the universal god can be imagined. On the northern side
+we descended for some time through a forest of immense ilex trees, which
+sprang from a floor of green moss and covered our pathway with summer
+shade....
+
+We were now in the heart of the wild mountain region of Messenia, in
+whose fastnesses Aristomenes, the epic hero of the state, maintained
+himself so long against the Spartans. The tremendous gorge below us was
+the bed of the Neda, which we crossed in order to enter the lateral
+valley of Phigalia, where lay Tragoge. The path was not only difficult
+but dangerous--in some places a mere hand's-breath of gravel, on the
+edge of a plane so steep that a single slip of a horse's foot would have
+sent him headlong to the bottom.
+
+In the morning, a terrible sirocco levante was blowing, with an almost
+freezing cold. The fury of the wind was so great that in crossing the
+exposed ridges it was difficult to keep one's seat upon the horse. We
+climbed toward the central peak of the Lycaean Hills, through a wild dell
+between two ridges, which were covered to the summit with magnificent
+groves of oak. Starry blue flowers, violets and pink crocuses spangled
+the banks as we wound onward, between the great trunks. The temple of
+Apollo Epicurius stands on a little platform between the two highest
+peaks, about 3,500 feet above the sea.
+
+On the day of our visit, its pillars of pale bluish-gray limestone rose
+against a wintry sky, its guardian oaks were leafless, and the wind
+whistled over its heaps of ruin; yet its symmetry was like that of a
+perfect statue, wherein you do not notice the absence of color, and I
+felt that no sky and no season could make it more beautiful. For its
+builder was Ictinus, who created the Parthenon. It was erected by the
+Phigalians, out of gratitude to Apollo the Helper, who kept from their
+city a plague which ravaged the rest of the Peloponnesus. Owing to its
+secluded position, it has escaped the fate of other temples, and might
+be restored from its own undestroyed materials. The cella had been
+thrown down, but thirty-five out of thirty-eight columns are still
+standing. Through the Doric shafts you look upon a wide panorama of gray
+mountains, melting into purple in the distance, and crowned by arcs of
+the far-off sea. On one hand is Ithome and the Messenian Gulf, on the
+other the Ionian Sea and the Strophades....
+
+We now trotted down the valley, over beautiful meadows, which were
+uncultivated except in a few places where the peasants were plowing for
+maize, and had destroyed every trace of the road. The hills on both
+sides began to be fringed with pine, while the higher ridges on our
+right were clothed with woods of oak. I was surprised at the luxuriant
+vegetation of this region. The laurel and mastic became trees, the pine
+shot to a height of one hundred feet, and the beech and sycamore began
+to appear. Some of the pines had been cut for ship-timber, but in the
+rudest and most wasteful way, only the limbs which had the proper curve
+being chosen for ribs. I did not see a single sawmill in the
+Peloponnesus; but I am told that there are a few in Euboea and
+Acarnania....
+
+As we approached Olympia, I could almost have believed myself among the
+pine-hills of Germany or America. In the old times this must have been a
+lovely, secluded region, well befitting the honored repose of Xenophon,
+who wrote his works here. The sky became heavier as the day wore on, and
+the rain, which had spared us so long, finally inclosed us in its misty
+circle. Toward evening we reached a lonely little house, on the banks of
+the Alpheus. Nobody was at home, but we succeeded in forcing a door and
+getting shelter for our baggage. Francois had supper nearly ready before
+the proprietor arrived. The latter had neither wife nor child, tho a few
+chicks, and took our burglarious occupation very good-humoredly. We
+shared the same leaky roof with our horses, and the abundant fleas with
+the owner's dogs.
+
+
+
+
+TIRYNS AND MYCENAE[60]
+
+BY J. P. MAHAFFY
+
+
+The fortress of Tiryns may fitly be commented on before approaching the
+younger, or at least more artistically finished, Mycenae. It stands
+several miles nearer to the sea, in the center of the great plain of
+Argos, and upon the only hillock which there affords any natural scope
+for fortification. Instead of the square, or at least hewn, well-fitted
+blocks of Mycenae, we have here the older style of rude masses piled
+together as best they would fit, the interstices being filled up with
+smaller fragments. This is essentially cyclopean building. There is a
+smaller fort, of rectangular shape, on the southern and highest part of
+the oblong hillock, the whole of which is surrounded by a lower wall,
+which takes in both this and the northern longer part of the ridge. It
+looks, in fact, like a hill-fort, with a large inclosure for cattle
+around it.
+
+Just below the northeast angle of the inner fort, and where the lower
+circuit is about to leave it, there is an entrance, with a massive
+projection of huge stones, looking like a square tower, on its right
+side, so as to defend it from attack. The most remarkable feature in the
+walls are the covered galleries, constructed within them at the
+southeast angle. The whole thickness of the wall is often over twenty
+feet, and in the center a rude arched way is made--or rather, I believe,
+two parallel ways; but the inner gallery has fallen in, and is almost
+untraceable--and this merely by piling together the great stones so as
+to leave an opening, which narrows at the top in the form of a Gothic
+arch. Within the passage, there are five niches in the outer side, made
+of rude arches in the same way as the main passage. The length of the
+gallery I measured, and found it twenty-five yards, at the end of which
+it is regularly walled up, so that it evidently did not run all the way
+round. The niches are now no longer open, but seem to have been once
+windows, or at least to have had some lookout points into the hill
+country.
+
+It is remarkable that, altho the walls are made of perfectly rude
+stones, the builders have managed to use so many smooth surfaces looking
+outward, that the face of the wall seems quite clean and well built. At
+the southeast corner of the higher and inner fort, we found a large
+block of red granite, quite different from the rough, gray stone of the
+building, with its surface square and smooth, and all the four sides
+neatly beveled, like the portal stones at the treasury of Atreus. I
+found two other similar blocks close by, which were likewise cut smooth
+on the surface. The intention of these stones we could not guess, but
+they show that some ornament, and some more finished work, must have
+once existed in the inner fort. Tho both the main entrances have massive
+towers of stone raised on their right, there is a small postern at the
+opposite or west side, not more than four feet wide, which has no
+defenses whatever, and is a mere hole in the wall.
+
+The whole ruin is covered in summer with thistles, such as English
+people can hardly imagine. The needles at the points of the leaves are
+fully an inch long, extremely fine and strong, and sharper than any
+two-edged sword. No clothes except a leather dress can resist them. They
+pierce everywhere with the most stinging pain, and make antiquarian
+research in this famous spot a veritable martyrdom, which can only be
+supported by a very burning thirst for knowledge, or the sure hope of
+future fame. The rough masses of stone are so loose that one's footing
+is insecure, and when the traveler loses his balance, and falls among
+the thistles, he will wish that he had gone to Jericho instead, or even
+fallen among thieves on the way.
+
+It is impossible to approach Mycenae from any side without being struck
+with the picturesqueness of the site. If you come down over the
+mountains from Corinth, as soon as you reach the head of the valley of
+the Inachus, which is the plain of Argos, you turn aside to the left, or
+east, into a secluded corner--"a recess of the horse-feeding Argos," as
+Homer calls it--and then you find on the edge of the valley, and where
+the hills begin to rise one behind the other, the village of Charvati.
+When you ascend from this place, you find that the lofty Mount Elias is
+separated from the plain by two nearly parallel waves of land, which are
+indeed joined at the northern end by a curving saddle, but elsewhere are
+divided by deep gorges. The loftier and shorter wave forms the rocky
+citadel of Mycenae--the Argion, as it was once called.
+
+I need not attempt a fresh description of the Great Treasury. It is in
+no sense a rude building, or one of a helpless and barbarous age, but,
+on the contrary, the product of enormous appliances, and of a perfect
+knowledge of all the mechanical requirements for any building, if we
+except the application of the arch. The stones are hewn square, or
+curved to form the circular dome within, with admirable exactness. Above
+the enormous lintel-stone, nearly twenty-seven feet long, and which is
+doubly grooved, by way of ornament, all along its edge over the doorway,
+there is now a triangular window or aperture, which was certainly filled
+with some artistic carving like the analogous space over the lintel in
+the gate of the Acropolis. Shortly after Lord Elgin had cleared the
+entrance, Gell and Dodwell found various pieces of green and red marble
+carved with geometrical patterns, some of which are reproduced in
+Dodwell's book. Gell also found some fragments in a neighboring chapel,
+and others are said to be built into a wall at Nauplia. There are
+supposed to have been short columns standing on each side in front of
+the gate, with some ornament surmounting them; but this seems to me to
+rest on doubtful evidence, and on theoretical reconstruction. Dr.
+Schliemann, however, asserts them to have been found at the entrance of
+the second treasury which Mrs. Schliemann excavated, tho his account is
+somewhat vague. There is the strongest architectural reason for the
+triangular aperture over the door, as it diminishes the enormous weight
+to be borne by the lintel; and here, no doubt, some ornament very like
+lions on the other gate may have been applied.
+
+There has been much controversy about the use to which this building was
+applied, and we can not now attempt to change the name, even if we could
+prove its absurdity. Pausanias, who saw Mycenae in the second century
+A.D., found it in much the same state as we do, and was no
+better informed than we, tho he tells us the popular belief that this
+and its fellows were treasure-houses like that of the Minyae at
+Orchomenus, which was very much greater, and was, in his opinion, one of
+the most wonderful things in all Greece.
+
+Standing at the entrance, you look out upon the scattered masonry of the
+walls of Mycenae, on the hillock over against you. Close behind this is a
+dark and solemn chain of mountains. The view is narrow and confined, and
+faces the north, so that, for most of the day, the gate is dark and in
+shadow. We can conceive no fitter place for the burial of a king,
+within sight of his citadel, in the heart of a deep natural hillock,
+with a great solemn portal symbolizing the resistless strength of the
+barrier which he had passed into an unknown land. But one more remark
+seems necessary. This treasure-house is by no means a Greek building in
+its features. It has the same perfection of construction which can be
+seen at Eleutherae, or any other Greek fort, but still the really
+analogous buildings are to be found in far distant lands--in the raths
+of Ireland, and the barrows of the Crimea.
+
+ "And yet how lovely in thine age of woe,
+ Land of lost gods and godlike men, are thou!
+ Thy vales of evergreen, thy hills of snow,
+ Proclaim thee Nature's varied favourite now:
+ Thy fanes, thy temples to the surface bow,
+ Commingling slowly with heroic earth,
+ Broke by the share of every rustic plough:
+
+ "Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild:
+ Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields,
+ Thine olives ripe as when Minerva smiled,
+ And still his honeyed wealth Hymettus yields;
+ There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds,
+ The freeborn wanderer of thy mountain air;
+ Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds,
+ Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare;
+ Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair."
+
+ --From Byron's "Childe Harold."
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE GREEK ISLANDS
+
+
+
+
+A TOUR OF CRETE[61]
+
+BY BAYARD TAYLOR
+
+
+Crete lies between the parallels of 35 degrees and 36 degrees, not much
+farther removed from Africa than from Europe, and its climate,
+consequently, is intermediate between that of Greece and that of
+Alexandria. In the morning it was already visible, altho some thirty
+miles distant, the magnificent snowy mass of the White Mountains
+gleaming before us, under a bank of clouds. By ten o'clock, the long
+blue line of the coast broke into irregular points, the Dictynnaean
+promontory and that of Akroteri thrusting themselves out toward us so as
+to give an amphitheatric character to that part of the island we were
+approaching, while the broad, snowy dome of the Cretan Ida, standing
+alone, far to the east, floated in a sea of soft, golden light. The
+White Mountains were completely enveloped in snow to a distance of 4,000
+feet below their summits, and scarcely a rock pierced the luminous
+covering. The shores of the Gulf of Khania, retaining their
+amphitheatric form, rose gradually from the water, a rich panorama of
+wheat-fields, vineyards and olive groves, crowded with sparkling
+villages, while Khania, in the center, grew into distinctness--a
+picturesque jumble of mosques, old Venetian arches and walls, pink and
+yellow buildings, and palm trees. The character of the scene was Syrian
+rather than Greek, being altogether richer and warmer than anything in
+Greece.
+
+Khania occupies the site of the ancient Cydonia, by which name the Greek
+bishopric is still called. The Venetian city was founded in 1252, and
+any remnants of the older town which may have then remained, were quite
+obliterated by it. The only ruins now are those of Venetian churches,
+some of which have been converted into mosques, and a number of immense
+arched vaults, opening on the harbor, built to shelter the galleys of
+the Republic. Just beyond the point on which stands the Serai, I counted
+fifteen of these, side by side, eleven of which are still entire. A
+little further, there are three more, but all are choked up with sand,
+and of no present use. The modern town is an exact picture of a Syrian
+seaport, with its narrow, crooked streets, shaded bazaars, and turbaned
+merchants. Its population is 9,500, including the garrison, according to
+a census just completed at the time of our visit. It is walled, and the
+gates are closed during the night....
+
+Passing through the large Turkish cemetery, which was covered with an
+early crop of blue anemones, we came upon the rich plain of Khania,
+lying broad and fair, like a superb garden, at the foot of the White
+Mountains, whose vast masses of shining snow filled up the entire
+southern heaven. Eastward, the plain slopes to the deep Bay of Suda,
+whose surface shone blue above the silvery line of the olive groves;
+while, sixty miles away, rising high above the intermediate headlands,
+the solitary peak of Mount Ida, bathed in a warm afternoon glow, gleamed
+like an Olympian mount, not only the birthplace, but the throne of
+immortal Jove. Immense olive trees from the dark-red, fertile earth;
+cypresses and the canopied Italian pine interrupted their gray monotony,
+and every garden hung the golden lamps of its oranges over the wall. The
+plain is a paradise of fruitfulness....
+
+In the morning, the horses were brought to us at an early hour, in
+charge of a jolly old officer of gendarmes, who was to accompany us. As
+far as the village of Kalepa, there is a carriage road; afterward, only
+a stony path. From the spinal ridge of the promontory, which we crossed,
+we overlooked all the plain of Khania, and beyond the Dictynnaean
+peninsula, to the western extremity of Crete. The White Mountains, tho
+less than seven thousand, feet in height, deceive the eye by the
+contrast between their spotless snows and the summer at their base, and
+seem to rival the Alps. The day was cloudless and balmy; birds sang on
+every tree, and the grassy hollows were starred with anemones, white,
+pink, violet and crimson. It was the first breath of the southern
+spring, after a winter which had been as terrible for Crete as for
+Greece.
+
+After a ride of three hours, we reached a broad valley, at the foot of
+that barren mountain mass in which the promontory terminates. To the
+eastward we saw the large monastery of Agia Triada (the Holy Trinity),
+overlooking its fat sweep of vine and olive land.... In the deep, dry
+mountain glen which we entered, I found numbers of carob-trees. Rocks of
+dark-blue limestone, stained with bright orange oxydations, overhung us
+as we followed the track of a torrent upward into the heart of this
+bleak region, where, surrounded by the hot, arid peaks, is the Monastery
+of Governato.
+
+We descended on foot to the Monastery of Katholiko, which we reached in
+half an hour. Its situation is like that of San Saba in Palestine, at
+the bottom of a split in the stony hills, and the sun rarely shines upon
+it. Steps cut in the rock lead down the face of the precipice to the
+deserted monastery, near which is a cavern 500 feet long, leading into
+the rock. The ravine is spanned by an arch, nearly fifty feet high.
+
+At Agia Triada, as we rode up the stately avenue of cypresses, between
+vineyards and almond trees in blossom, servants advanced to take our
+horses, and the abbot shouted, "Welcome," from the top of the steps. We
+were ushered into a clean room, furnished with a tolerable library of
+orthodox volumes. A boy of fifteen, with a face like the young Raphael,
+brought us glasses of a rich, dark wine, something like port, some jelly
+and coffee. The size and substantial character of this monastery attests
+its wealth, no less than the flourishing appearance of the lands
+belonging to it. Its large courtyard is shaded with vine-bowers and
+orange trees, and the chapel in the center has a facade supported by
+Doric columns.
+
+
+
+
+THE COLOSSAL RUINS OF CNOSSOS[62]
+
+BY PHILIP S. MARDEN
+
+
+The ruins [of the Cnossos palace] lie at the east of the high road, in a
+deep valley. Their excavation has been very complete and satisfactory,
+and while some restorations have been attempted here and there, chiefly
+because of absolute necessity to preserve portions of the structure,
+they are not such restorations as to jar on one, but exhibit a fidelity
+to tradition that saves them from the common fate of such efforts.
+Little or no retouching was necessary in the case of the stupendous
+flights of steps that were found leading up to the door of this
+prehistoric royal residence, and which are the first of the many sights
+the visitor of to-day may see.
+
+It is in the so-called "throne room of Minos" that the restoring hand is
+first met. Here it has been found necessary to provide a roof, that
+damage by weather be avoided; and to-day the throne room is a dusky
+spot, rather below the general level of the place. Its chief treasure is
+the throne itself, a stone chair, carved in rather rudimentary
+ornamentation, and about the size of an ordinary chair. The roof is
+supported by the curious, top-heavy-looking stone pillars, that are
+known to have prevailed not only in the Minoan but in Mycenaean period;
+monoliths noticeably larger at the top than at the bottom, reversing the
+usual form of stone pillar with which later ages have made us more
+familiar. This quite illogical inversion of what we now regard as the
+proper form has been accounted for in theory, by assuming that it was
+the natural successor of the sharpened wooden stake. When the ancients
+adopted stone supports for their roofs, they simply took over the forms
+they had been familiar with in the former use of wood, and the result
+was a stone pillar that copied the earlier wooden one in shape. Time, of
+course, served to show that the natural way of building demanded the
+reversal of this custom; but in the Mycenaean age it had not been
+discovered, for there are evidences that similar pillars existed in
+buildings of that period, and the representation of a pillar that stands
+between the two lions on Mycenae's famous gate has this inverted form.
+
+Many hours may be spent in detailed examination of this colossal ruin,
+testifying to what must have been in its day an enormous and impressive
+palace. One can not go far in traversing it without noticing the traces
+still evident enough of the fire that obviously destroyed it many
+hundred, if not several thousand, years before Christ. Along the western
+side have been discovered long corridors, from which scores of long and
+narrow rooms were to be entered. These, in the published plans, serve to
+give to the ruin a large share of its labyrinthine character. It seems
+to be agreed now that these were the storerooms of the palace, and in
+them may still be seen the huge earthen jars which once served to
+contain the palace supplies. Long rows of them stand in the ancient
+hallways and in the narrow cells that lead off them, each jar large
+enough to hold a fair-sized man, and in number sufficient to have
+accommodated Ali Baba and the immortal forty thieves. In the center of
+the palace little remains; but in the southeastern corner, where the
+land begins to slope abruptly to the valley below, there are to be seen
+several stories of the ancient building. Here one comes upon the rooms
+marked with the so-called "distaff" pattern, supposed to indicate that
+they were the women's quarters.
+
+The restorer has been busy here, but not offensively so. Much of the
+ancient wall is intact, and in one place is a bathroom with a very
+diminutive bathtub still in place. Along the eastern side is also shown
+the oil press, where olives were once made to yield their coveted
+juices, and from the press proper a stone gutter conducted the fluid
+down to the point where jars were placed to receive it. This discovery
+of oil presses in ancient buildings, by the way, has served in more than
+one case to arouse speculation as to the antiquity of oil lamps such as
+were once supposed to belong only to a much later epoch. Whether in the
+Minoan days they had such lamps or not, it is known that they had at
+least an oil press and a good one. In the side of the hill below the
+main palace of Minos has been unearthed a smaller structure, which they
+now call the "villa," and in which several terraces, have been uncovered
+rather similar to the larger building above. Here is another throne
+room, cunningly contrived to be lighted by a long shaft of light from
+above falling on the seat of justice itself, while the rest of the room
+is in obscurity.
+
+It may be that it requires a stretch of the imagination to compare the
+palace of Cnossos with Troy, but nevertheless there are one or two
+features that seem not unlike the discoveries made by Dr. Schliemann on
+that famous site. Notably so, it seems to me, are the traces of the
+final fire, which are to be seen at Cnossos as at Troy, and the huge
+jars, which may be compared with the receptacles the Trojan excavators
+unearthed, and found still to contain dried peas and other things that
+the Trojans left behind when they fled from their sacked and burning
+city. Few are privileged to visit the site of Priam's city, which is
+hard, indeed, to reach; but it is easy enough to make the excursion to
+Candia and visit the palace of old King Minos, which is amply worth the
+trouble, besides giving a glimpse of a civilization that is possibly
+vastly older than even that of Troy and Mycenae. For those who reverence
+the great antiquities, Candia and its pre-classic suburb are distinctly
+worth visiting, and are unique among the sights of the ancient Hellenic
+and pre-Hellenic world.
+
+
+
+
+CORFU[63]
+
+BY EDWARD A. FREEMAN
+
+
+From whichever side our traveler draws near to Corfu, he comes from
+lands where Greek influence and Greek colonization spread in ancient
+times, but from which the Greek elements have been gradually driven out,
+partly by the barbarism of the East, partly by the rival civilization of
+the West. The land which we see is Hellenic in a sense in which not even
+Sicily, not even the Great Hellas of Southern Italy, much less than the
+Dalmatian archipelago, ever became Hellenic. Prom the first historic
+glimpse which we get of Korkyra,[64] it is not merely a land fringed by
+Hellenic colonies; it is a Hellenic island, the dominion of a single
+Hellenic city, a territory the whole of whose inhabitants were, at the
+beginning of recorded history, either actually Hellenic or so thoroughly
+hellenized that no one thought of calling their Hellenic position in
+question. Modern policy has restored it to its old position by making it
+an integral portion of the modern Greek kingdom.
+
+To the south of the present town, connected with it by a favorite walk
+of the inhabitants of Corfu, a long and broad peninsula stretches boldly
+into the sea. Both from land and from sea, it chiefly strikes the eye as
+a wooded mass, thickly covered with the aged olive trees which form so
+marked a feature in the scenery of the island. A few houses skirt the
+base, growing on the land side into the suburb of Kastrades, which may
+pass for a kind of connecting link between the old and the new city. And
+from the midst of the wood, on the side nearest to the modern town,
+stands out the villa of the King of the Greeks, the chief modern
+dwelling on the site of ancient Korkyra. This peninsular hill, still
+known as Palaiopolis, was the site of the old Corinthian city whose name
+is so familiar to every reader of Thucydides. On either side of it lies
+one of its two forsaken harbors. Between the old and the new city lies
+the so-called harbor of Alkinoos; beyond the peninsula, stretching far
+inland, lies the old Hyllaic harbor, bearing the name of one of the
+three tribes which seem to have been essential to the being of a Dorian
+commonwealth....
+
+This last is the Corfu whose fate seems to have been to become the
+possession of every power which has ruled in that quarter of the world,
+with one exception. For fourteen hundred years the history of the island
+is the history of endless changes of masters. We see it first a nominal
+ally, then a direct possession, of Rome and of Constantinople; we then
+see it formed into a separate Byzantine principality, conquered by the
+Norman lord of Sicily, again a possession of the Empire, then a
+momentary possession of Venice, again a possession of the Sicilian
+kingdom under its Angevin kings, till at last it came back to Venetian
+rule, and abode for four hundred years under the Lion of Saint Mark.
+Then it became part of that first strange Septinsular Republic of which
+the Czar was to be the protector and the Sultan the overlord. Then it
+was a possession of France; then a member of the second Septinsular
+Republic under the hardly disguised sovereignty of England; now at last
+it is the most distant, but one of the most valuable, of the provinces
+of the modern Greek kingdom.
+
+Of the modern city there is but little to say. As becomes a city which
+was so long a Venetian possession, the older part of it has much of the
+character of an Italian town. It is rich in street arcades; but they
+present but few architectural features; and we find none of those
+various forms of ornamental window so common, not only in Venice and
+Verona, but in Spalato, Cattaro, and Traue. The churches in the modern
+city are architecturally worthless. They are interesting so far as they
+will give to many their first impression of orthodox arrangement and
+orthodox ritual. The few ecclesiastical antiquities of the place belong
+to the elder city. The suburb of the lower slope of the hill contains
+three churches, all of them small, but each of which has an interest of
+its own.
+
+
+
+
+RHODES[65]
+
+BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER
+
+
+Coming on deck the next morning at the fresh hour of sunrise, I found we
+were at Rhodes. We lay just off the semicircular harbor, which is
+clasped by walls--partly shaken down by earthquakes--which have noble,
+round towers at each embracing end. Rhodes is, from the sea, one of the
+most picturesque cities in the Mediterranean, altho it has little
+remains of that ancient splendor which caused Strabo to prefer it to
+Rome or Alexandria. The harbor wall, which is flanked on each side by
+stout and round, stone windmills, extends up the hill, and becoming
+double, surrounds the old town; these massive fortifications of the
+Knights of St. John have withstood the onsets of enemies and the tremors
+of the earth, and, with the ancient moat, excite the curiosity of this
+so-called peaceful age of iron-clads and monster cannon. The city
+ascends the slope of the hill and passes beyond the wall. Outside and on
+the right toward the sea are a picturesque group of a couple of dozen
+stone windmills, and some minarets and a church-tower or two. Higher up
+the hill is sprinkled a little foliage, a few mulberry trees, and an
+isolated palm or two; and, beyond, the island is only a mass of broken,
+bold, rocky mountains. Of its forty-five miles of length, running
+southwesterly from the little point on which the city stands, we can see
+but little.
+
+Whether or not Rhodes emerged from the sea at the command of Apollo, the
+Greeks exprest by this tradition of its origin their appreciation of its
+gracious climate, fertile soil, and exquisite scenery. From remote
+antiquity it had fame as a seat of arts and letters, and of a vigorous
+maritime power, and the romance of its early centuries was equaled if
+not surpassed when it became the residence of the Knights of St. John. I
+believe that the first impress of its civilization was given by the
+Phoenicians; it was the home of the Dorian race before the time of the
+Trojan War, and its three cities were members of the Dorian Hexapolis;
+it was, in fact, a flourishing maritime confederacy strong enough to
+send colonies to the distant Italian coast, and Sybaris and Parthenope
+(modern Naples) perpetuated the luxurious refinement of their founders.
+The city of Rhodes itself was founded about four hundred years before
+Christ, and the splendor of its palaces, its statues and paintings gave
+it a pre-eminence among the most magnificent cities of the ancient
+world. If the earth of this island could be made to yield its buried
+treasures as Cyprus has, we should doubtless have new proofs of the
+influence of Asiatic civilization upon the Greeks, and be able to trace
+in the early Doric arts and customs the superior civilization of the
+Phoenicians, and of the masters of the latter in science and art, the
+Egyptians.
+
+Naturally, every traveler who enters the harbor of Rhodes hopes to see
+the site of one of the seven wonders of the world, the Colossus. He is
+free to place it on either mole at the entrance of the harbor, but he
+comprehends at once that a statue which was only one hundred and five
+feet high could never have extended its legs across the port. The fame
+of this colossal bronze statue of the sun is disproportioned to the
+period of its existence; it stood only fifty-six years after its
+erection, being shaken down by an earthquake in the year 224 B.C., and
+encumbering the ground with its fragments till the advent of the Moslem
+conquerors.
+
+Passing from the quay through a highly ornamented Gothic gateway, we
+ascended the famous historic street, still called the Street of the
+Knights, the massive houses of which have withstood the shocks of
+earthquakes and the devastation of Saracenic and Turkish occupation.
+This street, of whose palaces we have heard so much, is not imposing; it
+is not wide, its solid stone houses are only two stories high, and their
+fronts are now disfigured by cheap Arab balconies; but the facades are
+gray with age. All along are remains of carved windows. Gothic
+sculptured doorways and shields and coats of arms, crosses and armorial
+legends, are set in the walls, partially defaced by time and the respect
+of Suleiman for the Knights, have spared the mementos of their faith and
+prowess. I saw no inscriptions that are intact, but made out upon one
+shield the words "voluntas mei est." The carving is all beautiful.
+
+We went through the silent streets, waking only echoes of the past, out
+to the ruins of the once elegant church of St. John, which was shaken
+down by a powder-explosion some thirty years ago, and utterly flattened
+by an earthquake some years afterward. Outside the ramparts we met, and
+saluted, with the freedom of travelers, a gorgeous Turk who was taking
+the morning air, and whom our guide in bated breath said was the
+governor. In this part of the town is the Mosque of Suleiman; in the
+portal are two lovely marble columns, rich with age; the lintels are
+exquisitely carved with flowers, arms, casques, musical instruments, the
+crossed sword and the torch, and the mandolin, perhaps the emblem of
+some troubadour knight. Wherever we went we found bits of old carving,
+remains of columns, sections of battlemented roofs. The town is
+saturated with the old Knights. Near the mosque is a foundation of
+charity, a public kitchen, at which the poor were fed or were free to
+come and cook their food; it is in decay now, and the rooks were sailing
+about its old, round-topped chimneys.
+
+There are no Hellenic remains in the city, and the only remembrance of
+that past which we searched for was the antique coin, which has upon
+one side the head of Medusa and upon the other the rose (rhoda) which
+gave the town its name. The town was quiet; but in pursuit of this coin
+in the Jews' quarter we started up swarms of traders, were sent from
+Isaac to Jacob, and invaded dark shops and private houses where Jewish
+women and children were just beginning to complain of the morning light.
+Our guide was a jolly Greek, who was willing to awaken the whole town in
+search of a silver coin. The traders, when we had routed them out, had
+little to show in the way of antiquities. Perhaps the best
+representative of the modern manufactures of Rhodes is the wooden shoe,
+which is in form like the Damascus clog, but is inlaid with more taste.
+The people whom we encountered in our morning walk were Greeks or Jews.
+The morning atmosphere was delicious, and we could well believe that the
+climate of Rhodes is the finest in the Mediterranean, and also that it
+is the least exciting of cities.
+
+
+
+
+MT. ATHOS[66]
+
+BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER
+
+
+Beyond Thasos is the Thracian coast and Mt. Pangaus, and at the foot of
+it Philippi, the Macedonian town where republican Rome fought its last
+battle, where Cassius leaned upon his sword-point, believing everything
+lost. Brutus transported the body of his comrade to Thasos and raised
+for him a funeral pyre; and twenty days later, on the same field, met
+again that specter of death which had summoned him to Philippi. It was
+not many years after this victory of the Imperial power that a greater
+triumph was won at Philippi, when Paul and Silas, cast into prison, sang
+praises unto God at midnight, and an earthquake shook the house and
+opened the prison doors.
+
+In the afternoon we came in sight of snowy Mt. Athos, an almost
+perpendicular limestone rock, rising nearly six thousand four hundred
+feet out of the sea. The slender promontory which this magnificent
+mountain terminates is forty miles long and has only an average breadth
+of four miles. The ancient canal of Xerxes quite severed it from the
+mainland. The peninsula, level at the canal, is a jagged stretch of
+mountains (seamed by chasms), which rise a thousand, two thousand, four
+thousand feet, and at last front the sea with the sublime peak of Athos,
+the site of the most conspicuous beacon-fire of Agamemnon. The entire
+promontory is, and has been since the time of Constantine, ecclesiastic
+ground; every mountain and valley has its convent; besides the twenty
+great monasteries are many pious retreats. All the sects of the Greek
+church are here represented; the communities pay a tribute to the
+Sultan, but the government is in the hands of four presidents, chosen by
+the synod, which holds weekly sessions and takes the presidents,
+yearly, from the monasteries in rotation. Since their foundation these
+religious houses have maintained against Christians and Saracens an
+almost complete independence, and preserved in their primitive
+simplicity the manners and usages of the earliest foundations.
+
+Here, as nowhere else in Europe or Asia, can one behold the
+architecture, the dress, the habits of the Middle Ages. The good
+devotees have been able to keep themselves thus in the darkness and
+simplicity of the past by a rigorous exclusion of the sex always
+impatient of monotony, to which all the changes of the world are due. No
+woman, from the beginning till now, has ever been permitted to set foot
+on the peninsula. Nor is this all; no female animal is suffered on the
+holy mountain, not even a hen. I suppose, tho I do not know, that the
+monks have an inspector of eggs, whose inherited instincts of aversion
+to the feminine gender enable him to detect and reject all those in
+which lurk the dangerous sex. Few of the monks eat meat, half the days
+of the year are fast days, they practise occasionally abstinence from
+food for two or three days, reducing their pulses to the feeblest
+beating, and subduing their bodies to a point that destroys their value
+even as spiritual tabernacles. The united community is permitted to keep
+a guard of fifty Christian soldiers, and the only Moslem on the island
+is the solitary Turkish officer who represents the Sultan; his position
+can not be one generally coveted by the Turks, since the society of
+women is absolutely denied him. The libraries of Mt. Athos are full of
+unarranged manuscripts, which are probably mainly filled with the
+theologic rubbish of the controversial ages, and can scarcely be
+expected to yield again anything so valuable as the Tishendorf
+Scriptures.
+
+At sunset we were close under Mt. Athos, and could distinguish the
+buildings of the Laura Convent, amid the woods beneath the frowning
+cliff. And now was produced the apparition of a sunset, with this
+towering mountain cone for a centerpiece, that surpassed all our
+experience and imagination. The sea was like satin for smoothness,
+absolutely waveless, and shone with the colors of changeable silk, blue,
+green, pink, and amethyst. Heavy clouds gathered about the sun, and from
+behind them he exhibited burning spectacles, magnificent fireworks, vast
+shadow-pictures, scarlet cities, and gigantic figures stalking across
+the sky. From one crater of embers he shot up a fan-like flame that
+spread to the zenith and was reflected on the water. His rays lay along
+the sea in pink, and the water had the sheen of iridescent glass. The
+whole sea for leagues was like this; even Lemnos and Samothrace lay in a
+dim pink and purple light in the east. There were vast clouds in huge
+walls, with towers and battlements, and in all fantastic shapes--one a
+gigantic cat with a preternatural tail, a cat of doom four degrees long.
+All this was piled about Mt. Athos, with its sharp summit of snow, its
+dark sides of rock.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] From "Pictures from Italy." Dickens made his trip to Italy in 1844.
+
+[2] From "Italy: Florence and Venice." By special arrangement with, and
+by permission of, the publishers. Henry Holt & Co. Copyright, 1869.
+Translated by John Durand.
+
+[3] Begun in 1386. Its architects were Germans and Frenchmen.
+
+[4] From "Italy: Florence and Venice." By special arrangement with, and
+by permission of, the publishers, Henry Holt & Co. Copyright, 1869.
+Translated by John Durand.
+
+[5] From "The Story of Pisa." Published by E. P. Dutton & Co.
+
+[6] From "Pictures From Italy."
+
+[7] From "Cities of Southern Italy and Sicily."
+
+[8] From "Travels in Italy."
+
+[9] A German friend with whom Goethe was traveling.
+
+[10] From "Pictures from Italy."
+
+[11] From "Italy: Rome and Naples." By special arrangement with, and by
+permission of, the publishers, Henry Holt & Co. Copyright, 1869.
+Translated by John Durand.
+
+[12] This term designates a road built along the rocky shore of a
+seaside, being a figurative application of the architectural term
+"cornice."--Translator's note.
+
+[13] From "Cities of Southern Italy and Sicily."
+
+[14] From a letter to Thomas Love Peacock, written in 1819.
+
+[15] From "Pictures from Italy."
+
+[16] From "Journeys in Italy." By special arrangement with, and by
+permission of, the publishers, Brentano's. Copyright, 1902.
+
+[17] The memoir writer.
+
+[18] From "Journeys in Italy." By special arrangement with, and by
+permission of, the publishers, Brentano's. Copyright, 1902.
+
+[19] From "Unknown Switzerland." Published by James Pott & Co.
+Politically, Lake Lugano is part Swiss and part Italian.
+
+[20] The St. Gothard.
+
+[21] From a letter to Thomas Love Peacock, written in 1818.
+
+[22] From "The Spell of the Italian Lakes." By special arrangement with,
+and by permission of, the publishers, L. C. Page & Co. Copyright, 1907.
+
+[23] From "Remarks on Several Parts of Italy in the Years 1701, 1702,
+1703."
+
+[24] In the town are now about 1,500 people; in the whole territory of
+the republic, 9,500. San Marino lies about fourteen miles southwest from
+Rimini.
+
+[25] At the present time, fourteen hundred years; so that San Marino is
+the oldest as well as the smallest republic in the world.
+
+[26] From "French and Italian Note-Books." By special arrangement with,
+and by permission of, Houghton, Mifflin Co., publishers of Hawthorne's
+works. Copyright, 1871, 1883, 1889.
+
+[27] The author's son, Julian Hawthorne.
+
+[28] From "Italian Cities." By special arrangement with, and by
+permission of, the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1900.
+
+[29] From "Italy: Florence and Venice." By special arrangement with, and
+by permission of, the publishers, Henry Holt & Co. Copyright, 1869.
+
+[30] From "Historical and Architectural Sketches: Chiefly Italian."
+Published by the Macmillan Co.
+
+[31] From "Cities of Southern Italy and Sicily."
+
+[32] From "Letters of a Traveler."
+
+[33] From "Historical and Architectural Sketches: Chiefly Italian."
+Published by the Macmillan Co.
+
+[34] From "Sicily: The Garden of the Mediterranean." By special
+arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, L. C. Page & Co.
+Copyright, 1909.
+
+[35] From "The History of Sicily." Published by the Macmillan Co.
+
+[36] The Greek name for Girgenti.
+
+[37] From "Travels in Italy."
+
+[38] From "Travels in Italy."
+
+[39] From "Sicily: The Garden of the Mediterranean." By special
+arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, L. C. Page & Co.
+Copyright, 1909.
+
+[40] From "Vacation Days in Greece." By special arrangement with, and by
+permission of, the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1903.
+
+[41] From "Constantinople." By special arrangement with, and by
+permission of, the publishers, Henry Holt & Co. Copyright, 1875.
+
+[42] From "Rambles and Studies in Greece." Published by the Macmillan
+Co.
+
+[43] From "Travels in Greece and Russia." Published by G. P. Putnam's
+Sons.
+
+[44] From the "Description of Greece." Pausanias was a Greek traveler
+and geographer who lived in the second century A.D.--in the time of the
+Roman emperors, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius.
+
+[45] From "Rambles and Studies in Greece." Published by the Macmillan
+Co.
+
+[46] The Venetian commander who bombarded the Parthenon in 1687.
+
+[47] Edward Dodwell (1767-1832), an English traveler and archeologist,
+notable for his investigations in Greece when it had been little
+explored, and author of various records of his work.--Author's note.
+
+[48] From "Rambles and Studies in Greece." Published by the Macmillan
+Co.
+
+[49] This very pattern, in mahogany, with cane seats, and adapted, like
+all Greek chairs, for loose cushions, was often used in Chippendale
+work, and may still be found in old mansions furnished at that
+epoch.--Author's note.
+
+[50] From "Rambles and Studies in Greece." Published by the Macmillan
+Co.
+
+[51] From "Travels in Greece and Russia." Published by G. P. Putnam's
+Sons.
+
+[52] From "Rambles and Studies in Greece." Published by the Macmillan
+Co.
+
+[53] From "Greece and the Aegean Islands." By special arrangement with,
+and by permission of, the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin Co. Copyright,
+1907.
+
+[54] From the "Description of Greece." Pausanias wrote in the time of
+Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius.
+
+[55] From "Vacation Days in Greece." By special arrangement with, and by
+permission of, the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1903.
+
+[56] From "In the Levant." By special arrangement with, and by
+permission of, the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin Co. Copyright, 1875.
+Salonica, formerly Turkish territory, was added to the territory of
+Greece in 1913, under the terms of the treaty of peace that followed the
+Balkan war against Turkey.
+
+[57] From "In the Levant." By special arrangement with, and by
+permission of, the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin Co. Copyright, 1875.
+
+[58] From "Travels in Greece and Russia." Published by G. P. Putnam's
+Sons.
+
+[59] From "Travels in Greece and Russia," Published by G. P. Putnam's
+Sons.
+
+[60] From "Rambles and Studies in Greece." Published by the Macmillan
+Co.
+
+[61] From "Travels in Greece and Russia." Published by G. P. Putnam's
+Sons.
+
+[62] From "Greece and the AEgean Islands." By special arrangement with,
+and by permission of, the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin Co. Copyright,
+1907.
+
+[63] From "Sketches from the Subject and Neighbor Lands of Venice."
+Published by the Macmillan Co.
+
+[64] The ancient Greek name of Corfu.
+
+[65] From "In the Levant." By special arrangement with, and by
+permission of, the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin Co. Copyright, 1876.
+
+[66] From "In the Levant." By special arrangement with, and by
+permission of, the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin Co. Copyright, 1876. As
+one of the results of the Balkan war of 1912-1913, Mt. Athos, which had
+formerly been under Turkish rule, was added to the territory of Greece.
+Nature made Mt. Athos a part of the mainland, but a canal was cut by
+Xerxes across the lowland at the base of the lofty promontory, making it
+an island. Some parts of this canal still remain.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol
+VIII, by Various
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