interruptions of the audience, that the destiny of the kingdom was on the turn of the scale. When a great question is pending in the House, every café in the town is a reflex of it. Groups of men, in passionate tones, and with energy of action such as the boulevards of Paris rarely witness, talk over the politics of the day, while a crowd of eager listeners applaud or interrupt. An American writer says, in relation to the passion of the Athenians for politics: "With a territory but three-fifths as great as that of

New York, with a population of nearly two millions, with universal suffrage, and with a monarchy so limited that the government is in reality a democracy in the administration of its internal affairs, the Greek nation of to-day devotes ten times too much energy to governing itself. This concentration of force within narrow limits begets heat at Athens. Under such pressure the political friction is something enormous. Athens supports from thirty to forty newspapers. Political clubs are more numerous than in classic days, and as influential. Every man of prominence has his newspaper, his club of personal followers, his petty party."

The University, in the upper part of the town, is approached by a handsome portico of Pentelic marble, the gift of King Otho. It was founded in the year 1837, and at the present time 1,500 students are instructed by sixty able professors. Lectures are delivered

with in many other cities where they would be less expected; and one is struck with the exortional number of men-especially on the outskirts of the city-who seem to have nothing whatever to do. In the poor quarters of the city, the stone hovels of the people front a very we-begone appearance, and are as dirty as any to be found in Egypt. A enrions entom, or law, prevails among these people. "Their huts," says a recent writer, "are constantly encroaching upon the vacant land on the slopes of the rocky citadel. The Land is the property of the Government, and no one has a right to build upon it. But

there is at Athens either a law or a prescriptive right, which prevents the removal or destruction of a house once built and occupied. Taking advantage of this, a couple newly married notify their friends, material is quickly got together, and on the appointed night, as silently as may be, the simple house is erected between the dark and dawn, the hands of scores of friends making light work; and, with such household goods as they can boast, the young householders take possession at once. Then, from the sacred home altar, they safely answer the questions of the officers of the law, should any notice be taken of the trespass. As you gaze down upon these simple homes from the Acropolis, in the earliest dawn of a summer morning, and see the inmates, roused from a night's rest (often passed beneath the open sky, on the flat roof, or beside the humble door), light a little fire in the open air and prepare their frugal meal-as you see how pathetically those little houses

seem to cling like suppliants about the knees of the marble-crowned, world-famous Rock of Athens, it takes little fancy to imagine that these homes of the poor have crept for protection beneath the mighty shadow of the stronghold of liberty in Athens' glorious past."

Beyond the English church a kind of no-man's-land of open country is reached, and on an artificially raised plain stand the magnificent ruins of the Olympieium, or Temple of Zeus Olympius. From the earliest ages this site was dedicated to religious uses, and in the year 530 B.C., Pisistratus commenced a sumptuous temple here; but the work was abandoned until the year 174 B.C., when Antiochus III. resumed it, with the aid of the architect Cossutius, according to whose marvellous designs the work was subsequently completed in the reign of Hadrian, A.D. 135. In front and back it had ten columns, and on either side twenty-one columns, with triple colonnades at the ends, and double colonnades at the sides. Its length was 380 feet, and width 184 feet, enclosed by 120 Corinthian columns, each 64 feet in height and 7 feet in diameter, and it contained the statue of Zeus, exquisitely wrought in gold and ivory, while beside it stood the statue of the Emperor Hadrian.

Now all that remains is a group of fifteen columns; thirteen of them support an architrave, and all of them are crowned with capitals ten feet in breadth. Two columns stand apart at a considerable distance, and assist the mind to realise the magnificence of what the building must once have been; while one column, which was blown down in a great storm on the 26th October, 1852, gives perhaps a better idea of the immense proportions of the edifice than can be obtained from the upright columns. On the architrave of two of the columns a hermit constructed his aërial cell in the Middle Ages.

These are the ruins of the largest Greek temple extant, next to that of Ephesus: a temple which was, said Livy, "the only one in all the world worthy the Olympian Jove." There are some seats under the columns, and on a moonlight night a cup of coffee may be sipped here, and one of the finest views in Greece obtained. The columns are wrought in the marble of Pentelicus, and are dazzlingly white, and in the moonlight every line of the fluted pillars stands in relief from its shadowed depression, and gives an appearance more spiritual than natural. The platform is a perfectly bare floor, hard and level; the background, of apparently illimitable extent, commanding views of the Saronie. Gulf, Egina, and the coast of Argolis; not a shadow seems to fall anywhere save those cast by the columns; there is not a sound to be heard except the songs of nightingales from the boulevard leading to the town, or the gentle ripple of the Ilissus. Near at hand is the Gate of Hadrian, looking in that light as perfect as it must have looked in the days when it marked the boundary between the Athens of Theseus and the Athens of Hadrian. Beyond this gate and above it rises the massive rock of the Acropolis, 300 feet high, crowned with buildings the most wonderful and beautiful the world has ever seen. By daylight Athens wears a very arid and burnt-up look, the monotonous browns and reds unrelieved by verdure, but in the moonlight the scenery is perfect.

It may seem strange that of a building so vast in extent and of such splendid workmanship so little should remain. But it must be remembered that it was unadapted, from its vast size and construction, to become a Christian temple, and therefore it fell. The

Parthenon, the Theseium, and others of the best-preserved temples in Athens were used for Christian worship, and owe their preservation to that religion which was to the Greeks but "foolishness." The Temple of Zeus Olympius could not be utilised for that purpose, and so it came to pass that only sixteen out of the one hundred and twenty-four columns which once surrounded it, remain, and not a trace of the building itself is left, while the Theseium, of earlier date, is to-day a completely habitable edifice.

The Gate of Hadrian, forming the entrance from the west to the precincts of this temple and the Hadrianopolis, or quarter of the city founded by Hadrian, still remains in comparatively good preservation, and stands apart in solitary grandeur. It stood at the north-west corner of the temple, separated from it, however, by a spacious court. The gateway is twenty-three feet wide, and fifty-six feet high; two Corinthian columns project on either side; and over the gate is an upper storey borne by an architrave supported by Corinthian columns sixty-four feet high. On the architrave are inscriptions describing it as dividing Athens into two parts; on the west side, towards the Acropolis, is written in ancient Greek characters, "This is Athens, the City of Theseus." On the east side, facing the Temple of Zeus Olympius, are the words, "This is the City of Hadrian, not that of Theseus."

At the foot of the platform on which the temple is built rises the celebrated spring Callirrhoë, and a mass of rock in the bed of the Ilissus diverts the miserable little streamlet to a meagre pond, where washerwomen are generally at work. Although the Ilissus is a very little stream, it is not quite so contemptible as Cobden would make it, who said "the washerwomen of Attica must dam it up if they would get enough water to wash a shirt."

A short walk eastward and the Stadium is reached, where the youth of Athens long ago disported itself in the Olympic and Isthmian games, and where now, every year, athletic sports of modern Athenians are held. This Stadium was founded by the orator Lycurgus, 330 B.C., and was provided with seats of Pentelic marble by Herodes Atticus, A.D. 140. It is only since 1870, when King George I. caused the buried portion at the back to be excavated, that the full proportions of this noble Stadium have been seen. The racecourse, "650 feet long and 106 feet in width, is bounded on the south side by an elliptical barrier, and in its whole length by a parapet on each side. Along the outside of the latter ran a corridor 8 feet broad, paved with marble, through which the spectators passed to their seats." Accommodation was provided for 50,000 spectators; but the marble of the tiers of seats has been converted into lime in the neighbouring kilns.

Leaving the Stadium and turning towards the Acropolis, a visit may be paid to the Lantern of Demosthenes, as it is generally called, although by some it may be better known as the monument of Lysicrates-choragus, or furnisher of the chorus in the Attic drama. It is a graceful circular edifice, consisting of a colonnade of eight Corinthian columns, resting on a square basement, and crowned with a cupola. The frieze, of which there are casts in the British Museum, represents the metamorphosis of the Tyrrhenian pirates who had attacked Dionysus; and the inscription on the architrave records the victory gained by Lysicrates when he led the chorus, and the boys of the tribe of Acamantis conquered, 335 B.C. On the top of the cupola was placed the tripod which