(Bacchus), which, after the recent excavations, is among the most interesting and complete of all the ruins of Athens. It lies on the lower slope of the Acropolis towards the south, with the Parthenon above, Hymettus on the left, and the valley of the Ilissus in front. A nobler site cannot be conceived. Here, sheltered on the north, in the pure, clear air of heaven, a gentle breeze from the sea fanning their faces, and the most exquisite combinations of Nature and Art surrounding them, sat the quick-witted citizens of Athens, listening to the creations of their unrivalled dramatists. It is said, on the authority of Plato,1 that as many as thirty thousand spectators could assemble in this theatre; but modern explorers have failed-even after the ground has been pretty well cleared-to see how this could be. One-half of the number apparently would fill its area. But with even such a number, what a sight must have been the Athenian demos here assembled!

Wearied with our long ramble, we turn northwards to our hotel, and pass on our way the vast pillars of the Temple of Jupiter Olympus, still standing the remains of the great work of Hadrian, who has left so many traces of his activity everywhere in Greece as in Italy. Here, too, we pass near the bed of the Ilissus and the famous fountain of Callirhöe, rising in a ridge of rock which crosses the shallow stream. All the poetic imagery of the Phædrus vaguely fills the imagination; but the scene presents no picturesque aspects which, save for its associations, would detain the passenger for a moment. It is cheerful in the sunlight, and the Athenian washerwomen are busy on the banks, making a washing-tub, it may be, of the very fountain itself. But the meanness of the classic stream is not compensated by any glow of verdure or touch of beauty around. Classic streams are seldom what we anticipate. They break the promise to the eye more than anything which the traveller longs to see; and standing by the Ilissus, I could understand, if not sympathise with, the taunt of Cobden, who reproached a system of education which made men familiar with the windings of such a stream as this, and left them ignorant of the mighty waters of the American continent, and the many cities which have risen upon their banks. Yet surely it is a wonderful evidence of the greatness of spirit over matter that the associations of all educated men should gather around this poor streamlet because of the glory of the intellectual life which was lived upon its banks!

I devoted a separate day to the Areopagus and the Pnyx, and found a special pleasure in the lonely grandeur of their associations. On the Areopagus there is nothing to arrest the current of thought which comes flooding upon the soul as one stands on the bare limestone rock, under the shadow of the Acropolis. There was anciently

1 1 Sympos., 175 c.

an altar to Minerva Areia upon it; and Dr. Wordsworth speaks' as if he had still observed in 1836 the ruins of the church erected to Dionysius the Areopagite, to commemorate his conversion. But, save the two great stones-traceable in rude outline-upon which, it is said, the accuser and defendant stood, and some vague indications of the bench or triclinium where the judges sat, there are now no signs of human handiwork that I remember. It is one of the most singular and impressive of all the reminiscences of ancient Athens the sittings of this celebrated tribunal on this great rock in the open air; and, as if to add awe and majesty to the scene, the cave and shrine of the Eumenides were hard by. The idea of justice must have risen in a stern form before the accused as he stood facing the inflexible council; and remembered that the vengeance which pursues crime lay in wait for him as he passed from their presence.

Then

Here, in the centre of the rocky platform, stood St. Paul. He probably ascended by the steps cut in the rock, which are the usual access from the Agora, or market-place, below, where he conversed" daily with them that met him." His words, comparatively unheeded for a while, at length aroused curiosity. His tones struck on the ears of "certain philosophers of the Epicureans and of the Stoics," and they entered into disputation with him. The infection caught a wider circle, "and some said, Let us hear what this babbler will say; and other some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods; because he preached unto them Jesus and the resurrection." "they took him and brought him unto Areopagus, saying, May we know what this new doctrine whereof thou speakest is? For thou bringest certain strange things to our ears; we would know, therefore, what these things mean." may well imagine that even St. Paul felt something of the awe of the spot "as he stood in the midst of Mars' hill." "It was a scene with which the dread recollections of centuries were associated. It was a place of silent awe in the midst of the gay and frivolous city. Those who withdrew to the Areopagus from the Agora came at once into the presence of a higher power." The judges were probably there at the moment, Dionysius amongst them; while the crowd who had followed from the Agora would cluster on the steps and around the hill. The Acropolis rose above with its magnificent temples; the bronze Minerva, in its towering height, stretching its guardian spear over the city; the temple of Theseus, the national hero, below, where it still stands in almost unimpaired beauty. Everywhere around there were statues and shrines of "gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art or man's device." With what a noble simplicity-with what a reticent majesty, does he strike the keynote of his address to these accompaniments!-the evi

"Athens and Attica," p. 75.

dences of a spirit reverent in the midst of ignorance, seeking the Divine amidst all human heroisms and triumphs of human skill. "Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription: TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you."

We never weary of this magnificent speech: the noblest missionary address ever uttered. What a lofty conception pervades it!-the thought of many hearts, after which they had been blindly groping; towards which all their statues and shrines dimly pointed, obscuring and perverting it while they sought to render it. How does the Unknown take form, and life, and light, as the Apostle proceeds! All the surrounding ideas of worship the guardian wisdom of the Acropolis, the heroic grandeur of Theseus, the dread justice of the Eumenides, passing into the living fact of One who is "Lord of heaven and earth;" "who dwelleth not in temples made with hands, neither is worshipped with men's hands," but who giveth to all "life, and breath, and all things, and hath made of one blood all nations of the earth to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the bounds of their habitation." The Athenians were looking up darkly from the objects of reverential awe around them to the Unknown. They had embodied and set up for worship their own fragmentary conceptions of it, but a dim instinct told them that there was Something greater than the most exquisite creations of their own genius. The Unknown must, after all, be something higher than their highest ideal. And is it not so as revealed in the words of St. Paul? Are not his words as a light let down from heaven, not merely gathering into intelligibility our dim spiritual aspirations, but flashing upon them from above a higher truth than they had ever been able to reach a more luminous and perfect spiritual conception than poets have imagined, philosophers excogitated, or artists figured? Never does the reality of Revelation of a thought transcending the highest thought of man-appear more evident than in the language with which the Jew of Tarsus confronted on Mars' hill the philosophy, the curiosity, and the brilliant sensualism of the "men of Athens."

The Pnyx is now, as it no doubt was in the palmy days of Athens and Athenian oratory, a blank and open hill-side, stretching from the southwest of the Areopagus northwards, in the form of a semicircle, towards the Agora. The slope stretches gently downwards, terminating in a line of "huge polygonal blocks," which intercept the further descent, and the condensed pressure of which supporting the upward soil, or the pressure

of the crowds assembled within the vast circumference, has given its name to the spot. The speaker stood above in the chord of the semicircle, in the middle of which, projecting from it, is a rectangular rock, hewn from the general mass, whence he could command the vast assembly. Here, in the open air, the Athenian orator addressed the mass of Athenian citizens. He spoke with all the natural and artistic glories of Athens before him, and with the sea of Attica behind, which was barely visible as he turned his head. head. The excited demos crowding up from the Agora, the trophies of national triumph on which he looked, "the sea, the sky, the vales and mountains of his native land," all in view, helped to kindle his enthusiasm to its highest pitch, and to give to his eloquence its most moving splendour. "There must have been," says Dr. Wordsworth, " worth, "something inexpressibly solemn in the ejaculation, 'O earth and God,' uttered, in his most sublime periods, by Demosthenes in this place." place." All is now silent in the still, balmy air of spring, as I wander over the bare expanse. There are no upturned faces gleaming with excitement towards the Bema; there is no stir or hum of men from the distant Agora; scarcely a passing wayfarer is in view, and I muse for hours undisturbed amidst a scene quiet as a churchyard, with the old mountains around, the blue Ægean still dimly visible, and at my feet, thickly growing amongst the stunted herbage, the purple asphodel, in groves of which, according to classic dream, wander the shades of ancient heroes.1

But my space is rapidly filling, and I have as yet been merely speaking of the city of the past. What of Athens as it now is-its political, its social, its religious state? What of it as a place of residence for a quiet student? What of the country around-the Bay of Phalerum, by the shores of which Demosthenes chewed pebbles, that he might improve his utterance, and give nobler voice to his eloquence as he stood upon the platform of the Pnyx? or of Pentelicus, the ascent of which made one day's delightful excursion, a memorial of which I treasure dearly, and the kindly hospitality at the foot of which, offered us by an intelligent monk, I remember gratefully? or Plato's Academe and the Colonos of Sophocles, both of which have left pleasing, though pensive, memories—the former contrasting especially with any ideal that may have floated through one's mind? and, more than all, of Marathon, which I visited in such genial fellowship, as to make the day white in the retrospect of all the three weeks I spent at Athens? I must spare a few words further for this excursion.

Ah, heart! when winter chills the blood,
And frost of days lies on the hair;
When crusted are the soul and bud,
And sighs replace the gift of prayer;
When summer comes, in frolic play,
To winter on her weary day.

A little maid with smile so frank,
And brow where lies the kiss of God;
Between the leafless hedges dank

With chilly drip, and steam of sod; She came, this merry child called May, To me upon a weary day.

She seemed at first a little speck,
Within the centre of the lane;

A touch of form and tint-a fleck
Of golden sunshine-a refrain

MAY.

Of distant song-an echo gay, To me upon that weary day.

And o'er her head the branches reared

Soft mauve, and amber, with the blue;

Soft shafts where God's light hand appeared, Soft tones where leaves were bursting through.

Daisies beneath her tread-ah! gay,
To me upon that weary day.

Half child, half woman, as she grew

From out the tree- thronged, town-filled haze;

I found in her a promise true

Of loving peace for future days. Growing from haze which over-lay From eve to light, that weary day.

HUME NISBET.

66

46

44

--

'I am seized with a long-since-unwonted yearning Toward yonder grave, untroubled spirit-choir; My stammering song, as some new language learning, Wanders and wavers, like the Eolian lyre.

*

*

"What I possess, I see afar remote,

And what has vanished-that is real, I wot."

This deeper motive, and the growing influence of travellers' tales (especially since the discovery of Bermuda), together with the altered versification, distinguish the "Tempest" from the comedy which a kindred subject-matter tempts one to couple with it, the "Midsummer Night's Dream." It is obviously no less widely separated from the Tragedies and History-Plays. Those milder and more harmonious ideas of life, which grow as contemplation succeeds to action; those ideas of restoration, restitution, reconciliation, and of the communion of man with Nature; that sense of the eternal charm of infancy and early youth, which are felt to push their way amidst alien elements in the "Winter's Tale," and "Cymbeline," and the Shakespearian scenes of "Pericles," are here expressed with consummate purity. As is natural in an imaginative work, they are confronted with their opposites, but in such a manner that the evil is overcome by the good. In one case, indeed, the dramatic contrast is so forcible as to betray the superficial reader into a disproportioned estimate. Just as Portia and Shylock are contrasted in the drama of friendship, so the beneficent and mischievous agencies once combined in Puck are parted between Ariel and Caliban. And as Shylock, from sheer vividness of portraiture, is apt to

absorb undue attention, this wonderful creation of Caliban also is sometimes dwelt upon more than he deserves. I will only notice here that his ideal nature is subtly indicated by his always speaking in verse, even in the comic scenes (so that Jaques would say Good-bye to him).

In this play, then, Shakespeare is for once consciously refining upon nature. But he is true to his own great principle that

"Nature is made better by no mean, But nature makes that mean," and his sovereign alchemy consists in making manifest the familiar secrets of the heart.

Except for sinning and repenting, Miranda is more akin to us than Milton's Eve. And in Caliban there are features of the real cannibal,

caught by some divination, which, as the Archbishop says of Prince Hal's theology, "is a wonder whence" our Will "should glean it." The minor contrast between Caliban and Trinculo, mutatis mutandis, recalls Prof. Huxley's preference of the Papuan to the East Londoner.

In breaking off from an inexhaustible subject (omitting all consideration of the good Gonzalo, the subtle Antonio, Alonzo's grief, the Boatswain, and other characters), I would just point to some of those touches of nature whereby that which seems fantastic at first sight claims to be recognised and loved as human.

1. Prospero, whom all regard with awe as a necromancer, has the fond par iality of a father, and is so engrossed in the happiness of his child that he forgets not only the enemies who lie at his mercy but his present imminent danger from the plot of Caliban. When reminded of it he is overcome, less by the peril to himself than by the ingratitude of the born devil whom he has striven to redeem. Note, also, that from his past experience of the world he fails to realise the reverential chivalry of youthful love, and is over-anxious where Ferdinand is over-confident.

2. Miranda, once infected, somewhat forgets her father's precepts, and even betrays him so far as to say to Ferdinand, "He's safe for these three hours." These are the unconscious blenches at which "Jove laughs." How much more of herself and of human life and conduct she learns in that short interview than from her father's long recital, which had rapt her into vague attention!

3. Ariel (the "airy spirit" of Titania's romance), though he has no feeling except the longing to be free, yet has learned enough from Prospero slyly to "conceive" that such a little family party would rather be alone; he knows that were he human he would be touched with compassion at the punishment of Alonzo and the rest; and when the