30 
MY TRIP TO GREECE AND THE GOLDEN 
HORN. 
(ILLUSTRATED BY THE LANTERN). 
By THOMAS PRESTON. February 27th, 1906. 
For over thirty-two years our Club has discussed subjects 
of interest in Art, Science, Literature and Travel, but has not 
taken up much time with the “ mingled beauties of exulting 
Greece,” nor of the historic sites in the lands and islands still 
further east. 
To-night we shall take our way towards the dawn and the 
rising of the sun, to holy, haunted ground. Dr. Johnson said 
the grand object of all travelling was to see the shores of the 
Mediterranean. Happy those who can compass this, and 
happier still if Homer’s enchanting genius is over them. 
“ Before I begin to write,’’ says a famous author, “ I always 
read a little of Homer, for I love to ight my lamp at the sun.” 
The intelligent efforts of explorers and savants has caused a 
remodelling of old ideas. Much that was once treated as 
Mythology is now recognised as History. We reverently 
sat on the archaic stone throne of Minos, a fabled Cretan king, 
and walked in the labyrinth which Daedalus built for him at 
Cnossus. We also saw the weapons and jewellery from Troy 
which had been handled by Homer’s heroes and heroines 1200 
years before Christ. 
The earliest Greeks known were located at Sicyon 2000 
years B.C., and from them descended the Dorians, Zolians, 
Achaians and Ionians, names familiar in connection with 
the Arts. 
To Cicero the whole land of Greece was one vast shrine 
of hallowed memories. Athens has been well called “ the 
eye of Greece, mother of arts and eloquence,’ for here 
was treasured the artistic wealth of the age of Pericles. 
In that fifth century B.C., Ruskin says, the principles of 
beauty discovered by the Greeks were specially cultivated and 
applied in relation to the splendour of their temple worship, 
and to their veneration of the spirit of heroism, which the 
later Goths have in their conceited wisdom termed disdainfully 
mythology. The symbolic figures of mythology represent 
general truths and abstract ideas, 
— 
