1 888] Athens Revisited 7 



in its results to-day ! We had interests, too, in a long promised visit 

 to her relations the Noels in Eubaea, and I was curious to see the 

 changes which should have come about in the thirty years which had 

 elapsed since I first knew Athens as a member of the English Legation 

 in the days of King Otho. 



" 20th Nov. — We arrived by night at the Piraeus and landed in the 

 early morning, Frank Noel having come from Achmetaga to meet us. 

 It is thirty years almost to a month since I first drove up the road to 

 Athens, and I find little change. The suburbs have extended some- 

 what, and the olive groves have shrunk, and the hills are even barer 

 than before, but nothing marks the progress of the age unless it be the 

 overthrow of the fine old Venetian walls of the Acropolis. I regret 

 these as much as if they had pulled down the Parthenon itself. I 

 wandered in the town for a couple of hours, looking for houses I used 

 to frequent, and for friends I used to know, but all of these last were 

 gone. Our diplomatic set at Athens in 1859 was certainly a dis- 

 tinguished one. At the Russian Legation we had Ozeroff for Minister 

 with Staal for First Secretary, now Ambassador in London, and Neli- 

 doff for attache, now Ambassador at Constantinople. Haymerle, after- 

 wards Prime Minister at Vienna, was Austrian Secretary. At our own 

 Legation we had that good Irishman, Sir Thomas Wyse, with William 

 Eliot, afterwards Lord St. Germans, for First Secretary. Drummond, 

 Digby, and myself attaches. I was the youngest of all the Corps 

 diplomatique, only eighteen years old, and a favourite on account of my 

 youth. The Dufferins were spending the winter there of '59-60, he 

 little over thirty, his mother, with whom he had been travelling in 

 Egypt, the most delightful of women. We used all to ride out, a 

 merry party, twice a week, following a paper chase, of which I was 

 generally the leader on an old white horse, which, in memory of 

 Shelley's lines, I called Apocalypse." x 



We used to gallop through the olive groves, armed with revolvers, 

 as robbers were still common in the mountains round, just as described 

 by Edmond About in his " Roi des Montagnes " and " La Grece Con- 

 temporaine," while one met retired bandit chiefs in the best Athens 

 society. King Otho wore the Albanian fustanelle, and that and the 

 costume of the Islands, with its immense balloon-like calico nether gar- 

 ments and red cap, were the common dress of the young Greek bloods. 

 The king's footmen are the only wearers of the fustanelle to-day. 



On the 22nd we paid our visit to Achmetaga, for me a romantic 

 spot, for I had spent some weeks in Eubaea in i860 in merry company 



1 Next came Anarchy, he rode 

 On a white horse splashed with blood; 

 He was pale even to the lips, 

 Like Death in the Apocalypse. 



