THE ROYAL PALACE, ATHENS 



not only to feel but actually to see beyond 

 Lycabettus the plain of Marathon and the 

 ^Egean Sea ; the bareness of the mountains 

 explained the city's epithet Violet-crowned^ for 

 the soft mauves of morning reflected from their 

 glowing surface become at midday an intensity 

 of violet seen nowhere else, and at stormy eve a 

 pomp of the deepest, the most royal purple. 

 Greece for the visitor is more beautiful and 

 more interesting than any other country ; over 

 the whole of it lies the subtle charm of associa- 

 tion. " Not only the poet and the antiquary, 

 but even the average person has an undefined 

 love for the names of places he learned about 

 at school, the names which resound through 

 all literature and are the fete names of all the 

 arts." 



From the tree-shaded garden-alleys of the 

 Royal Palace there are charming glimpses of the 

 Acropolis, the Propylaea, the Erechtheum, the 

 Parthenon crowning the heights, the broken 

 columns of the temple of Olympian Zeus. An 

 ancient canal flows among the grassy paths ; 

 there is an antique mosaic, and an antique 

 marble pillar with an inscription saying that 

 140 



