A DAY AT ATHENS. 497 



and there the laboratory furnace glowed. And in 

 that college two foreign students were received, and 

 went forth learned in its lore. The first created a 

 nation in the Egyptian style ; the second created a 

 system of ideas ; and, strange to say, on Egyptian soil 

 the two were reunited : the philosophy of Moses was 

 joined in Alexandria to the philosophy of Plato, not 

 only by the Jews, but also by the Christians ; not only 

 in Philo Judaeus, but also in the Gospel of St John. 



Over the bright blue waters, under the soft and 

 tender sky, with the purple sails outspread and roses 

 twining round the roast, with lute and flute resounding 

 from the prow, and red wine poured upon the sea, and 

 thanksgiving to the gods, we enter the Piraeus, and 

 salute with our flag the temple on the hill. Vessels 

 sweep past us, outward bound, laden with statues and 

 paintings, for such are the manufactures of Athens, 

 where the milestones are masterpieces, and the street- 

 walkers poets and philosophers. Imagine the trans- 

 ports of the young provincial who went to Athens to 

 commence a career of ambition, to make himself a 

 name. What raptures he must have felt as he passed 

 through that City of the Violet Crown with Homer in 

 his bosom, and hopes of another United Greece within 

 his heart. What a banquet of delights, what varied 

 treasures of the mind were spread before him 

 there. He listened first to a speech of Pericles on 

 political affairs, and then to a lecture by Anaxagoras. 

 He was taken to the studio of Phidias and of Poly- 

 gnotus : he went to a theatre built of Persian masts to 

 see a new tragedy by Sophocles or Euripides, and 

 finished the evening at Aspasia's establishment, with 

 odes of Sappho, and ballads of Anacreon, and sweet- 

 eyed musicians, and intellectual heterse. So great are 

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