ChaiecuihrlancVs Travels in GreecCy Palestine^ 
from bis father.” I did not return till 
night drove me from‘the shore. The 
^•aves, raised by the evening breeze, 
broke against the beach and expired at 
my feeh; I walked for some time along 
the shore of that sea which baihed the 
tomb of Themistocles : and in all proba¬ 
bility I was at this moment the only per¬ 
son in Greece that called to mind this 
great man. 
. approach to ATHENS, 
At length arrived the great day of our 
entrance into Athens. At three in the 
morning, we were all on horsebacK, and 
proceeded in silence along the Sacred 
AVay; and never did the most devout of 
the initiated experience transports equal 
to mine. We had put on our best 
clothes for the solemn occasion ; the 
janissary had turned his turban, and, as 
an extraordinary thing, the horses had 
been rubbed down and cleaned. We 
crossed the bed of a stream called Sa- 
ranta-Pntamo, or the Forty Rivers, 
probably the Eleusinian Cephisus ; and 
saw some ruins of Christian churches, 
^ hich stand on the site of the tomb of 
that Zarcx whom Apollo hmiselt in¬ 
structed in the art of song. Oilier ruins 
indicated the monuments of Eumolpe 
'and Hippothoon. W e foond the Rhiti, 
or currents of salt water, where, during 
the feasts of Eleusis, the populace in¬ 
sulted passengers in memory ot the abuse 
with which an old wbman had once 
leaded Ceres. Proceeding thence to the 
extreme point of the cauaf of Salamis, 
'we entered the defile formed by JMount 
Fames and i\Iount-/Egaleon ; this part 
of the,Sacred Way tvas denominated the 
jSIystic, We perceived the monastery 
of “Daphne, erected on the ruins of the 
temple of Apollo, and the church oi 
which is one of the most ancient in 
Att ica. A little farther we observed 
Some remains cf ?. temple of Tenus. 
Ti^ defile tlien began to widen; we 
marie a circuit round IMount Poecile 
placed in the middle of the road as if to 
bide the scenery' beyond it, and the plain 
of Athens suddenly burst upon our 
view. 
The iirst thing that struck me was the 
citadel illumined by the rising sun. It 
was exactly opposite to me, on the other 
side of the plain, and seemed to be sup¬ 
ported by IMouiit Hyinettus, which form¬ 
ed the back ground of the picture. It 
exhibited, in a confused assemblage, the 
capitals of tlie Propylsea, the columns of 
the Parlbenon and of the temulo of 
T 
Erectheus, the embrasures of a waT 
planted with cannon, tiiC Gotliic ruins of 
the Christians, and the edifices of the 
jMussulmans, 
Tsvo small hills, the Anchesmus and 
the iNluseum, rose to the north and 
south of the Acropolis. Between these 
two hills, and at the foot of the Acro¬ 
polis, appeared Athens itself. Its flat 
roofs interspersed with minarets, cy¬ 
presses, ruins, detached columns, and 
the domes of its mosques crowned with 
the large nests of storks, produced a 
pleasingeftect in the sun^s rays. 
It is not in the first moment of a strong 
emotion that you derive most enjoymeuc 
from your feelings, I proceeded to¬ 
wards Athens with a kind of pleasure 
which deprived me of the power of re¬ 
flection ; not that I experienced any 
thing like what 1 had felt at the sight of 
Lacedtemon. Sparta and Athens have-, 
even in their ruins, retained their difler- 
ent characteristics; those of the former, 
are gloomy, grave, and solitary; those 
of the latter, pleasing, light, ami social. 
At the sight of the land of Lycurgus, 
every idea becomes serious, manly, and 
profound; the soul, fraught with new 
energies, seems to be elevated and ex¬ 
panded: before the city of Solon, you 
are enchanted, as it were, by the magic 
of genius ; you are filled with the idea 
of the perfection of man, considered as 
an intelligent and immortal being. The 
loftv sentiments of human nature as- 
•p' 
sumed, at Atiiens, a degree of elegance 
which they had not at Sparta. Among 
the Athenians, patriotism and the love of 
indepei;idence were not a blind instinct, 
but an enlightened sentiment, springing 
from that love of the beautiful in gene¬ 
ral, with which heaven had so liherally 
endowed them. In a word, as I passed 
from the ruins of Lacedeemon to the 
ruins of Athens, I felt that I should have 
liked to die with Leonidas, and to live 
with Pericles, 
We proceeded rapidly tlirough tiie 
twm first of the regions into which the 
pflain of Atliens appeared to he divideeJ, 
the waste and the cultivated region. On 
this part of the road nothing is to he 
seen of the monument of the Rhodian, 
and the tomb of the courtezan ; but you 
perceive the ruins of some churches. 
We entered the olive wood; and befoie- 
we reached the Cephisus we met witli 
tw’o tombs and an altar to Jupiter the 
Indulgent. We soon distinguished the 
bed of the Cephisus, bet%veen the trunks 
of vyhich bordqrqd it hke 
