One wonders whether the princesses of to-day (who no longer dry clothes upon the shore) amuse their leisure hours with Homer's recitals concerning their predecessors? One of them, at any rate, has chosen Corfu as a place of sojourn; the Empress of Austria, after paying many visits to the island, has now built for herself a country residence, or villino, at a distance from the town, not far from Nausicaa's stream. The house is surrounded by gardens, and from the terrace there is a magnificent view in all directions; here she enjoys the solitude which she is said to love, and the Corfiotes see only the coming and going of her yacht. I don't know why there should be something so delightful, to one mind at least, in the selection of this distant Greek island as the resting-place of a queen, who takes the long journey down the Adriatic year after year to reach her retreat. The preference is perhaps due simply to fondness for a sea-voyage, and to the fact that a yacht lying at Trieste lies practically at Vienna's door. Lovers of Corfu, however, will not be turned aside by any of these reasons; they will continue to believe that the choice is made for beauty's sake; they will extol this perfect appreciation; they will praise this modern Nausicaa; they will purchase her portrait in photographed copies. When they have one of these representations, they can note with satisfaction the accordance between its outlines and a taste in islands which is surely the best in the world.
The casino of the Empress is not the only royal residence at Corfu. About a mile from the town is the country-house called "Mon Repos," the property of the King of Greece. King George and Queen Olga, with their children, have frequently spent summers here. The mansion is ordinary as regards its architecture—it was built by one of the Lords High. The situation is altogether admirable, with a view of the harbor and town. But the especial loveliness of Mon Repos is to be found in its gardens; their foliage is tropical, with superb magnolias, palms, bananas, aloes, and orange and lemon trees. There are flowers of all kinds, with roses clambering everywhere, and blossoming vines. The royal family who rule, or rather preside over, the kingdom of the Hellenes are much respected and beloved at Corfu. The King, who was Prince William of Denmark—the brother of the Czarina of Russia and of the Princess of Wales—took the name of George when he ascended the throne in 1863. He was elected by the National Assembly. Now that he has been reigning nearly thirty years, and has a grandson as well as a son to succeed him, it is amusing to turn back to the original candidates and the votes; for it was an election (within certain limits) by the people, and all sorts of tastes were represented. Prince Alfred of England, the Duke of Edinburgh, was at the head of the list; but as it had been stipulated that no member of the reigning families of England, France, or Russia should have the crown, his name was struck off. There were votes for Prince Jerome Napoleon. There were votes for the Prince Imperial. There were even votes for "A Republic." But Greece, as she stands, is as near a republic as a country with a sovereign can be. Suffrage is universal; there is no aristocracy; there are no hereditary titles, no entailed estates; the liberty of the press is untrammelled; education is free. Everywhere the people are ardently patriotic; they are actively, and one may say almost dangerously, interested in everything that pertains to the political condition of their country. This interest is quickened by their acute intellects. I have never seen faces more sharply intelligent than those of the Greek men of to-day. I speak of men who have had some advantages in the way of education. But as all are intensely eager to obtain these advantages, and as schools are now numerous, education to a certain extent is widely diffused. The men are, as a general rule, handsome. But they are not in the least after the model of the Greek god, as he exists in art and fiction. This model has an ideal height and strength, massive shoulders, a statuesque head with closely curling hair, and an unruffled repose. The actual Greek possesses a meagre frame, thin face, with high cheek-bones, a dry, dark complexion, straight hair, small eyes, and as for repose, he has never heard of it; he is overwhelmingly,never-endingly restless.
With this enumeration my statement that he is handsome may not appear to accord. Nevertheless, he is a good-looking fellow; his spare form is often tall, the quickly turning eyes are wonderfully brilliant, the dark face is lighted by the gleam of white teeth, the gait is very graceful, the step light. The Albanian costume, which was adopted after the revolution as the national dress for the whole country, is amazing. We have all seen it in paintings and photographs, where it is merely picturesque. But when you meet it in the streets every day, when you see the wearer of it engaged in cooking his dinner, in cleaning fish, in driving a cart, in carrying a hod, or hanging out clothes on a line, then it becomes perfectly fantastic. The climax of my own impressions about it was reached, I think, a little later, at Athens, when I beheld the guards walking their beats before the King's palace, and before the simple house of the Crown Prince opposite; they are soldiers of the regular army, and they held their muskets with military precision as they marched to and fro, attired in ordinary overcoats (it happened to be a rainy day) over the puffed-out white skirts of a ballet-dancer. Robert Louis Stevenson, in one of his recent letters from the South Seas, writes that "the mind of the female missionary" (British) "tends to be constantly busied about dress; she can be taught with extreme difficulty to think any costume decent but that to which she grew accustomed on Clapham Common, and, to gratify this prejudice, the native is put to useless expense." And here it occurs to me that it is high time to explore this Clapham Common. We go as worshippers to Shakespeare's Avon; we go to the land of Scott and Burns; we know the "stripling Thames at Bablockhithe," where "the punt's rope chops round"; but to Clapham Common we make, I think, no pilgrimages, although it has as clearly marked a place in English literature as the Land of Beulah or the Slough of Despond. I fancy that Americans are not so closely tied to a fixed standard in dress as are the missionaries who excite Mr. Stevenson's wrath. A half of our population seeks its ideal in Paris, but as a whole we are easy-going. We accept the Chinese attire in our streets without demur; the lack of attire of the Sioux does not disconcert us; when abroad we admire impartially the Egyptian gown and the Cossack uniform, and we adorn ourselves liberally with the fez. But the Greek costume makes us pause; it seems a bravado in whimsicality. One can describe it in detail: one can say that it consists of a cap with a long tassel, a full white shirt, an embroidered jacket with open sleeves, a tight girdle, the white kilt or fustanella, long leggings with bright-colored garters, and, usually, shoes with turned-up toes. The enumeration, however, does not do away with the one general impression of men striding about in short white ballet petticoats.
