I see, seated about fifty feet away from it, the Tennessee negro I described at Constantinople, Frank Parish. A Scotchwoman is seated beside him, and seems to be proud of him as a beaux. She is a lady’s maid that came here yesterday from the Sublime Porte with her mistress and Frank. The Scotch lady insisted on Frank taking a slide with the young men, but for Frank it was no joke, as he was an extraordinary large man. But Frank, being as full of conspicuousness as any other man, it only required a little coaxing to get him started; at last he seated himself for a slide, but he did not much like to let go lest there would be a crash up. He anchored himself to the top and hesitated some, paused and looked like a fool. An Irish servant that was with the same family as the Scotchwoman, encouraged Frank, by saying, “be a marn,” Frank said, “if I am not a man there is none about here,” just to fill up the pause of suspense; but while Frank was looking and studying, the Irishman loosened his hands, and he went down like a colossus; seeing that he had broke no bones, he got up with a smile and felt himself all over to see if he was safe and sound. The Irishman said, “how did it feel my marn?” Frank pronounced it the most pleasant sensation he ever experienced. “Then ye never dreamed that ye were married,” said the Irishman. Frank said he had, but had forgot it. The Scotchwoman wished to know if that was a pleasant dream; the Irishman said, “it was the most pleasant dream a marn could have, and the most unpleasant was to find it a lie.”
Starting from the “female substitute for barrenness,” we met a man with a telescope, and we all wanted to take a fair view of Athens. The Irishman borrowed it from the man and took the first squint. He pointed to a fine house towards the Kings palace, and there he looked alone. When I obtained it I looked there too, and saw a beautiful Grecian maid combing her long black hair; gazing at her until she finished, I got a most ungentlemanly view of a lady, from which, in all due respect to her, I had to refrain, and took another direction in search of fair views. We went down the hill, and as we moved along the Grecian ladies’ and gentlemen’s walks, I, though mixed up in a crowd of different people, was determined to hear Frank talk to this Scotchwoman. He was telling her of his business, which was still going on in Nashville, Tennessee, and of how many improvements he intended to make in his bath house and barber shop, when he returned, with things that he had already bought in Paris. She believed it all, and Frank was in his glory. I noticed their actions particularly, and was upon the eve of hearing their loveliest words, when she stopped as if it was a great sacrifice to her to give up his company. They lingered some time, as they would fain go on, but as she was going to her mistress’ hotel, and Frank to his, they must part. Frank was well versed for the occasion, in Byron. He took her by the hand and looked her in the face affectionately, and said with emotion,
“Maid of Athens, ere we part,
Give, oh give me back my heart.”
As Frank was going to my hotel I thought it well to make his acquaintance; he said he saw me at Constantinople, but as I was an American, he did not deem it necessary to make my acquaintance, as I knew that he was a mere barber from Tennessee. He also told me he had been married several times, and was now engaged at home. The day after this, I was outside of Athens at what is called “the amusement grounds” of Athens, for the people repair there every evening to hear the national band play. This band comes from Bavaria, where Greece got her present king. King Otho is the son of the King of Bavaria. Here the king rides out every evening, and here Frank took another liberty with royalty. As the King and his wife rode up to the band, his horses stopped just at Frank’s elbow, and Frank walked to the carriage and offered his red hand to the king, and it was, through courtesy, accepted. Athens is to-day a small town, and the King lives here. The whole population of Greece is not quite a million. Our slaves would make four kingdoms as powerful in population as Greece. Oh, when will we be the “Freest government in the world?” We looked from the Acropolis down upon a village, but in old times we looked upon a town. “Ah! Greece, they love thee least who owe thee most.” The women are still pretty, and what is like a Grecian nose? Come, pilgrim, and see Athens in the days when it is not even a shadow of its former greatness, and ask yourself if power constitutes stability. Yes, go upon the Acropolis and gaze downward to the top of Mars’ hill, and look at the council stand of St. Paul; raise your eyes and turn them eastward, and if your imagination is as good as your sight, you will see the sea that in old times was covered over with the fleet of Alexander the Great. Further off from the shore, in the year of our Lord 1191, Richard I. of England, the lion-hearted, crusaded along with men, women, children, cattle and dogs, to put down infidelity on the sacred plains of Palestine, where Abraham, Isaac and Jacob walked as types of moral light for the salvation of mankind. Now, as you stand there on the Acropolis, as Cecrops himself has stood, be not disgusted at what you see below, of the so much written of towns, for though now you see Athens, it is true you do not see herself, but “Athens a sepulchre.”
BEAUTIFUL VENICE.
On a little slip of land between the gulf of Lepante and Athens, we come to Corinthe; we know it not, save a few immense pillars of marble pinnacling the site of Corinthe. Artists from all parts of the world come here and sit down at their base to sketch their dimensions; then away they go, with no regretful feelings for the great founders of arts stupendous, who, perhaps, three thousand years ago, were known far and near as men of the best faculties. The greatest gem that Rome ever put in its crown, was the one that was made by imagination of the Greecian dictator when listening to Cicero, he said, “Rome has robbed us of all we possess, but our eloquence, and it seems as if that is going towards Rome.” But Rome has since fallen as low as Athens!
In the Ionian sea, between Sicily and Greece, are the Ionian islands, seven in number, and Corfu is the principal one; they now all belong to the English. Out further the East Indias, where the queen of England has 150,000,000 subjects; on the coast of Africa, at the cape of Good Hope, the West Indias, and the Canadas, is her sceptral wand waving its ambrosial food of civilization. “The sun never sets on the Queen’s domain.”