“Behold me seated à la Turque close to a party of Moslem gentlemen who alternately smoke and say their prayers all day long. We are steaming up through the lovely “Isles of Greece,” having left Rhodes this morning and Cos an hour ago. As we pass each wild cape and green shore I take up a certain opera glass with ‘H. S.’ on the top of the box, and wish very much I could see through it the dear, kind eyes that used it once. They would be pleasanter to see than all these scenes, glorious as they are. The sun is going down into the calm blue sea and throwing purple lights already on the countless islands through which the vessel winds its way. White sea-gulls follow us and beautiful little quaint-sailed boats appear every now and then round the islands. The peculiar beauty of this famous passage is derived, however, from the bold and varied outline of the islands and adjoining coast of Asia Minor. From little rocks not larger than the ship itself, up to large provinces with extensive towns like Cos, there is an endless variety and boldness of form. Ireland’s Eye magnified to twice the height, is, I should say, the commonest type. In some almost inaccessible cliffs one sees hermitages; in others convents. I shall post this at Smyrna.”
As the Impératrice stopped two or three days in the magnificent harbour of Smyrna, I had good opportunity to land and make my way to the scene of Polycarp’s Martyrdom amid the colossal cypresses which outdo all those of Italy except the quincentenarians in the Giusti garden in Verona. It was Easter, and a ridiculous incident occurred on the Saturday. I was busy writing in the cabin of the Impératrice at mid-day, when, subito! there were explosions in our vessel and in a hundred other vessels in the harbour, again and again and again, as if a battle of Trafalgar were going on all round! I rushed on deck and found the steward standing calm and cheerful amid the terrific noise and smoke, “For God’s sake what has happened?” I cried breathless. “Nothing, Signora, nothing! It is the Royal Salute all the ships are firing, of 21 guns.”
“In honour of whom?” I asked, somewhat less alarmed.
“Iddio, Signora! Gesù Cristo, sicuro! È il momento della Resurrezione, si sà.”
“O, no!” I said, “Not on Saturday. It was on Sunday, you know!”
“Che, che! Dicono forse cosi i Protestanti! Sappiamo noi altri, che era il Sabato.”
I never got to the bottom of this mystery, but can testify that at Smyrna in 1858 there were many scores of these Royal Salutes (!) on Holy Saturday at noon in honour of the Resurrection.
It was one of the brightest hours of my happy life, that on which I stood on the deck of our ship at sunrise and passed under “Sunium’s marble steep” and knew that I was approaching Athens. As we steamed up the gulf, the red clouds flamed over Parnes and Hymettus and lighted up the hills of Peloponnesus. The bright blue waves were dancing under our prow, and I could see over them far away the “rocky brow which looks o’er sea-born Salamis,” where Xerxes sat on his silver-footed throne on such a morn as this. Above, to our right, over the olive woods with the rising sun behind it, like a crowned hill was the Acropolis of Athens and the Parthenon upon it.
Very soon I had landed at the Piræus and had engaged a carriage (there was no railway then) to take me to Athens. The drive was enchanting, between olive groves and vineyards, and with the Temple of Theseus and the buildings on the Acropolis coming into view as I approached Athens, till I was beside myself with delight and excitement. The first thing to do was to drive to the private house of the banker to whom I was recommended, to arouse the poor old gentleman (nothing loath apparently to do business even at seven o’clock) to draw fifty sovereigns, and then to go to the French Hotel, choose a room with a fine view of the Parthenon, and to say to the master: “Send me the very best déjeuner you can provide and a bottle of Samian wine, and let this letter be taken to Mr. Finlay.” That breakfast, with that view, was a feast of the gods after my many abstinencies, though I nearly “dashed down the cup of Samian wine,” not in patriotic despair for Greece, but because it was so abominably bad that no poetry could have been made out of it by Anacreon himself. Hardly had I finished my meal, when Mr. Finlay appeared at my door, having hurried with infinite kindness to welcome me, and do honour to the introduction of his cousin, my dear sister-in-law. “I put myself,” said he, “at your orders for the day. We will go wherever you please.”
It would be unfair to inflict on the reader a detailed account of all I saw at Athens under the admirable guidance of Mr. Finlay during a week of intensest enjoyment. Mr. Finlay (it can scarcely yet be forgotten) went out to Greece a few weeks or months before Byron and fought with him and after him, through the War of Independence. After this, having married a beautiful Armenian lady, he bought much land in Eubœa, built himself a handsome house in Athens and lived there for the rest of his life, writing his great History (in five volumes) of Greece under Foreign Domination; making a magnificent collection of coins; and acting for many years as the Times correspondent at Athens. He was not only a highly erudite archæologist, but an enthusiast for the land of his adoption and all its triumphs of art; in short, the best of all possible ciceroni. I was fortunately not wholly unprepared to profit by his learned expositions and delicate observation on the architecture of the glorious ruins, for I had made copies of prints of all at Athens and elsewhere in Greece with ground-plans and restorations and notes of everything I could learn about them, many years before when I was wont to amuse myself with drawing, while my mother read to me. I found that I knew beforehand nearly exactly what remained of the Parthenon and the Erechtheum and the Temple of Victory, the Propylæum on the Acropolis and the Theseium below; and it was of intensest interest to me to learn, under Mr. Finlay’s guidance, precisely where the Elgin Marbles had stood, and to note the extraordinary fact, on which he insisted much,—that there is not a single straight line in the whole Parthenon. Everything, down to single stones in the entablatures and friezes, is curved, in some cases, he felt assured, after they had been placed in situ. The extreme entasis of the columns and the great pyramidal inclination of the whole building, were most noticeable when attention was once drawn to them. As we approached the majestic ruins of Adrian’s Temple of Jupiter on the plains below, (that enormous temple which had double rows of columns surrounding it and quadruple rows in front and back, of ten columns each) I exclaimed “Why! there ought to be three columns standing at that far angle!” “Quite true,” said Mr. Finlay, “one of them fell just six weeks ago.”