From the Lakes of Killarney to the Golden Horn

by Henry M. Field

Athens, November 9th.

If the best proof of our fondness for a place be that we leave it with regret, few cities will stand higher in our remembrance than Naples, from which we turned away with many a lingering look, as we waved our adieus to our friends, who answered us from the deck of the Franklin. Never did the bay look more beautiful than that Monday afternoon, as we sailed away by Capri and Sorrento, and Amalfi and the Bay of Salerno. The sea was calm, the sky was fair. The coast, with its rocky headlands and deeply indented bays, was in full sight, while behind rose the Apennines. The friends were with us who were to be our companions in the East, adding to our animation by their own, as we sat upon the deck till the evening drew on. As the sun went down, it cast such a light over the sea, that the ship seemed to be swimming in glory, as we floated along the beautiful Italian shores. A little before morning we passed through the Straits of Messina, between Scylla and Charybdis, leaving Mount Etna on our right, and then for an hour or two stood off the coast of Calabria, till we ran out of sight of land, into the open sea of the Mediterranean.

Wednesday found us among the Ionian islands, and we soon came in sight of the Morea, a part of the mainland of Greece. We had been told to watch, as we approached Athens, for sunset on the Parthenon; but it was not till long after dark that we entered the harbor of the Piræus, and saw the lights on the shore, and our first experience was anything but romantic. At ten o'clock we were cast ashore, in darkness and in rain; so that instead of feeling any inspiration, we felt only that we were very wet and very cold. While the commissionaire went to call a carriage, we waited for a few moments in a café, which was filled with Greek soldiers who were drinking and smoking, and looked more like brigands than the lawful defenders of life and property. Such was our introduction to the classic soil of Greece. But the scene was certainly picturesque enough to satisfy our young spirits (for I have two such now in charge), who are always looking out for adventures. Soon the carriage came, and splashing through the mud, we drove to Athens, and at midnight found a most welcome rest in our hotel.

But sunrise clears away the darkness, and we look out of our balcony on a pleasant prospect. We are in the Hotel Grande Bretagne, facing the principal square, and adjoining the Royal Palace, in front of which the band comes to play under the King's windows every day. Before us rises a rocky hill, which we know at once to be the Acropolis, as it is strown with ruins, and crowned with the columns of a great temple, which can be no other than the Parthenon.

Turning around the horizon, the view is less attractive. The hills are bleak and bare, masses of rock covered with a scanty vegetation. This desolate appearance is the result of centuries of neglect; for in ancient times (if I have read aright), the plain of Athens was a paradise of fertility, and where not laid out in gardens, was dense with foliage. Stately trees stood in many a grove besides that of the Academy, while the mountains around "waved like Lebanon." But nature seems to have dwindled with man, and centuries of misrule, while they have crushed the people, have stripped even the mountains of their forests.

But with all the desolateness around it, Athens is to the scholar one of the most interesting cities in the world. Its very ruins are eloquent, as they speak of the past. We have been here six days, and have been riding about continually, seeking out ancient sites, exploring temples and ruins, and find the charm and the fascination increasing to the last.

The Parthenon has disappointed me, not in the beauty of its design, which is as nearly perfect as anything ever wrought by the hand of man, but in the state of its preservation, which is much less perfect than that of the temples at Pæstum. Time and the elements have wrought upon its marble front; but these alone would not have made it the ruin that it is, but for the havoc of war: for so massive was its structure that it might have lasted for ages. Indeed, it was preserved nearly intact till about two centuries ago. But the Acropolis, owing to the advantages of its site (a rocky eminence, rising up in the midst of the city, like the Castle of Edinburgh), had often been turned into a fortress, and sustained many sieges. In 1687 it was held by the Turks, and the Parthenon was used as a powder magazine, which was exploded by a bomb from the Venetian camp on an opposite hill, and thus was fatally shattered the great edifice that had stood from the age of Pericles. Many columns were blown down, making a huge rent on both sides. It is sad to see these great blocks of Pentelican marble, that had been so perfectly fashioned and chiselled, now strown over the summit of the hill.

And then, to complete the destruction, at the beginning of this century, came a British nobleman, Lord Elgin, and having obtained a firman from the Turkish Government, proceeded deliberately to put up his scaffolding and take down the friezes of Phidias, and carried off a ship-load of them to London, where the Elgin Marbles now form the chief ornament of the British Museum. The English spoilers have indeed allowed some plaster casts to be taken, and brought back here—faint reminders of the glorious originals. With these and such other fragments as they have been able to gather, the Greeks have formed a small museum of their own on the Acropolis. In those which preserve any degree of entireness, as in the more perfect ones in London, one perceives the matchless grace of ancient Greek sculpture. There are long processions of soldiers mounted on horses, and priests leading their victims to the sacrifice. In these every figure is different, yet all are full of majesty and grace. What a power even in the horses, as they sweep along in the endless procession; and what a freedom in their riders. The whole seems to march before us.

But many of the fragments that have been collected are so broken that we cannot make anything out of them. We know from history that there were on the Acropolis five hundred statues (besides those in the Parthenon), scattered over the hill. Of these but little remains—here an arm, or a leg, or a headless trunk, which would need a genius like that of the ancient sculptor himself to restore it to any degree of completeness. It is said of Cuvier that such was his knowledge of comparative anatomy, that from the smallest fragment of bone he could reconstruct the frame of a mastodon, or of any extinct animal. So perhaps out of these remains of ancient art, a Thorwaldsen (who had more of the genius of the ancient Greeks than any other modern sculptor,) might reconstruct the friezes and sculptures of the Parthenon.

But perhaps it is better that they remain as they are—fragments of a mighty ruin, suggestions of a beauty and grace now lost to the world; and which no man is worthy to restore.