The tourist who visits Greece to-day finds much to admire in the modern city which ancient Athens wears now like a jewel on her withered breast. It is a bright, attractive place. When I revisited it a few years ago, it seemed to me by contrast with the Orient a miniature Paris. Yet this is all of very recent growth. Half a century ago the devastation wrought here by the Turks had left the city desolate. Hardly a house in the whole town was habitable. But now we find a city of one hundred and thirty thousand people, with handsome residences, public squares, clean streets, and several public buildings that would adorn any capital in the world.
THE BYZANTINE CHURCH.
One of the finest private residences in Athens is the home of the late Doctor Schliemann, the world-renowned explorer of the plain of Troy and other sites of Greek antiquity. It is constructed of pure Pentelic marble. Around its roof beautiful groups of statuary gleam white against the blue of the Athenian sky. Anywhere else this style of decoration would perhaps seem out of place; not so in Athens. It simply serves as a reminder of the fact that once the wealth of art here was so great that half the galleries of the world are filled to-day with the fragments of it that remain. So many statues once existed here, that an Athenian wit declared that it was easier to find a god in Athens than a man!
RESIDENCE OF DOCTOR SCHLIEMANN.
