We of course went to see the ruins of the Parthenium, built by Pericles and ornamented with the marbles of Phidias. It wuz finished about four hundred and thirty years B.C. and cost about four millions of our money. A great Bishop once said:
“This was the finest edifice on the finest site in the world, hallowed by the noblest recollections that can stimulate the human heart.”
It stands on the highest point of the Acropolis and wuz decorated by the greatest sculptor the world ever saw. It stands on the site of an older temple to Minerva. They thought a sight of that woman. It made me feel well to see 392 one of my sect so highly thought on though I did not approve of their worshippin’ her and I would never give my consent to be worshipped on a monument, not for the world I wouldn’t––no, indeed!
Robert Strong wanted to go to see the ruins of the enormous temple of Jupiter where chariot races were run and the Olympic games wuz fought that Paul speaks of so many times in his letters to the churches.
But time wuz passin’ fast away and we thought best to not linger there any longer and we went directly from there to Vienna, a longer journey than we had took lately, but Robert thought we had better not stop on the way.
Vienna is a beautiful city. I d’no as I would go so fur as the Viennesse myself and say it is the most beautiful in the world, but it stands up high amongst ’em.
The beautiful blue Danube makes a curve round it as if it wuz real choice of it and loved to hold it in its arms. I say blue Danube, but its waters are no more blue than our Jonesville creek is pink. But mebby if I wuz goin’ to sing about the creek I might call it blue or pink for poetical purposes.
We had rooms nigh to the river, the banks of which wuz terraced down to the water, and laid out in little parks, public gardens full of flowers and trees and flowering shrubs.
There are two massive stun bridges in this part of the city, and very handsome dwellin’ houses, churches, and the Swartzenburg palace. The buildings are very handsome here, more lofty and grand looking even than they are in Paris, and you know you would imagine that wuz the flower of the universe, and I needn’t mention the fact that I had to gin into it that it goes fur beyend Jonesville.
The street called the Ring Strasse, I spoze because it curves round some like a ring, is three milds long, and most two hundred feet wide. And along this broad beautiful avenue there are six rows of large chestnut trees. A track for 393 horseback riders on one side, a broad carriage driveway, two fine promenades, besides the walk.