"From Constantinople I went to Smyrna, and thence into Greece. Here I am now, at last, in the city of Athens, the glorious home not only of the Drama, but also of so much else that has passed into the life of mankind. Alas, how changed! With all the power of imagination which I can conjure up, I am hardly able to convince myself that this was the once proud city of Pericles, Plato, Æschylus, Demosthenes, and the other men whose names have sounded so grand in the mouths of posterity. Looking on the tumbled temples and desolate walls, I have exclaimed with Byron,-- 'Ancient of days! august Athena, where, Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul? Gone,--glimmering through the dream of things that were. First in the race that led to Glory's goal,-- They're sought in vain, and o'er each mouldering tower, Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power.'" A personal adventure, also, that befell him at Athens, must not be omitted. One beautiful afternoon, he had been inspecting the Parthenon and what remained of its sculptured ornaments. Near where he stood, a heap of skulls lay on the ground, skulls of some of the victims of the last revolution, who had fallen in a battle of the Greeks and Turks. His attention was drawn to the phrenological developments of several of these skulls. Chancing at that moment to look down towards the temple of Theseus, he saw, only a short distance from him, a man glide from behind a column and walk away. The man was clad in the costume of an Albanian, one of the most picturesque costumes in the world, and looked as if he had freshly stepped out of a painting,--so beautiful was the combination of symmetry in his form, grace in his motion, and beauty in his dress. Perfectly fascinated, Forrest hastened forward and addressed the stranger in English, in French, in Spanish; but vain was every attempt to make himself understood. Just then Hill, the American missionary for many years at Athens, came along. Forrest accosted him with the inquiry, "Do you know who that man is yonder?" and, as much to his amazement as to his delight, received the answer, "Why, do you not know him? That is the son of Marco Bozzaris!" The lines of his friend Halleck,-- "And she, the mother of thy boys. Will, by her pilgrim-circled hearth, Talk of thy doom without a sigh; For thou art Freedom's now, and Fame's; One of the few, the immortal names That were not born to die,"-- these lines, and his own parting scene with their author in New York harbor, flashed into his mind, and he felt as if this incident alone were enough to repay him for his whole journey. On his return once more to Paris, in a letter to his friend Leggett he sketches in epitome the ground he has been over. An extract follows: