The Argive theatre was built to hold an enormous audience. We counted sixty-six tiers of seats, in four divisions—thus differing from the description of Colonel Leake, which we had before us at the time. As he observes, there may be more seats still covered with rubbish at the bottom—indeed this, like all the rest of Argos, ought to yield a rich harvest to the antiquarian, being still almost virgin soil, and never yet ransacked with any care. From the higher seats of the theatre of Argos, which rise much steeper than those of Syracuse, there is a most enchanting prospect to the right, over a splendid rich plain, covered, when we first saw it, with the brilliant emerald-green of young vines and tobacco plants, varied with the darker hue of plane-trees and cypresses. After the wilderness through which we had passed this prospect was intensely delightful. Straight before us, and to the left, was the deep blue bay of Argolis, with the white fortifications of Nauplia crowning its picturesque Acropolis. All around us, in every other direction, was a perfect amphitheatre of lofty mountains. This bay is, for its size, the most beautiful I ever saw, and the opinion which we then formed was strengthened by a sunset view of it from the other side—from Nauplia—which was, if possible, even finer, and combined all the elements which are conceivable in a perfect landscape. Near the theatre there is a remnant of Cyclopean building, apparently the angle of a wall, made of huge uncut blocks, like those at Tiryns. There are said to be some similar substructures on the Larissa, which is, however, itself a mediæval ruin, and therefore, to us, of slight interest. All the children about brought us coins, of every possible date and description, but were themselves more interesting than their coins. For here, in southern Greece, in a very hot climate, in a level plain, every second child is fair, with blue eyes, and looks like a transplanted northern, and not like the offspring of a southern race. After the deep brown Italian children, which strike the traveller by their southernness all the way from Venice to Reggio, nothing is more curious than these fairer children, under a sunnier and hotter sky; and it reminds the student at once how, even in Homer, yellow hair and a fair complexion is noted as belonging to the King of Sparta. This type seems to me common wherever there has not arisen a mixed population, such as that of Athens or Syra, and where the inhabitants appear to live as they have done for centuries. Fallmerayer’s cleverness and undoubted learning persuaded many people, and led many more to suspect, that the old Greek race was completely gone, and that the present people were a mixture of Turks, Albanians, and Slavs. To this many answers suggest themselves,—to me, above all things, the strange and accurate resemblances in character between ancient and modern Greeks,—resemblances which permeate all their life and habits.