But Athens is rapidly becoming a great and rich city. It already numbers 110,000, without counting the Peiræus; accordingly, except in digging foundations for new houses, it is not possible to find room for any serious excavations. House rent is enormously high, and building is so urgent that the ordinary mason receives eight to ten francs per day. This rapid increase ought to be followed by an equal increase in the wealth of the surrounding country, where all the little proprietors ought to turn their land into market-gardens. I found that either they could not, or (as I was told) they would not, keep pace with the increased wants of the city. They are content with a little, and allow the city to be supplied—badly and at great cost—from Salonica, Syra, Constantinople, and the islands, while meat comes in tons from America. How different is the country round Paris and London! But this is a digression into vulgar matters, when I had merely intended to inform the reader what intellectual novelties he would find in revisiting Athens. For nothing is more slavish in modern travel than the inability the student feels, for want of time in long journeys, or want of control over his conveyance, to stop and examine something which strikes him beside his path. And that is the main reason why Oriental—and as yet Greek—travelling is the best and most instructive of all. You can stop your pony or mule, you can turn aside from the track which is called your road, you are not compelled to catch a train or a steamer at a fixed moment. When roads and rails have been brought into Greece, hundreds of people will go to see its beauty and its monuments, and will congratulate themselves that the country is at last accessible. But the real charm will be gone. There will be no more riding at dawn through orchards of oranges and lemons, with the rich fruit lying on the ground, and the nightingales, that will not end their exuberant melody, still outsinging from the deep-green gloom the sounds of opening day. There will be no more watching the glowing east cross the silver-gray glitter of dewy meadows; no more wandering along grassy slopes, where the scarlet anemones, all drenched with the dews of night, are striving to raise their drooping heads and open their splendid eyes to meet the rising sun. There will be no more watching the serpent and the tortoise, the eagle and the vulture, and all the living things whose ways and habits animate the sunny solitudes of the south. The Greek people now talk of going to Europe, and coming from Europe, justly too, for Greece is still, as it always was, part of the East. But the day is coming when enlightened politicians, like Mr. Tricoupi, will insist on introducing through all the remotest glens the civilization of Europe, with all its benefits forsooth, but with all its shocking ugliness, its stupid hurry, and its slavish uniformity.