Of the two museums on the Acropolis, the principal one requires little comment and is very easily seen and appreciated. In an ante-room are the archaic figures of which I have already spoken, with the remains taken from about the Parthenon, together with casts of the Elgin marbles, and many small and beautiful reliefs, apparently belonging to votive monuments. There are also two figures of young men, with the heads and feet lost, which are of peculiarly beautiful Parian marble, and of very fine workmanship. But the visitor is very likely to pass by the little Turkish house, which is well worth a visit, for here are the cypress plugs from the pillars of the Parthenon or Propylæa; here are also splendid specimens of archaic vases, such as are very hard indeed to find in any other collection. The large jars from Melos which are here to be seen have the most striking resemblance in their decoration to the fragment of a similar vessel, with a row of armed figures round it, which was found at Mycenæ, and is now in the Ministry of Public Instruction. Lastly, there stands in the window a very delicately worked little Satyr, as the pointed ears and tail show, but of voluptuous form—rather of the hermaphrodite type: there is hardly a better preserved statuette than this anywhere at Athens. It seemed a pity that such a gem should be hidden away in so obscure a place; and I hope that by this time it has been brought into the larger and official museum. I will venture to conclude this chapter with a curious comparison. It was my good fortune, a few months after I had seen the Acropolis, to visit a rock in Ireland, which, to my great surprise, bore many curious analogies to it—I mean the rock of Cashel. Both were strongholds of religion—honored and hallowed above all other places in their respective countries—both were covered with buildings of various dates, each representing peculiar ages and styles in art. And as the Greeks, I suppose for effect’s sake, have varied the posture of their temples, so that the sun illumines them at different moments, the old Irish have varied the orientation of their churches that the sun might rise directly over against the east window on the anniversary of the patron saint. There is at Cashel the great Cathedral—in loftiness and grandeur the Parthenon of the place; there is the smaller and more beautiful Cormac’s Chapel, the holiest of all, like the Erechtheum at Athens. Again, the great sanctuary upon the Rock of Cashel was surrounded by a cluster of abbeys about its base, which were founded there by pious men on account of the greatness and holiness of the archiepiscopal seat. Of these, one remains, like the Theseum at Athens, eclipsed by the splendor of the Acropolis.