The ruins at Eleusis are disappointing to the ordinary traveler, though interesting to the archæologist. They have none of the pathetic romance which, notwithstanding the scoldings of many vulgar persons set forth in a certain visitors’ book, broods gently over poetic Olympia. Above the village is a vast confusion of broken columns, defaced capitals, bits of wall, bits of pavement, marble steps, fallen medallions, vaults, propylæa, substructures, scraps of architraves carved with inscriptions, and subterranean store-rooms. In the pavement of the processional way, by which the chariots came up to the Temple of Demeter, the chief glory and shrine of Eleusis, are the deep ruts made by the chariot-wheels. The remnants of the hall of the initiated bears witness to the long desire of poor human beings in all ages to find that peace which passeth our understanding. Of beauty there is little or none. Nevertheless, even now, it is not possible in the midst of this tragic _débâcle_ to remain wholly unmoved. Indeed, the very completeness of the disaster that time and humanity have wrought here creates emotion when one remembers that here great men came, such men as Cicero, Sophocles, and Plato; that here they worshiped and adored under cover of the darkness of night; that here, seeking, they found, as has been recorded, peace and hope to sustain them when, the august festival over, they took their way back into the ordinary world along the shores of sea and lake. Eleusis is no longer beautiful. It is a home of devastation. It is no longer mysterious. A successful man is making a fortune out of soap there. But it is a place one cannot easily forget. And just above the ruins there is a small museum which contains several very interesting things, and one thing that is superb. This last is the enormous and noble upper part of the statue of a woman wearing ear-rings. I do not know its history, though some one assured me that it was a caryatid. It was dug up among the ruins, and the color of it is akin to that of the earth. The roughly undulating hair is parted in the middle of a majestic, goddess-like head. The features are pure and grand; but the two things that most struck me, as I looked at this great work of art, were the expression of the face and the deep bosom, as of the earth-mother and all her fruitfulness. In few Greek statues have I seen such majesty and power, combined with such intensity, as this nameless woman shows forth. There is indeed almost a suggestion of underlying fierceness in the face, but it is the fierceness that may sometimes leap up in an imperial nature. Are there not royal angers which flame out of the pure furnaces of love? This noble woman seems to me to be the present glory of Eleusis.