"_Buon giorno, signora! Vi è veramente una bella città! Mà, dov' è la Fenice?_" Such was the morning salutation of the Venetian captain in command of the Austrian Loyd steamer which had conveyed us up the Gulf of Corinth, as he pointed derisively to a collection of huts about a stone's throw from the shore, and wondered what could induce any one, voluntarily, to abandon his "sea Cybele" for such as these! So few were they in number, and so small in size, that they had hitherto eluded our notice; nevertheless, they constituted, insignificant as they appeared, the town of Lutraki. The captain's interruption, awakening us from a dream of "Gods and god-like men," was as disagreeable as all such interruptions must be, alike indicating ignorance, and that want of sympathy, which is its natural result. But to the English traveller, who now scarcely dares to hope to find a spot left on Europe where he may look on Nature, unseared by cockneyfied sights and sounds, it ought not to form a very serious subject for complaint. To such an one, sick of Italian cities, where his countrymen assemble but to parade their _ennui_ and their vices, as of German steamboats, on the decks of which they listlessly throng, dividing their glances pretty equally between castles and cutlets--a rock and a _ragout_--how invigorating is the first sight of Greece, in all its primitive and majestically tranquil simplicity! And what a strangely felicitous epithet does that seem of "voiceless" bestowed by Byron on those shores where nothing is heard, save occasionally the plaintive cry of a sea-gull, and the very gentlest murmur from the waves. There, may be observed in perfection the truth of Chateaubriand's remark, that, "_le paysage n'est creé que par le soleil; c' est la lumière qui fait le paysage_." However, our present purpose is to narrate a short episode in modern Athenian life, rather than to dwell on scenes with which genius even can but imperfectly familiarize the world, either by pen or pencil.