First in interest and glory was Athens, which was never more splendid than in the time of the Antonines. The great works of the age of Pericles still retained their original beauty and freshness; and the city of Minerva still remained the centre of all that was elegant or learned of the ancient civilization, and was held everywhere in the profoundest veneration. There still flourished the various schools of philosophy, to which young men from all parts of the empire resorted to be educated--the Oxford and the Edinburgh, the Berlin and Paris of the ancient world. In spite of successive conquests, there still towered upon the Acropolis the temple of Minerva, that famous Parthenon whose architectural wonders have never been even equaled, built of Pentelic marble, and adorned with the finest sculptures of Pheidias--a Doric temple, whose severe simplicity and matchless beauty have been the wonder of all ages--often imitated, never equaled, majestic even in its ruins. Side by side, on that lofty fortification in the centre of the city, on its western slope, was the Propylaea, one of the masterpieces of ancient art, also of Pentelic marble, costing 2000 talents, or $23,000,000[Footnote: Smith, Geog. Diet.] when gold was worth more than twenty times what it is now. Then there was the Erechtheum, the temple of Athena Polias, the most revered of all the sanctuaries of Athens, with its three Ionic porticos, and its frieze of black marble, with its olive statue of the goddess, and its sacred inclosures. The great temple of Zeus Olympius, commenced by Peisistratus and completed by Hadrian, the largest ever dedicated to the deity among the Greeks, was four stadia in circumference. It was surrounded by a peristyle which had ten columns in front and twenty on its sides. The peristyle being double on the sides, and having a triple range at either end, besides three columns between the antae at each end of the cella, consisted altogether of one hundred and twenty columns. These were sixty feet high and six and a half feet in diameter, the largest which now remain of ancient architecture in marble, or which still exist in Europe. This vast temple was three hundred and fifty-four feet in length and one hundred and seventy-one in breadth, and was full of statues. The ruins of this temple, of which sixteen columns are still standing, are among the most imposing in the world, and indicate a grandeur and majesty in the city of which we can scarcely conceive. The theatre of Bacchus, the most beautiful in the ancient world, would seat thirty thousand spectators. I need not mention the various architectural monuments of this classic city, each of which was a study--the Temple of Theseus, the Agora, the Odeum, the Areopagus, the Gymnasium of Hadrian, the Lyceum, and other buildings of singular beauty, built mostly of marble, and adorned with paintings and statues. What work of genius in the whole world more