They had such a delightful way of mixing up the histories of gods and mortals in those days that the imaginative person who visits Athens will find himself gazing as gratefully and as open-eyed at the rocks in which the Centaur hid as at those from which Demosthenes delivered his philippics, just as in London the room at the Charter House where Colonel Newcome said "Adsum" for the last time is much more real than that room in Edinburgh in which Rizzio was killed, or as the rock from which Monte Cristo sprang, at the base of the Chateau d'If, is so much more actual than the entire field of Waterloo. It is hard to know just which was real and which a delightful myth; and yet there has been so little change in Greece since then that you are brought nearer to Alcibiades and to Pericles than you can ever come, in this world at least, to Dr. Johnson and Dean Swift. You cannot recreate Grub Street and the debtors' prison, but Euboea still "looks on Marathon, and Marathon on the sea," and, if you are presumptuous, you can strut up and down the rocky plateau from which Demosthenes spoke, or take your seat in one of the marble chairs of the Theatre of Dionysus, and pretend you are a worthy citizen of Athens listening to a satire of Sophocles. [Illustration: GREEK PEASANT GIRL] The quiet and fresh cleanliness of modern Athens comes to you after the roar and dirt of Cairo's narrow lanes and dusty avenues like the touch of damask table linen and silver after the greasy oil-cloth of a Mediterranean coasting steamer. It is quiet, sunny, and well-bred. You do not fight your way through legions of donkey-boys and dragomans, nor are your footsteps echoed by swarms of guides and beggars. It is a pretty city, with the look of a water-color. The houses are a light yellow, and the shutters a watery green, and the tile roofs a delicate red, and the sky above a blue seldom shown to ordinary mortals, but reserved for the eyes of painters and poets, who have a sort of second sight, and so are always seeing it and using it for a background. Athens is a very new city, with new streets and new public buildings, and a new King and Royal Palace. It is like a little miniature. There is a little army, chiefly composed of officers, and a miniature cabinet, and a beautiful miniature university, and everybody knows everybody else; and when the King or Queen drives forth, the guard turns out and blows a bugle, and so all Athens, which is always sitting at the cafes around the square of the palace, nods its head and says, "The Queen is going for a drive," or, "Her Majesty has returned early to-day," and then continues to clank its sword and to twirl its mustache and to sip its coffee. Modern Athens tends towards the Frank in dress and habit of thought. The men have adopted his costume, and the women wear little flat curls like the French ladies in _Le Figaro_, and peaked bonnets and high heels. [Illustration: THE UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS]