As for Lord Elgin, it may be, as is said, that he did carry off a carload or so of the beautiful things when he had obtained from the Government (it was Turkish then) permission to remove a few pieces. But it may be added that the things he removed were wholly uncared for at that time and were being mutilated and appropriated by vandals who, but for Elgin, might have robbed the world of them altogether. As it is, they are safe in the British Museum, though I think they should be restored to Greece in this her day of reincarnation. We stood before the Temple of Victory and gazed out on the Bay of Salamis, where victory was won. We entered the Erechtheum, built on the sacred spot where Athena victoriously battled with Poseidon for the possession of Athens, and we stood in reverential awe before the marble women that have upheld her portico so long. We crossed the relic-strewn space and visited the Acropolis museum, but it was chilly and lifeless, and I did not care for the classified, fragmentary things. Then we entered the little enclosure known as Belvedere and gazed down on the Athens of to-day. If anybody doubts that modern Athens is beautiful, let him go to that spot and look down through the evening light and behold a marble vision such as the world nowhere else presents. Whatever ancient Athens may have been, it would hardly surpass this in beauty, and if Pericles could stand here to-day and gaze down upon the new city which has arisen to preserve his treasures, I think he would be satisfied. When the others had gone to visit the Hill of Mars, Laura and I wandered back to the Parthenon, followed its silent corridors, and saw it all again to our hearts' content. And when our eyes were tired, we rested them by looking out between the columns to the hills, Hymettus and Pentelicus, glorified in the evening light, wearing always their "violet crown." _They_ are unchanged. Races may come and go, temples may rise and totter and crumble into dust. The old, old days that we so prize and honor--they are only yesterdays to the hills. The last fragment of these temples will be gone by and by--the last memory of their glory--but the hills will be still young and wearing their violet crown, still turning green in the breath of a Grecian spring. Down through that splendid entrance, the Propylæa, at last, for it was growing late. We had intended climbing the Hill of Mars, where St. Paul preached, but we could see it plainly in the sunset light and there was no need to labor up the stairs. I think it was about this time of the day when St. Paul preached there. He had been wandering about Athens, among the temples, on a sort of tour of observation, making a remark occasionally--of criticism, perhaps--disputing with the Jews in the synagogue, and now and again in the market-place. The story, told in the seventeenth chapter of Acts, begins: