From the busy quay of Salonica one looks across the blue water at the snows of Olympus and a wonderful far panorama of hills and dales of classic Greece; and Salonica itself is a fair city to look upon from the sea, with its gleaming white houses and minarets, and dark groves of cypress sloping up to the ancient castle and fortifications. I need not recall here the great part which Thessalonica played in the old days when Persians, Athenians, Macedonians, Romans, Normans of Sicily, and Saracens in succession conquered and held the famous port, the principal city between Rome and the East; its vicissitudes and many bloody sieges. Old Thessalonica, with its Greek, Roman, and Byzantine ruins, relics of “sad, half-forgotten things and battles long ago,” the thronged city where St. Paul preached and worked with his hands among the Macedonian artisans, as the modern Salonica has once again come to the forefront in the shaping of the world’s history, and its citizens walk proudly because here dawned the liberty of the Ottomans, with its inspiring hopes. There is something about the atmosphere of Salonica which makes it seem a fitting place to be the birthplace of a great movement. One feels freer on its broad quay and in its clean, well-paved streets than in the narrow, ever muddy lanes which imprison one in Constantinople. The climate for the greater part of the year is most exhilarating, and the inhabitants of this white city, “ever delicately walking through most pellucid air,” seem more vivacious and brisk, and are said to be more enlightened, more industrious, and shrewder than those of the capital. Even under the tyranny and corruption of the old _régime_ things were fairly well ordered in Salonica, and the municipal authorities did some good work, as the appearance of the streets shows, though they did appropriate, in the shape of irregular salaries, one-half of the rates. Salonica, too, enjoyed a measure of liberty, even in those dark days, and men could do here many things which would have ensured their prompt punishment in Constantinople. For example, though meetings of any description were banned by the Palace, and a man could not invite two or three friends to dine with him in his house without permission, and though to be found guilty of being a Freemason was to incur the death penalty, Freemasonry (French, Grand Orient, Spanish, and Italian) flourished in Salonica; there were five Masonic Lodges in the town throughout the long years of despotism, though of course the Lodges had no fixed habitations, and the Masons used to meet in whatever house or perhaps lonely spot in the open country was at any time deemed to be the safest place.