The members of such a club should have been classical scholars, but these were in the minority. The greater portion of those who patronised this latest London freak were extremely up-to-date, and defended their insistent modernity amidst ancient artificial environment by Acts xvii. 21: "For the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing!" And certainly they acted well up to the text, for all the scandal and novelty of the metropolis seemed to flow from this pseudo-classical source. Plays were discussed in manuscript, novels on the eve of publication; inventors came here to suggest plans for airships, or to explain how the earth could signal to Mars. Some members had brand new ideas for the improvement of motor mechanism, others desired to evolve colour from sound, detailing with many words how music could be made visible. As to politics, the Athenians knew everything which was going on behind the scenes, and could foretell equally truthfully a war, a change of Government, the abdication of a monarch, or the revolt of an oppressed people. If any traveller arrived from the Land-at-the-Back-of-Beyond with an account of a newly-discovered island, or an entirely new animal, he was sure to be a member of the club. Thus, although the interior of the Pall Mall mansion suggested Greece and Rome, Nero and Pericles, the appointments for comfort, for the quick dispatch of business or pleasure, and the ideas, conversation, and dress of the members, were, if anything, six months ahead of the present year of grace. The Athenian Club was really a mixture or blending of two far-apart epochs, the very ancient and the very modern; but the dark ages were left out, as the members had no use for mediæval ignorance.