DEAR B.

LETTER V.

Constantinople, Nov., 1859.

In Athens there are but comparatively few monuments of its former greatness and renown left standing. The ancient city attained its meridian splendor under the administration of Pericles, five hundred and fifty years before the Christian era. That great ruler, aided by Phidias, whom the ancients were satisfied to call the

great stone cutter," left behind him those splendid monuments that have been the admiration of the world in all succeeding ages; and notwithstanding the repeated efforts that have been made to destroy them, they still stand, the noblest and most interesting ruins in existence, imperishable proofs of the superiority of the ancient Athenians in taste and genius over all others, either of ancient or modern times

Most conspicious among the ruins of the Acropolis is the Parthenon, the wreck of the grandest edifice ever reared, and hallowed by the noblest recollections that can stimulate the mind. As I wandered through its courtly halls and over its prostrate columns, and reverted to those brighter days of Grecian glory, when her heroes, patriots, and sages assembled there to teach wisdom, honor, and virtue to the ancient world. While thus meditating, the truth of those beautiful lines of Byron was forcibly impressed upon my mind

"Ancient of days! august Athena ! where,

Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul?
Gone-glimmering through the dream of things that were;
First in the race that led to Glory's goal,

They won and passed away-is this the whole?

A schoolboy's tale, the wonder of an hour;

The warrior's weapon and the sophist's stole

Are sought in vain, and o'er each mouldering tower,
Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power.

Son of the morning, rise! approach you here!
Come, but molest not yon defenceless urn;
Look on this spot-a nation's sepulchre !
Abode of gods whose shrines no longer burn."

True, the shrines of the imaginary gods of the

Greeks no longer burn, but while standing upon Mars Hill, where St. Paul stood when he unfolded to the astonished Athenians the mysteries of the unknown god whom they ignorantly worshipped, I saw a forcible illustration of the enduring truth of those Gospel mysteries he endeavored to teach to the heathen Greeks, in the fine Greek churches, and the neat English chapel that stood at the foot of the hill; fit abodes, as St. Paul taught, of that God whose kingdom is not of this world; while around the marble temples of the heathen deities were desolate-tumbling to ruin.

The remains of the temple of Minerva on the Acropolis is very ornamental, and a beautiful piece of architecture. The remains of the temple of Jupiter, the largest of the Grecian temples, is in the western part of the city; but the best preserved of all the Grecian temples is that of Theseus, the most virtuous of all the heroes," though some of his "virtuous" deeds read oddly enough now. There is not a column or stone of this temple amiss. It is built of white marble, like all the ancient temples of Athens, and looks

as much like standing forever as it did twentyfive hundred years ago.

Since the Greeks have thrown off the yoke of the Sultan, they are gradually but slowly rising from the degraded condition incident to their long oppression. May we not hope that our own American missionaries who are so earnestly employed there, may rapidly see the fruits of their self-denying labors.

The modern city, the capital of King Otho's dominions, is built upon the site of ancient Athens, and has a mixed poulation of thirty thousand inhabitants, who possess but few of the ennobling traits of their illustrious ancestors, being deceptive and treacherous-degenerate sons and unworthy descendants of Leonidas and Pericles, Plato and Demosthenes.

The next place that claimed my attention was the site and plains of ancient Troy, at the mouth of the Hellespont in Asia Minor, the scenes of the struggles of Achilles and Hector, the woes of Piram and the bullyings of large-limbed Ajax, all about the beautiful Helen, so immortalized in the tale of Troy divine. If Helen had been a

virtuous woman, and the Illiad never written, who would have been the father of poetry, I wonder? The lonely tomb of Achilles is all that is prominent upon the extensive plain.