e quieting influence of their
presence.

The next day, almost in the spirit of worship, we went to Marathon. If
Salamis was my Holy Grail, then Marathon was my Mecca. We started out
quite early in the morning, with relays of horses to meet us on the
way. It tried to rain once or twice, but it seemed not to have the
heart to spoil my crusade, for presently the sun struggled through the
ragged clouds and shed a hazy half light through their edges, which
completely destroyed the terrible, blinding glare and made the day
simply perfect.

The road to Marathon led through orchards of cherry-trees white with
blossoms, through green vineyards, past groves of olive-trees which
look old enough to have seen the Persian hosts, through groups of
cypress-trees, such noble sentinels of deathless evergreen; through
fields of wild-cabbage blooms, making the air as sweet as the
alfalfa-fields of the West; across the Valanaris by a little bridge,
and suddenly an isolated farmhouse with a wine-press, and
then--Marathon!

"The mountains look on Marathon,
And Marathon looks on the sea,
And musing there an hour alone,
I dreamed that Greece might still be free;
For standing by the Persian's grave,
I could not deem myself a slave!"

Marathon is only a vast plain, but what a plain! It has only a small
mound in the centre to break its smoothness, but what courage, what
patriotism, what nobility that mound covers! It was there, many
authorities say, that all the Athenians were buried who fell at
Marathon, although Byron claims that it covers the Persian dead.

How Greece has always loved freedom! In the Ecole Polytechnique are
three Turkish battle-flags and some shells and cannon-balls from a war
so recent that the flags have scarcely had time to dry or the shells
to cool. What a pity, what an unspeakable pity, that all the glory of
Greece lies in the past, and that the time of her power has gone
forever! Nothing but her brave, undaunted spirit remains, and never
can she live again the glories of her Salamis, her Marathon, her
Thermopylae.

We have seen Athens in all her guises, the Acropolis in all her moods,
at sunrise, in a thunder-storm, in the glare of mid-day, at sunset,
and yet we saved the best for the climax. On the last night we were in
Athens we saw the Acropolis by moonlight. We nearly upset the whole
Greek government to accomplish this, for the King has issued an edict
that only one night in the month may vis