The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Rise of Iskander, by Benjamin Disraeli

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Title: The Rise of Iskander

Author: Benjamin Disraeli

Release Date: April, 2005 [EBook #7842]
Posting Date: August 9, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RISE OF ISKANDER ***

Produced by K. Kay Shearin

THE RISE OF ISKANDER

By Benjamin Disraeli

CHAPTER 1

The sun had set behind the mountains, and the rich plain of Athens was
suffused with the violet glow of a Grecian eye. A light breeze rose; the
olive-groves awoke from their noonday trance, and rustled with returning
animation, and the pennons of the Turkish squadron, that lay at anchor
in the harbour of Piraeus, twinkled in the lively air. From one gate
of the city the women came forth in procession to the fountain; from
another, a band of sumptuous horsemen sallied out, and threw their
wanton javelins in the invigorating sky, as they galloped over the
plain. The voice of birds, the buzz of beauteous insects, the breath of
fragrant flowers, the quivering note of the nightingale, the pattering
call of the grasshopper, and the perfume of the violet, shrinking from
the embrace of the twilight breeze, filled the purple air with music and
with odour.

A solitary being stood upon the towering crag of the Acropolis, amid
the ruins of the Temple of Minerva, and gazed upon the inspiring scene.
Around him rose the matchless memorials of antique art; immortal columns
whose symmetry baffles modern proportion, serene Caryatides, bearing
with greater grace a graceful burthen, carvings of delicate precision,
and friezes breathing with heroic life. Apparently the stranger, though
habited as a Moslemin, was not insensible to the genius of the locality,
nor indeed would his form and countenance have misbecome a contemporary
of Pericles and Phidias. In the prime of life and far above the common
stature, but with a frame the muscular power of which was even exceeded
by its almost ideal symmetry, white forehead, his straight profile, his
oval countenance, and his curling lip, exhibited the same visage that
had inspired the sculptor of the surrounding demigo