n made to
brighten the place; but the visitors must have been endowed with a
strong natural cheerfulness to withstand with success such a mixture of
the commonplace and the dreary as the palace presents. They had the
magnificent view to look at, and there was always the graceful
silhouette of the _Irene_ out on the water. She could come up at any
time and take them away; it was this, probably, that kept them alive.

[Illustration: THE PALACE]

[Illustration: UNIVERSITY OF THE IONIAN ISLANDS]

If the palace is ordinary, what shall be said of another memento which
adorns the esplanade? This is a high, narrow building, so uncouth that
it causes a smile. It looks raw, bare, and so primitive that if it had a
pulley at the top it might be taken for a warehouse erected on the bank
of a canal in one of our Western towns; one sees in imagination
canal-boats lying beneath, and bulging sacks going up or down. Yet this
is nothing less than that University of the Ionian Islands which was
founded by the Earl of Guildford early in this century, the epoch of
English enthusiasm for Greece, the days of the Philhellenes. Lord
Guildford, who was one of the distinguished North family, gave largely
of his fortune and of his time to establish this university.
Contemporary records speak of him as "an amiable nobleman." But after
seeing his touchingly ugly academy and his bust (which is not ugly) in
the hall of the extinct Ionian Senate at the palace, one feels sure that
he was more than amiable--he must have been original also. The English
are called cold; but as individuals they are capable sometimes of
extraordinary enthusiasms for distant causes and distant people.
Adventurous travellers as they are, does the charm lie in the word
"distant"? The defunct academy now shelters a school where vigorous
young Greeks sit on benches, opposite each other, in narrow, doorless
compartments which resemble the interior of a large omnibus; this, at
least, was the arrangement of the ground-floor on the day of our visit.
Although it was December, the boys looked heated. The teachers, who
walked up and down, had a relentless aspect. Even the porter,
white-haired and bent, had a will untouched by the least decay; he would
not show us the remains of the university library, nor the Roman
antiquities which are said to be stored somewhere in a lumber-room,
among them "fifty-nine frames of mosaic representing a bustard in
various attitudes." He had not the pow