waves, keeping steady time, like a
line of soldiery, as they resounded upon the hollow shore--he would
not deign to notice that restless living element at all, except to
bless his stars that he was not upon it. Nor the distinct detail, nor
the refined coloring, nor the graceful outline and roseate golden line
of the jutting crags, nor the bold shadows east from Otus or Laurium
by the declining sun--our agent of a mercantile firm would not value
these matters even at a low figure. Rather we must turn for the
sympathy we seek to yon pilgrim student, come from a semi-barbarous
land to that small corner of the earth, as to a shrine, where he might
take his fill gazing on those emblems and coruscations of invisible,
unoriginate perfection. It was the stranger from a remote province,
from Britain or from Mauritania, who in a scene so different from that
of his chilly, woody swamps, or of his fiery, choking sands, learned
at once what a real university must be, by coming to understand the
sort of country which was its suitable home.

Nor was this all that a university required and found in Athens. No
one, not even there, could live on poetry. If the students at that
famous place had nothing better than bright hues and soothing sounds,
they would not have been able or disposed to turn their residence
there to much account. Of course they must have the means of living,
nay, in a certain sense, of enjoyment, if Athens was to be an _alma
mater_ at the time, or to remain afterward a pleasant thought in their
memory. And so they had: be it recollected Athens was a port and a
mart of trade, perhaps the first in Greece; and strangers were ever
flocking to it, whose combat was to be with intellectual, not physical
difficulties, and who claimed to have their bodily wants supplied that
they might be at leisure to set about furnishing their minds.

Now barren as was the soil of Attica, and bare the face of the
country, yet it had only too many resources for an elegant, nay,
luxurious abode there. So abundant were the imports of the place, that
it was a common saying that the productions which were found singly
elsewhere were brought together in Athens. Corn and wine, the staple
of existence in such a climate, came from the Islands of the AEgean;
fine wool and carpeting from Asia Minor; slaves, as now, from the
Euxine; and timber too, and iron and brass, from the coasts of the
Mediterranean. The Athenian did not condescend to manufactures