se
themselves with various light sports, but chiefly to dance their
favourite Romaika, which has been handed down to them from the earliest
days of their heroic ancestors, when it was known under the more classic
name of the Cretan or Doedalian dance.

Century after century has seen it danced by the youths and maidens of
successive generations, on the self-same spots--always the most
beautiful in the neighbourhood--both on the islands and on the main,
since the time when Greece was young and strong--the fit cradle of the
arts and sciences; when that literature was produced which will last as
long as the world exists; when those temples arose, and those statues
came forth from their native rock, which subsequent ages have never been
able to equal; when all that the human mind could conceive most elegant
had its birth; when her ships traversed all known seas, and her colonies
went forth to civilise the earth; when her sages gave laws to the world,
and a handful of her sons were sufficient to drive back thousands upon
thousands of the vaunted armies of the East; from those glorious epochs
to the time when, sunk in effeminacy and vice, despising the wisdom of
her ancestors, she fell under the sway of the most savage of the tribes
she had once despised--yet still, in abject slavery, while all that man
cared for was destroyed, the sports of their youth were not forgotten;
and what was learned in youth, the parents taught their children to
revive, as their only consolation in their misery and degradation.

Thus, Homer's description of the dance in his days would answer
perfectly, even to the very costume, for that danced in a remote island
of the Archipelago:--

"A figure dance succeeds:
A comely band
Of youths and maidens, bounding hand-in-hand;
The maids in soft cymars of linen drest;
The youths all graceful in the glossy waistcoat.

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"Now all at once they rise--at once descend,
With well-taught feet, now shaped in oblique ways,
Confusedly regular, the moving maze:
Now forth, at once, too swift for sight they spring,
And undistinguish'd blend the flying ring.
So whirls a wheel in giddy circle tost,
And rapid as it runs the single spokes are lost."

Among the spectators was Nina, and after much persuasion she had induced
Ada Garden to accompany her, with Marianna. Ada had done so after due
consideration, from believing