ne of the passes
from Baeotia into Attica, and famous as the retreat of the chief
patriots concerned in destroying the thirty tyrants of Athens.

Spirit of freedom! when on Phyle's brow
Thou sat'st with Thrasybulus and his train,
Couldst thou forebode the dismal hour which now
Dims the green beauties of thine Attic plain?
Not thirty tyrants now enforce the chain,
But every carle can lord it o'er thy land;
Nor rise thy sons, but idly rail in vain,
Trembling beneath the scourge of Turkish hand,
From birth till death enslaved; in word, in deed unmann'd.

Such was the condition in which the poet found the country as he
approached Athens; and although the spirit he invoked has reanimated
the dejected race he then beheld around him, the traveller who even
now revisits the country will still look in vain for that lofty mien
which characterises the children of liberty. The fetters of the
Greeks have been struck off, but the blains and excoriated marks of
slavery are still conspicuous upon them; the sinister eye, the
fawning voice, the skulking, crouching, base demeanour, time and many
conflicts only can efface.

The first view of the city was fleeting and unsatisfactory; as the
travellers descended from the mountains the windings of the road
among the hills shut it out. Having passed the village of Casha,
they at last entered upon the slope, and thence into the plain of
Attica but the intervening heights and the trees kept the town
concealed, till a turn of the path brought it full again before them;
the Acropolis crowned with the ruins of the Parthenon--the Museum
hill--and the Monument of Philopappus--

Ancient of Days--august Athena! where,
Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul?
Gone--glimmering through the dreams of things that were:
First in the race that led to glory's goal,
They won, and pass'd away:--is this the whole?
A schoolboy's tale, the wonder of an hour!
The warrior's weapon, and the sophist's stole
Are sought in vain, and o'er each mouldering tower,
Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power.

CHAPTER XVII

Athens--Byron's Character of the modern Athenians--Visit to Eleusis--
Visit to the Caverns at Vary and Keratea--Lost in the Labyrinths of
the latter

It has been justly remarked, that were there no other vestiges of the
ancient world in existence than those to be seen at Athens, they are
still sufficient of th