the flowers with which the glorious path of scholarship is strewed!
But tell me, then: I have learned much concerning Byzantium and
Thessalonica long ago from Demetrio Calcondila, who has but lately
departed from Florence; but you, it seems, have visited less familiar
scenes?"

"Yes; we made what I may call a pilgrimage full of danger, for the sake
of visiting places which have almost died out of the memory of the West,
for they lie away from the track of pilgrims; and my father used to say
that scholars themselves hardly imagine them to have any existence out
of books. He was of opinion that a new and more glorious era would open
for learning when men should begin to look for their commentaries on the
ancient writers in the remains of cities and temples, nay, in the paths
of the rivers, and on the face of the valleys and the mountains."

"Ah!" said Bardo, fervidly, "your father, then, was not a common man.
Was he fortunate, may I ask? Had he many friends?" These last words
were uttered in a tone charged with meaning.

"No; he made enemies--chiefly, I believe, by a certain impetuous
candour; and they hindered his advancement, so that he lived in
obscurity. And he would never stoop to conciliate: he could never
forget an injury."

"Ah!" said Bardo again, with a long, deep intonation.

"Among our hazardous expeditions," continued Tito, willing to prevent
further questions on a point so personal, "I remember with particular
vividness a hastily snatched visit to Athens. Our hurry, and the double
danger of being seized as prisoners by the Turks, and of our galley
raising anchor before we could return, made it seem like a fevered
vision of the night--the wide plain, the girdling mountains, the ruined
porticos and columns, either standing far aloof, as if receding from our
hurried footsteps, or else jammed in confusedly among the dwellings of
Christians degraded into servitude, or among the forts and turrets of
their Moslem conquerors, who have their stronghold on the Acropolis."

"You fill me with surprise," said Bardo. "Athens, then, is not utterly
destroyed and swept away, as I had imagined?"

"No wonder you should be under that mistake, for few even of the Greeks
themselves, who live beyond the mountain boundary of Attica, know
anything about the present condition of Athens, or _Setine_, as the
sailors call it. I remember, as we were rounding the promontory of
Sunium, the Greek pilot we had on board our Vene