most striking sort. To the Greeks, steeped in
mythologic faith, accustomed to regard their lineage as
autochthonous and their polity as the fabric of a god, nothing
seemed more natural than that Pallas should have selected for her
own exactly that portion of Hellas where the arts and sciences might
flourish best. Let the Boeotians grow fat and stagnant upon their
rich marshlands: let the Spartans form themselves into a race of
soldiers in their mountain fortress: let Corinth reign, the queen of
commerce, between her double seas: let the Arcadians in their oak
woods worship pastoral Pan: let the plains of Elis be the
meeting-place of Hellenes at their sacred games: let Delphi boast
the seat of sooth oracular from Phoebus. Meanwhile the sunny but
barren hills of Attica, open to the magic of the sky, and beautiful
by reason of their nakedness, must be the home of a people powerful
by might of intelligence rather than strength of limb, wealthy not
so much by natural resources as by enterprise. Here, and here only,
could stand the city sung by Milton:--

Built nobly, pure the air, and light the soil,
Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts
And eloquence, native to famous wits
Or hospitable, in her sweet recess,
City or suburban, studious walks and shades.

We who believe in no authentic Pallas, child of Zeus, may yet pause
awhile, when we contemplate Athens, to ponder whether those old
mythologic systems, which ascribed to godhead the foundation of
states and the patronage of peoples, had not some glimpse of truth
beyond a mere blind guess. Is not, in fact, this Athenian land the
promised and predestined home of a peculiar people, in the same
sense as that in which Palestine was the heritage by faith of a
tribe set apart by Jehovah for His own?

[1] This interpretation of the epithet [Greek:
iostephanos] is not, I think, merely fanciful. It seems to
occur naturally to those who visit Athens with the
language of Greek poets in their memory. I was glad to
find, on reading a paper by the Dean of Westminster on the
topography of Greece, that the same thought had struck
him. Ovid, too, gives the adjective _purpureus_ to
Hymettus.

[2] Jowett's translation, vol. ii. p. 520.

Unlike Rome, Athens leaves upon the memory one simple and
ineffaceable impression. There is here no conflict between Paganism
and Christianity, no statues of Hellas baptised by popes into the
company of