does one place one's feet upon the bare
rock where walked the bright spirits of ancient Athens. The morning
sun of Europe, the dawning vision of all that we Europeans could be or
mean, dawns again in the soul. As an old or invalid man, or one at
least who in middle years has sinned and gone astray, one looks back to
the innocence and promise of childhood. Here shone the light of our
being undimmed; here was kindled in Europe the faith of the ideal.
Yonder is Mars Hill from which St. Paul showed the new way when the
light was growing dim. For Greece identified man in part with the
Divine, but the new religion gave forgetful humanity its altar of
remembrance, affirming that we do not belong to the beasts that perish
but are affiliated to the Almighty.

It is perhaps strange that to-day the city which was the cradle of the
ideal is a city where there are no ideals at all--either old or new,
where Plato now means nothing, where even Bolshevism is not heard of.
S----, who took his bachelorate on divinity at Oxford, is writing a
sympathetic treatise on Nietzsche and Christianity for his doctorate at
the University of Athens. But what a mistake! What an unfortunate
choice of place and theme! Who was Nietzsche? "I have changed my
title to 'Nietzsche as the Devil'" says S----. "Ah, that's better,"
says his professor, "that we can understand."

You come down from the heights into the modern city, and you behold the
rising civilization of a new Greece. Here without question is a most
pleasant city, with acacia avenues and white houses and full-bosomed
abundant orange-trees hanging their golden fruits. Thus happily
bowered, merchants and bankers pursue their avocations, and shopkeepers
display their wares in a pleasant array of modern shops. On the
streets walk leisurely an indolent and elegant people; the dark women
are especially _chic_ and it must be said refined and restrained, and
not so seductive in appearance as the South would suggest. You see
also at the many open-air cafes and in the street a very
distinguished-looking type of man with finely cut features and
plentiful iron-grey hair. You surmise that you are looking upon the
most indolent people in the world--not lazy like Russians or Irish, but
elegantly indolent, walking so slowly, playing meditatively with their
beads--for nearly every man carries his string of jet or amber beads,
which he mechanically tells, though without a thought of prayer. They
w