eriod were to me more delightful
than any of the other memorials. I say "ashamed," for why should one be
haunted by Venice in Greece? With the Parthenon to look forward to, why
should the lion of St. Mark, sculptured on Corfu facades, be a thing to
greet with joy? Many of us are familiar with the disconsolate figures of
some of our fellow-countrymen and countrywomen in the galleries of
Europe, tired and dejected tourists wandering from picture to picture,
but finding nothing half so interesting as the memory of No. 4699
Columbus Avenue at home. I am afraid it is equally narrow to be scanning
Corfu, Athens, Cairo, and the sands of the desert itself for something
that reminds one of another place, even though that place be the
enchanting pageant of a town at the head of the Adriatic. History,
however, as related by the esplanade, pays no attention to these
aberrations of the looker-on; its story goes steadily forward. The lions
of St. Mark on the facades, and another memento of the Doges--namely,
the statue of Count von der Schulenburg, who commanded the Venetian
forces in the great defence of Corfu in 1716--these memorials have as
companions various tokens of the English occupation, which, following
that of Venice, continued through forty-nine years--that is, from 1815
to 1863. Before this there had been a short period of French dominion;
but the esplanade, so far as I could discover, contains no memorial of
it, unless Napoleon's phrase can stand for one--and I think it can. The
souvenirs of the British rule are conspicuous. The first is the palace
built for the English Governor, a functionary who bore the sonorous
official name of Lord High Commissioner, a title which was soon
shortened to the odd abbreviation "the Lord High." This palace is an
uninteresting construction stretching stiffly across the water-side of
the esplanade, and cutting off the view of the harbor. It is now the
property of the King of Greece, but at present it is seldom occupied.
While we were at Corfu its ghostliness was enlivened for a while; Prince
Henry of Prussia was there with his wife. They had left their yacht (if
so large a vessel as the _Irene_ can be called a yacht), and were
spending a week at the palace. An hour after their departure entrance
was again permitted, and an old man, still trembling from the excitement
of the royal sojourn, conducted us from room to room. All was ugly.
Fading flowers in the vases showed that an attempt had bee