University of Virginia Library

86. LETTER LXXXVI.

Athens.—We dismounted at the door of Socrates's
prison. A hill between the Areopagus and the sea, is
crowned with the remains of a showy monument to a
Roman pro-consul. Just beneath it the hill forms a
low precipice, and in the face of it you see three low
entrances to caverns hewn in the solid rock. The
farthest to the right was the room of the Athenian
guard, and within it is a chamber with a round ceiling,
which the sage occupied during the thirty days of his
imprisonment. There are marks of an iron door which
separated it from the guard-room, and through the
bars of this he refused the assistance of his friends to
escape, and held those conversations with Crito, Plato,
and others, which have made his name immortal. On
the day upon which he was doomed to die, he was removed
to the chamber nearest the Acropolis, and here
the hemlock was presented to him. A shallower excavation
between, held an altar to the gods; and after
his death, his body was here given to his friends.

Nothing, except some of the touching narrations of
scripture, ever seemed to me so affecting as the history
of the death of Socrates. It has been likened (I think,
not profanely), to that of Christ. His virtuous life, his
belief in the immortality of the soul and a future state
of reward and punishment, his forgiveness of his enemies
and his godlike death, certainly prove him, in
the absence of revealed light, to have walked the
“darkling path of human reason” with an almost inspired
rectitude. I stood in the chamber which had
received his last breath, not without emotion. The
rocky walls about me had witnessed his composure as
he received the cup from his weeping jailer; the
roughly-hewn floor beneath my feet had sustained
him, as he walked to and fro, till the poison had chilled
his limbs; his last sigh, as he covered his head with
his mantle and expired, passed forth by that low portal.
It is not easy to be indifferent on spots like these.
The spirit of the place is felt. We can not turn back
and touch the brighter links of that “fleshly chain,”
in which all human beings since the creation have been
bound alike, without feeling, even through the rusty
coil of ages, the electric sympathy. Socrates died
here! The great human leap into eternity, the inevitable
calamity of our race, was here taken more nobly
than elsewhere. Whether the effect be to “fright us
from the shore,” or, to nerve us by the example, to look
more steadily before us, a serious thought, almost of
course a salutary one, lurks in the very air.

We descended the hill and galloped our small Turkish
horses at a stirring pace over the plain. The short
stirrup and high peaked saddle of the country, are (at
least to men of my length and limb) uncomfortable
contrivances. With the knees almost up to the chin,
one is compelled, of course, to lean far over the horse's

head, and it requires all the fullness of Turkish trousers
to conceal the awkwardness of the position. We drew
rein at the entrance of the “olive grove.” Our horses
walked leisurely along the shaded path between the
trees, and we arrived in a few minutes at the site of
Plato's academy. The more ethereal portion of my
pleasure in seeing it must be in the recollection. The
Cephissus was dry, the noon-day sun was hot, and we
were glad to stop, with throbbing temples, under a
cluster of fig-trees, and eat the delicious fruit, forgetting
all the philosophers incontinently. We sat in our
saddles, and a Greek woman, of great natural beauty,
though dressed in rags, bent down the boughs to our
reach. The honey from the over-ripe figs, dropped
upon us as the wind shook the branches. Our dark-eyed
and bright-lipped Pomona served us with a grace
and cheerfulness that would draw me often to the
neighborhood of the academy if I lived in Athens. I
venture to believe that Phryne herself, in so mean a
dress, would scarce have been more attractive. We
kissed our hand to her as our spirited horses leaped
the hollow with which the trees were encircled, and
passing the mound sacred to the Furies, where Œdipus
was swallowed up, dashed over the sultry plain once
more, and were soon in Athens.

I have passed most of my leisure hours here in a
scene I certainly did not reckon in anticipation, among
the pleasures of a visit to Athens—the American missionary
school. We have all been delighted with it,
from the commodore to the youngest midshipman.
Mr. and Mrs. Hill have been here some four or five
years, and have attained their present degree of success
in the face of every difficulty. Their whole
number of scholars from the commencement, has
been upward of three hundred; at present they have
a hundred and thirty, mostly girls.

We found the school in a new and spacious stone
building on the site of the ancient “market,” where
Paul, on his visit to Athens, “disputed daily with
those that met with him.” A large court-yard, shaded
partly with a promegranate-tree, separates it from the
marble portico of the Agora, which is one of the finest
remains of antiquity. Mrs. Hill was in the midst of
the little Athenians. Two or three serious-looking
Greek girls were assisting her in regulating their movements,
and the new and admirable system of combined
instruction and amusement was going on swimmingly.
There were, perhaps, a hundred children in the benches,
mostly from three to six or eight years of age;
dark-eyed, cheerful little creatures, who looked as if
their “birthright of the golden grasshopper” had made
them nature's favorites as certainly as in the days when
their ancestor-mothers settled questions of philosophy.
They marched and recited, and clapped their sunburnt
hands, and sung hymns, and I thought I never
had seen a more gratifying spectacle. I looked around
in vain for one who seemed discontented or weary.
Mrs. Hill's manner to them was most affectionate.
She governs, literally, with a smile.

I selected several little favorites. One was a fine
fellow of two to three years, whose name I inquired
immediately. He was Plato Petarches, the nephew
of the “maid of Athens,” and the son of the second
of the three girls so admired by Lord Byron. Another
was a girl of six or seven, with a face, surpassing, for
expressive beauty, that of any child I ever saw. She
was a Hydriote by birth, and dressed in the costume
of the islands. Her little feet were in Greek slippers;
her figure was prettily set off with an open jacket,
laced with buttons from the shoulder to the waist, and
her head was enveloped in a figured handkerchief,
folded gracefully in the style of a turban, and brought
under her chin, so as to show suspended a rich metal'ic
fringe. Her face was full, but marked with
childish dimples, and her mouth and eyes, as beautiful
as ever those expressive features were made, had a retiring
seriousness in them, indescribably sweet. She
looked as if she had been born in some scene of Turkish
devastation, and had brought her mother's heartache
into the world.

At noon, at the sound of a bell, they marched out,
clapping their hands in time to the instructer's voice,
and seated themselves in order upon the portico, in
front of the school. Here their baskets were given
them, and each one produced her dinner and ate it
with the utmost propriety. It was really a beautiful
scene.

It is to be remembered that here is educated a class
of human beings who were else deprived of instruction
by the universal custom of their country. The females
of Greece are suffered to grow up in ignorance. One
who can read and write is rarely found. The school
has commenced fortunately at the most favorable moment.
The government was in process of change, and
an innovation was unnoticed in the confusion that at a
later period might have been opposed by the prejudices
of custom. The king and the president of the
regency, Count Armansperg, visited the school frequently
during their stay in Athens, and expressed
their thanks to Mrs. Hill warmly. The Countess
Armansperg called repeatedly to have the pleasure
of sitting in the school-room for an hour. His majesty,
indeed, could hardly find a more useful subject in
his realm. Mrs. Hill, with her own personal efforts,
has taught more than one hundred children to read the
Bible! How few of us can write against our names
an equal offset to the claims of human duty?

Circumstances made me acquainted with one or two
wealthy persons residing in Athens, and I received
from them a strong impression of Mr. Hill's usefulness
and high standing. His house is the hospitable
resort of every stranger of intelligence and respectability.

Mr. King and Mr. Robinson, missionaries of the
Foreign Board, are absent at Psera. Their families
are here.

I passed my last evening among the magnificent
ruins on the banks of the Ilissus. The next day was
occupied in returning visits to the families who had
been polite to us, and, with a farewell of unusual regret
to our estimable missionary friends, we started on
horseback to return by a gloomy sunset to the Piræus.
I am looking more for the amusing than the useful in
my rambles about the world, and I confess I should
not have gone far out of my way to visit a missionary
station anywhere. But chance has thrown this of
Athens across my path, and I record it as a moral
spectacle to which no thinking person could be indifferent.
I freely say I never have met with an equal
number of my fellow-creatures, who seemed to me so
indisputably and purely useful. The most cavilling
mind must applaud their devoted sense of duty, bearing
up against exile from country and friends, privations,
trial of patience, and the many, many ills inevitable
to such an errand in a foreign land, while even
the coldest politician would find in their efforts the
best promise for an enlightened renovation of Greece.

Long after the twilight thickened immediately about
us, the lofty Acropolis stood up, bathed in a glow of
light from the lingering sunset. I turned back to gaze
upon it with an enthusiasm I had thought laid on the
shelf with my half-forgotten classics. The intrinsic
beauty of the ruins of Greece, the loneliness of their
situation, and the divine climate in which, to use Byron's
expression, they are “buried,” invest them with
an interest which surrounds no other antiquities in the
world. I rode on, repeating to myself Milton's beautiful
description: