We walked out into the grass-grown, fragment-strewn court beyond the

Parthenon. It startled us, every now and then, to see a stony white face

stare suddenly up at us out of the grass with its dead eyes. The place

seemed alive with ghosts. I half expected to see the Athenian heroes of

twenty centuries ago glide out of the shadows and steal into the old

temple they knew so well and regarded with such boundless pride.

The full moon was riding high in the cloudless heavens, now. We

sauntered carelessly and unthinkingly to the edge of the lofty

battlements of the citadel, and looked down--a vision! And such a

vision! Athens by moonlight! The prophet that thought the splendors of

the New Jerusalem were revealed to him, surely saw this instead! It lay

in the level plain right under our feet--all spread abroad like a

picture--and we looked down upon it as we might have looked from a

balloon. We saw no semblance of a street, but every house, every window,

every clinging vine, every projection was as distinct and sharply marked

as if the time were noon-day; and yet there was no glare, no glitter,

nothing harsh or repulsive--the noiseless city was flooded with the

mellowest light that ever streamed from the moon, and seemed like some

living creature wrapped in peaceful slumber. On its further side was a

little temple, whose delicate pillars and ornate front glowed with a rich

lustre that chained the eye like a spell; and nearer by, the palace of

the king reared its creamy walls out of the midst of a great garden of

shrubbery that was flecked all over with a random shower of amber lights

-a spray of golden sparks that lost their brightness in the glory of the

moon, and glinted softly upon the sea of dark foliage like the pallid

The Innocents Abroad