DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.11448#0515
CHAP. XIX.]
ATHENS—ROME—GREECE.
201
large modern houses, one of which, the Hotel d'Orient, is our
destination.
Since Athens has been gathered into the European family, and
restored to Christendom, it has become as familiar to the public
as Edinburgh. It would, however, be too late at this period of
my pilgrimage to affect fastidiousness in treading upon beaten
ground ; and this is the spot above all others on wnich I should
like to linger, and, if it must be so, to take my leave of the gentle
reader.
Greece is one of the few countries that I have an earnest desire
to revisit, and yet, at every step one takes, there is an annoying—
almost a painful—sense of incongruity between its present and its
past, and, what is worse, a hopeless attempt to reconcile them.
In Rome, the gradation from the older to the later time is almost
imperceptible; the gods, temples, and ceremonies were converted
to Christianity, together with the souls of men. The bronze
statue of Jupiter became St. Peter, and Juno has transmitted her
peacock feathers to the state insignia of the Pope; the Tomb of
Adrian has resolved itself into the Castle of St. Angelo; and,
more than all else, the vitality of Roman art connects the present
with the past. Scarcely had the awakened taste of Europe begun
to appreciate the beauty of the Pantheon, when Michael Angelc
exclaimed, " I will place it in the air!" and kept his word by
crowning St. Peter's church with such another for a dome. Pe-
trarch was crowned with laurel on the capitol without any ap-
parent sense of ridicule; Rienzi ably acted the character of the
Last of the Tribunes ; Painting caught the mantle which Sculp-
ture had let fall; and Raphael's pencil realized conceptions as
glorious as the chisel of Phidias had ever wrought.
With Greece it was otherwise—in her fate seemed verified the
pagan aphorism, " Whom the gods love die young." She passed
away in the season of her triumphant youth ; she perished in her
pride, and, through the night of ages that followed, her imperish-
able name alone was remembered. Even in Caesar's triumph,
he " spared the contemptible living only for the sake of their
glorious dead."
And now, a Bavarian king and an alien people are to restore
the glory of ancient Greece! Verily, they seem like children
ATHENS—ROME—GREECE.
201
large modern houses, one of which, the Hotel d'Orient, is our
destination.
Since Athens has been gathered into the European family, and
restored to Christendom, it has become as familiar to the public
as Edinburgh. It would, however, be too late at this period of
my pilgrimage to affect fastidiousness in treading upon beaten
ground ; and this is the spot above all others on wnich I should
like to linger, and, if it must be so, to take my leave of the gentle
reader.
Greece is one of the few countries that I have an earnest desire
to revisit, and yet, at every step one takes, there is an annoying—
almost a painful—sense of incongruity between its present and its
past, and, what is worse, a hopeless attempt to reconcile them.
In Rome, the gradation from the older to the later time is almost
imperceptible; the gods, temples, and ceremonies were converted
to Christianity, together with the souls of men. The bronze
statue of Jupiter became St. Peter, and Juno has transmitted her
peacock feathers to the state insignia of the Pope; the Tomb of
Adrian has resolved itself into the Castle of St. Angelo; and,
more than all else, the vitality of Roman art connects the present
with the past. Scarcely had the awakened taste of Europe begun
to appreciate the beauty of the Pantheon, when Michael Angelc
exclaimed, " I will place it in the air!" and kept his word by
crowning St. Peter's church with such another for a dome. Pe-
trarch was crowned with laurel on the capitol without any ap-
parent sense of ridicule; Rienzi ably acted the character of the
Last of the Tribunes ; Painting caught the mantle which Sculp-
ture had let fall; and Raphael's pencil realized conceptions as
glorious as the chisel of Phidias had ever wrought.
With Greece it was otherwise—in her fate seemed verified the
pagan aphorism, " Whom the gods love die young." She passed
away in the season of her triumphant youth ; she perished in her
pride, and, through the night of ages that followed, her imperish-
able name alone was remembered. Even in Caesar's triumph,
he " spared the contemptible living only for the sake of their
glorious dead."
And now, a Bavarian king and an alien people are to restore
the glory of ancient Greece! Verily, they seem like children