friend, and had rode home with him to Lake-View after the address. While he was speaking I had taken notes, the substance of which I afterward wrote out, although not with sufficient fulness to do him complete justice. No part of his address was written; and I was surprised at the perfect self-possession which he exhibited, for so young a man, -his familiarity with the subject,—his agreeable manner, -and his fine command of language.

2. But Ralph had been a great reader, and a very diligent student, ever since I had known him. On our ride homeward he told me that he had never failed, since he went to the city, to speak, every Wednesday evening, in the debating society which he joined there;-that he always studied his subject thoroughly, and that he never allowed himself the use of notes while speaking.

3. He said, moreover, that he had been accustomed to plead causes for the poor, without charge, in the justices' courts. I saw that this practice of frequent speaking, connected with his careful previous preparation, was laying the foundation for great success in his profession. But I was somewhat surprised to hear him say that he had not yet wholly abandoned the idea of entering the ministry, the preparation for which he had begun with Mr. Raymond. Then, suddenly changing the subject, he said, “Do you know, Mr. Bookmore, that my friend, Phil Barto, whom I love so dearly, is in great danger?"

4. "I presume I know to what you refer," I replied, “for I have heard it whispered that Philip has been known, when in the city, to drink to excess. Is it true?"

5. "Too true; too true," Ralph replied. "Poor Phil! The evil habit has grown up with him almost from infancy; and at times he seems to be utterly powerless under its influence. Poor fellow! He is a good-hearted young man, and has splendid natural abilities. He wishes to go to the city, and read law, as I have done; but I am afraid of the influences that he might be brought under there.”

6. "What about Tom Downing?" I asked. "I saw his name in the paper not long ago."

"Ah, there's a bad case," he replied. "Tom is in the city, and he is a shiftless, drunken fellow,-and I am afraid that he is something even worse than that. Twice he has been arrested for taking goods from the stores of his employers, and selling them. He had no money, and both times sent for me to defend him. The evidence was not sufficient to convict him in either case, and he escaped; but I was pretty well convinced, in my own mind, that, in both cases, he was guilty, although he stoutly denied it to me in private."

7. "What a contrast," said Ralph, "between Tom's course and that of Carl Hoffmann! Carl writes me that

he is nearly through his medical course at Baltimore, and that he intends to take his mother, and settle in far-away San Francisco, where he has relatives. The druggist in Lake-View, who has known Carl from childhood, thinks everything of him.

8. "Carl,' he says, 'is a good representative of the best features of the large German element in this country. He has a mind that acquires knowledge readily; he is true and faithful, always good-natured and obliging, strictly temperate, industrious and saving,-and why should he not succeed? He must succeed; for those are the qualities that insure success.'

9. I was not at all surprised at Tom Downing's downward course, or at the good reports about Carl; but I was grieved to learn that Phil Barto-so promising, so good in other respects-should be addicted to that terrible habit, which is so relentless in its grasp upon its victim, when once within its toils.

10. Ralph remained in Lake-View the next day, Saturday, so that he might be present, in the evening, at the reading of Freddy Jones's seventh letter. Not only were most of Freddy's former school-mates present on that occa

sion, but Mr. Agnew and Mr. Raymond also were there; and Mr. Raymond brought with him the old French gentleman, Mr. Bardou.

CHAPTER XVII.—AROUND THE WORLD.-No. 9.

FROM ATHENS TO CONSTANTINOPLE.

I. Grecian Historic Ruins.

1. When I closed my last letter we had just dropped anchor in the Pira'us, and were preparing to enter the city of Athens, once so renowned as

"The eye of Greece, mother of arts and eloquence."

The modern city, which is built on the plain, mostly west and north of the ancient Acrop'olis, has now a population of a little more than fifty thousand. It is not seen in the view that I have sent you.

2. We found good accommodations at an English hotel on Minerva Street-the broadest street in the city,—and here we had our headquarters for nearly six weeks, visiting, in the mean time, first, the celebrated ruins of the ancient city, and, after that, Thebes, Corinth, the plain of Marathon, the straits of Thermop'ylæ, and other places rendered famous in the history of ancient Greece.

3. The ruins of the Parthenon, or Temple of Minerva, together with the other ruins on the hill of the Acropolis, -which, Prof. Howard says, was at once the fortress, the sacred enclosure, the treasury, and the muse'um of the Athenian nation,-claimed our first attention. The Professor kept us interested in the descriptions of the ancient city-and of the Parthenon above all; reading, or repeating from memory, verses from Byron, and Mrs. Hemans, and many other writers.

4. The following lines he quoted, as we stood on the Acrop'olis, in front of the Parthenon, looking up at the massive structure, still grand in its ruins:

5. "Fair Parthenon! yet still must Fancy weep
For thee, thou work of nobler spirits flown.
Bright, as of old, the sunbeams o'er thee sleep
In all their beauty still-and thine is gone!
Empires have sunk since thou wert first revered,
And varying rites have sanctified thy shrine.

6. "Mourn, graceful ruin! On thy sacred hill

Thy gods, thy rites, a kindred fate have shared :
Yet art thou honored in each fragment still,
That wasting years and barbarous hands have spared ;
Each hallowed stone, from rapine's fury borne,

Shall wake bright dreams of thee in ages yet unborn.”

Hemans.

7. We also went up on Mars' Hill, a hill a little to the west of the Acrop'olis; and Prof. Howard said that we probably climbed the very stone steps which the Apostle Paul ascended when he went up to the court of the Areop'agus; and then he read the account that is given of Paul in the seventeenth chapter of the Acts, telling how Paul disputed with the Athenians, and how he preached them a sermon on that occasion.

8. We visited the site of ancient Thebes, once the leading city of Greece, thirty miles north-west of Athens; but we found little there indicative of its former grandeur. It has been written of this ruined city,—

"Desolate are thy fields, O-gyg'i-an, Thebes;

No broken shaft nor ruined temple shows

Verse 5.-What figure of speech is used in the expression "Fair Parthenon!"?-Why may Fancy be said to "weep"?-On what resemblance is based the figure "the sunbeams sleep"?

a

So called from Og'y-ges, who is supposed to have been the first king of Thebes. He is also said to have been the only person saved from the deluge in which Greece was covered with water.

Thy former site; no mouldering stone remains

To tell thy splendor in the ages past."-Haygarth.

9. Corinth, forty-eight miles west of Athens, where St. Paul resided nearly two years, and to whose "church of God" he addressed two epistles, we found to be only a straggling village, with modern houses and gardens, and with only one Grecian ruin to show that it was once the proud rival of Athens in population, in wealth, in the extent of its commerce, and in the fine arts. Prof. Howard says we may well exclaim with the poet,—

10. "Where is thy grandeur, Corinth ?-Shrunk from sight
Thy ancient treasures, and thy ramparts' height,

Thy godlike fanes and palaces! Oh, where
Thy mighty myriads, and majestic fair?

Relentless war has poured around thy wall,

And hardly spared the traces of thy fall!"-Byron.

11. We rode out, one day, to the plain of Marathon, twenty miles north-east of Athens; and in the centre of the plain we climbed the mound that was raised over the bodies of the Athenians who fell there in a famous battle with the Persian hosts more than two thousand years ago -a battle in which ten thousand Athenians defeated a hundred and twenty thousand Persians.

12. The Professor, right there, told us the story of that battle;—he told how Dari'us the king sent out his cohorts and his legions from their Asiatic homes, by thousands and tens of thousands, to conquer all Grecce,-and how the little but brave band of Greeks met them :

"And on, like a wave, came the rush of the brave

'Ye sons of the Greeks, on, on!'

And the Mede stepped back from the eager attack

Of the Greek at Marathon."

13. He told how the Grecks triumphed, and how their poets and orators proclaimed