The Cruise of the Branwen

ATHENS Erechtheus, was gathering flowers when she was carried off by Boreas. We had passed these ruins every day as we drove from our hotel to the new stadium, and at last I had leisure to look at them quietly in their lovely setting near the fountain of Callirhoe, from which still wells, among the dripping maidenhair fern, the purest water in the city. In the background rises the rocky plateau of crystalline limestone that is the Acropolis ; the gently swelling hills towards Phalerum conceal the sparkling sea ; and on the left, as you look out from Athens, are the slopes of bare Hymettus. The Corinthian capitals of Hadrian's work are are not in the usual pure Greek style, which has left only one example of the perfect Corinthian type in Athens-the choragic monument of Lysicrates. The chaste severity of a great build– ing like the Parthenon seemed to Ictinus, its architect, to be better expressed in the plain majesty of the Doric, and the groups and statuary of Pheidias were clear and massive upon it, visible from a distance. Even the Temple of Theseus, the other great archi– tectural treasure of Athens, is in severe Doric, though it is much smaller; and as Bishop Word– worth says, " the loveliness of its colouring is such that from the rich mellow hue which the marble has now assumed it looks as if it had been quarried from the golden light of an Athenian sunset." Perfect as it is, and easily visible upon its · platform, this wonderful construction shows very clearly all the best points of Doric detail, 133