ask him. These are the _élite_ of Athens. Then there are the Sophists
and their young disciples, and the vast crowd of the Athenian people.
Some of the oldest among them may have seen and heard the "Prometheus
Vinctus"; certainly very many of them have seen "Antigone," and
"Oedipus," and "Electra"; and all of them have heard the Rhapsodists.
Great wonders have they seen and heard, which, in their appeal to the
heart, transcend all the wonders of this nineteenth century. Not more
fatal to the poor Indian was modern civilization, bringing swift ruin to
his wigwam and transforming his hunting-grounds into the sites of
populous cities, than modern improvements would have been to the Greek.
Modern strategy! What a subject for Homer would the siege of Troy have
been, had it consisted of a series of pitched battles with rifles!
Railways, steamboats, and telegraphs, annihilating space and time, would
also have annihilated the Argonautic expedition and the wanderings of
Ulysses. There would have been little fear, in a modern steamship, of
the Sirens' song; one whistle would have broken the charm. A modern
steamship might have borne Ulysses to Hades,--but it would never have
brought him back, as his own ship did. And now do you think a ride to
Eleusis by railway to-day would strike this Athenian populace, to say
nothing of the philosophers and poets we have along with us?

But they are thinking of Eleusis, and not of the way to Eleusis; so that
we may as well keep our suggestion to ourselves,--also those pious
admonitions which we were just about to administer to our companions on
heathenish superstitions. A strange fascination these Athenians have;
and before we are aware, _our_ thoughts, too, are centred in Eleusis,
whither are tending, not Athens only, but vast multitudes from all
Greece. Their movement is tumultuous; but it is a tumult of natural
enthusiasm, and not of Bacchic frenzy. If Athens be, as Milton calls
her, "the eye of Greece," surely Eleusis must be its heart!