biblical student, and did not spend much of his time instructing himself
about Scriptural localities.--They say the Oracle complains, in this hot
weather, lately, that the only beverage in the ship that is passable, is
the butter. He did not mean butter, of course, but inasmuch as that
article remains in a melted state now since we are out of ice, it is fair
to give him the credit of getting one long word in the right place,
anyhow, for once in his life. He said, in Rome, that the Pope was a
noble-looking old man, but he never did think much of his Iliad.

We spent one pleasant day skirting along the Isles of Greece. They are
very mountainous. Their prevailing tints are gray and brown, approaching
to red. Little white villages surrounded by trees, nestle in the valleys
or roost upon the lofty perpendicular sea-walls.

We had one fine sunset--a rich carmine flush that suffused the western
sky and cast a ruddy glow far over the sea.--Fine sunsets seem to be
rare in this part of the world--or at least, striking ones. They are
soft, sensuous, lovely--they are exquisite refined, effeminate, but we
have seen no sunsets here yet like the gorgeous conflagrations that flame
in the track of the sinking sun in our high northern latitudes.

But what were sunsets to us, with the wild excitement upon us of
approaching the most renowned of cities! What cared we for outward
visions, when Agamemnon, Achilles, and a thousand other heroes of the
great Past were marching in ghostly procession through our fancies? What
were sunsets to us, who were about to live and breathe and walk in actual
Athens; yea, and go far down into the dead centuries and bid in person
for the slaves, Diogenes and Plato, in the public market-place, or gossip
with the neighbors about the siege of Troy or the splendid deeds of
Marathon? We scorned to consider sunsets.