He Presently, However, Informed Me That There Was One Anomalous Circumstance Attended Upon The Practical Working Of Our Political System Which He Had Never Been Able To Hear Explained In A Manner Satisfactory To Himself.

From the fact of his having found a difficulty in his subject, I began to think that my host might really know rather more of it than his announcement of a thorough knowledge had led me to expect.

I felt interested at being about to hear from the lips of an intelligent Greek, quite remote from the influence of European opinions, what might seem to him the most astonishing and incomprehensible of all those results which have followed from the action of our political institutions. The anomaly, the only anomaly which had been detected by the vice- consular wisdom, consisted in the fact that Rothschild (the late money-monger) had never been the Prime Minister of England! I gravely tried to throw some light upon the mysterious causes that had kept the worthy Israelite out of the Cabinet, but I think I could see that my explanation was not satisfactory. Go and argue with the flies of summer that there is a power divine, yet greater than the sun in the heavens, but never dare hope to convince the people of the south that there is any other God than Gold.

My intended journey was to the site of the Paphian temple. I take no antiquarian interest in ruins, and care little about them, unless they are either striking in themselves, or else serve to mark some spot on which my fancy loves to dwell. I knew that the ruins of Paphos were scarcely, if at all, discernible, but there was a will and a longing more imperious than mere curiosity that drove me thither.

For this just then was my pagan soul's desire - that (not forfeiting my inheritance for the life to come) it had yet been given me to live through this world - to live a favoured mortal under the old Olympian dispensation - to speak out my resolves to the listening Jove, and hear him answer with approving thunder - to be blessed with divine counsels from the lips of Pallas Athenie - to believe - ay, only to believe - to believe for one rapturous moment that in the gloomy depths of the grove, by the mountain's side, there were some leafy pathway that crisped beneath the glowing sandal of Aphrodetie - Aphrodetie, not coldly disdainful of even a mortal's love! And this vain, heathenish longing of mine was father to the thought of visiting the scene of the ancient worship.

The isle is beautiful. From the edge of the rich, flowery fields on which I trod to the midway sides of the snowy Olympus, the ground could only here and there show an abrupt crag, or a high straggling ridge that up-shouldered itself from out of the wilderness of myrtles, and of the thousand bright-leaved shrubs that twined their arms together in lovesome tangles.

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