path on the left, leading to the little valley of Hagios Georgios-the ancient Nemea. I was determined to see the ruins, whatever chances of rain there were. Some caves were to be seen as we approached Nemea, which the poets of old fancied to have been the haunts of the Nemean lion, destroyed by Hercules. At length, from the top of a small elevation, we came in sight of the small retired valley of Nemea. It seemed to be about three miles long, and one mile wide. A few minutes more brought us to the Temple of Jupiter. It was raining as hard as ever; but I dismounted, and tramped through the high grass, to examine this famous temple. There are only three columns standing-two of them belonging to the "pronaos," or chief entrance, and the third to the ruined colonnade before it. But the shape of the edifice can be made out with distinctness. All the columns of the colonnade which surrounded the temple lie strown about the surface of the ground. The numerous earthquakes with which this portion of the globe is visited, have thrown down one stone or one pillar after another; and where a whole column has fallen at once, its pieces lie one beside another, in regular succession, on the ground. The capital of one of those which are yet standing has been, by the same convulsion of nature, curiously moved from its place, and a few more movements of the same kind will cause its fall. The inferiority of the material of which the temple was constructed a coarse gray limestone or marble-but especially the distance of the place from any modern Greek city, have saved it from spoliation. It seems very probable that there remain stones enough on the spot to rear the temple over again. I sat down upon the wet stones, and under the shelter of an umbrella, succeeded in transferring to paper a sketch of the ruins. Sideri, my man, although well covered up, showed some impatience to leave, as the road before us was a long one-so we pushed forward. A couple of hours brought us to the end of the difficult pass, when we fell in again with the direct road through the pass of the Dervenachia. There was a khan here, at which we rested, and dried ourselves by the fire kindled upon the stone hearth, built in the middle of the room. The smoke found its way out through the chinks of the thatched roof. Our host made us some coffee-about the only thing which can be obtained any where in Greece. The mountain stream, by whose sandy bed we rode next, was swollen, and caused us some difficulty in wading. But the

rain had ceased, and we should have enjoyed a fine view of the Gulf of Corinth as we descended, had it not been for the heavy clouds which shut out the view of almost every thing in the distance. When we got to the small hotel at Corinth, the day was too near its close to allow of my going up to the top of the Acrocorinthus ; besides, I hoped that the weather might change, and allow of some distant view.

I found that my friend, the deputy, who had so kindly offered that I should go under the protection of his escort from Nauplia, had arrived before me, and occupied the only decent room in the establishment. My own room was bad enough. Mine host, a red-faced Ionian, who spoke Italian better than Greek, came to know what I wanted to eat. "What would you like," said he, "lamb, beef, or eggs and bread and butter?" I expressed myself perfectly satisfied if I could procure some of either of the former. "I am really most sorry," replied he; "but there is not a particle of meat in the house." "Can you not procure some in the village?" I asked, quite alarmed at the idea, that after solacing myself all day with the prospect of a good dinner, I stood a good chance of being starved. "It is quite impossible; there is not a bit in town." "What, then, have you got?" I demanded, with some repressed indignation. "Why, please your honor, there is nothing but some bread and eggs." So I dined on a piece of bread and one or two eggs, which, in the absence of spoons, were dispatched as best could be. After which feast, I threw myself on my bed to await the morrow; and soliloquized—

"Non cuivis homini contingit adire Corinthum."

In the morning, the weather, I found, had not changed. But having an hour or two to spare, I resolved not to fail at least to ascend the fortress. It is on the top of a hill about 1750 feet high, and covers an area of several acres. We found several soldiers within this impregnable fortress, one of whom accompanied us about; but the fog was so dense that we could see nothing but the valley immediately beneath us, and a very small arm of the Bay of Cenchræa, which St. Paul is recorded to have passed through on his way to Corinth. In our return to Corinth, we passed by the ruins of the only temple remaining at Corinth. It is remarkable that not a fragment of the Corinthian architecture has survived in this city, for this building consists of seven heavy Doric columns of rather degenerate style. The village which we now passed through

is small and dirty. Its houses are low and poorly built; and Corinth, famous of old for its luxury and its pleasures, now presents the aspect of a miserable hamlet, with nothing but its ancient name to uphold its reputation.

Kalamaki, the little port on the eastern side of the isthmus, is about six or eight miles distant. The Lloyd's steamer was to leave this morning for Athens, and we

had to hurry thither over a road covered with water. We passed by the ruins of a small amphitheatre, just outside of the town, and about half way came to Hexamili, where the old wall crossed the isthmus. We reached Kalamaki just as the passengers from the Gulf of Lepanto arrived, and were embarking. At five or six o'clock that afternoon, I reached Athens.

FEW people know precisely how it was

done. Certainly not more than three, by whom; the secret having remained up to this date in keeping of my friend ALPHONSE Who, I am credibly informed, is now turning his length of limb to account in the gold region of Australia; of a grisette, a knowledge of whose name and residence among the clouds and chimneytops of Paris, the above-named friend persisted in reserving to himself; and of your humble servant, who, for certain pecuniary advantages of no matter here, finds himself conscientiously impelled to state the circumstances from beginning to end as they really occurred.

The present writer had his residence in Paris, with a view, it was understood, to the completion of his studies. We young Americans know what that means, though our mammas and papas do not. In short, I occupied number 3, on a sixth floor, with a view of the clouds, and I know not what multitude of house-tops and chimney-tops-no questions asked and three francs a week lodging. It was there that I received the élite of my countrymen; for we Americans are a gregarious race, and setting aside the whalebone-caned and moustached young snobs who hail from the aristocratical purlieus of our chief cities, and mutually avoid US and each other abroad, taking up with roué counts, and very problematical countesses; with this exception,

say;

whom I desire deferentially to exclude from the category of which they are ashamed, we Yankees and demi-Yankees are much given to consorting together for the benefit of the public morals and tranquillity. However, as it happened, it was vacation time, and dearth of society had brought in its train unusual reflections. It was high time to turn a new leaf, I thought, and prove myself less frivolous,

in my way, than young Whipper Snapper, whose lemon-kids and perfumery were recognizable if the wind set fair, the breadth of the Champs Elysées. My friends at home might be none the wiser, especially if I chattered a little French and German in their hearing occasionally, in an off-hand easy sort of way; but how to reconcile the waste of so many years to my own conscience, when these trifles should become gravities of yesterday on record, and not reversible by any amount of later-day penitence. Yes, I would reform now while in the mood, and what was better, while the half-score of mauvais sujets who constituted an impromptu joint-stock company in the occupancy of my apartment on the sixth floor, whenever the fancy possessed them, were on their travels elsewhere, and not likely to upset my resolution before carried into effect, and irrevocable. It annoyed me to imagine them drumming on the door of the chamber, imitating the French horn and key bugle, and giving other unmistakable tokens of incredulity and persistence; all tending to call in question the veracity of statement set forth on a halfsheet of foolscap, to be wafered to the top panel of said door, to wit; that "Monsieur had gone for the benefit of his health, injured by too much study, to the Spas of Germany for a twelvemonth; meanwhile begged to live in the memory of his be reaved friends."

So while I sat and smoked the pipe of contrition, and turned over in my mind the most advisable manner of bringing about the above-mentioned praiseworthy results, there came a careless tap upon the very panel upon which I was fastening in thought the intimation of my supposed absence, and without loss of time the same hands made bold to turn the latch and usher in a face well garnished with beard and moustache, and adorned

by long locks tucked behind the ears; which last were surmounted by a diminutive cap such as the students of Paris and their confrères are fond of wearing on all occasions, set jauntily over the right eye, over which also dangled the tassel which, until plucked violently out by the root, is the usual ornament of its centre.

The face was certainly not strange to me, neither the mode of its procedure. First, it rolled its eyes about, taking a solemn inventory of the contents of the chamber, halting with a

momentary

gleam of satisfaction on a lithograph of the then popular danseuse, whese likeness I had recently added to my collection, and passing over the master of the premises on view, with a cursory glance. Then it introduced a body, rather lank and decidedly long-limbed, but not wanting in muscle, which possessed itself without waste of speech, and with much discrimination, of the sole uncrippled chair; tilted its back against the wall, drew out a short meerschaum from a side pocket, and while busied in igniting the former, for the first time broke silence.

"May I venture to ask if Monsieur is at home?"

I smoked and said nothing, looking at the speaker, perhaps, with some little acerbity, at the thought of my fine resolves being thus prematurely blown

over.

"Monsieur intends going to the Spas for the benefit of his health, I perceive," M. Alphonse further remarked with gravity; and indeed, the inscription I had intended for the outer door, lay, right side up, upon the table where I had composed and penned it an hour before.

"I intend to turn a new leaf," I said in a decided tone. "From to-day, I intend to devote to study eighteen hours out of the twenty-four, and if necessary go to the Spas, yes, to the poles for the purpose.

And here I favored my friend with a disquisition on the ways and vagabondism of Young America abroad, summing up with a reiteration of my last resolve, to all of which M. Alphonse listened with becoming patience and attention, firing as it were a feu de joie of smoke from the port-hole of his nostrils whenever he conceived I had uttered a praiseworthy sentiment. When I paused, he remarked without removing his pipe, "Bon! perhaps Monsieur would like to commence his studies with pyrotechnics, a very ele vating science. If so, Monsieur has but to say the word, as the fête of the republic takes place to-morrow at Versailles."

To this sally I vouchsafed no reply. But M. Alphonse was not the man to be balked. "Monsieur will go?" he added presently, with an air of satisfied conviction. I puffed a strong negative: there is no little meaning in a whiff of tobacco smoke rightly observed. "May I ask Monsieur why not?"

66

Because," I said, with an ill-defined vexation, verging on amusement, at the incongruity between the homely directness of the words it suited me to employ, and the elaborate courtesy it equally pleased my complacent friend to drag into service as I have already said, I intend to turn over a new leaf, and devote my hours to study (here my friend expressed his general approval of the sentiment, by two distinct columns of smoke from his nostrils); I have resolved to abandon pleasure, and Paris if need be, and isolate myself from my late disreputable associates"-disreputable associates, impressively, with an eye to my audience (a shrug). "Finally, and once for all, I beg you will in no single instance count upon my countenance or assistance in any of your sorties by night or day." Here my guest, who had brought his feet to the top round of his chair, folded his ape-like length of arms about his knees in a comfortable way, and resting his beard on the summit of the pyramid so formed, sat sedately smoking, and regarding me in much the manner, and with about as much meaning in his physiognomy, as an overgrown chimpanzee might have shown.

Now, there were two peculiarities about my guest-the one conventional, the other personal-which have not yet been noticed. The first of these was, that although glorying in the cognomen of Alphonse glorying, be it understood, not so much in the sentimentality of the name, as in its identity with that of the great lachrymist then guiding the destinies of the republic-Alphonse was no more a Frenchman than you or I, but a native New Englander, reared, no doubt, on baked beans and such like condiments, which, to receive the testimony of a host of witnesses, have a tendency to develope much length of limb, and the kind of ungainliness known with us by the epithet slabsided, not less than characteristic shrewdness, and a marvellous faculty of invention. The other peculiarity, a more marked and individual one, was a habit which, according to his statement, he had contracted when weak-chested from premature overgrowth, of laughing inwardly without much outward indication of mirth, except such as might be conveyed

in the swaying forward of the upper portion of his body at very near a right angle to the lower, and loose dangling about of his large hands, as the shoulders were moved by the inward convulsion. On such occasions his conduct, to an uninformed spectator, appeared that, either of a man suffering from some acute disease, or of an imbecile-usually the latter.

While I looked at him now, soberly, through the smoke of my creating, his features began to relax, and having presently slipped himself out of his chair, he proceeded to double his ungainly person into the shape of an inverted L, evidently inoved so to do by some highly amusing suggestion of his brain. The paroxysm having subsided, he seated himself at my desk, and having written a line or two in a gigantic hand, read to me the following notice to all whom it might concern-to wit: "Messieurs mes amis. The occupant of this apartment having been suddenly called away by an affliction in his family, regrets that he will be detained from your urbane society during the ensuing two days." "Is that well expressed?" M. Alphonse asked, wetting some wafers in his mouth preparatory to attaching them to the back of the slip from which he had just read.

"Upon my word!" I said. "Is it your intention to wafer that notice upon the door of this apartment?"

"Assuredly."

"May I. venture to ask, with what motive?"

"Why," said Alphonse, sitting down again—for he had risen to carry his purpose into effect-"I need a friend at the present juncture, and feel that I cannot count too strongly on your friendship. To be brief: in a room in the left wing of the palace at Versailles, a lady whom I adore is now confined-by order of my illustrious namesake, you understand; and for state reasons. The display of fireworks

"Pray speak sensibly," I interrupted.

Well," said Alphonse, after a long pause; as that story seems incredible to Monsieur, there is nothing for it but to speak the truth, if Monsieur has faith in the existence of that quality in the present humble speaker."

"Proceed," said I, calmly.

"There can be no question, that although naturally possessing a mild and forgiving temper, I am prone to look upon the police with a hostile eye, as the enemies of much innocent nocturnal amusement. Furthermore, that I regard the class of gamins with a truly paternal affection."

"For the police-yes," I responded, laughing, especially since your fine of fifteen francs, for dancing the American war dance, of your invention, at Mère Gros, number two, Rue Papelót. But as for the gamins, who take occasion to mock your personalities whenever you appear in their quartier, I am not quite so sure of your good-will, having indeed heard you declare, times out of mind, that you would be the death of some of them."

"Which evinces the goodness of my temper, as they certainly deserve death by flaying. However that may be, it is my present intention to afford them a treat, such as the gamins of Paris and Versailles have seldom if ever enjoyed. At the same time, I propose to confound the police, from Toulon downwards."

"As how ?" I asked, beginning to be interested; and refilled my pipe, the better to listen, weigh, and pass judgment on whatever might follow.

"Thus it is my intention to give tomorrow evening, slightly in advance of the hour allotted in the programme for the official display, a magnificent exhibition of fireworks; which, it is also part of my intention, shall altogether eclipse that of my illustrious namesake and the Goddess of Liberty."

"Oh, no doubt!" was my response; "you have beyond question counted the cost, and will send the bill to your uncle in India; or perhaps you have unlimited credit with the pyrotechnists?"

"Not at all-you mistake," my friend answered. "It is my illustrious namesake, or, more properly, the provisional government, that furnishes the necessary supplies of powder, pasteboard, and turpentine stars. Otherwise, I am afraid the project would be impossible."

"What!" cried I, a sudden light breaking in upon me; you surely cannot mean to fire, or attempt to fire, the small mountain of rockets they pile together on fête days in the Cour d'Honneur!" and the thought was so preposterously audacious, that I could not refrain from laughing outright.

"Monsieur is sagacity itself," Alphonse responded, unmoved.

"And I, no doubt, am to lead the forlorn hope-in other words, to find occasion to touch them off with my cigar; or, better still, toss a bundle of ignited lucifers into the midst, and take the consequences."

"Pas si bête," my friend returned. tranquilly smoking. "The fact is," he proceeded to say, after a pause-"I have

not yet matured my plans, the idea having occurred to me only now, while turning over in my mind the highly praiseworthy course you have chalked out for yourself in the future. But the present is yet ours-by which I mean to-morrow; and as young Americans and democrats, we should not forget the duty we owe to our country's reputation abroad, in ending every career with a certain eclat, even if that eclat be confined only to the circle of our friends. In short, I propose," said my friend, who, while speaking, had busied himself in wafering up his placard to the outer panel, and now stepped back to ascertain if it were well placed, "to celebrate and announce to the world your secession from our ranks, and future adhesion to a better cause, by a grand pyrotechnic display, as already said. Also, to astonish the police, and thereby afford gratuitous entertainment and instruction to the assembled garons and gamins. Such is the programme of performances which Monsieur will honor with his attendance."

"As a spectator, perhaps," I put in, beginning to relent.

As a spectator," M. Alphonse, who had returned to his chair, answered, between whiffs of smoke, "from the best available situation-assuredly."

A spectator, from the best situation too, left nothing to object.

I smoked, meditated, and resolved. "Well then," said I, with a smile at the subject of my thoughts, "at three o'clock to-morrow we will set forth to astonish the natives."

Now, while admitting, that with the guilelessness, not to say rashness, which belongs to my character, I entered blindfold into the above compact, and with not the most remote idea of the means by which the proposed result was to be brought about; I wish it specially understood and held in view by each and every reader of the present memoir- First, That I accompanied M. Alphonse, solely and by verbal understanding in the capacity of a spectator ("from the best available situation"), and in none other; and that my after course was the result, not of premeditation, but of the force of events to the current of which I had committed myself with too little reserve. Secondly, That I vow and protest, had I supposed the result would have been such as it proved-or, at least, such as has been traced by some to the events I am about to record namely, the subsequent overthrow of the provisional government-I would no more have lent my countenance

to the undertaking, than to the great Barnum, for a wax cast for his Museum in Broadway. And Thirdly, and lastly, That, mentally reviewing the difficulties of the undertaking, and the recognized alertness of the French police individually and as a body, it occurred to me to afford an instance in which Yankee invention would for instance be baffled, and in which my friend-who proposed to himself merely to enact the modest part of sceneshifter, would actually appear on the boards-in other words, in charge of the police-in the character of Harlequin unmasked. I confess, the thought caused me to smile, and in the end to accompany my friend; and to this day I am uncertain whether his observation of the abovenamed smile, and a sharp guess at the amiable wish of which it was born, gave the unexpected turn to events apparent in this narrative.

II.

EVERY one who has ever run down by rail from Paris to Versailles, must hold in mind the three rooms at the station, corresponding to three classes of carriages constituting the train, into which one is inducted by a little Frenchman in fancy military costume, and left to look and walk about, and perhaps discover acquaintances until the opening of the first class passenger door of egress announces the speedy debouchement of your own crowd of expectants. In the second class saloon it was, that M. Alphonse and I found ourselves the day of the fête in company with a multitude of French people and a sprinkling of Italians, Germans, Swiss, and the like, no doubt; but with not one solitary countryman of our own, I feel firmly convinced; in truth it was of Number One that the faithful representatives of ourselves and institutions abroad, had taken joint possession, as is the manner of Americans, with a royal duke (not of France, of course), three English milords, and a banker.

"Ha! bonne ange!" cried Alphonse on a sudden, with a grimace, and kissing the tips of his glove-perhaps I should say, of his fingers, since the latter excceded the former by at least half a jointto somebody in a distant corner; and forgetful of the claims of kindness and leaving an argument in the heat of which we were, unfinished, set off to present himself before the "ange," of whom his greater stature had allowed him a glimpse. I followed, and presently found M. Alphonse, whom I had at the outset lost in