HE NEW YORK FCBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS.

THE ACROPOLIS,

ATHENS.

Drawn by J. M. W. Turner, R.A. from a Sketch by T. Allison.

"Ancient of days! August Athena! where

Where are thy men of might ?-thy great of soul?
Gone-glimmering through the dream of things that were;
First in the race that led to glory's goal,

They won, and pass'd away—is this the whole?

A schoolboy's tale, the wonder of an hour!

The warrior's weapon and the sophist's stole

Are sought in vain, and o'er each mouldering tower, Dim with the mist of years, grey flits the shade of power." Childe Harold, canto ii. st. 2.

"AT Athens, on his first visit, Lord Byron made a stay of between two and three months, not a day of which he let pass without employing some of its hours in visiting the grand monuments of ancient genius around him, and calling up the spirit of other times among their ruins.

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Though the poet has left in his own works an ever-enduring testimony of the enthusiasm with which he now contemplated the scenes around him, it is not difficult to conceive that, to superficial observers, Lord Byron at Athens might have appeared an untouched