Gutenkarte

CHAPTER XXXII. At Sea Once More--The Pilgrims all Well--Superb Stromboli--Sicily by Moonlight--Scylla and Charybdis--The "Oracle" at Fault--Skirting the Isles of Greece Ancient Athens--Blockaded by Quarantine and Refused Permission to Enter--Running the Blockade--A Bloodless Midnight Adventure--Turning Robbers from Necessity--Attempt to Carry the Acropolis by Storm--We Fail--Among the Glories of the Past--A World of Ruined Sculpture--A Fairy Vision--Famous Localities--Retreating in Good Order --Captured by the Guards--Travelling in Military State--Safe on Board Again

We can not forget Florence--Naples--nor the foretaste of heaven that is in the delicious atmosphere of Greece--and surely not Athens and the broken temples of the Acropolis. Surely not venerable Rome--nor the green plain that compasses her round about, contrasting its brightness with her gray decay--nor the ruined arches that stand apart in the plain and clothe their looped and windowed raggedness with vines. We shall remember St. Peter's: not as one sees it when he walks the streets of Rome and fancies all her domes are just alike, but as he sees it leagues away, when every meaner edifice has faded out of sight and that one dome looms superbly up in the flush of sunset, full of dignity and grace, strongly outlined as a mountain.