THE BOND OF FRIENDSHIP. 439

lead across swollen streams; take care that you are not washed
away!

What is your reward for undergoing these hardships? The
fullest, richest reward. Nature manifests herself here in all her
greatness; every spot is historical, and the eye and the thoughts
are alike delighted. The poet may sing it, the painter portray
it in rich pictures; but the air of reality which sinks deep into
the scul ot the spectator, and remains there, neither painter nor
poet can produce.

In many little sketches I have endeavoured to give an idea of
a small part of Athens and its environs; but how colourless the
picture seems! How little does it exhibit Greece, the mourning
genius of beauty, whose past greatness and whose sorrow the
stranger never forgets !

The lonely herdsman yonder on the hills would, perhaps, by a
simple recital of an event in his life, better enlighten the stranger
who wishes in a few features to behold the land of the Hellenes,
than any picture could do.

“Then,” says my Muse, “let him speak.”

A custom, a good, peculiar custom, shall be the subject of the
mountain shepherd’s tale. It is called ;

THE BOND OF FRIENDSHIP.

Our rude house was put together of clay; but the door-posts
were columns of fluted marble found near the spot where the house
was erected. The roof reached almost down to the ground. It
was now dark brown and ugly, but it had originally consisted of
blooming olive and fresh laurel branches brought from beyond
the mountain. Around our dwelling was a narrow gorge, whose
walls of rock rose steeply upwards, showing naked and black, and
round their summits often hung clouds, like white living figures.
Never did I hear a singing bird there, never did the men there
dance to the sound of the bagpipe; but the spot was sacred from
the old times: even its name reminded of this, for it was called
Delphi! The dark solemn mountains were all covered with snow ;
the highest, which gleamed the longest in the red light of evening,
was Parnassus; the brook which rolled from it near our house
was once sacred also. Now theass sullies it with its feet, but the
stream rolls on and on, and becomes clear again. How I can
remember every spot in the holy solitude! In the midst of the
hut a fire was kindled, and when the hot ashes lay there red and
glowing, the bread was baked inthem, When the snow was piled
so high around our hut as almost to hide it, my mother appeared
most cheerful: then she would hold my head between her hands,
and sing the songs she never sang at other times, for the Turks
our masters would not allow it. She sang:

“On the summit of Olympus, in the forest of dwarf firs, lay an