Page:Englishwomaninan00elli.pdf/47

 imagination the race must die. Our standards are skill in commerce!

Had I the art, whether of pen or brush, to pay fit homage to this immortal rock, who would look or listen? Could I invent yet one more machine to "save time"—for making more money—the world would be at my feet.

Where shall we look for a Pericles, who hand our laurels to the presiding genius of a "cash and carry" store?

There is no finer view of Athens than one can gain from the Acropolis, as the city lies at its feet, like some plain of brown paper dotted with green palms and the little white houses drawn in chalk.

"Here," said I, "is the Greece of Oxford—of Homer and Plato, of Æschylus and of Sophocles! The magnificent traditions of an immortal past.

"It was in Oxford of classic memories, that I first heard the Tales of Greece, first listened to her great scholars telling of Andromache and Antigone in the exquisite language of the finest literature in the world.

"Here, too, is the Greece of Byron—of Childe Harold, and of the Maid of Athens!"

How the voice carries in this clear atmosphere! No wonder these ancient people would crowd under the blue skies to every play, tragic or comic, that their great dramatists could produce.

And now, as the sunset colours—gold, scarlet, violet, and purple—are glowing upon the immortal rock, over the marble ruins, I marvel at "tiny" Athens and her "vast" name.

Alas, for Hellas and modern Greece!

Had her own people been as faithful as Oxford to the traditions of ancient Greece, what would have been the Eastern Question to-day? And for some, no doubt, it is this very honouring of Hellas that has been responsible for our fatal pro-Greek enthusiasms. If we recognise the superiority of the modern Turk, loyalty to Plato, to Aristotle, and to Socrates must forbid speech; gratitude to the lyrcis of Hellas must tie the tongue. Orators and poets, artists and thinkers