he will have seen Demetri. Doubtless the costumer had been in Athens, and forgotten that Greece is not living Greece any more. Demetri received us under the shadow of his wing-that is, the corner of a modern carriage man lay dead in the church before the pulpit | dea" in New York, and if he sees Jason in the whence his voice had often sounded in loud ut- | same dress he appeared in lately at Wallack's, terance of words of faith and hope, and they prayed, and sang, and spoke of his life of labor and his glorious death; and the crowd looked on his countenance for the last time and went out and left him there, and then the sun had gone down on Baalbec, and the stars were look--and let me tell you, that after a year of waning down in silver sorrow on the ruined temple; and the boy, the wanderer, clothed in Eastern garb and surrounded by dark-browed Arabs, sat in his tent door on the plain under the lofty columns, and heard the stream beside him bab bling its old story to the sky and the ruin. I worshiped God that Sunday in the ruined Temple of the Sun at Baalbec, and they were burying my father that Sunday afternoon at home, and he was worshiping in the temple above, whose glory eye hath not seen! dering life, and seven months of it on boat, camel, and horse, without venturing into a wheeled vehicle, it makes one nervous to ride in a carriage. We were afraid for our necks all the way up to Athens, and Athens is five miles from the Piræus landing. Miriam longed for the chestnut horse of Syrian memory, and I would have given all my future carriage-rides for Mohammed the bay. We reached Athens, however, and the hotel. It was close by Otho the King's huge barn of a palace, in which the English and French keep him on the fat of the land, while the people of Greece occupy themselves in keeping the fat down, by trying the poor King's patience and scaring his soul out of him monthly. Then he rushes off to Austria or some German Court for a quiet pipe of tobacco, and leaves the Queen to catch robbers and govern Greeks. She is, in fact, the man of the house. But all this is neither here nor there. In the very city of Athens rises an abrupt hill of rock. Its sides are nearly perpendicular to I did not know that he was dead till long after that—when I was in the land of Minerva. | It was with a feeling that I can not well describe that I awoke one morning in the steamer Carmel, and hastened on deck to see the shores of Greece. It was a glorious morning-day was just breaking in the east. A fresh breeze came off the land from Hymettus, and the sea was rolling easily. Aurora was on the eastern horizon. As I came on the upper deck I met the young Prince de P, who was out before me, and who pointed up to the lofty crags un-ward the top, but the débris of the hill has made a der which we were running. It was "Sunium's marble steep." The first flush of the morning lit the ruin of the temple of Minerva, and the white columns shone far over the sea. It was my first, and a fitting sight of Grecian ruin. Perhaps no spot in all of Greece could be found more exactly typical of Greece as it is. Standing on a noble promontory, its base washed by the eternal murmur of the waves, looking far out toward the islands of the sea, as if to teach the world the grandeur, the beauty, the glory of Athena, it is a beautiful, a mag-was clear, and the scene grand. nificent relic-grand in its ruin, beautiful in its decay. slope all around it at the bottom of the precipice. On one side it is accessible by a steep climb. The top is nearly level, and includes two or three acres of land or rock. This is the Acropolis of Athens. The top is a mass of ruins. Pavements, capitals, cornices, statues, columns, architraves, lie in hideous confusion, where once the noblest works of human art were gathered. It was a windy day when I climbed the Acropolis first. The gale howled and whined through the ruins of the Parthenon; but the sunshine Let him who would know the difference between Egyptian and Greek Mythology compare these two temples. The one grand, gloomy, mystical, and incomprehensible; the other simple, beautiful, compact, and complete. The one Two hours passed swiftly by as we paced the deck and talked of the shore along which we were running, every inch of which was full of classic memorials. This mountain was Pentel-hewn out of the living rock, and dedicated to an icus, that was Hymettus. Just there lay Mara- | unknown deity, but dimly shadowed forth by his thon. Yonder in the west is the citadel of Cor- attributes, which were represented as the only inth. Here is the Bay of Salamis, and there means of his intercourse with man; the other -right there-across a long, low, prairie-like finished and superb in design, and beautiful bestretch of land, grand, noble in the distance,yond praise in execution, dedicated to a godsublime in antiquity-there are the Acropolis dess of self-sufficient wisdom-an idol of beauand the Parthenon. tiful stone. Miriam came on deck as we caught sight of it. Then all our eyes were fixed on it, and the steamer dashed on, rounding the point and running into the little landlocked harbor of the Piræus. Demetri was on board before the anchor was fairly run out. Demetri is landlord of the Hôtel des Etrangers, and Demetri is a trump. If In Egypt idolatry was in its infancy when Abou Simbal was hewn. In Athens idolatry was the only worship of the nation when Minerva dwelt in the Parthenon. In the one, the obelisk pointed to the residence of the deity; in the other, the closed roof of the temple shut in all heavenly aspirations. But again I trespass. The guardian, a lame any one wishes to know his personal appearance, soldier, trotted closely after me as I walked let him go to the next representation of "Me- | hither and thither among the ruins, and seem After this my uncle Gerard shunned the world. He settled down at Woolwich, where his ladylove continued to reside; and though his stately house and pleasant grounds were the finest in the whole county-though he was the best of neighbors, and his early grapes and ripe peaches were freely sent to every fortunate sufferer who chanced to fall sick in their season of bearing, he yet avoided all society. He lived alone, with a housekeeper as reserved as himself, a maid-ofall-work, and a gardener. ed afraid I would pocket the Parthenon itself. | with her sweet brown eyes, and her bonnie brown He talked nothing but Greek, and I almost any hair, became Mistress Amy Deane. thing else, but not a word of that. So we had no intercourse. But I knew an interpreter. I bought him off with a silver coin, and he left me to my loneliness in the Parthenon. I lay down on my back, and looked up at the sky. The white clouds traveled over me like angels, and the sky seemed fathomless in its blue. And far away into its depths my thoughts went seeking the throne of the unknown God, whose name had been declared to the Athenians down yon- | der on Mars Hill by the Apostle of the Gentiles. If never before, at least then there was a sincere worshiper of the God of Abraham in the Holy of Holies of the temple of Minerva. That night came to me a terrible messenger. A wandering newspaper, thrown in my way almost by chance, wherein I read on one page that my father had gone to the assembly of the patriarchs and prophets, and on the opposite page that Miriam's brother had joined the company that wear white robes in the land of light. Let him who can imagine the weight of that blow on two lonely travelers, or how dark and fearful now in memory seem the Acropolis of Athens and the ghostly Parthenon as I saw them from my window that night through the fast tears that flooded my eyes. MY INHERITANCE. I. My father, who was his favorite nephew, resided at that time in New York, and was about marrying. He tried vainly to persuade his uncle to remove to the city, or at least to settle near him. The invariable answer expressed a quiet but resolute preference for Woolwich. When I was born, two years after, my father wrote again, begging him to come to my christening, and telling him that I was to be called for him-Gerard Sunderland. I believe my mother, Heaven bless her tender heart! had selected a lovely young girl to stand sponsor by his side, hoping, with her womanly tact, that so the lost Amy might be replaced, and another smile make rainbows about his lonely life. But in reply came the same quiet refusal to visit New York, even for a day; and the letter also stated that he had made his will, bequeathing to his infant grand-nephew, Gerard Sunderland, My great-uncle, Mr. Gerard Sunderland, was all his property. dead; and I, his heir, Gerard Sunderland the Second, had just stepped upon the cars to go and take possession of his estate in Woolwich, a pleasant little village not far from the Connecticut River. He had been a strange man, in many respects, this dead great-uncle of mine. In his early youth he was a diligent student, a man of rare genius, devoting himself only to study. He had traveled over many lands, and came back with much learning, a polished, stately gentleman. He was over thirty when he fell in love. I use advisedly this hackneyed expression. It was with him a desperate, unthinking plunge. He staked his all upon one throw. With such a nature as his there could be no calling back the heart-no after-growth of tenderness. He loved, as such men oftenest do, a woman remarkable for nothing beyond her peers, and yet he made of her a goddess. She was sweet and blithesome rather than very beautiful. She had little fondness for study. She would rather gather roses than read poems; and made pies oftener than periods. She was very young, too, scarcely half his own age; and yet, to his fancy, she was the one stately and most perfect lady, whom no woman could ever equal, whose name no man's voice must ever utter without homage. He approached her, I have been told, with a reverent humility very wonderful in his proud nature; and perhaps that kind of wooing was not the one best suited to enchain her wayward fancy. At all events his love was not returned, and before many months pretty Amy Mansfield, I had only seen him twice. Twice, during my early boyhood, I had been sent-rather with his permission than by his request-to visit him at Woolwich. Once my parents wished--because of my dear mother's health, which was then delicate-to travel without the care which taking me would have involved; the other time New York was visited by an epidemic, before which all fled who could. Business kept my father in the city; and my mother, caring nothing for life unless he might share it, determined to remain with him; while, to ease her mother-heart of its anxiety, I was sent again to Woolwich. Sitting in the cars, while the quiet villages through which we passed, the tall trees, and the very fences by the wayside, seemed to fly from us with lightning speed, I recalled those two visits. I had traveled then by stage. The journey had been a very fatiguing one, lasting from the gray of the early morning until ten at night. My welcome bad been kind, but grave; and the weeks I passed there had appeared strangely solitary to a child accustomed to the restless bustle of New York. It seemed to me almost as if I were in one of the enchanted castles I had read of in my story-books, where all the beautiful things would vanish if one spoke above a whisper. But this very stillness had not been without its own exceeding charm to my childish imagination. It was happiness enough for me to walk through the garden when the morning dew trembled, tear-like, in the hearts of the | ly sweet was the still, dead smile into which his blossoms; to gather the magical roses, and see lips were frozen. Absorbed in these thoughts, the gardener train the climbing honey-suckle so I had not heeded the stopping of the cars or the tall that I used to wonder if there was a giant name of the station, and I roused myself with a living in wicked state at the top of it. It was sudden start when the conductor, touching my best of all to watch the wonderful panorama of arm, said, politely, sunset. It was to me-city born and bred-as if the breath of God had created a new world; had called to quick and beautiful life wonders of which I had never heard or dreamed. Uncle Gerard, too, was very good to me, in his own stately way. He used to tell me wonderful stories of the foreign countries he had visited, and sometimes to show me paintings which he had made-for he was no mean artist -of some of those far-off scenes. There was one picture which hung in his study the only one there-and I had never seen it, for a crimson curtain always hung before it. One day I boldly asked him if he had painted it, and why I might not see it, as I had seen the rest. A look which I could not interpret passed over his face. His voice trembled, but he was not angry. "I believe you wish to stop here. This is Woolwich, Sir." I got out. My memory of places was always extremely tenacious. Much as Woolwich had in many respects changed since I had visited it, I knew my way at once to the house which was now mine. Leaving my baggage at the station, I walked onward. Before long I came to the spot where my uncle's grounds-I had not learned to say my grounds, as yet-commenced. They lay on both sides of the road, or rather drive, for it was not public property, leading up to the mansion. The pine-trees on either side of the way were not many years old when I saw them last, but they had grown so tall now that their branches met over my head, and, looking up through their greenery, they seemed to lift their odorous boughs almost to “Surely,” he said; "why not? You shall the sky. The drive itself flashed white, as if see it, Gerard." He drew away the curtain, and a woman's face was there. Gentle brown eyes smiled on me; brown hair of precisely the same hue rippled, in waves, over the delicate shoulders; the mouth was arch and bright, yet sweet, and looked as if it was just going to speak to me. I was too much pleased to be demonstrative. I think the tears even came to my eyes. They had a trick of doing so in childhood, whenever any thing appealed strongly to my quick æsthetic nature. I only said, "Oh, Uncle Gerard, I never saw any thing half so beautiful!" "You think so," was the gentle answer; "but her face was ten times fairer than any painter's art could make it." With a long, perhaps unconscious, sigh he replaced the curtain, and during my visit I never saw that face again. But its memory came back to me vividly as I rode on now toward Woolwich. How those far-off childhood days came back, shedding their glamour over my spirit-came back, with their strange radiance of sunsets and sunrises, their wonderful fragrance of flowers, their far hills and bright waters. I was twenty-eight now. It had been eighteen years since I last saw Uncle Gerard. I had not known him well enough to have his loss come home to me as a real sorrow; still a sort of tender, poetic melancholy invested the memory of this solitary man, grown old alone, clinging to a by-gone love which had never known response; alone with his artist gifts, his genius, his rare learning. I had been too far away from home to be summoned in time for his funeral, but my parents had gone; and my mother told me, with tears in her eyes, how death had seemed to still the long sorrow of his life-to give back youth and hope to his worn face—and how marvelous strewn with snowy, glittering shells in the summer sunshine. The grass was fresh and green, with the long afternoon shadows trailing over it. Soon I turned a corner, and there before me was the house which the trees had till now concealed—a stately, old-fashioned mansion, with an upright three-story centre, and long rambling wings on each side. Around these wings, whose windows opened to the ground, were pleasant verandas. A handsome flight of stone steps led up to the principal front entrance. The whole place was tasteful, well-appointed, beautifully kept, with a kind of hospitable face, which roused in me a certain pride and joy of ownership, for which I reproached myself the moment after. I would have pushed open the door and gone in, but it was fastened, and I was obliged to have recourse to a ponderous silver knocker in the shape of a lion's head. The old housekeeper of eighteen years before came to the door. I had sundry grateful recollections of delicious little pies and cakes with which she had surfeited my boyhood. I was glad to see her kindly face again. She had not changed much. Her figure was hale and buxom as ever, though years had certainly frosted her hair which used to be thick and black. I extended my hand: "How do you do, Mrs. Tabitha ?" She did not answer at first; she seemed trying to recollect me. Her face wore a puzzled expression which presently cleared up. "Belike you'll be our young master?" "The same." "Well, I'm sure we'll be heartily glad to see you, Sir, only if you'd just sent word you was coming, we'd been all ready for you, and Mike would have gone after you with the carriage." I suppose it always remained a mystery to the good old lady why I should have preferred walking quietly over the road to my new pos sessions, rather than coming to them with due | words which dwelt upon her beauty seemed honors, drawn in state by Uncle Gerard's sleek touched with flame, and yet it was a flame as gray horses. However, I soon managed to put pure as those which lit in other days the sacriher on a right footing-to become the master in- fices offered to Heaven. To him she was not stead of the visitor, and in due time I was the pretty, light-hearted girl which only she quietly installed in my new home. seemed to other eyes, but the elect woman, crowned, to his thought, with all that there was on earth of nobleness, purity, and religion-a woman such as must have inspired the poets of those old classic days when they wrote of goddesses. For the first day or two there was pleasure enough in rambling about the grounds, but the third day was rainy, and I shut myself up in my uncle's study. The vailed picture hung there still. I felt almost as if I were committing sacrilege when I drew away the curtain, but I had a strong desire to see how faithfully my memory had reproduced it. It was the same face that I had carried with me all these years, only there was a look of self-abnegation about it, a look like a prayer which I had not remembered, which I was puzzled to reconcile, at first, with what I had been told of Amy Mansfield's sunny, joyous nature, her disposition to take every thing at its best-to live in the present. My uncle must have painted her as she had seemed to his imagination. All the lofty traits with which his fancy had dowered her he had brought out upon the canvas. But, even without that expression, which seemed the look of a pitying angel, she must have been very lovely. I could imagine how a man might well have worshiped her, and asked her to be nothing that she was not. I looked at her a long time. I was not romantic. I had been engaged in commerce, and it had not been without its usual hardening effect upon me. I must marry some time, I took that for granted. I was equally resolved that the future Mrs. Gerard Sunderland must be a lady of fortune and position, and yet I could not help thinking, as I gazed upon the picture, that I should like very much to have her eyes look at me like those eyes of bonny Amy Mansfield. And then I smiled at the thought of getting so enthusiastic about a woman who must be old and gray now, even if she were still living. And here a curiosity—I wish I could dignify it by a worthier name-took possession of me to learn her after fate. All I had heard was that she became Amy Deane and lived in Woolwich. Who was this gude mon who was her husband-this successful rival of my refined, stately great uncle? Nothing would be easier than to call Mrs. Tabitha and make the necessary inquiries, but I had a sort of romantic wish to find out in a different manner. It might be my uncle's papers would tell her story. Nothing more likely than for this man, reserved, yet painstaking and patient, who had no human confidant, to write down on paper such things as troubled the current of his life. I began a studions search among the papers in his desk. I was not disappointed. In a compartment by itself I found a book which had evidently been a sort of journal. It was not dated, or kept with any attempt at regularity. It seemed as if, when he could no longer hush the cry of his soul, it had found vent there. At first, however, it was joyous. He had just come to Woolwich-he had seen her. The His timid wooing was detailed there; the delicate, poetical attentions by which he sought to make known his homage; and, at last, he told in words, every one of which seemed an embodied agony, how he had asked her love and asked in vain. There was no reproach coupled with her name. He seemed to think it nothing strange that she had not been able to love one who seemed to her youth so grave and old-his only marvel was that he should ever have been presumptuous enough to ask her. She had not fallen, ever so slightly, from the pedestal on which he had placed her-she was his goddess still. A few pages farther on her betrothal was chronicled to one Everhard Deane, the young rector of Woolwich-a man, my uncle wrote, whom she could worthily love-who, God grant, might love and cherish her forever! Of her marriage there was nothing written, but, by-andby, there came a leaf from which it appeared that he had been painting her portrait. It said: "I have been to church to-day. Everhard Deane preached for the first time since his marriage. They have returned from their short bridal tour. They are living in the rectory. I knew I should see her at church, but I could not stay away, though every moment was torture. I went early. I took my seat where, if she sat in the minister's pew, I could watch every expression of her face, catch every inflection of her voice. Soon they came in. She was leaning on his arm, as I had once hoped, Heaven help me, she would lean on mine. Oh, how she looked! Love made her face radiant. She had never seemed to me so maddeningly beautiful as now, when she had given herself forever to another. My portrait does not do her justice. I must give to her sweet eyes a tenderer light; I must paint an added nobleness in the still calm of her mouth. Did I covet her? If I did, God will forgive me; God, who knows I would not deprive her of one moment of happiness, even to make her mine forever. "Oh how her low voice thrilled me, as she joined in the prayers! Can Everhard Deane love her as I do? He seemed indeed very content, very proud, as who might not with her by his side? Well, I shall learn calmness in time. It is something to have loved her-to have dreamed, once in life, a happy dream." Then came other pages, sometimes with intervals of years between them. Once he had seen her with her first-born child in her arms, a noble boy. Then that brave boy had died, and it was beautiful to see how every sorrow that came nigh this Amy of his love brought out the still, deep tenderness of Uncle Gerard's nature. There were many such sorrows. Five children, one after another, she had followed to their quiet resting-places in the church-yard, underneath the rectory windows-the church-yard where, all summer long, suns shone, winds blew, and birds sang above her darlings, and round them every spring-time went on the new birth of nature; the wondrous spring-time miracle of earth's resurrection, typical of the mortal putting on immortality-Nature's own seal to the Divine promise, "Thy dead shall live again." It seemed that, despite these many sorrows, the fair Amy was very happy in her husband. Nor was her middle age left desolate. The youngest of all her children, her daughter Rachel, was spared to her; was growing up by her mother's side, with her mother's gentle voice, and eyes which were Amy's own. The last page of all was stained with that stain which from heart or paper can never be effaced a strong man's tears. Amy was dead. The grave had closed upon that hair, still brown and shining-that smile which had never grown old to his loving eyes. She had never been his, and yet, now she was gone, a light, a music, a glory had been swept forever from earth and life. Happy Everhard Deane! He has a right to plant roses over her grave-a right to mourn her a blessed heritage for all his lifetime in the memory that that dainty form has thrilled in his clasping arms; that those brown tresses have bathed his bosom with their silken length; those lips pressed upon his their first kisses-uttered for him their last prayer. The grave has closed over her. It wanted but this to make Uncle Gerard's lone life lonelier. It was something to see her to watch, on Sundays and Saint days, for the chance gleam of her sad and tender smile, or the tremulous music of her voice joining in prayer and psalm. Now he has watched and listened for the last time-Amy is dead! Happy Everhard Deane ! He was beloved-therefore, for him, all the beauty and glory of life are immortal. Beyond the grave he can claim his bride, young and fair again in heaven. For him fond arms are waiting-for him one heart beats lonely, even in the light of that day which hath no end, with longings for his coming; but for Gerard Sunderland there must be solitude-so whispers his despairing heart-even in heaven. After this page all the leaves were blank. With this record of sorrow, the journal of Uncle Gerard's life came to a full stop. There was no date-I could not tell how long ago it had been written; but I wondered if that had not been his death stroke-if, after this great sorrow, his life had not begun to ebb. getting an old man now, and since his wife died he seems sadly broken; but we all like him, and as long as he can say a prayer we would not change him away." "How long since his wife died?" was my next question. The answer startled me. "Just one year to a day before our dead master. He never held up his head after her death. Some said he took it harder than her husband. Belike you have not heard the story, but the master loved Mistress Deane when she was Amy Mansfield. They say she was a pretty girl and her eyes were wondrous sweet and bright, but nobody else saw such great things in her as your uncle. She said Nay to his suit. Mr. Deane was a younger man, and he had her heart. But it darkened all Mr. Sunderland's life. He always seemed to feel every trouble that came upon her as if it was his own, and when she died he never got over it." The next day was Sunday, and I went early to church, more anxious, I must confess, to see the husband and child of this dead Amy than to join in the service, which I had not then learned to love. That morning I saw Rachel Deane for the first time. The rector seemed a quiet yet deep-feeling old man, bowed down by sorrow. There was something singularly beautiful in his benign face framed in silver hair, and in the pathos of his low yet thrilling voice. His utterance charmed my ear, it was so distinct and musical, despite the tremulousness it had caught from age and sorrow. But I did not hear his sermon. I was too much absorbed in looking at the saintly face which was uplifted toward him from the minister's pew. Rachel Deane, at sixteen, was the very image of her mother's portrait in my Uncle Gerard's study; save that the expression of holiness, of self-abnegation, was even deepened in her young, wistful face. She was, I could see, all that my uncle's imagination had made of her mother. Her voice-somehow I always notice voices-was so clear that I could easily single out its low tones whenever she joined in the service. Had I only heard that, without looking upon her face, I could have almost divined her character. should have said that it must be the utterance of a true, pure soul, strong to do and to suffer; yet a cheerful, kindly soul, moreover, carrying light and blessing with it every where. I It was not long before I made her acquaintance. The Reverend Mr. Deane came to call upon me, and, very naturally, I returned his visit. I soon found that his daughter possessed a vigorous, inquiring mind, already stored with all the available contents of her father's library. But these works, for the most part books of science, history, and theology, had by no means satisfied her. She had read a few volumes of poems, and one or two of Scott's novels, which had been her mother's, and these had opened to her vision the enchanted realm of song and fiction, through which she longed to wander. I had "Mr. Everhard Deane," was the reply. "He's it in my power to gratify this longing. Uncle That night, while Mrs. Tabitha poured my tea, I took occasion to inquire who was the present rector of Woolwich. |