A Greek newspaper's report of this occasion remarked:—

I will only add that all parties stood during the official part of the interview. This being at an end, coffee and cordials were brought, and we sat at ease, and chatted as well as my limited use of the modern Greek tongue allowed. Before we separated, one of the Greeks present invited the chiefs and myself and daughter to a feast which he proposed to give at Phaleron, in honor of the meeting which I have just described.

The Cretan chiefs came punctually to the station, and presently we all entered a parlor-car, and were whisked off to the scene of action. This was the hotel at Phaleron, where we found a long table handsomely set out, and adorned with fruits and flowers. The company dispersed for a short time,—some to walk by the shore; some to see the lambs roasting on their spit in the courtyard; I, to sit quietly for half an hour, after which interval, dinner was announced.

The Homeric rage of hunger and thirst having been satisfied, it became time for us to make the most of a reunion so rare in its elements, and necessarily so brief. I will here quote partially the report given in one of the Greek papers of the time. The writer says: "During dinner many warm toasts were drunk. Mr. Rainieri drank to the health of Mrs. Howe. Mr. Paraskevaïdes drank to the memory of Dr. Howe and the health of all freedom-loving Americans, giving his toast first in Greek and afterwards in English. To all this, Mrs. Howe made answer in French, with great sympathy and eloquence." So the paper said, but I will only say that I did as well as I was able.

The report says truly that the heroes of Crete, with their white beards, resembled gods of Olympus. The three oldest—Korakas, Kriaris, and Syphacus—spoke of the days in which Dr. Howe, while taking part with them in the military operations of the war of Greek independence, at the same time made his medical skill availing to the sick and wounded.

After the simple patriarchal festivity, the return, even to Athens, seemed a return to the commonplace.

A word regarding the Greek church belongs here. Its ritual represents, without doubt, the most ancient form of worship which can have representation in these days. The church calls itself simply orthodox. It classes Christians as orthodox, Romanist, and Protestant, and condemns the two last-named confessions of faith equally as heresies. The Greek church in Greece has little zeal for the propaganda of its special doctrine, but it has great zeal against the introduction of any other sect within the boundaries of its domain. Protestant and Catholic congregations are tolerated in Greece, but the attempt to educate Greek children in the tenets held by either is not tolerated, is in fact prohibited by government. I found the religious quiet of Athens somewhat disturbed by the presence of several missionaries, supported by funds from America, who persisted in teaching and preaching; one, after the form of the Baptist, another, after that of the Presbyterian body. The schools formerly established in connection with these missions have been forcibly closed, because those in charge of them would not submit them to the religious authority of the Greek priesthood.

THE word "society" has reached the development of two opposite meanings. The generic term applies to the body politic en masse; the specific term is technically used to designate a very limited portion of that body. The use, nowadays, of the slang expression "sassiety" is evidence that we need a word which we do not as yet possess.

It is with this department of the human fellowship that I now propose to occupy myself, and especially with one of its achievements, considered by some a lost art,—the salon.

The uses of society, in the sense of an assemblage for social intercourse, may be briefly stated as follows: first of all, such assemblages are needed, in order to make people better friends. Secondly, they are needed to enlarge the individual mind by the interchange of thought and expression with other minds. Thirdly, they are needed for the utilization of certain sorts and degrees of talent which would not be available either for professional, business, or educational work, but which, appropriately combined and used, can forward the severe labors included under these heads, by the instrumentality of sympathy, enjoyment, and good taste.

Any social custom or institution which can accomplish one or more of these ends will be found of important use in the work of civilization; but here, as well as elsewhere, the ends which the human heart desires are defeated by the poverty of human judgment and the general ignorance concerning the relation of means to ends. Society, thus far, is a sort of lottery, in which there are few prizes and many blanks, and each of these blanks represents some good to which men and women are entitled, and which they should have, and could, if they only knew how to come at it.

In this way, end number two, the enlargement of the individual mind is lost sight of, and, end number three, the interchange of thought and experience does not have room to develop itself.

People say what they think others want to hear: they profess experiences which they have never had. Here, consequently, a sad blank is drawn, where we might well look for the greatest prize; and, end number four, the utilization of secondary or even tertiary talents is defeated by the application of a certain fashion varnish, which effaces all features of individuality, and produces a wondrously dull surface, where we might have hoped for a brilliant variety of form and color.

One of the great needs of society in all times is that its guardians shall take care that rules or institutions devised for some good end shall not become so perverted in the use made of them as to bring about the result most opposed to that which they were intended to secure. This, I take it, is the true meaning of the saying that "the price of liberty is eternal vigilance," no provision to secure this being sure to avail, without the constant direction of personal care to the object.

Here we may have a glimpse of a true republic of intelligence. What should overthrow it? Why should it not last forever, and be handed down from one generation to another?

The salon is an insecure institution; first, because the exclusion of new material, of new men and new ideas, may so girdle such a society that its very perfection shall involve its death. Then, on account of the false ideas and artificial methods which self-limiting society tends to introduce, in time the genuine basis of association disappears from view: the great name is wanted for the reputation of the salon, not the great intelligence for its illumination. The moment that you put the name in place of the individual, you introduce an element of insincerity and failure.

Such contradictions have deep roots; even the general conduct of neighborhood evinces them. People are often concerned lest those who live near them should infringe upon the rights and reserves of their household. In large cities, people sometimes boast with glee that they have no acquaintance with the families dwelling on either side of them. And yet, in some of those very cities, social intercourse is limited by regions, and one street of fine houses will ignore another, which is, to all appearances, as fine and as reputable. Under these circumstances, some may naturally ask: "Who is my neighbor?" In the sense of the good Samaritan, mostly no one.

Resist as we may, the Christian order is prevailing, and will more and more prevail. At the two opposite poles of popular affection and learned persuasion, it did overcome the world, ages ago. In the intimate details of life, in the spirit of ordinary society, it will penetrate more and more. We may put its features out of sight and out of mind, but they are present in the world about us, and what we may build in ignorance or defiance of them will not stand. Modern society itself is one of the results of this world conquest which was crowned with thorns nearly two thousand years ago. In spite of the selfishness of all classes of men and women, this conquest puts the great goods of life within the reach of all.

I speak of Christianity here, because, as I see it, it stands in direct opposition to the natural desire of privileged classes and circles to keep the best things for their own advantage and enjoyment. "What, then!" will you say, "shall society become an agrarian mob?" By no means. Its great domain is everywhere crossed by boundaries. All of us have our proper limits, and should keep them, when we have once learned them.

The social and political life of America has passed out of the cell state into the sweep of a wide and brilliant efficiency. Let us not try to imprison this truly cosmopolitan life in cells, going back to the instinctive selfhood of the barbaric state.

Nature starts from cells, but develops by centres. If we want to find the true secret of social discrimination, let us seek it in the study of centres,—central attractions, each subordinated to the governing harmony of the universe, but each working to keep together the social atoms that belong together. There was a time in which the stars in our beautiful heaven were supposed to be kept in their places by solid mechanical contrivances, the heaven itself being an immense body that revolved with the rest. The progress of science has taught us that the luminous orbs which surround us are not held by mechanical bonds, but that natural laws of attraction bind the atom to the globe, and the globe to its orbit.

The club is taking the place of the salon to-day, and not without reason. I mean by this the study, culture, and social clubs, not those modern fortresses in which a man rather takes refuge from society than really seeks or finds it. I have just said that mankind are governed by centres of natural attraction, around which their lives come to revolve. In the course of human progress, the higher centres exercise an ever-widening attraction, and the masses of mankind are brought more and more under their influence.

In the club, a sort of public spirit necessarily develops itself. Each of us would like to have his place there,—yes, and his appointed little time of shining,—but a worthy object, such as will hold together men and women on an intellectual basis, gradually wins for itself the place of command in the affections of those who follow it in company. Each of these will find that his unaided efforts are insufficient for the furthering and illustration of a great subject which all have greatly at heart. I have been present at a forge on which the pure gold of thought has been hammered by thinkers into the rounded sphere of an almost perfect harmony. One and another and another gave his hit or his touch, and when the delightful hour was at an end, each of us carried the golden sphere away with him.

Here I have heard Wendell Phillips and Oliver Wendell Holmes; John Weiss and James Freeman Clarke; Athanase Coquerel, the noble French Protestant preacher; William Henry Channing, worthy nephew of his great uncle; Colonel Higginson, Dr. Bartol, and many others. Extravagant things were sometimes said, no doubt, and the equilibrium of ordinary persuasion was not infrequently disturbed for a time; but the satisfaction of those present when a sound basis of thought was vindicated and established is indeed pleasant in remembrance.

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, one day, if I remember rightly, gave a very succinct and clear statement of the early forms of Calvinistic doctrine as held in this country, and Wendell Phillips lent his eloquent speech to this and to other discussions.

I am sorry when I see people build palaces in America. We do not need them. Why should we bury fortune and life in the dead state of rooms which are not lived in? Why should we double and triple for ourselves the dangers of insufficient drainage or defective sanitation? Let us have such houses as we need,—comfortable, well aired, well lighted, adorned with such art as we can appreciate, enlivened by such company as we can enjoy. Similarly, I believe that we should, individually, come much nearer to the real purpose of a salon by restricting the number of our guests and enlarging their variety.

If we are to have a salon, do not let us think too much about its appearance to the outside world,—how it will be reported, and extolled, and envied. Mr. Emerson withdrew from the Boston Radical Club because newspaper reports of its meetings were allowed. We live too much in public to-day, and desire too much the seal of public notice.

But do not let us offend ourselves or our friends with the glare of lights, the noise of numbers, in order that all may suffer a tedious and joyless being together, and part as those who have contributed to each other's ennui, all sincere and reasonable intercourse having been wanting in the general encounter.

We should not feel bound, either, to the literal imitation of any facts or features of European life which may not fit well upon our own. In many countries, the currents of human life have become so deepened and strengthened by habit and custom as to render change very difficult, and growth almost impossible. In our own, on the contrary, life is fresh and fluent. Its boundaries should be elastic, capable even of indefinite expansion.

The other mode of living may have much to recommend it for those to whom it is native and inherited, but it is not for us. And when we apologize for our needs and deficiencies, it should not be on the ground of our youth and inexperience. If the settlement of our country is recent, we have behind us all the experience of the human race, and are bound to represent its fuller and riper manhood. Our seriousness is sometimes complained of, usually by people whose jests and pleasantries fail to amuse us. Let us not apologize for this, nor envy any nation its power of trifling and of persiflage. We have mighty problems to solve; great questions to answer. The fate of the world's future is concerned in what we shall do or leave undone.

We are a people of workers, and we love work—shame on him who is ashamed of it! When we are found, on our own or other shores, idling our life away, careless of vital issues, ignorant of true principles, then may we apologize, then let us make haste to amend.

When a Greek tragedy is performed before us, we are amazed at its force, its coherence, and its simplicity. What profound study and quick sense of the heroic in nature must have characterized the man who, across the great gulf of centuries, can so sweep our heart-strings, and draw from them such responsive music! Our praise of these great works almost sounds conceited. It would be more fitting for us to sit in silence and bewail our own smallness. Comedy, too, has her grandeur; and when she walks the stage in robe and buskins, she, too, is to receive the highest crown, and her lessons are to be laid to heart.

This method reminds us of the obstructionists in the British Parliament. One man speaks of himself as loathing the city and longing to return

After various laughable adventures, Dikæopolis finds it possible to conclude a truce with the invaders on his own account, in which his neighbors, the Acharnians, are not included. He returns to his farm, and goes forth with wife and daughter to perform the sacrifice fitting for the occasion.

DIKÆOPOLIS

WIFE

DAUGHTER

DIKÆOPOLIS

WIFE

Dikæopolis now intones a hymn to Bacchus, but is interrupted by the violent threats of his war-loving neighbors, the Acharnians, who break out in injurious language, and threaten the life of the miscreant who has made peace with the enemies of his country solely for his own interests. With a good deal of difficulty, he persuades the enraged crowd to allow him to argue his case before them, and this fact makes us acquainted with another leading trait in Aristophanes; viz., his polemic opposition to the poet Euripides. Dikæopolis, wishing to make a favorable impression upon the rustics, hies to the house of Euripides, whose servant parleys with him in true transcendental language.

DIKÆOPOLIS

SERVANT

DIKÆOPOLIS

SERVANT

The visitor now calls aloud upon the poet:

This Chollidæ probably corresponded to the Pea Ridge often quoted in our day. Euripides declines to come down, but is presently made visible by some device of the scene-shifter. In the dialogue that follows, Aristophanes ridicules the personages and the costumes brought upon the stage by Euripides, and reflects unhandsomely upon the poet's mother, who was said to have been a vender of vegetables. Dikæopolis does not seek to borrow poetry or eloquence from Euripides, but prays him to lend him "a suit of tatters from a worn-out tragedy."

Euripides now asks what especial costume would suit the need of Dikæopolis, and calls over the most pitiful names in his tragedies: "Do you want the dress of Oineos?"—"Oh, no! something much more wretched."—"Phœnix? "—"No; much worse than Phœnix."—"Philocletes?"—"No."—"Lame Bellerophon?" Dikæopolis says:

Euripides by this description recognizes the personage intended, viz., Telephus, the physician, and orders his servant to go and fetch the ragged suit, which he will find "next to the tatters of Thyestes, just over Ino's." Dikæopolis exclaims, on seeing the mass of holes and patches, but asks, further, a little Mysian bonnet for his head, a beggar's staff, a dirty little basket, a broken pipkin; all of which Euripides grants, to be rid of him. All this insolence the visitor sums up in the following lines:—

This is more than Euripides can bear, and the gates are now shut upon the intruder.

Later in the play, Dikæopolis appears in company with the General Lamachus. A sudden call summons this last to muster his men and march forth to repel a party of marauders. Almost at the same moment, Dikæopolis is summoned to attend the feast of Bacchus, and to bring his best cookery with him. In the dialogue that follows, the valiant soldier and the valiant trencherman appear in humorous contrast.

LAMACHUS

DIKÆOPOLIS

LAMACHUS

DIKÆOPOLIS

LAMACHUS

DIKÆOPOLIS

LAMACHUS

DIKÆOPOLIS

LAMACHUS

DIKÆOPOLIS

LAMACHUS

DIKÆOPOLIS

LAMACHUS

DIKÆOPOLIS

LAMACHUS

Dikæopolis makes some insolent rejoinder, at which the general takes fire. He calls for his lance; Dikæopolis, for the spit, which he frees from the roast meat. Lamachus raises his Gorgon-orbed shield; Dikæopolis lifts a full-orbed pancake. Lamachus then performs a mock act of divination:—

DIKÆOPOLIS

In "The Frogs," god and demigod, Bacchus and Hercules, are put upon the stage with audacious humor. The first has borrowed the costume of the second, in which unfitting garb he knocks at Hercules' door on his way to Hades, his errand being to find and bring back Euripides. The dearth of clever poets is the reason alleged for this undertaking. Hercules suggests to him various poets who are still on earth. Bacchus condemns them as "warblers of the grove; poor, puny wretches!" He now asks Hercules for introductions to his friends in the lower regions, and for

A funeral now comes across the stage. Bacchus asks the dead man if he is willing to carry some bundles to Hell for him. The dead man demands two drachmas for the service. Bacchus offers him ninepence, which he angrily refuses, and is carried out of sight. Charon presently appears, and makes known, like a good ferryman, the points at which he will deliver passengers.

Just so, in my youth, sailing on the Hudson, one heard all night the sound of Peekskill landing! Fishkill landing! Rhinebeck landing!—with darkness and swish of steam quite infernal enough.

This music is the famous "Chorus of the Frogs," beginning, "Brokekekesh, koash, koash," and running through many lines, with this occasional refrain, of which Bacchus soon tires, as he does of the oar. His servant Xanthias is obliged to make the journey by land and on foot, Charon bidding him wait for his master at the Stone of Repentance, by the Slough of Despond, beyond the Tribulations. After encountering the Empousa, a nursery hobgoblin, they meet the spirits of the initiated, singing hymns to Bacchus—whom they invoke as Jacchus—and to Ceres. This part of the play, intended, Frere says, to ridicule the Eleusinian mysteries, is curiously human in its incongruity,—a jumble of the beautiful and the trivial. I must quote from it the closing strophe:—

Very incongruous is certainly this picture of Bacchus, in a cowardly and ribald state of mind, listening to the hymn which celebrates his divine aspect. Jacchus, whom the spirits invoke, is the glorified Bacchus, the highest ideal of what was vital religion in those days. But the god himself is not professionally, only personally, present, and, wearing the disguise of Hercules, in no way notices or responds to the strophes which invoke him. He asks the band indeed to direct him to Pluto's house, which turns out to be near at hand.

The women threaten the false Hercules with the pains and penalties of swindling. He now pretends to soliloquize: "I love poor Xanthias dearly; that I do."

Bacchus, thus driven to the wall, proclaims his divinity, and claims Xanthias as his slave. The latter suggests that if Bacchus is a divinity, he may be beaten without injury, as he will not feel it. Bacchus retorts, "If you are Hercules, so may you." Æacus, to ascertain the truth, impartially belabors them both. Each, in turn, cries out, and pretends to have quoted from the poets. Æacus, unable to decide which is the god and which the impostor, brings them both before Proserpine and Pluto.

In the course of a delicious dialogue between the two servants, Æacus and Xanthias, it is mentioned that Euripides, on coming to the shades, had driven Æschylus from the seat of honor at Pluto's board, holding himself to be the worthier poet. Æschylus has objected to this, and the matter is now to be settled by a trial of skill in which Bacchus is to be the umpire.

Æschylus rejoins:

Euripides says that he found the Muse

In order to bring her to a more genteel figure:

And here the poet comes to speak of a question which is surely prominent to-day in the minds of thoughtful people. Æschylus, in his argument against Euripides, speaks of the noble examples which he himself has brought upon the stage, reproaches his adversary with the objectionable stories of Sthenobæus and Phædra, with which he, Euripides has corrupted the public taste.

Euripides alleges in his own defence that he did not invent those stories. "Phædra's affair was a matter of fact." Æschylus rejoins:

I do not know which of the plays of Aristophanes is considered the best by those who are competent to speak authoritatively upon their merits; but of those that I know, this drama of "The Frogs" seems to me to exhibit most fully the scope and extent of his comic power. Condescending in parts to what is called low comedy,—i.e., the farcical, based upon the sense of what all know and experience,—it rises elsewhere to the highest domain of literary criticism and expression.

Perhaps the very extravagance of fun is carried even further in the drama of "The Birds" than in those already quoted from. Its conceits are, at any rate, most original, and, so far as I know, it is without prototype or parallel in its matter and manner.

The wily Athenian begins his address with prodigious flattery, calling the feathered folk "a people of sovereigns," more ancient of origin than man, his deities, or his world. In support of this last clause, he quotes a fable of Æsop, who narrates that the lark was embarrassed to bury his father, because the earth did not exist at the time of his death. Sovereignty, of old, belonged to the birds. The stride of the cock sufficiently shows his royal origin, and his authority is still made evident by the alacrity with which the whole slumbering world responds to his morning reveille. The kite once reigned in Greece; the cuckoo in Sidon and Egypt. Jupiter has usurped the eagle's command, but dares not appear without him, while

Then comes a soothsayer to order the appropriate sacrifices; then an astronomer, with instruments to measure the due proportions of the city; then a would-be parricide, who announces himself as a lover of the bird empire, and especially of that law which allows a man to beat his father. Peisthetairus confesses that, in the bird domain, the chicken is sometimes applauded for clapper-clawing the old cock. When, however, his visitor expresses a wish to throttle his parent and seize upon his estate, Peisthetairus refers him to the law of the storks, by which the son is under obligation to feed and maintain the parent. This law, he says, prevails in Nephelococcagia, and the parricide accordingly betakes himself elsewhere.

I have given my time too fully to the Greek poet to be able to make any extended comparison between his works and those of the Elizabethan dramatists. But from the plays which trifle so with the grim facts of nature, I can fly to the "Midsummer Night's Dream," and alight for a moment on one of its golden branches. Shakespeare's Athenian clowns are rather Aristophanic in color. The play of "Pyramus and Thisbe" might have formed one interlude on that very stage which had in sight the glories of the Parthenon. The exquisite poetry which redeems their nonsense has its parallel in the lovely "Chorus of the Clouds," the ode to Peace, and other glimpses of the serious Aristophanes, which here and there look out from behind the mask of the comedian.

These works are to us exquisite pieces of humoristic extravagance, but to the people of the time they were far more than this; viz., the lesson of ridicule for what was tasteless and ridiculous in Athenian society, and the punishment of scathing satire for what was unworthy. Annotators tell us that the plays are full of allusions to prominent characters of the day. Some of these, as is well known, the poet sets upon the stage in masquerades which reveal, more than they conceal, their true personality. For the demagogue Cleon, and for the playwright Euripides, he has no mercy.

The patient student of Aristophanes and his commentators will acquire a very competent knowledge of the politics of the wise little city at the time of which he treats, also of its literary personages, pedants or sophists. The works give us, I think, a very favorable impression of the public to whose apprehension they were presented,—a quick-witted people, surely, able to follow the sudden turns and doublings of the poet's fancy; not to be surprised into stupidity by any ambush sprung upon them out of obscurity.

Although Aristophanes is very severe upon individuals, he does not, I think, foster any class enmities, except, perhaps, against the sophists. Although a city man, he treats the rustic population with great tenderness, and the glimpses he gives us of country life are sweet and genial. In this, he contrasts with the French playwrights of our time, to whom city life is everything, and the province synonymous with all that is dull and empty of interest.