George John Cayley

“ These magnificent ruins are in the hands of monstrous bad showmen, who, in striving to improve them, do all they can to deface and spoil them. To my uninstructed mind, evidence of depraved taste is visible in all that has yet been done; for instance, passing the guard-house on the ascent to the Propylæa, staring you in the face is a marble wall of heads and limbs, hands and feet, besides other small relics of Greek, Persian, and Roman workmanship, huddled together without regard to the connection that may have originally existed between them, and trimmed off like a box-hedge. ”

“ The authorities in their wisdom have established a guard—the off-duty members of which select the most inviting spots amidst the ruins whereon to slumber and dream; and as you pause in thought at the Propylæa, or strive to erect in imagination the Parthenon or Erechtheum, as they once were, you are startled out of your very self by a series of apoplectic snores gobbled in on one inhalation and sent forth again on a prolonged whistling hist. ”

“ In roaming among the ruins of Athens I pass a good deal of time, and am always ready to spend a day at the Acropolis, and, profane wretch that I am, to take with much gusto a pipe and a trifle of meditation on the Areopagus. ”