From The Fact Of His Having Found A
Difficulty In His Subject, I Began To Think That My Host Might
Really Know Rather More Of It Than His Announcement Of A Thorough
Knowledge Had Led Me To Expect.
I felt interested at being about
to hear from the lips of an intelligent Greek, quite remote from
the influence of European opinions, what might seem to him the most
astonishing and incomprehensible of all those results which have
followed from the action of our political institutions.
The
anomaly, the only anomaly which had been detected by the vice-
consular wisdom, consisted in the fact that Rothschild (the late
money-monger) had never been the Prime Minister of England! I
gravely tried to throw some light upon the mysterious causes that
had kept the worthy Israelite out of the Cabinet, but I think I
could see that my explanation was not satisfactory. Go and argue
with the flies of summer that there is a power divine, yet greater
than the sun in the heavens, but never dare hope to convince the
people of the south that there is any other God than Gold.
My intended journey was to the site of the Paphian temple. I take
no antiquarian interest in ruins, and care little about them,
unless they are either striking in themselves, or else serve to
mark some spot on which my fancy loves to dwell. I knew that the
ruins of Paphos were scarcely, if at all, discernible, but there
was a will and a longing more imperious than mere curiosity that
drove me thither.
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