When Rome had a C?sar and a Cicero, and a Cassius with a Brutus, Athens dictated the arts and sciences for her. Though she cannot claim the originality of them, she can the perfection of beautifying. The conquest of Alexander the Great, in Egypt, among the Africans, was considered the greatest triumph of conquest ever made by man, because it enabled the warlike people of Greece, to adorn their triumphs with the spoils of the vanquished. Egypt was a higher sphere of artistical science than any other nation on the earth. This will naturally convey an idea to the world that the black man was the first skillful animal on the earth, because Homer describes the Egyptians as men with wooly hair, thick lips, flat feet, and black, and we have no better authority than Homer. We know not the exact epoch of his time, but we know it was before any other authentic chronicler, save the sacred book of Moses, by the fact that he voyaged on the Nile before the pyramids were built, which we can trace three thousand years.

On the 29th of May, 1852, as the sun was going down the blue arch of the western sky, I reached the top of Mars Hill, in Athens, and seated myself in the seat where St. Paul rested from his display of power over a bigoted people, when he said, “I perceive that in all things you are too superstitious.”

When St. Paul stood on Mars Hill, Athens was a voluptuous city to look at. There was the white marble temple of Apollo, Jupiter, Minerva, Juno and Mars, besides temples to the sun and moon, and one to the “unknown god,” all of which were reared up in the most conspicuous reigns of those gods over the minds of all the inhabitants of Athens in a limited degree. As I descended Mars Hill, I turned to the right and entered the temple of Bacchus, who is described in the classical dictionary thus: “son of Jupiter and Semele, and god of wine and drunkards, nourished till a proper time of birth in his fathers thigh, after the death of his mother, whom Jupiter, at her request, visited in all his majesty. Semele, who was a mortal and unable to bear the presence of a god, was consumed to ashes.” An old man was in the temple to keep people from breaking pieces off from the beautiful temple’s treasure, which was the tomb of Bacchus, with the god carved on the sides, drinking his delight. I did not know what god’s temple this was, and enquired of the old man, he could not speak any European language, but was quite successful in conveying the information I wanted; he took an old gourd and scooped some water up from the bottom of a bucket, and drank it with great hilarity, at the same time pointing to Bacchus, as if he would say, “he drank!” I said, “You mean to say this is the temple of Bacchus, the god of wine and drunkards, do you?” he bowed towards his toes and then stood erect, and tried to make me understand that the rest of the tombs there were gods and goddesses, of which Apollo loved either sexually or valorously. There were no windows to the temple, the only inlet was the door, but though the door was shut, it was as light inside as one would wish. The marble was transparent, and when the sun shone upon its roof or walls, it forced its light through in a determined way.

As I left this veritable tomb and sepulchre of the great god of wine and drunkards, my guide pointed to an aperture from the heart of a hill, and said, that entrance goes to the cave where Socrates was poisoned. We then went up the most imposing ruins of Athens, the Acropolis. The temples there looked down upon the rest of the temples of Athens, like Jupiter would at the feast of gods, it was higher and more stupendous than all. There was the seats of solid blocks of white marble of the twelve judges. They were all in a row, and only one broke. They were solid blocks with scooping apertures, for a man to place his rotundity in comfortable quarters. Round about the ruins were balls and cannon, grape, and several bursted shells, but one half of this tremendous mass of splendid ruins stood upright, as when it first took its stand among the wonders of the world, as a temple of wisdom. This temple makes it impossible for us to pronounce ourselves the “light of all ages.”

The great god of this temple was the Ammon of the Africans, the Belus of the Babylonians and the Ossiris of the Egyptians; from him, mankind receives his blessings, and their blessings of miseries, and he is looked upon as one acquainted with everything, past, present and future. Saturn was Jupiter’s father, and conspired against his son and in consequence was banished from his kingdom. Now Jupiter became ruler of the universe and sole master of the Empire of the world, and divided with his brothers, reserving for himself the kingdom of heaven, and giving the Empires of the sea to Neptune, and that of the infernal regions to Pluto. The sea moved at his wrath, and hell burned his opposers, and he looked down from heaven at the commotion of his wrath till the men on earth considered their welfare only secured by worshipping his smile. Athens and all her superstition is gone now, and the godly man now laughs at the folly of the wisdom that all talent of old times craved for. On Mars hill where St. Paul thundered the decrees of God against gods, though nothing to designate the spot, there the Christian of to-day would rather stake his salvation than from the most sacred abode of Jupiter and Juno. But there is still weak minds in Athens, for as I descend I see on the side of a hill that celebrated stone where females used to come from all parts of Italy as well as Greece to slide down on it, as a true avoidance of barrenness. This stone is as slick as a piece of soap, so slick a lizzard could not run down it. For nearly three thousand years two and three thousand women pe............