John Stephens - Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey, Russia, and Poland, Vol. 1 (of 2)

Before we went away the whole school rose at once, and gave us a glorious finale with a Greek hymn. In a short time these girls will grow up into women and return to their several families; others will succeed them, and again go out, and every year hundreds will distribute themselves in the cities and among the fastnesses of the mountains, to exercise over their fathers, and brothers, and lovers, the influence of the education acquired here; instructed in all the arts of woman in civilized domestic life, firmly grounded in the principles of morality, and of religion purified from the follies, absurdities, and abominations of the Greek faith. I have seen much of the missionary labours in the East, but I do not know an institution which promises so surely the happiest results. If the women are educated, the men cannot remain ignorant; if the women are enlightened in religion, the men cannot remain debased and degraded Christians.

The ex-secretary Rigos was greatly affected at the appearance of this female school; and, after surveying it attentively for some moments, pointed to the Parthenon on the summit of the Acropolis, and said to Mrs. Hill, with deep emotion, "Lady, you are erecting in Athens a monument more enduring and more noble than yonder temple;" and the king was so deeply impressed with its value, that, a short time before my arrival, he proposed to Mr. Hill to take into his house girls from different districts and educate them as teachers, with the view of sending them back to their districts, there to organize new schools, and carry out the great work of female education. Mr. Hill acceded to the proposal, and the American missionary school now stands as the nucleus of a large and growing system of education in Greece; and, very opportunely for my purpose, within a few days I have received a letter from Mr. Hill, in which, in relation to the school, he says, "Our missionary establishment is much increased since you saw it; our labours are greatly increased, and I think I may say we have now reached the summit of what we had proposed to ourselves. We do not think it possible that it can be extended farther without much larger means and more personal aid. We do not wish or intend to ask for either. We have now nearly forty persons residing with us, of whom thirty-five are Greeks, all of whom are brought within the influence of the gospel; the greater part of them are young girls from different parts of Greece, and even from Egypt and Turkey (Greeks, however), whom we are preparing to become instructresses of youth hereafter in their various districts. We have five hundred, besides, under daily instruction in the different schools under our care, and we employ under us in the schools twelve native teachers, who have themselves been instructed by us. We have provided for three of our dear pupils (all of whom were living with us when you were here), who are honourably and usefully settled in life. One is married to a person every way suited to her, and both husband and wife are in our missionary service. One has charge of the government female school at the Piræus, and supports her father and mother and a large family by her salary; and the third has gone with our missionaries to Crete, to take charge of the female schools there. We have removed into our new house" (of which the foundation was just laid at the time of my visit), "and, large as it is, it is not half large enough. We are trying to raise ways and means to enlarge it considerably, that we may take more boarders under our own roof, which we look up to as the most important means of making sure of our labour; for every one who comes to reside with us is taken away from the corrupt example exhibited at home, and brought within a wholesome influence. Lady Byron has just sent us one hundred pounds toward enlarging our house with this view, and we have commenced the erection of three additional dormitories with the money."

Athens is again the capital of a kingdom. Enthusiasts see in her present condition the promise of a restoration to her ancient greatness; but reason and observation assure us that the world is too much changed for her ever to be what she has been. In one respect, her condition resembles that of her best days; for, as her fame then attracted strangers from every quarter of the world to study in her schools, so now the capital of King Otho has become a great gathering-place of wandering spirits from many near and distant regions. For ages difficult and dangerous of access, the ancient capital of the arts lay shrouded in darkness, and almost cut off from the civilized world. At long intervals, a few solitary travellers only found their way to it; but, since the revolution, it has again become a place of frequent resort and intercourse. It is true that the ancient halls of learning are still solitary and deserted, but strangers from every nation now turn hither; the scholar to roam over her classic soil, the artist to study her ancient monuments, and the adventurer to carve his way to fortune.

The first day I dined at the hotel I had an opportunity of seeing the variety of material congregated in the reviving city. We had a long table, capable of accommodating about twenty persons. The manner of living was à la carte, each guest dining when he pleased; but, by tacit consent, at about six o'clock all assembled at the table. We presented a curious medley. No two were from the same country. Our discourse was in English, French, Italian, German, Greek, Russian, Polish, and I know not what else, as if we were the very people stricken with confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel. Dinner over, all fell into French, and the conversation became general. Every man present was, in the fullest sense of the term, a citizen of the world. It had been the fortune of each, whether good or bad, to break the little circle in which so many are born, revolve, and die; and the habitual mingling with people of various nations had broken down all narrow prejudices, and given to every one freedom of mind and force of character. All had seen much, had much to communicate, and felt that they had much yet to learn. By some accident, moreover, all seemed to have become particularly interested in the East. They travelled over the whole range of Eastern politics, and, to a certain extent, considered themselves identified with Eastern interests. Most of the company were or had been soldiers, and several wore uniforms and stars, or decorations of some description. They spoke of the different campaigns in Greece in which some of them had served; of the science of war; of Marlborough, Eugene, and more modern captains; and I remember that they startled my feelings of classical reverence by talking of Leonidas at Thermopylæ and Miltiades at Marathon in the same tone as of Napoleon at Leipsic and Wellington at Waterloo. One of them constructed on the table, with the knives and forks and spoons, a map of Marathon, and with a sheathed yataghan pointed out the position of the Greeks and Persians, and showed where Miltiades, as a general, was wrong. They were not blinded by the dust of antiquity. They had been knocked about till all enthusiasm and all reverence for the past were shaken out of them, and they had learned to give things their right names. A French engineer showed us the skeleton of a map of Greece, which was then preparing under the direction of the French Geographical Society, exhibiting an excess of mountains and deficiency of plain which surprised even those who had travelled over every part of the kingdom. One had just come from Constantinople, where he had seen the sultan going to mosque; another had escaped from an attack of the plague in Egypt; a third gave the dimensions of the Temple of the Sun at Baalbeck; and a fourth had been at Babylon, and seen the ruins of the Tower of Babel. In short, every man had seen something which the others had not seen, and all their knowledge was thrown into a common stock. I found myself at once among a new class of men; and I turned from him who sneered at Miltiades to him who had seen the sultan, or to him who had been at Bagdad, and listened with interest, somewhat qualified by consciousness of my own inferiority. I was lying in wait, however, and took advantage of an opportunity to throw in something about America; and, at the sound, all turned to me with an eagerness of curiosity that I had not anticipated.