Two more delightful days of steaming among the Greek Islands now followed.  The heat was moderate, the motion gentle, the sea was liquid lapis lazuli, and the hundred-tinted islets around us, wrought their accustomed spell.  Surely there is something in climate which creates permanent abodes of art!  The Mediterranean, with its hydrographical configuration, excluding from its great peninsulas the extremes of heat and cold, seems destined to nourish the most exquisite sentiment of the Beautiful.  Those brilliant or softly graduated tints invite the palette, and the cultivation of the graces of the mind, shining with its aesthetic ray through lineaments thorough-bred from generation to generation, invites the sculptor to transfer to marble, grace of contour and elevation of expression.  But let us not envy the balmy South.  The Germanic or northern element, if less susceptible of the beautiful is more masculine, better balanced, less in extremes.  It was this element that struck down the Roman empire, that peoples America and Australia, and rules India; that exhausted worlds, and then created new.

The most prominent individual of the native division of passengers, was Arif Effendi, a pious Moslem of the new school, who had a great horror of brandy; first, because it was made from wine; and secondly, because his own favourite beverage was Jamaica rum; for, as Peter Parley says, “Of late years, many improvements have taken place among the Mussulmans, who show a disposition to adopt the best things of their more enlightened neighbours.”  We had a great deal of conversation during the voyage, for he professed to have a great admiration of England, and a great dislike of France; probably all owing to the fact of rum coming from Jamaica, and brandy and wine from Cognac and Bordeaux.

Another individual was a still richer character:  an American Presbyterian clergyman, with furi-bond dilated nostril and a terrific frown.

“You must lose Canada,” said he to me one day, abruptly, “ay, and Bermuda into the bargain.”

“I think you had better round off your acquisitions with a few odd West India Islands.”

“We have stomach enough for that too.”

“I hear you have been to Jerusalem.”

“Yes; I went to recover my voice, which I lost; for I have one of the largest congregations in Boston.”

“But, my good friend, you breathe nothing but war and conquest.”

“The fact is, war is as unavoidable as thunder and lightning; the atmosphere must be cleared from time to time.”

“Were you ever a soldier?”

“No; I was in the American navy.  Many a day I was after John Bull on the shores of Newfoundland.”

“After John Bull?”

“Yes, Sir, sweating after him:  I delight in energy; give me the man who will shoulder a millstone, if need be.”

“The capture of Canada, Bermuda, and a few odd West India Islands, would certainly give scope for your energy.  This would be taking the bull by the horns.”