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Seven years since Miss Wright, from this seminary, went to Smyrna to teach the Protestant children of the Mediterranean. After a term of four years, she left Smyrna and came to Athens, where she remained two years, and gathered meantime this choice collection of relics. They are placed on shelves in a sort of closet with glass doors; it says over the top, "Athenian Case;" for there are several other similar cases in the room, one of minerals, another of shells, &c. Yesterday Miss Wright took them all down, and placed them one after another in my hands, and described them so perfectly, that it seems to me I have really seen them. And Mary, to-day I will in fancy do the same for you. First, here is a little clay lamp, which was dug from the ruins; you see it is shaped like the half of a goose-egg, and about as large. It has a little tube on the top of one side for the wick, and some little holes in the middle, where the oil was poured in; and they answered also for a vent. It is a rude thing, but we cannot know what great purposes it has answered in the world. Perhaps by its light Aristophanes wove his brilliant comedies. Or it may have belonged to Plato; and sat upon his little classic table, while he wrote his dialogues and twelve letters; the elegance, melody, and sweetness of which, you know, so pleased the people, that they entitled him the Athenian bee. Let us see; Socrates' father was a statuary, and for several years the great philosopher followed the same employment. Here is one of the Athenian gods, and perhaps it was chiselled by his own hand, and one of those which he was afterwards accused of ridiculing; which to us would seem a very slight offence, but then nothing could atone for it but death. In the old world, as in the new, innocence was never safe; since time began she has been exposed to the tongue of slander. Socrates was adorned by every virtue and stained by no vice, and his high-souled independence and freedom of speech upon all subjects, for many years placed him beyond suspicion and malevolence. But after the witty and unprincipled Aristophanes had once ventured to ridicule the venerable character of Socrates in one of his comedies upon the stage, the way was opened, and praise soon gave place to criticism and censure. Envy hurled at him her poisoned arrows, and jealousy, in the voices of Miletus, Aritus and Lycon, stood forth to recriminate him; and good Socrates was summoned before the tribunal of five hundred, accused of corrupting the Athenian youth, and ridiculing the many gods which the Athenians worshipped.

Here, Mary, is a little earthen bowl, which does not seem to differ much from the pottery of our day, though it has lain under ground more than two thousand years. If not the same, it was probably one like it, from which Socrates drank the poison handed him, you remember, by the executioner, with tears in his eyes: then the great moralist exclaimed, there is but one God, and drew off the fatal draught. This, too, is a singular little thing; likewise a piece of pottery shaped like a candlestick, with a bilge in the middle, and a hole in the top. The Greeks called it lachrymatory, which signifies a vessel for tears. What idea those people had of bottling tears, we know not, but it reminds me of the beautiful passage of David, "Thou tellest my wanderings; put Thou my tears into Thy bottle; are they not in Thy book?" These little tear-bottles are found in the sarcophagi, or the stone coffins, dug so frequently from the ruins of ancient Athens; placed there by the friends of the deceased, and probably contained the tears of the mourners, or those whose profession it is in oriental countries to weep for the dead.

Miss Wright was present on one of these occasions, and such control over the lachrymal glands she never before saw: from perfect indifference, they were the next moment seemingly lost in the deepest grief; their cheeks bathed in what we call crocodile tears.

Here is one of the little sylvan gods of the ancient Greeks, of pottery mould. It was probably a votive offering to Pan and Apollo, suspended perhaps in their caves, which are now to be seen in the side of the Athenian Acropolis, which literally means the highest point of the city. Here is another more ancient still. It must have been used in the days of Cadmus, from its resemblance to the Egyptian mummies. It is a fantastic little thing, marked with hieroglyphics, with arms folded across its breast, and robed like a mummy.

Now open your hands wide, Mary, do not let it drop; this is the head of a great lion, taken from the eaves of the Parthenon, the most beautiful temple ever dedicated to the goddess Minerva; and it is still the model of architects all over the world. Put your hand in his mouth, here, you see it is wide open where the water spouted out. It was chiselled from a block of Pentelican marble, which in the quarry they say is pure white, and glistens in the sun like rock sugar.

Now I will give you a little marble book. It came from Mars Hill, where Paul stood and declared to the Athenians the unknown God, and defended himself before the Court Areopagus, and answered in the presence of the Athenian judges, for his bold innovation upon their religious faith. Four hundred years before Christ, Socrates was tried and condemned upon the same spot and for the same cause. And a few years, since, Dr. King, our missionary in Greece, was tried for a like offence, which, you see, makes him the third in an illustrious line of criminals. When Dr. King went to Athens, he built his house upon a pile of the old ruins, from which he dug this water-jar. It is an ancient thing, but at the present time Greek maidens use them, only larger, for carrying water from the fountains. They have double handles, and when they are filled they hold them in their hands, one on each shoulder, which to us would be a wearisome task; but their supple joints do not mind it, and if we too had some such exercise, our forms would perhaps be more erect, and our chests more expansive.