quainted with the names of Stymphalus, Nemea, Mycenae, Lyrceia, Lerna, and Tegea?" probably, were very hasty sketches; and the circumstances of weather, etc. may have occasioned Although this may be very true inasmuch as it some difference in the appearance of the same obrelates to the reader, yet to the traveller, we must jects to different spectators. We shall therefore observe, in opposition to Mr. Gell, that nothing return to Mr. Gell's preface; endeavouring to set can be less useful than the designation of his route him right in his directions to travellers, where we according to the ancient names. We might as think that he is erroneous, and adding what apwell, and with as much chance of arriving at the pears to have been omitted. In his first sentence, place of our destination, talk to a Hounslow post-he makes an assertion which is by no means corboy about making haste to Augusta, as apply to rect. He says, "We are at present as ignorant of our Turkish guide in modern Greece for a direc- Greece, as of the interior of Africa." Surely not tion to Stymphalus, Nemea, Mycenæ, etc. etc. quite so ignorant ; or several of our Grecian Mungo This is neither more nor less than classical affecta-Parks have travelled in vain, and some very sump-tion; and it renders Mr. Gell's book of much more tuous works have been published to no purpose! confined use than it would otherwise have been :— As we proceed, we find the author observing that but we have some other and more important re-Athens is now the most polished city of Greece," marks to make on his general directions to Grecian when we believe it to be the most barbarous, even tourists; and we beg leave to assure our readers to a proverbthat they are derived from travellers who have lately visited Greece. In the first place, Mr. Gell is absolutely incautious enough to recommend an interference on the part of English travellers with the Minister at the Porte, in behalf of the Greeks. "The folly of such neglect (page 16, Preface), in many instances, where the emancipation of a district might often be obtained by the present of a snuff-box or a watch, at Constantinople, and without the smallest danger of exciting the jealousy of such a court as that of Turkey, will be acknowledged when we are no longer able to rectify the error." We have every reason to believe, on the contrary, that the folly of half-a-dozen travellers, taking this advice, might bring us into a war. "Never interfere with any thing of the kind," is a much sounder and more politic suggestion to all English travellers in Greece. Ο ̓Αθήνα, πρώτη χώρα, Τί δαιδάρους τρέφεις τώρα; (1) is a couplet of reproach now applied to this oncefamous city; whose inhabitants seem little worthy of the inspiring call which was addressed to them, within these twenty years, by the celebrated Riga: Δεῦτε παῖδες τῶν Ελλήνων, κ. το λο lannina, the capital of Epirus, and the seat of Ali Pacha's government, is in truth deserving of the honours which Mr. Gell has improperly bestowed on degraded Athens. As to the correctness of the remark concerning the fashion of wearing the air cropped in Molossia, as Mr. Gell informs us, our authorities cannot depose: but why will he use the classical term of Eleuthero-Lacones, when that people are so much better known by their modern name of Mainotes? "The court of the Pacha of Tripolizza" is said "to realise the splendid visions of the Arabian Nights." This is true with regard to the court: but surely the traveller ought to have added that the city and place are most miserable, and forman extraordinary contrast to the splendour of the court. Mr. Gell mentions gold mines in Greece: he should have specified their situation, as it certainly is not universally known. When, also, he remarks that "the first article of necessity in Greece is a firman, or order from the sultan, per Mr. Gell apologises for the introduction of "his panoramic designs," as he calls them, on the score of the great difficulty of giving any tolerable idea of the face of a country in writing, and the case with which a very accurate knowledge of it may be acquired by maps and panoramic designs. We are informed that this is not the case with many of these designs. The small scale of the single map we have already censured; and we have hinted that some of the drawings are not remarkable for correct resemblance of their originals. The two nearer views of the Gate of the Lions at Mycenæmitting the traveller to pass unmolested," we are are indeed good likenesses of their subject, and the first of them is unusually well executed; but the general view of Mycenæ is not more than toler- | able in any respect; and the prospect of Larissa, etc. is barely equal to the former. The view from this last place is also indifferent; and we are positively assured that there are no windows at Nauplia which look like a box of dominos,-the idea suggested by Mr. Gell's plate. We must not, however, be too severe on these picturesque bagatelles, which, much misinformed if he be right. On the contrary, we believe this to be almost the only part of the Turkish dominions in which a firman is not necessary; since the passport of the Pacha is absolute within his territory (according to Mr. G.'s own admission), and much more effectual than a firman. "Money," he remarks, "is easily procured at Sa (1) We write these lines from the recitatian of the travellers to whom we have alluded: but we cannot vouch for the correctness of the Romaic. lonica, or Patras, where the English have consuls." It is much better procured, we understand, from the Turkish governors, who never charge discount. The consuls for the English are not of the most magnanimous order of Greeks, and far from being so liberal, generally speaking; although there are, in course, some exceptions, and Strune of Patras has been more honourably mentioned. After having observed that "horses seem the best mode of conveyance in Greece," Mr. Gell proceeds: "Some travellers would prefer an English saddle; but a saddle of this sort is always objected to by the owner of the horse, and not without reason," etc. This, we learn, is far from being the case; and, indeed for a very simple reason, an English saddle must seem to be preferable to one of the country, because it is much lighter. When, too, Mr. Gell calls the postilion "menzilgi," he mistakes him for his betters: serrugees are postilions; menzilgis are postmasters. Our traveller was fortunate in his Turks, who are hired to walk by the side of the baggage-horses. They "are certain," he says, "of performing their engagement without grumbling." We apprehend that this is by no means certain: but Mr. Gell is perfectly right in preferring a Turk to a Greek for this purpose; and in his general recommendation to a take a janissary on the tour; who, we may add, should be suffered to act as he pleases, since nothing is to be done by gentle means, or even by offers of money, at the places of accommodation. A courier, to be sent on before to the place at which the traveller intends to sleep, is indispensable to comfort: but no tourist should be misled by the author's advice to suffer the Greeks to gratify their curiosity, in permitting them to remain for some time about him on his arrival at an inn. They should be removed as soon as possible; for, as to the remark that "no stranger would think of intruding when a room is pre-occupied," our informants were not so well convinced of that fact. Though we have made the above exceptions to the accuracy of Mr. Gell's information, we are most ready to do justice to the general utility of his directions, and can certainly concede the praise which he is desirous of obtaining, namely, "of having facilitated the researches of future travellers, by affording that local information which it was before impossible to obtain." This book, indeed, is absolutely necessary to any person who wishes to explore the Morea advantageously; and we hope that Mr. Gell will continue his Itinerary over that and over every other part of Greece. He allows that his volume "is only calculated to become a book of reference, and not of general entertainment:" but we do not see any reason against the compatibility of both objects in a survey of the most celebrated country of the ancient world. To that country, we trust, the attention not only of our travellers, but of our legislators, will hereafter be directed. The greatest caution will, indeed, be required, as we have premised, in touching on so delicate a subject as the amelioration of the possessions of an ally: but the field for the exercise of political sagacity is wide and inviting in this portion of the globe; and Mr. Gell, and all other writers who interest us, however remotely, in its extraordinary capabilities, deserve well of the British empire. We shall conclude by an extract from the author's work, which, even if it fails of exciting that general interest which we hope most earnestly it may attract, towards its important subject, cannot, as he justly observes, "be entirely uninteresting to the scholar;" since it is a work "which gives him a faithful description of the remains of cities, the very existence of which was doubtful, as they perished before the æra of authentic history." The subjoined quotation is a good specimen of the author's minuteness of research as a topographer; and we trust that the credit which must accrue to him from the present performance will ensure the completion of his Itinerary : "The inaccuracies of the maps of Anacharsis, are in many Strabo as surrounded by the territories of Sicyon, Argos, Cleonæ, respects very glaring. The situation of Phlius is marked by and Stymphalus. Mr. Hawkins observed, that Phlius, the ruins of which still exist near Agios Giorgios, lies in a direct line between Cleone and Stymphalus, aud another from Seyon to Argos; so that Strabo was correct in saying that it lay between those four towns; yet we see Phlius, in the map of Argolis by M. Barbie du Bocage, placed ten miles to the north of Stymphalus, contradicting both history and fact. D'Anville is guilty of the same error. Phlionte, on the point of land which forms the port of Drepano: "M. du Bocage places a town named Phlius, and by him there are not at present any ruins there. The maps of D'Anville are generally more correct than any others where ancient geography is concerned. A mistake occurs on the subject of Tiryus, understood. It is possible that Vathi. or the profound valley, and a place named by him Vathia, but of which nothing can be may be a name sometimes used for the valley of Barbitsa, and that the place named by D'Anville Claustra may be the outlet of that valley called Kleisoura, which has a corresponding signi lication. "The city of Tiryns is also placed in two different positions; once by its Greek name, and again as Tirynthus. The mistake between the islands of Sphæria and Calaura has been noticed in page 135. The Pontinus, which D'Anville represents as a river, and the Erasinus, are equally ill placed in his map. There was a place called Creopolis, somewhere toward Cynouria; but its situation is not easily fixed. The ports called Bucephalium and Piræus seem to have been nothing more than little bays in the country between Corinth and Epidaurus. The town called Athena, in Cynouria, by Pausanias, is called Athena by Thucydites, book 5. 41. "In general, the maps of D'Anville will be found more accurate the mistakes of that geographer are in general such as could than those which have been published since his time; indeed not be avoided without visiting the country. Two errors of D'Anville may be mentioned, lest the opportunity of publishing the Itinerary of Arcadia should never occur. The first is, that the rivers Malætas and Milaon, near Methydrium, are represented as running toward the south, whereas they flow northwards to the Ladon; and the second is, that the Aroanius, which falls into the Erymanthus at Psophis, is represented as flowing from the the ancients themselves who have written on the subject. The lake of Pheneos; a mistake which arises from the ignorance of fact is, that the Ladon receives the waters of the lakes of Or chomenos and Pheneos: but the Aroanius rises at a spot not two into the commission of excesses so hazardous to hours distant from Psophis. In furtherance of our principal object in this critique, we have only to add a wish that some of our Grecian tourists, among the fresh articles of information concerning Greece which they have lately imported, would turn their minds to the language of the country. So strikingly similar to the ancient Greek is the modern Romaic as a written language, and so dissimilar in sound, that even a few general rules concerning pronunciation would be of most extensive use. PARLIAMENTARY SPEECHES. OF LORDS, FEBRUARY 27, 1812. themselves, their families, and the community. At the time to which I allude, the town and county were burdened with large detachments of the military; the police was in motion, the magistrates assembled, yet all the movements, civil and military, had led to-nothing. Not a single instance had occurred of the apprehension of any real delinquent actually taken in the fact, against whom there existed legal evidence, sufficient for conviction. But the police, however useless, were by no means idle: several notorious delinquents had been detected; men, liable to conviction, on the clearest evidence of the capital crime of poverty; men, who had been nefariously guilty of lawfully begetting several children, whom, thanks to the times! they were unable to maintain. Considerable injury has DEBATE ON THE FRAME-WORK BILL, IN THE HOUSE been done to the proprietors of the improved frames. These machines were to them an advantage, inasmuch as they superseded the necessity of employing a number of workmen, who, were left in conse THE order of the day for the second reading of this bill being read, Lord BYRON rose, and (for the first time) ad-quence to starve. By the adoption of one species dressed their Lordships as follows: offrame in particular, one man performed the work of many, and the superfluous labourers were thrown out of employment. Yet it is to be observed, that the work thus executed was inferior in quality; not marketable at home, and merely hurried over with a view to exportation. It was called, in the My Lords; the subject now submitted to your Lordships for the first time, though new to the House, is by no means new to the country. I believe it had occupied the serious thoughts of all descriptions of persons, long before its introduction to the notice of that legislature, whose in-cant of the trade, by the name of "spider-work." terference alone could be of real service. As a person in some degree connected with the suffering county, though a stranger not only to this House in general, but to almost every individual whose attention I presume to solicit, I must claim some portion of your Lordships' indulgence, whilst I offer a few observations on a question in which I confess myself deeply interested. To enter into any detail of the riots would be superfluous: the House is already aware that every outrage short of actual bloodshed has been perpetrated, and that the proprietors of the frames obnoxious to the rioters, and all persons supposed to be connected with them, have been liable to insult and violence. During the short time I recently passed in Nottinghamshire, not twelve hours elapsed without some fresh act of violence; and on the day I left the country I was informed that forty frames had been broken the preceding evening; as usual, without resistance and without detection, Such was then the state of that county, and such I have reason to believe it to be at this moment. But whilst these outrages must be admitted to exist to an alarming extent, it cannot be denied that they have arisen from circumstances of the most unparalleled distress: the perseverance of these miserable men in their proceedings, tend to prove that nothing but absolute want could have driven a large, and once honest and industrious, body of the people, The rejected workmen, in the blindness of their ignorance, instead of rejoicing at these improvements in arts so beneficial to mankind, conceived themselves to be sacrificed to improvements in mechanism. In the foolishness of their hearts they imagined, that the maintenance and well-doing of the industrious poor were objects of greater consequence than the enrichment of a few individuals by any improvement, in the implements of trade, which threw the workmen out of employment, and rendered the labourer unworthy of his hire. And it must be confessed that although the adoption of the enlarged machinery, in that state of our commerce which the country once boasted, might have been beneficial to the master without being detrimental to the servant, yet, in the present situation of our manufactures, rotting in warehouses, without a prospect of exportation, with the demand for work and workmen equally diminished, frames of this description tend materially to aggravate the distress and discontent of the disappointed sufferers But the real cause of these distresses, and consequent disturbances, lies deeper. When we are told that these men are leagued together, not only for the destruction of their own comfort, but of their very means of subsistence, can we forget that it is the bitter policy, the destructive warfare, of the last eighteen years, which has destroyed their comfort, your comfort, all men's comfort?-that policy which, originating with "great statesmen now no more," has survived the dead to become a curse on the living, unto the third and fourth generation! These men never destroyed their looms till they were become useless, worse than useless; till they were become actual impediments to their exertions in obtaining their daily bread. Can you, then, wonder that in times like these, when bankruptcy, convicted fraud, and imputed felony, are found in a station not far beneath that of your Lordships, the lowest though once most useful portion of the people should forget their duty in their distresses, and become only less guilty than one of their representatives? But while the exalted offender can find means to baffle the law, new capital | punishments must be devised, new snares of death must be spread, for the wretched mechanic who is famished into guilt. These men were willing to dig, but the spade was in other hands: they were not ashamed to beg, but there was none to relieve them: their own means of subsistence were cut off, all other employments pre-occupied ; and their excesses, however to be deplored and condemned, can hardly be subject of surprise. their quarters amidst the derision of old women, and the hootings of children. Now though, in a free country, it were to be wished that our military should never be too formidable, at least to ourselves, I cannot see the policy of placing them in situations where they can only be made ridiculous. As the sword is the worst argument that can be used, so should it be the last. In this instance it has been the first; but providentially as yet only in the scabbard. The present measure will, indeed, pluck it from the sheath; yet had proper meetings been held in the earlier stages of these riots, had the grievances of these men and their masters (for they also had their grievances) been fairly weighed and justly examined, I do think that means might have been devised to restore these workmen to their avocations, and tranquillity to the county. At present the county suffers from the double infiction of an idle military and a starving population. In what state of apathy have we been plunged so long, that now, for the first time, the House has been officially apprised of these disturbances? All this has been transacting within 130 miles of London, and yet we, "good easy men, have deemed full sure our greatness was a ripening,” and have sat down to enjoy our foreign triumphs in the midst of domestic calamity. But all the cities you have taken, all the armies which have retreated before your leaders, are but paltry subjects of self-congratulation, if your land divides against itself, and your dragoons and your executioners must be let loose against your fellow-citizens. You call these men a mob, desperate, dangerous, and ignorant; and seem to think that the only way to quiet the "bellua multorum capitum” is to lop off a few of its superfluous heads. But even a mob may be better reduced to reason by a mixture of conciliation and firmness, than by additional irritation and redoubled penalties. Are we aware of our obliga tions to a mob? It is the mob that labour in your fields and serve in your houses,—that man your navy, and recruit your army;—that have enabled you to defy all the world, and can also defy you when neglect and calamity have driven them to despair! You may call the people a mob; but do not forget, that a mob too often speaks the senti It has been stated that the persons in the temporary possession of frames connive at their destruction; if this be proved upon inquiry, it were necessary that such material accessories to the crime should be principals in the punishment. But I did hope, that any measure proposed by his Majesty's government, for your Lordships' decision, would have had conciliation for its basis; or, if that were hopeless, that some previous inquiry, some deliberation, would have been deemed requisite; not that we should have been called at once, without examination and without cause, to pass sentences by wholesale, and sign death-warrants blindfold. But, admitting that these men had no cause of complaint; that the grievances of them and their employers were alike groundless; that they deserved the worst; what inefficiency, what imbecility, has been evinced in the method chosen to reduce them! Why were the military called out to be made a mockery of, if they were to be called out at all? As far as the difference of seasons would permit, they have merely parodied the summer campaign of Major Sturgeon; and, indeed, the whole proments of the people. And here I must remark, ceedings, civil and military, seemed on the model of those of the mayor and corporation of Garratt. Such marchings and counter-marchings! from Nottingham to Bullwell, from Bullwell to Banford, from Banford to Mansfield! and when at length the detachments arrived at their destination, in all "the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war," they came just in time to witness the mischief which had been done, and ascertain the escape of the perpetrators; to collect the "spolia opima" in the fragments of broken frames, and return to with what alacrity you are accustomed to fly to the succour of your distressed allies, leaving the distressed of your own country to the care of Providence or the parish. When the Portuguese suffered under the retreat of the French, every arm was stretched out, every hand was opened; from the rich man's largess to the widow's mite, all was bestowed, to enable them to rebuild their villages and replenish their granaries. And at this moment, when thousands of misguided, but most unfortunate fellow-countrymen are struggling with the extremes The such from whom you may select your victims, dragged into court, to be tried for this new offence, by this new law; still, there are two things wanting to convict and condemn him; and these are, in my opinion,-twelve butchers for a jury, and a Jefferies for a judge! of hardship and hunger, as your charity began and recent instances, temporising, would not be abroad it should end at home. A much less sum, a without its advantages in this. When a proposal tithe of the bounty bestowed on Portugal, even if is made to emancipate or relieve, you hesitate, you those men (which I cannot admit without inquiry) deliberate for years, you temporise and tamper could not have been restored to their employments, with the minds of men; but a death-bill must be would have rendered unnecessary the tender mer · passed off-hand, without a thought of the consecies of the bayonet and the gibbet. But doubtless quences. Sure I am, from what I have heard, and our friends have too many foreign claims, to admit from what I have seen, that to pass the bill under a prospect of domestic relief; though never did all the existing circumstances, without inquiry, such objects demand it. I have traversed the seat without deliberation, would only be to add injusof war in the Peninsula, I have been in some of the tice to irritation, and barbarity to neglect. most oppressed provinces of Turkey, but never un- framers of such a bill must be content to inherit der the most despotic of infidel governments did I the honours of that Athenian lawgiver whose edicts beheld such squalid wretchedness as I have seen were said to be written, not in ink, but in blood. since my return, in the very heart of a Christian But suppose it passed; suppose one of these men, country. And what are your remedies? After as I have seen them,-meagre with famine, sullen months of inaction,and months of action worse than with despair, careless of a life which your Lordinactivity, at length comes forth the grand specific, ships are perhaps about to value at something less the never-failing nostrum of all state physicians, than the price of a stocking-frame;-suppose this from the days of Draco to the present time. After man surrounded by the children for whom he is feeling the pulse and shaking the head over the pa- unable to procure bread at the hazard of his existient, prescribing the usual course of warm water tence, about to be torn for ever from a family which and bleeding, the warm water of your mawkish po-he lately supported in peaceful industry, and which lice, and the lancets of your military, these convul- it is not his fault that he can no longer so support; sions must terminate in death, the sure consum--suppose this man, and there are ten thousand mation of the prescriptions of all political Sangrados. Setting aside the palpable injustice and the certain inefficiency of the bill, are there not capital punishments sufficient in your statutes? Is there not blood enough upon your penal code, that more must be poured forth to ascend to Heaven and testify against you? How will you carry the bill into effect? Can you commit a whole county to their own prisons? Will you erect a gibbet in every field, and hang up men like scare-crows? or will you proceed (as you must to bring this measure into effect) by decimation? place the county under martial law? depopulate and lay waste all around you? and restore Sherwood Forest, as an acceptable gift to the crown, in its former condition of a royal chase and an asylum for outlaws? Are these the remedies for a starving and desperate populace? Will the famished wretch who has braved your bayonets be appalled by your gibbets? When death is a relief, and the only relief it appears that you will afford him, will he be dragooned into tranquillity? Will that which could not be effected by your grenadiers be accomplished by your executioners? If you proceed by the forms of law, where is your evidence? Those who have refused to impeach their accomplices, when transportation only was the punishment, will hardly be tempted to witness against them when death is the penalty. With all due deference to the noble lords opposite, I think a little investigation, some previous inquiry, would induce even them to change their purpose. That most favourite state measure, so marvellously efficacious in many DEBATE ON THE EARL OF DONOUGHMORE'S MOTION LORD BYRON rose and said: My Lords, The question before the House has een so frequently, fully, and ably discussed, and never perhaps more ably than on this night, that it would be difficult to adduce new arguments for or against it. But, with each discussion, difficulties have been removed, objections have been canvassed and refuted, and some of the former opponents of Catholic emancipation have at length conceded to the expediency of relieving the petitioners. In conceding thus much, however, a new objection is started; it is not the time, say they, or it is an improper time, or there is time enough yet. In some degree I concur with those who say, it is not the time exactly; that time is past: better had it been for the country, that the Catholics possessed at this moment their proportion of our privileges, that their nobles held their due weight in our councils, than that we should be assembled to discuss their claims. It had indeed been better— "Non tempore tali Cogere concilium cum muros obsidet hostis." |