Liakura. Fair is proud Seville; let her country boast Oh, thou Parnassus! [p. 9. St. 60. | country, appear more conspicuous than in the These stanzas were written in Castri (Delphos), record of what Athens was, and the certainty at the foot of Parnassus, now called Ataxvga of what she now is. This theatre of contention between mighty factions, of the struggles of orators, the exaltation and deposition of tyrants, the triumph and punishment of generals, is now become a scene of petty intrigue and perpetual agents d disturbance between the bickering certain British nobility and gentry. "The will foxes, the owls and serpents in the ruins of Babylon," were surely less degrading than such inhabitants. The Turks have the plea of coquest for their tyranny, and the Greeks have only suffered the fortune of war, incidental ta the bravest; but how are the mighty fallen, when two painters contest the privilege of plu dering the Parthenon, and triumph in turn, ac cording to the tenor of each succeeding firman! Sylla could but punish, Philip subdue, and Xerxes barn Athens; but it remained for the paltry antiquarian, and his despicable agents, to render her contemptible as himself and his pursuits. Some bitter o'er the flowers its bubbling venom LUCR. A traitor only fell beneath the feud. [p. 12. St. 85. Alluding to the conduct and death of Solano, the Governor of Cadiz. "War even to the knife!" [p. 12. St. 86. "War to the knife." Palafox's answer to the French General at the siege of Saragoza. And thou, my friend! [p. 13. St. 91. The Honourable I*. W**. of the Guards, who died of a fever at Coimbra. I had known him ten years, the better half of his life, and the happiest part of mine. In the short space of one month I have lost her who gave me being, and most of those who had made that being tolerable. To me the lines of YOUNG are no fiction: Insatiate archer! could not one suffice? And thrice ere thrice yon moon had fill'd I should have ventured a verse to the memory of the late Charles Skinner Matthews, Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge, were he not too much above all praise of mine. His powers of mind, shown in the attainment of greater honours, against the ablest candidates, than those of any graduate on record at Cambridge, have sufficiently established his fame on the spot where it was acquired, while his softer qualities live in the recollection of friends who loved him too well to envy his superiority. NOTES TO CANTO II. Despite of war and wasting fire. [p. 13. St. 1. PART of the Acropolis was destroyed by the explosion of a magazine during the Venetian siege. The Parthenon, before its destruction in part, by fire during the Venetian siege, had been a temple, a church, and a mosque. In each point of view it is an object of regard: it changed its worshippers; but still it was a place of worship thrice sacred to devotion: its violation is à triple sacrilege. But "Man, vain man, Drest in a little brief authority, Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven Far on the solitary shore he sleeps. [p. 14. St. 5. It was not always the custom of the Greeks to burn their dead; the greater Ajax in particular was interred entire. Almost all the chiefs became gods after their decease, and he was indeed neglected, who had not annual games near his tomb, or festivals in honour of his memory by his countrymen, as Achilles, Brasidas, and at last even Antinous, whose death was as heroic as his life was infamous. Here, son of Saturn! was thy fav'rite throne. [p. 14. St. 10. The temple of Jupiter Olympius, of which sixteen columns, entirely of marble, yet survive: originally there were 150. These columns, however, are by many supposed to have belonged to the Pantheon. And bear these altars o'er the long-reluctant brine. [p. 14. St. 11. The ship was wrecked in the Archipelago. To rive what Goth, and Turk, and Time hath But worse than steel and flame, and ages slow, Sicily, who followed the same profession, he has Is the dread sceptre and dominion dire Of men who never felt the sacred glow That thoughts of thee and thine on polish'd breasts bestow. [p. 13. St. 1. We can all feel, or imagine, the regret with which the ruins of cities, once the capitals of empires, are beheld; the reflections suggested by such objects are too trite to require recapitulation. But never did the littleness of man, and the vanity of his very best virtues, of patriotism to exalt, and of valour to defend his proved the able instrument of plunder. Between this artist and the French Consul Fauvel, whe wishes to rescue the remains for his own govern ment, there is now a violent dispute concerning a car employed in their conveyance, the wheel of which-I wish they were both broken upen it-has been locked up by the Consul, and Lesieri has laid his complaint before the Waywode. Lord Elgin has been extremely happy is his choice of Signor Lusieri. During a residence of ten years in Athens he never had the curio eity to proceed as far as Sanium), till he accompanied us in our second excursion. However, his works, as far as they go, are most beautiful; but they are almost all unfinished. While he and his patrons confine themselves to tasting medals, appreciating cameos, sketching columns, and cheapening gems, their little absurdities are as harmless as insect- or fox-hunting, maidenspeechifying, barouche-driving, or any such pastime: but when they carry away three or four shiploads of the most valuable and massy relics that time and barbarism have left to the most injured and most celebrated of cities; when they destroy, in a vain attempt to tear down, those works which have been the admiration of ages, I know no motive which can excuse, no name which can designate, the perpetrators of this dastardly devastation. It was not the least of the crimes laid to the charge of Verres, that he had plundered Sicily, in the manner since imitated at Athens. The most unblushing impudence could hardly go farther than to affix the name of its plunderer to the walls of the Acropolis; while the wanton and useless defacement of the whole range of the bassorelievos, in one compartment of the temple will never permit that name to be pronounced by an observer without execration. On this occasion I speak impartially: I am not a collector or admirer of collections, consequently no rival; but I have some early prepossession in favour of Greece, and do not think the honour of England advanced by plunder, whether of India or Attica. Another noble Lord has done better, because he has done less: but some others, more or less noble, yet "all honourable men," have done best, because, after a deal of excavation and execration, bribery to the Waywode, mining and countermining, they have done nothing at all. Her sons too weak the sacred shrine to guard, [p. 14. St. 12. I cannot resist availing myself of the permission of my friend Dr. Clarke, whose name requires no comment with the public, but whose sanction will add tenfold weight to my testimony, to insert the following extract from a very obliging letter of his to me, as a note to the above lines: "When the last of the Metopes was taken from the Parthenon, and, in moving of it, great part of the superstructure with one of the tri glyphs was thrown down by the workmen whom Lord Elgin employed, the Disdar, who beheld the mischief done to the building, took his pipe from his mouth, dropped a tear, and, in a supplicating tone of voice, said to Lusieri: Téλos! I was present. The Disdar alluded to was the father of the present Disdar. Where was thine Ægis, Pallas! that appall'd -The netted canopy. [p. 14. St. 14. According to Zozimus, Minerva and Achilles * Now Cape Colonna. In all Attica, if we frightened Alaric from the Acropolis; but others except Athens itself and Marathon, there is relate that the Gothic king was nearly as misno scene more interesting than Cape Colonna.chievous as the Scottish peer.-See CHANDLER. To the antiquary and artist, sixteen columns are an inexhaustible source of observation and design; to the philosopher, the supposed scene of some of Plato's conversations will not be unwelcome; and the traveller will be struck with the beauty of the prospect over "Isles that crown the Egean deep" but for an Englishman, Colonna has yet an additional interest, as the actual spot of Falconer's Shipwreck. Pallas and Plato are forgotten in the recollection of Falconer and Campbell: [p. 15. St. 18. The netting to prevent blocks or splinters from falling on deck during action. Here in the dead of night by Lonna's steep, The seaman's cry was heard along the deep. This temple of Minerva may be seen at sea from a great distance. In two journeys, which I made, and one voyage to Cape Colonna, the view from either side, by land, was less striking than the approach from the isles. In our second land-excursion we had a narrow escape from a party of Mainnotes, concealed in the caverns beneath. We were told afterwards, by one of their prisoners subsequently ransomed, that they were deterred from attacking us by the appearance of my two Albanians : conjecturing very sagaciously, but falsely, that we had a complete guard of these Arnauts at hand, they remained stationary, and thus saved our party, which was too small to have opposed any effectual resistance. Colonna is no less a resort of painters than of pirates; there The hireling artist plants his paltry desk, And makes degraded Nature picturesque. But there Nature, with the aid of Art, has done that for herself. I was fortunate enough to engage a very superior German artist; and hope to renew my acquaintance with this and many other Levantine scenes by the arrival of his performances. But not in silence pass Calypso's isles. Land of Albania! let me bend mine eyes Albania comprises part of Macedonia, Illyria, Chaonia, and Epirus. Iskander is the Turkish word for Alexander; and the celebrated Scanderbeg (Lord Alexander) is alluded to in the *) This Sr. Gropius was employed by a noble Lord for the sole purpose of sketching, in which he excels; but I am sorry to say, that he has, through the abused sanction of that most respectable name, been treading at humble distance in the steps of Sr. Lusieri. A shipful of his trophies was detained, and I believe confiscated, at Constantinople in 1810. I am most happy to be now enabled to state, that "this was not in his bond;" that he was employed solely as a painter, and that his noble patron disavows all connexion with him, except as an artist. If the error in the first and second edition of this poem has given the noble Lord a moment's pain, I am very sorry for it; Sr. Gropius has assumed for years the name of his agent; and though I cannot much condemn myself for sharing in the mistake of so many, I am happy in being one of the first to be undeceived. Indeed, I have as much pleasure in contradicting this as I felt regret in stating it. maining English servant at Athens; my dragoman was as ill as myself, and my poor Aruants nursed me with an attention which would have done honour to civilization. third and fourth lines of the thirty-eighth |tributed my recovery. I had left my last restanza. I do not know whether I am correct in making Scanderbeg the countryman of Alexander, who was born at Pella in Macedon, but Mr. Gibbon terms him so, and adds Pyrrhus to the list, in speaking of his exploits. Of Albania Gibbon remarks, that a country "within sight of Italy is less known than the interior of America." Circumstances, of little consequence to mention, led Mr. Hobhouse and myself into that country before we visited any other part of the Ottoman dominions; and with the exception of Major Leake, then officially resident at Yanina, no other Englishmen have ever advanced beyond the capital into the interior, as that gentleman very lately assured me. Ali Pacha was at that time (October, 1809) carrying on war against Ibrahim Pacha, whom he had driven to Berat, a strong fortress which he was then besieging: on our arrival at Yanina we were invited to Tepaleni, his Highness's birth-place, and favourite Serai, only one day's distance from Berat; at this juncture the Vizier had made it his head-quarters. After some stay in the capital, we accordingly followed; but though furnished with every accommodation and escorted by one of the Vizier's secretaries, we were nine days (on account of the rains) in accomplishing a journey which, on our return, barely occupied four. On our route we passed two cities, Argyrocastro and Libochabo, apparently little inferior to Yanina in size; and no pencil or pen can ever do justice to the scenery in the vicinity of Zitza and Delvinachi, the frontier-village of Epirus and Albania proper. On Albania and its inhabitants I am unwilling to descant, because this will be done so much better by my fellow-traveller, in a work which may probably precede this in publication, that I as little wish to follow as I would to anticipate him. But some few observations are necessary to the text. came They had a variety of adventures; for the Moslem, Dervish, being a remarkably handsome man, was always squabbling with the husbands of Athens; insomuch that four of the principal Turks paid me a visit of remonstrance at the Convent, on the subject of his having taken a woman from the bath-whom he had lawfully bought, however a thing quite contrary to eti quette. Basili also was extremely gallant amongst his for the church, mixed with the highest contempt own persuasion, and had the greatest veneration of churchmen, whom he cuffed upon occasion a most heterodox manner. Yet he never passed a church without crossing himself; and I re member the risk he ran in entering St. Sophia, in Stambol, because it had once been a place of his worship. On remonstrating with him on his inconsistent proceedings, he invariably answered, "our church is holy, our priests are thieves:" and then he crossed himself as usual, and boxed the ears of the first papa who refused to assist in any required operation, as was always found to be necessary where a of his village. Indeed a more abandoned race priest had any influence with the Cogia Bashi of miscreants cannot exist than the lower orders of the Greek clergy. When preparations were made for my return, my Albanians were summoned to receive their pay. Basili took his with an awkward show of regret at my intended departure, and marched away to his quarters with his bag of piasters. I sent for Dervish, but for some time he was not to be found; at last he entered, just as Signor Logotheti, father to the ci-devant Anglo-consul of Athens, and some other of my Dervish took the money, but on a sudden dashed it to Greek acquaintances, paid me a visit. the ground; and clasping his hands, which he raised to his forehead, rushed out of the room weeping bitterly. From that moment to the hour of my embarkation he continued his lamentations, and all our efforts to console him only produced this answer, “Ma peivel, leaves me." Signor Logotheti, who never wept before for any thing less than the loss of a para, melted; the padre of the convent, my attendants, my visitors-and I verily believe that even "Sterne's foolish fat scullion," would have left her "fish-kettle," to sympathize with the unaffected and unexpected sorrow of this barbarian. "He The Arnauts, or Albanese, struck me forcibly by their resemblance to the Highlanders of Scotland, in dress, figure, and manner of living. Their very mountains seemed Caledonian with a kinder climate. The kilt, though white; the spare, active form; their dialect, Celtic in its sound, and their hardy habits, all carried me back to Morven. No nation are so detested and dreaded by their neighbours as the Albanese: the Greeks hardly regard them as Christians, or the Turks as Moslems; and in fact they are a mixture of both, and sometimes neither. Their habits are predatory: all are armed; and the red-shawled Arnauts, the Montenegrins, Chimariots, and Gegdes are treacherous; the others differ somewhat in garb, and essentially in character. As far as my own experience goes, I For my own part, when I remembered that, can speak favourably. I was attended by two, a short time before my departure from England, an Infidel and a Mussulman, to Constantinople a noble and most intimate associate had excaand every other part of Turkey which sed himself from taking leave of me because he within my observation; and more faithful in had to attend a relation "to a milliner's," I felt peril, or indefatigable in service, are rarely no less surprised than humiliated by the preto be found. The Infidel was named Basilius, sent occurrence and the past recollection. the Moslem, Dervish Tahiri; the former a man of middle age, and the latter about my own. Basili was strictly charged by Ali Pacha in person to attend us; and Dervish was one of fifty who accompanied us through the forests of Acarnania to the banks of Achelous, and onward to Messalunghi in Etolia. There I took him into my own service, and never had occasion to repent it till the moment of my departure. When in 1810, after the departure of my friend Mr. H. for England, I was seized with a severe fever in the Morea, these men saved my life by frightening away my physician, whose throat they threatened to cnt if I was not cured within a given time. To this consolatory assurance of posthumous retribution, and a resolute refusal of Dr. Romanelli's prescriptions, I at That Dervish would leave me with some regret was to be expected: when master and man have been scrambling over the mountains of a dozen provinces together, they are unwilling to separate; but his present feelings, contrasted with his native ferocity, improved my opinion of the human heart. I believe this almost ferdal fidelity is frequent amongst them. One day, on our journey over Parnassus, an Englishman in my service gave him a push in some dispate about the baggage, which he unluckily mistook for a blow; he spoke not, but saw down leaning his head upon his hands. Foreseeing the conse quences, we endeavoured to explain away the affront, which produced the following answer: "I have been a robber, I am a soldier: no captain ever struck me; you are my master, have eaten your bread, but by that bread! (a usual oath) had it been otherwise, I would have stabbed the dog, your servant, and gone to the mountains." So the affair ended, but from that day forward he never thoroughly forgave the thoughtless fellow who insulted him. Dervish excelled in the dance of his country, conjectured to be a remnant of the ancient Pyrrhic: be that as it may, it is manly, and requires wonderful agility. It is very distinct from the stupid Romaika, the dull round-about of the Greeks, of which our Athenian party had So many specimens. The Albanians in general (I do not mean the cultivators of the earth in the provinces, who have also that appellation, but the mountaineers) have a fine cast of countenance; and the most beautiful women I ever beheld, in stature and in features, we saw levelling the road broken down by the torrents between Delvinachi and Libochabo. Their manner of walking is truly theatrical; but this strut is probably the effect of the capote, or cloak, depending from one shoulder. Their long hair reminds you of the Spartans, and their courage in desultory warfare is unquestionable. Though they have some cavalry amongst the Gegdes, I never saw a good Arnaut horseman: my own preferred the English saddles, which, however, they could never keep. But on foot they are not to be subdued by fatigue. —And pass'd the barren spot, Monastic Zitza! [p. 18. St. 48 The convent and village of Zitza are four hours journey from Joannina, or Yanina, the capital of the Pachalick. In the valley the river Kalamas (once the Acheron) flows, and not far from Zitza forms a fine cataract. The situation is perhaps the finest in Greece, though the approach to Delvinachi and parts of Acarnania and Ætolia may contest the palm. Delphi, Parnassus, and, in Attica, even Cape Colonna and Port Raphti, are very inferior; as also every scene in Ionia, or the Troad. I am almost inclined to add the approach to Constantinople; but from the different features of the last, a comparison can hardly be made. Here dwells the caloyer. [p. 18. St. 49. And Laos wide and fierce came roaring by. [p. 19. St. 55. The river Laos was full at the time the author passed it; and, immediately above Tepaleni, was to the eye as wide as the Thames at men-Westminster; at least in the opinion of the author and his fellow-traveller, Mr. Hobhouse. In the summer it must be much narrower. It certainly is the finest river in the Levant; neither Achelous, Alpheus, Acheron, Scamander nor Cayster, approached it in breadth or beauty. Actium, Lepanto, fatal Trafalgar. [p. 17. St. 40. Actium and Trafalgar need no further tion. The battle of Lepanto, equally bloody and considerable, but less known, was fought in the gulph of Patras; here the author of Don Quixote lost his left hand. And fellow-countrymen have stood aloof. [p. 20. St. 66. Alluding to the wreckers of Cornwall. -The red wine circling fast. [p. 20. St. 71. The Albanian Mussulmans do not abstain from wine, and indeed very few of the others. Each Palikar his sabre from him cast. [p. 20. St. 71. Palikar, shortened when addressed to a single person, from laxapi, a general name for a soldier amongst the Greeks and Albanese who speak Romaic-it means properly "a lad. Tambourgi! Tambourgi! thy 'larum afar. [p. 20. Song, Stanza 1. These stanzas are partly taken from different Albanese songs, as far as I was able to make them out by the exposition of the Albanese in Romaic and Italian. Remember the moment when Previsa fell. [p. 21. Song, St. 8. It was taken by storm from the French. Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth. [p. 21. St. 73. Some thoughts on this subject will be found in the subjoined papers. Spirit of freedom! when on Phyle's brow Thou sat'st with Thrasybulus and his train. [p. 21. St. 74. Phyle, which commands a beautiful view of Athens, has still considerable remains; it was seized by Thrasybulus previous to the expulsion | rain is extremely rare, snow never lies in the of the Thirty. Receive the fiery Frank, her former guest. [p. 21. St. 77. When taken by the Latins, and retained for several years. The prophet's tomb of all its pious spoil. [p. 21. St. 77. Mecca and Medina were taken some time ago by the Wahabees, a sect yearly increasing. Thy vales of ever-green, thy hills of snow[p. 22. St. 85. On many of the monntains, particularly Liakura, the snow never is entirely melted, notwithstanding the intense heat of the summer; but I never saw it lie on the plains even in winter. Save where some solitary column_mourns Above its prostrate brethren of the cave. [p. 22. St. 86. Of Mount Pentelicus, from whence the marble was dug that constructed the public edifices of Athens. The modern name is Mount Mendeli. An immense cave formed by the quarries still remains, and will till the end of time. When Marathon became a magic word— [p. 23. St. 89. "Siste Viator-heroa calcas!" was the epitaph on the famous Count Merci ;-what then must be our feelings when standing on the tumulus of the two hundred (Greeks) who fell on Marathon? The principal barrow has recently been opened by Fauvel; few or no relics, as vases, etc. were found by the excavator. The plain of Marathon was offered to me for sale at the sum of sixteen thousand piastres, about nine hundred pounds! Alas!-"Expende-quot libras in duce summo-invenies!" was the dust of Miltiades worth no more? it could scarcely have fetched less if sold by weight. Before I say any thing about a city of which every body, traveller or not, has thought it necessary to say something, will request Miss Owenson, when she next borrows an Athenian heroine for her four volumes, to have the goodness to marry her to somebody more of a gentleman than a "Disdar Aga" (who by the by is not an Aga), the most impolite of petty officers, the greatest patron of larceny Athens ever saw (except Lord E.), and the unworthy occupant of the Acropolis, on a handsome annual stipend of 150 piastres (eight pounds sterling), out of which he has only to pay his garrison, the most ill-regulated corps in the ill-regulated Ottoman Empire. I speak it tenderly, seeing I was once the cause of the husband of "Ida of Athens nearly suffering the bastinado; and because the said "Disdar" is a turbulent husband, and beats his wife, so that I exhort and beseech Miss Owenson to sue for a separate maintenance in behalf of "Ida." Having premised thus much, on a matter of such import to the readers of romances, I may now leave Ida, to mention her birth-place. Setting aside the magic of the name, and all those associations which it would be pedantic and superfluous to recapitulate, the very situation of Athens would render it the favourite of all who have eyes for art or nature. The climate, to me at least, appeared a perpetual spring during eight months I never passed a day without being as many hours on horseback: plains, and a cloudy day is an agreeable rarity. In Spain, Portugal, and every part of the east which I visited, except Ionia and Attica, I perceived no such superiority of climate to our own; and at Constantinople, where I passed May, June, and part of July (1810), you might "damn the climate, and complain of spleen," five days out of seven. The air of the Morea is heavy and unwhole some, but the moment you pass the isthmus in the direction of Megara the change is strikingly perceptible. But I fear Hesiod will still be found correct in his description of a Bestia winter. We found at Livadia an “esprit fort" in a Greek bishop, of all free-thinkers! This worthy hypocrite rallied his own religion with great intrepidity (but not before his flock), and talked of a mass as a "Coglioneria." It was impossible to think better of him for this: but, for a Beetian, he was brisk with all his absurdity. This phenomenon (with the exception indeed of Thebes, the remains of Charonea, the plain of Platea, Orchomenus, Livadia, and its nominal care of Trophonius) was the only remarkable thing we saw before we passed Mount Citharon. The fountain of Dirce turns a mill: at least my companion (who, resolving to be at once cleanly and classical, bathed in it) pronounced it to be the fountain of Dirce, and any body who thinks it worth while may contradict him. At Castri we drank of half a dozen streamlets, some not of the purest, before we decided to our satisfaction which was the true Castalian, and even that had a villanous twang, probably from the snow, though it did not throw us into an epic fever, like poor Dr. Chandler. From Fort Phyle, of which large remains still exist, the Plain of Athens, Pentelicus, Hymettus, the Egean, and the Acropolis, burst upan the eye at once; in my opinion, a more glorions prospect than even Cintra or Istambol. Not the view from the Troad, with Ida, the Hellespont, and the more distant Mount Athos, can equal it, though so superior in extent. I heard much of the beauty of Arcadia, but excepting the view from the monastery of Megaspelion which is inferior to Zitza in a command of country), and the descent from the mountains on the way from Tripolitza to Argos, Arcadia has little to recommend it beyond the name. "Sternitur, et dulces moriens reminiscitur /Argos." Virgil could have put this into the mouth of none but an Argive; and (with reverence be it spoken) it does not deserve the epithet. And if the Polynices of Statius, "In mediis audit duo litora campis," did actually hear both shores in crossing the isthmus of Corinth, he had better ears than have ever been worn in such a journey since. "Athens," says a celebrated topographer, “is still the most polished city of Greece." Perhaps it may of Greece, but not of the Greeks; for Joannina in Epirus is universally allowed, amongst themselves, to be superior in the wealth, refinement, learning, and dialect of its inhabitants. The Athenians are remarkable for their cunning; and the lower orders are not impre perly characterized in that proverb, which classes them with "the Jews of Salonica, and the Turks of the Negropont." Among the various foreigners resident in Athens, French, Italians, Germans, Ragusans, there was never a difference of opinion in their estimate of the Greek character, though on all other topics they disputed with great acrimony. Mr. Fauvel, the French consul, who has passed thirty years principally at Athens, and to whose talents as an artist and manners as t gentleman none who have known him can refuse |