_Mr. Editor_,—In introducing the following pieces to your notice,
permit me to say a few words of the gentleman whose lectures on the
condition and prospects of his native Greece have occasioned them to
be offered to you. Perdicaris is a native of Berea in Macedonia, a
place memorable not only for classic but for sacred associations. He
left his country while a youth, about the commencement of the Greek
revolution; and after travelling for some time in Syria and Egypt, was
brought off by an American vessel of war, from Smyrna, where his
situation as a Greek was extremely perilous. His education having been
completed in this country, he engaged as a teacher of the Greek
language, first at the Mount Pleasant Institution, Amherst,
Massachusetts, and subsequently at Washington College, Hartford,
Connecticut. Being now about to return to his native country, he is
perfecting his acquaintance with the United States and their
institutions, by travel; while at the same time he aims by lectures
delivered in the various cities, to excite an interest in the public
mind in the prospects and condition of his own country. It appears to
be his most earnest wish, to remove some false ideas with respect to
his native land, which have been too generally prevalent, and which
even the tone of Byron's poetry—friend of Greece as he was—has tended
to confirm. In the accounts of Perdicaris, we discover that his
country is still worthy of her ancient fame, that she possesses, and
has possessed for years, numerous and eminent scholars, noble
institutions of learning, a national poetry of no ordinary merit, an
active and intelligent population, and a general diffusion of
enlightened public spirit, of which it is as gratifying as it is
unexpected, to be informed.
Of the two following pieces, the one is a translation, executed with
Mr. Perdicaris's assistance, from Christopoulos, who has been styled
the Modern Anacreon. It has in the original, an amusing and touching
simplicity, which I have not, I fear, succeeded in preserving. The
second piece must speak for itself.