Voyage to Vourla--The British Fleet--The _Portland_--Captain Price--
My hammock--Bocca Silota--Cape Colonna--Greece enslaved--Greece free--
Greek Climate--Reign of mind--Thracian poetry--The great Heaven--
Olympus--The gods--Fatalism--Death--Predictions--Inspiration--Tokens
of woe--Immortality--Superstitions--Homer--Christianity.
There were several Englishmen, French, and Americans, at Madame
Maracini’s table where I joined them at dinner. I soon after retired
to bed, and slept until five o’clock the next morning, having kept a
lamp lighted all night, lest I might be “wanting to myself.” When I
rose, paid my short account at Madame’s, very much to her regret that
it was not “a little longer,” and was “off” with all my baggage for the
_Hinde_. We sailed at half-past seven for Vourla, every body on-board
being “quite convinced,” that the _Portland_ had gone. In about an
hour and a half, we arrived within telescopic view of the fleet, when
I heard a young gentleman, who was on the look-out, announce that a
ship was getting under weigh. Every telescope on-board was immediately
in requisition, and in a few minutes it was agreed on all hands that
the ship, which had already proceeded on her first tack to depart from
the gulph, was no other than the _Portland_, which “of course” had
already gone--which _must_ have gone--which was under immediate orders
and could not have avoided obeying those orders in spite of wind and
weather!
♦ VOYAGE TO VOURLA ♦
We neared the fleet rapidly, and Lieutenant Coleman fortunately
having letters for Captain Price, commander of the _Portland_, made
a signal to the Admiral’s ship to that effect, which was immediately
answered by another signal addressed to the _Portland_, desiring her
to wait for letters. I was in the humour to be pleased with every
thing; but even if that had not been the case, I should have been
insensible to all great impressions, if I had not admired the superb
spectacle which was now spread before me. Vourla is a village about
five leagues to the south-west of Smyrna. The bay is one of the best
for stationary quarters on the whole of the Asiatic coast. It is
protected from the winds that blow up the gulph from the Egean by a
bold and lofty promontory, and from the land-winds by mountains which
stretch round the shore. Within the bay the whole British fleet was
anchored, consisting of the _Caledonia_, 110 guns; the _Britannia_,
110 guns; the _Thunderer_, 84; the _Canopus_, 84; the _Talavera_, 74;
the _Edinburgh_, 74; the _Endymion_ frigate, 50; the _Childers_ brig;
the _Scout_ sloop; and the _Medea_ steamer, which had just arrived in
eleven days from England.
♦ THE BRITISH FLEET ♦
The flag of the admiral, Sir Josias Rowley, was flying on-board the
_Caledonia_, which looked like an immense fortification floating on the
waters. When we approached sufficiently near, our boat was lowered,
and the transfer to it of all my luggage, of four seamen, Lieutenant
Coleman, and myself, was but the operation of a moment. In a few
minutes I ascended the ladder of the _Caledonia_, was introduced to the
admiral, stated my request for a passage on-board the _Portland_ to
Napoli, sanctioning my motion by exhibiting my letters of introduction
to all our foreign ministers on the route home; obtained an order for
my passage, as desired; told the fine old admiral all the news of
Constantinople; saw him sign the order produced by his secretary, which
was given in charge of an officer of the _Caledonia_, whose jolly-boat
was waiting to take us to the _Portland_; committed myself to the
said boat; flew along the waves, which gave us occasionally a good
drenching; arrived alongside the _Portland_, which had slackened sail;
mounted the deck where most of the officers were assembled; made my
bow to Captain Price, who, upon reading the order, received me in the
kindest manner; shook hands with the officer who had attended me; saw
his boat off, and myself perfectly at home on the shining deck of the
_Portland_. Since that moment the words “of course,” and “I am quite
convinced” have been blotted out from my vocabulary.
♦ THE “PORTLAND” ♦
Never having sailed in a man-of-war before, I now found myself in
a world altogether new to my habits, but extremely interesting, as
a sphere full of peculiarities, which immediately engaged all my
faculties of observation. The _Portland_, of fifty-two guns, having
on-board 420 men, is one of the handsomest ships in our navy. The
perfection of system, the rapidity, the silence with which every
change of sail was effected, were among the first objects that won my
applause. We had baffling winds to contend against, and necessarily
resorted to every kind of tack which might enable us to cheat our
atmospheric foes, and escape from the gulph. The arrangements for
combining the strength of parties of men in different quarters, for
the purpose of accomplishing the same object--the precision with which
the successive manœuvres were executed--the suddenness with which the
deserted deck was crowded--the crowded deck deserted--as if the men
were called from their tombs, and sent back to them by the voice of an
enchanter, were to me surprising in the extreme.
♦ CAPTAIN PRICE ♦
Captain Price and I speedily became friends. He had the goodness
to invite me to his own table, whither we were summoned at three
o’clock, by the band playing the “roast beef of old England,” a tune
that brought up all the associations of my early childhood, as I had
not heard it since that stage of my existence. The first lieutenant,
Burridge, who has the name, (and, I believe, from what fell under my
observation, most deservedly) of being one of the best seamen in that
class of his Majesty’s service, sat at the foot of the table; the
purser, Mr. Cooper, and two or three other gentlemen were present. All
were much interested in hearing the news from Constantinople, to which,
according to my notion, an excellent dinner, graced by a bottle or two
of champagne, imparted a most agreeable zest. Tea soon followed in the
captain’s cabin, where I might have easily imagined myself in a London
drawing-room, fitted out in a very elegant manner. The hospitable
occupant opened his collection of books for my amusement; assigned a
writing-table to my use, furnished with the usual implements; desired
me to consider his cabin as my own during the voyage; and, more than
once, laughingly congratulated me upon my singular good fortune in
reaching the _Portland_ at the very instant of departure.
♦ MY HAMMOCK ♦
We remained in sight of the fleet almost the whole day: towards
evening, ship after ship began to fade from our horizon; and, at
length, a formidable wind springing up, we turned Cape Burnu and made
for the Bocca Silota. A hammock was prepared for me in the room next
to the cabin, and curtained by a large signal flag which reached
nearly from one side of the apartment to the other. The stepping stool
to my couch was a cannon, mounted, and prepared to ask any friend at
the wrong side of my castle a civil question, if it should become
necessary. Captain Price’s hammock was suspended at the opposite end
of the same apartment, and curtained in the same manner. During the
night there was what sailors call a “stiff breeze,” amounting almost
to a storm. But a hammock is certainly an invention handed down among
men from the days of Paradise. It combines every requisite for wooing
one to sleep--and that sleep too as much superior to the lethargy of a
four-post feather bed, as genuine old Madeira or Sherry, is to what the
gods of Lombard Street call “London Particular.”
Unless the _Portland_ could be turned upside down by any chance, my
individual body cared no more for tempests than if they were the
breath of a sleeping kitten. I certainly felt my repository, during
some unascertainable part of the night, describing a very considerable
segment of a circle, in consequence of the plunging of our vessel
through the angry waves. Nevertheless, I knew I was under the care of
my countrymen, and that my simple business was to sleep on--a business
which, I may say, I executed to my own entire satisfaction, until seven
o’clock the following day (1st November), when, saluting the beauteous,
clear, cold, morning, I found that we had passed through the Bocca
Silota, and were already leaving the mountains of the Negropont and the
island of Andros behind us.
♦ BOCCA SILOTA ♦
Tyne soon was visible far on our left, and beyond it we thought we
could perceive through the telescope even Myconi and Delos. Syra was
distinctly seen. We passed between Macronisi and Zea, Thermia being
in the distance. While we were looking for the latter, the smoke of
a steam-boat, which was passing below the verge of our horizon, was
discerned. I conjectured that this was the boat which had been expected
for some days at Smyrna, in order to proceed to the Black Sea and the
Danube, for the purpose of completing the steam-navigation of that
river. Captain Price hoped it was a special steamer from England,
charged with dispatches for the fleet, and ordering the admiral to
sail for the Bosphorus. My supposition turned out, however, to be the
right one; although, for reasons most probably altogether Russian, the
steam-navigation of the Danube, has not been, to this hour, extended
beyond Galacz. The boat, however, is now well employed between Smyrna
and Constantinople, where it is established as a regular packet.
♦ CAPE COLONNA ♦
We were almost becalmed at the entrance of the Gulf of Athens. To be
detained, however, by any circumstance, in such a sea, amid the isles
that “crown the Egean deep,” in the neighbourhood of Sunium, whose
immortal associations, as Lord Byron truly said, “gleam along the
wave,” the sixteen columns of Minerva’s celebrated temple recalling
the most glorious ages of Greece, should be considered, instead of a
disappointment, a peculiarly fortunate circumstance.
And yet how lovely in thine age of woe,
Land of lost gods and godlike men! art thou!
Thy vales of evergreen, thy hills of snow,
Proclaim thee Nature’s varied favourite now;
Thy fanes, thy temples, to thy surface bow,
Commingling slowly with heroic earth,
Broke by the share of every rustic plough:
So perish monuments of mortal birth,
So perish all in turn, save well-recorded worth;
Save where some solitary column mourns
Above its prostrate brethren of the cave;
Save where Tritonia’s airy shrine adorns
Colonna’s cliff,[4] and gleams along the wave;
Save o’er some warrior’s half-forgotten grave,
Where the gray stones and unmolested grass
Ages, but not oblivion, feebly brave,
While strangers only not regardless pass,
Lingering like me, perchance, to gaze, and sigh, ‘Alas!’
Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild;
Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields;
Thine olive ripe as when Minerva smiled:
And still his honied wealth Hymettus yields;
There the blythe bee his fragrant fortress builds,
The free-born wanderer of thy mountain air;
Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds
Still in his beam Mendeli’s marbles glare;
Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair.
Where’er we tread ’tis haunted, holy ground,
No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould,
But one vast realm of wonder spreads around,
And all the Muse’s tales seem truly told;
Till the sense aches with gazing to behold
The scenes our earliest dreams have dwelt upon:
Each hill and dale, each deepening glen and wold
Defies the power which crushed thy temples gone:
Age shakes Athena’s tower, but spares gray Marathon.
[4] “In all Attica,” says the poet, “if we except Athens itself
and Marathon, there is no scene more interesting than Cape Colonna.
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 Ægean 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:--
‘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 journies which I made, and one voyage to Cape Colonna, the
views from either side, by land, was less striking than the approach
from the isles.”
♦ GREECE ENSLAVED ♦
It was to me a fresh source of delight, which Lord Byron could not have
enjoyed, during his visit to these scenes, that they were no more the
land of the slave; that their “foreign lord” was expelled, and that,
however beautiful the following stanzas may be, they have already lost
all application to the present state of Greece:--
The sun, the soil, but not the slave, the same;
Unchanged in all except its foreign lord--
Preserves alike its bounds and boundless fame,
The battle-field, where Persia’s victim horde
First bow’d beneath the brunt of Hella’s sword,
As on the morn, to distant glory dear,
When Marathon became a magic word;
Which utter’d, to the hearer’s eye appear
The camp, the host, the fight, the conqueror’s career,
The flying Mede, his shaftless broken bow;
The fiery Greek, his red pursuing spear;
Mountains above, Earth’s, Ocean’s plain below;
Death in the front, Destruction in the rear!
Such was the scene--What now remaineth here?
What sacred trophy marks the hallow’d ground,
Recording Freedom’s smile and Asia’s tear?
The rifled urn, the violated mound,
The dust thy courser’s hoof, rude stranger! spurns around.
♦ GREECE FREE ♦
Something more than the “rifled urn,” the “violated mound,” and the
“dust” spurned by the courser’s hoof, does after all remain to Greece,
notwithstanding the centuries she has passed under the oppression of
more than one foreign master. I beheld Sunium restored to more than
its ancient freedom, newly risen from the shades of a long night of
calamity, and preparing to receive all the blessings which a condition
of civilized independence can bestow upon a country.
Our first intention was, to have steered between Hydra and the shore of
the mainland; but there being a strong probability that, if the wind
carried us far within the island, it would altogether abandon us there,
we changed our course to a more southerly direction, hoping that some
friendly god would send us a pocket-full of wind, sufficient to impel
our sails towards the Gulf of Napoli. But Æolus and his crew were all
fast asleep; not a breath moved along the waters, and we lay all the
night like a restless spirit, gadding slowly about, star-gazing.
♦ GREEK CLIMATE ♦
I had often heard and read much of the climate of Greece; but all my
conceptions of it fell short of the reality. I know of no principle in
nature upon which the character and the boundaries of a climate can be
so clearly defined as they appear in these seas. An irregular diagram,
including Argos, Corinth, all Attica, the “broad Hellespont,” Lemnos,
and the Lesbian isle, Chios, Samos, Patmos, and Crete--an area crowded
with islands, which, so far as we saw them, seemed at a distance to
float on the waters literally like specks of cloud, would comprehend,
judging from what I had witnessed myself and learned from our pilot,
not only a portion of the surface of the globe, but also of the sky,
and of the atmosphere, peculiarly cheering to the senses, on account
of the golden hues that are always in the firmament, the beautiful
repose and brightness that smile every where on the land, and the
never-changing, admirable azure of the waves. Even during the nights,
in fine weather, these features scarcely vanish from the scene. But
they are arrayed in their most resplendent loveliness just after the
sun has retired, or at the moment the curtains of the east are drawn
back that he may again behold the favourite region of his dominions.
♦ REIGN OF MIND ♦
It is no wonder that such a climate produced Homer, Sappho, Euripides,
Demosthenes, Plato, and those other illustrious poets, authors, and
historians, whose names are even more familiar amongst us than those
of the most distinguished men of our own age and country. The feelings
of rapture created by the influence of the pure atmosphere and the
cloudless sky, are subdued by the gentle whispers of the sea, and the
perfect stillness of the mountains. Mind reigns in all her power amidst
such Elysian scenes. The grosser thoughts associated with the tumult of
life, seldom cast their shade upon the intellect that here cultivates,
with true devotion, the impulses which lead to renown.
But it is indeed surprising that a people gifted as the Greeks
were with such a climate, and territory, and sea, and men of such
transcendant genius, could have accepted from the Egyptians, or
have cherished amongst themselves that strange and absurd system
of polytheism which prevailed for ages over all their nations. It
is even probable that the early poets of Thrace, who exercised the
functions of the priesthood, extended very considerably the hints they
had originally received from the neighbourhood of the Nile. They not
only gave corporeal substance, passions, and human imperfections to
the ideal gods of Egypt, but they multiplied their number beyond all
bounds of computation, and assigned them a fixed celestial abode on
the verge of their own horizon. They further peopled all nature with
immortal and happy spirits, which were akin to the heavenly powers, and
exercised an uncontrolled jurisdiction over the mountains and vales,
the woodlands and rivers, and lesser brooks, the gloomy forest, and
unfathomable ocean. To relate the genealogy of these various gods and
goddesses, nymphs and dryads; to ascertain their peculiar attributes
and dispositions; to describe their occupations, and to define the
crimes which offended, and the expiations which appeased them, were the
most common themes of primitive Greek poetry.
♦ THRACIAN POETRY ♦
Their chief ruler and principal powers usually resided in a region
of the firmament, high _above_ the mountain of Olympus. There, in an
island of their own, whose foundations were of imperishable brass, and
which was all over floored with gold, each divinity had a separate
mansion of metallic construction, divided into apartments. The palace
of Jove had a council-hall arranged with benches for the senate of the
skies; a hall for banquets decorated with his throne and subordinate
couches of gold; a nuptial chamber, and a fragrant cabinet rich in
immortal apparel, where his queen composed her charms, and which was
secured from intrusion by a brazen door and bolt, mysterious to all in
heaven but herself. Vulcan, who framed these edifices, did not forget
to give all the beauties of his art to his own habitation, where his
ponderous anvils resounded from morning to night. The same sun which
poured light on earth, illumined also this ethereal region, and when
that fire went down to ocean, the same darkness reigned over both. Had
it been in the power of man to pile Ossa on Olympus, and on Ossa the
forest-crowned Pelion, he might have invaded this heavenly empire.
♦ THE GREAT HEAVEN ♦
♦ OLYMPUS ♦
A vast dense cloud formed the gate of the great heaven, which was the
peculiar charge of the vigilant Hours; to them also was consigned the
care of Mount Olympus, the favourite resort of the gods when they
wished to descend from their more lofty abode and take a nearer view of
the proceedings of mankind. This mountain was a kind of free territory,
common alike to the powers of air, ocean, and hell, and in this respect
differed in nothing from earth, which was equally subject to their
visitations. When they had occasion to repair to either earth or
Olympus, they drove thither in chariots, prodigally decorated with gold
and silver, and drawn by immortal coursers, which, at every bound they
made, traversed as much of the horizon as the human eye can measure.
♦ THE GODS ♦
We are not to suppose, however, that whether the gods assembled in
the great heaven, or on Olympus, they always enjoyed uninterrupted
happiness. Though they had ichor in their veins instead of blood,
because they lived on ambrosia and nectar, and though they exulted in
an immortal existence, still they had every one of them human hearts
and frailties. They were susceptible of love, hatred, envy, revenge,
and violent anger, not only with respect to the inhabitants of earth,
but towards each other. They were capable of deception. They seldom
had fixed, not to say immutable resolves. Capricious, choleric, and
short-sighted, they felt most delighted when they could counteract the
counsels of their peers, or disobey the mandates of their sovereign.
He ruled only by his thunders; to his wisdom little deference was
paid, to his beneficence less. In fact, heaven was nothing more than
a commonwealth, with a tyrannical dictator, and alternately swayed by
furious adverse factions. Resembling men so much in disposition, they
did not much differ from them as to their outward appearance. Their
forms were indeed somewhat more majestic and graceful; their apparel was
more superb; and there was a certain glory about them which discovered
their divinity--nothing more.
Although that internal sense of dependence on a divine power, which
accompanies man in whatever climate he breathes, taught these
communities the necessity of seeking the protection of heaven, still
they do not seem to have had a deep and satisfied confidence in the
efficacy of the modes which they adopted to obtain it. They practised
them; they frequently endeavoured to communicate with the gods by
orisons, which were held in peculiar esteem. But the very next hour they
would upbraid their patrons for inflicting adversity upon men, who did
every thing to gratify them. This however was the result of despair,
rather than of defiance. We know of but very few instances in which the
prerogatives of Jove were treated with positive contempt, and these were
supposed to have been avenged in an exemplary manner. Generally they
entertained towards the gods a sullen, superstitious fear, which was
redeemed by no quality of affection. The only inhabitant of heaven who
was truly loved was Hermes, the friend of man.
♦ FATALISM--DEATH ♦
Fatalism was undoubtedly the doctrine of the multitude; nor was it very
injurious to their happiness, since they conceived it to be their duty
to bear patiently the ills of life, under the impression that they
proceeded from above. They had an innate consciousness that they were
ever watched by a superintending Providence, whose interposition in
their affairs, either for an adverse or prosperous issue, they thought
they could frequently observe.
What could they hope for without the protection of the gods? All
men stood in perpetual need of it. They were the weakest, the most
miserable of creatures that breathed, or crept, on earth! They,
like the leaves on the trees, flourished for awhile, deriving their
nutriment from the soil beneath, but when the appointed season came,
they faded and fell, quite sapless. All men were assuredly destined to
die; it was the condition of their birth, and at the moment of their
birth the hour of their dissolution was irrevocably fixed. When once
the soul escaped from the body no power could recall it.
♦ PREDICTIONS ♦
Being so strongly persuaded of the omnipotence of fate, it does not
appear strange, that, almost from the period when the country first
received inhabitants, they deluded themselves with various means
for obtaining an insight into that futurity which they supposed
to have been already arranged. The actual occurrence sometimes of
circumstances, which had been previously indicated in dreams, led men
in the earliest ages of the world to attend with mysterious wonder
to these visions of the night. Occasional, or accidental success in
foreboding, on such conjectural grounds, events which afterwards took
place, conferred on some individuals the reputation of prophecy, which
they themselves were not slow to justify and improve. Some dreams were
true, others fallacious; but in man’s ignorance of the future, their
most minute shades were examined and magnified as portentous.
♦ INSPIRATION ♦
When human superstition advanced thus far, it was not difficult for a
famous interpreter of dreams to induce his disciples to believe that
he derived his skill from unearthly inspiration, and that he could
foretell events by the aid of that inspiration alone. Thus oracles
arose. That of Dodona was in the early ages well-known and frequently
consulted. The responses were at first delivered from a lofty oak,
but it was from an early period the centre of a regular college or
association of prophets, who slept always on the ground, and habituated
themselves in other respects to an austere discipline. The oracle
at Delphi was still more celebrated. It was consulted by Priam and
Agamemnon before the Trojan war, and was honoured with a temple of
polished marble which was roofed. The riches which it contained, in
consequence of the golden tripods and other valuable articles presented
to the god of the oracle, were calculated by Achilles to be at least
equal to the accumulated wealth of Troy, before that city was besieged.
This oracle was also attended by an order of Seers.
♦ TOKENS OF WOE ♦
These men are generally represented as distinguished for probity,
virtue, and even philosophy. They found their way into the councils
of princes as domestic prophets. Their advice was generally listened
to with a deference which was due not less to their piety than their
wisdom. Such was the influence which they exercised over the human
mind, that royal mothers did not hesitate, when they commanded it, to
expose on the mountains their loveliest and dearest offspring. Besides
interpreting dreams, and explaining the responses of the oracles, a
task which they often found exceedingly difficult, it was also their
peculiar province to draw omens from the flight of birds, the appearance
of lightnings, and meteoric phenomena. They do not appear to have
had any idea of astrology. They further inculcated the belief, that
the terrible events of fate were sometimes preceded by extraordinary
occurrences. Involuntary and inextinguishable laughter was heard; the
intellect wandered; the meat before the guests dripped with blood; their
eyes were suffused, and their cheeks streamed with tears; the mind was
oppressed with presages of woe; the sun was veiled in the mid-heavens,
and a supernatural darkness thickened around them; groans and wailings
affrighted the ear, while innumerable ghosts were seen hastening to the
shades.
♦ IMMORTALITY ♦
It was an universal belief that the human soul was immortal. On parting
from the body it was supposed to expand itself to an unsubstantial
resemblance of the countenance and figure which it had previously
animated, just as living or departed friends sometimes appear to us in
dreams. If the rites of sepulture were duly performed, the soul was
conducted to Erebus, which was fabled to be situated on the confines
of the Acherusian Lake near the Egyptian City of Memphis. There dwelt
Pluto and Proserpine, who ruled the dead. Punishments of various kinds
were inflicted on those who had grossly outraged the laws of the gods;
the greater number of the shades, whose crimes in life were redeemed
by some virtues, were permitted to wander for ever in groves, where
they were scarcely visible to each other by a melancholy twilight;
but favourites of the gods were transferred to the care of the
yellow-haired Rhadamanthus, who placed them in the vale of Elysium, in
the neighbourhood of the same lake. There they enjoyed an uninterrupted
round of ease, unchilled by the rain, or snows of winter, cheered by
the zephyrs of perpetual spring.
♦ SUPERSTITIONS ♦
Even over these shadowy regions, the seers persuaded mankind, that they
could exert an irresistible controul. They prescribed certain dark
and mysterious ceremonies, the right performance of which enabled a
mortal to compel the souls of the departed to appear in his presence.
Amid such wild and dismal superstitions, we are not surprised to find
a rooted faith in the agency of evil demons. Painful wasting disease,
and a strong propensity to wickedness, were supposed to be the effects
of their peculiar malignity. They believed also in the potency of
that super-human influence which we call enchantment, and record
many superstitious observations on the character of particular days,
accidents, and appearances of nature, which they looked upon as ominous
of good or evil fortune, and to which they seem to have paid a most
scrupulous regard.
♦ HOMER ♦
How far the reflecting men of those primitive times reposed on this
system of religion, inconsistent as it was, and obscured by the
oracles, auguries, and incantations which formed no inconsiderable
sources of its influence on the mind of the multitude, is a question
not easy now to be solved. Though Homer uses the gods as the machinery
of his poems, and frequently represents them in a most unamiable
light, yet he uniformly, wherever a fit opportunity presents itself,
inculcates the necessity and advantages of prayer, sacrifice, and
obedience. He was constitutionally pious, and had an instinctive
love of virtue, which raised him at times far beyond the religion of
his age. In the overflow of his happy impulses, he more than once
lighted on the grand truth, that there existed ONE GOD, who created
and disposed of all things. To that Great Being he alone attributes
omnipotence, omniscience, justice, and benignity, in terms which
unequivocally demonstrate the very different opinion which he had
conceived of the haughty ruler of Olympus. Towards Jove he is never
borne with a feeling of love, but towards Jehovah his secret soul
always springs with a beautiful affection.
♦ CHRISTIANITY ♦
It seems to me impossible to reflect on the system of religion which
thus prevailed generally in Ancient Greece, without coming to the
conclusion, that the Creator intended thereby to shew that, although
placed on the most favoured territory, and under the most genial
climate of earth for the cultivation of his mental faculties, man had
not the power to invent so much as a single principle of Christianity.
The Stoics carried the rules of morality to the highest degree of
perfection known to any of the sects who ruled the ethical philosophy
of the day: but not one of them understood the word “humility.” To
a generous mind it is, naturally speaking, infinitely a more noble
revenge to forgive an adversary than to persecute him. Clemency brings
with it peace to the mind, and grandeur to its conceptions: resentment,
gratifying at the moment, soon forces upon the soul a sense of deep
abasement, which transfers the triumph to the victim. The stoics,
whatever may be thought of some of their maxims, never arrived in
practice at this discovery, which, even if we had known it, we never
could have carried into execution, but for the example of Him who
brought us the Revelation.