MODERN GREECE.

'Journal of a Tour in Greece and the Ionian Islands.' By WILLIAM MURE,

of Caldwell.

[1842.]

What are the nuisances, special to Greece, which repel tourists from

that country? They are three;--robbers, fleas, and dogs. It is

remarkable that all are, in one sense, respectable nuisances--they

are ancient, and of classical descent. The monuments still existing

from pre-Christian ages, in memory of honest travellers assassinated

by brigands of klephts, (Kleptai,) show that the old respectable calling

of freebooters by sea and land, which Thucydides, in a well-known

passage, describes as so reputable an investment for capital during

the times preceding his own, and, as to northern Greece, even during

his own, had never entirely languished, as with us it has done, for

two generations, on the heaths of Bagshot, Hounslow, or Finchley. Well

situated as these grounds were for doing business, lying at such

convenient distances from the metropolis, and studying the convenience

of all parties, (since, if a man were destined to lose a burden on his

road, surely it was pleasing to his feelings that he had not been

suffered to act as porter over ninety or a hundred miles, in the service

of one who would neither pay him nor thank him); yet, finally, what

through banks, and what through policemen, the concern has dwindled

to nothing. In England, we believe, this concern was technically known

amongst men of business and 'family men,' as the 'Low Toby.' In Greece

it was called [Greek: laeseia]; and Homericaliy speaking, it was perhaps

the only profession thoroughly respectable. A few other callings are

mentioned in the Odyssey as furnishing regular bread to decent men--viz.

the doctor's, the fortune-teller's or conjurer's, and the armorer's.

Indeed it is clear, from the offer made to Ulysses of a job, in the

way of hedging and ditching, that sturdy big-boned beggars, or what

used to be called 'Abraham men' in southern England, were not held to

have forfeited any heraldic dignity attached to the rank of pauper,

(which was considerable,) by taking a farmer's pay where mendicancy

happened to be 'looking downwards.' Even honest labor was tolerated,

though, of course, disgraceful. But the Corinthian order of society,

to borrow Burke's image, was the bold sea-rover, the buccaneer, or,

(if you will call him so) the robber in all his varieties. Titles were,

at that time, not much in use--honorary titles we mean; but had our

prefix of 'Right Honorable' existed, it would have been assigned to

burglars, and by no means to privy-councillors; as again our English

prefix of 'Venerable' would have been settled, not on so sheepish a

character as the archdeacon, but on the spirited appropriator of church

plate. We were surprised lately to find, in a German work of some

authority, so gross a misconception of Thucydides, as that of supposing

him to be in jest. Nothing of the sort. The question which he represents

as once current, on speaking a ship in the Mediterranean--'Pray,

gentlemen, are you robbers?' actually occurs in Homer; and to Homer,

no doubt, the historian alludes. It neither was, nor could be conceived,

as other than complimentary; for the alternative supposition presumed

him that mean and well-known character--the merchant, who basely paid

for what he took. It was plainly asking--Are you a knight grand-cross

of some martial order, or a sort of costermonger? And we give it as

no hasty or fanciful opinion, that the South Sea islands (which

Bougainville held to be in a state of considerable civilization) had,

in fact, reached the precise stage of Homeric Greece. The power of

levying war, as yet not sequestered by the ruling power of each

community, was a private right inherent in every individual of any one

state against all individuals of any other. Captain Cook's ship, the

Resolution, and her consort, the Adventure, were as much independent

states and objects of lawful war to the islanders, as Owyhee, in the

Sandwich group, was to Tongataboo in the Friendly group. So that to

have taken an Old Bailey view of the thefts committed was unjust, and,

besides, inefectual; the true remedy being by way of treaty or

convention with the chiefs of every island. And perhaps, if Homer had

tried it, the same remedy (in effect, regular payments of _black-mail_)

might have been found available in _his_ day.

It is too late to suggest _that_ idea now. The princely pirates are

gone; and the last dividend has been paid upon their booty; so that,

whether he gained or lost by them, Homer's estate is not liable to any

future inquisitions from commissioners of bankruptcy or other sharks.

He, whether amongst the plundered, or, as is more probable, a

considerable shareholder in the joint-stock privateers from Tenedos,

&c., is safe both from further funding and refunding. We are not. And

the first question of moment to any future tourist is, what may be the

present value, at a British insurance office, of any given life risked

upon a tour in Greece? Much will, of course, depend upon the extent

and the particular route. A late prime minister of Greece, under the

reigning king Otho, actually perished by means of one day's pleasure

excursion from Athens, though meeting neither thief nor robber. He

lost his way: and this being scandalous in an ex-chancellor of the

exchequer having ladies under his guidance, who were obliged, like

those in the Midsummer Night's Dream, to pass the night, in an Athenian

wood, his excellency died of vexation. Where may not men find a death?

But we ask after the calculation of any office which takes extra risks:

and, as a basis for such a calculation, we submit the range of tour

sketched by Pausanius, more than sixteen centuries back--that [Greek:

Pansapachae periodos], as Colonel Leake describes it, which carries

a man through the heart of all that can chiefly interest in Greece.

Where are the chances upon such a compass of Greek travelling, having

only the ordinary escort and arms, or having _no_ arms, (which the

learned agree in thinking the safer plan at present,) that a given

traveller will revisit the glimpses of an English moon, or again embrace

his 'placens uxor?' As with regard to Ireland, it is one stock trick

of Whiggery to treat the chances of assassination in the light of an

English hypochondriacal chimaera, so for a different reason it has

been with regard to Italy, and soon will be for Greece. Twenty years

ago it was a fine subject for jesting--the English idea of stilettos

in Rome, and masqued bravos, and assassins who charged so much an inch

for the depth of their wounds. But all the laughter did not save a

youthful English marriage party from being atrociously massacred; a

grave English professional man with his wife from being carried off

to a mountainous captivity, and reserved from slaughter only by the

prospect of ransom; a British nobleman's son from death or the

consequences of Italian barbarity; or a prince, the brother of Napoleon,

from having the security of his mansion violated, and the most valuable

captives carried off by daylight from his household. In Greece

apparently the state of things is worse, because absolutely worse under

a far slighter temptation. But Mr. Mure is of opinion that Greek robbers

have private reasons as yet for sparing English tourists.

So far then is certain: viz. that the positive danger is greater in

poverty-stricken Greece than in rich and splendid Italy. But as to the

valuation of the danger, it is probably as yet imperfect from mere

defect of experience: the total amount of travellers is unknown. And

it may be argued that at least Colonel Leake, Mr. Dodwell, and our

present Mr. Mure, with as many more as have written books, cannot be

among the killed, wounded, or missing. There is evidence in octavo

that they are yet 'to the fore.' Still with respect to books, after

all, they may have been posthumous works: or, to put the case in another

form, who knows how many excellent works in medium quarto, not less

than crown octavo, may have been suppressed and intercepted in their

rudiments by these expurgatorial ruffians? Mr. Mure mentions as the

exquisite reason for the present fashion of shooting from an ambush

first, and settling accounts afterwards, that by this means they evade

the chances of a contest. The Greek robber, it seems, knows as well

as Cicero that 'non semper viator a latrone, nonnunquam etiam latro

a viatore occiditur'--a disappointment that makes one laugh exceedingly.

Now this rule as to armed travellers is likely to bear hard upon our

countrymen, who being rich, (else how come they in Greece?) will surely

be brilliantly armed; and thus again it may be said, in a sense somewhat

different from Juvenal's--

Et _vacuus_ cantat coram latrone viator;

_Vacuus_ not of money, but of pistols. Yet on the other hand, though

possibly sound law for the thickets of Mount Cithaeron, this would be

too unsafe a policy as a general rule: too often it is the exposure

of a helpless exterior which first suggests the outrage. And perhaps

the best suggestion for the present would be, that travellers should

carry in their hands an apparent telescope or a reputed walking-cane;

which peaceful and natural part of his appointments will first operate

to draw out his lurking forest friend from his advantage; and on closer

colloquy, if this friend should turn restive, then the 'Tuscan artist's

tube,' contrived of course a double debt to pay, will suddenly reveal

another sort of tube, insinuating an argument sufficient for the

refutation of any sophism whatever. This is the best compromise which

we can put forward with the present dilemma in Greece, where it seems

that to be armed or to be unarmed is almost equally perilous. But our

secret opinion is, that in all countries alike, the only absolute

safeguard against highway robbery is--a railway; for then the tables

are turned; not he who is stopped--incurs the risk, but he who stops:

we question whether Samson himself could have pulled up his namesake

on the Liverpool railway. Recently, indeed, in the Court of Common

Pleas, on a motion to show cause by Sergeant Bompas, in Hewitt v.

Price, Tindal (Chief-Justice) said--'We cannot call a railway a public

[Footnote 1] security, I think,' (_laughter:_) but _we_ think otherwise.

In spite of 'laughter,' we consider it a specific against the Low Toby.

And, _en attendant_, there is but one step towards amelioration of

things for Greece, which lies in summary ejecting of the Bavarian

locusts. Where all offices of profit or honor are engrossed by needy

aliens, you cannot expect a cheerful temper in the people. And,

unhappily, from moody discontent in Greece to the taking of purses is

a short transition.

Thus have we disposed of 'St. Nicholas's Clerks.' Next we come to fleas

and dogs:--Have we a remedy for these? We have: but as to fleas,

applicable or not, according to the purpose with which a man travels.

If, as happened at times to Mr. Mure, a natural, and, for his readers,

a beneficial anxiety to see something of domestic habits, overcomes

all sense of personal inconvenience, he will wish, at any cost, to

sleep in Grecian bedrooms, and to sit by German hearths. On the other

hand, though sensible of the honor attached to being bit by a flea

lineally descended from an Athenian flea that in one day may possibly

have bit three such men as Pericles, Phidias, and Euripides, many quiet

unambitious travellers might choose to dispense with 'glory,' and

content themselves with the view of Greek _external_ nature. To these

persons we would recommend the plan of carrying amongst their baggage

a tent, with portable camp-beds; one of those, as originally invented

upon the encouragement of the Peninsular campaigns from 1809 to 1814,

and subsequently improved, would meet all ordinary wants. It is

objected, indeed, that by this time the Grecian fleas must have

colonized the very hills and woods; as once, we remember, upon

Westminster Bridge, to a person who proposed bathing in the Thames by

way of a ready ablution from the July dust, another replied, 'My dear

sir, by no means; the river itself is dusty. Consider what it is to

have received the dust of London for nineteen hundred years since

Caesar's invasion.' But in any case the water cups, in which the

bed-posts rest, forbid the transit of creatures not able to swim or

to fly. A flea indeed leaps; and, by all report, in a way that far

beats a tiger--taking the standard of measurement from the bodies of

the competitors. But even this may be remedied: giving the maximum

leap of a normal flea, it is always easy to raise the bed indefinitely

from the ground--space upwards is unlimited--and the supporters of the

bed may be made to meet in one pillar, coated with so viscous a

substance as to put even a flea into chancery.

As to dogs, the case is not so easily settled; and before the reader

is in a condition to judge of our remedy, he ought to know the evil

in its whole extent. After all allowances for vermin that waken you

before your time, or assassins that send you to sleep before your time,

no single Greek nuisance can be placed on the same scale with the dogs

attached to every _menage_, whether household or pastoral. Surely as

a stranger approaches to any inhospitable door of the peasantry, often

before he knows of such a door as in _rerum natura_, out bounds upon

him by huge careering leaps a horrid infuriated ruffian of a

dog--oftentimes a huge _moloss_, big as an English cow--active as a

leopard, fierce as a hyena but more powerful by much, and quite as

little disposed to hear reason. So situated--seeing an enemy in motion

with whom it would be as idle to negotiate as with an earthquake--what

is the bravest man to do? Shoot him? Ay; that was pretty much the

course taken by a young man who lived before Troy: and see what came

of it. This man, in fact a boy of seventeen, had walked out to see the

city of Mycenae, leaving his elder cousin at the hotel sipping his

wine. Out sprang a huge dog from the principal house in what you might

call the High street of Mycenae; the young man's heart began to

palpitate; he was in that state of excitement which affects most people

when fear mingles with excessive anger. What was he to do? Pistols he

had none. And, as nobody came out to his aid, he put his hand to the

ground; seized a _chermadion_, (or paving-stone), smashed the skull

of the odious brute, and with quite as much merit as Count Robert of

Paris was entitled to have claimed from his lucky hit in the dungeon,

then walked off to report his little exploit to his cousin at the

hotel. But what followed? The wretches in the house, who never cared

to show themselves so long as it might only be the dog killing a boy,

all came tumbling out by crowds when it became clear that a boy had

killed the dog. '_A la lanterne!_' they yelled out; valiantly charged

_en masse_: and among them they managed to kill the boy. But there was

a reckoning to pay for this. Had they known who it was that sat drinking

at the hotel, they would have thought twice before they backed their

brute. That cousin, whom the poor boy had left at his wine, happened

to be an ugly customer--Hercules _incog_. It is needless to specify

the result. The child unborn had reason to rue the murder of the boy.

For his cousin proved quite as deaf to all argument or submission as

their own foul thief of a dog or themselves. Suffice it--that the royal

house of Mycenae, in the language of Napoleon's edicts, ceased to

reign. But here is the evil; few men leave a Hercules at their hotel;

and all will have to stand the vindictive fury of the natives for their

canine friends, if you should pistol them. Be it in deliverance of

your own life, or even of a lady's by your side, no apology would be

listened to. In fact, besides the disproportionate annoyance to a

traveller's nerves, that he shall be kept uneasy at every turn of the

road in mere anxiety as to the next recurrence of struggles so

desperate, it arms the indignation of a bold Briton beforehand--that

a horrid brute shall be thought entitled to kill _him_; and if he

_does_, it is pronounced an accident: but if he, a son of the mighty

island, kills the brute, instantly a little hybrid Greek peasant shall

treat it as murder.

Many years ago, we experienced the selfsame annoyance in the north of

England. Let no man talk of courage in such cases. Most justly did

Marechal Saxe ask an officer sneeringly, who protested that he had

never known the sensation of fear, and could not well imagine what it

was like, had he never snuffed a candle with his fingers? 'because in

that case,' said the veteran, 'I fancy you must have felt afraid of

burning your thumb.' A brave man, on a service of known danger, braces

up his mind by a distinct effort to the necessities of his duty. The

great sentiment that it is his duty, the sentiments of honor and of

country, reconcile him to the service while it lasts. No use, besides,

in ducking before shot, or dodging, or skulking; he that faces the

storm most cheerfully, has after all the best chance of escaping--were

that the object of consideration. But, as soon as this trial is over,

and the energy called forth by a high tension of duty has relaxed, the

very same man often shrinks from ordinary trials of his prowess. Having,

perhaps, little reason for confidence in his own bodily strength,

seeing no honor in the struggle, and sure that no duty would be hallowed

by any result, he shrinks from it in a way which surprises those who

have heard of his martial character. Brave men in extremities are many

times the most nervous, and the shyest under perils of a mean order.

We, without claiming the benefit of these particular distinctions,

happened to be specially 'soft' on this one danger from dogs. Not from

the mere terror of a bite, but from the shocking doubt besieging such

a case for four or five months that hydrophobia may supervene. Think,

excellent reader, if we should suddenly prove hydrophobous in the

middle of this paper, how would you distinguish the hydrophobous from

the non-hydrophobous parts? You would say, as Voltaire of Rousseau,

'sa plume apparemment brulera le papier.' Such being the horror ever

before our mind, images of eyeballs starting from their sockets, spasms

suffocating the throat--we could not see a dog starting off into a

yell of sudden discovery bound for the foot of our legs, but that

undoubtedly a mixed sensation of panic and fury overshadowed us; a

[Greek: Chermadion] was not always at hand; and without practice we

could have little confidence in our power of sending it home, else

many is the head we should have crushed. Sometimes, where more than

one dog happened to be accomplices in the outrage, we were not

altogether out of danger. 'Euripides,' we said, 'was really torn to

pieces by the dogs of a sovereign prince; in Hounslow, but a month

since, a little girl was all but worried by the buck-hounds of a greater

sovereign than Archelaus; and why not we by the dogs of a farmer?' The

scene lay in Westmorland and Cumberland. Oftentimes it would happen

that in summer we had turned aside from the road, or perhaps the road

itself forced us to pass a farm-house from which the family might be

absent in the hayfield. Unhappily the dogs in such a case are often

left behind. And many have been the fierce contests in which we have

embarked; for, as to retreating, be it known that there (as in Greece)

the murderous savages will pursue you--sometimes far into the high

road. That result it was which uniformly brought us back to a sense

of our own wrong, and finally of our rights. 'Come,' we used to say,

'this is too much; here at least is the king's highway, and things are

come to a pretty pass indeed, if we, who partake of a common nature

with the king, and write good Latin, whereas all the world knows what

sort of Latin is found among dogs, may not have as good a right to

standing-room as a low-bred quadruped with a tail like you.' Non usque

adeo summis permiscuit ima longa dies, &c. We remember no instance

which ever so powerfully illustrated the courage given by the

consciousness of rectitude. So long as we felt that we were trespassing

on the grounds of a stranger, we certainly sneaked, we seek not to

deny it. But once landed on the high-road, where we knew our own title

to be as good as the dog's, not all the world should have persuaded

us to budge one foot.

Our reason for going back to these old Cumbrian remembrances will be

found in what follows. Deeply incensed at the insults we had been

obliged to put up with for years, brooding oftentimes over

'Wrongs unredress'd, and insults unaveng'd,'

we asked ourselves--Is vengeance hopeless? And at length we hit upon

the following scheme of retribution. This it is which we propose as

applicable to Greece. Well acquainted with the indomitable spirit of

the bull-dog, and the fidelity of the mastiff, we determined to obtain

two such companions; to re-traverse our old ground; to make a point

of visiting every house where we had been grossly insulted by dogs;

and to commit our cause to the management of these new allies. 'Let

us see,' said we, 'if they will speak in the same bullying tone _this_

time.' 'But with what ulterior views?' the dispassionate reader asks.

The same, we answer, which Mr. Pitt professed as the objects of the

Revolutionary war--'Indemnity for the past, and security for the

future.' Years, however, passed on; Charles X. fell from his throne;

the Reform Bill passed; other things occurred, and as last this change

struck us--that the dogs, on whom our vengeance would alight, generally

speaking, must belong to a second generation, or even a third, in

descent from our personal enemies. Now, this vengeance 'by procuration'

seemed no vengeance at all. But a plan which failed, as regarded our

own past wrongs, may yet apply admirably to a wrong current and in

progress. If we Englishmen may not pistol Greek canine ruffians, at

any rate we suppose an English bulldog has a right to make a tour in

Greece, A mastiff, if he pays for his food and lodgings, possesses as

good a title, to see Athens and the Peloponnesus as a Bavarian, and

a better than a Turk; and, if he cannot be suffered to pass quietly

along the roads on his own private affairs, the more is the pity. But

assuredly the consequences will not fall on _him_; we know enough of

the sublime courage bestowed on that heroic animal, to be satisfied

that he will shake the life out of any enemy that Greece can show. The

embassy sent by Napoleon to the Schah of Persia about the year 1810,

complained much and often of the huge dogs scattered over all parts

of Western Asia, whether Turkish or Persian; and, by later travels

amongst the Himalayas, it seems that the same gigantic ruffians prevail

in Central Asia. But the noble English bull-dogs, who, being but three

in number, did not hesitate for one instant to rush upon the enormous

lion at Warwick, will face any enemy in the world, and will come off

victors, unless hyperbolically overweighted; a peril which need not

be apprehended, except perhaps in Laconia or Messenia.

Here, therefore, we should be disposed to leave the subject. But, as

it is curious for itself, is confessedly of importance to the traveller,

and has thrown light upon a passage in the Odyssey that had previously

been unintelligible--we go on to one other suggestion furnished by the

author before us. It is really a discovery; and is more worthy of a

place in annotations upon Homer than nine in ten of all that we read;--

'Among the numerous points of resemblance with which the classical

traveller cannot fail to be struck, between the habits of pastoral and

agricultural life as still exemplified in Greece, and those which

formerly prevailed in the same country, there is none more calculated

to arrest his attention than the correspondence of the shepherds'

encampments, scattered on the face of the less cultivated districts,

with the settlements of the same kind whose concerns are so frequently

brought forward in the imagery of the Iliad and Odyssey. Accordingly,

the passage of Homer to which the existing peculiarity above described,'

(viz. of pelting off dogs by large jagged stones,) 'affords the-most

appropriate commentary, is the scene where Ulysses, disguised as a

beggar, in approaching the farm of the swineherd, is fiercely assaulted

by the dogs, but delivered by the master of the establishment. Pope's

translation, with the exception of one or two expressions,' (amongst

which Mr. Mure notices _mastiff_ as "not a good term for a sheep-dog,")

'here conveys with tolerable fidelity the spirit of the original:--

'"Soon as Ulysses near the enclosure drew,

With open mouths the furious mastiffs flew;

Down sate the sage; and, cautious to withstand,

Let fall the offensive truncheon from his hand.

Sudden the master runs--aloud he calls;

And from his hasty hand the leather falls;

With show'rs of stones he drives them far away;

The scatter'd dogs around at distance bay."'

ODYSS. xiv. 29.

First, however, let us state the personal adventure which occasions

this reference to Homer, as it illustrates a feature in Greek scenery,

and in the composition of Greek society. In the early part of his

travels, on a day when Mr. Mure was within a few hours of the immortal

Mesolonghi, he (as better mounted) had ridden a-head of his suite.

Suddenly he came upon 'an encampment of small, low, reed wigwams,'

which in form resembled 'the pastoral capanne of the Roman plain;' but

were 'vastly inferior in size and structure.' Women and children were

sitting outside: but finally there crawled forth from the little

miserable hovels two or three male figures of such gigantic dimensions

as seemed beyond the capacity of the entire dwellings. Several others

joined them, all remarkable for size and beauty. And one, whose air

of authority bespoke his real rank of chief, Mr. Mure pronounces 'a

most magnificent-looking barbarian,' This was a nomad tribe of

Wallachian shepherds, descended (it is supposed) from the Dacian

colonies, Romans intermingled with natives, founded by the later

Caesars; the prevalent features of their faces are, it seems, Italian;

their language is powerfully veined with Latin; their dress differing

from that of all their Albanian neighbors, resembles the dress of

Dacian captives sculptured on the triumphal monuments of Rome; and

lastly, their peculiar name, _Vlack Wallachian_, indicates in the

Sclavonic language pretty much the same relation to a foreign origin,

as in German is indicated by the word _Welsh_: an affinity of which

word is said to exist in our word _Walnut_, where _wall_ (as the late

Mr. Coleridge thinks) means _alien_, _outlandish_. The evidence

therefore is as direct for their non-Grecian descent as could be

desired. But they are interesting to Greece at this time, because

annually migrating from Thessaly in the summer, and diffusing themselves

in the patriarchal style with their wives, their children, and their

flocks, over the sunny vales of Boeotia, of Peloponnesus, and in general

of southern Greece. Their men are huge, but they are the mildest of

the human race. Their dogs are huge, also; so far the parallel holds.

We regret that strict regard to truth forbids us to pursue the

comparison.

'I found myself on a sudden,' says Mr. Mure, 'surrounded by a fierce

pack of dogs, of size proportioned to that of their masters, and which

rushed forth on every side as if bent on devouring both myself and

beast: being altogether unprovided with any means of defence but the

rope-end of the same halter that supplied my stirrups, I was (I confess)

not a little disconcerted by the assault of so unexpected an enemy.'

From this he was soon delivered at the moment by some of the gentle

giants, who 'pelted off the animals with the large loose stones that

lay scattered over the rocky surface of the heath.' But upon the

character of the nuisance, and upon the particular remedy employed--both

of which are classical, and older than Troy, Mr. Mure makes the

following explanations:--

'The number and ferocity of the dogs that guard the Greek hamlets and

sheepfolds, as compared with those kept for similar purposes in other

parts of the world, is one of the peculiarities of this country which

not only first attracts the attention of the tourist, but is chiefly

calculated to excite his alarm, and call into exercise his prowess or

presence of mind. It is also amongst the features of modern Greek life

that supply the most curious illustrations of classical antiquity.

Their attacks are not confined to those who approach the premises of

which they are the appointed guardians;' they do not limit themselves

to defensive war: 'in many districts they are in the habit of rushing

from a considerable distance to torment the traveller passing along

the public track; and when the pastoral colonies, as is often the case,

occur at frequent intervals, the nuisance becomes quite intolerable.'

But in cases where the succession is less continuous, we should imagine

that the nuisance was in the same proportion more dangerous; and Mr.

Mure acknowledges--that under certain circumstances, to a solitary

stranger the risk would be serious; though generally, and in the case

of cavalcades, the dogs fasten chiefly upon the horses. But endless

are the compensations which we find in the distributions of nature.

Is there a bane? Near it lies an antidote. Is there a disease? Look

for a specific in that same neighborhood. Here, also, the universal

rule prevails. As it was destined that Greece in all ages should be

scourged by this intestine enemy, it was provided that a twofold

specific should travel concurrently with the evil. And because the

vegetable specific, in the shape of oaken cudgels, was liable to local

failure, (at this moment, in fact, from the wreck of her woods by means

of incendiary armies, Greece is, for a season, disafforested,) there

exists a second specific of a mineral character, which (please Heaven?)

shall never fail, so long as Greece is Greece. 'The usual weapons of

defence, employed in such cases by the natives, are the large loose

stones with which the soil is _everywhere_ strewed--a natural feature

of this region, to which also belongs its own proper share of classic

interest.' The character of the rocks prevailing in those mountain

ridges which intersect the whole of Greece is, that whilst in its

interior texture 'of iron-hard consistency,' yet at the surface it is

'broken into detached fragments of infinitely varied dimensions.'

Balls, bullets, grape, and canister shot, have all been 'parked' in

inexhaustible magazines; whilst the leading feature which strikes the

mind with amazement in this natural artillery, is its fine _retail_

distribution. Everywhere you may meet an enemy: stoop, and everywhere

there is shot piled for use. We see a Leibnitzian preestablished harmony

between the character of the stratification and the character of the

dogs. Cardinal de Retz explains why that war, in the minority of Louis

XIV., was called the _Fronde_; and it seems that in Greece, where an

immortal _fronde_ was inevitable, an immortal magazine was supplied

for it--one which has been and will continue to be, under all

revolutions, for the uncultured tracts present the missiles equally

diffused; and the first rudiments of culture show themselves in

collections of these missiles along the roads. Hence, in fact, a general

mistake of tourists. 'It is certain,' says Mr. Mure, 'that many of the

circular mounds, which are noticed in the itineraries under the rubric

of _ancient tumulus_, have been heaped up in this manner. It is to

these stones that travellers, and the population at large instinctively

have recourse, as the most effectual weapon against the assaults of

the dogs.' The small shot of pebbles, however, or even stones equal

to pigeon's eggs, would avail nothing: 'those selected are seldom

smaller than a man, exerting his whole force, can conveniently lift

and throw with one hand.' Thence, in fact, and from no other cause,

comes (as Mr. Mure observes) the Homeric designation of such stones,

viz. _chermadion_, or handful; of which he also cites the definition

given by Lucian, [Greek text: lithos cheiroplaethaes], a _hand-filling

stone_. Ninety generations have passed since the Trojan war, and each

of the ninety has used the same bountiful magazine. All readers of the

_Iliad_ must remember how often Ajax or Hector, took up _chermadia_,

'such as twice five men in our degenerate days could barely lift,'

launching them at light-armed foes, who positively would not come

nearer to take their just share of the sword or spear. 'The weapon is

the more effectual, owing to the nature of the rock itself, broken as

it is in its whole surface into angular and sharp-pointed inequalities,

which add greatly to the severity of the wound inflicted. Hence, as

most travellers will have experienced, a fall amongst the Greek rocks

is unusually painful.' It is pleasing to find Homer familiar not only

with the use of the weapon, but with its finest external 'developments.'

Not only the stone must be a bouncer, a _chermadion_, with some of the

properties (we believe) marking a good cricket-ball, but it ought to

be [Greek Text: ochxioeis]--such is the Homeric epithet of endearment,

his caressing description of a good brainer, viz. _splinting-jagged_.

This fact of the chermadic weight attached to the good war-stone

explains, as Mr. Mure ingeniously remarks, a simile of Homer's, which

ought to have been pure nonsense for Pope and Cowper; viz. that in

describing a dense mist, such as we foolishly imagine peculiar to our

own British climate, and meaning to say that a man could scarcely

descry an object somewhat ahead of his own station, he says, [Greek

Text: tosson tis t'ep leussel oson t'epi laan iaesi]: _so far does man

see as lie hurls a stone_. Now, in the skirmish of 'bickering,' this

would argue no great limitation of eyesight. 'Why, man, how far _would_

you see? Would you see round a corner?' 'A shot of several hundred

yards,' says Mr. Mure, 'were no great feat for a country lad well

skilled in the art of stone-throwing.' But this is not Homer's

meaning--'The cloud of dust' (which went before an army advancing, and

which it is that Homer compares to a mist on the hills perplexing the

shepherd) 'was certainly much denser than to admit of the view extending

to such a distance. In the Homeric sense, as allusive to the hurling

of the ponderous _chermadion_, the figure is correct and expressive.'

And here, as everywhere, we see the Horatian parenthesis upon Homer,

as one, _qui nil molitur inepte_, who never speaks vaguely, never wants

a reason, and never loses sight of a reality, amply sustained. Here,

then, is a local resource to the British tourist besides the imported

one of the bull-dog. And it is remarkable that, except where the dogs

are preternaturally audacious, a mere hint of the chermadion suffices.

Late in our own experience too late for glory, we made the discovery

that all dogs have a mysterious reverence for a trundling stone. It

calls off attention from the human object, and strikes alarm into the

caitiff's mind. He thinks the stone alive. Upon this hint we thought

it possible to improve: stooping down, we 'made believe' to launch a

stone, when, in fact, we had none; and the effect generally followed.

So well is this understood in Greece that, according to a popular

opinion reported by Mr. Mure, the prevailing habit in Grecian dogs,

as well as bitches, of absenting themselves from church, grows out of

the frequent bowing and genuflexions practised in the course of the

service. The congregation, one and all, simultaneously stoop; the dog's

wickedness has made him well acquainted with the meaning of that act;

it is a symbol but too significant to his conscience; and he takes to

his heels with the belief that a whole salvo of one hundred and one

_chermadia_ are fastening on his devoted 'hurdies.'

Here, therefore, is a suggestion at once practically useful, and which

furnishes more than one important elucidation to passages in Homer

hitherto unintelligible. For the sake of one other such passage, we

shall, before dismissing the subject, pause upon a novel fact,

communicated by Mr. Mure, which is equally seasonable as a new Homeric

light, and as a serviceable hint in a situation of extremity.

In the passage already quoted under Pope's version from Odyssey, xiv.

29, what is the meaning of that singular couplet--

'Down sate the sage; and cautious to withstand,

Let fall the offensive truncheon from his hand.' [Footnote 2]

Mr. Mure's very singular explanation will remind the naturalist of

something resembling it in the habits of buffaloes. Dampier mentions

a case which he witnessed in some island with a Malay population, where

a herd of buffaloes continued to describe concentric circles, by

continually narrowing around a party of sailors; and at last submitted

only to the control of children _not too far beyond the state of

infancy_. The white breed of wild cattle, once so well known at Lord

Tankerville's in Northumberland, and at one point in the south-west

of Scotland, had a similar instinct for regulating the fury of their

own attack; but it was understood that when the final circle had been

woven, the spell was perfect; and that the herd would 'do business'

most effectually. As respects the Homeric case, 'I,' (says Mr. Mure,)

'am probably not the only reader who has been puzzled to understand

the object of this manoeuvre' (the sitting down) 'on the part of the

hero. I was first led to appreciate its full value in the following

manner:--At Argos one evening, at the table of General Gordon,' (then

commanding-in-chief throughout the Morea, and the best historian of

the Greek revolution, but who subsequently resigned, and died in the

spring of 1841, at his seat in Aberdeenshire,) 'the conversation

happened to turn, as it frequently does where tourists are in company,

on this very subject of the number and fierceness of the Grecian dogs;

when one of the company remarked that he knew of a very simple expedient

for appeasing their fury. Happening on a journey to miss his road, and

being overtaken by darkness, he sought refuge for the night at a

pastoral settlement by the wayside. As he approached, the dogs rushed

out upon him; and the consequences might have been serious had he not

been rescued by an old shepherd, (the Eumeus of the fold,) who after

pelting off his assailants, gave him a hospitable reception in his

hut. The guest made some remark on the zeal of his dogs, and on the

danger to which he had been exposed from their attack. The old man

replied 'that it was his own fault, from not taking the customary

precaution in such an emergency; that he ought to have stopped, and

_sate down_ until some person came to protect him.' Here we have the

very act of Ulysses; with the necessary circumstance that he laid aside

his arms; after which the two parties were under a provisional treaty.

And Adam Smith's doubtful assumption that dogs are incapable of

exchange, or reciprocal understanding, seems still more doubtful. As

this expedient was new to the traveller, 'he made some further

inquiries; and was assured that, if any person in such a predicament

will simply seat himself on the ground, laying aside his weapon of

defence, the dogs will also squat in a circle round him; that, as long

as he remains quiet, they will follow his example; but that, as soon

as he rises and moves forward, they will renew their assault. This

story, though told without the least reference to the Odyssey, at once

brought home to my own mind the scene at the fold of Eumeus with the

most vivid reality. The existence of the custom was confirmed by other

persons present, from their own observation or experience.' Yet, what

if the night were such as is often found even in Southern Greece during

winter--a black frost; and that all the belligerents were found in the

morning symmetrically grouped as petrifactions? However, here again

we have the Homer _qui nil molitur inepte_, who addressed a people of

known habits. Yet _quare_--as a matter of some moment for Homeric

disputes--were these habits of Ionian colonies, or exclusively of

Greece Proper?

But enough of the repulsive features in Greek travelling. We, for our

part, have endeavored to meet them with remedies both good and novel.

Now let us turn to a different question. What are the positive

attractions of Greece? What motives are there to a tour so costly?

What are the _Pros_, supposing the _Cons_ dismissed? This is a more

difficult question than is imagined: so difficult that most people set

out without waiting for the answer: they travel first and leave to

providential contingencies the chance that, on a review of the tour

in its course, some adequate motive may suggest itself. Certainly it

may be said, that the word Greece already in itself contains an adequate

motive; and we do not deny that a young man, full of animal ardor and

high classical recollections, may, without blame, give way to the mere

instincts of wandering. It is a fine thing to bundle up your traps at

an hour's warning, and fixing your eye upon some bright particular

star, to say--'I will travel after thee: I will have no other mark:

I will chase thy rising or thy setting: that is, on Mr. Wordsworth's

hint derived from a Scottish lake, to move on a general object of

_stepping westwards_, or _stepping eastwards_. But there are few men

qualified to travel, who stand in this free 'unhoused' condition of

license to spend money, to lose time, or to court peril. In balancing

the pretensions of different regions to a distinction so costly as an

_effectual_ tour, money it is, simply the consideration of cost, which

furnishes the chief or sole ground of administration; having but 100

pounds sterling disposable in any one summer, a man finds his field

of choice circumscribed at once: and rare is the household that can

allow twice that sum annually. He contents himself with the Rhine, or

possibly, if more adventurous, he may explore the passes of the

Pyrenees; he may unthread the mazes of romantic Auvergne, or make a

stretch even to the Western Alps of Savoy.

But, for the Mediterranean, and especially for the Levant--these he

resigns to richer men; to those who can command from three to five

hundred pounds. And next, having submitted to this preliminary

limitation of radius, he is guided in selecting from what remains by

some indistinct prejudice of his early reading. Many are they in England

who start with a blind faith, inherited from Mrs. Radeliffe's romances,

and thousands beside, that, in Southern France or in Italy, from the

Milanese down to the furthest nook of the Sicilies, it is physically

impossible for the tourist to go wrong. And thus it happens, that a

spectacle, somewhat painful to good sense, is annually renewed of

confiding households leaving a real Calabria in Montgomeryshire or

Devonshire, for dreary, sunburned flats in Bavaria, in Provence, in

Languedoc, or in the 'Legations' of the Papal territory. 'Vintagers,'

at a distance, how romantic a sound! Hops--on the other hand--how

mercenary, nay, how culinary, by the feeling connected with their use,

or their taxation! Arcadian shepherds again, or Sicilian from the 'bank

of delicate Galesus,' can these be other than poetic? The hunter of

the Alpine ibex--can he be other than picturesque? A sandalled monk

mysteriously cowled, and in the _distance_, (but be sure of _that!_)

a band of robbers reposing at noon amidst some Salvator-Rosa-looking

solitudes of Calabria--how often have such elements, semi-consciously

grouped, and flashing upon the indistinct mirrors lighted up by early

reading, seduced English good sense into undertakings terminating in

angry disappointment! We acknowledge that the English are the only

nation under this romantic delusion; but so saying, we pronounce a

very mixed censure upon our country. In itself it is certainly a folly,

which other nations (Germany excepted) are not above, but below: a

folly which presupposes a most remarkable distinction for our

literature, significant in a high moral degree. The plain truth is--that

Southern Europe has no romance in its household literature; has not

an organ for comprehending what it is that we mean by Radcliffian

romance. The old ancestral romance of knightly adventure, the

_Sangreal_, the _Round Table_, &c., exists for Southern Europe as an

antiquarian subject; or if treated aesthetically, simply as a subject

adapted to the ludicrous. And the secondary romance of our later

literature is to the south unintelligible. No Frenchman, Spaniard, or

Italian, at all comprehends the grand poetic feeling employed and

nursed by narrative fictions through the last seventy years in England,

though connected by us with their own supposed scenery.

Generally, in speaking of Southern Europe, it may be affirmed that the

idea of heightening any of the grander passions by association with

the shadowy and darker forms of natural scenery, heaths, mountainous

recesses, 'forests drear,' or the sad desolation of a silent sea-shore,

of the desert, or of the ocean, is an idea not developed amongst them,

nor capable of combining with their serious feelings. By the evidence

of their literature, viz. of their poetry, their drama, their novels,

it is an interest to which the whole race is deaf and blind. A Frenchman

or an Italian (for the Italian, in many features of Gallic

insensibility, will be found ultra-Gallican) can understand a state

in which the moving principle is sympathy with the world of conscience.

Not that his own country will furnish him with any grand exemplification

of such an interest; but, merely as a human being, he cannot escape

from a certain degree of human sympathy with the dread tumults going

on in that vast theatre--a conscience-haunted mind. So far he stands

on common ground; but how this mode of shedding terror can borrow any

alliance from chapels, from ruins, from monastic piles, from Inquisition

dungeons, inscrutable to human justice, or dread of confessionals,--all

this is unfathomably mysterious to Southern Europe. The Southern

imagination is passively and abjectly dependent on _social_ interests;

and these must conform to modern types. Hence, partly, the reason that

only the British travel. The German is generally too poor. The Frenchman

desires nothing but what he finds at home: having Paris at hand, why

should he seek an inferior Paris in distant lands? To an Englishman

this demur could seldom exist. He may think, and, with introductions

into the higher modes of aristocratic life, he may know that London

and St. Petersburg are far more magnificent capitals than Paris; but

_that_ will not repel his travelling instincts. A superior London he

does not credit or desire; but what he seeks is not a superior, it is

a different, life;--not new degrees of old things, but new kinds of

experience are what he asks. His scale of conception is ampler; whereas,

generally, the Frenchman is absorbed into one ideal. Why else is it,

that, after you have allowed for a few Frenchmen carried of necessity

into foreign lands by the diplomatic concerns of so vast a country,

and for a few artists travelling in quest of gain or improvement, we

hear of no French travellers as a class? And why is it that, except

as regards Egypt, where there happens to lurk a secret political object

in reversion for France, German literature builds its historic or

antiquarian researches almost exclusively upon English travellers? Our

travellers may happen or not to be professional; but they are never

found travelling for professional objects. Some have been merchants

or bankers, many have been ecclesiastics; but neither commercial nor

clerical or religious purposes have furnished any working motive,

unless where, as express missionaries, they have prepared their readers

to expect such a bias to their researches. Colonel Leake, the most

accurate of travellers, is a soldier; and in reviewing the field of

Marathon, of Plataa, and others deriving their interest from later

wars, he makes a casual use of his soldiership. Captain Beaufort,

again, as a sailor, uses his nautical skill where it is properly called

for. But in the larger proportions of their works, even the professional

are not professional; whilst such is our academic discipline, that all

alike are scholars. And in this quality of merit the author before us

holds a distinguished rank. He is no artist, though manifesting the

eye learned in art and in landscape. He is not professionally a soldier;

he is so only by that secondary tie, which, in our island, connects

the landed aristocracy with the landed militia; yet though not, in a

technical sense, military, he disputes, with such as _are_, difficult

questions of Greek martial history. He is no regular agriculturist,

yet he conveys a good general impression of the Greek condition with

relation to landed wealth or landed skill, as modified at this moment

by the unfortunate restraints on a soil handed over, in its best parts,

by a Turkish aristocracy that had engrossed them, to a Bavarian that

cannot use them. In short, Mr. Mure is simply a territorial gentleman;

elevated enough to have stood a contest for the representation of a

great Scottish county; of general information; and, in particular, he

is an excellent Greek scholar; which latter fact we gather, not from

anything we have heard, but from these three indications meeting

together;--1. That his verbal use of Greek, in trying the true meaning

of names, (such as Mycene, the island of Asteris, &c.,) is original

as well as accurate. 2. That his display of reading (not volunteered

or selected, but determined by accidents of local suggestion) is ample.

3. That the frugality of his Greek citations is as remarkable as their

pertinence. He is never tempted into trite references; nor ever allows

his page to be encumbered by more of such learning than is severely

needed.

With regard to the general motives for travelling, _his_ for Greece

had naturally some relation to his previous reading; but perhaps an

occasional cause, making his true motives operative, may have been his

casual proximity to Greece at starting--for he was then residing in

Italy. Others, however, amongst those qualified to succeed him, wanting

this advantage, will desire some positive objects of a high value, in

a tour both difficult as regards hardships, costly, and too tedious,

even with the aids of steam, for those whose starting point is England.

These objects, real or imaginary, in a Greek tour, co-extensive with

the new limits of Greek jurisdiction, let us now review:--

I. _The Greek People_.--It is with a view to the Greeks personally,

the men, women, and children, who in one sense at least, viz., as

occupants of the Greek soil, represent the ancient classical Greeks,

that the traveller will undertake this labor. Representatives in one

sense! Why, how now? are they not such in all senses? Do they not trace

their descent from the classical Greeks?' We are sorry to say _not_;

or in so doubtful a way, that the interest derived from that source

is too languid to sustain itself against the opposing considerations.

Some authors have peremptorily denied that one drop of genuine Grecian

blood, transmitted from the countrymen of Pericles, now flows in the

veins of any Greek subject. Falmereyer, the German, is at the head (we

believe) of those who take that view. And many who think Falmereyer

in excess, make these unpleasant concessions; viz., 1st, that in Athens

and throughout Attica, where, by special preference, one would wish

to see the Grecian cast of face predominating, _there_, to a single

family almost, you may affirm all to be Albanian. Well; but what is

Albanian? For the Albanian race, as having its headquarters in regions

once undoubtedly occupied by a Greek race. Epirus, for instance,

Acarnania, &c., may still be Grecian by descent: but unfortunately it

is not so. The Albanians are no more Grecian, and notoriously no more

represent the old legitimate Greeks, who thumped the Persians and whom

the Romans thumped, than the modern English represent the Britons, or

the modern Lowland Scotch represent the Scoti, of the centuries

immediately following the Christian era. Both English and Lowland

Scotch, for the first five centuries after the Christian era, were

ranging the forests of north Germany or of southern Sweden. The men

who fought with Caesar, if now represented at all, are so in Wales,

in Cornwall, or other western recesses of the island. And the Albanians

are held to be a Sclavonic race--such at least is the accredited theory;

so that modern Greece is connected with Russia not merely by the bond

of a common church, but also by blood, since the Russian people is the

supreme branch of the Sclavonic race. This is the first concession

made which limits any remnant of the true Greek blood to parts of the

ancient Hellas not foremost in general interest, nor most likely to

be visited.

A second is, that if any claim to a true Grecian descent does exist

extensively, it must be looked for amongst Mahometan clans, descended

from renegades of former days, now confounded with our Mussulmans

ejected from Greece, and living in Thrace, or other regions under the

Sultan's sceptre. But even here the purity of the descent is in the

last degree uncertain.

This case is remarkable. From the stationary character of all things

in the East, there was a probability beforehand, that several

nations--as in particular, four that we will mention: the Greeks, the

Egyptians, the Persians, the Affghans--should have presented the same

purity of descent, untainted by alien blood, which we find in the

children of Ishmael, and the children of his half-brother the patriarch

Isaac. Yet, in that case, where would have been the miraculous unity

of race predicted for these two nations exclusively by the Scriptures?

The fact is, the four nations mentioned have been so profoundly changed

by deluges of foreign conquest or foreign intrusion, that at this day,

perhaps, no solitary individual could be found whose ancestral line

had not been confounded with other bloods. The Arabs only, and the

Jews, are under no suspicion of this hybrid mixture. Vast deserts,

which insulate one side of the Arabian peninsula; the sea, which

insulates the other sides, have, with other causes, preserved the Arab

blood from all general attaint of its purity. Ceremonies, institutions,

awful scruples of conscience, and through many centuries, misery and

legal persecution, have maintained a still more impassable gulf between

the Jews and other races. Spain is the only Christian land where the

native blood was at any time intermingled with the Jewish; and hence

one cause for the early vigilance of the Inquisition in that country

more than elsewhere; hence also the horror of a Jewish taint in the

Spanish hidalgo; Judaism masquing itself in Christianity, was so keenly

suspected, or so haughtily disclaimed, simply because so largely it

existed. It was, however, under a very peculiar state of society, that,

even during an interval, and in a corner, Jews _could_ have intermarried

with Christians. Generally, the intensity of reciprocated hatred, long

oppression upon the one side, deep degradation upon the other,

perpetuated the alienation, had the repulsion of creeds even relaxed.

And hence, at this day, the intense purity of the Jewish blood, though

probably more than six millions of individuals.

But with respect to the Grecians, as no barrier has ever existed between

them and any other [Footnote 3] race than the Turks, and these only

in the shape of religious scruples, which on one side had the highest

political temptation to give way, there was no pledge stronger than

individual character, there could be no national or corporate pledge,

for the maintenance of this insulation. As therefore, in many recorded

cases, the strongest barrier (viz., that against Mahometan alliances)

is known to have given way, as in other cases innumerable, but

forgotten, it must be presumed to have given way? this inference

follows, viz., that if anywhere the Grecian blood remains in purity,

the fact will be entirely without evidence; and for us, the result

will be the same as if the fact had no existence. Simply as a matter

of curiosity, if our own opinion were asked as to the probability,

that in any situation, a true-blooded population yet survives at this

day, we should answer that, if anywhere, it will be found in the most

sterile of the Greek islands. Yet, even there the bare probability of

such a result will have been open to many disturbances; and especially

if the island happen to be much in the way of navigators, or the harbors

happen to be convenient, or if it happen to furnish a good stage in

a succession of stages, (according to the ancient usages of

Mediterranean seamanship), or if it possessed towns containing

accumulations of provisions or other stores, or offered good

watering-places; under any of these endowments, an island might be

tempting to pirates, or to roving adventurers, or to remote overpeopled

parts of Italy, Africa, Asia Minor, &c.; in short, to any vicious city

where but one man amongst the poorer classes knew the local invitations

to murderous aggressions. Under so many contingencies operative through

so many centuries, and revolutions so vast upon nations so multiplied,

we believe that even a poor unproductive soil is no absolute pledge

for non-molestation to the most obscure of recesses.

For instance, the poorest district of the large island Crete, might

(if any could) be presumed to have a true Greek population. There is

little to be found in that district beyond the means of bare

subsistence; and (considering the prodigious advantages of the ground

for defensive war) little to be looked for by an invader but hard

knocks, 'more kicks than halfpence,' so long as there was any indigenous

population to stand up and kick. But often it must have happened in

a course of centuries, that plague, small-pox, cholera, the

sweating-sickness, or other scourges of universal Europe and Asia,

would absolutely depopulate a region no larger than an island; as in

fact, within our brief knowledge of the New Hollanders, has happened

through small-pox alone, to entire tribes of those savages, and, upon

a scale still more awful, to the American Indians. In such cases, mere

strangers would oftentimes enter upon the lands as a derelict. The

Sfakians, in that recess of Crete which we have noticed, are not

supposed by scholars to be a true Grecian race; nor do we account them

such. And one reason of our own, superadded to the common reasons

against allowing a Greek origin, is this:--The Sfakians are a

large-limbed, fine-looking race, more resembling the Wallachians whom

we have already noticed, than the other races of Crete, or the other

Greek islanders, and like the Wallachians, are often of colossal

stature. But the classical Greeks, we are pretty certain, were a race

of little men. We have more arguments than one for this belief. But

one will be sufficient. The Athenian painter who recorded the battle

of Marathon in fresco upon the walls of a portico, was fined for

representing the Persians as conspicuously taller than the Greeks. But

why?--why should any artist have ascribed such an advantage to the

enemy, unless because it was a fact? What plausible motive, other than

the notoriety of the fact, can be imagined in the painter? In reality,

this artist proceeded as a general rule amongst the Greeks, and a rule

strictly, if not almost superstitiously observed, and of ancient

establishment, which was, that all conquerors in any contest, or at

any games, olympic, or whatsoever they might be, were memorialized by

statues exactly representing the living man in the year of victory,

taken even with their personal defects. The dimensions were preserved

with such painful fidelity, as though the object had been to collect

and preserve for posterity, a series from every generation, of those

men who might be presumed by their trophies to have been the models

by natural prefiguration for that particular gymnastic accomplishment

in which they had severally excelled. [See the _Acad. des Inscriptions_,

about the year 1725.] At the time of Marathon, fought against the

Lieutenant of Darius, the Olympic games had existed for two hundred

years, _minus_ thirteen; and at the closing battle of Plataea, fought

against the Lieutenant of Xerxes, for two hundred, _minus_ only two.

During all this period, it is known for certain, perhaps even from far

older times, that this rule of exact _portraiture_, a rigid demand for

duplicates or fac-similes of the individual men, had prevailed in

Greece. The enormous amount of Persian corpses buried by the Greeks,

(or perhaps by Persian prisoners,) in the Polyandrium on the field of

battle, would be measured and observed by the artists against the

public application for their services. And the armor of those select

men-at-arms, or [Greek Text: oplitai], who _had_ regular suits of

armor, would remain for many centuries suspended as consecrated

anathaeyata in the Grecian temples; so that Greek artists would never

want sure records of the Persian dimensions. Were it not for this rule,

applied sternly to all real conflicts, it might have been open to

imagine that the artist had exaggerated the persons of the enemy by

way of exalting to posterity the terrors which their ancestors had

faced; a more logical vanity than that inverse artifice imputed to

Alexander, of burying in the Punjaub gigantic mangers and hyperbolical

suits of armor, under the conceit of impressing remote ages with a

romantic idea of the bodily proportions in the men and horses composing

the _elite_ of the Macedonian army. This was the true secret for

disenchanting the martial pretensions of his army. Were you indeed

such colossal men? In that case, the less is your merit; of which most

part belongs manifestly to a _physical_ advantage: and in the ages of

no gunpowder the advantage was less equivocal than it is at present.

In the other direction, the logic of the Greek artist who painted

Marathon is more cogent. The Persians were numerically superior, though

doubtless this superiority has been greatly exaggerated, not wilfully

so much as from natural mistakes incident to the Oriental composition

of armies; and still more on the Grecian side, from extreme inaccuracy

in the original reports, which was so great that even Herodotus, who

stood removed from Plataea at the time of commencing his labors, by

pretty much the same interval as we in 1842 from Waterloo, is rightly

observed by Colonel Leake (_Travels in Greece_) to have stated to him

the Greek numbers on the great day of Plataea, rather from the basis

of fixed rateable contingents which each state was bound to furnish,

than of any positive return that he could allege. However, on the

whole, it seems undeniable that even at Platsea, much more at Marathon,

the Persians had the advantage in numbers. If, besides this numerical

advantage, they had another in qualities of bodily structure, the

inference was the greater to the Grecian merit. So far from slighting

a Persian advantage which really existed, a Greek painter might rather

be suspected of inventing one which did not. We apprehend, however,

that he invented nothing. For, besides that subsequent intercourse

with Persians would have defeated the effect of his representation had

it reposed on a fiction, it is known that the Greeks did not rightly

appreciate tallness. 'Procerity,' to use Dr. Johnson's stately word

in speaking of the stately Prussian regiment, was underrated in Greece;

perhaps for this reason, that in some principal gymnastic contests,

running, leaping, horsemanship, and charioteering, it really _was_ a

disadvantage. And hence possibly arose a fact which has been often

noticed with surprise; viz. that the legendary Hercules was never

delineated by the Greek artists as more than an athletic man of the

ordinary standard with respect to height and bulk. The Greek imagination

was extravagantly mastered by physical excellence; this is proved by

the almost inconceivable value attached to gymnastic merit. Nowhere,

except in Greece, could a lyrical enthusiasm have been made available

in such a service. But amongst physical qualities they did not

adequately value that of lofty stature. At all events, the rule of

portraiture--the whole portrait and nothing but the portrait--which

we have mentioned as absolute for Greece, coerced the painter into the

advantageous distinction for the Persians which we have mentioned. And

this rule, _as servile to the fact_, is decisive for the Greek

proportions of body in comparison with the Persian.

But were not some tribes amongst the Greeks celebrated for their

stature? Yes; the Daulians, for instance, both men and women: and in

some modern tourist we remember a distinction of the same kind claimed

for the _present_ occupants of Daulis. But the ancient claim bad

reference only to the Grecian scale. Tall, were they? Yes, but tall

for Grecians. The Romans were possibly a shade taller than the Greeks,

but they also were a little race of men. This is certain. And, if a

man were incautious enough to plead in answer the standard of the

modern Italians, who are often both tall and athletic, he must be

reminded that to Tramontanes, in fact, such as Goths, Heruli, Scyrra,

Lombards, and other tribes of the Rhine, Lech, or Danube, Italy is

indebted for the improved breed of her carcasses. [Footnote 4] Man,

instead of degenerating according to the scandalous folly of books,

very slowly improves everywhere; and the carcasses of the existing

generation, weighed off, million for million, against the carcasses

of any pre-Christian generation, we feel confident would be found to

have the advantage by many thousands of stones [the butchers' stone

is eight pounds] upon each million. And universally the best _prima

facie_ title to a pure Greek descent will be an elegantly formed, but

somewhat under-sized, person, with a lively, animated, and intelligent

physiognomy; of which last may be said, that, if never in the highest

sense rising to the noble, on the other hand, it never sinks to the

brutal. At Liverpool we used to see in one day many hundreds of Greek

sailors from all parts of the Levant; these were amongst the most

probable descendants from the children of Ion or of OEolus, and the

character of their person was what we describe--short but symmetrical

figures and faces, upon the whole, delicately chiselled. These men

generally came from the Greek islands.

Meantime, what is Mr. Mure's opinion upon this much-vexed question?

Into the general problem he declines to enter; not, we may be sure,

from want of ability to treat it with novelty and truth. But we collect

that he sees no reason for disputing the general impression, that an

Albanian or hybrid population is mainly in possession of the soil, and

that perhaps he would say, _lis est de paupere regno_; for, if there

is no beauty concerned in the decision, nor any of the quality of

physical superiority, the less seems the value of the dispute. To

appropriate a set of plain faces, to identify the descent of ordinary

bodies, seems labor lost. And in the race now nominally claiming to

be Grecian, Mr. Mure evidently finds only plain faces, and ordinary

bodies. Those, whom at any time he commends for beauty or other

advantages of person, are tribes confessedly alien; and, on the other

hand, with respect to those claiming to be Greek, he pronounces a

pointed condemnation by disparaging their women. It is notoriously a

duty of the female sex to be beautiful, if they can, with a view to

the recreation of us males--whom Lily's Grammar affirms to be 'of the

worthier gender.' Sitting at breakfast, (which consisted 'of red

herrings and Gruyere cheese,') upon the shore of Megara, Mr. Mure

beheld the Megarensian lasses mustering in force for a general ablution

of the Megarensian linen. The nymphs had not turned out upon the usual

principles of feminine gatherings--

'Spectatum venit, venit spectentur it ipsae;'

and yet, between them, the two parties reciprocated the functions.

Each to the other was a true spectacle. A long Scotchman,

'Qui sicca solus secum spatiatur arena,'

and holding in his dexter mauley a red herring, whilst a white

table-cloth (the centre of his motions) would proclaim some mysterious

rite, must to the young ladies have seemed a merman suddenly come up

from the sea, without sound of conch; whilst to him the large deputation

from female Megara furnished an extra theatre for the inspection of

Greek beauty. 'There was no river mouth visible, the operation being

performed in the briny sea itself;' and, so far from this being unusual,

Mr. Mure notices it as a question of embarrassment to the men of

Plutarch's age, why the Phoeacian princess in the Odyssey did _not_

wash in the sea, but mysteriously preferred the river, (_Sympos, I.

qu._ 9;) but as to beauty, says Mr. Mure, 'I looked in vain for a

figure, which either as to face or form could claim even a remote

resemblance to Nausicaa. The modern Greek woman indeed appeared to me,

upon the whole, about the most ill-favored I have met with in any

country.' And it attests the sef-consistency of Mr. Mure, that in

Aracova, the only place where he notices the women as having any

pretensions to beauty, he and others agree that their countenances are

not true to the national type; they are generally reputed to offer

something much nearer to the bloom and the _embonpoint_ of female

rustics in Germany; and accordingly, it is by the Bavarian officers

of King Otho's army that these fair Aracovites have been chiefly raised

into celebrity. We cannot immediately find the passage in Mr. Mure's

book relating to Aracova; but we remember that, although admitting the

men to be a tolerably handsome race, he was disappointed in the females.

Tall they are, and stout, but not, he thinks, beautiful.

Yet, in dismissing this subject of personal appearance, as the most

plausible test now surviving for the claim of a pure Greek descent,

we must not forget to explain--that it is far from our design to

countenance the hypothesis of any _abrupt_ supercession, at any period

or by any means, to the old Grecian blood. The very phrase of 'national

type,' which we used in the last paragraph, and the diffusion of a

language essentially Greek, argue at once a slow and gradational

transition of the population into its present physical condition. Mr.

Mure somewhere describes, as amongst the characteristics of the present

race, swarth-iness and leanness. These we suspect to have been also

characteristics of the old original _ton d'apameibomenoi_ Greeks. If

so, the fact would seem to argue, that the changes, after all, had not

been on a scale sufficient to obliterate the primitive type of Hellenic

nature; whilst the existence of any _diffused_ type marks a tendency

to national unity, and shows that some one element has so much

predominated as to fuse the rest into a homogeneous whole. Indeed, it

is pretty certain that a powerful cross in any human breed, whatever

effects it may have in other respects, leaves the intellect improved--if

not in the very highest qualities, yet in mobility, activity, and

pertinacity of attention. The Greek nation has also shown itself morally

improved; their revolutionary war evoked and tried, as in a furnace,

the very finest qualities of courage, both adventurous and enduring;

and we heartily agree in the sentiment delivered so ably by Mr. Mure,

that the struggles of these poor shepherds and herdsmen, driven into

caves and thickets, and having no great rallying principle but the

banner of the Cross against the Crescent, were as much more truly

sublime in suffering and in daring, than the classical struggles against

the Persians, as they are and will be more obscure in the page of

general history. We do not at all question great stamina and noble

elements in the modern Greek character--generations of independence

will carry this character to excellence; but still we affirm, that he

who looks for direct descendants from the race of Miliades, Pericles,

or Epaminondas, is likely to be disappointed; and most disappointed

in that Athens, which for all of us alike (as appealing to our

imaginative feelings) still continues to be what it was for Cicero--true

and very Greece; in which, therefore, of all cities locally recalling

the classical times, we can least brook a disappointment.

If not the people of Greece, is it then the NATURAL SCENERY of Greece

which can justify the tourist in this preference? Upon this subject

it is difficult to dispute. What a man is likely to relish in

scenery--what style or mode of the natural picturesque; and secondly,

what weight or value he will allow to his own preferences--are questions

exceedingly variable. And the latter of these questions is the more

important; for the objection is far less likely to arise against this

mode of scenery or that, since every _characteristic_ mode is relished

as a change, than universally against all modes alike as adequate

indemnifications for the toils of travelling. Female travellers are

apt to talk of 'scenery' as all in all, but men require a social

interest superadded. Mere scenery palls upon the mind, where it is the

sole and ever-present attraction relied on. It should come unbidden

and unthought of, like the warbling of birds, to sustain itself in

power. And at feeding-time we observe that men of all nations and

languages, _Tros Tyriusve,_ grow savage, if, by a fine scene, you

endeavor to make amends for a bad beef-steak. The scenery of the

Himalaya will not 'draw houses' till it finds itself on a line of good

hotels.

This difference, noted above, between the knowledge and the power of

a scenery hunter may be often seen illustrated in the fields of art.

How common is the old sapless connoisseur in pictures, who retains his

learned eye and his distinguished skill, but whose sensibilities are

as dry as summer dust to the interests of the art. On the other hand,

daily you see young people whose hearts and souls are in the forests

and the hills, but for whom the eye is perfectly untutored. If, now,

to the differences in this respect you add the extensive differences

which prevail as to the kinds of scenery, it is easy to understand how

rich in the materials for schism must be every party that starts up

on the excitement of mere scenery. Some laud the Caucasus; some the

northern and eastern valleys of Spain; some the Alpine scenery; some

the Pyrenean. All these are different; and from all alike differs again

what Mr. Mure classes as the classical character of scenery. For this,

he thinks a regular education of the eye requisite. Such an education

he himself had obtained from a residence in Italy. And, subject to

that condition, he supposes the scenery on the Eurotas (to the eastern

side of the Peloponnesus) the most delightful in Europe. We know not.

It may be so. For ourselves, the obscure sense of being or moving under

a vast superincumbency of some great natural power, as of a mighty

forest, or a trackless succession of mountainous labyrinths, has a

charm of secret force far better than any distinct scenes to which we

are introduced. Such things ought not to be. But still so it is--that

tours in search of the picturesque are peculiarly apt to break up in

quarrels. Perhaps on the same principle which has caused a fact

generally noticed, viz. that conchologists, butterfly-fanciers, &c.,

are unusually prone to commit felonies, because too little of a human

interest circulates through their arid pursuits. The morbid irritation

accumulates until the amateur rushes, out with a knife, lets blood in

some quarter, and so restores his own connection with the vitalities

of human nature. In any case, we advise the Greek tourist to have at

least two strings to his bow besides scenery.

III.--Is it, then, the monuments of the antique, the memorials of

Pericles and Phidias, which a man should seek in Greece? If so, no

great use in going beyond Athens. Because, though more solemn images

survive in other places, associated with powers more mysterious and

ages more remote, as the gate of Lions at Mycense, or the relics yet

standing (and perhaps to stand for ever) of Cyclopian cities, forms

of art that for thousands of years have been dying away through dimness

of outlines and vegetable overgrowth into forms of nature--yet in

Athens only is there a great open museum of such monuments. The Athenian

buildings, though none of them Homeric in point of origin, are old

enough for us. Two-and-a-half millennia satisfy our grovelling

aspirations. And Mr. Mure himself, whilst insisting on their too

youthful character, admits that they are 'superior in number, variety,

and elegance to those which the united cities of Greece can now show.'

Yet even these pure monuments have been combined with modern

aftergrowths, as in the case of the Propylyoea, of which multitudes

doubt [Mr. Mure in particular] whether they can now be detached from

the connection with effect. For more reasons than one, it will, perhaps,

be advisable to leave them in their present condition, and that is as

hybrid as the population. But, with respect to Athenian buildings, it

strikes our feelings--that finish and harmony are essential conditions

to their effect. Ruins are becoming to Gothic buildings--decay is there

seen in a graceful form; but to an Attic building decay is more

expressive of disease--it is scrofula; it is phagedoenic ulcer. And

unless the Bavarian government can do more than is now held out or

hoped, towards the restoration and _disengagement_ of the public

buildings surmounting the city, we doubt whether there will not be as

much of pain as of an artist's pleasure in a visit to the Athenian

capital, though now raised to the rank of metropolis for universal

Greece.

IV.--There are, however, mixed monuments, not artificial in their

origin, but which gradually came to act upon the feelings as such from

their use, and habitual connection with human purposes. Such for

instance is the Acro-Corinthus, of which Mr. Mure says--that it 'is

by far the most striking object that I have ever seen, either abroad

or at home. Neither the Acropolis of Athens, nor the Larissa of Argos,

nor even Gibraltar, can enter into the remotest competition with this

gigantic citadel.' Indeed, when a man is aware of the impression

produced by a perpendicular rock over six hundred feet high, he may

judge of the stupendous effect from a citadel rising almost insulated

in the centre of a plain, sloping to the sea, and ascending to the

height of nineteen hundred feet.

Objects of this class, together with the mournful Pelasgic remains,

the ruins or ruined plans which point back to Egypt, and to Phoenicia,

these may serve as a further bribe to the tourist in Greece. If a

collection of all the objects in every class, according to the best

order of succession for the traveller, were arranged skilfully, we

believe that a maritime circuit of Greece, with a few landings and

short excursions, would bring the whole of what is first-rate within

a brief period of weeks and an easy effort. As to the people, they

will become more or less entitled to a separate interest, according

to the improvement and improved popularity of their government. And

upon that will depend much of the comfort, much even of the safety,

to be looked for by tourists. The prospects at present are not

brilliant. A government and a court, drawn from a needy aristocracy

like the Bavarian, are not suited to a needy people, struggling with

the difficulties of a new colony. However, we will hope for the best.

And for the tourist in _Greece as it is_, perhaps Mr. Mure's work is

the best fitted for popularity. He touches all things sufficiently,

but exhausts none. And we add, very sincerely, this antithesis, as due

to him, that of what may be called personal guides, or those who

maintain a current of personal interest in their adventures, or in the

selecting from their private experience, he is the most learned; whilst

of learned guides he is, in the sense explained, the most amusingly

personal.