various quarters of the city, enjoyed the prospect from the light-house on the high rock of the citadel, and mingled with the people. They were the first specimen we saw of a Greek population; and I must do the Greek nation the justice to say, that they were also the worst. The streets were thronged with ragged, cut-throat looking fellows,-fierce, rugged, weather-worn visages, who might well have sat for Byron's pictures. Our old friends, the Lazzaroni of Naples, are gentlemen in comparison. And yet these Corfuites might afford to look down upon some boat-loads of wild Albanian peasants, which we saw in the harbour. The government of the Ionian Islands, under the direction and influence of the English Lord High Commissioner, has established many schools, in which the Scriptures are read. Mr. Lowndes, the intelligent Missionary of the London Missionary Society, is the General Superintendent of all these schools throughout the Islands; and had just returned from a tour in which he had visited eighty schools. No religious instruction is given in them, beyond the reading of the Scriptures. According to the estimate of Mr. L., who had resided twenty-two years in Corfu, the city contains about 16,000 inhabitants; and the whole island about 35,000. Other estimates vary much from this.

Leaving Corfu at sunset, we saw during the evening the islands of Paxos and Anti-Paxos; and passed at night through the channel between Santa Maura and Theaki, the ancient Ithaca. We of course lost the sight of Sappho's Leap on the western coast of the former. The morning found us some distance S. E. of the latter island; of which we had a distinct, though not a close view; yet enough to awaken all our classic feelings, and call up vividly before us Ulysses and the great "Father of Song." Both these islands, as also Cephalonia, present the aspect of dark,

high, rocky mountains, with little appearance of fertility.

We entered the Bay of Patras, and anchored in its roadstead for some hours. The bay is shut in by mountains, which exclude the winds. The weather was warm and sunny, like a day of June. Patras is a large straggling village with about 7000 inhabitants, lying at the foot of the western slope of Mount Voda, the ancient Panachaicon. Above the village is a dismantled fortress; from which there is a fine prospect of the bay and its shores. The plain of Patras is fertile and tolerably well tilled. On the north of the bay is the ancient Aetolia; here one sees the modern Missilonghi on the coast; and further east the mouth of the Eurotas; and far in the N. E. the snowy summits of Oeta and Parnassus. An hour or more N. E. of Patras is the narrow entrance to the Gulf of Lepanto, defended by two fortresses on low opposite points; and just beyond is the town of Lepanto on the northern coast.-From Patras the mail is usually sent by land to Athens, across the isthmus of Corinth; and travellers also often take this route.

Towards evening we were again upon our way; and passed during the night along the coast of Arcadia. The next morning, soon after sunrise, we were running close in shore and near to Navarino and Modon; and then, rounding the islands of Sapienza and Cabrera, we struck across the bay of Koron to the coast of Maina. Here the frowning peaks of Pentedaktylon, the ancient Taygetus, rose in majesty before our view, the loftiest and most rugged summits of the Peloponnesus. These mountains, the back-bone of ancient Laconia, are still inhabited by a brave and high-spirited people, the Mainotes; who boast that they are of pure Spartan descent, and that they have never been conquered. The events of recent years, however, seem

to call in question the latter of these assertions; while a sprinkling of Slavic words and names of places, are thought by scholars versed in these matters, to indicate some infusion of Slavic blood. We passed quite near to the coast, and could see many of their villages, mere clusters of stone hovels with square towers intermingled, for the purpose of defence in the frequent feuds between families and neighbours, which were formerly so common. The stern hand of a regular government has lessened the number of these feuds, and destroyed many of these private castles. The people are turning their attention more to the arts of peace and civilization. They have demanded teachers; and a missionary station had just been established among them by the American Board, under the patronage of the fine old Mainote Bey, Mavromichalis, with every encouragement and prospect of success.

In the afternoon we turned the high rocky point of Cape Matapan, and struck across the Laconian Gulf to the northward of Cerigo towards Cape Malio. This latter cape we passed at evening; and bore away during the night for Hydra. In the morning of Dec. 8th, we were abreast of this island at some distance from it; and could see on our right the little island of St. George, and the remoter ones of Zea and Thermia. Cape Colonna was also visible, and the island Helena beyond; while before us lay Mount Hymettus, upon which a cloud was discharging its snows. As we advanced, the Acropolis, and then Mount Pentelicus opened upon the view; and rounding the promontory of Mynichia, we cast anchor at 11 o'clock in the oval land-locked basin of the Piraeus. We were somewhat astonished to find fiacres in waiting, apparently of German manufacture; and in one of them we were soon on our way along a macadamized road to the city of Athens, a distance of six English miles.

This drive was accompanied by sad feelings. The day was cloudy, cold and cheerless. The plain and mountains around, the scenes of so many thrilling associations, were untilled and desolate; and on every side were seen the noblest monuments of antiquity in ruins, now serving to mark only the downfall of human greatness and of human pride. Nor did the entrance to the city tend to dissipate these feelings. Small dwellings of stone, huddled together along narrow, crooked, unpaved, filthy lanes, are not the Athens which the scholar loves in imagination to contemplate. Yet they constitute, with a few exceptions, the whole of modern Athens. Even in its best parts, and in the vicinity of the court itself, there is often an air of haste and shabbiness, which, although not a matter of wonder under the circumstances in which the city has been built up, cannot fail to excite in the stranger a feeling of disappointment and sadness. This however does not last long. The force of historical associations is too powerful not to triumph over present degradation; and the traveller soon forgets the scenes before him, and dwells only on the remembrance of the past.

We found a welcome home in the hospitable mansions of Messrs. King and Hill, American Missionaries; and rejoiced to learn that their exertions in behalf of education and religious instruction are duly acknowledged by the Greek people, and are bearing good fruit. The clergy, as is well known, are in general opposed to such labours; and the government to a great degree indifferent; except in respect to the female schools of Mrs. Hill, which the government has so far encouraged, as to furnish at its own cost a certain number of pupils, to be afterwards employed as teachers in national female schools.

It would not become me to enter into any details respecting the antiquities of Athens. Greece was not VOL. I.

2

the object of my journey; nor had a visit to Athens made part of my original plan. I was therefore not prepared to investigate its remains, any further than I could gather information on the spot from the excellent works of Col. Leake and Dr. Wordsworth.' Yet no one can visit Athens without receiving a profound impression of its ancient taste and splendour; and the record of this impression in my own case, is all that I can give.

The most striking feature in Athens is doubtless the Acropolis. It is a mass of rock, which rose precipitously in the midst of the ancient city, and is still accessible only on its N. W. part. On the oblong area of its levelled surface were collected the noblest monuments of Grecian taste; it was the very sanctuary of the arts, the glory, and the religion of ancient Athens. The majestic Propylon, the beautiful Erectheum, and the sublime Parthenon, all built of the purest marble, though now ruined and broken down, still attest the former splendours of the place, and exhibit that perfect unity of the simple, the sublime, and the beautiful, to which only Grecian taste ever attained. In this respect, there is no other spot like it on earth. Rome has nothing to compare with it; and the vast masses of Egyptian architecture, while they almost oppress the mind with the idea of immensity, leave no impression of beauty or simplicity.

My first visit in Athens was to the Areopagus, where Paul preached. This is a narrow, naked ridge of limestone rock, rising gradually from the northern end, and terminating abruptly on the south, overagainst the west end of the Acropolis, from which it bears about north; being separated from it by an elevated valley. This southern end is fifty or sixty feet above the said

1) Leake's Topogr. of Athens. Wordsworth's Athens and Attica.

2) See the narrative in Acts xvii. 16, seq.