'We had some difficulty in procuring horses at Thebes, as we were not provided with a travelling firman from the porte, and as we had now left the dominions of our patron Ali, and were in the territory of Bekir, pasha of the Negroponte. We at last, however, accomplished this point, and set out late in the day for Athens.

'The road took us across the rivulet in the ravin, and near the tepid fountain, which we left to the right, and proceeded for two hours over a plain to the south-east, well cultivated, but without a single tree. We then crossed the Asopus, a small stream, at a bridge called Metropolita, in the site nearly of Erythræ, whence the troops of Mardonius were encamped, along the banks of the river, as far as Hysiæ, on the confines of the Platæan territory, and near which the Greek forces were also stationed when Masistius was killed by the Athenian horse. We here found ourselves at once in another kind of country; for the soil, which had been before rich and deep, was now rocky and light, and we began to scale low stony hills, going to the south-south-east for thee hours. We passed a small marshy plain, and then ascended a zigzag path on a rock, which is a low ridge of Mount Elatias, or Citharon. When we got to the top we had the ruins of a small tower on a crag to our left. Descending a little, we came at once upon a green plain, about four miles in length and two in breadth, running from west to east. On entering this plain, we left on our right hand a small village, with a church of some size, and proceeded eastward for an hour, when we arrived at a most miserable and half deserted village, called Scourta.

Here we passed our Christmas Eve, in the worst hovel of which we had ever been inmates. The cows and pigs occupied the lower part of the chamber, where there were racks and mangers and other appurtenances of the stable, and we were put in possession of the upper quarter. We were almost suffocated with the smoke, a common calamity in Greek cottages, in which the fire is generally made in the middle of the room, and the roof, having no aperture, was covered with large flakes of soot, that sometimes showered down upon us during the night.'

The hardships of travelling, however, are amply compensated on arriving at Athens, where a foreigner discovers an agreeable change in the aspect of all around him. Personal safety is here complete; and the Turk appears to lose his repulsive look, and to assume in some measure the character of humanity and affability. Lord Byron and Mr. H. remained between two and three months in the metropolis of Attica, and had thus an ample opportunity of examining the remains of ancient art which exist in it to an extent that is really surprising after the lapse of two thousand years. Athens stands at the foot of the rock of the citadel, and contains about 1300 houses,

surrounded by a wall, which, as it comprehends gardens and corn-grounds, is nearly three miles in circuit. The houses are small and badly built; while the streets, notwithstanding the Homeric epithet of ivpuayvia, are all narrow and irregular. Several of them have a raised causeway on both sides, so broad as to contract the middle of the street into a kind of dirty gutter. The trade of Athens consists in exporting the produce of the neighbouring territory, particularly oil, and receiving corn in return, with manufactured goods from Italy, and of late years from England. Several families of Franks are settled here, and have intermarried with the Greeks; and it is among these families that a stranger will find the most agreeable society, the character of the natives falling considerably below the impression excited by a remembrance of the days of Themistocles and Aristides. Though the oppression of the Turkish government is less felt here than in other places, great irregularity and vexatious exaction still prevail:

The murmurs of the commonalty have frequently broken out into open complaints; and even a complete revolution, involving the destruction of the Archons, and an establishment of a better order of things, has been meditated by the more daring and ambitious amongst the oppressed. An unfortunate malecontent, who, in fond recollection of better days, has given to his three sons the names of Miltiades, Themistocles, and Alcibiades, talked to me of this glorious project (тo nado ngayμα). "The Turks," said he, "will be on our side if we get the better; but alas! the influence of money is all-powerful; and Demosthenes himself, were he alive, and (like me) without a para, would not have a single listener." He added besides, that their priests, a powerful body, would espouse the cause of their Codja-bashees.'

'Some of the Athenians are fond of tracing back their pedigree, which, however, acording to their own account, they are unable to do beyond the Turkish conquest. The name Chalcocondyles was, till lately, the one held in the greatest repute; but the person who at present professes himself to be, on his mother's side, a descendant of the family, has not assumed the appellation. The character of the modern inhabitants of this town does not rank high amongst their countrymen; and the proverb which is to be seen in Gibbon, I heard quoted against them in their own city-" As bad as the Turks of Negroponte, the Jews of Salonica, and the Greeks of Athens." A French resident, who had lived amongst them many years, talking to me of their propensity to calumniate and supplant each other, concluded with this lively expression, " Believe me, my dear sir, they are the same canaille as they were in the days of Miltiades."

'We were not amongst them long enough to discover any very unamiable traits by which they may be distinguished from other Greeks, though I think we saw in them a propensity to detraction and intrigue. Whatever may be their talents this way, they are now chiefly employed in debating whether the French or English, nations inhabiting countries unknown to their ancestors, shall deprive them of the last memorials of their ancient glory. To retain them themselves never, I believe, is an object of their wishes.'—

Until within a few years a journey to Athens was reckoned a considerable undertaking, fraught with difficulties and dangers; and at a period when every young man of fortune, in France and England, considered it an indispensable part of his education to survey the monuments of ancient art remaining in Italy, only a few desperate scholars and artists ventured to trust themselves amongst the barbarians, to contemplate the ruins of Greece.'

But these terrors, which a person who has been on the spot cannot conceive could ever have been well-founded, seem at last to be dispelled. Attica at present swarms with travellers, and several of our fair country-women have ascended the rocks of the Acropolis. So great, indeed, has been the increase of visitants, that the city, according to a scheme formed by a Greek, who was once in our service, will soon be provided with a tavern, a novelty surely never before witnessed at Athens.'

The author and his companion made it a rule to devote a portion of each day of their residence at Athens to the inspection of the monuments of antiquity. The temple of Theseus, the best preserved of ancient edifices, was within a few minutes' walk of their residence. Its length is a hundred and ten feet, and its width forty-five, a size too limited to impress the spectator at first: but the transient disappointment never fails to be succeeded by admiration on examining the beautiful proportions of the building. Its roof is supported by thirty-four columns, all of the finest Parian marble, the sculpture on which is in general in good preservation. It stands on a knoll of open ground between two and three hundred yards from the town. The Areopagus is a very uneven elevation, consisting of two rocky eminences, and is within a stone's throw of the craggy sides of the Acropolis. 'We must be cautious,' says Mr. H. of attaching an important signification to the words "hill, valley, or rock," when applied to Athens or its vicinity; for, although the landscape there presented to us is among the most lovely in the world, it is a landscape in miniature, and by no means correspondent to the notions excited by the exploits of antiquity. In truth, we meet thoughout these volumes with repeated hints of the diminutiveness of the Grecian territories and cities;-hints which,

on the part of a writer evidently averse to undervalue the ancients, possess a decided claim to the attention of the impartial inquirer. The habit of reckoning distances by stadia has a tendency to conceal from the reader of Grecian history the insignificant extent of many of their districts. A traveller who is unincumbered with baggage may easily make the tour of Boeotia in a couple of days; and he may ride from Livadia to Thebes, and back again, between breakfast and dinner. The Athenian generals were sworn to invade the territories of Megara twice in a year; an exploit which any horseman may perform in the course of a few hours, since the distance, by the longest computation, is only twenty-seven miles.

Mr. H. had an opportunity of visiting the fields of battle both of Marathon and Platea. In the former, he saw nothing, as far as the nature of the ground is concerned, to contradict the assertion of Herodotus that the Persian force exceeded a hundred thousand men: but when speaking of Platæa, his opinion is different:

• Notwithstanding the circumstantial account and the particular enumeration of the forces of the two nations engaged in the battle given by Herodotus, no traveller who has seen the scene of action, which is to this day recognizable by most undoubted signs, can fail to suspect the Grecian historian of some exaggeration. The whole conflict must have taken place on a triangular space, bounded by the road from Thebes into the pass of Citharon, five miles, the base of Citharon three miles, and the road from Platea to Thebes, six miles. The Greeks were one hundred and ten thousand men; the Persians, with their confederates, three hundred and fifty thousand. But the most severe part of the action, and in which, reckoning both Lacedemonians and Persians, nearly three hundred and fifty thousand troops were engaged, was fought on the ravin, in marshy steep ground amongst the hills, where notwithstanding the account informs us that the cavalry of Mardonius were the most active, it seems difficult to believe that a single squadron of horse could have manœuvred.

From Gargaphia to the Molois is but little more than a mile, and, according to the historian, the whole of this immense body fought in less than that space; for Mardonius advanced into the hills to encounter Pausanias. I should suppose that such an extent of ground would not contain such numbers, although ranged in the deepest order of which the ancient tactics allowed; and the Persians did not advance in any order at all, but confusedly. The fifty thousand allies of Mardonius and the Athenians might have fought in the plain between the Asopus and the foot of the hill, which, however, according to modern tactics, would not admit of even that number of troops to engage.'

Charonæa appears to have been situated on a hill near the north-east base of Parnassus; and the fatal plain lies to the north, extending in length from east to west. No spot in the world,' says Mr. H., can be better calculated for deciding a national quarrel, since there does not appear to be even a mole-hill to impede the manœuvres of hostile armies.' The remains of the town are very insignificant. A similar remark applies to the vestiges of Megara; where, however a population of three thousand inhabitants still exists; but their dwellings are built of mud with low flat roofs. Eleusis is now a miserable village of thirty mud cottages, but finely situated on the declivity of a long hill, with sufficient remains to make it probable that a great part of the hill was originally occupied by buildings. As to the Piræus, nothing in its present appearance would lead a person to imagine that it had ever been a harbour of consequence. It has lost the aspect of a triple port, the recess on the right being like a marsh, while that on the left is of little depth. The deepest water is at the mouth of the third interior port; yet one of our sloops of war was warned that she would run aground if she endeavoured to get in, and was accordingly obliged to anchor in the straits between Salamis and the part once called Phoron.

Corfu has been rendered by the French a place of great strength; and the distance from Italy or Albania is so short as in a manner to put a blockade out of the question. As a siege of the town by land would require a large force, Bonaparte could scarcely have fixed on a station of more importance for the views which, in his days of sanguine calculation, he entertained against the Turkish empire.-Patras stands in a beautiful country on the declivity of a mountain, but is frequently visited with agues and contagious fevers.-The table of a Greek of rank living in this quarter is thus described:

'The meat was stewed to rags. They cut up a hare into pieces to roast. I do not recollect that any of the flesh dishes were boiled. The pastry was not good, being sweetened with honey, and not well baked; but the thick ewes' milk, mixed with rice and preserves, and garnished with almonds, was very palatable. The boutaraga, caviar, and macaroni powdered with scraped cheese, were good dishes. But the vegetables and fruits, some of which the luxuriant soil furnishes without culture, were indeed delicious, and in great variety. There were cabbages, cauliflowers, spinach, artichokes, lettuces, and cellery, in abundance; but the want of potatoes was supplied by a root tasting like sea-cale. The fruits, which were served up at the conclusion of the dinner, and before the cloth was removed, were oranges, olives, pears, quinces, pomegranates, citrons, medlars, and nuts, and lastly, the finest melons we ever tasted.'