the crusades then commenced, which brought the East into relation with the West, the Greeks with the Latins and Saracens; and though there was a striking distinction between the supple and artful character of the Greeks, and the barbarous rudeness of the Latins, new ideas were inspired into the mind of the nation, and new expressions were introduced into its language. The Italians particularly had great influence over the Romaic, or modern Greek, which was then formed; poets and prose writers availed themselves of this new language; which, though as remote from the ancient Greek as the Italian is from the tongue of ancient Rome, soon became the national idiom. Had not their liturgy, from the earliest times of Christianity, maintained the use of the aucient harmonious language of their ancestors, the Greeks probably would have been much farther distant from its purity; and to this same preventive cause may be attributed the uniformity which prevails in the modern language in all the different districts, how remote soever they may be from the centre of Greece. In some of the islands also, which are very little addicted to trade, more of the words and turns of expression of the ancient Greek are preserved than in the rest of the country. The Albanians, who have been settled in Greece only six centuries, have adopted the language of the Greeks, though they differ from them in other respects, and treat them with great contempt. Independently of words and expressions derived from the European tongues, the ancient Greek grammar has undergone various alterations"; the accents, which the nice ear of an Athenian distinguished with so much care, have been confounded; the aspira. tions, though still marked, are no longer pronounced ; several vowels and diphthongs, that the ancients distinguished, have now the same sound given to them, ει, οι, η et v, being pronounced by the Greeks as ; and this, they pretend, is the true pronunciation. With the words of the ancient language the moderns have taken great liberties, lengthening some, shortening others, interpolating or retrenching the vowels or consonants in the middle of words, changing one letter for another; in fine, confounding their significations, and using the ancient words in new senses. In the grammar, the dual number, peculiar to the ancient Greek, and the oblique cases, are lost; the auxiliaries to have and to will, employed in modern languages to indicate the past and the future, as well as the use of the personal pronouns in the verbs, are all derived from European sources. It is remarkable, that the mariners and fishermen of the nation have retained more of the ancient words than others; the names which they give to plants and fishes bear a strong resemblance to those by which Dioscorides, and other naturalists, called them. On the other hand, the most corrupt dialect is used in Attica, where once the most pure and chastened style prevailed. The orthography varies much, and, indeed, has no fixed rules.

We cannot expect any brilliant progress in literature from a people oppressed for so many centuries, who possess no capital, or any great establishments for education; who, until this

century, had not even a single printing press, and received from Venice and Trieste the only books generally saleable, that is, the formularies of devotion. The Athenians have lost all traces of those dramatic exhibitions of which their ancestors were so fond. Only three poems have been produced among them before the eighteenth century; but since that time their poets have multiplied, and their productions have become more numerous and varied. Songs, in which all nations delight, are become a favorite amusement with the Greeks. At first they had two kinds of them, viz. erotic, or love songs, and the clephtica tragoudia, that is, songs celebrating the great exploits of some klephtes, a name simply signifying a robber, but by no means dishonorable in some parts of Greece, where the most respectable people make no scruple of taking to the highway, and subsisting on the booty they have acquired, especially if they have regularly made their offering at the shrine of some saint or madonna. We shall quote two of these klephtic songs in the original, as a specimen of the Romaic generally spoken, with subjoined translations, which will give some idea of the tone that breathes through many of these mountain strains.

Ο ΤΑΦΟΣ ΤΟΥ ΔΗΜΟΥ.

Ο ήλιος ἐβασίλευε, κι' ὁ Δῆμος διατάζει Σύρτε, παιδιά μου, στὸ νερὸν, ψωμὶ νὰ φάτ' ἀπόψε. Καὶ σὺ Λαμπσάκη μ' ἀνεψιέ, κάθου ἐδῶ κοντά μου Νὰ τ ̓ ἅρματά μου φόρεσε, νὰ σαι καπετάνος Καὶ σεις, παιδιά μου, πάρετε τὸ ἔρημον σπαθί μου, Πράσινα κόψετε κλαδιά, στρώστε μου νὰ καθήσω, Καὶ φέρτε τὸν πνευματικὸν νὰ μ' ἐξομολογήσει Νὰ τὸν εἰπῶ τὰ κρίματα ὅσα ἔχω καμωμένα Τριάντα χρόνι' άρματωλός, κ' εἴκοσι ἔχω κλέφτης Καὶ τώρα μ' ἦρθε θάνατος, καὶ θέλω ν' ἀπαιθάνω. Κάμετε τὸ καβουρί μου πλατύ, ψηλὸν νὰ γίνῃ, Νὰ στέκ ̓ ὀρθὸς νὰ πολεμῶ, καὶ εἴπλα νὰ γεμίζω. Κι' ἀπὸ τὸ μέρος τὸ δεξὶ ἀφῆστε παραθύρι, Τὰ χελιδόνια νά έρχωνται, τὴν ἄνοιξιν νὰ φέρουν, Καὶ τ ̓ ἀηδόνια τὸν καλόν Μάτην νὰ μὲ μαθαίνουν.

THE TOMB OF THE KLEPITES.

Darkness drew near, and day was fading fast, Like death and life, when Demes spoke his last :Leave me awhile, my children!-hence, and bring Our draught for evening from the crystal spring; My brother's son, Lampsakis! come and wear These arms-my arms-henceforth be chieftain here-My comrades, take my now forsaken swordCut me green boughs, and let its blade afford Once more a couch to rest its weary lord! Call me a priest to whom I may confess All my past errors-would the list were lessA Klephtes long! an Armatolos longer, Terror of Turks-but now the foe is stronger"Tis Death! prepare my tomb-but broad and high' When o'er it sounds the Moslem's battle-cry, Let me have space to raise my mouldering corse, Appall with death, yet strike with living force! And leave one crevice-where the rustling wing Of swallows and of nightingales that sing The lovely May, may tell me when 'tis Spring!'

A little while before the insurrection of the Greeks a printing press was established in the island of Scio; by this means learning began to spread rapidly; the classic works of ancient Greece were republished; libraries, colleges, and schools, were established among themselves, and the young Greeks were encouraged to frequent the foreign universities. Of all the losses suffered by this interesting country, that of her universities at Buchorest, Aivali, Scio, Yanina, and Athens, will be long felt; the very seeds of their restoration perished with the 500 Greek students, the sacred band,' who fell at the fatal battle of Drageschan. The Anglo-Ionian university of Corfu is now the only sanctuary for Greek literature; and this, perhaps, is destined ere long to shed the beams of learning and virtue over the regions of the Levant.

The character of the Grecian people, as of all other civilised nations, has been strongly influenced by the principles and practices of its religion. In ancient times, notwithstanding the lights that philosophy afforded, they were completely under the dominion of their priests; their treasures were lavished at their altars, their lives were often sacrificed in their temples, and the fables of their mythology, and the various festivals of their worship, some of them horrid for their cruelty and others abominable for their licentiousness, were the themes of their finest works of imagination. However free they were in the conduct of their civil affairs, they were really slaves in their religious opinions. When at length the prevalence of Christianity wrought the downfall of this ancient system of superstition and imposture, the national spirit transferred to the new worship the ardent imagination, the vivacity, and the puerile superstition, that had been derived from the ancients. Miserable controversies, and scholastic subtilties, distracted the minds of the people; a breach took place VOL. X.

with the church of Rome; pagan doctrines relative to magic, the curse pronounced by the priests, and the efficacy of some religious services, were propagated almost without alteration; but, incredible as it may seem, the doctrine of purgatory, so profitable to the Latins, and which has conferred such immense influence and riches on their clergy, never gained access among the Greeks. The usurpation of temporal power by the clergy, which has constituted the disgrace of the Latin church, is unknown to them, the Greeks are astonished how a bishop of Rome, who, say they, is no more than a bishop of Alexandria, of Antioch, or of Nice, should dare to usurp the supremacy over the whole Christian world, and domineer over the clergy and laity. There has always been something of the republican forms of antiquity preserved in the Greek church; they consider the priestly power as residing chiefly in the patriarchs, metropolitans, archbishops, and bishops; and say, that the first seven councils have settled every thing that relates to doctrine, the decisions of which nothing should, or can, affect. As to discipline, they consider it as the business of the synods, and that the assistance of a pope is altogether unnecessary. Four patriarchs, elected by the synods, and residing at Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria, have nearly the same power, that of Constantinople being merely regarded as the chief, and exercising some temporal authority in a council of archimandrites, archdeacons, and other priests and monks, at which he presides; every bishop among the Greeks decides matters in dispute, according to the codes of Justinian and Theodosius, and the laws of Basil of Macedonia. But this temporal authority is rather the result of the civil, than the religious state of the people, who, having no other superior authorities than their patriarchs and bishops, would rather refer to these national judges, than to the tribunals of their Turkish oppressors. The manners of the superior Greek clergy are very simple: as they are mostly taken from the monastic order, their lives partake very much of the uniformity of the cloister; while monachism itself does not, as in the Romish church, exhibit any thing of that pomp, predominant influence, and cruel authority, which have been displayed by the Jesuits, the Dominicans, and Cistertians, of the West. The Greek monks are all of the order of St. Basil, preserving much of the simplicity of their primitive institution; it is in soli-, tary places, in the midst of rocks and deserts, that the caloyers take up their abode. It must not, however, be concealed, that the inhabitants of the Greek cloisters are generally very ignorant; being condemned to a contemplative mode of life, they seem as if they imagined they had nothing more to do with their reason; and some of them, not content with the sacrifice of thought, submit to the mortifications, and austere life of anchorites, and become almost walking spectres. Ambitious, notwithstanding this, of ecclesiastical honors, their conduct is often greedy and oppressive; the patriarch, obliged to pay a tax to the Turks for his place, exacts upon the metropolitans, these squeeze the bishops, and the bishops lay the monks and parishes under con

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tribution; they frequently sell the furniture of those who do not pay these exactions, and contract debts at the cost of the people. The lower clergy, that is to say the papas, having no prospect of advancement, betake themselves to occupations of the meanest kind, in order to support their families; for, happily for the population of the country, they are not forbidden to marry. They are frequently husbandmen or farmers, who, having learned a few of the formularies and ceremonies of the church, have purchased the priestly office of some accommodating bishop, and, becoming all at once papas, make money of every thing; they sell absolutions, sacraments, exorcisms, relics, &c. They promote all kinds of superstition; they have covered all Greece with their little chapels, each of which has its officiating priest; ignorant and fanatical, and miserably paid, they are often the disgrace of the religion they profess, and pursue trades by no means honorable, in order to obtain their subsistence. 'All Greece,' says the Count de Choiseul-Gouffier, is filled with these monks, scarcely any of whom can read; but they know how far the influence of religious fear extends over superstitious minds. Every pirate has with him a caloyer, or papas, to absolve him from a crime the very moment he has committed it; after having massacred the people in the buildings they take by surprise, after having plundered and razed them to their foundations, they immediately prostrate themselves at the foot of their minister, when the repeating of a few words reconciles them to the Deity, as they suppose, calms their consciences, and encourages them to the commission of new crimes. Numberless ceremonies and superstitions constitute the whole of the religion of the papas and the laity; and there is not one superstitious opinion or practice of the ancient Greeks which is not prevalent among their descendants in some form or other; they have even augmented the number. They acknowledge the influence of evil genii every where; they have protecting saints against every species of misfortune and accident; they have peopled nature with invisible spirits; the dead have no rest among them, they appear again in the form of vampires or broucalakas; the whole village is thrown into confusion, and they make ase of every charm to quiet the restlessness of these phantoms. In no place has sorcery so completely enthroned itself as in Greece; not only do they believe in it, but they see its effects every where. Dreams are ever furnishing fresh food for superstition; they attribute periodical fevers, and other diseases, to malignant influences, and to envy; they write the name of the malady on a triangular paper, and stick it on the entrance of the sick man's chamber in order to obtain his cure; they fix the nail of a coffin on the doors of their houses to drive away the apparitions; they tremble at the screeching of an owl, or the shaking of a leaf; the osprey spreads alarm in every direction, when its cries interrupt the silence of the night; a whole caravan is stopped, if a bare cross its path, until some one comes up, who has not seen it, and breaks the charm; to hear the braying of an ass on a fast day, to meet a papas, or monk, at the rising of

the sun, are portentous omens; lightning is dreaded by the busbandmen, and eclipses are considered as the precursors of calamities; in fine, the number five is held as one of the worst of auguries, so that they believe themselves bewitched if they utter it, or if any one extend to them their hand with the five fingers.

Should another Luther make his appearance in the Eastern church, he would have a multitude of these things to reform, and he would render a great service to the people by suppressing the useless fasts, which are imposed on them during a great part of the year. The fast on the Epiphany, at the great ceremony of the blessing of the waters, every Wednesday and Friday in honor of the Passion, at the Ascension, and at Christmas; but it is in Lent especially, that every body, even the sick and women with child, observe a rigorous fast: to see the miserable food, and even polypuses and other marine animals, some of them half putrified, on which they then support themselves, we have the greatest difficulty to conceive how these intrepid fasters can sustain life. At the approach of Easter they make themselves amends for this severe abstinence; on Palm Sunday they decorate the churches with the boughs of odoriferous shrubs; they purchase on the following days absolution from their sins; on Holy Thursday they partake of the Communion according to the rites of the primitive church, observing this ceremony as a banquet of peace and brotherly love; Ash Wednesday is a day of entire fasting, and they continue their devotions till late at night; but on Easter eve all is bustle and preparation for the next day's festival; they clean the house, throw out of the windows the old earthen vessels, which have been used during Lent; the best apparel is taken out of the family chest; the paschal lamb is purchased for the solemn repast, and they resume the harp and the tambourine, which had been laid aside during the fast. The dawn of the Sabbath is hailed by vollies of musketry and cries of joy; they make presents to their friends of painted eggs and cakes, the paschal lamb is eaten by the whole family, and copious libations of wine spread everywhere a noisy pleasure, which is kept up during eight days, and often degenerates into extreme licentiousness. In many respects these orgies resemble the Saturnalia of the ancient Greeks.

Baptism among the Greeks is administered by immersion, and they accuse the Latins of having altered this institution by practising sprinkling. Their communion is a distribution of wheaten bread and wine; to which on particular festivals a lamb is added; this simple repast seems very much to resemble the agapai of the first Christians. In their churches they have only pictures painted on wood, miserably executed; in the country of Phidias and Praxiteles they have proscribed without pity statues and sacred sculpture, for fear of falling into idolatry, but they have no fear of this kind from exposing to view the wretched images painted by the monks. These paintings pass among them as miraculous; and most of the Greek monasteries possess one of them, which the cre

dulity of the laity renders very profitable to the clergy; pilgrims repair to those that are most renowned, especially on the festivals, which are celebrated near fountains held sacred in the days of republican Greece.

II. Under the name of Great Greece or Livadia are comprehended the provinces situated between the sea, on the east, south, and west, and Macedonia and Albania on the north; that is to say Acarnania, Ætolia, Phocsi, Boeotia, Thessaly, and Attica. There are few remains of the multitude of cities which once filled this country, and its population is perhaps not more than one-tenth of what it was in ancient times. The mountains on the side of Albania afford a eovert for some warlike tribes, whose chief occupation is robbing, and who attack one another, when they are not engaged with the neighbour ing nations; the presence of the Turks, too, has been sufficient to depopulate these once flourish ing provinces. The soil still continues fertile, and the traveller is charmed with the luxuriant pasturage of the plains, the thick forests of the mountains, the fruitful fields and plantations of the valleys, the delightful orchards round the towns, the fisheries of the coast, and the cultivation of the silkworm, the vine, and the olive, all flourishing under a climate remarkable for its mildness.

The richest, most prosperous, and best peopled, province of ancient Greece is Attica; but it has lost all the advantages, which human genius and industry had conferred upon it; nothing now remains but a serene sky, a fine climate, and a soil suited to every species of culture; yet badly tilled, it exhibits in some places a naked sterility, producing only degenerated vegetables. The population had been in 1820 reduced to 25,000 souls, including Greeks, Turks, and Albanians; among the two latter foreign nations, the Greeks themselves seem like foreigners; bowed down under the degrading yoke of these barbarians, the Greek of Attica has none of the airy vivacity of the ancient Athenian, who could bear neither slavery nor liberty, and in whom the love of glory and a taste for the fine arts incessantly gave birth to the most lively emotions. Deprived of their cities, their industry, and their commerce, the inhabitants have been reduced to a rustic and pastoral life; in winter these wandering shepherds descend from the mountains of Thessaly, to find under a softer climate pasturage for their large flocks of goats and sheep. The former of these animals are more numerous in these provinces than the latter, and almost equally serviceable; of their hair are manufactured sacks and large carpets; their milk, either by itself, or mixed with that of the cow, makes good cheese, and their skins, converted into bottles, serve for the transportation of the wine, oil, and honey, of the province; and, being afterwards tanned, are made into shoes for the people. Five shepherds are counted sufficient for a flock of 1000, and, when the vintage is over, they bring their flocks into the vineyards, to feed on the vine leaves. The people of Attica still excel in the art of dyeing wool and cotton; they dye blue with indigo, yellow with Avignon berries, and red with the

chrysoxylon or wood of the rhus-cotinus, which, growing on the mountains in the neighbourhood of Marathon and Pendeli, is gathered by the Albanians, who sell it to the dyers. The country yields great quantities of good madder, and a little cochineal is gathered on mount Cacha, but not used in dyeing. The wine, anciently much esteemed, is very bitter, weak, and saturated with resin; the honey of mount Hymettus, once so celebrated, Clarke assures us, has now the effect of a medicine, so that it is dangerous to take much of it. The poor Caloyers, who inhabit this barren mountain, are obliged to deliver the honey which they gather to the bishop of Athens, to whom the revenues of their convent belong. Wood is in general very scarce in Attica, and in some places they have no other fuel than brambles; there are very few mulberry trees, and the quantity of silk produced is very small; it is, however, fine and entirely white. Every thing seems to have degenerated on this classical soil, not through the fault of nature, but of man. The oil, of which they make 20,000 large measures a-year, furnishes occupation during the winter to a great number of workmen; many of whom themselves possess a house with a little vineyard, some olive plants, and a few hives of bees, on which they subsist, while taking care of the olive plantations of the oikokuroi, or richer proprietors. The latter also let out little farms, with a cottage and some arable land, to the poor, furnishing them with grain for seed and cattle, and receiving at the harvest two-thirds of the produce, after a tenth has been reserved for the voivode or Turkish governor. In the plain of Athens a great quantity of barley is cultivated; it is sown in October or November: in the month of May they drive horses and asses into the fields, tying them to posts, that they may eat the barley; and removing the posts when they have sufficiently fed upon and manured the land around them. A plough of the simplest construction is then used in preparing the ground for the sowing of cotton, which immediately commences. Instead of a harrow, they employ a process, which is also evidently derived from the early times of Greece; a laborer standing upright on a plank laid upon the ground, which is drawn by oxen over the furrows in order to close them. The cotton harvest commences in the month of September, and when it is finished the barley sowing commences; so that the earth never rests, but, after a long series of ages, still yields its fruits without relaxation or abatement. When they thresh their corn, they bring it out into a court. the floor of which is either paved or made of closely beaten or smooth earth; in the neighbourhood of Athens the ground is sufficiently hard without beating; in the midst of this area they fix a post, to which they fasten with a cord one or more horses, making them turn round in a circle; the cord winding round the post, is continually shortening and bringing the horses to the centre; they then make them turn the contrary way, till the cord is completely unrolled; the workmen in the mean time are constantly throwing in the corn under the animals' feet. When the grain is winnowed, it is laid up in

heaps, and befor: the year 1821 the Turkish aga used to come and put his seal upon them, and it was unlawful to remove the least portion, until the tithe had been taken. Besides this tithe there was a tax upon vineyards, another upon wine, another on exports, and lastly a karatch or capitation tax: when the harvest is finished in Attica the laborers go with their mares into Bootia, where the season is later on account of the mountains and lakes.

In Attica the native Greeks have by degrees given place to the Albanians, or intermingled with the foreigners who had possession of the country in the middle ages, such as the Arragonese, the French, the Venetians, and the Genoese; it would therefore be very difficult to find any trace of the ancient Athenians or Eleusinians. The language and manners of the nation, however, still predominate, and have resisted even the barbarous oppression of the Turks.

The Piræus, formerly the celebrated port of Athens, exhibits few and very imperfect remains of the fine monuments of art with which it was once adorned: it now consists only of a convent, a custom-house, a few warehouses, and four anchoring places. The commerce of Attica, now furnishes only some fruits, oils, and cotton, for exportation. A plain and a few hills separate it from Athens, the citadel of which first strikes the eye of the traveller on his approach: on the road there are some fragments of tombs; and traces of the wall, which joined the city to the port, are still visible. In the neighbourhood of the port extends a bank of rocks scarcely elevated above the soil, and on putting aside the bushes there is to be seen a line of pits cut in the rocks, and covered with flat stones; this was the ancient necropolis or burying-place; these graves are filled with fine mould, at the bottom of which lie the remains of the Athenians or Piræans of ancient times. Burnt bones of black sheep sacrificed to the dead are also found, as well as pateræ and other things connected with the profession of the deceased: one plate of bronze bears the name of a judge, in another tomb there is a mask of bakeď earth, in another the figure of a philosopher sitting, and in others painted vases, &c.

Athens is irregularly intersected and surrounded by a rampart rudely elevated, and its present gates do not answer to the situations of the ancient ones; that of the Lions is the most imposing in its appearance. What remains of the ancient monuments is rather to be sought for without the city, the country parts being less subject to change, and in the city the ruins of antiquity serving mostly for the construction of new buildings. Formerly Athens extended all round the Acropolis, which is now isolated and on the outside of the city, which now does not occupy, perhaps, more than a fourth part of its former site. The bazaar or market place occupies a large space of ground, formerly perhaps the Ceramicus of the ancients; and a mosque, thought to be founded on the ruins of the Pantheon, stands in the midst of the square; another is supposed to be erected on the foundations of the temple of the Uranian Venus; and in front

of the Turkish cadi's palace, near the same place, the prison of Athens once stood. In the same neighbourhood are to be found some remains of the portico of the stoics, and the dervises or Turkish monks not long since occupied the tower of the winds, which stands at the end of one of the streets : it is of an octagonal form, and built of marble, and received its name from the circumstance of Andronicus Cyrrhestes, its builder, having represented on the eight sides the figures of the principal winds; a brazen triton, turning on a pivot, indicated on the top of the building the prevailing wind; every front also had a sundial upon it. Demosthenes's Lantern, an ancient edifice, also of white marble, has become by a strange vicissitude the abode of the capuchins; not far from this is another ancient monument, called the Lantern of Diogenes, well known by the imitations of it constructed in some western countries, especially in the park of St. Cloud. The modern edifices and establishments are small and mean in appearance, and, if we except the residences of the foreign consuls, are easily overtopped by the palm trees and olives, and by the minarets of the mosques; the hospital exhibits nothing but poverty, and, if the visits of travellers in this age had not induced some naturalised foreigners to keep something like inns, the curious visitor would not have been able to find a lodging in the city of Pericles.

It would be worth while to take a journey to Athens, if it were only to see the Acropolis. This is the most ancient part of the city, and was at once a fort and a sanctuary, whence they held dominion over the bodies and souls of the inhabitants. A sacred olive, a salt spring, and an old idol, believed to be that of Minerva, gave rise in the time of Pericles to the construction of this fine monument of antiquity. Cecrops and Erechteus had their tombs in it. After the burning of the old temple of Minerva and the sacred olive by the Persians, in the seventy-fifth olympiad, Pericles built the magnificent Propylæum and the majestic temple of Parthenon, the ruins of which are still the models for artists; and this is not wonderful, since Phidias adorned it with his inimitable sculpture. Only the walls, however, the columns, and the caryatides, remain. This fine edifice, it appears, was not quite perfect in symmetry, which may have arisen from the necessity of occupying the site of the old temple, which was accounted sacred. The interior received scarcely any light from without, but was illuminated by a vast golden chandelier, the masterpiece of Callimachus, which was supplied with oil only once a year, the wick being made of asbestos, and consequently indestructible; this mysterious light shed its flickering beams over the old idol of Minerva, which had its face turned towards the east; and a figure of Mercury, surrounded with myrtle branches, and the sacred serpent, the guardian of the temple, came in for a share of the public veneration. Some traces of the Cella are still discovered in three saloons of different sizes; the largest, towards the east, dedicated to Erechteus, was adorned on the outside with a portico, supported by six