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The river Laos was full at the time the author passed it; and, immediately above Tepaleen, was to the eye as wide as the Thames at Westminster; at least in the opinion of the author and his fellow. traveller, Mr. Hobhouse. In the summer it must be much narrower. It certainly is the finest river in the Levant; neither Achelous, Alpheus, Acheron, Scamander, nor Cayster approached it in breadth or beauty.

27.

And fellow-countrymen have stood aloof.

Alluding to the wreckers of Cornwall.

28.

Stanza Ixvi. line 8.

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The Albanian Mussulmans do not abstain from wine, and indeed very few of the others.

29.

Each Palikar his sabre from him cast.

Stanza Ixxi, line 7. Palikar, shortened when addressed to a single person, from Пazpi, a general name for a soldier amongst the Greeks and Albanese who speak Romaic-it means properly "a lad.”

30.

While thus in concert, &c.

Stanza Ixxii. line last. As a specimen of the Albanian or Arnaou: dialect of the Illyric, I here insert two of their most popular choral songs, which are generally chaunted in dancing by men or women indiscriminately. The first words are merely a kind of chorus without meaning, like some in our own and all other languages.

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The last stanza would puzzle a commentator: the men have certainly buskins of the most beautiful texture, but the ladies (to whom the above is supposed to be addressed) have nothing under their little yellow boots and slippers but a well-turned and sometimes very white ancle. The Arnaout girls are much handsomer than the Greeks, and their dress is far more picturesque. They preserve their shape much longer also, from being always in the open air. It is to be observed, that the Arnaout is not a written language; the words of this song, therefore, as well as the one which follows, are spelt according to their pronunciation. They are copied by one who speaks and understands the dialect perfectly, and who is a native of Athens.

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*The Albanese, particularly the women, are frequently termed “Caliriotes ;” for what reason I inquired in vaïn.

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I believe the two last stanzas, as they are in a different measure, ought to belong to another ballad. An idea something similar to the thought in the last lines was expressed by Socrates, whose arm having come in contact with one of his "Critobuυποκολπιοι,

lus or Cleobulus, the philosopher complained of a shooting pain as far as his shoulder for some days after, and therefore very properly resolved to teach his disciples in future without touching them.

31.

Tambourgi! Tambourgi! thy 'larum afar, &c.

Song, Stanza 1. line 1. These stanzas are partly taken from different Albanese songs, as far as I was able to make them out by the exposition of the Albanese in Romaic and Italian.

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Some thoughts on this subject will be found in the subjoined pa pers.

34.

Spirit of freedom! when on Phyle's brow
Thou sat'st with Thrasybulus and his train,

Stanza lxxiv. lines 1 and 2.

Phyle, which commands a beautiful view of Athens, has still considerable remains: it was seized by Thrasybulus previous to the expulsion of the Thirty.

35.

Receive the fiery Frank, her former guest;
Stanza Ixxvii. line 4.

When taken by the Latins, and retained for several years.-Søg

Gibbon.

36.

The prophet's tomb of all its pious spoil.

Stanza Ixxvii. line 6. Mecca and Medina were taken some time ago by the Wahabees, a sect yearly increasing.

37.

Thy vales of ever-green, thy hills of snow

Stanza Ixxxv. line 3.

On many of the mountains, particularly Liakura, the snow never is entirely melted, notwithstanding the intense heat of the Summer; but I never saw it lie on the plains even in Winter.

38.

Save where some solitary column mourns
Above its prostrate brethren of the cave.

Stanza Ixxxvi. lines 1 and 2.

Of Mount Pentelicus, from whence the marble was dug that constructed the public edifices of Athens. The modern name is Mount Mendeli. An immense cave formed by the quarries still remains, and will till the end of time.

39.

When Marathon became a magic word

Stanza Ixxxix. line 7. "Siste Viator-heroa calcas!" was the epitaph on the famous Count Merci;-what then must be our feelings when standing on the tumulus of the two hundred (Greeks) who fell on Marathon? The principal barrow has recently been opened by Fauvel; few or no relics, as vases. &c. were found by the excavator. The plain of Marathon was offered to me for sale at the sum of sixteen thou sand piastres, about nine hundred pounds! Alas!-"Expendequot libras in duce summo-invenies ?"-was the dust of Miltiades worth no more? it could scarcely have fetched less if sold by weight.

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Before I say any thing about a city of which every body, traveller or not, has thought it necessary to say something, 1 will request Miss Owenson, when she next borrows an Athenian heroine for her four volumes, to have the goodness to marry her to some. body more of a gentleman than a " Disdar Aga," (who by the by is not an Aga) the most impolite of petty officers, the greatest patron of larceny Athens ever saw, (except Lord E.) and the unwor thy occupant of the Acropolis, on a handsome annual stipend of 150 piastres (eight pounds sterling) out of which he has only to pay his garrison, the most ill regulated corps in the ill-regulated Ottoman Empire. I speak it tenderly, seeing I was once the cause of the husband of "Ida of Athens" nearly suffering the bastinado; and because the said "Disdar" is a turbulent husband, and beats his wife, so that I exhort and beseech Miss Owenson to sue for a separate maintenance in behalf of "Ida." Having premised thus much, on a matter of such import to the readers of romances, I may now leave Ida, to mention her birth-place.

Setting aside the magic of the name, and all those associations.

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which it would be pedantic and superfluous to recapitulate, the very situation of Athens would render it the favourite of all who have eyes for art or nature. The climate, to me at least, appeared a perpetual spring; during eight months I never passed a day without being as many hours on horseback: rain is extremely rare, snow never lies in the plains, and a cloudy day is an agreeable rarity. In Spain, Portugal, and every part of the East which I visited, except Ionia and Attica, I perceived no such superiority of climate to our own; and at Constantinople, where I passed May, June, and part of July, (1810) you might "damn the climate, and complain of spleen," five days out of seven.

The air of the Morea is heavy and unwholesome, but the moment you pass the isthmus in the direction of Megara the change is strikingly perceptible. But I fear Hesiod will still be found correct in his description of a Boeotian winter.

We found at Livadia an "Esprit fort" in a Greek bishop, of all free-thinkers! This worthy hypocrite rallied his own religion with great intrepidity (but not before his flock) and talked of a mass as a "Coglioneria." It was impossible to think better of him for this; but, for a Boeotian, he was brisk with all his absurdity. This phenomenon, (with the exception indeed of Thebes, the remains of Chæronea, the plain of Platea, Orchomenus, Livadia, and its nominal cave of Trophonius,) was the only remarkable thing we saw before we passed Mount Citharon.

The fountain of Dirce turns a mill: at least, my companion (who resolved to be at once cleanly and classical bathed in it) pronounc ed it to be the fountain of Dirce, and any body who thinks it worth while may contradict him. At Castri we drank of half a dozen streamlets, some not of the purest, before we decided to our satisfaction which was the true Castalian, and even that had a villanous twang, probably from the snow, though it did not throw us into an epic fever, like poor Dr. Chandler.

From Fort Phyle, of which large remains still exist, the Plain of Athens, Pentelicus, Hymettus, the Egean, and the Acropolis, burst upon the eye at once; in my opinion, a more glorious prospect than even Cintra or Islambol. Not the view from the Troad, with Ida, the Hellespont, and the more distant Mount Athos, can equal it, though so superior in extent.

I heard much of the beauty of Arcadia, but excepting the view from the monastery of Megaspelion (which is inferior to Zitza in a command of country) and the descent from the mountains on the way from Tripolitza to Argos, Arcadia has little to recommend it beyond the name.

"Sternitur, et dulces moriens reminiscitur Argos."

Virgil could have put this into the mouth of none but an Argive; and (with reverence be it spoken) it does not deserve the epithet. And if the Polynices of Statius who, "In mediis audit duo litora campis," did actually hear both shores in crossing the isthmus of Corinth, he had better ears than have ever been worn in such a journey since.

"Athens," says a celebrated topographer, "is still the most polished city of Greece.". Perhaps it may of Greece, but not of the Greeks; for Joannina in Epirus is universally allowed, amongst themselves, to be superior in the wealth, refinement, learning, and dialect of its inhabitants. The Athenians are remarkable for their cunning; and the lower orders are not improperly characterized in that proverb, which classes them with the Jews of Salonica, and the Turks of the Negropont."

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