Theological Essays and Other Papers Volume II Part 6

Not having the French original of Bourrienne's work, we are compelled to quote from Dr. Memes's translation, which, however, is everywhere incorrect, and in a degree absolutely astonis.h.i.+ng; and, where not incorrect, offensive from vulgarisms or ludicrous expressions. Thus, he translates _un drole_, a droll fellow--wide as the poles from the true meaning, Again, the verb _devoir_, in all tenses, that eternal stumbling-block to bad French scholars, is uniformly mistranslated.

As an instance of ign.o.ble language, at p. 294, vol. I., he says, 'Josephine was delighted with the disposition of her _goodman_,' a word used only by underbred people. But of all the absurdities which disfigure the work, what follows is perhaps the most striking:--'Kleber,'

he says, 'took a _precognition_ of the army,' p. 231, vol. I. A precognition! What Pagan ceremony may that be? Know, reader, that this monster of a word is a technical term of Scotch law; and even to the Scotch, excepting those few who know a little of law, absolutely unintelligible. In speaking thus harshly, we are far from meaning any thing unkind to Dr. M., whom, on the contrary, for his honorable sentiments in relation to the merits of Bonaparte, we greatly respect.

But that as nothing to do with French translation--the condition of which, in this country, is perfectly scandalous.

NOTE 8.

Some people may fancy that this scene of that day's drama was got up merely to save appearances by a semblance of discussion, and that in effect it mattered not how the performance was conducted where all was scenical, and the ultimate reliance, after all, on the bayonet. But it is certain that this view is erroneous, and that the final decision of the soldiery, even up to the very moment of the crisis, was still doubtful. Some time after this exhibition, 'the hesitation reigning among the troops,' says Bourrienne, 'still continued.' And in reality it was a mere accident of pantomime, and a clap-trap of sentiment, which finally gave a sudden turn in Napoleon's favor to their wavering resolutions.

NOTE 9.

We have occasionally such expressions as--'When wild in woods _the n.o.ble savage_ ran.' These descriptions rest upon false conceptions; in fact, no such combination anywhere exists as a man having the training of a savage, or occupying the exposed and naked situation of a savage, who is at the same time in any moral sense at liberty to be n.o.ble-minded. Men are moulded by the circ.u.mstances in which they stand habitually; and the insecurity of savage life, by making it impossible to forego any sort of advantages, obliterates the very idea of honor.

Hence, with all savages alike, the point of honor lies in treachery--in stratagem--and the utmost excess of what is dishonorable, according to the estimate of cultivated man.

NOTE 10.

Shakespeare's Sonnets.

NOTE 11.

Or perhaps the _right_, for the Prussian cavalry (who drew their custom from some regiments in the service of Gustavus Adolphus; and they again traditionally from others) are always trained to mount in this way.

NOTE 12.

It is painful to any man of honorable feelings that, whilst a great rival nation is pursuing the enn.o.bling profession of arms, his own should be reproached contemptuously with a sordid dedication to commerce. However, on the one hand, things are not always as they seem; commerce has its enn.o.bling effects, direct or indirect; war its barbarizing degradations. And, on the other hand, the facts even are not exactly as _prima facie_ they were supposed; for the truth is, that, in proportion to its total population, England had more men in arms during the last war than France. But, generally speaking, the case may be stated thus: the British nation is, by original const.i.tution of mind, and by long enjoyment of liberty, a far n.o.bler people than the French. And hence we see the reason and necessity that the French should, with a view to something like a final balance in the effect, be trained to a n.o.bler profession. Compensations are every where produced or encouraged by nature and by Providence; and a n.o.bler discipline in the one nation is doubtless some equilibrium to a n.o.bler nature in the other.

NOTE 13.

_In council_, we say purposely and in candor; for the only pleas in palliation ever set up by Napoleon's apologists, are these two--_necessity_, the devil's plea, in the first place; secondly, that the guilt of the transaction, whether more or less, was divided between the general and his council.

NOTE 14.

And from the fact of that corps in Charlemagne's army, which effected the pa.s.sage, having been commanded by his uncle, Duke Bernard, this mountain previously known as the _Mons_ Jovis, (and, by corruption, Mont le Joux,) very justly obtained the name which it still retains.

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 cla.s.sical descent. The monuments still existing from pre-Christian ages, in memory of honest travellers a.s.sa.s.sinated by brigands of klephts, (Kleptai,) show that the old respectable calling of freebooters by sea and land, which Thucydides, in a well-known pa.s.sage, 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 furnis.h.i.+ng 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 st.u.r.dy 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. t.i.tles were, at that time, not much in use--honorary t.i.tles we mean; but had our prefix of 'Right Honorable' existed, it would have been a.s.signed 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p, 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 pa.s.s 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 compa.s.s 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 a.s.sa.s.sination 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 a.s.sa.s.sins 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 ma.s.sacred; 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 n.o.bleman'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 fas.h.i.+on 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 compet.i.tors. 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--s.p.a.ce 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 a.s.sa.s.sins 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 princ.i.p.al 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 n.o.body 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 ent.i.tled 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 ma.s.se_: 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 ent.i.tled to kill _him_; and if he _does_, it is p.r.o.nounced 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 eyeb.a.l.l.s 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 c.u.mberland. Oftentimes it would happen that in summer we had turned aside from the road, or perhaps the road itself forced us to pa.s.s 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 pa.s.s 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 ill.u.s.trated the courage given by the consciousness of rect.i.tude. So long as we felt that we were trespa.s.sing 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 t.i.tle 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 c.u.mbrian 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 dispa.s.sionate 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, pa.s.sed on; Charles X. fell from his throne; the Reform Bill pa.s.sed; 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 t.i.tle, to see Athens and the Peloponnesus as a Bavarian, and a better than a Turk; and, if he cannot be suffered to pa.s.s quietly along the roads on his own private affairs, the more is the pity. But a.s.suredly 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 emba.s.sy 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 n.o.ble 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 pa.s.sage 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 cla.s.sical 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 pa.s.sage 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 a.s.saulted 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 ill.u.s.trates 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 p.r.o.nounces '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 a.s.sault 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 cla.s.sical, 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 ill.u.s.trations of cla.s.sical antiquity.