Theological Essays and Other Papers Volume II Part 7

Their attacks are not confined to those who approach the premises of which they are the appointed guardians;' they do not limit themselves to defensive war: 'in many districts they are in the habit of rus.h.i.+ng from a considerable distance to torment the traveller pa.s.sing along the public track; and when the pastoral colonies, as is often the case, occur at frequent intervals, the nuisance becomes quite intolerable.'

But in cases where the succession is less continuous, we should imagine that the nuisance was in the same proportion more dangerous; and Mr.

Mure acknowledges--that under certain circ.u.mstances, to a solitary stranger the risk would be serious; though generally, and in the case of cavalcades, the dogs fasten chiefly upon the horses. But endless are the compensations which we find in the distributions of nature.

Is there a bane? Near it lies an antidote. Is there a disease? Look for a specific in that same neighborhood. Here, also, the universal rule prevails. As it was destined that Greece in all ages should be scourged by this intestine enemy, it was provided that a twofold specific should travel concurrently with the evil. And because the vegetable specific, in the shape of oaken cudgels, was liable to local failure, (at this moment, in fact, from the wreck of her woods by means of incendiary armies, Greece is, for a season, disafforested,) there exists a second specific of a mineral character, which (please Heaven?) shall never fail, so long as Greece is Greece. 'The usual weapons of defence, employed in such cases by the natives, are the large loose stones with which the soil is _everywhere_ strewed--a natural feature of this region, to which also belongs its own proper share of cla.s.sic interest.' The character of the rocks prevailing in those mountain ridges which intersect the whole of Greece is, that whilst in its interior texture 'of iron-hard consistency,' yet at the surface it is 'broken into detached fragments of infinitely varied dimensions.'

b.a.l.l.s, bullets, grape, and canister shot, have all been 'parked' in inexhaustible magazines; whilst the leading feature which strikes the mind with amazement in this natural artillery, is its fine _retail_ distribution. Everywhere you may meet an enemy: stoop, and everywhere there is shot piled for use. We see a Leibnitzian preestablished harmony between the character of the stratification and the character of the dogs. Cardinal de Retz explains why that war, in the minority of Louis XIV., was called the _Fronde_; and it seems that in Greece, where an immortal _fronde_ was inevitable, an immortal magazine was supplied for it--one which has been and will continue to be, under all revolutions, for the uncultured tracts present the missiles equally diffused; and the first rudiments of culture show themselves in collections of these missiles along the roads. Hence, in fact, a general mistake of tourists. 'It is certain,' says Mr. Mure, 'that many of the circular mounds, which are noticed in the itineraries under the rubric of _ancient tumulus_, have been heaped up in this manner. It is to these stones that travellers, and the population at large instinctively have recourse, as the most effectual weapon against the a.s.saults of the dogs.' The small shot of pebbles, however, or even stones equal to pigeon's eggs, would avail nothing: 'those selected are seldom smaller than a man, exerting his whole force, can conveniently lift and throw with one hand.' Thence, in fact, and from no other cause, comes (as Mr. Mure observes) the Homeric designation of such stones, viz. _chermadion_, or handful; of which he also cites the definition given by Lucian, [Greek text: lithos cheiroplaethaes], a _hand-filling stone_. Ninety generations have pa.s.sed since the Trojan war, and each of the ninety has used the same bountiful magazine. All readers of the _Iliad_ must remember how often Ajax or Hector, took up _chermadia_, 'such as twice five men in our degenerate days could barely lift,'

launching them at light-armed foes, who positively would not come nearer to take their just share of the sword or spear. 'The weapon is the more effectual, owing to the nature of the rock itself, broken as it is in its whole surface into angular and sharp-pointed inequalities, which add greatly to the severity of the wound inflicted. Hence, as most travellers will have experienced, a fall amongst the Greek rocks is unusually painful.' It is pleasing to find Homer familiar not only with the use of the weapon, but with its finest external 'developments.'

Not only the stone must be a bouncer, a _chermadion_, with some of the properties (we believe) marking a good cricket-ball, but it ought to be [Greek Text: ochxioeis]--such is the Homeric epithet of endearment, his caressing description of a good brainer, viz. _splinting-jagged_.

This fact of the chermadic weight attached to the good war-stone explains, as Mr. Mure ingeniously remarks, a simile of Homer's, which ought to have been pure nonsense for Pope and Cowper; viz. that in describing a dense mist, such as we foolishly imagine peculiar to our own British climate, and meaning to say that a man could scarcely descry an object somewhat ahead of his own station, he says, [Greek Text: tosson tis t'ep leussel oson t'epi laan iaesi]: _so far does man see as lie hurls a stone_. Now, in the skirmish of 'bickering,' this would argue no great limitation of eyesight. 'Why, man, how far _would_ you see? Would you see round a corner?' 'A shot of several hundred yards,' says Mr. Mure, 'were no great feat for a country lad well skilled in the art of stone-throwing.' But this is not Homer's meaning--'The cloud of dust' (which went before an army advancing, and which it is that Homer compares to a mist on the hills perplexing the shepherd) 'was certainly much denser than to admit of the view extending to such a distance. In the Homeric sense, as allusive to the hurling of the ponderous _chermadion_, the figure is correct and expressive.'

And here, as everywhere, we see the Horatian parenthesis upon Homer, as one, _qui nil molitur inepte_, who never speaks vaguely, never wants a reason, and never loses sight of a reality, amply sustained. Here, then, is a local resource to the British tourist besides the imported one of the bull-dog. And it is remarkable that, except where the dogs are preternaturally audacious, a mere hint of the chermadion suffices.

Late in our own experience too late for glory, we made the discovery that all dogs have a mysterious reverence for a trundling stone. It calls off attention from the human object, and strikes alarm into the caitiff's mind. He thinks the stone alive. Upon this hint we thought it possible to improve: stooping down, we 'made believe' to launch a stone, when, in fact, we had none; and the effect generally followed.

So well is this understood in Greece that, according to a popular opinion reported by Mr. Mure, the prevailing habit in Grecian dogs, as well as b.i.t.c.hes, of absenting themselves from church, grows out of the frequent bowing and genuflexions practised in the course of the service. The congregation, one and all, simultaneously stoop; the dog's wickedness has made him well acquainted with the meaning of that act; it is a symbol but too significant to his conscience; and he takes to his heels with the belief that a whole salvo of one hundred and one _chermadia_ are fastening on his devoted 'hurdies.'

Here, therefore, is a suggestion at once practically useful, and which furnishes more than one important elucidation to pa.s.sages in Homer hitherto unintelligible. For the sake of one other such pa.s.sage, we shall, before dismissing the subject, pause upon a novel fact, communicated by Mr. Mure, which is equally seasonable as a new Homeric light, and as a serviceable hint in a situation of extremity.

In the pa.s.sage already quoted under Pope's version from Odyssey, xiv.

29, what is the meaning of that singular couplet--

'Down sate the sage; and cautious to withstand, Let fall the offensive truncheon from his hand.' [Footnote 2]

Mr. Mure's very singular explanation will remind the naturalist of something resembling it in the habits of buffaloes. Dampier mentions a case which he witnessed in some island with a Malay population, where a herd of buffaloes continued to describe concentric circles, by continually narrowing around a party of sailors; and at last submitted only to the control of children _not too far beyond the state of infancy_. The white breed of wild cattle, once so well known at Lord Tankerville's in Northumberland, and at one point in the south-west of Scotland, had a similar instinct for regulating the fury of their own attack; but it was understood that when the final circle had been woven, the spell was perfect; and that the herd would 'do business'

most effectually. As respects the Homeric case, 'I,' (says Mr. Mure,) 'am probably not the only reader who has been puzzled to understand the object of this manoeuvre' (the sitting down) 'on the part of the hero. I was first led to appreciate its full value in the following manner:--At Argos one evening, at the table of General Gordon,' (then commanding-in-chief throughout the Morea, and the best historian of the Greek revolution, but who subsequently resigned, and died in the spring of 1841, at his seat in Aberdeens.h.i.+re,) 'the conversation happened to turn, as it frequently does where tourists are in company, on this very subject of the number and fierceness of the Grecian dogs; when one of the company remarked that he knew of a very simple expedient for appeasing their fury. Happening on a journey to miss his road, and being overtaken by darkness, he sought refuge for the night at a pastoral settlement by the wayside. As he approached, the dogs rushed out upon him; and the consequences might have been serious had he not been rescued by an old shepherd, (the Eumeus of the fold,) who after pelting off his a.s.sailants, gave him a hospitable reception in his hut. The guest made some remark on the zeal of his dogs, and on the danger to which he had been exposed from their attack. The old man replied 'that it was his own fault, from not taking the customary precaution in such an emergency; that he ought to have stopped, and _sate down_ until some person came to protect him.' Here we have the very act of Ulysses; with the necessary circ.u.mstance that he laid aside his arms; after which the two parties were under a provisional treaty.

And Adam Smith's doubtful a.s.sumption that dogs are incapable of exchange, or reciprocal understanding, seems still more doubtful. As this expedient was new to the traveller, 'he made some further inquiries; and was a.s.sured that, if any person in such a predicament will simply seat himself on the ground, laying aside his weapon of defence, the dogs will also squat in a circle round him; that, as long as he remains quiet, they will follow his example; but that, as soon as he rises and moves forward, they will renew their a.s.sault. This story, though told without the least reference to the Odyssey, at once brought home to my own mind the scene at the fold of Eumeus with the most vivid reality. The existence of the custom was confirmed by other persons present, from their own observation or experience.' Yet, what if the night were such as is often found even in Southern Greece during winter--a black frost; and that all the belligerents were found in the morning symmetrically grouped as petrifactions? However, here again we have the Homer _qui nil molitur inepte_, who addressed a people of known habits. Yet _quare_--as a matter of some moment for Homeric disputes--were these habits of Ionian colonies, or exclusively of Greece Proper?

But enough of the repulsive features in Greek travelling. We, for our part, have endeavored to meet them with remedies both good and novel.

Now let us turn to a different question. What are the positive attractions of Greece? What motives are there to a tour so costly?

What are the _Pros_, supposing the _Cons_ dismissed? This is a more difficult question than is imagined: so difficult that most people set out without waiting for the answer: they travel first and leave to providential contingencies the chance that, on a review of the tour in its course, some adequate motive may suggest itself. Certainly it may be said, that the word Greece already in itself contains an adequate motive; and we do not deny that a young man, full of animal ardor and high cla.s.sical recollections, may, without blame, give way to the mere instincts of wandering. It is a fine thing to bundle up your traps at an hour's warning, and fixing your eye upon some bright particular star, to say--'I will travel after thee: I will have no other mark: I will chase thy rising or thy setting: that is, on Mr. Wordsworth's hint derived from a Scottish lake, to move on a general object of _stepping westwards_, or _stepping eastwards_. But there are few men qualified to travel, who stand in this free 'unhoused' condition of license to spend money, to lose time, or to court peril. In balancing the pretensions of different regions to a distinction so costly as an _effectual_ tour, money it is, simply the consideration of cost, which furnishes the chief or sole ground of administration; having but 100 pounds sterling disposable in any one summer, a man finds his field of choice circ.u.mscribed at once: and rare is the household that can allow twice that sum annually. He contents himself with the Rhine, or possibly, if more adventurous, he may explore the pa.s.ses of the Pyrenees; he may unthread the mazes of romantic Auvergne, or make a stretch even to the Western Alps of Savoy.

But, for the Mediterranean, and especially for the Levant--these he resigns to richer men; to those who can command from three to five hundred pounds. And next, having submitted to this preliminary limitation of radius, he is guided in selecting from what remains by some indistinct prejudice of his early reading. Many are they in England who start with a blind faith, inherited from Mrs. Radeliffe's romances, and thousands beside, that, in Southern France or in Italy, from the Milanese down to the furthest nook of the Sicilies, it is physically impossible for the tourist to go wrong. And thus it happens, that a spectacle, somewhat painful to good sense, is annually renewed of confiding households leaving a real Calabria in Montgomerys.h.i.+re or Devons.h.i.+re, for dreary, sunburned flats in Bavaria, in Provence, in Languedoc, or in the 'Legations' of the Papal territory. 'Vintagers,'

at a distance, how romantic a sound! Hops--on the other hand--how mercenary, nay, how culinary, by the feeling connected with their use, or their taxation! Arcadian shepherds again, or Sicilian from the 'bank of delicate Galesus,' can these be other than poetic? The hunter of the Alpine ibex--can he be other than picturesque? A sandalled monk mysteriously cowled, and in the _distance_, (but be sure of _that!_) a band of robbers reposing at noon amidst some Salvator-Rosa-looking solitudes of Calabria--how often have such elements, semi-consciously grouped, and flas.h.i.+ng upon the indistinct mirrors lighted up by early reading, seduced English good sense into undertakings terminating in angry disappointment! We acknowledge that the English are the only nation under this romantic delusion; but so saying, we p.r.o.nounce a very mixed censure upon our country. In itself it is certainly a folly, which other nations (Germany excepted) are not above, but below: a folly which presupposes a most remarkable distinction for our literature, significant in a high moral degree. The plain truth is--that Southern Europe has no romance in its household literature; has not an organ for comprehending what it is that we mean by Radcliffian romance. The old ancestral romance of knightly adventure, the _Sangreal_, the _Round Table_, &c., exists for Southern Europe as an antiquarian subject; or if treated aesthetically, simply as a subject adapted to the ludicrous. And the secondary romance of our later literature is to the south unintelligible. No Frenchman, Spaniard, or Italian, at all comprehends the grand poetic feeling employed and nursed by narrative fictions through the last seventy years in England, though connected by us with their own supposed scenery.

Generally, in speaking of Southern Europe, it may be affirmed that the idea of heightening any of the grander pa.s.sions by a.s.sociation with the shadowy and darker forms of natural scenery, heaths, mountainous recesses, 'forests drear,' or the sad desolation of a silent sea-sh.o.r.e, of the desert, or of the ocean, is an idea not developed amongst them, nor capable of combining with their serious feelings. By the evidence of their literature, viz. of their poetry, their drama, their novels, it is an interest to which the whole race is deaf and blind. A Frenchman or an Italian (for the Italian, in many features of Gallic insensibility, will be found ultra-Gallican) can understand a state in which the moving principle is sympathy with the world of conscience.

Not that his own country will furnish him with any grand exemplification of such an interest; but, merely as a human being, he cannot escape from a certain degree of human sympathy with the dread tumults going on in that vast theatre--a conscience-haunted mind. So far he stands on common ground; but how this mode of shedding terror can borrow any alliance from chapels, from ruins, from monastic piles, from Inquisition dungeons, inscrutable to human justice, or dread of confessionals,--all this is unfathomably mysterious to Southern Europe. The Southern imagination is pa.s.sively and abjectly dependent on _social_ interests; and these must conform to modern types. Hence, partly, the reason that only the British travel. The German is generally too poor. The Frenchman desires nothing but what he finds at home: having Paris at hand, why should he seek an inferior Paris in distant lands? To an Englishman this demur could seldom exist. He may think, and, with introductions into the higher modes of aristocratic life, he may know that London and St. Petersburg are far more magnificent capitals than Paris; but _that_ will not repel his travelling instincts. A superior London he does not credit or desire; but what he seeks is not a superior, it is a different, life;--not new degrees of old things, but new kinds of experience are what he asks. His scale of conception is ampler; whereas, generally, the Frenchman is absorbed into one ideal. Why else is it, that, after you have allowed for a few Frenchmen carried of necessity into foreign lands by the diplomatic concerns of so vast a country, and for a few artists travelling in quest of gain or improvement, we hear of no French travellers as a cla.s.s? And why is it that, except as regards Egypt, where there happens to lurk a secret political object in reversion for France, German literature builds its historic or antiquarian researches almost exclusively upon English travellers? Our travellers may happen or not to be professional; but they are never found travelling for professional objects. Some have been merchants or bankers, many have been ecclesiastics; but neither commercial nor clerical or religious purposes have furnished any working motive, unless where, as express missionaries, they have prepared their readers to expect such a bias to their researches. Colonel Leake, the most accurate of travellers, is a soldier; and in reviewing the field of Marathon, of Plataa, and others deriving their interest from later wars, he makes a casual use of his soldiers.h.i.+p. Captain Beaufort, again, as a sailor, uses his nautical skill where it is properly called for. But in the larger proportions of their works, even the professional are not professional; whilst such is our academic discipline, that all alike are scholars. And in this quality of merit the author before us holds a distinguished rank. He is no artist, though manifesting the eye learned in art and in landscape. He is not professionally a soldier; he is so only by that secondary tie, which, in our island, connects the landed aristocracy with the landed militia; yet though not, in a technical sense, military, he disputes, with such as _are_, difficult questions of Greek martial history. He is no regular agriculturist, yet he conveys a good general impression of the Greek condition with relation to landed wealth or landed skill, as modified at this moment by the unfortunate restraints on a soil handed over, in its best parts, by a Turkish aristocracy that had engrossed them, to a Bavarian that cannot use them. In short, Mr. Mure is simply a territorial gentleman; elevated enough to have stood a contest for the representation of a great Scottish county; of general information; and, in particular, he is an excellent Greek scholar; which latter fact we gather, not from anything we have heard, but from these three indications meeting together;--1. That his verbal use of Greek, in trying the true meaning of names, (such as Mycene, the island of Asteris, &c.,) is original as well as accurate. 2. That his display of reading (not volunteered or selected, but determined by accidents of local suggestion) is ample.

3. That the frugality of his Greek citations is as remarkable as their pertinence. He is never tempted into trite references; nor ever allows his page to be enc.u.mbered by more of such learning than is severely needed.

With regard to the general motives for travelling, _his_ for Greece had naturally some relation to his previous reading; but perhaps an occasional cause, making his true motives operative, may have been his casual proximity to Greece at starting--for he was then residing in Italy. Others, however, amongst those qualified to succeed him, wanting this advantage, will desire some positive objects of a high value, in a tour both difficult as regards hards.h.i.+ps, costly, and too tedious, even with the aids of steam, for those whose starting point is England.

These objects, real or imaginary, in a Greek tour, co-extensive with the new limits of Greek jurisdiction, let us now review:--

I. _The Greek People_.--It is with a view to the Greeks personally, the men, women, and children, who in one sense at least, viz., as occupants of the Greek soil, represent the ancient cla.s.sical Greeks, that the traveller will undertake this labor. Representatives in one sense! Why, how now? are they not such in all senses? Do they not trace their descent from the cla.s.sical Greeks?' We are sorry to say _not_; or in so doubtful a way, that the interest derived from that source is too languid to sustain itself against the opposing considerations.

Some authors have peremptorily denied that one drop of genuine Grecian blood, transmitted from the countrymen of Pericles, now flows in the veins of any Greek subject. Falmereyer, the German, is at the head (we believe) of those who take that view. And many who think Falmereyer in excess, make these unpleasant concessions; viz., 1st, that in Athens and throughout Attica, where, by special preference, one would wish to see the Grecian cast of face predominating, _there_, to a single family almost, you may affirm all to be Albanian. Well; but what is Albanian? For the Albanian race, as having its headquarters in regions once undoubtedly occupied by a Greek race. Epirus, for instance, Acarnania, &c., may still be Grecian by descent: but unfortunately it is not so. The Albanians are no more Grecian, and notoriously no more represent the old legitimate Greeks, who thumped the Persians and whom the Romans thumped, than the modern English represent the Britons, or the modern Lowland Scotch represent the Scoti, of the centuries immediately following the Christian era. Both English and Lowland Scotch, for the first five centuries after the Christian era, were ranging the forests of north Germany or of southern Sweden. The men who fought with Caesar, if now represented at all, are so in Wales, in Cornwall, or other western recesses of the island. And the Albanians are held to be a Sclavonic race--such at least is the accredited theory; so that modern Greece is connected with Russia not merely by the bond of a common church, but also by blood, since the Russian people is the supreme branch of the Sclavonic race. This is the first concession made which limits any remnant of the true Greek blood to parts of the ancient h.e.l.las not foremost in general interest, nor most likely to be visited.

A second is, that if any claim to a true Grecian descent does exist extensively, it must be looked for amongst Mahometan clans, descended from renegades of former days, now confounded with our Mussulmans ejected from Greece, and living in Thrace, or other regions under the Sultan's sceptre. But even here the purity of the descent is in the last degree uncertain.

This case is remarkable. From the stationary character of all things in the East, there was a probability beforehand, that several nations--as in particular, four that we will mention: the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Persians, the Affghans--should have presented the same purity of descent, untainted by alien blood, which we find in the children of Ishmael, and the children of his half-brother the patriarch Isaac. Yet, in that case, where would have been the miraculous unity of race predicted for these two nations exclusively by the Scriptures?

The fact is, the four nations mentioned have been so profoundly changed by deluges of foreign conquest or foreign intrusion, that at this day, perhaps, no solitary individual could be found whose ancestral line had not been confounded with other bloods. The Arabs only, and the Jews, are under no suspicion of this hybrid mixture. Vast deserts, which insulate one side of the Arabian peninsula; the sea, which insulates the other sides, have, with other causes, preserved the Arab blood from all general attaint of its purity. Ceremonies, inst.i.tutions, awful scruples of conscience, and through many centuries, misery and legal persecution, have maintained a still more impa.s.sable gulf between the Jews and other races. Spain is the only Christian land where the native blood was at any time intermingled with the Jewish; and hence one cause for the early vigilance of the Inquisition in that country more than elsewhere; hence also the horror of a Jewish taint in the Spanish hidalgo; Judaism masquing itself in Christianity, was so keenly suspected, or so haughtily disclaimed, simply because so largely it existed. It was, however, under a very peculiar state of society, that, even during an interval, and in a corner, Jews _could_ have intermarried with Christians. Generally, the intensity of reciprocated hatred, long oppression upon the one side, deep degradation upon the other, perpetuated the alienation, had the repulsion of creeds even relaxed.

And hence, at this day, the intense purity of the Jewish blood, though probably more than six millions of individuals.

But with respect to the Grecians, as no barrier has ever existed between them and any other [Footnote 3] race than the Turks, and these only in the shape of religious scruples, which on one side had the highest political temptation to give way, there was no pledge stronger than individual character, there could be no national or corporate pledge, for the maintenance of this insulation. As therefore, in many recorded cases, the strongest barrier (viz., that against Mahometan alliances) is known to have given way, as in other cases innumerable, but forgotten, it must be presumed to have given way? this inference follows, viz., that if anywhere the Grecian blood remains in purity, the fact will be entirely without evidence; and for us, the result will be the same as if the fact had no existence. Simply as a matter of curiosity, if our own opinion were asked as to the probability, that in any situation, a true-blooded population yet survives at this day, we should answer that, if anywhere, it will be found in the most sterile of the Greek islands. Yet, even there the bare probability of such a result will have been open to many disturbances; and especially if the island happen to be much in the way of navigators, or the harbors happen to be convenient, or if it happen to furnish a good stage in a succession of stages, (according to the ancient usages of Mediterranean seamans.h.i.+p), or if it possessed towns containing acc.u.mulations of provisions or other stores, or offered good watering-places; under any of these endowments, an island might be tempting to pirates, or to roving adventurers, or to remote overpeopled parts of Italy, Africa, Asia Minor, &c.; in short, to any vicious city where but one man amongst the poorer cla.s.ses knew the local invitations to murderous aggressions. Under so many contingencies operative through so many centuries, and revolutions so vast upon nations so multiplied, we believe that even a poor unproductive soil is no absolute pledge for non-molestation to the most obscure of recesses.

For instance, the poorest district of the large island Crete, might (if any could) be presumed to have a true Greek population. There is little to be found in that district beyond the means of bare subsistence; and (considering the prodigious advantages of the ground for defensive war) little to be looked for by an invader but hard knocks, 'more kicks than halfpence,' so long as there was any indigenous population to stand up and kick. But often it must have happened in a course of centuries, that plague, small-pox, cholera, the sweating-sickness, or other scourges of universal Europe and Asia, would absolutely depopulate a region no larger than an island; as in fact, within our brief knowledge of the New Hollanders, has happened through small-pox alone, to entire tribes of those savages, and, upon a scale still more awful, to the American Indians. In such cases, mere strangers would oftentimes enter upon the lands as a derelict. The Sfakians, in that recess of Crete which we have noticed, are not supposed by scholars to be a true Grecian race; nor do we account them such. And one reason of our own, superadded to the common reasons against allowing a Greek origin, is this:--The Sfakians are a large-limbed, fine-looking race, more resembling the Wallachians whom we have already noticed, than the other races of Crete, or the other Greek islanders, and like the Wallachians, are often of colossal stature. But the cla.s.sical Greeks, we are pretty certain, were a race of little men. We have more arguments than one for this belief. But one will be sufficient. The Athenian painter who recorded the battle of Marathon in fresco upon the walls of a portico, was fined for representing the Persians as conspicuously taller than the Greeks. But why?--why should any artist have ascribed such an advantage to the enemy, unless because it was a fact? What plausible motive, other than the notoriety of the fact, can be imagined in the painter? In reality, this artist proceeded as a general rule amongst the Greeks, and a rule strictly, if not almost superst.i.tiously observed, and of ancient establishment, which was, that all conquerors in any contest, or at any games, olympic, or whatsoever they might be, were memorialized by statues exactly representing the living man in the year of victory, taken even with their personal defects. The dimensions were preserved with such painful fidelity, as though the object had been to collect and preserve for posterity, a series from every generation, of those men who might be presumed by their trophies to have been the models by natural prefiguration for that particular gymnastic accomplishment in which they had severally excelled. [See the _Acad. des Inscriptions_, about the year 1725.] At the time of Marathon, fought against the Lieutenant of Darius, the Olympic games had existed for two hundred years, _minus_ thirteen; and at the closing battle of Plataea, fought against the Lieutenant of Xerxes, for two hundred, _minus_ only two.

During all this period, it is known for certain, perhaps even from far older times, that this rule of exact _portraiture_, a rigid demand for duplicates or fac-similes of the individual men, had prevailed in Greece. The enormous amount of Persian corpses buried by the Greeks, (or perhaps by Persian prisoners,) in the Polyandrium on the field of battle, would be measured and observed by the artists against the public application for their services. And the armor of those select men-at-arms, or [Greek Text: oplitai], who _had_ regular suits of armor, would remain for many centuries suspended as consecrated anathaeyata in the Grecian temples; so that Greek artists would never want sure records of the Persian dimensions. Were it not for this rule, applied sternly to all real conflicts, it might have been open to imagine that the artist had exaggerated the persons of the enemy by way of exalting to posterity the terrors which their ancestors had faced; a more logical vanity than that inverse artifice imputed to Alexander, of burying in the Punjaub gigantic mangers and hyperbolical suits of armor, under the conceit of impressing remote ages with a romantic idea of the bodily proportions in the men and horses composing the _elite_ of the Macedonian army. This was the true secret for disenchanting the martial pretensions of his army. Were you indeed such colossal men? In that case, the less is your merit; of which most part belongs manifestly to a _physical_ advantage: and in the ages of no gunpowder the advantage was less equivocal than it is at present.

In the other direction, the logic of the Greek artist who painted Marathon is more cogent. The Persians were numerically superior, though doubtless this superiority has been greatly exaggerated, not wilfully so much as from natural mistakes incident to the Oriental composition of armies; and still more on the Grecian side, from extreme inaccuracy in the original reports, which was so great that even Herodotus, who stood removed from Plataea at the time of commencing his labors, by pretty much the same interval as we in 1842 from Waterloo, is rightly observed by Colonel Leake (_Travels in Greece_) to have stated to him the Greek numbers on the great day of Plataea, rather from the basis of fixed rateable contingents which each state was bound to furnish, than of any positive return that he could allege. However, on the whole, it seems undeniable that even at Platsea, much more at Marathon, the Persians had the advantage in numbers. If, besides this numerical advantage, they had another in qualities of bodily structure, the inference was the greater to the Grecian merit. So far from slighting a Persian advantage which really existed, a Greek painter might rather be suspected of inventing one which did not. We apprehend, however, that he invented nothing. For, besides that subsequent intercourse with Persians would have defeated the effect of his representation had it reposed on a fiction, it is known that the Greeks did not rightly appreciate tallness. 'Procerity,' to use Dr. Johnson's stately word in speaking of the stately Prussian regiment, was underrated in Greece; perhaps for this reason, that in some princ.i.p.al gymnastic contests, running, leaping, horsemans.h.i.+p, and charioteering, it really _was_ a disadvantage. And hence possibly arose a fact which has been often noticed with surprise; viz. that the legendary Hercules was never delineated by the Greek artists as more than an athletic man of the ordinary standard with respect to height and bulk. The Greek imagination was extravagantly mastered by physical excellence; this is proved by the almost inconceivable value attached to gymnastic merit. Nowhere, except in Greece, could a lyrical enthusiasm have been made available in such a service. But amongst physical qualities they did not adequately value that of lofty stature. At all events, the rule of portraiture--the whole portrait and nothing but the portrait--which we have mentioned as absolute for Greece, coerced the painter into the advantageous distinction for the Persians which we have mentioned. And this rule, _as servile to the fact_, is decisive for the Greek proportions of body in comparison with the Persian.

But were not some tribes amongst the Greeks celebrated for their stature? Yes; the Daulians, for instance, both men and women: and in some modern tourist we remember a distinction of the same kind claimed for the _present_ occupants of Daulis. But the ancient claim bad reference only to the Grecian scale. Tall, were they? Yes, but tall for Grecians. The Romans were possibly a shade taller than the Greeks, but they also were a little race of men. This is certain. And, if a man were incautious enough to plead in answer the standard of the modern Italians, who are often both tall and athletic, he must be reminded that to Tramontanes, in fact, such as Goths, Heruli, Scyrra, Lombards, and other tribes of the Rhine, Lech, or Danube, Italy is indebted for the improved breed of her carca.s.ses. [Footnote 4] Man, instead of degenerating according to the scandalous folly of books, very slowly improves everywhere; and the carca.s.ses of the existing generation, weighed off, million for million, against the carca.s.ses of any pre-Christian generation, we feel confident would be found to have the advantage by many thousands of stones [the butchers' stone is eight pounds] upon each million. And universally the best _prima facie_ t.i.tle to a pure Greek descent will be an elegantly formed, but somewhat under-sized, person, with a lively, animated, and intelligent physiognomy; of which last may be said, that, if never in the highest sense rising to the n.o.ble, on the other hand, it never sinks to the brutal. At Liverpool we used to see in one day many hundreds of Greek sailors from all parts of the Levant; these were amongst the most probable descendants from the children of Ion or of OEolus, and the character of their person was what we describe--short but symmetrical figures and faces, upon the whole, delicately chiselled. These men generally came from the Greek islands.

Meantime, what is Mr. Mure's opinion upon this much-vexed question?

Into the general problem he declines to enter; not, we may be sure, from want of ability to treat it with novelty and truth. But we collect that he sees no reason for disputing the general impression, that an Albanian or hybrid population is mainly in possession of the soil, and that perhaps he would say, _lis est de paupere regno_; for, if there is no beauty concerned in the decision, nor any of the quality of physical superiority, the less seems the value of the dispute. To appropriate a set of plain faces, to identify the descent of ordinary bodies, seems labor lost. And in the race now nominally claiming to be Grecian, Mr. Mure evidently finds only plain faces, and ordinary bodies. Those, whom at any time he commends for beauty or other advantages of person, are tribes confessedly alien; and, on the other hand, with respect to those claiming to be Greek, he p.r.o.nounces a pointed condemnation by disparaging their women. It is notoriously a duty of the female s.e.x to be beautiful, if they can, with a view to the recreation of us males--whom Lily's Grammar affirms to be 'of the worthier gender.' Sitting at breakfast, (which consisted 'of red herrings and Gruyere cheese,') upon the sh.o.r.e of Megara, Mr. Mure beheld the Megarensian la.s.ses mustering in force for a general ablution of the Megarensian linen. The nymphs had not turned out upon the usual principles of feminine gatherings--

'Spectatum venit, venit spectentur it ipsae;'

and yet, between them, the two parties reciprocated the functions.

Each to the other was a true spectacle. A long Scotchman,

'Qui sicca solus sec.u.m spatiatur arena,'

and holding in his dexter mauley a red herring, whilst a white table-cloth (the centre of his motions) would proclaim some mysterious rite, must to the young ladies have seemed a merman suddenly come up from the sea, without sound of conch; whilst to him the large deputation from female Megara furnished an extra theatre for the inspection of Greek beauty. 'There was no river mouth visible, the operation being performed in the briny sea itself;' and, so far from this being unusual, Mr. Mure notices it as a question of embarra.s.sment to the men of Plutarch's age, why the Phoeacian princess in the Odyssey did _not_ wash in the sea, but mysteriously preferred the river, (_Sympos, I.

qu._ 9;) but as to beauty, says Mr. Mure, 'I looked in vain for a figure, which either as to face or form could claim even a remote resemblance to Nausicaa. The modern Greek woman indeed appeared to me, upon the whole, about the most ill-favored I have met with in any country.' And it attests the sef-consistency of Mr. Mure, that in Aracova, the only place where he notices the women as having any pretensions to beauty, he and others agree that their countenances are not true to the national type; they are generally reputed to offer something much nearer to the bloom and the _embonpoint_ of female rustics in Germany; and accordingly, it is by the Bavarian officers of King Otho's army that these fair Aracovites have been chiefly raised into celebrity. We cannot immediately find the pa.s.sage in Mr. Mure's book relating to Aracova; but we remember that, although admitting the men to be a tolerably handsome race, he was disappointed in the females.

Tall they are, and stout, but not, he thinks, beautiful.

Yet, in dismissing this subject of personal appearance, as the most plausible test now surviving for the claim of a pure Greek descent, we must not forget to explain--that it is far from our design to countenance the hypothesis of any _abrupt_ supercession, at any period or by any means, to the old Grecian blood. The very phrase of 'national type,' which we used in the last paragraph, and the diffusion of a language essentially Greek, argue at once a slow and gradational transition of the population into its present physical condition. Mr.

Mure somewhere describes, as amongst the characteristics of the present race, swarth-iness and leanness. These we suspect to have been also characteristics of the old original _ton d'apameibomenoi_ Greeks. If so, the fact would seem to argue, that the changes, after all, had not been on a scale sufficient to obliterate the primitive type of h.e.l.lenic nature; whilst the existence of any _diffused_ type marks a tendency to national unity, and shows that some one element has so much predominated as to fuse the rest into a h.o.m.ogeneous whole. Indeed, it is pretty certain that a powerful cross in any human breed, whatever effects it may have in other respects, leaves the intellect improved--if not in the very highest qualities, yet in mobility, activity, and pertinacity of attention. The Greek nation has also shown itself morally improved; their revolutionary war evoked and tried, as in a furnace, the very finest qualities of courage, both adventurous and enduring; and we heartily agree in the sentiment delivered so ably by Mr. Mure, that the struggles of these poor shepherds and herdsmen, driven into caves and thickets, and having no great rallying principle but the banner of the Cross against the Crescent, were as much more truly sublime in suffering and in daring, than the cla.s.sical struggles against the Persians, as they are and will be more obscure in the page of general history. We do not at all question great stamina and n.o.ble elements in the modern Greek character--generations of independence will carry this character to excellence; but still we affirm, that he who looks for direct descendants from the race of Miliades, Pericles, or Epaminondas, is likely to be disappointed; and most disappointed in that Athens, which for all of us alike (as appealing to our imaginative feelings) still continues to be what it was for Cicero--true and very Greece; in which, therefore, of all cities locally recalling the cla.s.sical times, we can least brook a disappointment.

If not the people of Greece, is it then the NATURAL SCENERY of Greece which can justify the tourist in this preference? Upon this subject it is difficult to dispute. What a man is likely to relish in scenery--what style or mode of the natural picturesque; and secondly, what weight or value he will allow to his own preferences--are questions exceedingly variable. And the latter of these questions is the more important; for the objection is far less likely to arise against this mode of scenery or that, since every _characteristic_ mode is relished as a change, than universally against all modes alike as adequate indemnifications for the toils of travelling. Female travellers are apt to talk of 'scenery' as all in all, but men require a social interest superadded. Mere scenery palls upon the mind, where it is the sole and ever-present attraction relied on. It should come unbidden and unthought of, like the warbling of birds, to sustain itself in power. And at feeding-time we observe that men of all nations and languages, _Tros Tyriusve,_ grow savage, if, by a fine scene, you endeavor to make amends for a bad beef-steak. The scenery of the Himalaya will not 'draw houses' till it finds itself on a line of good hotels.

This difference, noted above, between the knowledge and the power of a scenery hunter may be often seen ill.u.s.trated in the fields of art.

How common is the old sapless connoisseur in pictures, who retains his learned eye and his distinguished skill, but whose sensibilities are as dry as summer dust to the interests of the art. On the other hand, daily you see young people whose hearts and souls are in the forests and the hills, but for whom the eye is perfectly untutored. If, now, to the differences in this respect you add the extensive differences which prevail as to the kinds of scenery, it is easy to understand how rich in the materials for schism must be every party that starts up on the excitement of mere scenery. Some laud the Caucasus; some the northern and eastern valleys of Spain; some the Alpine scenery; some the Pyrenean. All these are different; and from all alike differs again what Mr. Mure cla.s.ses as the cla.s.sical character of scenery. For this, he thinks a regular education of the eye requisite. Such an education he himself had obtained from a residence in Italy. And, subject to that condition, he supposes the scenery on the Eurotas (to the eastern side of the Peloponnesus) the most delightful in Europe. We know not.

It may be so. For ourselves, the obscure sense of being or moving under a vast superinc.u.mbency of some great natural power, as of a mighty forest, or a trackless succession of mountainous labyrinths, has a charm of secret force far better than any distinct scenes to which we are introduced. Such things ought not to be. But still so it is--that tours in search of the picturesque are peculiarly apt to break up in quarrels. Perhaps on the same principle which has caused a fact generally noticed, viz. that conchologists, b.u.t.terfly-fanciers, &c., are unusually p.r.o.ne to commit felonies, because too little of a human interest circulates through their arid pursuits. The morbid irritation acc.u.mulates until the amateur rushes, out with a knife, lets blood in some quarter, and so restores his own connection with the vitalities of human nature. In any case, we advise the Greek tourist to have at least two strings to his bow besides scenery.

III.--Is it, then, the monuments of the antique, the memorials of Pericles and Phidias, which a man should seek in Greece? If so, no great use in going beyond Athens. Because, though more solemn images survive in other places, a.s.sociated with powers more mysterious and ages more remote, as the gate of Lions at Mycense, or the relics yet standing (and perhaps to stand for ever) of Cyclopian cities, forms of art that for thousands of years have been dying away through dimness of outlines and vegetable overgrowth into forms of nature--yet in Athens only is there a great open museum of such monuments. The Athenian buildings, though none of them Homeric in point of origin, are old enough for us. Two-and-a-half millennia satisfy our grovelling aspirations. And Mr. Mure himself, whilst insisting on their too youthful character, admits that they are 'superior in number, variety, and elegance to those which the united cities of Greece can now show.'

Yet even these pure monuments have been combined with modern aftergrowths, as in the case of the Propylyoea, of which mult.i.tudes doubt [Mr. Mure in particular] whether they can now be detached from the connection with effect. For more reasons than one, it will, perhaps, be advisable to leave them in their present condition, and that is as hybrid as the population. But, with respect to Athenian buildings, it strikes our feelings--that finish and harmony are essential conditions to their effect. Ruins are becoming to Gothic buildings--decay is there seen in a graceful form; but to an Attic building decay is more expressive of disease--it is scrofula; it is phagedoenic ulcer. And unless the Bavarian government can do more than is now held out or hoped, towards the restoration and _disengagement_ of the public buildings surmounting the city, we doubt whether there will not be as much of pain as of an artist's pleasure in a visit to the Athenian capital, though now raised to the rank of metropolis for universal Greece.

IV.--There are, however, mixed monuments, not artificial in their origin, but which gradually came to act upon the feelings as such from their use, and habitual connection with human purposes. Such for instance is the Acro-Corinthus, of which Mr. Mure says--that it 'is by far the most striking object that I have ever seen, either abroad or at home. Neither the Acropolis of Athens, nor the Larissa of Argos, nor even Gibraltar, can enter into the remotest compet.i.tion with this gigantic citadel.' Indeed, when a man is aware of the impression produced by a perpendicular rock over six hundred feet high, he may judge of the stupendous effect from a citadel rising almost insulated in the centre of a plain, sloping to the sea, and ascending to the height of nineteen hundred feet.

Objects of this cla.s.s, together with the mournful Pelasgic remains, the ruins or ruined plans which point back to Egypt, and to Phoenicia, these may serve as a further bribe to the tourist in Greece. If a collection of all the objects in every cla.s.s, according to the best order of succession for the traveller, were arranged skilfully, we believe that a maritime circuit of Greece, with a few landings and short excursions, would bring the whole of what is first-rate within a brief period of weeks and an easy effort. As to the people, they will become more or less ent.i.tled to a separate interest, according to the improvement and improved popularity of their government. And upon that will depend much of the comfort, much even of the safety, to be looked for by tourists. The prospects at present are not brilliant. A government and a court, drawn from a needy aristocracy like the Bavarian, are not suited to a needy people, struggling with the difficulties of a new colony. However, we will hope for the best.

And for the tourist in _Greece as it is_, perhaps Mr. Mure's work is the best fitted for popularity. He touches all things sufficiently, but exhausts none. And we add, very sincerely, this ant.i.thesis, as due to him, that of what may be called personal guides, or those who maintain a current of personal interest in their adventures, or in the selecting from their private experience, he is the most learned; whilst of learned guides he is, in the sense explained, the most amusingly personal.

NOTES.

NOTE 1.

Chief Justice squinted probably at the Versailles affair, where parties were incinerated; for which, in Yorks.h.i.+re, there is a local word--_crozelled,_ applied to those who lie down upon a treacherous lime-pit, whose crust gives way to their weight. But if he meant security in the sense of public funds, Chief-Justice was still more in error, as he will soon learn. For the British Railways now yield a regular income of three millions per annum--one tenth of the interest of the national debt; offer as steady an investment as the 3 per cent consols; and will soon be quoted in other securities.

NOTE 2.

As respects the _elegance_ of this translation, there is good reason to warn the reader--that much of the Odyssey was let off by-contract, like any poor-house proposal for 'clods' and 'stickings' of beef, to low undertakers, such as Broome and Fenton. Considering the ample fortune which Pope drew from the whole work, we have often been struck by the inexplicable indulgence with which this scandalous part.i.tion is treated by Pope's biographers. It is simply the lowest act of self- degradation ever connected with literature.