And gentle winds and waters near
Make music to the lonely ear.

Each flower the dews have lightly wet,
And in the sky the stars are met;

And on the wave is deeper blue,

And on the leaf a browner hue;

And in the Heaven that clear obscure,
So softly dark, and darkly pure,

That follows the decline of day

As twilight melts beneath the moon away."

Let the noble Lord maintain his station upon Turkish ground, and we shall ever hail his labours with the applause to which they are entitled; let him roam whither he will, we shall be happy to follow him through all the regions of poetic fancy. The hill of Zion alone is forbidden ground-exas, enas.

ART. V. A Journey through Albania and other Provinces of Turkey in Europe and Asia, to Constantinople, during the Years 1809 and 1810. By J. C. Hobhouse. Second EdiCawthorn. 1813.

tion. 2 Vols.

4to. 51. 5s. Plates.

THE exclusion of British travellers from the romantic scenes of Switzerland and the classic regions of Italy, has been productive of one effect which we consider of no small importance, inasmuch as it has turned the attention of our rising youth to other objects, which had too long lain buried in oblivion and neglect. The glories of ancient Greece had so far faded off the remembrance of our former travellers, as scarcely to excite a wish of visiting a country, in which were transacted those mighty deeds which dignify and adorn the records of history. Of those among us, whose minds were imbued with the spirit, whose taste was formed by the language of Grecian literature, they were very few, who entertained an adequate conception even of the exist ence of those places with a veneration for which they were so early inspired. They traced the names and relative positions of the various cities in a map, as of scenes long since erased from the face of nature. Of Athens and Thebes they entertained no other idea, than that of their former existence; nor were Pindus and Parnassus less fabulous than their tutelary inhabitants. It would almost appear, that the dæmon of barbarism in darkening the minds and degrading the nature of its inhabitants, had en

veloped, as it were in a cloud, those cities, those temples, those walls, whose very ruins would rise up in judgment against their degenerate children.

mag

The scenes however which our fathers viewed only in imagination, and enjoyed in remembrance and name, are by the researches of modern travellers, presented to our view in a more substantial form. Athens is no longer now an Utopia in our fancy, but in actual existence before our eyes; we are familiarized to the columns of the Parthenon and to the heights of the Acropolis; we form no longer a fanciful but a correct idea of the glories of ancient Greece; we compare her past with her present state; we compute her former grandeur not by our general notions of nificence, but by those remains, which are now in so many volumes presented to our eye. The features of the country, the outlines of the coast, the form of the mountains begin to be impressed upon our minds; our enjoyment therefore of every department of Greek literature is proportionably encreased by the reality of place with which it is now accompanied. To many able tourists we are indebted for this material addition to the pleasure and to the interest which we receive in our researches into the history, the language, and the philosophy of the Greeks, but to none more than to the author of the volumes now before us; which present us in the most pleasing form with all that local information, of which our modern scholars stood so much in need.

The volumes commence with the departure of Mr. Hobhouse from Malta, from whence he sailed by Ithaca, and the heights of Leucadia, not many weeks before the kingdom of Ulysses was surrendered by the French into the hands of a serjeant and seven men. The necessary preparations for travelling in Turkey are detailed with an accuracy which will be most valuable to any future travellers.

The first principal town, at which Mr. Hobhouse and his friend arrived, was Ioannina, where he paid a visit to the grandson of the famous Ali Pasha, the eldest, not more than ten years old, is represented as receiving his guests with a polite unembarrassed air, offering them refreshments, and doing the honours of the place with as much gravity as the most antiquated courtier. He reproved a brother of about seven years old in their presence, for skipping about in the company of strangers; so early are the young Mahometans inured to the habit of solemnity and command.

Our limits will not permit us to follow our travellers through Albania, we shall only bear our testimony to the entertaining account which Mr. Hobhouse has given us of the scenery, the

manners

manners, the customs, and the government of the country, and to the very interesting relation of his interview with Ali Pasha.

Our travellers mounted the heights of Parnassus, and visited the abode of the Pythia. From thence they proceeded to Thebes, which is shorn indeed of its beams and is now almost lost in dirt and insignificance. On Christmas-day, 1809, they entered into the plains of Attica, and were refreshed, after the dreary and uncultivated regions which they had traversed, with the long-extended olive-groves of this favoured country, which even amid the surrounding barbarism, still appears to retain some remnants of its former civilization. Mr. Hobhouse has presented us with an animated, yet a most accurate description of all the remaining glories of this illustrious city. The temple of Theseus, the Acropolis, the Areopagus, rise before our view: the Odeum, the Museum, the temple of Hadrian, the stupendous columns of which are an object of admiration even to the Turks themselves, parties of whom often seat themselves under the shadow of the columns, and gaze upon them with reverence.

From the description of the Parthenon, we shall extract the following passage for the gratification of our readers.

"The Parthenon stood on the highest flat area of the hill of the Acropolis; and, when the temples on every side of it were standing, whose ruins now serve as foundations for the modern buildings, this magnificent structure appeared to crown a glittering assemblage of marble edifices; and the eye of the Athenian, surveying from below the fair gradation of successive wonders, rested at last upon the colossal image of his goddess, rising majestic from the summit of her own temple, the genius of the Acropolis, the tutelary deity of Athens and of Greece.

"The ascent to the citadel itself was by a long flight of steps, beginning nearly from the Areopagus. The very walls of the fortifications were crowned with an ornamental entablature, parts of which still remain; and these, and every other structure, were of the purest Pentelic marble. No wonder then that the Acropolis, in its whole circuit, was regarded as one vast offering consecrated to the Divinity. The portion of the Parthenon yet standing cannot fail to fill the mind of the most indifferent spectator with sentiments of astonishment and awe, and the same reflections arise upon the sight even of the enormous masses of marble ruins which are spread upon the area of the Temple. Such scattered fragments will soon constitute the sole remains of the Temple of Minerva.

"If the progress of decay should continue to be as rapid as it has been for something more than a century past, there will, in a few years, be not one marble standing upon another on the site of the Parthenon. In 1667, every antiquity of which there is now any trace in the Acropolis, was in a tolerable state of preservation. This great Temple might, at that period, be called entire :-having

been

been previously a Christian church, it was then a mosck, the most beautiful in the world. At present, only twenty-nine of the Doric columns, some of which no longer support their entablatures, and part of the left wall of the cell, remain standing. Those of the north side, the angular ones excepted, have all fallen: the dipteral porches, especially the Pronaos, contain the greatest number, and these retain their entablatures and pedinients, though much injured. "In the interval between two of my visits to the Acropolis, a large piece of the architrave belonging to the exterior colonnade of the Pronaos fell down; all the sculptures from the tympanum of this porch have been destroyed; and the trunks and broken arms of two figures, incorrectly supposed Hadrian and Sabina, or two deities with the heads of those persons, are all now remaining of the grand piece of sculpture which represented the birth of Minerva, and Jupiter in the midst of the assembled gods. The figure of the Victory, which was on the right of Jupiter, has been recovered by Lord Elgin's agents, who demolished a Turkish house close to the north-west angle of the Temple, for the purposes of excavation, and found it, as well as small parts of the Jupiter, the Vulcan, and the Minerva, underneath the modern building, where they had lain since the Venetians had unsuccessfully attempted to remove them in 1687,

"Many of the sculptures on the ninety-two metopes of the peri, style, representing the battle of the Lapitha and the Centaurs, particularly those on the entablature of the south side, were almost entire in 1767. I believe there is not one now remaining: the last were taken down by Lord Elgin.

"All that was left of the sculpture on the eastern porch, the contest between Minerva and Neptune, has been carried off by the same person. The marks of the separation are still very apparent. Ignorant of the cause, I pointed them out to Mr. Lusieri himself, who informed me of the fact, and showed the places in the pediment whence the two female colossal statues, the Neptune, the Theseus, and the inimitable horse's head, still remembered and regretted by all at Athens, had been removed. Such of the statues as had before fallen, had been ground to powder by the Turks. It is but fair to mention this fact, at the same time that the other circumstance is recorded.

of

"One hundred and seventy of the six hundred feet of bas-relief sculpture on the frize of the cell, representing the Panathenæan procession, remained entire in the time of Chandler. A portion of it, containing seven figures, was taken down from its situation by M. de Choiseul Gouffier, and is now in the Napoleon museum. I know not whether the collection of our ambassador contains any this precious sculpture, too exquisite not to have been executed according to the design, and under the superintendance, of Phidias himself. Most part of that portion of it on the wall of the Pronaos, yet remains; and by means of a ruined staircase, once belonging to a minaret built against one of the columns of that portico, I

managed

managed to get on the top of the colonnade, and by leaning at full length over the architrave, had a sufficiently close inspection of the work to be convinced, that this sculpture, though meant to be viewed at a distance of forty feet at least from below, is as accurately and minutely executed, as if it had been originally designed to be placed near the eye of the spectator. Some equestrian figures are remarkably entire, and retain to this day the animation and freshness with which they issued from the hands of the artist.

"Within the cell of the Temple all is desolation and ruin; the shafts of columns, fragments of the entablatures, and of the beams of the roof, are scattered about on every side, but especially on the north of the area, where there are vast piles of marble. I measured one piece, seventeen feet in length, and of proportionate breadth and thickness. The floor, also of marble, has been broken up towards the eastern front, and in the south-east angle of the area, is the wretched mosck, as well as some stone-work of the Greek church, into which the Parthenon was formerly converted. A dent in the floor is pointed out as having been occasioned by the shell which blew up a powder-magazine, and destroyed the roof of the Temple, when bombarded by Morosini.

"Besides the vast magnitude of the marbles composing the Parthenon, which, perhaps, is more easily remarked in the fallen ruins than in the parts of the building yet standing, there is another just cause for admiration, in the exquisite care and skill with which every portion of the architecture appears to have been wrought. The work on the Ovollos and Cavettos is as highly finished in the fragments of the enormous cornices, formerly placed at a vast height from the ground, as the minute parts in the lower portion of the building. The same uninterrupted perfection is observable in the fluttings of the shafts, in all the mouldings of the capitals, and particularly in the tambours of the fallen columns, the surfaces of which are smoothed to such a degree of exactness and nicety, as to render the junctures of the blocks almost undiscoverable." P. 338.

The removal of so many splendid remains of Athenian antiquity by Lord Elgin to England, is discussed by Mr. Hobhouse with much fairness and candour; the arguments on both sides the question are dispassionately stated, the result of which appears to be, that Lord Elgin has only anticipated those ravages, which time and barbarism were now so rapidly making, and that even in the eyes of the next generation his Lordship will stand acquitted.

Throughout the olive yards and gardens which are now watered by the Cephisus are still to be seen remains of sepulchral stelæ, shafts of columns, and other remains of classical magnificence. On the site of the Colonus a Greek chapel is erected, the groves of the Academe are still in existence; but of the gar

dens