LXXXVIII. Where'er we tread, 't is haunted, holy ground, No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould, But one vast realm of wonder spreads around, And all the Muse's tales seem truly told, Till the sense aches with gazing to behold The scenes our earliest dreams have dwelt upon: Each hill and dale, each deepening glen and wold, Defies the power which crush'd thy temples gone: Age shakes Athena's tower, but spares grey Marathon. LXXXIX. The sun, the soil, but not the slave, the same; The camp, the host, the fight, the conqueror's career, The flying Mede, his shaftless broken bow; The fiery Greek, his red pursuing spear; Mountains above, Earth's, Ocean's plain below; Death in the front, Destruction in the rear! Such was the scene-what now remaineth here? What sacred trophy marks the hallow'd ground, Recording Freedom's smile and Asia's tear? The rifled urn, the violated mound, [around. The dust thy courser's hoof, rude stranger! spurns XCI. Yet to the remnants of thy splendour past The parted bosom clings to wonted home, resistance. Colonna is no less a resort of painters than of pirates; there "The hireling artist plants his paltry desk. And makes degraded Nature picturesque,” (see Hodgson's Lady Jane Grey, etc.) But there Nature, with the aid of Art, has one that for herself. I was fortunate enough to engage a very superior German artist; and hope to renew my acquaintance with this and many other Levantine scenes, by the arrival of his perfomances. But he whom Sadness sootheth may abide, And scarce regret the region of his birth, When wandering slow by Delphi's sacred side, Or gazing o'er the plains where Greek and Persian died. XCIII. Let such approach this consecrated land, And pass in peace along the magic waste; But spare its relics-let no busy hand Deface the scenes, already how defaced! Not for such purpose were these altars placed : Revere the remnants nations once revered : So may our country's name be undisgraced, So mayst thou prosper where thy youth was rear'd, By every honest joy of love and life endear'd! XCIV. For thee, who thus in too-protracted song Thou too art gone, thou loved and lovely one! see Would they had never been, or were to come! Would he had ne'er return'd to find fresh cause to roam! XCVI. Oh! ever loving, lovely, and beloved! How selfish Sorrow ponders on the past, And clings to thoughts now better far removed! But Time shall tear thy shadow from me last. All thou couldst have of mine, stern Death! thou hast; [friend : The parent, friend, and now the more than Ne'er yet for one thine arrows flew so fast, And grief with grief continuing still to blend, Hath snatch'd the little joy that life had yet to lend. (1) "Siste, viator-heroa calcas!" was the epitaph on the famous Count Merci;—what then must be our feelings when standing on the tumulus of the two hundred (Greeks) who fell on Marathon? The principal barrow has recently been opened by Fauvel: few or no relics, as vases, etc. were found by the excavator. The plain of Marathon was offered to me for sale at the sum of sixteen thousand piastres, about nine hundred pounds! Alas!-"Expende invenies!" Was the dust of quot livras in duce summo Miltiades worth no more? It could scarcely have fetched less if sold by weight. XCVII. Then must I plunge again into the crowd, And follow all that Peace disdains to seek? Where Revel calls, and Laughter, vainly loud, False to the heart, distorts the hollow cheek, To leave the flagging spirit doubly weak; Still o'er the features, which perforce they cheer, To feign the pleasure or conceal the pique; Smiles form the channel of a future tear, Or raise the writhing lip with ill-dissembled sneer. XCVIII. What is the worst of woes that wait on age? What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow? To view each loved one blotted from life's page, And be alone on earth, as I am now. (1) Before the Chastener humbly let me bow, O'er hearts divided and o'er hopes destroy'd: Roll on, vain days! full reckless may ye flow, Since Time hath reft whate'er my soul enjoy'd, And with the ills of Eld mine earlier years alloy'd. APPENDIX. CANTO II. NOTE [A.] See p. 94. Too rive what Goth, and Turk, and Time hath spared." AT this moment (January 3, 1810), besides what has been already deposited in London, an Hydriot vessel is in the Pyræus to receive every portable relic. Thus, as I heard a young Greek observe, in common with many of his countrymen-for, lost as they are, they yet feel on this occasion-thus may Lord Elgin boast of having ruined Athens. An Italian painter of the first eminence, named Lusieri, is the agent of devastation; and, like the Greek finder of Verres in Sicily who followed the same profession, he has proved the able instrument of plunder. Between this artist and the French Consul Fauvel, who wishes to rescue the remains for his own government, there is now a violent dispute concerning a car employed in their conveyance, the wheel of which-I wish they were both broken upon it!—has been locked up by the Consul, and Lusieri has laid his complaint before the Waywode. Lord Elgin has been extremely happy in his choice of Signor Lusieri. During a residence of ten years in Athens, he never had the curiosity to proceed as far as Sunium (now Cape Colonna), till he accompanied us in our second excursion. However, his works, as far as they go, are most beautiful but they are almost all unfinished. While he and his patrons confine themselves to tasting medals, appreciating cameos, sketching columns, and cheapening gems, their little absurdities are as harmless as insect or fox-hunting, maiden-speechifying, barouche-driving, or any such pastime; but when they carry away three or four shiploads of the most valuable and massy relics that time and barbarism have left to the most injured and most celebrated of cities; when they destroy, in a vain attempt to tear down, those works which have been the admiration of ages, I know no motive which can excuse, no name which can designate, the perpetrators of this dastardly devastation. It was not the least of the crimes laid to the charge of Verres, that he had plundered Sicily in the manner since imitated at Athens. The most unblushing impudence could hardly go farther than to affix the name of its plunderer to the walls of the Acropolis; while the wanton and useless defacement of the whole range of the basso-relievos, in one compartment of the temple, will never permit that name to be pronounced by an observer without execration. On this occasion I speak impartially: I am not a collector or admirer of collections, consequently no rival; but I have some early prepossessions in favour of Greece, and do not think the honour of England advanced by plunder, whether of India or Attica. Another noble Lord has done better, because he has done less; but some others, more or less noble, yet "all honourable men," have done best, because, after a deal of excavation, and execration, bribery to the Waywode, mining and countermining, they have done nothing at all. We had such ink-shed, and wine-shed, which almost ended in bloodshed! Lord E.'s “ prig"-see Jonathan Wild for the definition of “priggism "—quarrelled with another, Gropius (2) by name (a very good answered Matthias; “he could not otherwise have written such a poem."-E. (1) This stanza was written October 14, 1811; upon which day the poet, in a letter to a friend, says,-"It seems as though I were to experience in my youth the greatest misery of age. My (2) This Sr. Gropius was employed by a noble Lord for the sole friends fall around me, and I shall be left a lonely tree before purpose of sketching, in which he excels; but I am sorry to say, I am withered. Other men can always take refuge in their fa- that he has, through the abused sanction of that most respectable milies: I have no resource but my own reflections, and they pre-name, been treading at humble distance in the steps of Sr. Lusieri. sent no prospect here or hereafter, except the selfish satisfaction -A shipful of his trophies was detained, and I believe confiscated, of surviving my friends. I am indeed very wretched." In reference to this stanza, “Surely,” said Professor Clarke to the author of the Pursuits of Literature, Lord Byron cannot have experienced such keen anguish as these exquisite allusions to what older men may have felt seem to denote."-"I fear he has," at Constantinople, in 1810. I am most happy to be now enabled to state, that "this was not in his bond;" that he was employed solely as a painter, and that his noble patron disavows all connection with him, except as an artist. If the error in the first and second edition of this poem has given the noble Lord a NOTE [B.] See p. 97. "Land of Albania! let me bend mine eyes name, too, for his business) and muttered something to follow as I would to anticipate him. But some about satisfaction, in a verbal answer to a note of few observations are necessary to the text. The the poor Prussian: this was stated at table to Gro- Arnaouts, or Albanese, struck me forcibly by their pius, who laughed, but could eat no dinner after- resemblance to the Highlanders of Scotland, in wards. The rivals were not reconciled when I left dress, figure, and manner of living. Their very Greece. I have reason to remember their squabble, mountains seemed Caledonian, with a kinder clifor they wanted to make me their arbitrator. mate. The kilt, though white; the spare active form; their dialect, Celtic in its sound; and their hardy habits, all carried me back to Morven. No nation are so detested and dreaded by their neighbours as the Albanese; the Grecks hardly regard them as Christians, or the Turks as Moslems; and in fact they are a mixture of both, and sometimes neither. Their habits are predatory-all are armed; and the red-shawled Arnaouts, the Montenegrins, Chimariots, and Gegdes, are treacherous; the others differ somewhat in garb, and essentially in character. As far as my own experience goes, I can speak favourably. I was attended by two, an Infidel and a Mussulman, to Constantinople and every other part of Turkey which came within my observation; and more faithful in peril, or indefatigable in service, are rarely to be found. The Infidel was named Basilius; the Moslem, Dervish Tahiri ; the former a man of middle age, and the latter about my own. Albania comprises part of Macedonia, Illyria, Chaonia, and Epirus. Iskander is the Turkish word for Alexander; and the celebrated Scanderbeg Lord Alexander) is alluded to in the third and fourth lines of the thirty-eighth stanza. I do not know whether I am correct in making Scanderbeg the countryman of Alexander, who was born at Fella in Macedon, but Mr. Gibbon terms him so, and adds Pyrrhus to the list, in speaking of his exploits. to attend us; and Dervish was one of fifty who accompanied us through the forests of Acarnania to the banks of Achelous, and onward to Missolonghi in Ætolia. There I took him into my own service, and never had occasion to repent it till the moment of my departure. Of Albania Gibbon remarks, that a country within sight of Italy is less known than the interior of America." Circumstances, of little conse-Basili was strictly charged, by Ali Pacha in person, quence to mention, led Mr. Hobhouse and myself into that country before we visited any other part of the Ottoman dominions; and, with the exception of Major Leake, then officially resident at Joannina, no other Englishmen have ever advanced beyond the capital into the interior, as that gentleman very lately assured me. Ali Pacha was at that time (Oc- When, in 1810, after the departure of my friend ther, 1809) carrying on war against Ibrahim Pacha, Mr. Hobhouse for England, I was seized with a whom he had driven to Berat, a strong fortress, severe fever in the Morea, these men saved my life which he was then besieging: on our arrival at by frightening away my physician, whose throat Joannina we were invited to Tepaleni, his high- they threatened to cut if I was not cured within a ness's birthplace, and favourite Serai, only one given time. To this consolatory assurance of postday's distance from Berat; at this juncture the Vi-humous retribution, and a resolute refusal of Dr. zier had made it his head-quarters. After some Romanelli's prescriptions, I attributed my recovery. stay in the capital, we accordingly followed; but, I had left my last remaining English servant at though furnished with every accommodation, and Athens; my dragoman was as ill as myself; and my escorted by one of the Vizier's secretaries, we were poor Arnaouts nursed me with an attention which nine days (on account of the rains) in accomplishing would have done honour to civilisation. They had a journey which, on our return, barely occupied a variety of adventures; for the Moslem, Dervish, four. On our route we passed two cities, Argyro- being a remarkably handsome man, was always castro and Libochabo, apparently little inferior to squabbling with the husbands of Athens; insomuch Yanina in size; and no pencil or pen can ever do that four of the principal Turks paid me a visit of justice to the scenery in the vicinity of Zitza and remonstrance at the convent, on the subject of Delvinachi, the frontier village of Epirus and Alba- his having taken a woman from the bath-whom he nia Proper. had lawfully bought, however—a thing quite contrary to etiquette. Basili also was extremely gallant amongst his own persuasion, and had the greatest veneration for the church, mixed with the highest contempt of churchmen, whom he cuffed one of the first to be undeceived. Indeed, I have as much pleasure in contradicting this as I felt regret in stating it.-Note to third edition. On Albania and its inhabitants I am unwilling to descant, because this will be done so much better by my fellow-traveller, in a work which may probably precede this in publication, that I as little wish moment's pain, I am very sorry for it: Sr. Gropius has assumed for tears the name of his agent; and, though I cannot much condemn myself for sharing in the mistake of so many, I am happy in being upon occasion in a most heterodox manner. Yet "I have been a robber; I am a soldier; no captain he never passed a church without crossing himself; ever struck me; you are my master, I have eaten and I remember the risk he ran in entering St. your bread, but, by that bread! (a usual oath) had Sophia, in Stambol, because it had once been a it been otherwise, I would have stabbed the dog place of his worship. On remonstrating with him your servant, and gone to the mountains." So the on his inconsistent proceedings, he invariably affair ended, but from that day forward he never answered, "Our church is holy, our priests are thoroughly forgave the thoughtless fellow who inthieves ;" and then he crossed himself as usual, and sulted him. Dervish excelled in the dance of his boxed the ears of the first "papas" who refused to country, conjectured to be a remnant of the ancient assist in any required operation, as was always Pyrrhic: be that as it may, it is manly, and requires found to be necessary where a priest had any influ- wonderful agility. It is very distinct from the ence with the Cogia Bashi of his village. Indeed, a stupid Romaika, the dull round-about of the Greeks, more abandoned race of miscreants cannot exist of which our Athenian party had so many specithan the lower orders of the Greek clergy. When preparations were made for my return, my Albanians were summoned to receive their pay. Basili took his with an awkward show of regret at my intended departure, and marched away to his quarters with his bag of piastres. I sent for Dervish, but for some time he was not to be found; at last he entered, just as Signor Logotheti, father to the ci-devant Anglo-consul of Athens, and some other of my Greek acquaintances, paid me a visit. Dervish took the money, but on a sudden dashed it to the ground; and clasping his hands, which he raised to his forehead, rushed out of the room, weeping bitterly. From that moment to the hour of my embarkation, he continued his lamentations; and all our efforts to console him only produced this answer, M'ște," "He leaves me." Signor Logotheti, who never wept before for any thing less than the loss of a para (about the fourth of a farthing), melted; the padre of the convent, my attendants, my visitors-and I verily believe that even Sterne's "foolish fat scullion" would have left her "fish-kettle," to sympathise with the unaffected and unexpected sorrow of this barbarian. For my own part, when I remembered that, a short time before my departure from England, a noble and most intimate associate had excused himself from taking leave of me because he had to attend a relation "to a milliner's," I felt no less surprised than humiliated by the present occurrence and the past recollection. That Dervish would leave me with some regret was to be expected when master and man have been scrambling over the mountains of a dozen provinces together, they are unwilling to separate; but his present feelings, contrasted with his native ferocity, improved my opinion of the human heart. I believe this almost feudal fidelity is frequent amongst them. One day, on our journey over Parnassus, an Englishman in my service gave him a push in some dispute about the baggage, which he unluckily mistook for a blow; he spoke not, but sat down leaning his head upon his hands. Foreseeing the consequences, we endeavoured to explain away the affront, which produced the following answer: — mens. The Albanians in general (I do not mean the cultivators of the earth in the provinces, who have also that appellation, but the mountaineers) have a fine cast of countenance; and the most beautiful wo- { men I ever beheld, in stature and in features, we saw levelling the road, broken down by the torrents, between Delvinachi and Liboahabo. Their manner of walking is truly theatrical; but this strut is pro- | bably the effect of the capote, or cloak depending from one shoulder. Their long hair reminds you of the Spartans, and their courage in desultory warfare is unquestionable. Though they have some cavalry amongst the Gegdes, I never saw a good Arnaout horseman; my own preferred the English saddles, which, however, they could never keep. But on foot they are not to be subdued by fatigue. The last stanza would puzzle a commentator: the men have certainly buskins of the most beautiful texture, but the ladies (to whom the above is supposed to be addressed) have nothing under their little yellow boots and slippers but a well-turned and sometimes very white ankle. The Arnaout girls are much handsomer than the Greeks, and their dress is far more picturesque. They preserve their shape much longer also, from being always in the open air. It is to be observed, that the Arnaout is not a written language: the words of this song, therefore, as well as the one which follows, are spell according to their pronunciation. They are copied by one who speaks and understands the dialect perfectly, and who is a native of Athens. Before I say any thing about a city of which every body, traveller or not, has thought it necessary to say something, I will request Miss Owenson, when she next borrows an Athenian heroine for her four volumes, to have the goodness to marry her to somebody more of a gentleman than a "Disdar Aga" (who by the by is not an Aga), the most impolite of petty officers, the greatest patron of larceny Athens ever saw (except Lord E.), and the unworthy occupant of the Acropolis, on a handsome annual stipend of 150 piastres (eight pounds sterling), out of which he has only to pay his garrison, the most ill-regulated corps in the ill-regulated Ottoman Empire. I speak it tenderly, seeing I was once the cause of the husband of "Ida of Athens" nearly suffering the bastinado; and because the said "Disdar" is a turbulent husband, and beats his wife; so that I exhort and beseech Miss Owenson to sue for a separate maintenance in behalf of "Ida." Having premised thus much, on a matter of such import to the readers of romances, I may now leave Ida, to mention her birthplace. Setting aside the magic of the name, and all those associations which it would be pedantic and superfluous to recapitulate, the very situation of Athens would render it the favourite of all who have eyes for art or nature. The climate, to me at least, appeared a perpetual spring; during eight months I never passed a day without being as many hours on horseback rain is extremely rare, snow never lies : |