LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 University of California. 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
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 Class 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 A SAIL IN THE GREEK SEAS, 
 SUMMER OF 1877. 
 
 JAMES ALBERT HARRISON. 
 
 " The swallow brings us news 
 'Tis time to sell the winter cloak, and buy the summer blouse." 
 
 Aristoph. Birds, 714. Jebb. 
 "The sundry contemplation of my travels, which, by often rumination, 
 wraps me in a most humorous sadness." Shakspere. 
 
 ( 
 
 or THE 
 
 t/N/VERSr, 
 
 r OF 
 
 BOSTON : 
 HOUGHTON, OSGOOD AND COMPANY. 
 
 1878. 
 
D^^, 
 
 
 
 V^ 
 
 ^n 
 
 Copyright, 1878, 
 By JAMES A. HARRISON. 
 
 RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: 
 
 STEREOTYPED A N D P R I N T E D B Y * 
 
 H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. 
 
To 
 S. A. H. AND L. N. B. 
 
 183666 
 
NOTE. 
 
 
 
 This little book is a record of a few weeks' 
 travel in Greece last summer. It does not make 
 the least claim to thoroughness ; no deep ques- 
 tions of archaeology are discussed ; only the vivid 
 impressions of the moment ^are given; and the 
 task of discussing the moral and political regen- 
 eration of the modern Greeks is left to more 
 elaborate investigators. The journey was a de- 
 lightful succession of pictorial surprises ; the land- 
 scape and the externalities of Greece could alone 
 be noted, and there was no time for discussing 
 Greek parliamentary reform, the subtler aspects 
 of Greek character, or the inner and profounder 
 life of this interesting people. The indulgence 
 of the kindly reader is therefore asked for the 
 many (doubtless) hasty judgments of these pages, 
 the sudden transitions from subject to subject, 
 the use of the present tense, and the constant 
 recurrence of /. A book written in the fields, 
 hotels, and ships, on one's knees, or sauntering 
 
vi NOTE. 
 
 through olive groves with the thermometer ioo 
 Fahrenheit, must be guilty of all these ; so slight 
 and perishable a thread of oriental travel hardly 
 deserves the memorializing help of print at all. 
 The author, however, with due apologies, brings 
 it before the public with the hope that it may at- 
 tract more attention to a field still little explored 
 by tourists. 
 
 J. A. H. 
 Lexington, Va. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Through the Ionian i 
 
 II. Summer Days in Athens .... 77 
 
 III. Attic Experiences 146 
 
 IV. Glimpses of Old and New Athens . 171 
 V. Odds and Ends of Greek Life . . . 206 
 
 VI. Through the Islands of the Blest . 245 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 I. 
 
 We left Milan at i.io p. m. for Venice, by the 
 express, and rode through blinding dust till a deli- 
 cious thunder-storm broke upon us, and we arrived 
 in Venice amid grand lightning and deafening 
 thunder. We got a charming glimpse of Verona, 
 Padua, and Lago di Garda as we passed. Mount- 
 ains on the Swiss and Austrian side and endless 
 fields and vineyards on the other ; crowds of peo- 
 ple coming and going all the time. There was one 
 poor German girl in distress : she seemed to have 
 difficulty in understanding or being understood. 
 We reached Venice at 7.45 a. m., covered with dust 
 and fatigue, took a gondola, and were wafted (there 
 is no other way to express the delightful motion) 
 to the Hotel Victoria, wherawe flew into the arms 
 (figuratively) of several waiters, all affectionately 
 marshaled on the marble steps to receive us. 
 Then we were 'taken up to the oddest sort of a 
 room with double doors and windows that looked 
 
2 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 nowhere, alcoves that concealed nothing, a floor 
 tessellated in a sort of composition looking like 
 Castile soap, and a pudgy bed hung with muslin 
 to keep out mosquitoes. Despite this chamber 
 of horrors, however, we had a delightful dinner 
 and refreshing night's rest and then got up and 
 rambled over our old haunts again, the Piazza, 
 San Marco, the Doge's Palace, the Piazzetta, etc. 
 All seemed so fresh and familiar, so old and 
 strange. A pale gray day : towards evening we 
 witnessed a magnificent sunset from the cam- 
 panile of San Marco's, gold and pink. There 
 was a band of music playing in the square, and 
 an innumerable multitude of promenaders, while 
 the full moon rose in dazzling mellowness and 
 glorified the scene. To-day was indescribably 
 beautiful ; full of golden sunshine as a rose is of 
 bloom or a bright eye with tears. I took a gon- 
 dola and was rowed up the Grand Canal, out into 
 the lagoon, over to Murano, and back by Mala- 
 mocco (where there is splendid surf-bathing) and 
 the Armenian convent. What a lovely place this 
 is ! With a garden full of blooming oleander and 
 magnolia, a series of exquisite landscapes break- 
 ing in on you through every window, and an inef- 
 fable tranquillity. (Plague take these Ac qua ! ac- 
 quafresca! criers, who disturb one's meditations at 
 every moment !) Except Tasso's Garden, I have 
 never seen so lovely a spot. We saw letters there 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 3 
 
 from Longfellow and Bryant and a host of celeb- 
 rities, after which we went through the library and 
 church and got a glimpse of the precious illumi- 
 nated breviaries and MSS. We were shown 
 Lord Byron's autograph and inkstand, then 
 through picture-galleries, museum, printing room, 
 and refectory. The garden was in infinite bloom, 
 incomparable geraniums making great spots of 
 Tizianesque color, tall cypresses casting ebon 
 shadows, sweetness and peace diffused over the 
 whole place, and such a gentle-faced, gentle-man- 
 nered padre for a guide. It 's true his French 
 was n't good, but I have seldom seen a sweeter 
 face. Anda in pace. 
 
 We got back to the Victoria thoroughly wearied, 
 and are now about to start for Trieste (i 1.30 p. m.), 
 where I hope to arrive to-morrow. Buona Notte ! 
 
 We arrived at Ancona, on the Italian coast, at 
 6, after a most beautiful sail down the Adriatic 
 from Trieste, which we left yesterday afternoon 
 at 4. We are in a Lloyd's coasting steamer 
 going from Trieste to Smyrna, and touching at 
 Ancona, Brindisi, Corfu, Cephalonia, Zante, Cer- 
 igo, and Syra (all but the last Ionian Islands), 
 a trip which I have long desired to make. The 
 steamer is a charming little screw, the Oresfe, 
 with cool, well-ventilated cabin, and one of the 
 tidiest state-rooms I ever had, curtained, with two 
 port-holes whence brilliant views may be caught 
 
4 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 to seaward as through the end of a telescope ; 
 heavy plate-glass mirror and luxurious lounge, 
 withal high-ceilinged, and scrupulously clean. 
 The view the whole afternoon after we had 
 turned our backs on Trieste was indescribable. 
 The wind blew gently and freshly right behind 
 us, just curling the waves till they laughed and 
 lapsed over into sparkling white caps, while the 
 grand Austrian Alps hung over the northwestern 
 shore as if to take a last look at us. They were 
 snow-capped in places. Imagine their exquisite 
 beauty veiled by this wonderful azure air and 
 glimmering blue-white through the film of trans- 
 parent atmosphere between. The head of the 
 Adriatic with Trieste as a brooch is a vast am- 
 phitheatre of semi-encircling mountains, a scene 
 and centre of unrivaled fertility. From Navre- 
 sina, where we changed coming from Venice to 
 Trieste it is more than a garden. The mount- 
 ains of Udine are great belts of luxurious vege- 
 tation. The vine creeps all over their sides ; the 
 fig grows wild, apparently ; an infinite garden fol- 
 lows the railway ; delicious glimpses of the Adri- 
 atic peep in through the great rents in the blasted 
 rock ; the road is high up on the mountain side, 
 and deep below the sea is rimmed and embroi- 
 dered with bright flower-inclosed villas, where the 
 Austrian and Italian nobility go into villeggia- 
 tura in the summer. What an eye for the pict- 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES, 5 
 
 uresque these strange, matter-of-fact railway peo- 
 ple seem to have ! Or is engineering an imagin- 
 ative science ? They select their sites as care- 
 fully as a poet would the subject for an epic 
 poem. This run from Cormous to Trieste is 
 truly epic. We could see Miramar far beneath 
 on a promontory, Miramar of tender and pa- 
 thetic memor}^ It is a white, gleaming villa- 
 castle, laved by the Adriatic and imbedded in 
 trees and flowers. I did not have time to go up 
 and visit it. We passed a restless night coming 
 from Venice, starting up in tremulous excite- 
 ment every half hour from brief snatches of sleep, 
 to see whether we had reached the place for 
 changing trains, and then having intervals of 
 intense sleep in between, for we were fagged and 
 satiated with the desert-like scenery of Venice. 
 Every now and then during the night I would 
 break out into floods of inspired Italian, inspired 
 or injected into me through horror of getting out 
 at the wrong place. It 's amazing what feats of 
 memory one will perform in need. I quite as- 
 tonished my batteliere in Venice, after his long 
 spasms of excruciating French, by unexpectedly 
 breaking out into fluent Italian. " Signore com- 
 prende Italiano bene,'' cried he, quite offended, 
 as if I had been taking an unbecoming advantage 
 of him. His indignation was flattering. Where 
 the Italian came from I do not know ; but I found 
 
6 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 myself chattering away as we gondolaed about 
 among the lovely isles and lagoons, now shooting 
 out into broad sheets of trembling green sunlight, 
 now floating into the shadow of ancient walls and 
 gardens on some remote isola^ where the per- 
 fumes of oleanders were wafted to us over the 
 convent walls, or a deep-toned bell came vibrat- 
 ing with strange sweetness over the water. What 
 a luminous, languid day it was, with its evening 
 wing sprinkled with iridescent light, like a pea* 
 cock's ; far-off mountains of Padova and Udine 
 standing in breathless calms and windless sea, 
 momentarily expecting to be doubled by a mi- 
 rage ; the mighty roll of the surf on the long shore 
 of Malamocco ; the cries of the mad people as we 
 passed the immense Spitale dei Pazzi, and Venice 
 lying along the distance with innumerable towers 
 and palaces, all enchanted into sudden brilliance. 
 But, best of all, dear old San Lazaro took my 
 fancy, a convent where the twenty religieux 
 who now dwell there must pass a heaven of 
 peace and sunnyness and gentle calm. The 
 crimson of its oleanders and the whiteness of its 
 blossoming magnolias, the blaze of its geraniums 
 and the slender shafts of its cypresses, the vine- 
 trellised pillars and long succession of cool clois- 
 ters, are now before me. I could not keep my 
 eyes off the marvelous views from the windows. 
 Picture-galleries, curiosities, scientific cabinet, 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. / 
 
 the noble library of thirty thousand volumes in 
 vellum, all were as nothing to this splendor and 
 shock and surprise of ever succeeding beauty. 
 "What a beautiful view you have here," said 
 I to the guide in French, when we came into 
 the ornithological department, where numbers of 
 bright-plumed birds and butterflies looked out 
 from their glass cases on us, and the ceiling was 
 one sheet of sunny painting. " Bellisima ! " said 
 the gentle padre, forgetting his French and gaz- 
 ing wistfully out on the magnificent landscape 
 stretched in blue and gold before us. There 
 were Armenian inscriptions everywhere ; one over 
 the refectory door that he interpreted for me : 
 " Silence." He showed me pictures of their 
 gorgeous canonical robes, a volume of Arme- 
 nian liturgies printed in thirty different lan- 
 guages, photographs of George Lord Byron (one 
 of which we purchased), pictures of the convent 
 garden (a blessed spot of sunshine and blossom- 
 ing sweetness), memories of the convent in many 
 a widely-separated speech, Turkish proverbs 
 translated into English, ancient illuminated MSS., 
 etc. I was loath to leave. What a strange con- 
 trast between this poetic quietude and fullness 
 of refinement and the wild cries of the madmen 
 as we passed their asylum quite near ! Such con- 
 trasts are found everywhere in life. 
 
 I did not at first understand my gondoliere, 
 
8 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 and thought the He des Fous was a hospital and 
 they were having a sort of Hospital Sunday, 
 there seemed such a wild gayety in their cries. 
 The whole immense establishment seemed vocal 
 with noises, singing, shouting, quick talk, and in- 
 distinguishable murmurs. There is a sparkle in 
 these poor Italian people that not even madness 
 can quench. What uncanny vivacity they have, 
 how their eyes flash at nothing, those crystal- 
 line lenses of fire and dew ; how they gesticulate 
 and intone in their melodious language ! We 
 found the cries of the boatmen of Venice very 
 interesting. They have a peculiar warning cry 
 when they are turning a corner, and even carry 
 on animated dialogues as they pass one another, 
 having a laugh or a jest for everybody, the 
 straw-hatted, blue-ribboned, bright-sashed ras- 
 cals ! I am told they are a most honorable class. 
 A class of superannuated gondolier! eke out a 
 miserable life by hauling in the gondolas that 
 land at different places and making them secure. 
 I thought they were impertinent lazzaroni and 
 generally turned away impatiently till I heard 
 their sad story. Many of them wear a caftan. 
 In Venice the flower-girls will put a bouquet into 
 your button-hole, so you had just as well submit; 
 and the caramelle sellers with their basket of dain- 
 ties, their cherries, or little sharp sticks, dipped in 
 syrup, etc., are a constant annoyance. And the 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 9 
 
 women in men's hats carrying huge copper buck- 
 ets of water from the fountains in the Doge's 
 Palace ! And these fountains, themselves of the 
 sixteenth century, with beautifully moulded bas- 
 reliefs in copper, too ! And the pigeons in 
 legions that haunt the square and light all over 
 you if you throw them anything. What a fan- 
 tastic place is Venice ! 
 
 Well, the whole evening after we left Trieste 
 was one of singular loveliness. The steamer was 
 not fast and we had time to take in the varied 
 sea and landscapes that passed panoramically 
 before us. On one side, the dim Euganean Hills 
 overhung by the dazzling apparition of the Aus- 
 trian Alps, for they were as faint as an appari- 
 tion ; on the other, the picturesquely indented 
 shore of Istria, dotted with villages and cam- 
 paniles, curving harbors and long lines of white 
 hamlets stretching along it. The Adriatic was 
 alive with fishers and their boats ; some with 
 bright yellow sails, others with brilliant red, 
 others with red and yellow stripes, and still others 
 painted, some with crosses and globes, others with 
 regular pictures. Many of them were leg-of-mut- 
 ton rigged schooners. They looked like bright 
 birds skimming over the clear green water, part- 
 ing it into a long white moustache of brilliant 
 foam, and speeding it like Homer's 7rea Trrep- 
 ovra. Trieste harbor was full of them as well 
 
lO GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 as of picturesque costumes, Greek, Turk, Dal- 
 matian, and Albanian peasants, Portuguese, ne- 
 groes, and dark-visaged, wide-trousered mariners 
 from all parts. The harbor abounded in ship- 
 ping, too. Trieste is the seat of one branch of 
 the immense Lloyd corporation, and their office 
 there is a palace in its, proportions. We passed 
 one light-house and castle after another ; one 
 arrowy campanile and church-spire after another ; 
 and the sun set in a sea of gold and lighted up 
 the mighty amphitheatre like the vast candela- 
 brum of some giant opera-house. I remarked 
 the velvety sheen and softness of the sky, an 
 appearance which I had never noticed before. 
 It was like the thickest, softest quilted silk. 
 With us and in our metallically white light there 
 is no such radiance of softness ; no such color as 
 of cream-tinted porcelain. 
 
 Wearied with so much beauty, we went down 
 to our state-room and took a nap, not, however, 
 before we had dined. An odd dinner it was, too ! 
 It consisted of five or six courses, all more or 
 less meagre and curious. The first was a mimic 
 mountain of rice permeated with some sort of 
 gravy and moulded artistically on a great platter ; 
 then a course of sardines and olive oil and slices 
 of thin, round sausage ; then roast or fried veal 
 and potatoes ; then cheese and bread.; then wild 
 strawberries with lemon-juice ; then some deli- 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. II 
 
 cious cherries. When I came up on deck again, 
 about 9 o'clock, the full moon was flooding the 
 eastern sea with gold, a long river of rippling 
 illumination more pearly-soft than anything we 
 know in our sharp climate. After enjoying the 
 glorious warm breeze I went below, and, despite 
 nocturnal visitors, slept well. 
 
 The ship, which is a small one, rolled somewhat 
 in the night. The captain fortunately speaks 
 English, which nobody else on board seems to do, 
 but some of the engineers, I am told, speak Ger- 
 man. We arrived here (Ancona) early this morn- 
 ing. Immediately the ship was surrounded by 
 clamorous boatmen, dancing about with astonish- 
 ing volubility, out-doing one another in bids for 
 passengers, of which there were very few. It is 
 truly a " magneefecent " coast, as the captain 
 says with his strong Italian accent. There are 
 two moles which hem in the harbor on each side 
 and create a fine and spacious basin for ships. 
 We are at anchor, and remain here till lo to- 
 night. I shall go ashore presently and make a 
 few explorations. The cathedral is, they say, 
 worth seeing. I hear many bells ringing, as one 
 always does in Italian towns. We even heard the 
 scream of the railway whistle just now. The 
 coast is precipitous and the houses are built 
 one above another. The cathedral stands in the 
 most striking place of all, and there are vari- 
 
12 GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 ous picturesque fortifications crowning different 
 heights. 
 
 The water at Ancona is of the most beauti- 
 ful color, light green in the harbor and dark 
 green in the Adriatic. The line where they join 
 is distinctly seen. Near us is a queer lugger with 
 leg-of-mutton rig, full of fishermen. Her sails 
 are greenish yellow and black. At a distance 
 there are two others with gaudily painted sails 
 flung gayly in the wind. The passenger boats 
 have awnings. What a fresh, vivid breeze comes 
 in from the sea ! No color-box could rival these 
 hues of Italian sea and land. There were some 
 queer-looking steerage passengers on board with 
 green and whitfi sashes, sandals, full breeches, 
 and oriental caps. They slept on a piece of tar- 
 paulin under the open sky all night, I believe. 
 This morning at 6.30 we had cafe noir or cafe au- 
 lait^ as we liked, with bread and crackers. At 1 1 
 there is a dejeiiner a la fourchette. Our awning 
 makes grateful shade, for the sun is exceedingly 
 bright. Everywhere over the water I hear the 
 quick gallop of the Italian tongue. There seems 
 to be no particular sentence-accent to it, no in- 
 flections like the French or English. It is quick, 
 sharp, rolling, and monotonous gobble, gobble, 
 gobble. On our ship we are given four meals a 
 day, matfina, tea or coffee with bread ; colazio?ie 
 (luncheon), eggs, two hot dishes, salami, cheese, 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES, 1 3 
 
 fruit, and bread, cafe noir ; pranzo (dinner at 5), 
 soup, four hot dishes, pie or pudding, fruit and 
 cheese ; sera (supper), tea or coffee, with milk or 
 spirits, bread and butter. Wine is extra. There 
 is change of plates, even if you take a sardine. 
 Olives, pickles, and condiments are used in abun- 
 dance as a sort of alimentary oakum to fill up the 
 chinks. Lemon-juice on the strawberries is deli- 
 cious and gives a peculiar and pleasant piquancy. 
 The Italians, like the Germans, eat with their 
 knives and fingers. Yesterday, in the Hotel de 
 la Ville at Trieste, we were given grated cheese 
 to sprinkle in our soup, and there was (as a rarity) 
 wine at the table d'hote. An ugly, scrofulous- 
 faced Italian, too, ogled and grimaced, as he im- 
 provised and drank healths in champagne to a 
 lady. He had a singularly malign and sinister 
 face, hardly any nose, and a great, wide, flat face 
 and gleaming teeth. He wore a pair of huge eye- 
 glasses and grinned perpetually. The whole menu 
 reeked of grease. 
 
 Trieste is a gay place, so full of sailors and 
 moving population. I noticed countless white 
 steers yoked singly or in twos to wagons. This 
 seems to be a favorite draft animal with the 
 Triestais, The scene in the fish-market was very 
 lively fruits, flowers, fish, and vegetables, all in 
 heterogeneous confusion, everybody shouting and 
 trafficking, the cockers winking at you to take 
 
14 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 their vehicles, the flower-sellers thrusting pinks 
 and violets into your hands, the lazzaroni yawning 
 and begging, the air white with limestone dust, 
 through which the sun beamed, like snow, straw- 
 berries and cherries and oranges in tons, equally 
 attractive to flies, urchins, and market-people. 
 The town-hall and theatre are fine buildings. I 
 no sooner entered the hotel than I was pounced 
 upon by a lantern-jawed commissionnaire who with 
 ready ofliciousness insisted on doing everything 
 for me in a trice, get my ticket, take my name, 
 guide me about, drive me to Miramar, change 
 my money, flood me with miscellaneous informa- 
 tion ; in short, lick my boots and pick my pock- 
 ets, if necessary. A cringing, saucy creature, a 
 sort of ambidexter in humility and insolence. I 
 have an instinctive aversion to such fellows, and 
 they seem to have an instinctive affinity for me. 
 As soon as he found I could speak a little Ger- 
 man and get along very well for myself, that was 
 quite sufficient ; I was dropped like a hot cake, 
 and had no more trouble with ,the fellow. These 
 men are often unprincipled scoundrels. Every- 
 where money is stolen from one when changed 
 by hotel-clerks, stewards, etc. An Englishwoman 
 whom we met in Venice, and who knew them 
 well, said she never saw such people for lying 
 and bribery as the Italians. "If you could only 
 believe one word they say ! '' said she. I had it 
 
^^ ^ GREEK VIGNETTES. 1 5 
 
 exemplified in Trieste, where a lying omnibus- 
 driver came near convincing me that the vessel 
 sailed at 10 and not at 4, when I was rescued 
 from his claws by some of the by-standers. He 
 took the rebuff with the utmost coolness, and 
 said, " Well, the gentleman could deposit his bag- 
 gage at the steamer ! " 
 
 And the insolent head-waiters, camerieri^ som- 
 meliers, and oberkellner one meets in England, 
 France, and Germany ! Creatures in white neck- 
 tie (which ought to be the gallows-string of half 
 of them) and swallow-tail, side-whiskers and hair 
 parted in the middle, " foolish, fat scullions '' as 
 full of puff and self-importance as one of Coins' 
 bags was with wind. I cherish the profoundest 
 horror of these important personages. They 
 meet you at the hotel door and greet you lovingly 
 when you are departing in the hope of a franc or 
 a lira or whatever it is. I never give them any- 
 thing if I can possibly avoid it. But the faithful 
 hausknecht or boots, often with a wife and nu- 
 merous offspring, ought always to be remembered. 
 The steward on the steamship Spain (our Atlan- 
 tic steamer) who performed this office was the 
 most ghastly-looking object from loss of sleep 
 and ill-health I ever saw. He said he made up 
 for it by sleeping on land ! On our present ship 
 there is a framed notice in five languages, Eng- 
 lish, German, French, Italian, and Greek, giving 
 
1 6 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 various notices to the passengers, with a table of 
 wine-tariffs and a table of values for gold coins. 
 The vivacious Greeks will, I suppose, cheat us 
 out of half our remaining possessions through our 
 ignorance of their complicated currency, drachmcB, 
 lepta, oboli, colonnati, tallari, and what not. Span- 
 ish dollars of six drachmae are their favorite coin. 
 Gold coins are scarce in Greece. I believe they 
 even still reckon in Turkish piastres. The So- 
 cratic oboltis, used still in Greece, is an imaginary 
 coin like thQ paolo in Italy, and the shilling with 
 us. Every contract with inn-keepers, muleteers, 
 and boatmen must be made in writing or every- 
 thing will turn out to one's disadvantage. If I 
 escape from them as well as Lord Byron did from 
 Dr. Romaneirs prescriptions I shall be happy. 
 
 The mosquitoes will be annoying, as they were 
 in Venice. What does Baedeker mean by a " sort 
 of gnats with gauze wings ? " ^ And Murray 
 speaks of "gnats," which are entirely different 
 things. One already thirsts for the delicious land 
 scenery of Greece, over which even Murray grows 
 poetic. The habit of making guide-books and 
 binding them in red leather is fatal to the imagi- 
 nation. What imagination can there be in these 
 mechanical manufactures, guide-books, which 
 
 1 Helas ! I bitterly found out what Baedeker meant after 
 a few days in Athens. The Greek K(i>vcj-ip and CKlf are not 
 agreeable acquaintances. 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. I J 
 
 some enterprising firm engages a Peregrine Pickle 
 to write up for it at short notice, and which dis- 
 course of everything scenery, customs, geog- 
 raphy, geology, currency, hotels, and vermin in 
 the same breath ; alternate pictures of the Par- 
 thenon, and Maynard's Patent Protector against 
 Bugs ; the street of Tombs with Sir George 
 Somebody's chinchifuge ? It sets one's head in a 
 whirl. Quotations from the Odyssey and Iliad 
 will not consort with lazzaroni, thieves, and free 
 pratique. How much better are Augustus Hare's 
 charming "Walks!" But as soon as a guide-book 
 sets about a determined and resolute description 
 of a point, nearly all the interest vanishes and 
 the reader becomes the prey of desperate ennui. 
 Far more pleasant is a " Rambles in Greece " 
 like Mahaffy's, or a " Grece Contemporaine " by 
 About, books which really interest ; the one a 
 work of genius, the other a work of scholarship. 
 A set guide-book is an infinite weariness. Inter- 
 ested as one is in all that relates to modern and 
 ancient Greece, it is all but impossible to get up 
 an interest in Murray's compilation. The whole 
 subject petrifies as if it had been dipped in an 
 Irish bog. Set adjectives are doled out here and 
 there ; iron routes are laid down and planted be- 
 fore you like railways ; gulfs, rivers, seas, and 
 lakes freeze as you read about them ; classical 
 topography becomes a monstrous bore, and ThuT 
 17 
 
I 8 GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 cydides and Sophocles automatons milling out 
 quotations that all invariably appear singularly 
 infelicitous. Where is the purple sheen of the 
 Greek seas, the sculptured, sunny coast, the infi- 
 nite breeziness and beauty of the island pictures 
 and panoramas, the ilex and arbutus-clad heights 
 and promontories, the sites of the temples on 
 starry altitudes, the dreaming and desolate cities 
 which Cicero so pathetically mourned ; in short, 
 the whole movement and dance and gayety and 
 pathos of Greek scenery ? It becomes naught 
 under such processes of disenchantment. Guide- 
 books are purely commercial enterprises. They 
 lack the essential characteristic, purposeless- 
 ness. So soon as you set to work to tell people 
 all about a thing you in reality tell them nothing. 
 It is looking for the fairy-ring in broad daylight. 
 The fairy-land of Greece loves an uncertain moon- 
 light of inquiry, a careless, lover-like traveler 
 who takes in the weird richness of the air and 
 water and land without building roads through 
 them or erecting works of engineering on Calypso's 
 isle. Hence the marvelous charm of Hawthorne's 
 incidental descriptions, and passages in Gautier's 
 oriental travels. Lamartine and Chateaubriand, 
 Goethe and Emerson have the same gift. Travel- 
 ing with such guides over Greece would be divine. 
 It is a wonder that publishers don't engage men 
 of real genius to do their work. Such compila- 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES, 1 9 
 
 tions as even the best American-European guides 
 are intolerable. The English is poor, the descrip- 
 tions mechanical, the information meagre, and the 
 tone false. I left A. at home in disgust, a 
 work which professed to run over the whole of 
 Europe in one volume, octavo. A pretty mess it 
 makes of it, too ! As well print and bind the waves 
 of the Atlantic. And then, in the loquacious com- 
 mission naire-like desire to tell you everything, 
 they tell you nothing and leave your hands full of 
 ashes like Dead Sea apples. I carried such a 
 pack of printed scoriae with me to Europe one sum- 
 mer, one of those universal guides and gazet- 
 teers, and resolved never to do so again. Here, 
 in the very face of Greece, one feels Greece oozing 
 away from one through Murray's fingers. I fear 
 I shall be completely desillusio7ine by the time I 
 get there. How can you enjoy a mountain when 
 you are told exactly how many feet high it is, its 
 latitude and longitude, productions, barometric, 
 thermometric, and diabolic and geologic changes, 
 distances from such and such unpronounceable 
 points, botany, and general constitution } Does 
 not the whole thing become like the labeled 
 horrors of a zoological museum ? Of course it 
 is undeniable that there is much indispensable 
 information given, customs, passports, money, 
 servants, hotels, shops and shopping, quarantine 
 steamers, consuls, and routes ; but a book like 
 
20 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 Bradshaw does all this and more, for it does not 
 pretend to go into elaborate pen-and-ink delinea- 
 tions. You expect more from a red leather oc- 
 tavo that cost fifteen shillings. 
 
 The sail from Ancona to Brindisi was delight- 
 ful, cloudless skies and perfect nights. Occa- 
 sionally we would meet a felucca, curiously rigged 
 and full of wild-looking mariners, such as the 
 author of " Eothen " describes, a great broad- 
 bottomed Homeric o-xehiiq^ with three or four fan- 
 tastic triangular sails arranged at different an- 
 gles to one another, purely, as it would seem, 
 for pictorial effect, for they are the most unpracti- 
 cal of sails conceivable, and let all the wind go by. 
 How fanciful and picture-like they looked, on the 
 breezy Adriatic, almost out of sight of land ! I 
 nearly always noticed two together, Jesuits of 
 the sea. Heaven only knows what the dialect of 
 these fishermen is. At Corfu they put Greek ter- 
 minations to their Italian. The speech of this en- 
 tire region is an indescribable mosaic, Turkish, 
 Albanian, Italian, Greek, and Spanish patois, the 
 pigeon-English of the Mediterranean. The coast 
 of Italy was dimly descried all day yesterday. I 
 could see the snow-surtouted Apennines, peering, 
 vision-like, through sun-lit mist. The opposite 
 Greek coast was, of course, too distant for obser- 
 vation. Our little steamer sails along blandly 
 and hardily, without saying aught to anybody. 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 21 
 
 There is no observation-taking, nor dividing the 
 day into bells, nor comparison of local with chro- 
 nometer time, as on the Atlantic, not even a 
 plummet let down, or a knot-measure. They go 
 straight ahead, apparently by the dead reckoning. 
 Our captain's favorite exclamation is, "Ah, diav- 
 olo ! Ah, diavoli ! " He is a sharp-eyed, pigeon- 
 toed Italian, with a peremptory air and a light 
 step. There is now no passenger beside myself. 
 We got to Brindisi very early this morning. A 
 small, sinuous, river-like harbor, with little ship- 
 ping and not much capacity. Vergil died here, 
 and (curious association of ideas!) the famous 
 Appian Way had its end at the same Brindisi. 
 How pleasant it would be to read the " Voyage 
 to Brundusium " here. It is a pretty place, a 
 gleaming sea and atmosphere, ships coaling, 
 row-boats innumerable skimming the rippling 
 water, half naked lazzaroni lounging on the quay, 
 pink and yellow and white houses lining the 
 shore, feluccas flinging their light sails to the 
 wind, an antique column rising and overlooking 
 the harbor, the strange-windowed Hotel des In- 
 des Orientales with its rose-colored fagade, the 
 bright green water curled into an infinite emerald 
 irregularity, and the softest of breezes, alto- 
 gether a gay little picture. To-day we had deli- 
 cious figs and apricots for lunch. Also grilled 
 tomatoes ' with veal, stuffed veal with green peas 
 
22 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 and gravy, an omelette and cafe nero, which is 
 good fare for an Italian ship. The state-rooms, 
 small as our vessel is, are the most comfortable I 
 have ever inhabited, and I am no inconsiderable 
 traveler. There are two stewards or camerieri, 
 - a tall, loud-voiced one, and a small, frowsy- 
 haired one. The tea and coffee we get on board 
 are the only drinkable tea and coffee I have en- 
 countered on the sea. The Italians certainly ex- 
 cel in coffee and in ice-cream. 
 
 A scene of exquisite beauty is before me. The 
 Ionian Sea, like the most dazzling blue silk, lies 
 in front. On the coast is the lofty and barren 
 Albanian mountain-range, treeless and desolate, 
 cleaving the lucid atmosphere like a sharp scim- 
 itar, and seamed and indented with mountain 
 torrents and caves.' They are full of silvery blue 
 shadows. In this cloth-of-gold air what a dis- 
 tance one can see ! We have just passed a white 
 limestone island, apparently uninhabited ; others 
 are scattered, like silver on opal, over the blue 
 Ionian. We are approaching Corfu, the Corcyra 
 of the ancients, identified by Thucydides with the 
 Phaeacia of the Odyssey. If so, we are in the 
 fairy-land of Homer. I have seen, as yet, but 
 one light-house on all these islands ; an occa- 
 sional felucca dipping up on the horizon, or a 
 ship-like crag at a great distance. ' The air 
 seems full of Penelope's web, a delicate irritat- 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 23 
 
 ing gauze, that makes a wonder-land of all these 
 rugged rocks, but worries and thwarts you. Was 
 there ever a storm in these placid seas ? Can 
 we here enter into the experiences of Odysseus 
 on his tempestuous wanderings ? -^ This blue and 
 silvery beauty is indeed that " azure morn " of 
 which Theocritus speaks, a morn that colors 
 the seas, paints the atmosphere, makes the mount- 
 ains opalescent, and touches the horizon with 
 milky whiteness. This looks like a vast lake. 
 The most beautiful white clouds hang pictur- 
 esquely over the peaks of the Albanian range, scat- 
 tering opaque but prismatic shadows all over its 
 sides and letting in a flood of sunbeams to illu- 
 mine sharply other portions. The scenery just 
 here reminds one of Lake Champlain. 
 
 We took on several new passengers at Brindisi, 
 a blonde and a brun Italian, strange-costumed 
 steerage passengers, etc. At breakfast we were 
 all quite funereal; spending the time alternately 
 eating and casting furtive glances at one another. 
 Not a word was said. A melee of rice and gravy, 
 seasoned with tomatoes and garnished with chick- 
 en-livers, was one of our dishes. They poach eggs 
 capitally, and the fruit continues good. How one 
 could sail a life-time away on such water, wind- 
 less, stormless, rimmed in by fairy mountains, lit- 
 
 1 Kinglake considered Odysseus' voyage of ten years 
 from Troy to Ithaca quite moderate ! 
 
24 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 erally spangled with bright islands, cloudless, sap- 
 phire-iridescent, a silvery infinitude, land-locked, 
 not even a gull to be seen, nor a white-sailed 
 felucca. It is the land of the Lotus-eaters of 
 the afternoon. This must be Corfu in front of 
 us, a long, irregular, mountainous island, look- 
 ing as if it had basked in the pitiless sunlight 
 since the Pisistratidae, with a white gleam along 
 the shore as of surf, or sunlight, or sand, dotted 
 over with spare trees, all standing so wonderfully 
 revealed, like a piece of sculpture. Cypresses 
 puncture the air in groups, and soft slopes and 
 swells are beginning to heave in sight. The Al- 
 banian shore continues grand and blue-gray. We 
 run within a short distance of it. One end of 
 Corfu is only a mile or so off from the Albanian 
 main-land, that province which has given the 
 national dress to the Greeks, the descendants of 
 the ancient Illyrians, whose language Whitney 
 puts down with Etruscan and Basque, as possi- 
 bly Indo-European. I see houses here and there, 
 and what seem like farms on the Corfu side. 
 Not a human dwelling on the opposite coast. A 
 light-house on a cream-colored rock, rising out of 
 the blue sea, is just on the left. There is a mar- 
 velous calm- over everything. What little wind 
 there is is behind us. A ship in full sail is just 
 along-side. The wonderful panorama of the 
 Strait of Corfu opens before us : long vanishing 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES, 25 
 
 lines of ethereal-looking mountains, a sky dyed 
 with the intense pale blue of great heat, "dark 
 purple spheres of sea'' and "summer isles of 
 Eden," passionate color on earth and sky, 
 bald crags and precipices, ever-looming dis- 
 tances hung with islands as with purple fruits : 
 behind us the dazzling curve of sea down which 
 we have come, with a marble-like islet in the fore- 
 ground touched here and there with arbutus and 
 olive, and the grand azure arm of the Albanian 
 Mountains, reaching scythe-like around the outer 
 edge of our course all is one wavy world of 
 luminous water, carved into scintillant gulfs and 
 indentations against the bosom of the opposing 
 coasts. It looks more as if we were sailing in 
 the sky than on the sea. They speak of fearful 
 hurricanes and thunder-storms in these seas. 
 As well speak of hurricanes and thunder-storms 
 in Paradise. The moon w^as as sunny as an ap- 
 ricot last night. To-day the sun has powdered 
 the air with gold dust. There is heat, but it is 
 tempered by the salt sea. I do not see how we 
 shall escape from this thick woven net of coast, 
 coast in front, behind, on each side. But on 
 we go, with the wind changed and blowing right 
 in our faces. 
 
 There is a great stalwart Greek promenading 
 up and dowm the lower deck dressed in white 
 petticoats, long white stockings, loose green 
 
26 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 jacket, and red caftan, with gaiters. Another in 
 a vivid red caftan with long, pendant blue tassel, 
 close-fitting jacket, wide blue cottonnade trousers 
 gathered at the knee, and white stockings. 
 
 Looking back behind our ship is even more 
 wonderful than looking forward. It is like the 
 finest scenery of Lake Como or Lago Maggiore, 
 the sea one sheet of waveless blue, the atmos- 
 phere so limpid that you seem to see behind the 
 mountains whose crests stand out in it in a thou- 
 sand bright and illustrated forms, ships becalme<^ 
 in this Circe-like lake, a flight of tremulous zeph- 
 yrs hovering about your face and hair all the 
 time, the whole one picture of radiance and vo- 
 luptuousness. I am obliged to abandon my 
 blood-and-thunder Italian romance every moment 
 to gaze on this enchanting landscape. It is the 
 crystal sky of Hellas, the " surpassing ether " of 
 Euripides, the land of the snowy egret and the 
 crested hoopoe, of light and affability and brill- 
 iance. We shall soon be passing down the huge 
 Acroceraunian Mountains, in among the islands 
 scattered like a shivered necklace over the sea, > 
 Zante, Cephalonia, Cerigo, islands full of wine 
 and sharp aromatic scents, silver-leaved olives 
 and glowing oleander. There is indescribable 
 refreshment in this light, buoyant air. Though it 
 is hot, there is an elasticity and a joyousness in 
 it that does not inspire languor. It is not the 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 27 
 
 attar-of-roses atmosphere of Italy. There is a 
 spice of Greek airiness and lightsomeness in it, 
 just the difference between a winged epigram of 
 Archilochus and an ode of Petrarch. But yonder 
 is Corfu in sight, the city ! How it steals on 
 one out of its sunny corner, with the high mount- 
 ain behind, concealed, as it were, in the folds of 
 this shining atmosphere. I wondered what we 
 were making straight for. 
 
 What a place of thronging memories is Corfu. 
 The oldest sea-fight on record was fought by the 
 Corcyraeans. Here harbored the great Athenian 
 fleet before the fatal expedition to Sicily. A few 
 miles off, in a small bay " hardly large enough," 
 said Lord Byron, " for two frigates to manoeuvre 
 in,'' took place the Battle of Actium. A little 
 farther down, in 1571, occurred the Battle of Le- 
 panto. Innumerable souvenirs of Greeks and 
 crusaders, Venetians and Turks, cluster about 
 the place. Christian and profane have fought 
 for it. Jew and Gentile have rested and wrestled 
 there. Greek temples and grand Venetian forti- 
 fications have crowned and still crown in part its 
 lovely crags. The island is a spacious park, a 
 paradise, in the sense of Xenophon and the Ori- 
 ent, of currant vineyards, myrtle, arbutus, the glo- 
 rious blossomed rhododaphne, gnarled olives, 
 wild aloe and cactus, orange groves and mastic. 
 Its situation is really incomparable. It is a kind 
 
28 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 of semicircle of tall, interlaced houses and for- 
 tresses, Greek churches, fci/oSox^ta, arcaded prom- 
 enades like an Italian city, and cypress-tufted 
 slopes. How warm and soft-tinted the yellow 
 and red houses looked in the brilliant sunset 
 yesterday evening ! With my glass I could al- 
 most see what they had for table d'hote at the 
 HvoSo;(tov KcDi/cTavrtvovTroXt?, the first Greek hotel 
 in the Levant I have seen. And what flight and 
 tarantella-dance of swallows in the air over the 
 steep roof and the minaret-like cypresses. The 
 whole burg and town of Corfu glowed with rich- 
 ness and harmony in the vesper light. In front, 
 a lovely bit of color in the shape of the soft 
 green Island of Vido thrown on the water like a 
 great bed of green moss ; behind, the towering 
 mountains of San Salvador, spotted and spangled 
 in the rich gloom with little glistening white 
 Greek villages ; opposite, the fine coast of Epirus, 
 where cliff and crag seem to have performed a 
 Pyrrhic dance, they seem to be so mountainously 
 and marvelously heaped over one another ; in 
 the eastern distance, the cloud-wreathed pinnacles 
 of Pindus with the strange Ottoman villages of 
 Albania clinging like eagles' nests to the inter- 
 vening mountain-sides, Mecca on one side and 
 the Middle Ages on the other. Then the A^'ces 
 Phceacum of Vergil, the split and -splendid peaks 
 on which rise the twin fortresses that guard this 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 29 
 
 end of the town, how majestically they tower, 
 aericB palunihes^ and how deservedly they have 
 given a name to the island. The azure sea- 
 siesta of perfect tranquillity we had been all the 
 morning having, ceased when we gained the har- 
 bor of Corfu. A joyous breeze sprang to meet 
 us. The waves became wild and dashed in 
 spray on the quays and ramparts of the town. 
 The boats with their wild Greek mariners that 
 flocked out to take us ashore had no little trouble 
 in making headway. A crowd of hotel runners, 
 like so many corsairs, boarded us and thrust 
 their rival cards into our faces, " Hotel This ? '' 
 " Hotel That ? '' And the omnipresent polyglot 
 commissionnaire was there, too, with mouth wa- 
 tering with Greek, Italian, English, French, or 
 Arabic, ready to take you to the end of the 
 world, to Tasso's " I'ultima Irlanda," if you 
 would but give him your baggage. 
 
 Our small list of passengers soon scattered, 
 petticoated Albanian, slashed and caftaned Turk, 
 and all. We were left to enjoy this gorgeous 
 antechamber to the picture-gallery of the East all 
 by ourselves. 
 
 How the water shone and sparkled, shifted and 
 shivered into foam, tossing the great barges up 
 and down like cockle-shells and springing with 
 almost human laughter up on the sides of the 
 vessels. There were a good many ships in the 
 
30 GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 harbor. I saw, for the first time, the flag of 
 Greece waving from many of them, blue and 
 white horizontal stripe with a cross in the upper 
 corner. A formidable-looking Greek iron-clad 
 lay at anchor. Wild chatter of Greek and Italian 
 and Lingua Franca was kept up all day in load- 
 ing our ship and till late in the night. The 
 Greek, as I have hitherto heard it, is neither 
 sonorous nor melodious. It is a quick, nervous 
 language and the speakers of it abound in shrugs 
 and gesticulations. The fishermen and gondo- 
 lieri who came out to us stand up as they row, a 
 fashion universal in the Adriatic, and have their 
 oars tied by a loop of rope to a single peg. In 
 Venice there is a graceful fixture to attach the 
 oar to, a support resembling a bent elbow, or the 
 claw of an animal, often richly and artistically 
 wrought, in which the oar is held up high above 
 the side of the gondola, a fashion by whicR the 
 gondoliere can put forth all his strength on his 
 oar as he successively moves it forward or with- 
 draws it. The Greek boatmen so far are brown- 
 skinned, sharp-eyed, clamorous fellows, knowing 
 well enough how to cry out ** Barca, Signore ? " 
 if you don't understand Romaic. It is no won- 
 der Corfu is famed for its Romaika or Greek jig, 
 to see these fellows dancing about in their boats, 
 rowing like mad to get to the steamer first. They 
 seem intuitively quite accomplished in it. For a 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 3 I 
 
 wonder we did not arrive at Corfu on a festa; 
 for what with their formidable Lents and count- 
 less saint's days, they are nearly always celebrat- 
 ing something.^ Corfu is full of Greek churches. 
 There are Jews, too, in some thousands, who dwell 
 apart in a Ghetto of their own. How sadly the 
 Greek and Byzantine churches lack the graceful 
 bell-towers of Italy, those dainty belfries, dainti- 
 est of which is Giotto's at Plorence. The square, 
 slender tower with the grouped round-arched 
 windows, flower-like pilasters and sweet peal of 
 bells so tremulously hanging, how they charm 
 one as they rise up from the gardens of Tuscany 
 and ring out the Angelus on a dewy morning. 
 They are like human, hovering voices, these deli- 
 cate bells, and to me they give a rare sweetness 
 to the mourning mother church. 
 
 In Byzantinism, however, there is something 
 that frets one, a coldness, a formalism, an empty 
 splendor and decorative art, an incessant bowing 
 and scraping (which, by the way, is said to be the 
 reason why dogs are never seen in Byzantine 
 churches, from the stooping posture, as if about 
 to pick up a stone) ; in short, an unapproachable- 
 
 1 There are, I think, more than one hundred holidays in 
 the Greek calendar. How well can we understand the 
 " Greek calends " when one remembers their talent for pro- 
 crastination, the eternal manana ! manatia I (to-morrow ! 
 to-morrow !) of a wSpanish promise. 
 
32 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 ness which does anything but excite interest. 
 They cluster all about these Greek villages. This 
 morning I noticed an enormously fat old Greek 
 gentleman on board fumbling, as it seemed, a ro- 
 sary of amber ^ as he walked up and down. The 
 church is said to have an immense hold on its 
 communicants. This Sunday morning we awoke 
 and found Cephalonia in sight, not so grand a 
 series of Raphaelesque sketches before us on the 
 horizon as on yesterday, but the same airy witch- 
 ery of distant mountain forms, the same lapis 
 lazuli water, the same crystalline atmosphere, the 
 same Spenserian " watchet-blue " sky and vol- 
 uptuous tints. The whole island is redolent of 
 Homer. East of it lies Ithaca,^ whose people 
 are the cleverest of the Greeks, even to-day. A 
 little north as Leucadia, the isle of Sappho, and 
 Paxo, famous for the legend of Pan which Milton 
 and Mrs. Browning have embalmed islands at 
 this period full of scents of summer. It is im- 
 possible to marshal all the checkered recollec- 
 tions of these scenes through which we are pass- 
 ing; while I am writing islands are heaving in 
 
 1 Which afterwards, I found, was no rosary at all, but 
 merely a sort of portable conductor to carry off the super- 
 abundant vitality of a super-excitable people. They must 
 be perpetually picking at something better amber than 
 pockets ! It is, as About would say, " tme- habitude d' or lent P 
 
 2 See Schliemann's charming Ithaquej Peloponnhe, Troie, 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. , 33 
 
 sight and others are disappearing which were 
 places of celebrity thousands of years ago, 
 shrines of poetry, temples of adoration, fields on 
 which waved the fire-colored wheat of Homer and 
 which felt the wandering step of Tibullus, tem- 
 ples of Jupiter before which Nero danced, con- 
 vents where crusaders stopped to worship on 
 their pilgrimages to the Holy Land, estates once 
 owned by the friend of Cicero, and spots where 
 Cicero himself once meditated. It is certainly a 
 voyage of unsurpassable interest. Ithaca alone 
 with its Homeric scenery would repay the archae- 
 ological tourist. 
 
 How present to my mind while I studied the 
 beautiful Bay of Corfu were the gardens of Al- 
 kinous ! I had been reading the Odyssey on the 
 voyage across the Atlantic, and the whole was 
 fresh in my memory. Corfu, the ancient Scheria 
 of Homer, where Ulysses was cast away, was 
 rescued by Nausikaa when she went down to 
 wash the clothes, was clothed hospitably in the 
 royal garments themselves, and in them was rec- 
 ognized by the watchful mother of the maiden. 
 I can imagine Alkinous' lovely gardens and pali- 
 saded court looming out over this entrancing 
 bay, a scene of pre-historic beauty and simplicity, 
 whose very rudeness was refined away by the 
 elaborate cunning of the air, the far withdrawn 
 wool-white cloud, the intervening veil of down- 
 3 
 
34 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 drifting sea-blue air, the sea itself sending up 
 paint and spume to light up whatever primitive 
 KaXvpYj it might be and bring it out on the twi- 
 light heights like a star! These islands are full 
 of uncouth Greek shepherds and sharp watch- 
 dogs. A passage of Aristotle is unexpectedly 
 explained by reference to their habit of attacking 
 strangers.^ Little cabins and huts dot the crags 
 here and there, crags of every gay color. The 
 limestone is gnarled and sculptured by the sea 
 into huge caverns and grots. Just before me 
 now the magnificent declivities of Monte Nero 
 (nearly six thousand feet high) glimmer through 
 the sunny mist that broods over them like the 
 white cliffs of England, declivities of bleached 
 and blanched limestone almost painfully bright in 
 this quivering air. The sun smites on them at 
 times blindingly. We wound up the long Gulf of 
 Argostoli this morning and stopped for an hour 
 or two. Pale, Luxuri, Crani, and Argostoli lie in 
 this river-like fiord. The island is over one hun- 
 dred and twenty miles in circumference, and this 
 side of it is full of towns. The houses all seem 
 large and well built, embosomed in trees. I saw 
 quantities of aloe growing wild. On this fiord 
 there is a subterranean channel burrowed in the 
 
 1 Cf. Schliemann's amusing experience in Ithaca, when he 
 saved himself from a fierce Ithacan dog by, doing as the old 
 Greeks did in similar cases, sitting down. 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 35 
 
 rock down which the sea flows. The current is 
 strong enough to turn an immense iron grist-mill 
 wheel which I saw in motion. Cephalonia lacks 
 the truly Ionian luxuriousness of Corfu, but its 
 poesy is of the heroic measure. Vast convents, 
 admirable roads, a great Venetian fortress or two, 
 sunny sweeps of sloping currant vineyards, blue 
 and pink churches with Greek inscriptions, for- 
 ests of olives, stormy-looking mountains, to-day 
 wrapped in clouds, such are some of the points 
 of the island. Numerous boats, as usual, came 
 out to meet us, and there was the usual squabble 
 over passengers. I noticed one boat with Calli- 
 ope spelt with one / in Greek characters on her 
 stern. What a mobile, irritable people they seem 
 to be.^ The Cephaloniots appear better-looking 
 than any I have seen, and I saw more blond hair. 
 One of our passengers, a Greek, with sky-blue 
 umbrella, pea-green parrot in a red cage and end- 
 less baskets, got oif here, much to my relief. The 
 Greeks we have had on board have been any- 
 thing but agreeable-looking, above the medium 
 size, and consummate chatter-boxes. Shall I 
 modify my opinion in the light of Aristophanes 1 
 Not even the ancient fleas, bugs, and spongers 
 escaped this keen observer, nor does he indeed 
 seem to have escaped them ! This evening we 
 get to Zante (Zacynthus), our last stopping-place, 
 1 Cf. in confirmation, Tuckerman's "^DJ^rivEq rfjg ^rjixe^ov. 
 
 OF THE "^ 
 
36 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 I believe, till we exchange boats at Syra for 
 Athens. Athens! Can I realize it? Did I realize 
 Rome till its sad majesty had passed from my 
 sight and I thought over it in the long winter 
 nights at home ? It must sink deep like Tyrian 
 purple into every tissue of one's nature, and then 
 one may realize it. 
 
 But here is another big island on my right, 
 which I had not noticed ! It is a Balaklava of isl- 
 ands, this Ionian Sea, As fast as one is slain, 
 another rises. 
 
 And here is Ithaca with its cluster of heroic 
 memories, a stone memoir of Odysseus and Pe- 
 nelope. How singularly rich in archaeological or 
 rather aesthetic interest is this island. Gandar, 
 Wordsworth, Lilienstern, Bowen, Leake, Schrei- 
 ber, Koliades, Sir William Gell, Strabo, and 
 Plotemy all identify it with the Ithaca of Homer. 
 It lies along the eastern coast of Cephalonia, a 
 grouped and glorious mass of picturesque rock, 
 full of small towns, keen-witted people, dogs, and 
 sunlight ! One may get a boat in Cephalonia as 
 Schliemann did and go over to Ithaca in an hour, 
 provided one have the famous Homeric tail- 
 breeze. " Hungry and tired as I was," says the 
 enthusiastic doctor, " I was immensely glad to 
 find myself in the native land of the hero whose 
 story I had read a hundred times with the great- 
 est delight. I was fortunate enough to find on 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 3/ 
 
 disembarking the famous miller Panagis Asproi- 
 eraca who for four francs let me have his donkey 
 to carry my things while he himself served me as 
 guide and cicerone to the capital, Vathy. Learning 
 that I had come to Ithaca to make archaeological 
 researches, he applauded my undertaking warmly 
 and recounted to me as we walked all the advent- 
 ures of Ulysses from beginning to end. The 
 volubility with which he told them proved to me 
 that he had told the same thing a thousand times 
 before. His enthusiasm to tell me all about 
 Ithaca was so great that he did not tolerate in- 
 terruption. In vain I asked him, ^ Is that the 
 Grotto of the Nymphs ? Where is Laertes' Field ? ' 
 All my questions remained unanswered. The 
 road was long, but so was the story, and at length 
 when after midnight we found the threshold of 
 his house at Vathy, we were just entering hell 
 with the souls of the suitors under the guidance 
 of Mercury. I congratulated him smartly on 
 having read the poems of Homer and retain- 
 ing them well enough to repeat in modern Greek 
 the principal incidents of the twenty-four cantos 
 of the Odyssey. To my great amazement he an- 
 answered that he not only knew nothing of the an- 
 cient Greek, but that he could not read or write 
 the modern ! He said that he knew the adventures 
 of Ulysses by tradition. I asked then whether 
 the tradition was general among the people of 
 
38 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 Ithaca or whether it was confined to his family. 
 He said that his family really was the depositary 
 of it, and that nobody in the island knew the 
 story of the great king as well as he did, but 
 that everybody had a confused notion of it. 
 
 There is no hotel in the capital of Ithaca, though 
 the town has 2,500 inhabitants and is situated at 
 the head of the Gulf of Molo, one of the best 
 ports in the world. The total population of the 
 island (1868) is 13,000, and its length about 
 twenty-nine kilometers. It is a chain of calcare- 
 ous rocks. The Gulf of Molo divides it into two 
 almost equal parts, connected by an isthmus eight 
 hundred yards wide, on which towers Mount ^tos 
 crowned by vast ruins, called TraAatd/cao-rpoi/, de- 
 scribed by tradition as the ruins of the palace of 
 Ulysses. Rains and dews, once so abundant in 
 Ithaca, are very infrequent and trees are rare, 
 and the immense wheat harvest of the Odyssey 
 is now reduced to a fourth of what is necessary 
 for the sustenance of the inhabitants. Currants 
 and olive oil are the staple products of Ithaca. 
 The wine is thrice as strong as Bordeaux, and is 
 consumed at home. In spite of the excessive 
 heat of the island, the climate is very healthy, 
 and deserves the eulogies of Homer. 
 
 Bowen is right in saying that there is perhaps 
 not a place in the world where classic souvenirs 
 are so vivid and so few. The little rock with- 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES, 39 
 
 drew into obscurity immediately after the epoch 
 of its first legendary hero and poet, and so it has 
 remained for nearly three thousand years. In con- 
 trast with many once glorious countries, Ithaca 
 owes none of its illustriousness to more recent 
 times. Indeed, the very name of Ithaca is hardly 
 penned by a post-Homeric author except in allu- 
 sion to its poetic celebrity. Here, then, all our 
 recollections are concentrated round the heroic 
 age ; every hill and rock, every spring and olive- 
 grove is redolent of Homer and the Odyssey ; and 
 one is transported at a single bound over a hun- 
 dred generations into the most brilliant era of 
 Greek poetry and chivalry." 
 
 Many of Homer's localities are described with 
 such accuracy that they are recognizable to-day 
 from his descriptions. Thus the Grotto of the 
 Nymphs is a masterpiece of minute truthfulness 
 in landscape painting. Truly Homeric are the 
 agricultural instruments, or rather is the agricult- 
 ural implement (for they have but one, the 
 pointed hoe) of the Ithacans. With this they 
 scratch the earth and win a scant and laborious 
 subsistence. Dr. Schliemann found what he sup- 
 posed to be the palace of Ulysses on top of 
 Mount u^tos. He brings a stream of archaeo- 
 logical light to play on the Cyclopean walls and 
 cistern which he found, and covers all over with 
 the ivy of inexhaustible quotation. So great was 
 
40 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 the interest he felt amid the ruins of the palace 
 that he forgot the blaze of heat, hunger, and 
 thirst, devoured the legendary descriptions of the 
 spot in the Odyssey, and sat entranced over the 
 magnificent panorama that unrolled before his 
 eyes, and which is hardly inferior to the vision 
 from Mount ^tna in Sicily. 
 
 To the north lies Leucadia with Cape Ducato, 
 so famous in antiquity for Sappho's leap, from 
 which unfortunate lovers cast themselves, per- 
 suaded that this would cure their passion, a spot 
 celebrated for the leap of Sappho, the poet 
 Nicostratos, Deucalion, Artemisia, and others. 
 Strabo tells us that at the feast of Apollo the 
 Leucadians had the habit of casting a criminal 
 from this rock into the sea as an expiatory sac- 
 rifice for all the crimes of the people. Masses 
 of feathers and living birds were attached to him 
 to assist his flight, and fisher-boats lay drawn up 
 in circles below to pick him up and save him, if 
 possible. 
 
 On the south are the noble mountains of Pel- 
 oponnesus ; in the east the grand peaks of Ac- 
 arnania ; at one's feet is the beautiful spot be- 
 yond which float the mountains of Cephalonia 
 as if rising vertically out of the water. With 
 this Miltonic vision before him it is no wonder 
 Dr. Schliemann grows poetic and overflows with 
 classic reminiscence. Accordingly he plunged 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 4 1 
 
 at once into excavations, hired laborers, went to 
 work on Ulysses' palace, and discovered fune- 
 rary urns which he thought not improbably once 
 held the ashes of Penelope and her spouse ! 
 Intolerable heat, wretched fare, and the one hun- 
 dred and fifty Greek feasts and holidays did not 
 interrupt this poetic infatuation. Five rare vases 
 rewarded all this zeal, which was followed, not 
 by a fever, as one would reasonably expect in 
 the white heat of the Greek summer, but by a 
 tour of the island, readings, and declamations 
 from the Odyssey to delighted audiences of 
 Ithacans, friendships with the solitary shepherds 
 and their flocks, and boundless sentiment and 
 effusion. If the arrival of a stranger in the cap- 
 ital was an event, infinitely more so was his prog- 
 ress through the provinces. " Scarcely had I 
 sat down when all the people of the village 
 thronged around me and inundated me with ques- 
 tions. To cut matters short, I read them the 
 twenty-fourth chapter of the Odyssey from the 
 205th to the 412th verse, translating verse by 
 verse into their vernacular. Immense Was their 
 enthusiasm on hearing me declaim in the sono- 
 rous language of Homer, the language of their 
 ancestors three thousand years ago, the story of 
 the frightful miseries the old king Laertes had 
 endured in the very place where we were assem- 
 bled, and the picture of exquisite joy which he 
 
42 GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 had felt on meeting in this very place, after twen- 
 ty years' separation, his cherished son Ulysses 
 whom he had believed dead. All eyes were filled 
 with tears, and when I ended, men, women, and 
 children embraced me saying, MeyaA?]!/ ^^a^av /xas 
 eKaiJL<i ' Kara iroXXa ere c^p^aptorrto/xei/ (Thou hast 
 given us great joy ; many thanks). I was led in 
 triumph to the village, where they vied in lavish- 
 ing hospitality on me without wishing to accept 
 any remuneration." Thus the poetic doctor went 
 round like a wandering rhapsode, reading and 
 reciting to adoring crowds, shedding the divine 
 verses of Homer like a sweet perfume over their 
 isolated existences, and being rewarded by tears 
 of sympathy and delight. One can imagine the 
 effect which such recitations would make on the 
 vivid and impressionable people of the Ionian 
 Sea. 
 
 The people of Ithaca are frank and loyal, 
 chaste and pious to a point, bright-witted, labo- 
 rious, clean, and sympathetic. Prudence and wis- 
 dom characteristics of their great ancestors 
 are theirs too. Adultery is regarded among them 
 as a crime second only to parricide, and those 
 detected in it are pitilessly put to death. Hardly 
 one in fifty can read or write, but what they want 
 in culture they supply by mother-wit. The sim- 
 ple inhabitants of Ithaca, just as in the rest of 
 Greece, thee-and-thou you. Even the king is 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES, 43 
 
 thus addressed (Set?, thou). They are extremely 
 patriotic and proud of their nationality. Dr. 
 Schliemann says that whenever he met an Itha- 
 can in his oriental journeys and inquired his 
 country, he got the response : El/xat ^WaK-qfjio^ fxa 
 Tov 0eov ! (I 'm from Ithaca, by Jove !) 
 
 Another proof of the influence of souvenirs is 
 the quantity of Penelopes, Ulysseses, and Telema- 
 chuses to be found in Ithaca. These names have 
 an undying charm for the imagination of the Itha- 
 cans. In one point they do not resemble their 
 famous progenitor, no beggars are to be seen in 
 the islands. The clergy here as elsewhere in the 
 East is unsalaried, and subsists on the meagre 
 income from baptisms, burials, and marriages. 
 Hence the Greek priest, TraTTTra?, as they call him 
 (how like the iravovpyeov TOV TraTririx) of Theophas- 
 tus !), has to struggle continually with poverty, 
 and as there is no career open for him, he be- 
 comes ignorant and animalized. A piquant 
 Greek proverb about him runs thus : 
 
 'A/xa^ws Kol KaKOT^Oo}^, 
 'A/ca/xariys koL ^aya?, 
 OvSiv TrXiov Sev tov /xeVet 
 Ilapa va yvrj Trarra?.-^ 
 
 Thus as one journeys through these happy 
 
 1 Which may be paraphrased thus : " Ignorance, idle- 
 ness, and gluttony make the Greek priest." 
 
44 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 islands a thousand recollections throng over one 
 till the whole archipelago becomes dramatized 
 and every islet is a verse in an epic poem. How 
 much our interest in Corfu increases when we 
 remember that Antony and Octavia were married 
 there ; that it offered an asylum to Themistocles ; 
 that Aristotle took such delight in its vernal 
 beauty that he persuaded Alexander to visit it. 
 Then the arrival of Titus there after the con- 
 quest of Jerusalem ; St. Helena going to Pales- 
 tine to look for the true cross ; Augustus and 
 Diocletian ; Cato and Nero ; and last, but not 
 least, the foot-prints of the blind Belisarius ! ^ 
 
 We are just running into the harbor of Zante, 
 after Corfu the most picturesque and stately I 
 have seen in the Ionian. How true is the prov- 
 erb, " Zante, Zante, Fior di Levanti ! '' Another 
 oasis of verdure in this blue water-Sahara. Its 
 harbor is like a half-moon or a sickle, a miniature 
 Naples. Nor is Vesuvius wanting, for a splendid 
 twin-peaked mountain rises on the left and 
 makes the resemblance nearly complete. Nearly 
 every twenty years the place is shaken to pieces 
 by an earthquake. The harbor is full of shipping 
 and the white houses and steeples come out 
 prominently in the sun. A strong land breeze is 
 blowing. There is a lovely tassel of historic 
 memories hanging to its caftan, too, early Athe- 
 1 Tuckerman's "YIKkrivzq rrjc Irffiepov. 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 45 
 
 nian and Peloponnesian charms and glories, Vene- 
 tian supremacies and noble demeanor in the 
 Greek war of liberation, etc. Feluccas are dart- 
 ing about everywhere. The coast of Pelopon- 
 nesus away off is plainly visible to the southeast 
 with Olympian Elis dimly discernible. There is; 
 an oriental tint to everything. They even say 
 that the latticed windows of the East were preva- 
 lent here at no distant date, and that the un- 
 married women here and through the other isl- 
 ands live in Turkish seclusion. No wonder, in 
 this all-revealing air ! The quay is thronged with 
 Zantiot idlers, a Greek canaille as curious as ever 
 the old Athenians were. All the people literally 
 seem to be in the streets, which at the side are 
 arcaded over like the Rue de Rivoli. Venetian 
 campaniles point heavenward here and there. 
 The tow^n is very shallow in depth, and does not 
 look as if it extended more than a quarter of a 
 mile back, being hemmed in by lofty mountains. 
 Snow-white convents and churches hang conspic- 
 uously to the cliffs in every direction. 
 
 I see no costumes, only a caftan here and 
 there. A multitude of straw wide-awakes line the 
 adjacent quays. Some of the church groups are 
 very pretty, with walls white as milk, corniced with 
 blue and yellow, and a gate surmounted by a 
 graceful Byzantine arch in blue and white almost 
 like the quartering of an escutcheon. Other 
 
46 GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 churches and groups are of mellower coloring, 
 one group, for example, stained pink with bright 
 green blinds and gray battlemented wall running 
 round it, and grave-toned tiled roof. A Greek 
 convent, just touched and trembled over by the 
 sunset light, is built on the highest mountain-top. 
 I see the Byzantine dome and the long line of 
 sunset-painted windows. What tender serenity 
 reigns up there, w^hat calmness and summer light 
 and night, what peace and plenitude of beauty. 
 
 Our vessel is unloading strange-looking bags 
 and firkins and packages in a huge green and 
 black barge like Ulysses' schedia with the Homeric 
 t/cia at stern and stem, huge cross-beams, looped 
 oarlocks, etc. On the western side are many 
 pictorial groups ; enormous aloes, feathery palms, 
 sinewy cypresses ; gardens fenced in by high 
 walls and full of aromatic shrubs ; a mighty barge 
 taking horses ashore blinded; round-windowed, 
 zebra-striped houses streaked white and brown 
 on top ; wind-mills turning high up in the clear, 
 evening air ; fantastic-looking sail-boats swooping 
 swiftly up and down like white-winged swallows ; 
 a lunar crescent of sparkling blue water in which 
 our ship is anchored ; distant cries coming melo- 
 diously over the w^ater ; dogs barking in the dis- 
 tance ; a boat painted the gaudiest blue and yellow 
 just going by full of Zantiot sailors a.nd peasants, 
 the rhythmic beat of oars in the water, the 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 47 
 
 " Basta ! Basta ! " of the Italian and the indescrib- 
 able ejaculations of the Greek, what a combina- 
 tion of sights and sounds ! There is no twilight 
 here worth speaking of. The sun has but just 
 set and the water is already steely with approach- 
 ing dusk, while the sharp-sculptured heights back 
 of Zante that a moment ago stood out like the 
 blade of a scimiter are already growing dull. 
 The air is delightful. Surely the climate of the 
 Levant has been slandered. I know it is infi- 
 nitely hotter in Virginia. The thermometer can- 
 not this evening be more than 72 or 73. Either 
 the air has a peculiar resonance, or the songs of 
 the Greek gamins ashore are peculiarly penetrat- 
 ing, for I hear them distinctly, even conversation 
 and children's voices. We are some distance 
 from the shore. 
 
 The shops seem to be all shut up. Are the 
 Greeks so strict on Sunday? I know their 
 church is wrapped about them with the grip of 
 the Laocoon, but I thought the " Ionian haggler " 
 was always ready. Their singing is singularly 
 sweet : listen to this boatful of boys just going by. 
 The song is quaint and wild as the one the 
 Sirens sang to Ulysses, and who knows but it 
 may be as ancient 1 The Swedish music is rich 
 and singular, but somehow this touches me more. 
 Is it the charm of association? Presently this 
 whole amphitheatre will light up as Corfu did and 
 
48 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 throw a thousand trembling lights on the water. 
 The bells are ringing vespers^ shrill, castrati 
 bells, without the mellow music of Italian bells. 
 How much character the Italians know how to 
 give their bells. How those deep bells up in the 
 great companiles of Venice delighted and deaf- 
 ened me with their clangor. I felt a positive 
 awe in their presence; and as they all but one 
 began to thunder out the sunset ave I felt like a 
 poor fly being bell-bombarded. I think the bell- 
 ringer enjoyed my dismay. What a sunset it was 
 that evening at Venice, and what a post of obser- 
 vation I had ! The great tower up which Napo- 
 leon had ridden on horseback ; the gorgeous 
 mosque-like San Marco and airy Venice at my 
 feet j the far-off lagoons and mountains effulgent 
 with such beatitudes of light as Claude and Tur- 
 ner knew; the Adriatic made to lift up its jeweled 
 isles to catch the smile of benediction of that 
 light ; the response of the other bells in marvelous 
 antiphonal tumult. The lamps begin to sparkle 
 on shore. This is my first Sunday in the Levant ! 
 I have spent it partially in the intoxication of the 
 scenery, partially in studying out a difficult Italian 
 novel. 
 
 Mount Skopos at Zante is a very singular for- 
 mation. Between it and the Castle Hill on the 
 other side runs the Vale of Zante, a sea of fertil- 
 ity. It is from six to eight miles wide, and ex- 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 49 
 
 tends across the whole island. Delightful are 
 the spring and harvest time in this island, when 
 the island fills the surrounding seas with almond 
 blossoms and orange fragrance, or when the cur- 
 rant vineyards hang laden with luscious fruit. 
 There are strange nests on poles, constructed out 
 of leaves and thatch, which are put in the vine- 
 yards and have a guard stationed in them to 
 watch the fruit day and night. The whole island 
 is full of villas and gentlemen's country seats, 
 where the Ionian gentlemen exercise a courteous 
 hospitality. Think of the thorn of an earthquake 
 in the side of this Eden ! Opposite the Bay of 
 Zante, to the southeast, is the coast of Elis and 
 Olympia. Think of being almost in sight of 
 these memorable places and not being allowed 
 to land ! ^ Passengers going to Olympia land at 
 Zante and engage a boat to take them across to 
 Patras, whence mule-back to the seat of the ex- 
 cavations. 
 
 This morning (Monday) the sea is without a 
 ripple except what is made by our ship. We 
 are running very close to the Peloponnesian coast ; 
 what part of it I do not precisely know, but I 
 can discern with the naked eye numerous towns 
 and hamlets stuck in between the mountains, and 
 on a precipitous crag a mediaeval castle. The 
 
 1 See Lang's Feloponnesiche Wande^'ung, the reports of 
 Hirschfeld, Adler, and Curtius, etc. 
 4 
 
50 ' GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 mountains are absolutely bare, of the softest 
 and mellowest tints, gray, white, pink, streaked, 
 russet-brown, lovely warm neutral tints, and sil- 
 very nuances, I cannot fix them long enough 
 to analyze their characteristics, but the combined 
 effect is delicious. Now and then the mountains 
 open and let you see far up them, rising hundreds, 
 perhaps thousands, of feet sheer up out of the 
 ultramarine blue of the sea. The coast even 
 now has an autumnal look. There is the pathos 
 and decay of indefinable autumn all about them. 
 Nothing could be more majestic than their ever- 
 vanishing, ever-flickering profiles, now sweeping 
 to the sea in a lustrous cape, now towering into 
 an immense head-land, or shooting out in a fan- 
 tastic promontory, or again huddled together in a 
 grand aggregation of choral and symphonic rock. 
 Many of them are at this moment caressed by 
 hovering banks of cloud, white as an egret's 
 wing, that throw their sharp shadows on the 
 naked mountains like silhouettes from some mag- 
 ical camera. Each rock is a study of color and 
 form in itself, and the variety is infinite. As far 
 as the eye can see, the Mediterranean stretches 
 out like an immense inland lake, until it impinges 
 on this unconquerable coast. Sky and sea, like 
 Christ's coat, are without seam of juncture. I 
 see irregular stone fences, rude' terraces and 
 steps, and the whiter courses of mountain tor- 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES, 5 I 
 
 rents all about over the mountains. Shepherds' 
 huts, too, and little bays and indentations where 
 there is a tiny harbor and a house or two, shel- 
 ter for a felucca in stress, or ports where boats 
 can touch and get their load of currants, which 
 are now universally cultivated in the Pelopon- 
 nesus. 
 
 On the lips of these peasants many a phrase 
 may still be found that is familiar to the classical 
 scholar.^ The contour of the mountains is soft 
 as a mezzotint. There is a half-moonlike stretch 
 of coast just now before my eyes, which for soft 
 and sunny and exquisite shape and coloring is 
 unrivaled. I never saw such transfiguring air 
 as this : mountains that would be indescribably 
 bald and repulsive elsewhere are here transformed 
 into a fairy-land of beauty. I cannot even discern 
 a prickly aloe or a cactus on many of these, yet 
 they are as vivid and brilliant as the richest water- 
 color painting. What a noble cape is this we are 
 just now turning ; not a human habitation or a 
 tree to be seen, and yet such a bit of glorious 
 color as Turner would have luxuriated in ; not a 
 sisterhood of pallid cliffs, but a mighty mountain- 
 ous mass of variegated hue. It is, I believe, 
 
 1 Cf. Bernhardt Schmidt's Volksleben der Neugriechen, 
 If Thackeray found the very eyes of the French girls full of 
 idiom, one might say that the very outlines of this coast are 
 written in the Greek character. 
 
52 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 Cape Gallo. We passed Sphacteria and Nava- 
 rino a little earlier in the morning. Between 
 Capes Gallo and Matapan lies a deep indentation 
 fringed with high mountains, a fairy gulf which 
 we are this moment crossing. The Peloponnesus 
 here forms a series of gulfs which with their three 
 capes, Malea, Matapan, and Gallo, give the lower 
 end of the peninsula the aspect of an antique 
 Louis XIV. slipper. Platea, Areopolis, and Kit- 
 ries would be in sight with a powerful glass. 
 Continually my eyes are called away to gaze on 
 this most dazzling water laid out before me as 
 smooth as the purple lotos-blossoms I once saw 
 at Kew Gardens, with long sinuosities and rivers 
 of mirror-like calm, as if but recently furrowed 
 there by a vessel. Pale and perpendicular hang 
 the mountains over its edges, as if fascinated by 
 their own spectre-like loveliness. No ormolu 
 work could be richer than this magnificent nat- 
 ural frame. Over Cape Gallo is anchored a won- 
 derful fleet of cirrus-cumuli, sowing its mountains 
 with opaque-clear shadows like smoked crystal. 
 The waves run from us in long, lateral, foamless 
 swells like the undulations of a corn-field. In- 
 land more than one classic peak pierces the air : 
 Mount Ithome, the famous mountains that hem 
 in Sparta on the west, Pyrgos, Messene, and 
 others famed in song and story. ' I never im- 
 agined a coast so lovely. On my map this gulf 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 53 
 
 is nameless, but it certainly deserves a name, for 
 a more transcendent landscape it would be diffi- 
 cult to mention. Over and over again it recalls 
 the voluptuous lakes of Italy. The Gulf of 
 Corinth is a singular scene of placid glory. Is 
 it any wonder that the Greeks loved the sea? 
 How full of this sentiment is the Greek Anthol- 
 ogy, is the Odyssey, is the exquisite muse of 
 Theocritus ! Did not Homer in his continually 
 recurring phrase of the " hoary sea " mean that 
 silvery whiteness that films these seas when seen 
 aslant, a reflection of the almost incandescent 
 whiteness of the sky? It is like hoar-frost on 
 sapphire. The sea, while deeply, wonderfully 
 blue when you look right down into it, gives ofE 
 a silver-white, senescent radiance when you look 
 at it from another angle, the radiance of hoary 
 hair or white lilies in blue water; and this 
 brought out the more conspicuously by the long 
 ruddy spits of land that shoot forth into the sea 
 and give a strange warmth to the scene. The 
 silver accent is on everything, on the olive-leaves, 
 on the asphodels of Homer, on the wild aloes, 
 on the birch trunks that thickly clothe the higher 
 mountains here and there, on the far-off silvery 
 horizon, on the exquisite smile of white sand that 
 breaks at the foot of these crags, on the sea itself 
 in its multitudinous crests and white caps, on the 
 very gulls that float like silver eros-bows in the 
 
54 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 shadowless air. And more than all perhaps in 
 the clouds. To-day there has been breathless 
 calm, and this effect has been beautifully brought 
 out, the sky unimaginably white, the sea un- 
 imaginably blue, the offspring an indescribable 
 hoariness fired with sapphire. 
 
 We are now rounding Cerigo and passing be- 
 tween it and an island a stupendous chocolate- 
 colored rock rising vertically from the sea. It 
 looks like an enormous sea-sponge, and stands in 
 beautiful and unique isolation, like the cone of 
 a submerged mountain peak or the crown of 
 a Titan's hat, opposite the Cytherean coast of 
 which it is a dependency. A slender, spectre- 
 like silhouette of mountains hangs on the south- 
 east horizon Crete. Would not one expect 
 Venus with her doves to rise up out of this en- 
 chanted sea and take her flight visibly before one ? 
 The sea has the susurrus of those delicious verses 
 where she is described in Horace as winging her 
 way to Paphos and Cnidus. In the neighbor- 
 hood is the scene of the legend of Arion, the 
 lovely singer, returning laden with the wealth of 
 kings when, attacked by the pirates, he asked to 
 sing one more song to his lyre, and then sprang 
 into the sea, a legend over which even Lucian 
 forgot to jest, and became sentimental, Arion 
 was borne ashore by the mourning dolphins. A 
 vision on the horizon lies Melos, where, about 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 55 
 
 the time the great Napoleon died, Heine^s " Our 
 Lady of Beauty," the Venus of Milo, was found, 
 decay and resurrection ! 
 
 We have steamed into the Bay of Rapsali, a 
 scene of delightful beauty ! Rapsali is a crag 
 surmounted by a mediaeval fort, perched white 
 and inaccessible in the air. A snow-white Greek 
 church with quaint steeple looks over*the castle 
 wall ; behind nestles a white town full of large 
 stone houses with strange Eastern-looking towers, 
 lines of huge, round arched arcades like the 
 arches of an aqueduct, and fields of golden grain 
 for which the soil has been laboriously scratched 
 together and held in by stone walls ; at the foot 
 of the fortressed crag another town on the beach 
 with a heaven-y-pointing palm or two waving be- 
 hind, a forest of huge olives, groups of blossoming 
 aloes sending aloft a long shaft of flowers, a shelv- 
 ing pebbly beach in front, low one-story houses 
 like warehouses, painted or stained white with yel- 
 low window frames and green blinds. The houses 
 have a strangely unfinished look, from the fact 
 that there are neither eaves nor cornice ; peasant 
 huts everywhere, built of rude stones, with tufts of 
 golden grain and bright green foliage dotting the 
 steep mountains. The surf breaks musically on 
 the shore, near which as at Naples the water has 
 prismatic streaks on it, coming from the shallow- 
 ness of the sea and the white bottom on which 
 
56 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 the sunbeams strike and break up. A wind-mill 
 and a light-house here and there. It is a beauti- 
 ful solitary spot. The people were expecting 
 us, for as soon as we hove in sight, boats put 
 out to meet us, and there was the wrangle and 
 jangle of voices to which I am gradually accus- 
 toming myself. On the highest mountain-top is 
 another Bj^zantine chapel, with its apse strangely 
 turned to the sea. I did not have quite time 
 enough to take in the clustering city before we 
 started. What a noble situation for the sumpt- 
 uous temple of Venus which Pausanius mentions 
 is the Isle of Cerigo. The whole coast abounds 
 in caverns, some of which are said to be of sin- 
 gular beauty. I can see them as we pass. As- 
 tarte has left her sweetness behind in the honey 
 for which Cythera is famed. The island seems 
 put here for nothing in the world but to make a 
 most lovely picture. It has no bays or harbors 
 or rivers worth speaking of ; its peasantry are 
 wild and scattered ; the grain fields are now just 
 gilding a few spots with their fruitful gold ; the 
 coast is savage and cavernous ; there is scant 
 vegetation in its ruddy and rocky glens, and it is 
 visited only by the quails with preference. 
 
 What a spot of beauty on these laughing, lumi- 
 nous seas ! We are sailing round it, and new and 
 richer landscapes are breaking on us. The after- 
 noon sun tinges everything with a tenderness like 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 57 
 
 the softest enamel. One's eyes are nearly out 
 with gazing through opera-glasses at these kalei- 
 doscopic changes, these Protean metamorphoses, 
 this succession and procession of most beauteous 
 mountain forms. It is like turning over leaf 
 after leaf of a living Odyssey and ever the sea 
 comes in with a low chime as of murmurous 
 nereids, through the fluted, organ-like sea-grots 
 and echoing caverns. And singularly forsaken 
 seems this sea. How seldom we meet a vessel ! 
 This morning, for a wonder, there was a steamer 
 in sight now and then, a peak-sailed schooner 
 hugging the shore. The region is like the dead 
 Mediterranean itself, which has no tide and nei- 
 ther ebbs nor flows. So the scenery on the Sea 
 of Sodom has the same unearthly brilliance. 
 Life and light are coincident, and yet in this 
 land of light how dead it is ! 
 
 We arrived at Syra early yesterday morning, 
 and transhipped from the Orestes to the Lucifer' 
 early this morning. Fourth of July in Greece ! 
 The incongruity would seem almost absurd if one 
 did not connect 1776 with 776, the foundation 
 of culture with its declaration of independence. 
 My fourths of July have certainly been varied, 
 many of them spent on the Atlantic, as I have 
 had birthdays in many lands. I have never been 
 more dazzled than T was at the first glimpse of 
 Syra cloudless calm, the most golden expanse 
 
58 GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 of illuminated water, blue and breathless light 
 over everything, and Syra in the foreground with 
 Hermoupolis, its capital, whitening the shore 
 and climbing the conical mountain behind. The 
 baldest, nakedest mountains around, but so be- 
 jeweled and bewitched by this transcendent cli- 
 mate that they excel in beauty the most luxuriant 
 of forest-clad heights. And this is the ^gean 
 Sea, too, and opposite is Delos, the Holy Isle 
 and sun of the Cyclades, about which these wan- 
 dering isles revolved in the antique imagination, 
 thousand-fold sacred with associations of Apollo 
 and Artemis. Rhenea lies in front, an island 
 once chained by a Greek tyrant to Delos as an 
 offering to the divinities. Paros, the marble 
 home of our divinest statues, is a tranquil spot 
 of aerial mountain-line to the southeast, a spot 
 wrangled over for thirty years no long time ago, 
 with the Greek government and a private indi- 
 vidual as parties to the law-suit. Andros and 
 Mykonos face us to the northeast. In fact, we 
 are in the maelstrom of the ^gean, caught in the 
 whirl of bright isles and all be-meshed and en- 
 tangled in poetic memories. How different are 
 these islands from the Ionian ! As different as 
 the most luxuriant fertility can be from the most 
 utter nudeness. What do these ^geans live on ? 
 No such question needed to be asked among the 
 vines and olives and pomegranates of Corfu and 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 59 
 
 Zante. But here there seems to be absolutely 
 nothing except mountains of mica, slate, marble, 
 and granite. The harbor is full of ships, too 
 brigs and brigantines, barks, schooners, steam- 
 ships, corsair-like vessels with slender hulls and 
 huge sails, innumerable harche and barcarole with 
 their sailors standing up as they row, even a 
 mighty Austrian man-of-war with a band of music 
 and formidable port-holes with cannon peeping 
 out. Syra is then the Cyclad of the Cyclades, 
 the centre of the steam life of the Levant, the 
 universal calling point for out-going and in-com- 
 ing steamers, and the point of transhipment for 
 Athens. Why this island precisely should have 
 been selected I do not know, except its harbor 
 is deep and spacious, and it is full of a lively, 
 restless population attracted here for apparently 
 incomprehensible reasons. The town contains 
 at least thirty thousand inhabitants (with forty 
 thousand horse-power), a theatre, several cathe- 
 drals and casinos, and some large factories, and 
 is the seat of an extensive trade. It gives one 
 a more perfect idea of what, in a measure, an 
 ancient town must have been, than any I have 
 seen. It really even the telegraph, steam com- 
 munications, and churches looks like a resus- 
 citated Pompeii. The houses are built of crys- 
 talline limestone, many of them highly polished, 
 with beautiful marble porticoes and plinths, mar- 
 
6o GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 ble steps and window frames, niches with sculpt- 
 ured figures in them, battlements with light bal- 
 ustrade often surmounted by a small temple, 
 quaint ornamented chimneys, arcades upheld by 
 marble pillars, and tiny gardens full of acacias, 
 fig-trees, and trellised vines. The majority of 
 them are perfectly square, two-storied, without 
 cornice or gabled roof, stained brilliant white 
 with a bright blue or pale green band running 
 round the top ; square or Roman windows with 
 green Venetian blinds, behind which hang lace 
 curtains and hover faces always curiously on the 
 lookout. Veiled women occasionally pass you, 
 though the majority of the Syrote women seem 
 to go without any covering for the head except a 
 light silk parasol. The gamins in the street have 
 the blackest hair I ever saw, with pure olive 
 complexions and aquiline noses. They bathe all 
 day long on the mole in this beautifully clear, 
 clean water. There is the prismatic sheen on it 
 I have so often noticed. Dolphins and sea- 
 urchins abound in these waters ; there is even a 
 group of islands which the Greeks called Echm- 
 ades, poetic old fellows ! from their resem- 
 blance to hedge-hogs. They were always, with 
 an infinitely fertile fancy, coining epithets and 
 conceiving similitudes, likening one island to the 
 antlers of a stag, calling another the isle of 
 roses, and describing others as sown (Sporades) 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES, 6 1 
 
 over the sea. They did the same with the stars, 
 unraveling the intricacies of those skeins of gold- 
 en light and weaving them again into a garment 
 of gorgeous myths. How beautifully the constel- 
 lations flash on us from the Greek poets ! To 
 each one there is hung the medallion of some 
 exquisite epithet which itself has a touch of star- 
 riness in it. I could not help thinking of it as 
 I looked at the heavens last night, so brill- 
 iantly pure, so softly scintillant. They hung 
 there like fruits of Aladdin's garden, each star 
 bedded in its case of velvet air like a brilliant. 
 The city was one mass of mantling light elon- 
 gated in the water as we arrived. I went into 
 the cathedral and admired the polished marble 
 of its interior, with the vaulted roof stained light 
 blue, and colored glass in the Byzantine dome. 
 The blue and white of the Greek national colors 
 appear everywhere, even in the churches. These 
 Greek churches do not produce the effect of the 
 dim Gothic. They are too full of light, and 
 have a Protestant clearness. The two towers of 
 this cathedral are very pretty, light elaborately 
 wrought open work marble, surmounted by a 
 graceful belfry. Another church which I visited 
 was most beautiful, with its marble cloisters and 
 dainty cornice. I could not tell whether it was 
 a convent or a church; probably both. I did 
 
62 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 not go in.^ Windmills whirl on every height. In 
 one place there are six of them in a row, facing 
 one of the most wonderful views of the ^gean. 
 The streets of Hermoupolis are simply abomina- 
 ble interminable steps, torturous and torturing, 
 seldom wide enough for even one vehicle, up-hill, 
 down-hill all the time, without ever seeming to 
 reach anything. I walked along the quay as if I 
 were in a dream, or like a belated vizier of 
 Haroun-al-Raschid, amid the greatest variety of 
 costume, though Turkish trousers and vests pre- 
 dominated. The faces of these islanders are 
 the most beastly and unredeemed I ever saw. 
 Boundless sensuality and filth lay seared on 
 them and into them. Turkish cobblers at the 
 street corners mending shoes al fresco ; Turkish 
 fishermen in little kiosks frying eels and doling 
 them out to hungry customers ; Turkish howadji 
 sitting cross-legged in their dens, awaiting vic- 
 tims ; tobacco-venders in huge turbans smoking 
 impassibly ; trousered lads with shrill voices cry- 
 ing their fruits and vegetables in your ears as you 
 passed j paunchy fellows in caftans marching by 
 the side of asses laden with water-jugs or ham- 
 pers of tomatoes ; others crying the virtues of 
 
 1 The Greek clergy are not famous for intelligence, and I 
 was surprised to find such a nest of beauty Jn lively, com- 
 mercial little Syra, which seemed like a suburb of Birming- 
 ham. 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES, 63 
 
 their melons, salami, or oil. The whole quay was 
 blocked up by the squatting or perambulating 
 peddlers. I w^as reminded of the marchands and 
 rabais (as they are called) of New Orleans. It 
 was a shame to make such diminutive donkeys 
 bear such mountainous loads. Many of them 
 were hardly bigger than Newfoundlands. Shet- 
 land ponies would have been Bucephaluses be- 
 side some I saw. 
 
 The shops are mean and dark. We did not 
 see one that had the least claim to elegance. 
 Photograph shops, the delight and pride of 
 most European towns, were almost non-existent. 
 Countless low cafes (Kacfi(f>VLa kuI ixTrtpeppLa, as 
 
 they call them) lined and impeded the streets 
 with their tables and awnings. I longed to go 
 in and see what they were like, but durst not 
 from ignorance of the Romaic. I did contrive 
 to get a weak limonata fresca at one, though it 
 was served with a pewter spoon. We got back 
 change which I have not yet deciphered. The 
 Levant is a chaos of conflicting currencies. I now 
 have in my pocket American, English, French, 
 Swiss, Italian, Danish, Austrian, Greek, and Sy- 
 rote coins. One's pocket-book is a cabinet of cu- 
 riosities. This is practical numismatics ! All of 
 these coins except the American and Danish, 
 were obtained coming from London here. The 
 Greek ^n^ drachmae, two drachmae, and one 
 
64 GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 drachma pieces, especially if new, are beautiful. 
 They have a real, genuine ring about them, 
 though they are, I believe, somewhat depreciated. 
 The gold coins I have not yet seen, for they are 
 scarce. 
 
 Brigandage is unknown in these islands, except 
 the legalized brigandage of camerieri, battelieri, 
 and the whole host of hotel and aquatic vermin 
 that infest th,e Levant and empty your pockets. 
 Though written and printed prohibitions against 
 receiving fees may be staring the cameriere (as 
 the steward is called) in the face, with the pen- 
 alty of dismissal, if transgressed, attached, he 
 will expect a fee, probably remind you of one, at 
 least by insolence of manner. This is the great- 
 est misery we suffer : what to give these people, 
 or whether to give them anything. One is lit- 
 erally famished for small change all the time, for 
 there is ever a hand held out to receive it. One 
 thing I have remarked at Syra not a single 
 beggar ! At least, I have not been addressed by 
 one. What curious boat loads are passing us ! 
 unknown nationality, but very picturesque, men, 
 women, and children, in all imaginable clouts and 
 costumes ; market boats, baggage and passenger 
 boats, yachts with the Greek pennant and with 
 canopies to keep off the sun, others with gay ar- 
 morial or national scutcheons painted in the 
 stern, where sometimes there is an aphorism 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES, 6$ 
 
 such as l\<ii o ^eos. Naked lazzaroni so I call 
 them at least are diving like porpoises off the 
 mole just as we pass, with utter disregard of the 
 ladies on board. What easy, emotionless naked- 
 ness 1 It is as natural to strip oif and plunge in 
 here as it is to eat. Off we go ! The Liccifer is 
 full of Greeks bound for Athens. If it were not 
 so early they would all be as lively as crickets. 
 As it is, some are plunged in newspapers, others 
 are watching the beautiful scenery through dark- 
 ened glasses, for the sun is bright. The Lucifer 
 is a side-wheeler. A huge commotion just as we 
 start : two boatmen, one shouting Burro, Burro I 
 (butter, butter !) and the other apparently calling 
 down imprecations on us for being in such a 
 hurry are rowing frantically after our ship. 
 They have been belated, or we are before our 
 time, so it appeared at first as if we should not 
 take their baskets, evidently destined for our 
 larder, on board. What fury of ejaculation on 
 both sides ! One of them lost an oar, and I 
 thought he would have lost his senses. The sea 
 is again like glass. Vessels lie becalmed, or be- 
 witched, all along the shore. There is a Calypso 
 spell on the water. In what beautiful, symmetric 
 curves it parts from us and flows to the side ! 
 No clouds, only cloud-like islands, to tell the 
 parting line between sea and sky. 
 
 There is a young Hellene on board reading a 
 5 
 
66 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 newspaper, the 'Ec^/y/xcpts (Daily News), which 
 looks more like a theatre programme than a 
 paper. 
 
 Syra is a capital point for excursions. It is 
 the seat of the Greek Steamship Company (dr/>to- 
 ttXouov eraipta), which sends out steamers on voy- 
 ages of a fortnight among all the islands belong- 
 ing to the Hellenic kingdom. Sailing in these 
 tranquil seas is a matter of no difficulty, for they 
 are an Hephaestus-net of islands close enough to- 
 gether to sail in a goeletta from isle to isle, or 
 even to take a huge, heavy-bottomed o-Ka<^os and 
 row from point to point. If then one is fortu- 
 nate enough to miss the regular steamer in this 
 enchanting circumnavigation, there is no harm 
 done, and impecunious Greeks can always be 
 found to do for one what Uhland's ferryman 
 did for his sweet-voiced guest: 
 
 " Nimm nur, Fahrmann, nimm die Miethe, 
 Die ich genie dreifach biete, 
 Zween, die mit mir iiberfuhren, 
 Waren geistige Naturen." 
 
 Of course it is quite necessary to have a host in 
 view, for these islands, hospitable in everything 
 else, are inhospitable in hotels. To reckon with- 
 out a host, then, in a Greek circular voyage, is 
 even more lamentable in Greece than in the old 
 proverb. The Greeks, like the Turks, are hospit- 
 able in the islands, whatever they may be on the 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 6j 
 
 main-land ; and one is expected to enrich the ser- 
 vants, if not the proprietor, with a small sum on 
 departing. These boats generally leave Wednes- 
 day at 8 in the morning. There is the blessed 
 arrangement on them that one is not obliged to 
 eat. Meals are paid for as they are consumed, 
 and the passage money is for the voyage alone. 
 
 The vessel as it steams out of the brilliant- 
 toned harbor of Hermoupolis in Syra passes a 
 light-house which, like everything else in these 
 bold and glittering latitudes, is white. The cru- 
 cifixion that the eyes undergo in the ^gean is 
 equal to the old Carthaginian torture. The scat- 
 tered rock and refuse of disintegrated islands lie 
 about in the water, bits just peeping above the 
 water-line, picturesquely suggestive of dangers. 
 Tenos, Andros, Mykonos, Delos, and Rhenea are 
 faint in the distance fairy isles, like bits of Me- 
 leager's verse, sprinkled about on the sea to sug- 
 gest what antiquity must have been, pedestals 
 for temples or points for a hovering Athene with 
 the spear. The glimpse of Syra, or Syros, as the 
 cultivated Greeks call it, reveals the singular 
 formation of the island, a beehive of busy, rebell- 
 ious Greeks, who have done wonders to enliven 
 this Dead Sea and make it look again like the 
 ancient times. One has ample opportunities on 
 such a voyage to physiognomize with Lavater, or 
 to study costume. The fustanella^ or petticoat, 
 
68 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 is not worn by the Greeks of Asia Minor and 
 Turkey as it is throughout Hellas ; but instead 
 of its graceful white folds one finds the mon- 
 strous leg-bag of the islanders, and high, wide, 
 slovenly turban, replaced in Grece by a light 
 crimson fez like that worn by the Turkish sol- 
 diers. 
 
 After a sail of three hours the steamer arrives 
 at Paros, cast upon the sea like a ball and 
 guarded on each side by a smaller island. The 
 tout ensemble of this famous group has been 
 compared to the Brocken. Naxos, with its im- 
 mense mountain chain, towers to the left, often 
 veiled in white clouds. Anti-Paros, or Oliandros, 
 is discerned to the right of Paros. Paros on 
 nearer approach is seen to throw out many wild 
 and rugged promontories, on which the surf roars 
 grandly and ascends in airy vapor from the sea. 
 The ship threads her intricate way through a 
 series of islands and finally reaches the harbor, 
 Naussa (from m?)?, a ship). There is a tiny, 
 dazzling-white town perched on a cliff, and a 
 brown Venetian tower rising before it out of the 
 water. Turks, Venetians, and Russians have 
 fought for the island, and so fearfully did the 
 Russians devastate that it has passed into a prov 
 erb in the place. No sooner is the steamer in 
 sight than she is immediately enveloped in a 
 sort of squall of boats, which toss and tumble 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 69 
 
 about her in the vain hope of a passenger. The 
 steamer, however, turns round and goes over to 
 the neighboring island of Naxos, the seat of the 
 mediaeval Duchy of Naxos, still containing a 
 tower of the ancient dukes. There are two Ionic 
 columns standing on a tiny isle just before the 
 tow^n, which are supposed to be relics of the tem- 
 ple of Bacchus. Naxos, though the largest of the 
 Cyclades, has but 12,000 inhabitants, in spite of 
 its 8,000 heavy-armed mentioned by Herodotus. 
 It was always celebrated for its wine, and it has, 
 besides, great poetic interest in its association 
 with the legend of Ariadne, daughter of Minos. 
 Like Egeria, the forlorn damsel seems to have 
 turned into a fountain, for her name is thus per- 
 petuated in Naxos. A channel about two miles 
 wide separates Naxos and Paros, two islands 
 still famous for their wine and marble. Mar- 
 mora is one of the towns of Paros, and repro- 
 duces in its name a vision of the quarries of 
 Marpassa, famous for the heaviest and hardest 
 and most translucent of all marbles. The an- 
 tique subterranean quarries out of which the 
 statuary marble came were reopened in 1844, 
 when marble was wanted for the tomb of Na- 
 poleon in the Invalides. What an enchanter's 
 wand had the great general ! The marble for ar- 
 chitectural purposes was obtained from the sur- 
 face. Many excavated places were found full of 
 
70 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 antique terra-cotta lamps left there by the an- 
 cients. As is well known, these quarries grad- 
 ually fell into neglect, especially when, under 
 Augustus, the quarries of Carrara, near Lucca, 
 were discovered. An English company, with a 
 capital of ;^i 00,000, is now working them. A 
 wretched German, who has been quarrying the 
 Verde Antique of Tenos, and the Rosso Antico 
 of Laconia, has recently proposed to get at the 
 marble more expeditiously by blowing up Mount 
 Marpassa with dynamite ! Ets Kopa/cas ! 
 
 Paros is enveloped in a sort of asteroid dust 
 of islets, Douvessa, Keros, Macares, Heraclea, 
 and Skiuvessa. To the south the horizon is 
 haunted by los, called Nio by the sailors, and Si- 
 kinos. los, too, has a lovely legend hung to it, for 
 once, says tradition, fared a ship from Smyrna 
 to Athens, and the ship held the body of a blind 
 old man. It was the body of Homer, who had 
 died on the voyage. The mariners put into los 
 and buried the body, and even to-day at the lit- 
 tle cloister Plakolos they show gravestones that 
 mark the grave of Homer. I will not ruffle the 
 plumes of this graceful legend by telling about 
 the Dutch count in Russian regimentals who, in 
 1773, visited los and found the grave. The in- 
 habitants of the island call themselves lonians 
 and are intelligent, simple-hearted people. The 
 wonder is where they get their information from, 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 7 1 
 
 shut in as they are from year's end to year's end, 
 and only once in a fortnight connecting their lit- 
 tle wire with the great cable- wires of the world. 
 So acute, however, is the intelligence of the 
 Greek that even such scanty communication is 
 sufficient to make him infinitely the superior of 
 all other Orientals. He is the banker, the clerk, 
 the bootblack, the newsboy, and the land-owner 
 of the East. This vivid intellectuality is of itself 
 sufficient to disprove Fallmerayer's theory that 
 the Hellenic blood no longer exists, and that 
 modern Hellas is a sort of warmed-up Slavism. 
 How the Greeks blaze when Fallmerayer's the- 
 ory is mentioned the stupid Bavarian who 
 would take their nationality from them ! 
 
 But the marvel of this ^gean Sea, full of mar- 
 vels and delightsomeness as it is, is the island of 
 Santorino, the mysterious Vesuvius of the Eastern 
 Mediterranean. The island is an extinct volcano, 
 hoop-shaped, with unfathomable water in the cra- 
 ter and gigantic cliffs rimming it in on three sides. 
 The story of Santorino (a corruption for Santa 
 Irene) goes baclc to a dim antiquity. The little 
 islet Therasia lies at the door of the crater, and 
 makes the circle complete. There is a glittering 
 white Greek town, Epanomeria, perched on one 
 end of the horned semicircle, which becomes 
 more and more conspicuous as the ship glides 
 into the lake-like expanse. The ship cannot an- 
 
^2 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 chor, for no plummet-line can fathom these fabu- 
 lous waters. It is a dazzling scene of variegated 
 marble piled story on stor}^ like a Venetian pal- 
 ace green, white, brown, blue-black, yellow, as 
 the successive eruptions have come and gone 
 with their feverous color. The walls of the 
 crater are four hundred metres high, dizzy and 
 vertical, while the crater itself is twelve kilome- 
 tres long and eight broad. Near where the ves- 
 sel stops a long meandering tier of houses rises 
 on a precipice twelve hundred feet high, and forms 
 the ribbon-like capital of the island Thera. A 
 thread of a path winds in zigzag from the bottom 
 to the top of this island. The eye can discern 
 caves made by human hand in the perpendicular 
 wall as it rises sheer from the disk of fairy water 
 below. This is the greatest of known craters, and 
 has been compared to the Vulcanic ring on the 
 moon. A group of rounded peak-like islands 
 springs out of the centre of the basin, like the 
 pistils of some wondrous flower. They are en- 
 tirely uninhabited, and plumes of twining ser- 
 pentine smoke wreathe and coil out of the summit 
 of the highest of them. An account gathered 
 from a recent traveller ^ will perhaps give the 
 reader a distincter impression of this marvelous 
 child of the Mediterranean. 
 
 Santorino is only about twelve miks north of 
 1 Faucher's Streifziige, Lacroix, lies de la Grlce. 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES, J^ 
 
 Crete, and is the southernmost of the Cyclades 
 or Revolving Islands that to the antique eye per- 
 formed a sort of sacred choric dance round the 
 island of Delos. It was not originally the ring 
 that we see to-day, but a high rounded insular 
 table-land, without any depression in the cen- 
 tre. The island was repeatedly peopled from 
 the neighboring islands, Amorgos (the birthplace 
 of Simonides) and Melos, and then as repeatedly 
 abandoned from the dread of the ever-recurring 
 eruptions. The volcano opened its sublime bat- 
 teries far back in the pleiocene period, and con- 
 tinued to break out like a sort of perpetual French 
 Revolution till it established a reign of terror in 
 the Orient Mediterranean. It seems, like Pom- 
 peii and Herculaneum, to have been immerged 
 in a vast inundation of volcanic ashes, and then 
 overlaid by streams of lava. Prehistoric relics of 
 men and houses have been found leading back to 
 a remote period, and a village of considerable 
 extent has been partially unearthed. Articles of 
 clay, pebble, obsidian, and pure copper were 
 found, and also many evidences of the island's 
 having sunk beneath the sea and then risen 
 again, with a superincumbent mass of sea-shells 
 overlaying these prehistoric relics. 
 
 The French geologist, Fouque, who was sent 
 out to visit and study the volcano during the dis- 
 plays of 1866 and 1867, carried off most of the 
 
74 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 relics to Paris. Fouque and Le Normant place 
 the date of these prehistoric remains two thousand 
 years before Christ. The Phenicians seem to 
 have been the first historic people who inhabited 
 the island. The Greeks, with their characteris- 
 tic art sense, changed the Phenician name to 
 Kalliste (most beautiful), and then to Strongule 
 (circle). The Phenicians seem to have known 
 the island as a ring broken through, with the 
 sea in the middle. Then came the Dorians, in the 
 pre-Christian Dark Ages (looo B. c), and called 
 the island Thera, after their leader Theras. A 
 rock-alphabet, extremely archaic, has been found 
 carved in the cliffs of Santorino, said to be older 
 even than that found by a Milesian officer on the 
 pedestal of the twin colossi of Abu-Simbel in 
 Nubia. 
 
 A sleep of two thousand years succeeded the 
 nightmare of the first great historic eruption (2000 
 B. c), when in the third century before our era 
 the Titan began to toss again. Pliny tells us of 
 the convulsions of the island 236 b. c, when 
 islands dipped up and then under like living creat- 
 ures, received a name, then mysteriously disap- 
 peared in the seething water. The most dread- 
 ful outbreaks were those of 1650, 1707, and 1866, 
 when the volcano acted like a colossal syringe, 
 and drenched the neighboring isles.' The thun- 
 dering of the mighty monster continued three 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 75 
 
 months, and its sulphurous breath blasted the 
 vegetation as far away as the island of Melos. 
 In February, 1866, thousands of red-hot blocks 
 of stone were belched out of the sea, and fell 
 back into the hissing water, contributing to the 
 formation of new hills and islands a hundred 
 yards above the surface of the sea. Two islands 
 especially were the picturesque fruit of these 
 throes, Georgios and Aphroessa (the foam-born), 
 Aphrodite-islands born of the foam of the sea. 
 This magnificent tableau lasted nearly two years. 
 More than sixty sorts of grapes grow on this 
 wonder island, and a wine is produced from some 
 of them that is peculiarly delectable to the Rus- 
 sian taste. The Russians nearly monopolize the 
 ^ fiery juice of this diabolic vineyard. It is like 
 Lacryma Christi, Teneriffe, or even Madeira wine 
 when it is good. The wine is pure and unmixed 
 with grape sugar or alcohol, and will keep a hun- 
 dred years in a cool place. 
 
 What a singular contrast to all the smiling 
 islands around is this grand demonic rock that 
 has a fit of delirium tremens every few hundred 
 years, and then makes up for it by exquisite 
 beauty and fertility ! In the laughter of such seas 
 as these, who would suspect the tragic growl 
 that lurks under this loveliest of painted water ! 
 There is something ^schylaean in its outbreaks 
 a demonic discontent with the placidity and 
 
"J 6 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 poesy of the other Cyclades. The wonder is that 
 it did not, Hke -^tna, leave more enduring traces 
 behind in the plastic Greek nature, ^tna that 
 overshadows so mightily the idylls of Theocritus, 
 and makes those hot Sicilian warblings cooler by 
 the fantastic shadow of its background. 
 
 Perfect as every bit of rock is in the purple- 
 WMtered Levant, the rest seem commonplace in 
 comparison with this lurid cone a star-like Hy- 
 perion that has fallen among the asphodels and 
 lilies. It carries to the highest point that inten- 
 sity of color which is spread over the East like 
 a physical imagination, and is at times almost too 
 much for the traveler who has journeyed from a 
 grayer climate. 
 
At last in Athens! But what intense disap^ 
 pointment does the first view of this celebrated 
 city give rise to ! Incredible dust, parching heat, 
 squalor, shabbiness, and general neglect. After 
 a delightful sail up the Saronic Gulf, past Cape 
 Suijium, yEgina, and Salamis, which would have 
 been more delightful had I not been a little un- 
 well, we steamed into the winding harbor of 
 Piraeus, and were instantly boarded by a horde 
 of ravenous boatmen, eager to take us to land, 
 Sciotes, Syrotes, ^Eginotes, lonians, and Al- 
 banians. I do not know what I should have 
 done in the universal scrimmage, had I not fallen 
 into the hands (almost into the arms) of the 
 Ionian dragoman, Miltiades Vidis, who spoke 
 English. While I stood vainly parleying with 
 the captain of the Lucifer^ who did not under- 
 stand French or German, respecting my ticket, 
 which had not been restored, a parleying 
 which was as ludicrous as it was distressing, for 
 it soon attracted a circle of curious Athenians, 
 the blessed Miltiades fell into the midst of us as 
 if from heaven, and at once made the captain un- 
 
^8 GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 derstand that I wanted my ticket back, which 
 was a return-ticket and was to get me to Brindisi 
 on my way to Liverpool. The cameriere had 
 neglected, after collecting it in the morning, to 
 hand it to me again. Well, Miltiades was worthy 
 of his namesake of old, and we came out victori- 
 ous from this more than Marathon. I never saw 
 such a pertinacious, prickly-tongued set as these 
 Piraeote boatmen. They follow you up and down 
 the steamer, peep into your face (and perhaps 
 into your pocket), interrogate with eyes, tongues, 
 and hands, offer to take you ashore, suggest 
 hotels, etc., and though you say No, in all im- 
 aginable languages and with all imaginable em- 
 phasis, they keep hanging about like hornets, and 
 insist on giving you the sting of their services. 
 A sting it is indeed that long rankles in an empty 
 pocket, for there is no settled tariif (as there is 
 none for the Athenian d/xa^a/, carriages)^ and you 
 are literally at their mercy. Land you must, for 
 the ship is out in the harbor and you cannot 
 swim ashore with a portmanteau, an umbrella, a 
 pair of spectacles, a shawl, an overcoat, and a 
 duster, easy as it seems to be to strip off in this 
 antique atmosphere and plunge into the sea. It 
 was the same at Syra, the morning we left, on the 
 arrival of the steamer Mercuriox Candia. Though 
 it was but little after 4 in the morning, the ship 
 was already surrounded, like a team of steaming 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES, 79 
 
 horses, with a swarm of gad-fly boats full of 
 naked-legged lonians in waistcoat and fez, who, 
 even before the Mercur stopped, boarded her 
 like so many corsairs, climbing up the sides and 
 gangway, amid the universal scolding and damn- 
 ing of the crew. Thrice-blessed (or Trai^ayto?, as 
 they say in the Greek church) be the bronze- 
 faced Miltiades for rescuing me from these har- 
 pies, interpreting for me about my ticket, putting 
 me, bag and baggage, in his boat, and conveying 
 me, like the precious Argosy he had captured, to 
 a a/m^ that stood waiting for us on shore. One 
 felt as poor Isaac must have felt when the ram 
 appeared, or like classic Iphigenia on the trans- 
 formation. " Shall we go by carriage or by rail- 
 way ? " inquired I, timidly, of the ^gis-like Mil- 
 tiades, hoping that he would reply, " By railway," 
 for I knew that transportation by rail was only a 
 drachma, and my rapidly drained pocket shrank 
 from the five miles' drive to the Acropolis in an 
 expensive carriage. " By carriage," replied the 
 inexorable Miltiades, seeming to read my inner- 
 most heart and sternly rebuking any economical 
 instinct left lingering there. I yielded, as he had 
 been so kind already and would doubtless point 
 out to me many objects of interest along the road, 
 and he did in fact. The road runs for a while be- 
 side the Long Walls of Themistocles, and in sev- 
 eral places their foundations and superstructure, 
 
80 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 to a considerable extent, are laid bare, a piece 
 of admirable masonry, to have resisted leveling 
 Lacedaemonians, Venetians, Turks, and, most 
 reckless of all, Athenians themselves. Only the 
 wall on the right, covered with ages of dust and 
 blackened by weather-stains, was visible as we 
 drove along. For some time we followed this 
 great jugular vein of ancient Athens, a vein con- 
 necting it with the vitality, the vigor, and the liv- 
 ing energy of the sea. We stopped at a rude inn 
 where a fellow in the national costume refreshed 
 Miltiades with a glass of something green out of 
 a pink decanter. I, meanwhile, sat looking over 
 his book of recommendations as a guide, and 
 found to my surprise many well-known and dis- 
 tinguished names. I say surprise, for though the 
 appearance of -the dragoman was eminently hon- 
 est and kind, I did not judge from his English 
 that he had been in such distinguished company. 
 I found letters and recommendations from Sydney 
 Colvin, Newton of the British Museum, H. Mac- 
 lean, Henry T. Stanley, Amelia B. Edwards, 
 Oscar Browning, and some English noble folk, 
 all carefully folded and pasted in the book, and 
 all cordially uniting in commending the care, 
 kindness, and polyglot accomplishments of my 
 savior. He seemed proud that I recognized so 
 many names, said he had been in America three 
 years, but (with decided pride) learned his Eng- 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 8 1 
 
 lish in London, had served a secretary of lega- 
 tion or two, and knew all the classic places by 
 heart. He announced to me as we drove along, 
 " Yonder dee spot where Admiral Themistoclee 
 bore on the Prussian ship,'' while I sat mute with 
 indignation and horror and looked out for the 
 imaginary spot. " Yonder dee Hymettus where 
 you get honey for your breekfast," whilst I was 
 supposed to be licking my lips at this savory 
 announcement. ^' Dere dee Acropolis," point- 
 ing to a mass of dirty-looking ruins scowling in 
 the distance, and in which I in vain tried to recog- 
 nize the dazzling contours of the far-darting Par- 
 thenon. Is that the Parthenon ? I could not help 
 muttering to myself, over and over again, like 
 Keats's ancient beadsman. Am I at Athens t 
 Is this Miltiades Vidis ? In these vague and 
 vast inquiries time fled, and presently we found 
 ourselves with a mouthful of dust and a library 
 of information from our guide before the The- 
 seum. How noble and pensive it looked in the 
 evening light ! Inconceivably gray and grand it 
 stood on its plateau almost intact from a remote 
 antiquity. I saw or thought I saw children play- 
 ing among the columns bits of Yesterday be- 
 fore this Ancient of Days.-^ Our horses were, 
 however, too quick-footed for my eyes to tarry 
 
 1 An annual festival is held in the square in which this 
 Temple of Theseus is situated, when the strange and stately 
 
82 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 long on this famous cynosure, and we were 
 whirled on through a labyrinth of excruciating 
 streets. Everybody seemed to be in them, too, 
 and our coachman uttered strange cries, in a 
 boulevard Greek perhaps as old as Homer, for 
 the obstructers to get out of the way. Narrow, 
 winding, and squalid, these streets wind and 
 twine on themselves like bewildered corkscrews, 
 until they debouch into the o^o^ kloXov or the 
 6S09 ''E/)/xoi;,^ the two principal thoroughfares of 
 the city. For the first time I saw the national 
 costume with sufficient frequency to take in its 
 details : ^ shoes or slippers of red undressed 
 leather, with a tuft of worsted like a pen wiper on 
 the pointed and upturned toe ; leggins of white 
 cloth fitting close to the legs and clasped at the 
 knee by a garter, which is often varied by strips 
 of cloth wrapped in contrary directions round the 
 calf of the leg ; then a petticoat or kilt of white 
 cloth, which may be of various fullnesses, in in- 
 numerable folds, reaching hardly to the knee ; 
 
 dances of the modern Greeks the men dancing with each 
 other may be observed in the open air. 
 
 ^ The same name belonged to one of the Athenian streets 
 in antiquity, as Jebb, in his Attic Orators, mentions. 
 
 2 The costume is of high antiquity, and, though coming 
 originally from the Albanians and adopted as a national 
 costume only since the War of Independence in 1821-28, 
 has been observed on a coin of Pyrrhus now in the Museum 
 at Naples. 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 2>l 
 
 then a waistcoat, embroidered or not according to 
 the taste or means of the wearer, and fitting close 
 to the figure. Some have tight white sleeves, 
 others large and flowing ones, or false sleeves of 
 dark cloth hanging from the shoulder. Many 
 have a gay sash round the loins. A red fez, 
 with or without a long blue tassel, surmounts and 
 completes the costume, which on slender figures 
 is very graceful, but on stout or paunchy ones in- 
 finitely awkward. To see a great waddling Athe- 
 nian, with his kilt starched stiff and standing out 
 at right angles with his hips, like a sunflower, 
 pufhng and laboring through this dust and sun- 
 shine, is a scene to excite commiseration. The 
 costume is varied in a great many ways. Blue 
 stockings to the knee, and a bright blue or many- 
 colored waistcoat, with a straw hat instead of a 
 fez, may be seen, making a stylish contrast with 
 the white Albaniote kilt. There is a resemblance 
 between this dress and that of the Scotch High- 
 landers.^ I see women stepping about in a 
 
 1 The king wears the national costume on state occa- 
 sions, and it must be confessed there is a great deal of grace 
 in it. It gives a peculiar swing and stateliness to the figure. 
 One is reminded of the grave walking of antiquity such as 
 Plato says was a part of (what he calls) (rco(l)po(Tvv7j. To 
 see its wearers adjusting themselves at table or sauntering 
 slowly and majestically across the square, calls up a vision 
 of former life, which, however different in particulars, bears 
 a close resemblance to the life of to-day. 
 
84 GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 Strange and beautiful costume the same cos- 
 tume nearly as that described by Williams in his 
 account of Theresa, Byron's ^' Maid of Athens." 
 The most remarkable part of it is the brilliant 
 red cap arranged coquettishly among the hair 
 and hanging gracefully on one side with a splen- 
 did pendent golden tassel. In several cases this 
 was worn in contrast with a black silk dress and 
 black lace shawl. Only a parasol shielded the 
 head and face from the sun.^ European costumes 
 are very general. How the men can wear the fez 
 in this blinding light I cannot see, for it has no 
 protection for eyes or ears, and must be hot ; so 
 also must be the close-wrapped leggings. What 
 they have on under all this I am at a loss to con- 
 ceive. The necessity of frequent change of such 
 clothing is obvious, no rain for weeks and 
 months, and whirling dust, as in Northern 
 China, nearly all the time. It is as bad as Rome 
 in midsummer. 
 
 Just as we entered or rather crossed Eolus 
 Street we had a magnificent glimpse of the Acrop- 
 olis and its four hundred feet of historic perpen- 
 dicular. No position more glorious for a fortress 
 or a temple could be imagined commanding, 
 isolated, and towering, like Athens itself in the 
 
 1 The queen and her ladies of honor scions of the great 
 Greek families of Botzaris, Kolokotroni, Mavrocordato, and 
 others occasionally wear it. 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 85 
 
 hubbub of Greek republics. All around purpling 
 and crimsoning mountains; the blush of Lyca- 
 bettus, the violet of Hymettus, the gleam of the 
 sea at Phalerum, and the glamour of Parnes and 
 ^galeos in the distance. High up loomed this 
 immortal eminence, symbol of intellectual and 
 aesthetic eminence, and an undying relic of the 
 unattainable past. When I got to the hotel, 
 bathed, and went out in the twilight among the 
 glorious ruins of the Temple of Jupiter Olympius, 
 I could not help a feeling of strangeness and awe 
 at the surrounding desolation. The noble Corin- 
 thian colurns of this temple, the hoary and time- 
 stained arch of Hadrian, the beautiful ridge of 
 flowering Hymettus on the east, and the Parthe- 
 non faintly flushed by the setting sun, made truly 
 a hive of busy recollections. And then the 
 strange Greeks one saw. There was a kilted, 
 blue-waistcoated Albanian talking to a Greek 
 priest in black gown and steeple-crowned hat ; 
 white-buskined peasants driving donkeys and 
 armed with revolvers ; Greek soldiers in red 
 jackets and blue trousers; Greek school-boys 
 fresh from their Xenophon and Thucydides ; 
 groups of Athenian ladies among the columns, 
 in European panier and chapeau; many-colored 
 strangers from all parts of the East and West, 
 all these standing or walking in striking tableau 
 among the ruins on the road. 
 
86 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 We got up this morning early and took a walk 
 after the morning Ka^<^k%^ which all the Greeks, 
 like the French and Italians, seem to favor as a 
 preparation for the dejeuner d la fourchette, I 
 turned up in the direction of the palace, a great 
 barrack-like quadrangle with a rich-colored Pen- 
 telic portico, marble plinths and window-frames, 
 and spacious balcony in front. The glare from it 
 in this atmosphere is almost intolerable. It is 
 an anomaly in government that King George 
 lives in a rented palace : singularly suggestive, 
 too, of the slightness of the kingly tenure. The 
 palace is the property of the late King Otho's 
 heirs. In front there is a wide space unin- 
 closed, and interrupted here and there by a mag- 
 nificent group of aloes, oleanders, and myrtle. 
 The palace looks in a straight line down Hermes 
 (or Ermes, if we mean to follow the modern 
 Greek contempt for aspirates) Street, over the 
 beautiful tropical garden of the Constitution 
 Square. In the centre of this square, which is a 
 perfect thicket of myrtle, orange, aloe, cactus, 
 cypress, and pepper trees, there is a fountain 
 playing, and beyond lies the street, interrupted 
 by a very curious and very ancient Byzantine 
 church. 
 
 This church is to the modern specimens of that 
 style of architecture what the miniatures of Hans 
 Memling are to the large canvases of the Ve- 
 
GREEK VIGNErrES. 2>7 
 
 netians. We strolled along by the palace and 
 turned down a spacious avenue by the Hotel de 
 la Grande Bretagne. It is a gross slander to say 
 that new Athens is like a modern German city; 
 this street, particularly, is more like some of the 
 beautiful avenues that radiate from the Arc de 
 Triomphe at Paris, of course on a small and as 
 yet quite incomplete scale. Did any dingy Ger- 
 man city even Munich, the best of them ever 
 have anything like some of these exquisite mar- 
 ble fronts, with their Corinthian and Ionic colon- 
 nades, their niched statuary, their balustrade-like 
 cornice surmounted by grouped and classic urns ? 
 None that I have seen. They are part and par- 
 cel of this climate, where the marble floor of the 
 Parthenon, after the pacing of myriads of feet, 
 the assaults of various armies, the rains of more 
 than two thousand summers and winters, and the 
 rubbish accumulated since the time of Pericles, is 
 nearly as white to-day as in the year of its build- 
 ing. It is true there are many houses here which, 
 being built of broken limestone and faced with 
 stucco, do resemble houses in Teutonic Europe. 
 But it is wrong to say that the Athenian city is in 
 the least German. Several German architects of 
 eminence have for years been at w^ork in laying 
 out and building the handsomer portions of 
 Athens ; but they have failed to impress on their 
 work the usually so distinct Germanic individual- 
 
88 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 ity. Many of the houses I passed were very 
 beautifully built. The marble was polished and 
 of a mellow cream color; the windows without 
 shutters and shaded by the movable Venetian 
 blinds toned to suit the house ; gardens full of 
 delicious scents extended on the sides, and here 
 and there within the grounds some small poly- 
 chromatic building relieved the intense bright- 
 ness of the polished surfaces. I walked down by 
 the royal garden behind the palace, a garden 
 designed by the former Queen Amalie/ after 
 whom the street running down the front of the 
 palace is named (686? 'A//aAtas). It is some- 
 what disappointing to see a royal garden sur- 
 rounded by a rather dilapidated wooden fence 
 painted a dingy olive green ; but as soon as you 
 look beyond the fence, the eye and the senses 
 are delighted with the aromatic wilderness spread 
 out before them. It all seemed so familiar to 
 me : the yellow exquisite-scented acacia, the pink- 
 blossomed mimosa trembling in golden sunlight, 
 the graceful china-trees with their bunches of 
 ripe berries, the dusty fig and silvery olive, the 
 orange and white-flowered palmetto, the laura- 
 mundi, the fleche-like cypresses, the throng of 
 embattled century-plants that recalled an episode 
 
 1 The well-known lady of whom About said that while 
 the king examined all state papers without signing them, 
 she signed them all without examining them. 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 89 
 
 in the early life of Heine and crowded impene- 
 trably on one side of the garden fence. I had 
 seen them all, and more than these, in my own 
 southern home. But where was the grass ? Not 
 a sprig of it apparently on the thirsty soil, all 
 burnt up by the touch of the sirocco. Still the 
 garden is delightfully dense, and royal courtesy 
 opens it several hours every day to the public. 
 Why cannot all this wonderful plain be planted 
 in the same maimer ? Light as the soil is, there 
 are ineradicable figs and olives, cypresses and 
 lentisc, growing now where they grew in the time 
 of Plato. And there are long cypress-bordered 
 avenues shooting out in various directions where 
 the trees seem most vigorous. There is even a 
 luxuriant forest between the Piraeus and Athens. 
 Many streets are shaded by long lines of feathery 
 pepper-trees, which have been naturalized in 
 Greece and are highly graceful in their light and 
 tremulous foliage. 
 
 I walked on down through the glare and dust 
 of the street, seeking shade wherever I could find 
 it, and stopping now and then to notice numerous 
 large houses in process of erection in various di- 
 rections. The striking cone of Lycabettus, where 
 there is the reservoir which supplies Athens with 
 water,^ was before me all the time, and the range 
 
 . 1 See Faucher's Streifzuge for a curious account of the 
 ceremonies with which this and other waters are annually 
 
90 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 of Hymettus, looking almost near enough to touch. 
 There is no distance in such an atmosphere. I 
 passed several beer-gardens full of plants and 
 flowers, one called 17 X^vky] irepLorTepy, with a white 
 dove painted over the portal and inside a tangle 
 of perfumes and blossoms. The oleander is more 
 beautiful here than I have ever seen it, except in 
 Louisiana. The air is laden with it as you pass, 
 and it seems to delight in drought and sunlight. 
 After a while I turned back and walked along be- 
 hind the palace garden, every now and then catch- 
 ing glimpses of a marble capital or a piece of cor- 
 nice lying in among the trees, probably found 
 there when the garden was laid out, many years 
 ago. The song of the cicada came to me over 
 the fence, full of the sweetest associations. In 
 our own sunny South I had learned to love it in 
 my earliest childhood, and to listen for it on brill- 
 iantly sunny days. We children used to catch 
 the cicadas and make them sing for us by a little 
 cruelty. A gentle squeeze would make them 
 break out into shrill song. And then, what was 
 our delight if we found the shell of one that had 
 been shed and left sticking to some huge old 
 black-jack! Added to such pleasant recollections 
 were those drawn from Greek poetry, the lines of 
 Anacreon, the lovely epigrams of the anthology, 
 
 Messed by the church, that they may not dry up and leave 
 the town waterless. 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 91 
 
 the tender sentiment attached to such ephemeral 
 existences by the Melic poets, the dream of beauty, 
 gayety, and evanescence which they symbolized 
 to the laughing Athenians. They, like the imper- 
 ishable olive groves of Academe, cannot be burnt 
 out by any blaze or broil of the sun ; rather they 
 are the children of the sun, and find in him their 
 germinant principle. In a short while my walk 
 brought me in sight of the noble group of Jupiter 
 Olympius, a group of grand pillars still surmounted 
 by their architrave, standing on a gentle eminence 
 and looking straight, from one of the fagades, 
 on the deep blue bay of Phalerum. A white sail 
 could be seen now and then, and a wavy mountain 
 line like the ripple of a nereid's blue hair. Noth- 
 ing could be more poetic than the situation of 
 these majestic relics of antiquity, or more picture- 
 like than the landscape which they frame ; no 
 matter which way you look, an unrivaled perspec- 
 tive of the Acropolis, with the noble Panathenaic 
 frieze, and the Parthenon, or what is left of it, 
 peeping over the wall ; then the Saronic Gulf, blue 
 as the flames of alcohol or sulphur, the Pentelic 
 range, the distant sapphire of Peloponnesian 
 peaks, and even the cathedral-like Acrocorinthus. 
 A Greek church or two lay in the foreground, 
 with graceful oriental campanile opening here 
 and there into arches upheld by Ionic pillars and 
 holding a huge bell, like a brazen lily, in their 
 
92 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 heart. The three hundred churches which Athens 
 is said to have had in the time of Justinian have 
 dwindled into twenty or thirty. 
 
 Yesterday evening after our 5 o'clock dinner I 
 sallied forth, glass and guide-book in hand, to see 
 the sunset from the Parthenon. As usual I in- 
 stinctively took the longest way. Turning up the 
 bright new street beside the hotel, I diverged to 
 the right after a while and found myself in the 
 usual labyrinth of alleys that skirt the environs of 
 Turkish Athens everywhere, a labyrinth full of 
 low drinking shops, cafes, and inns, some with 
 arched doorways like pictures of the place of 
 the Nativity, opening on large, dingy, stable-like 
 rooms with a few rude tables and chairs scattered 
 about. Most of the houses were low, of one or 
 two stories, with an occasional tree or trellised 
 vine, or pot of basil. They w^ere rough stuccoed 
 affairs, many of them like pictures of the lacus- 
 trine hovels, abounding in children, cats, sol- 
 diers, red-fezzed men, and bare-headed women. 
 For a time I was quite bewildered in this pecul- 
 iarly Turkish and Albaniote precinct of Athens, 
 where little Greek is spoken, but I gradually 
 emerged on the Pelasgic slope of the Acropolis 
 and picked my way over the debris in front of 
 the Dionysiac Theatre. 
 
 In strange contrast with the surrounding si- 
 lence and squalor were the groups of dirty Greek 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 93 
 
 children playing about among the ruins, and the 
 solitary peasants who seemed to be hanging 
 around in the approaching twilight with anything 
 but benevolent intent. I soon learned, however, 
 that Athens is perfectly safe. I wandered on 
 and soon got among the wilderness of unrecog- 
 nized ruins and localities adjacent to the Dionys- 
 iac Theatre. The ground was covered by a nu- 
 merous populace of broken statues, metopes, 
 pieces of architraves, relics of gracefully carved 
 capitals, tombs, steles, and fluted pillars. Many 
 were covered with inscriptions interrupted at all 
 points by sudden and disastrous fractures inar- 
 ticulate cries in marble. The whole was like 
 what one imagines a graveyard to be at the Res- 
 urrection a hopeless jumble of conflicting and 
 incoherent individualities. There was a kilted 
 peasant near, drawing water out of a well and 
 washing his face from the bucket. The ground 
 was full of excavations, drains, basements of un- 
 known buildings, walls running in various lines, 
 then, as if themselves struck with a paroxysm of 
 doubt, stopping short and ending in nothing. A 
 huge archway of a vaulted subterranean passage 
 opened suddenly as if revealed by an earthquake. 
 Wells were sunk here and there. Mountains of 
 rubbish lay about which not even German schol- 
 arship has yet sifted. Then I came to the site 
 of Curtius's excavations in 1862, the deep sem- 
 
94 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 icircle of the Odeum of Herod, with bewitching 
 glimpses of Salamis, .^gina, and the mountains 
 through the ruined windows. Could there be a 
 more perfect framework for such a scene than a 
 ruined window with waving grasses hanging from 
 it, and the blue laughter of the sea scintillating 
 up ? Not far off was the great theatre where 
 the plays of ^schylus and Sophocles, Euripides, 
 Aristophanes, and Menander were performed, 
 not in the life-time of the four former, but with 
 splendor after their death. The amphitheatre of 
 seats hewn out of the solid rock is uncomfortably 
 vertical. Spectators in the upper tiers, like spec- 
 tators at Drury Lane and Covent Garden in the 
 amphitheatre, must have looked down on the 
 heads of the chorus and officiating priests. The 
 orchestra, near which were the best seats during a 
 representation, struck me as small. Here, indeed, 
 on the slope of the southeastern Acropolis, might 
 Symonds have written his brilliant chapter on 
 Aristophanes, and have conceived the varied 
 movement and multiplicity of the sacred Dionys- 
 iac festival. But I cannot, like him, conceive 
 the sacred obscenity of that scene, the religious 
 licentiousness of its observance, the fleshly epiph- 
 any and apotheosis of the strange pagan celebra- 
 tion, the long line of waving Bacchanals, the 
 ivy-wreathed boys and Silenus-faced priests. And 
 all this passed away ! Owls and prickly pear have 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 95 
 
 replaced the wisdom and wit of Aristophanes. 
 Aloes send up their far-darting spires where the 
 shaft of sarcasm flew from tier to tier. Broken 
 stones are the mournful remnant of the elegant 
 symmetry of the Odeum. Rooks caw over the 
 Parthenon and haunt this desolation in the twi- 
 light. The immemorial violet and crocus and 
 narcissus, that blend with honey in scattering their 
 scent over the field of Attic poetry, flourish in 
 the spring-time in the crevices of the surround- 
 ing rock. Wild oats wave from the inaccessible 
 walls of the mighty citadel of violet - crowned 
 Athens. There is no longer the apparition of the 
 chryselephantine work of Phidias lifting its helmed 
 head over the Propylaea, and making its spear- 
 point glitter like a star over the turbulent city. 
 
 Before turning in the rude wooden gate that 
 admits visitors to the summit, one comes on a 
 scene of almost savage ruin and bereavement. 
 Perhaps not even the Palace of the Caesars is a 
 scene of more intricate architectural problems 
 and identifications than this vestibule to the most 
 glorious of earthly temples. For a time (being 
 without a guide and wandering at will) I was in 
 doubt how to gain the entrance, which stood con- 
 siderably above us. Finally, after eluding the 
 clutches of an old trinket and rosary vender who 
 had a basket of jugs and jars for sale, I climbed 
 up and knocked with the handle of my umbrella. 
 
96 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 At length I succeeded in attracting the attention 
 of a Httle dog that barked shrilly and came run- 
 ning to meet me. We soon made friends with the 
 bright-eyed, laughing-faced fellow, and presently 
 one of the old revolutionists of '26-27 came hob- 
 bling to meet us. He seemed pleased at the sud- 
 den intimacy between his dog and the visitors, 
 and admitted us without hesitation. I was sur- 
 prised and delighted to find that he made no 
 movement to accompany us, a movement which 
 was found very necessary when, a few years ago, 
 a thief secreted himself among the ruins and 
 tried to sever with his penknife the marble toe of 
 the Nike Apteros, and we soon found ourselves 
 alone within the inclosure of the Parthenon, the 
 richest mosaic of immortal memories that our 
 world contains. It was just sunset. The air was 
 cooled from the blue fire of the afternoon, and a 
 gentle wind rustled among the columned temples 
 and gateway, making a soft music for the genius 
 of the place. Everywhere the same mouldering 
 debris, overrun by brambles or wild cucumber 
 vines, cucumbers, the staple fare of the Athe- 
 nian proletariat of Alciphron's time, and which 
 pursue the fleeing traveler in all imaginable 
 states of composition and decomposition, down 
 to the hotel-fares of modern times ! 
 
 Prostrate columns and the aesthetic chaos of 
 an overthrown and abandoned worship ran riot 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES, 97 
 
 in every nook and corner. Huge Doric columns 
 towered upward with massive architrave, or lay 
 with their drums scattered on the ground, with 
 the mark of the iron visible where they were 
 joined together. The battle-held of scholars, the- 
 ologians, and antiquaries lay all about. One can- 
 not conceive how so much could have been 
 crowded into so little space. Eleven hundred by 
 five hundred feet are the proportions of the plateau 
 of the Acropolis, if its perverse ups and downs 
 can be called a plateau. The solid base rock is 
 visible nearly everywhere except in the Parthe- 
 non itself. One is lost in the multitude of col- 
 umns, chambers, and steps. This must, under 
 Pericles, have been the richest cluster of build- 
 ings the eye ever dwelt on dense as a bouquet 
 of flowers. It was the blossom and burden of 
 Attica this carven, chromatic hill, full as any 
 cornucopia with the products of Athenian skill. 
 One can imagine the Athenians content with 
 their squalid houses when their eyes turned to 
 this splendid crag and they saw there the glory 
 of Athenian supremacy. It is no matter of mar- 
 vel that all other languages were jargon to them, 
 and all other nations jargon-talkers (Edpftapoi), 
 No one has ever solved the riddle of this supe- 
 riority of the Greeks. Think of their magnificent 
 drama amid the surrounding barbaric silence. It 
 is like the silver peak of the Jungfrau among the 
 7 
 
98 GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 mole-hills of the Hottentot. And then consider 
 the isolation of their culture, its unique devel- 
 opment, its many-sided and iridescent grace. Of 
 course there is much of the same intellectual 
 spirit among the distant Hindoos and Chinese, 
 but there is an element of the grotesque com- 
 bined with it that gives to all that these nations 
 have said and done a something out of time, the 
 tone of a cracked bell. The figure of Silenus was 
 as near as the Greeks could get to anything that 
 was monstrous in art. And in Silenus the union 
 of the beast and the man was relieved by the 
 most human laughter. Sometimes, as in Vergil's 
 Eclogue, he was even exalted into a poetic and 
 philosophic mentor. The streak of diabolism 
 running through Japanese art finds no response 
 in the Greek. Winckelmann's serenity, Lessing's 
 beauty, are found there in abundance, but beyond 
 the harmless satyrs and the masques of Medusa, 
 nothing that is purely and fantastically horrible. 
 How pure, how fragrant are these sculptured 
 shafts surmounted by their volutes or their acan- 
 thus leaves ! how different from the ever-archaic 
 Egyptian, the Indian temple, or the pagoda of 
 China ! 
 
 I wandered among the pillars of the Parthenon 
 and studied out the peristyle, pronaos, opistho- 
 domos, and cella, as well as the present condi- 
 tion of the temple allows. Can it be true, as Dr 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES, 99 
 
 Mahaffy in his recent " Rambles " affirms, ^ that 
 people are allowed to shoot at the remnants of 
 the wonderful Panathenaic frieze ? Or has the 
 good doctor in this as in some other things " ram- 
 bled '^ indeed ? It is inconceivable that the Greek 
 government could be so impotent as to allow 
 even the possibility of such vandalism. And yet 
 Bayard Taylor, I think, tells us that the monu- 
 ment of Botzaris at Mesolonghi and Ottfried 
 Miiller's monument at Athens have been similarly 
 maltreated. And the Greeks are, as Dr. Mahaffy 
 says, sufficiently careless of their national monu- 
 ments. I was allowed to walk the whole time 
 alone, while the ground was covered with valuable 
 fragments of sculpture many small inscribed 
 pieces that any one might take away. Several of 
 the pillars looked to me on the point of tottering 
 over, which a little bracing would secure for cent- 
 uries. The lame and futile attempts made by 
 King Otho to reelevate some of the prostrate pil- 
 lars stand to-day as a monument of capriciously 
 abandoned purpose. Tuckerman enters into an 
 interesting calculation about the cost of reerect- 
 ing the columns of the Olympieum, and tells us 
 that those which are fallen could be raised for 
 $3,000 each. The columns, floors, and stylobates 
 are written over with the innumerable autograph 
 of fools, who have left behind this sole record of 
 their folly. Everything is chipped or incised with 
 
100 GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 felomous penknives as high up as arms can reach. 
 Lead-pencil marks are tolerably harmless, for the 
 rain will soon wash them away, but when it comes 
 to positively sculpturing Smith and Jones in the 
 floors and on the pillars, names some of which 
 date back to the early decades of the century, 
 it almost seems as if an efficient guardian 
 should accompany visitors, annoying as such 
 guardians generally are. The Greek government 
 cannot fret with foreign governments for not de- 
 livering up their precious fragments, as Dr. Ma- 
 haffy well remarks, when the monuments they 
 have in their possession are thus bit by bit pass- 
 ing away. Ages of quarrying and stealing failed 
 to make much impression on the Colosseum till 
 the English tourist with his penknife and pencil 
 arrived on the spot. In this way the Parthenon 
 is being chipped to pieces by inches. The innu- 
 merable idiots that visit it have unwittingly pil- 
 loried their own names for the execration of suc- 
 ceeding ages. I noticed the same autograph 
 mania on top of the Cathedral of Milan. The 
 delicate pilasters and sculptures that make a mar- 
 ble museum of its roof were, wherever it was pos- 
 sible, scribbled over by the pack that ostensibly 
 go up to see the view, but really it seems to leave 
 behind their wretched names. Jones, Smith, and 
 Robinson on the Acropolis indeed ! Could not 
 a Bridge of Sighs, or a series of Pozzi, be con- 
 structed for these people ? 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 10 1 
 
 I was interrupted in my account of the 
 Acropolis by the sound of the dinner-bell, or 
 rather of the preparation-bell, which in this hotel 
 rings like a fire-bell and is equal to an American 
 gong. I went down to find our usual table d'hote 
 set : an Englishman talking French, a Russian 
 officer, two other Britishers just returned from a 
 trip through Syria and Constantinople, and five 
 or six Greeks talking alternately in their own lan- 
 guage and in French. French is very generally 
 understood in Athens, and is the language of so- 
 ciety, or of an entertainment where foreigners 
 might be present. There are many points of re- 
 semblance between the Greeks and the French. 
 Their eating and drinking habits and hours are 
 the same, and there is the same intellectual quick- 
 ness and restlessness, not to speak of the simi- 
 larity of complexion and appearance. The fond- 
 ness of the Greeks for France is seen in the 
 publication of several French newspapers at 
 Athens. To be sure, the French always has a 
 very decided accent, but then it is at least intel- 
 ligible, which is more than the modern Athenian 
 can say for his attempts at other languages. 
 Some of these Greeks are regular habitues of the 
 hotel, and have their silver napkin rings and 
 wine-marks ; others are transient boarders, rest- 
 ing a few days at Athens on the way to other 
 places, among whom are the two Syrian English- 
 
I02 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 men. I cannot say that I exactly like Greek 
 fare. The cooks spoil everything with their oil, 
 the associations of which are not enhanced when 
 one recollects that great quantities of it are ex- 
 ported to grease the machinery of Manchester. 
 The red mullet which we had for dinner would 
 have been excellent had they not been literally 
 smothered in it. After this there were toothsome 
 culottes de veau, with tomato sauce ; then a very 
 curious dish of squashes a la Grecque^ dressed 
 with cheese, maccaroni, and hashed meat, and 
 made into a sort of baked pudding ; last of all 
 the usual China bowl, accompanied by a mixed 
 salad of cucumbers, beets, and lettuce, all 
 drowned in oil. Oil is in the air and in the 
 cuisine here everywhere. The dinner was com- 
 pleted with a most delicious fruit meringue of 
 apricots, succeeded by peaches and pears. In 
 the adjoining Cabinet de Lecture a small cup of 
 very black Turkish coifee is served regularly 
 after every meal a thick decoction, very sweet 
 and black, with a chocolate-like scum on top and 
 a decided layer of sediment at the bottom. It 
 is, served without spoons, for what reason I am 
 at a loss to divine, except that to stir it would 
 be to make it insufferably sweet. At breakfast 
 the same morning the waiter first served me with 
 a huge plateful of maccaroni, dressed with toma- 
 toes and cheese; then three little chops, with 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES, 103 
 
 potatoes ; then cold fowl, cheese, and apricots. 
 We have but one lady, a Russian, who sits op- 
 posite and is anything but handsome. She is 
 a blonde, rare at Athens, I should think, 
 with a mountainous coiffure of light hair and ap- 
 parently a decided predilection for the French 
 language, which she speaks across the table with 
 the Russian officer, and on her own side with 
 the Englishman an extremely intelligent fel- 
 low, by the way, who seems to have been every- 
 where, even in America \ I imagine he is a news- 
 paper correspondent. He converses with, re- 
 markable fluency and point. 
 
 The tranquillity of the Hotel des E is 
 
 undisturbed save by an occasional arrival. Stran- 
 gers are scarce at Athens at this season. Hence 
 everybody that comes is received with open 
 arms and frank delight by mine host a very 
 handsome Greek, whom I have heard talking 
 five different languages. The price is ten 
 drachmae (francs) a day en pension and twelve for 
 the general public. 
 
 My room is cool and pleasant. From the bal- 
 cony in front there is perhaps the most magnifi- 
 cent view of the Acropolis in Athens. I have 
 its noble and majestic profile in all possible 
 lights : the dewy transparency of early morning, 
 the shekina-like glory of noon, the unutterable 
 beauty of the evening, and the last look at it 
 
I04 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 under the thick crowding stars. After a while I 
 shall have the full moon to complete this chapter 
 of photo-landscapes. 
 
 One's only trouble (beyond the peregrinations 
 of insects at night) is the frequency and emphasis 
 of the cries in the streets below. These cries 
 must begin at least at four in the morning, and 
 continue more or less all day fellows driving 
 asses or carrying baskets and crying their wares 
 to the quarter in which we live. I make vain 
 efforts to decipher these vocal hieroglyphics, but 
 so different is the people's language from the 
 cultivated or the written Greek that I can make 
 out only an occasional word o-t)Ka, etc. I fre- 
 quently hear KvpioL, $v\o ! (Wood, Messieurs !) It 
 is a question of great interest whether the efforts 
 of the cultivated modern Greeks to lead back 
 their language to its original purity will succeed. 
 I myself cannot but believe with Wagner that 
 such efforts are reactionary, retrogressive, and 
 contrary to the process of linguistic growth. The 
 language of the newspapers is no doubt very dif- 
 ferent from the language of the markets, the 
 streets, the cafes, and the theatre. It is, I think, 
 almost impossible at this late date to arrest the 
 analytic tendency of modern Greek a tendency 
 universal in language and which bears immedi- 
 ately on the rejection or expulsion of inversions, 
 synthetic verbal and declensional forms, gram- 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 105 
 
 matical gender, and the whole paraphernalia of 
 antique inflected speech. Already the accusative 
 is almost universally used by the modern Greek, 
 as it is by all the Romance languages, as the case 
 fitted above all others for general use. Why the 
 accusative should have been selected, except on 
 the principle of its frequent use, is a question. 
 There is the same tendency in English in the 
 perverse substitution of the dative them for the 
 earlier Anglo-Saxon accusative, and in the use of 
 him^ me, thee^ etc., after than and the substantive 
 verb. The same tendency to use the accusative 
 or dative is traceable in Danish, in colloquial 
 Italian, and in other languages. I can seldom 
 catch an inflection in the talk to which I listen 
 at cafes, perhaps because my ear is not yet suffi- 
 ciently cultivated to detect these niceties. The 
 aspirates x ^.nd B are heard with disagreeable 
 emphasis and frequency. Otherwise there is no 
 aspiration. One is inclined to think, with the 
 author of " Modern Greek in its Relation to 
 Ancient,"^ that there could have been no aspira- 
 tion in antiquity, or at least very little of it. If 
 it had been strong, how could it have fallen away 
 so perfectly ? The written sign survives, just as 
 the written h in Italian, but no sound is heard. 
 Or may there not have been, as has been the 
 case with our English h^ two streams of usage 
 1 Gel dart. 
 
I06 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 and tradition, one studiously cultivated by the 
 literate, the other unconsciously adopted by the 
 illiterate one set giving the rough breathing, 
 the other and larger set ignoring it ? A glance 
 into early English literature is sufficient to show 
 a similar state of things with regard to our h. 
 Seldom neglected in the Anglo-Saxon (as having 
 back of it acute recollections of the Germanic 
 guttural) we find its use fluctuating and unsettled 
 all through the great popular poems of Semi- . 
 Saxon, Early English, and Middle English An- 
 tiquity. Typical instances enough might be col- 
 lected to prove this point if it were necessary, 
 instances gathered from Robert of Brunne's 
 Chronicle, the Ancren Riwle, Robert of Glouces- 
 ter, Piers Plowman, Chaucer, and the Elizabethan 
 poets. It seems at least very singular that if 
 aspiration were the rule it should have fallen 
 away so universally. Little can be ascribed to 
 Turkish influence ; indeed, the Turks would prob- 
 ably have assisted in preserving this characteris- 
 tic accompaniment of Hellenic pronunciation. 
 
 Small as modern Athens is, there is a curious 
 sort of comfort in knowing that it is after all 
 about half as large as the ancient city, /. ^., the 
 city proper, excluding the outlying demes and 
 ports. 
 
 Nothing brings out more vividly the transcend- 
 ent cleverness of the Athenians than this small- 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES, 1 07 
 
 ness of their noble city. A handful of architects 
 and poets have dictated to the world and exer- 
 cised a thralldom which the world will never throw 
 off. It is a despotism, too, of the purest intellect, 
 the keenest intelligence, the most piercing and 
 brilliant insight. We see it in the agile move- 
 ments of the fleet at Salamis, on the field at Mar- 
 athon, in the deference of Roman conquerors 
 on innumerable historic occasions, even at the 
 present day in the acute business qualities of the 
 ordinary Greek commis. These characteristics 
 have remained as indelible as the tracks of their 
 triumphal chariots up the slope of the Propylaea. 
 Nearly all the business of the East is said to be 
 in their hands, not to say in their pockets. Their 
 churches and monasteries crown every height and 
 have the amplest domains. Even the newsboys 
 of Athens are as lively as wildfire, and run about 
 all day long cracking jokes and selling the news. 
 Are they like the Celts, selling more newspapers 
 and reading less than any other race t They 
 have as many faces as their Temple of the Winds, 
 but I must do them the justice to say that I have 
 not yet (not yet, I say) been tricked. We are 
 d3dng to find out what they eat and drink, eat 
 and drink among themselves, I mean,- and not as 
 shown on the bill of fare of the dinner-table. 
 How I should like to see a grand old Athenian 
 menu from a cook that talked Doric ! Doric was 
 
I08 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 their favorite language, and no doubt their recipes 
 were as archaic. I shall call in the services of 
 Miltiades, whom I see hovering about our vesti- 
 bule, and ask him to give me a list of the boissons 
 populaires that I may taste each and all. At the 
 hotel I am going through the list of vins die pays, 
 white and red Parnes, white and red Santorino, 
 Samian, and Corinthian wines. The resinated 
 wine I have not yet tasted. There is no taint of 
 resin in the Fames rouge which was ordered at 
 breakfast this morning and which is labeled in 
 French (!) " Cotes de Parnes." All the popular 
 drinks that contain wine are said to be strongly 
 resinated, a circumstance which Pliny says gave 
 wholesomeness to the wine. Taylor and other 
 travelers in Greece unite in saying that a taste 
 is very soon acquired for this wine, and it is after 
 a while greatly relished. I once knew a mechanic 
 whose universal remedy no matter what the 
 disease was turpentine. He even told me it 
 was good for new-born infants. So the Greeks, 
 those enfants eternels, may have thought. Noth- 
 ing could be more aromatic than the spiced and 
 shadow-spangled glades of a pine forest, but the 
 exudations from the bark of the pine would, I 
 should think, anything but improve the ethereal 
 flavors of the grape. However, I mean to try 
 for myself. Intrat Miltiades ! Alas ! alas ! Mil- 
 tiades told us yesterday that Dr. Schliemann's 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 109 
 
 treasures had been locked up. They had just as 
 well be back in Agamemnon's Tomb or at the 
 bottom of the sea. He gave me some account 
 which I could not quite make out, that they had 
 been only temporarily put away until they could 
 be displayed in some larger building than the 
 Bank, or National Trapeze (!), as the modern 
 Greeks call it, aptly enough named from some 
 of its performances, where they have been 
 hitherto lying. Here then is a pretty pickle, 
 coming four or five thousand miles to find what 
 one came to see locked up ! The Greek govern- 
 ment should surely remember that there are many 
 foreign students here whose chief purpose is to 
 see these treasures. We happen to know of four 
 prominent American scholars who came expressly 
 to see them. And here they are "interned," as 
 they said in the Franco-German war. Nobody 
 is, I suppose, going to steal them \ why, therefore, 
 should they be immured in the vaults of the 
 bank ? The Greeks, however, know themselves, 
 if they do not know foreigners. 
 
 Yesterday evening after dinner we went down 
 by the train to Phalerum and attended the open 
 air theatre there. How curious it seemed to 
 me. 'A^^vat is ^(xky\pov^ ^aXr\pov ts ^h6y]va^ ; SO 
 read my return ticket, with A Oiai^ (first class) 
 added. The road was built by an English com- 
 pany, is about four miles long, and rides smoothly 
 
no GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 and agreeably. This is the great promenade of 
 Athens : take a ticket for Phalerum, stroll up 
 and down the lovely beach, and then sit for an 
 hour or two under the stars listening to Greek or 
 Italian music. Modern Greek music is singu- 
 larly nasal and monotone. There is something 
 wild and wailing in it. I have heard vocalization 
 and choral chants of great beauty in the Russian 
 church, but the music of a Greek Easter, for ex- 
 ample, is like a seasick Gregorian chant. It is 
 all light and sound and lamb-eating at Easter-tide 
 in Greece. Hettner tells how the rustic popula- 
 tion come trooping to town with dressed lambs 
 slung in classic fashion across their backs ; of 
 the solemn rites in the churches ; the procession 
 through the streets with lighted candles ; the in- 
 tense and silent expectation up to twelve o'clock 
 the night before Easter, when the metropolitan 
 suddenly appears in the cathedral and cries Xptcr- 
 ^To% avia-TT] ! (Christ is risen !) and then the uni- 
 versal outbreak of tumult, fire-arms, and rockets. 
 The beau-monde was out in force at Phalerum 
 this evening. I was glad to find the seats num- 
 bered, enabling one to get up and go out in the 
 intermezzos. The play was a little Italian oper- 
 ette (^aTTcfxo), and the music was really charm- 
 ing. I cannot say much for Sappho's beauty, a 
 tall, dark-haired Italian, head and shoulders above 
 Phaon. Phaon had a pleasant tenor voice, but 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES, HI 
 
 sang and acted with affectation. There was a 
 graceful ballet, at which the Athenians for some 
 inscrutable reason hissed, for there were no legs 
 and no indecency. Of course the dresses were 
 wonderfully scant, and there was an exhibition of 
 feminine gymnastics, as in all ballets, but I can- 
 not believe the nation of Lais and Phryne so 
 prudish .as to object to legs, especially when the 
 national costume seems so particularly to ignore 
 them. Possibly there may have been something 
 objectionable in the characters of the dancers. 
 At any rate there was vehement applause as well 
 as vehement hissing. The sensitiveness of Athe- 
 nian audiences, though not so extreme as that of 
 the Neapolitan, is evidenced by various anecdotes 
 which have come down to us from the time of 
 Euripides. The actors were sometimes stoned 
 off the boards. Lucian, says Jebb, describes an 
 impersonation of Ajax so vivid that the "whole 
 house went mad along with Ajax they danced, 
 shouted, tore off their clothes." The music and 
 the mise-en-schie this special evening were singu- 
 larly appropriate. Hardly a flutter of breeze, 
 cloudless tranquillity above, the gentle ripple of 
 the ^gean on the shore, the rich mountain out- 
 lines gradually withdrawing themselves in purple 
 obscurity, the gleam of multitudinous stars, the 
 fragrance of the salt sea and scented gardens, all 
 blending with the classic subject and the delight- 
 
112 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 ful music to make an almost antique picture. 
 The programme or libretto was in Greek inter- 
 , spersed with Italian songs. There was no rich- 
 ness in the costumes or special virtuosity in the 
 orchestra ; and yet the whole dwells in my mem- 
 ory as a scene to be remembered. All the time 
 I felt the curious anachronism of such a subject 
 melodized and embalmed in the luxurious strains 
 of Italian art. The simplicity and monotony of 
 the ancient Greek music seem to have been 
 great : five or six notes and the old Pythagorean 
 octave. In spite of the intricacy of some of their 
 melodies there was hardly an approach to orches- 
 tral harmony among the ancient Greeks. It was 
 left for the morbid susceptibilities of our time to 
 find their vent in a splendid and highly developed 
 scheme of musical expression. Beethoven and 
 Shakspere are what we have to pit against Homer 
 and the Lydian flutes. It is the difference be- 
 tween the Parthenon and the Cathedral of Co- 
 logne. 
 
 I made the mistake of getting two tickets in- 
 stead of one, not being sufficiently acquainted 
 with colloquial Greek to rectify the error after I 
 had discovered it. The incessant talking and 
 humming of people all around me prevented a full 
 enjoyment of my first musical evening in Greece. 
 
 Phalerum Bay is peculiarly beautiful. An 
 English iron-clad was lying at anchor in the 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. II3 
 
 offing, and several of her tars with their wide- 
 awake, upturned straw hats assisted at the play. 
 There are delightful baths, to which the languid 
 Athenians continually resort. Fifty lepta for a 
 bath, one drachma for the theatre, and one for the 
 return ticket, make up an evening's amusement 
 that is extremely cheap and popular. The water 
 is shallow. There are several pretty villas on the 
 shore, and the usual series of Zei/o8oxta, 6o-rtapta 
 and Brasseries along it. A gay multitude sat in 
 front of them, enjoying the balmy air, the view, 
 the invariable cigarette, and the tiny cup of coffee, 
 preparatory to the play. An evening at Pha- 
 lerum is almost the only summer amusement the 
 Athenians have. One would think these beauti- 
 ful mountains, like those in the neighborhood of 
 Rome, would be covered with villas ; but such 
 has been the insecurity of the country that there 
 are none. Little villages here and there Pa- 
 tissia, Colonos, Ambelokipos, Kalandri are 
 sown over the plain ; but they all hover in sight 
 like a hen and her chickens. I notice in the hotel 
 this precautionary placard : " Gentlemen on the 
 point of making excursions will please inform 
 the proprietor twenty-four hours beforehand." 
 This is for the purpose of letting the authorities 
 know of the intended journey in case an escort 
 should be needed, or to keep them on the look- 
 out. I can hardly realize the necessity for these 
 
114 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 precautions, all seems so bright and safe and 
 . open in Athens. But a glass pointed at the sur- 
 rounding mountain chains the ridge of Hymet- 
 tus, the passes of Daphne and Phyle, the peak 
 of Pentelicus soon discloses an absolute soli- 
 tude. Not a house, hardly a tree, is to be seen. 
 It is as absolute a desert as the Roman Cam- 
 pagna. Deserted as it seems, however, there must 
 be vagrants and gypsies nested in this desert, 
 for otherwise no precautions would be necessary. 
 And when one remembers the terrible tragedy of 
 1870, when a party of English gentlemen and 
 ladies was attacked and four of the party mur- 
 dered in cold blood at Marathon, just eight miles 
 from Athens, one's archaeological fever abates, to- 
 gether with the hankering after visiting memora- 
 ble localities. At home one would take a horse 
 and gallop all over the country without asking 
 any one's grace. A guide-book and a blue-lined 
 white umbrella would be all that should be nec- 
 essary. I am perpetually puzzled at this sug- 
 gested lawlessness of the Greeks. The country is 
 small, everywhere penetrated at least by horse- 
 roads and bridle-paths ; Thebes, Eleusis, Mara- 
 thon, Delphi, only a few hours distant ; then 
 there should be perfect safety for single travelers. 
 The Athenians boast, too, of a high degree of 
 civilization : a beautiful university, fifty period- 
 icals, private and public schools, handsome muse- 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES, \ 1 15 
 
 urns, and thousands of school-children in Athens 
 alone. Surely there should be some fruits of all 
 this culture. 
 
 The misery is that there is the ineradicable 
 Klepht in the Greek nature. The Greeks will 
 steal and murder in a noble sort of way now and 
 then, and no civilization seems able to refine the 
 instinct away. The Klephts are no doubt fine 
 fellows ; they sing and fight well, and they did 
 splendid service in the Greek war of independ- 
 ence ; but it is time their thieving and murdering 
 proclivities should cease developing and periodi- 
 cally throwing the whole of Greece into a trance 
 of fear. -The accounts which Tuckerman gives 
 of the panic at Athens when the aforesaid gentle- 
 men were assassinated two of them secretaries 
 of the English and Italian embassies at the court 
 of Greece sound incredible. A handful of ruf- 
 fians defied the entire Greek government for 
 weeks, and half of them eventually escaped into 
 Turkey, whence they had come. 
 
 The traveler is irritated at the never-ceasing 
 necessity to take a guide, to inform the hotel- 
 keeper, to inform the police, to inform the am- 
 bassador, to inform the government, of his (the 
 traveler's) intentions, and to carry arms on jour- 
 neys in the interior. It is all very well to talk 
 about Turkish dominion, misrule, and influence 
 lingering in the land. Two generations have 
 
Il6 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 grown up since the Turkish aristocracy, furnished 
 with all the auxiliaries of modern life, police, 
 constitutional government, libraries, mails, steam 
 communication, not to speak of the churches that 
 dot the whole land, and it is high time that the 
 Greeks, if they are not a mere set of chatter-boxes, 
 should give evidence of the salutary influence of 
 these things by a complete extirpation of brig- 
 andage. In the Ionian Islands, under the pro- 
 tectorate of Great Britain, brigandage was un- 
 known, admirable roads penetrated the islands in 
 every direction, an efficient police was installed and 
 organized, and an unrivaled prosperity reigned. 
 I cannot see why the Greek government, embar- 
 rassed though it may have been financially since 
 1827, should show itself so impotent. Their silly 
 and eternal caviling in politics, their intense par- 
 tisan spirit, the acrimony of their parliamentary 
 discussions, and the recriminations and taunts 
 tossed about from side to side politically, fijl the 
 Phil-Hellene with despair. What is the use of 
 their fine ^ovky]^ and all their fine new boulevards, 
 national costumes, and institutions, if this con- 
 tinual shiftlessness is to go on ? Happily the 
 recent coalition of all parties under the leader- 
 ship of the old hero Canaris seems to be leading 
 to something like harmony. One sickens of the 
 Aristophanic comedy of Greek politics. There 
 are no parties, why should there be partisans ? 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 117 
 
 There is rarely any policy why should there 
 be any politics ? Greece is in the condition of 
 bonhomme Chrysale in Moliere's " Femmes Sa- 
 vantes : 
 
 " L'un me brule mon rot en lisant quelque histoire ; 
 L'autre reve ades vers quand je demande a boire." 
 
 In the government everybody wants to be in., 
 therefore everybody must be turned out. Hence 
 the perpetual motion, without progress, of Greek 
 politicians. 
 
 At 10 we left Phalerum, while Sappho was still 
 shrieking out her swan-song. The prospect of 
 our getting back to Athens more than counter- 
 balanced any interest in the anticipated leap. 
 In fifteen or twenty minutes we were at the sta- 
 tion, where carriages and snug little omnibuses 
 with ^IS-qpo S/ao/xos marked on them were in wait- 
 ing for the passengers. An English acquaint- 
 ance and I preferred to walk home, and stopped 
 on the way to take Trai/cora (ice-cream), which we 
 made the gargon understand by a combination 
 of French, Italian, English, and Greek. The ices 
 were delicious, and cost one hundred and ten 
 lepta for the two, about twenty-five cents. When 
 we first sat down to the wooden table and asked 
 for ices, the waiter rolled his eyes wildly and then 
 rushed off for an interpreter. The accomplish- 
 ments of this personage did not extend beyond 
 
Il8 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 a few fluent words in the above-mentioned lan- 
 guages, interspersed with copious parentheses of 
 Greek. However, we finally came to terms and 
 departed mutually content. One finds these re- 
 freshments in general very reasonable at Athens, 
 though it is impossible to praise the contents of 
 the dingy confectionery shops. A quart bottle 
 of red Cotes de Parnes which seems to be the 
 wine preferred at our table d'hote, costs only 
 three francs. And this, I was told by my loqua- 
 cious newspaper correspondent, was quite dear ! 
 The resinated wine is doled out at a penny a 
 glass, ten lepta. Tobacco shops and wine shops 
 constitute the chief objects along the streets. 
 And yet drunkenness is so rare in Greece as to 
 be almost phenomenal except at Easter. Every- 
 body smokes a lean, hungry cigarette, more full of 
 souvenirs of the kitchen-garden than of Turkish 
 tobacco-fields. It is hardly an exaggeration to 
 say that nearly every other house is a cafe. Could 
 the tabernce of antiquity have been so numerous ? 
 We know that these tabernce were crowded about 
 the ancient agora, and that they were places of 
 such disrepute that, though in extreme cases am- 
 bassadors were sometimes lodged in them, there 
 is a famous anecdote current about Demosthenes, 
 who was observed in one of them by the lynx-eyed 
 Diogenes. Demosthenes shrank back ashamed. 
 " The more you shrink back," said Diogenes, 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. I19 
 
 " the more you will be in the tavern." Aris- 
 tophanes smells of the pot-house, and I have no 
 doubt that many a scene from his comedies was 
 composed (mentally, at least) in just such dun- 
 geons as I look down into every day as I pass. 
 The same is said of Miiller, the genial caricaturist 
 of Munich. How many inns have been the outs 
 of immortal things ! 
 
 The new quarter of Athens is really beautiful. 
 I went into it this morning. If the city extends 
 and is beautified in a way like this, in fifty years 
 it will be one of the finest capitals in Europe. I 
 was quite amazed at the revelation. Hitherto 
 the elegiac sentiment had prevailed, and like 
 the Volney of " Les Ruines " I had been among 
 the ruins, on the Acropolis, or at the Olympi- 
 eum, or tracing Pausanias, and had not discov- 
 ered this handsome quarter, which extends diag- 
 onally from the palace on the right. Spacious 
 boulevards, are opening and building up in sev- 
 eral directions, lined by elegant houses. The 
 ambassadors and elite of the city affect this quar- 
 ter. The university is here, with its picturesque 
 tropical garden, flights of broad marble steps and 
 statuary at either end. By the side of this is the 
 exquisite white marble structure (designed as a 
 higher university, chiefly scientific, I am told), 
 of the purest polished marble, with Ionic fagades 
 and Corinthian wings richly decorated with stat- 
 
120 GREEK VIGNETTES 
 
 uary. The lamp-stands are beautiful specimens 
 of sculptured work. It is a gift of a wealthy 
 Greek, who bequeathed $1,500,000 for the pur- 
 pose, $750,000 for the building and $750,000 for 
 the endowment fund. The whole structure is a 
 work of infinite grace, and produces a fairy-like 
 effect in this lustrous light air. Beyond is the 
 6(p0a\fXLaTpLov, or hospital for eye diseases (eye- 
 sore), a building in polychrome, producing a sin- 
 gularly bizarre effect by the side of its marble rival. 
 Behind this row of buildings is the ^vatoypacfiLKou 
 Mvoretov (Physiographical Museum), one wing in- 
 scribed 'Avaro/xctoi/ (Anatomy), the other XrjfjLetov 
 (Chemistry). The Post-office, BovXyj (Parliament 
 House), and many very expensive residences, 
 faced with marble and with richly decorated cor- 
 nices, lie in this quarter. The 686s TravcTrto-TTy/xetov 
 (University Street) is even now one of the richest 
 and most elegant streets I have seen in Europe. 
 And how lustrously everything stands, out in this 
 divine air. Its lustre of gold and blue and white 
 cannot be conceived in paler climates. The tall 
 cypresses that stretch along the gardens are hoar 
 with white dust. The oleander floats its fleet of 
 delicate blossoms in every corner ; the mimosa 
 quivers and the figs ripen in many a golden 
 angle. Lycabettus stands behind all like a spe- 
 cial guardian of the place. The cicada warbles 
 serenely in the plane-trees. The hoar sunlight 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 121 
 
 with the gorgeous magic of its touch evokes the 
 subtle essences of the earth and volatilizes them 
 into banks of lilied cloud. One is caught as it 
 were in the focus of some saint's glory a hur- 
 ricane of soundless gold. The cicadae sing 
 regular cadence, and ripple forth their undula- 
 tory song in a rapture of light and joy. Clouds, 
 wasps, and frogs dance an Aristophanic Ro- 
 maika. 
 
 But the heat and the hurrying light and the 
 white dust accelerate one's pace, and one is glad 
 to get within the shadow of some building where 
 there is a nest of zephyrs in ambush. I hastened 
 on and got to the hotel to breakfast. The two 
 ladies, my vis-a-vis^ are, I find, daughters of the 
 Russian consul at Smyrna, on a visit to Athens. 
 They dress charmingly airy muslins and white 
 floating draperies. The supposed Frenchman 
 turns out to be a colonel in the Russian army, 
 General Tchernieff's chief of staff in the late war. 
 He is said to have served with General Lee, and 
 in the Franco-German war. He is supposed to be 
 here on some mission. The Greeks are always 
 supposing something about such people. Europe 
 is run mad with diplomacy the whole livelong 
 time. An official connected with one of these 
 detestable little courts cannot turn his toes in 
 without being suspected of a "mission." How 
 thankful one is that our American foreign rela- 
 tions are so plain and simple. 
 
122 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 I notice that the Athenians use quantities of 
 these light-gray porous clay jugs for cooling water 
 and wine. They are very graceful in shape and 
 very light. In the market there is one stall with 
 quite a mountain of them, and occasionally I meet 
 a wide-panniered donkey laden with them. They 
 are often seen placed in windows and on balco- 
 nies, I suppose to catch the air, that evaporation 
 may cool the contents. The public fountains are 
 at all hours, particularly the classic hour of even- 
 ing, crowded with Greek girls and boys drawing 
 water and carrying it home in earthernware jugs 
 of various manufacture. I see huge amphorae 
 shaped exactly like those seen in the excavations 
 at Pompeii. One would not have to go far to 
 see the libetes, the krateres, and the cups of Ho- 
 mer not in gold indeed, except some in Dr. 
 Schliemann's collection, but in clay in the hands 
 of the common people. Nothing seems more en- 
 during than the shapes and contours given to 
 pottery. Whether a matter of taste or conven- 
 ience, our water jugs and pitchers, crocks and 
 bowls, have preserved all the antique points of 
 utility, the big belly, and broad foundation, the 
 earthen handles and narrow neck, while lavish- 
 ing all the resources of silversmith, potter, and 
 artist on their external embellishment. The iri- 
 descent phials of the Egyptians are reproduced 
 in the glass of Venice. The rich incrustations 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 1 23 
 
 of Sevres are, as it were, the jeweled exudations 
 of Etruscan ornamentation. Our taste is ques- 
 tionable when compared with the Greek. Those 
 carved surfaces, red or brown or black, with their 
 simple and severe mythologic and linear orna- 
 mentation, that dance and rhythm of airy fig- 
 ures wreathing the Greek vase, as in Keats's odes 
 are very different from the brilliant bizarre 
 rococo of modern ornament : the grotesquerie of 
 Dresden, the enamels of Wedgewood, the plaques 
 of Palissy, Majolica, and Limoges, with their lux- 
 uriance of tropical design. One longs for a 
 simple Greek pitcher in all this demi-monde of 
 jugs. There is the same difference between ro- 
 coco and Greek art as between the perfumed 
 feverishness of an Ode Funambidiste and one 
 simple line of Menander. What a world of 
 bright air and health and sweetness opens from 
 the latter, what a dungeon of scented drawing- 
 rooms and purple indolences yawns from the 
 former ! In certain moments, then, give me the 
 light-kilted Greek girl with her plain jug at the 
 fountain, before all the painted poesies of French 
 art ceramique. 
 
 How delightful would it be, by the way, to 
 have one hotel furnished from top to bottom 
 h la Grecque ! The tawdry European furniture in 
 Athens is a real eye-sore dilapidated maple 
 and mahogany, reps, French mirrors, and Not- 
 
124 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 tingham lace. Why does not some enthusiast 
 savant hotellier, like the proprietor of the Drei 
 Konige at Basle, make his hotel a museum of 
 antiquities and restore the house architecture 
 and dining and sleeping habits of the ancient 
 Greeks ? They are putting up vast ugly Euro- 
 pean hotels here in excess ; why not a genuine 
 Greek villa-hotel, frescoed, columned, full of 
 light and air in sunny central spaces, with fount- 
 ains and statuary and fish-ponds and gardens ? 
 There is surely ground enough purchasable for 
 such a purpose, and no modern comfort need 
 necessarily be eschewed. The whole furnishing 
 and decoration should be antique. Our Southern 
 houses are full of delightful verandas ; why do 
 not these foolish people, with a climate identically 
 the same, introduce a similar style of house build- 
 ing? Many new houses are going up in every 
 quarter, yet people build as if they were to stand 
 a siege heavy brick or stone walls, windows 
 open to intolerable dust and glare, small porches 
 in front, put there solely to show off the beauty 
 of a group of pillars, and blinding white surfaces 
 of marble or stucco with absolutely nothing to 
 relieve the eyes. 
 
 There seems to be a lack of common sense 
 among the Greeks, which was as conspicuous in 
 antiquity as it is in modern times. This whole 
 plain, think of it! the plain of Attica, might 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES, 125 
 
 be planted with trees, and the valley of the Ilissus 
 like the vale of Kephissus be made a laughter of 
 light verdure and freshness. A slight premium 
 set on the planting of trees would rouse the 
 people to cover their slopes with greenness and 
 thereby attract the rain and moisture for which 
 the land suffers so much. The Khedive is plant- 
 ing Egypt with trees in this way a far hotter 
 climate. Napoleon instituted the same observ- 
 ance among the French. Why could not olives 
 and cypresses and plane-trees and sycamores be 
 made to spread from Marathon to Piraeus, and 
 from the pass of Daphne to the peak of Penteli- 
 cus ? The soil is light, it is true, but it is produc- 
 tive. Fruit is abundant, though inferior. If such 
 a rock as Syra can be made the spring market- 
 garden of Athens and Constantinople, a rock 
 which, when I saw it, hardly had the faintest sus- 
 picion of vegetation on it, I do not see why this 
 plain, once celebrated for its fertility, could not 
 be self-supporting. 
 
 The Kephissus, the silvery genius of the Acad- 
 emy, flows through a spot most beauteous for 
 abundance and fruitfulness. The eye rests on 
 its long plantations of olives and vines with de- 
 light one green spot in this scene of luminous 
 sterility. There are charming drives through 
 them, and secluded cicada-haunted hiding-places, 
 where the spirit of Plato seems to tranquillize 
 
126 GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 the air, and the murmur of melodious philosophy 
 to melodize the spirit of the scholar. The pre- 
 cincts of the Lyceum, the Olympieum, and the 
 Museum, sacred to Apollo, Zeus, and the Muses, 
 might be made to put on a like smile of radiant 
 vegetation. Of course all this would involve ex- 
 pense, and there is much to do. 
 
 One is provoked when one sees a country so 
 wholly given up to sunlight and idleness. And 
 yet I am told that the Greeks are not idle. They 
 will work all day if there is work to do and 
 money behind it, stealing a siesta in the shade 
 somewhere in the middle of the day and drawing 
 their meagre pay at dark. This pay is not over 
 two and a half drachmae per diem. They live 
 on nothing therefore like princes. Such pay 
 is wealth to the liver on black olives. There is 
 an ancient poet who celebrates myrtle berries, 
 honey, the portals of the Acropolis, and dried 
 figs all delicious fare ! The Greek workmen 
 are a fine, stalwart race, too. It must be pure 
 air that makes them so, for they eat very little. 
 The slouchiest-looking fellows I have seen are 
 the soldiers and gendarmes. The painful red 
 jackets of the latter are a focus of intolerable 
 brilliance in this Greek fire of summer. The 
 Albanian costume, hot as it appears to be, would 
 be better than this poor imitation of European 
 uniforms. Straw hats are as plenty as black- 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 12/ 
 
 berries. Everybody tries to be as cool as pos- 
 sible, except the thick-stockinged Englishman in 
 his tweeds and cheviots. To him a tall hat is 
 as indispensable as his teeth. In England, any- 
 thing but that would be decidedly out of taste. 
 To the correspondent of the London " Times " in 
 Paris, a soft felt hat goes together with a blouse, 
 Belleville, and revolution. An Englishman can 
 forgive anything except what he deems a certain 
 indecorum in dress. That is unpardonable, and 
 this unpardonableness attaches peculiarly to the 
 straw or felt hat. It is his bete noire. 
 
 Thinking it would be less trying to-day we 
 went out before breakfast and were literally swal- 
 lowed up in the light and glare. I never knew the 
 infinite blessedness of shade before. Everybody 
 here clings to it as to a well-known indispensable 
 friend. Pedestrians carefully seek it ; coachmen 
 and their horses stand in it. As soon as the first 
 speck of afternoon shade appears, the cafe people 
 begin to set out chairs and tables, sprinkle the 
 ground with water, and expect visitors, who soon 
 come out of their nests in troops, and sit and talk 
 the whole evening away. The light is exceedingly 
 trying to the eyes. Get up early and sit up late 
 and sleep in the forenoon is the only agreeable 
 division of the day. Even then there are long 
 hours of insufferable heat. In my room there is 
 fortunately nearly always a pleasant draught. It 
 
128 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 is absolutely necessary to put on a pair of black 
 or dark blue glasses to look at the Acropolis with 
 comfort, such a tide of blinding, bounding light 
 reflected and thrown from house to house drives 
 in through the green blinds. I am afraid the 
 week I have promised myself there, studying an- 
 cient topography, will have to be given up. 
 
 How pleasant to lie in the shadow of the Par- 
 thenon pillars, scan the environs with one's glass, 
 consult one's guides carefully, and leave the place 
 with some sort of knowledge of it an amateur's 
 orientation. If there is a group of mind and 
 marble in the world that should be thoroughly 
 explored, it is surely this famous hill. There is 
 no better introduction to ancient history. Per- 
 haps the finest view I have yet gotten of the Par- 
 thenon was yesterday evening from the Greek cem- 
 etery. This cemetery lies beyond the Ilissus, on 
 a slope, and the approach to it is by a long line of 
 funereal cypresses. I walked out there to look 
 at the tombs, several of which are magnificent, 
 particularly those of Korais, the famous scholar, 
 and Sir R. Church, the late commander-in-chief 
 of the Greek army. Of course this cemetery 
 lacks the sweet and holy beauty of the Protestant 
 cemetery at Rome that resting-place of famous 
 ashes. There is an air of neglect and age about 
 it, a lack of water to make things green and fresh, 
 a carelessness in laying off borders and defin- 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES, 1 29 
 
 ing walks. Beggars crouched in the streets among 
 the cypresses and called piteously for alms al- 
 most the first I have seen in Greece. Begging 
 on the way to the grave ! I could not help pity- 
 ing the poor wretches, while I hardened my heart 
 and gave them nothing, for it is a good principle 
 never if one can help it to give to beggars on the 
 public highway. The Greeks themselves, espe- 
 cially the lower classes, are extremely charitable. 
 I lingered till the last beams of the sun were 
 streaming gloriously through the pillars of the 
 Olympieum, springing over the classic Ilissus, 
 now stone-dry, and touching the hill where I stood 
 with a gentle radiance. The sun sank behind the 
 Acropolis and left a pool of golden light there, 
 upon which the grandiose outlines of the Parthe- 
 non stood forth in motionless serenity. Beams 
 and parallelograms of light lay painted behind 
 the looming pillars ; peristyle and pronaos let 
 through the winnowing rays and threw them on 
 the columned wilderness behind; the colored light 
 shaded and whitened into the colorless empyrean, 
 and gave to the mountains of ^gina and Pelo- 
 ponnesus an airy unsubstantiality. I had never 
 seen the profile of the Parthenon projected on 
 such a surpassing sky. It was a sky of Rhine- 
 wine, upon which these beauteous forms were 
 carven as upon some giant cameo. The Acropo- 
 lis, with all its clustering shadows and colors and 
 9 
 
I30 GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 columns, was a heroic shield of Achilles graven 
 on the plaque of the sky. This backward glimpse 
 compensated me for the dust through which I had 
 toiled shoe-deep to get to the cemetery. 
 
 In the cemetery I found soldiers, a Greek priest 
 or two in their ugly steeple-crown hat, and a few 
 promenaders. There were lanterns attached to 
 some of the tombs, and on many of them the jugs 
 I have described, inverted on a stick. This place 
 of death, instead of smiling with perennial ver- 
 dure, shares in the general sterility of all this part 
 of Athens, a quarter once rejoicing in unsur- 
 passed fertility. The bare hills lay burning in the 
 sun, with hardly a wisp of grass or an aromatic 
 weed growing on them.^ 
 
 Coming back I crossed the Ilissus by a new 
 stone bridge below the Olympieum, and found 
 the bed of the stream perfectly dry except for a 
 little drainage water here and there near the once 
 famous fountain of Callirrhoe. It is only a few 
 yards wide and with us would not attract the 
 
 1 The associations of the place were not rendered more 
 agreeable by recollections of the uncanny expedition with 
 which the dead are hurried to burial in Greece an event 
 which takes place twenty-four hours after death. Bating 
 this, and the singular custom of exposing the face of the 
 dead on the way to burial, the Greeks treat their dead with 
 great reverence. Tuckerman relates how, having an en- 
 gagement with a gentleman on the day following a meet- 
 ing, he sallied forth to fulfill it, and met his corpse I 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES, 131 
 
 slightest notice. Yet what inexhaustible interest 
 centres about it for the scholar. A few miles of 
 intermittent water refreshes half the domain of 
 Greek poetry ; the Kephissus and the sea mean- 
 der through the rest. The microscopic scale of 
 distances and magnitudes here is a source of 
 never-ceasing surprise. One may have had one's 
 Smith and Leake and Wordsworth at one's fin- 
 gers' ends long before arriving in Attica, and may 
 have known every measurement in the tiny com- 
 monwealth ; still, on the spot, in the face of the 
 gigantic achievements of these pygmies, one is 
 lost in wonderment when one actually sees the 
 territorial insignificance of their empire. 
 
 Seeing a great number of people walking down 
 a sort of wide boulevard toward the Ilissus, I fol- 
 lowed and soon found myself in a sort of Athen- 
 ian Champs Elysees. K-^ttos twi^ ^apinxiv^ KtJttos 
 Ttov 'IXt(7(rt3a)v Mov(r(ov, K-^ttos twv avrpovrinv vvfJL- 
 (t>(lv stood written over three gardens, in which a 
 multitude of people sat eating and drinking. It was 
 refreshing to see these beautifully wooded spaces 
 in the centre of so much desolation. A band 
 was playing in the Garden of the Muses of the 
 Ilissus, but it was sadly out of tune. Dissonant 
 cries from the waiters rose on every side ; a bell 
 was jingled ; the cracked band broke forth into 
 its wildest discord at intervals, and the people 
 seemed to be in a state of holiday hilarity. The 
 
132 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 waiters in the cafes, I may remark incidentally, 
 are singularly careless in their dress. They go 
 about dirty, in their shirt-sleeves, often smoking 
 cigarettes or cigars, with a smudgy apron and 
 perhaps slipshod slippers on. I have noticed 
 this even at the best cafes along Ermes and 
 Eolus streets. There is no style about either 
 the cafes or their attendants. The table ware is 
 invariably dirty ; neat tables and chairs are per- 
 fectly unknown except at the at 'A^^mi, the Belle 
 Grece, and one or two other places ; coffee is 
 generally served in small, dingy cups, with a glass 
 of dirty-looking water, on a pewter or ill-plated 
 waiter ; ice-water is doled out in niggardly doses 
 in case you call for Traywra, and in the hotels only 
 at table d'hote ; in short, the Greeks, though they 
 live in the streets except in siesta hours, know 
 nothing of even ordinary Parisian or English 
 comfort. 
 
 One would think that a hot climate would sug- 
 gest a hundred devices and ameliorations by 
 which to make life tolerable : floors carpeted 
 with matting, window-awnings, verandas, cool- 
 ing drinks, suburban or sea-side resorts, planting 
 of trees everywhere, production of superior fruit, 
 light and wholesome food, inexpensive baths and 
 bagnios, in a word, the most ordinary necessa- 
 ries of summer life. As it is, hot carpets in sum- 
 mer, heavy furniture, awningless windows and 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 1 33 
 
 verandaless houses, drinks that heat up an al- 
 ready exasperated body, a single poor little 
 promenade at Phalerum, few trees, poor fruit, 
 food rank with oil and condiments, and the ne- 
 cessity to go miles for a bath unless one lives 
 at a first-class hotel, such is the picture of 
 Athens in summer. What it may be in winter 
 I do not know. Then the cold is, according to 
 all accounts, equally uncomfortable. Roots of 
 olive-trees and scrapings of vineyards keep the 
 pinched and peevish sojourner thawed not to 
 be euphemistic at an enormous expense. The 
 mountains around are sprinkled with snow, and 
 the poor Greeks go lantern-jawed all the winter 
 long, owing to their ignorance of the simplest 
 household contrivances. So in these Armida 
 gardens were the rudest arrangements for com- 
 fort. I sat in the Garden of the Graces (!) and 
 called not for ambrosia but for a lemonade, 
 which was brought by a slovenly fellow in shirt- 
 sleeves. The whole thing was unclean a scum 
 on the lemonade, dirt in and on the glass, a 
 pewter spoon, and an untidy tray. And this is 
 one of the chief resorts in Athens ! 
 
 At half past eight there was a play in Greek 
 at the Apollo Theatre (car/oov 6 'AttoAXwi/) in 
 the same cafe-chantant garden. This I enjoyed 
 very much. The acting was good. I heard for 
 the first time the Greek clearly and elegantly 
 
134 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 pronounced. There was a throng present ; the 
 evening was beautiful, and we sat until twelve 
 o'clock following the trials and triumphs of two 
 lovers, sat under the stars, the night breathlessly 
 lovely, the fragrance of oleanders breathing every- 
 where, the bravos and laughter of the Athenians 
 audible every few moments, and all about an in- 
 definable pathos of passionate recollections. A 
 modern comedy on the banks of the Ilissus ! But 
 is not this Greek life an eternal comedy? Was 
 it not a centuries-long comedy in antiquity ? Is 
 anything more to be expected from these sunny 
 people ? When I left, late as it was, there was 
 still a third piece, more or less lurid, to be acted. 
 The Athenians do not seem content with a little, 
 they must have a long draught of pleasure. I 
 heard the crowd returning about half-past one. 
 In the intervals there was a little discordant third- 
 rate music. This evening they have " Trovatore " 
 in Italian at Phalerum. 
 
 What tiny sheets these Athenian newspapers 
 are! Two columns of the " Tribune " would fill 
 some of them entirely. They sell for almost 
 nothing, a penny or ha'penny, and are written 
 with a greater or less spice of pedantry. The 
 dative and genitive cases, which the popular dia- 
 lect regularly ignores, reappear in them with 
 classic precision ; the vanishing norhinative takes 
 the place of the more popular accusative as sub- 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 1 35 
 
 ject ; the n in the accusative singular of masculine 
 and feminine nouns, which is dropped by the 
 people, studiously reappears ; and the iota which 
 the people add in the accusative plural to certain 
 nouns is carefully expunged. Thus people are 
 getting accustomed to a classic standard ; the 
 ancient Greek, as the old English with Tennyson 
 and Morris, is the great source of neologisms, and 
 antique phrases are gradually, almost stealthily, 
 reintroduced from the pages of the poets and 
 philosophers. 
 
 We set out on an objectless walk this morn- 
 ing, and found ourselves after a while on one of 
 the numerous dusty roads that lead into the olive 
 grove, that famous bit of Athenian antiquity ; we 
 wandered on and on until we got quite into the 
 country, and found ourselves alone in this solitary 
 forest. The day is delightful, cloudy, with a 
 fresh northeast breeze \ no dust. Yesterday on 
 the Acropolis I felt the singular propriety of that 
 marble group which so much struck Pausanias 
 Earth asking sho7vers of Zeus. It is as if the 
 breath of a furnace-blast had blown over this 
 country and burnt up everything. Dust blows 
 sky-high, into one's third story windows, over the 
 house-tops and church steeples, permeating and 
 penetrating everything with a fine white powder. 
 All the vegetation is silver-hued with it \ it ca- 
 reers wildly along the streets in great clouds, and 
 
136 GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 blinds and suffocates everybody. Imagine, there- 
 fore, how delightful to be out under these breezy 
 olives, with the fragrance of a thousand aromatic 
 shrubs and flowers in the air, threats of refresh- 
 ing rain in the distant horizon, and innumerable 
 cicadse filling the woods with their song. The 
 shadows of the olives are getting longer over the 
 road, and the afternoon is coming on. The cica- 
 dae hum drowsily their dream of summer light 
 is short ; donkeys are braying and dogs barking 
 afar off ; the scarlet blossoms of the pomegranate 
 wave gently from out the bright green leaves ; 
 fields full of low graperies scatter their scents of 
 promised and ripening fruits ; peasants and coun- 
 try people lie asleep in the shade ; the wind 
 makes wavy and trembling melody among the 
 trees. It is a Greek scene full of Greek sugges- 
 tions. Not far off is Colonos, the birth-place of 
 Sophokles and the scene of CEdipus' death ; little 
 Greek chapels nestle here and there among the 
 figs and cypresses ; the long white roads meander 
 like a line of light through the olive solitudes and 
 glooms ; a carriage drives lazily by at intervals, 
 or a curious contadino saunters along, eying me 
 and my book. What immense and strangely in- 
 dividualized creatures these olive-trees are ! The 
 trunks of many of them are positively huge. But 
 then they are seldom more than eight or ten 
 yards high, with a large tuft of out-spread foliage 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES, 1 37 
 
 atop and on the sides. They line the roads and 
 fill the fields like an apple-orchard. Fences are 
 seldom to be seen. 
 
 This grove is one of the most genuine relics 
 of antiquity about Athens. Human hunger has 
 kept it alive when all the marble glories of Peri- 
 kles and Phidias have perished. And the Ke- 
 phissus ? It is now perfectly dry, a small chan- 
 nel of mud and river jacks, bearing evidences of 
 inundation, full of weeds and wild herbage, a fig- 
 tree here and there growing out of its banks, 
 hardly even what we should call a creek. It is 
 as tortuous as some of these gnarled olives, and 
 under no circumstances can be more than a few 
 feet deep. Yet Plato and Aristotle, Socrates and 
 Xenophon, delighted to walk along its banks. A 
 sacred Olivet for the scholar is Plato's part of 
 this grove the 'AKaSy/zxta, still so called by the 
 Greeks. It is full of nightingales in the spring. 
 Is it not as if one were not reading but realizing 
 the " Phaedon " ? No doubt these small black ants 
 that cover the whole face of the earth here 
 covered it in Socrates' time, and perhaps crawled 
 over the Son of Sophroniscus as they are crawl- 
 ing over me ants big and little, brown and red, 
 and black and long-legged. The tufted grass, 
 the donkeys going by laden with children and 
 fruit and vegetables, the rooks that hover in the 
 air and caw lazily all, no doubt, were the same. 
 
138 GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 The quaint little dogs, too, that snap at you now 
 and then cynically ghost of Diogenes, how real 
 they are ! The whole place is full of the mellow- 
 est music of associations. Greece is so inter- 
 twined with one's earliest recollections by themes, 
 versions, plays, prize poems, paper work (as the 
 English say) ; boyhood, that poetic antiquity of 
 each one of us of elderly age, is associated more 
 or less richly with all these. And to find the 
 mythologic and historic names more than real- 
 ized in this classic grove to-day ! It is a dream 
 which I should never have hoped to realize. 
 
 "We arrived," said Hughes, describing the 
 Academy, " at the banks of the Kephissus, the 
 ancient rival of the Ilissus, and its superior in 
 utility, flowing through the fertile plains which it 
 still adorns with verdure, fruits, and flowers. A 
 scene more delightful can scarcely be conceived 
 than the gardens on its banks, which extend from 
 the Academy up to the hills of Colonos. All the 
 images in that exquisite chorus of Sophokles, 
 where he dilates with so much rapture upon the 
 beauties of his native place, may still be verified ; 
 the crocus, the narcissus, and a thousand flowers 
 still mingle their various dyes and impregnate the 
 atmosphere with odors ; the descendants of 
 those ancient olives on which the vigilant eye of 
 Morian Jupiter was fixed still spread out their 
 broad arms, and form a shade impervious to the 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 1 39 
 
 sun. In the opening of the year the whole grove 
 is vocal with the melody of nightingales, and the 
 ground is carpeted with violets, those national 
 flowers of Athens ; at its close the purple and 
 yellow clusters, the glory of Bacchus, hang 
 around the trellis-work with which the numerous 
 cottages and villas are adorned. Oranges, apri- 
 cots, peaches, and figs, especially the latter, are 
 produced here of superior flavor; and at the time 
 I wandered through this delightful region, it was 
 glittering with golden quinces, weighing down 
 their branches, and beautifully contrasted with 
 the deep scarlet of the pomegranates which had 
 burst their confining rind ; nor can anything be 
 more charming than the views which present 
 themselves to the eye through vistas of dark 
 foliage : the temple-crowned Acropolis, the em- 
 purpled summits of Hymettus, Anchesmus, and 
 Pentelicus, or the fine waving outlines of Cory- 
 dalus, ^galeos, and Parnes This para- 
 dise owes its chief beauty to the perennial fount- 
 ains of the Kephissus (QEd. Col. 685), "over whose 
 innumerable rills those soft breezes blow which, 
 according to the ancient muse (Eurip. Med. 835), 
 were wafted by the Cytherean queen herself." 
 
 Yesterday all day long, I was on the Acrop- 
 olis, studying out the topography of its temples 
 and monuments. The day was one of the coolest 
 and pleasantest I have spent here ; somewhat too 
 
I40 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 windy, to be sure, but that made no difference, 
 as there was little dust up there. I returned to 
 dinner with a far more perfect notion than I ever 
 before had of the plan of this celebrated place. 
 With my glass too I discovered the circular 
 monument of Lysikrates, which I had not before 
 been able to find. It is in a labyrinth of crooked 
 streets. The evening before I visited the The- 
 seum and found the square in front full of new 
 recruits drilling for the army. What awkward, 
 clumsy fellows they were, too ! "Ei/, Sw ! "Ei/, Sco ! 
 sounded from the drill-sergeant, who was trying 
 to make them keep step ; "Ei/, Sw ! "Ei/, Sw ! echoed 
 from all sides, while the great temple stood there 
 in the grand evening light, aghast at the inso- 
 lence. An old soldier came up to me and said 
 something in Greek, which I did not understand ; 
 'AAAa, said he, then shrugged his shoulders and 
 turned on his heel. A wretched little cafe is 
 perched just in front of one of the porticoes of 
 the temple, and a soldier sat drinking at a table 
 placed between the pillars. A rich golden tint 
 has mellowed the brightness of the Pentelic 
 marble, the saucy little Greek church which had 
 perched itself in the cella has been removed, 
 restorations or strengthenings of the crumbling 
 pillars have been made at several points ; the 
 whole seems to be the object of affectionate 
 veneration by the modern Athenians. But, as 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 141 
 
 in Germany, there is hardly a ruin or a piece 
 of picturesque ground that is not defiled by a 
 hideous little saloon, as if the moment one 
 arrived in the presence of a beautiful object, one 
 then and there needed the assistance of some 
 abominable drink. It is the same with the Tem- 
 ple of Jupiter Olympius, where even nectar 
 and ambrosia would be out of place, much more 
 the cluster of foul little Kacjfx^eveta that one 
 actually finds. Dozens of rude tables and chairs 
 are placed around, at which people sit drinking 
 coffee, smoking narghileh-pipes, eating micro- 
 scopic ices, or sipping crassi. The latest phase of 
 Greek politics as changeable as watered silk 
 or the legs of the last ballet dancer at Phalerum 
 are discussed in the shadow of these glorious 
 pillars from sunset to sunset. One's breath is 
 taken away by such incongruities. And in the 
 neighboring garden theatre Lady Jane Grey 
 (Iwavi^a Vpkv) is murdered in five acts ! 
 
 I write this sitting on the steps of the Bema, 
 a huge platform of rocks symmetrically hewn 
 so as to resemble a pulpit, with a short rock- 
 hewn staircase on each side, one of ^n^ steps, the 
 other of four. The Bema stands on or rises out 
 of two platforms, also of rock, and has a magnif- 
 icent facing toward the plain of Attica, the vale 
 of the Kephissus, the hill of the Nymphs, the 
 Acropolis, and the Areopagus. Directly in front, 
 
142 GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 on its own slight eminence, lies the Theseum, a 
 rich mass of mellow marble, in this summer sun. 
 The buttressed and many-walled crag of the 
 Acropolis rises to the right and presents the mar- 
 velous point d'appui of which the Attic orators 
 were so fond in their speeches, beautifully en- 
 crusted with its templed coronet of Pentelic, with 
 the slope before it all covered with gigantic aloes. 
 Lycabettus rises to the north, and to the south- 
 west a sea of purple lustre mantles the Attic 
 plain, Geronia, Parnes, Kithaeron, and the Pass 
 of Daphne. There is no place in this lovely land 
 whose associations are more eloquent. This 
 rock is imperishable. It has not suffered in the 
 earthquakes and bombardments that have shat- 
 tered the Parthenon. The Athenians, Pericles 
 and Demosthenes, saw from it, perhaps, as I see 
 now, the diagonal bands of light and shadow 
 which the pillars of the Theseum are casting on 
 the cella of the temple, just in those delicate 
 curves and undulations in which Greek art de- 
 lighted. The Propylaea lift their sumptuous fa- 
 gade in full view, and the dainty apparition of 
 the Ionic-scrolled Temple of Nike Apteros sur- 
 mounts its masonry with a winged and ethereal 
 whiteness. Perhaps they even heard the guttural 
 caw of the ancestors of the rooks circling over 
 me, and filling the place with the superstitious 
 awe with which the Greeks regarded the fabulous 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 1 43 
 
 venerableness of some of these creatures, or the 
 irreverence with which they associated them with 
 their favorite oath. Surely, however, this hill, all 
 girdled with august ministrations and habitudes, 
 the cavern of the Erinnyes, of Apollo and 
 Pan, the Grot of the Nymphs, and the seat of 
 the hoar and reverend court of the Areopagus, 
 could not have been given up to the goats and 
 shepherds and ravens as it is now. One can 
 almost fancy one hears that famous speech of 
 St. Paul's, as he stood here and cried, "Ai^Spe? 
 'AOrjvaiOL, Kara Travra w? SicndaLiJiove(TTpov<s v/xas 
 OewpQ), '^ Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in 
 all things ye are too superstitious." The little 
 Piraeus railway engines send their scream up 
 here every fifteen or twenty minutes, and rudely 
 tear one out of one's classic visions. A kilted 
 goat-herd is browsing a flock of long-horned 
 goats on this hill, so famed in Athenian politics. 
 I even saw him hook three or four of them in 
 the horns with his crook, and deliver them over 
 to a wretch on horseback, who forthwith slaugh- 
 tered them and sent their blood trickling down 
 these storied rocks. The Bema and its steps, 
 like much of the surrounding red marble rock, 
 are covered with patches of golden mould, or 
 lichen, which gives a vari-colored look to the 
 whole. From the summit of the Bema entrancing 
 views crowd in on every side. What scenes and 
 
144 GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 associations unroll before one on this memorable 
 height. Athenian citizenship, popular elections, 
 the subtle and the florid oratory of Sicilian rheto- 
 rician or Attic sophist, the infinite comedy of the 
 Attic law courts, the multitudinous echoes of the 
 final struggle for independence, all are linked 
 and anchored to this lichened rock. Everything 
 about it is voluble and articulate with the past. 
 How keenly one realizes Holderlin's verses : 
 
 " Attika, die Riesin, ist gefallen ; 
 Wo die alten Gotteisoline ruhn 
 Im Ruin gestiirzter Marmorhallen, 
 Briitet ew'ge Todesstille nun." 
 
 The huge thunder-clouds of this morning have 
 broken into pellucid and rainless sunlight. The 
 mountains the '* purpureos colles florentis Hy- 
 metti " jut out sharply with a jeweled precision. 
 Meandering roads curve along the sides of Hy- 
 mettus ^ (mad mountain, the peasants call it) and 
 Lycabettus as plainly as if they were a few yards 
 off. It looks as if one might step into the gar- 
 den that is laid off to the west of the Temple 
 of Theseus. There is a white gleam on the tiny 
 
 1 A curious etymology : during the Venetian occupation 
 Hymettos changed to Hymetto ; the unaccented syllable 
 fell away, and Monte Matto remained. Matto is Italian for 
 mad, Cf. the legend of Mt. Pilatiis in Switzerland nions 
 Fileatus, capped mountain, confused with the mediaeval leg- 
 endary wandering of Pilate. 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 1 45 
 
 church of Agia Marina^ below the hill of the 
 Nymphs, and I can almost see the mass of 
 smooth worn rock where, following an ancient 
 tradition,^ women still slide down as a cure for 
 barrenness. It is too early for the Place d'Armes, 
 to the south of the Theseum, to fill up with the 
 new muster. The temple is certainly a grand 
 bit of architecture in this golden afternoon. 
 
 1 See Taylor's Travels in Greece, 
 10 
 
III. 
 
 What a singular nest is the Stoa of Hadrian ! 
 This once magnificent structure survives only in 
 a few mutilated Corinthian columns, and has 
 been converted into a sort of rookery of roosting 
 peddlers. Its colonnades and temples, library 
 porticoes and baths, its Propylaeum and spots 
 of Orient sunlight where the fashionable world 
 promenaded in the days of the Phil-Hellene em- 
 peror, are now what the Germans call an Eulen- 
 nest (an owl's nest). All the tinkers and tramps 
 of the Arabian Nights seem to sit there cross- 
 legged, surrounded by piles of apricots and figs, 
 pulling away at hookahs, or sipping their paKt, or 
 chewing />tao-Ttxa, or taking the preparation they 
 call XovKovfjiLa, It is the den of the Forty Thieves 
 transferred to Athens and illuminated by an 
 Athenian sun. There is no more amusing prom- 
 enade in Athens than ^ if you have a good nose 
 to walk through this quarter early in the morn- 
 ing, and take in the whole oriental vivacity of 
 the scene : little cafes, with rows of decanters full 
 of green, red, and white liquids, and the curious 
 little revolving machine which, driven by a stream 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. I47 
 
 of water, is made to strike two glasses, and thus 
 melodiously attract the wayfarer ; little cigarette 
 shelves hanging out of windows hired for the 
 purpose, with their pair of huge brass scales, their 
 boxes of Ka-Kv6% or common tobacco and their 
 brands of TroAtrtKos (the Greek Havana) ; the 
 water-cooler sellers with their heaps of graceful 
 jugs to chill water by evaporation ; the groups of 
 donkeys, with their panniers of fruit and vegeta- 
 bles, and the huge brass scales pendent at the 
 side j the rows of small booths full of a Rag-Fair 
 of articles shoes, fezes, "fustanelle," rosaries 
 made of shells, gay cloths and trinkets, fish, flesh, 
 fowl, and fruit, all mixed in an indescribable pict- 
 uresqueness and confusion ; and out of it all the 
 minarets of a Turkish mosque climbing heaven- 
 ward, with the cry of the muezzin, if it be even- 
 ing. It is as if the many-colored dome of some 
 cathedral had been shattered into a thousand 
 pieces, and the many-colored pieces had suddenly 
 become alive here ! It is a Midsummer Night's 
 Dream of the maddest color, filth, and noisi- 
 ness. 
 
 Newsboys thread the winding passageways 
 and cry, *H naXtvyevecrta (the Regeneration), or 
 To i6vLKov Uvevfia (the Spirit of the Nation), 
 at the top of their voices. Donkeys bray in the 
 brusquest manner. Lively chatting goes on be- 
 tween buyer and seller. Ancient Turks, perhaps 
 
148 GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 drowsy with opium or nothing to do, sit in the 
 oriental posture or scratch their turbaned heads. 
 Groups of men in the stately Albanian costume, 
 with their grand walk and graceful air, stalk up 
 and down with Eastern impassibility, price an ar- 
 ticle, call for a (^wrta (brazier of coals for lighting 
 cigarettes) at the cafes, or converse in the strange 
 patois of Greece about the last conclusions of the 
 fiovk-Y] or House of Delegates. The Greeks are 
 inexhaustible politicians, as they were in the days 
 of Alcibiades, and they do not willingly let an oc- 
 casion go by without a word or two on the future 
 of Greece. Always the future, the To MeXAov, 
 never the present ! And when it is not the future 
 it is the past that burden of dazzling inherit- 
 ance which oppresses the modern Greeks, which 
 makes them arrogant and contemptuous at efforts 
 to suggest improvements to them, and which 
 flings up their modern end of the scale, by way of 
 comparison, into something like the Clouds of 
 Aristophanes. An Albanian woman in scarlet 
 fez and golden tassel may be seen here and there, 
 going the market rounds and haggling in the true 
 Ionian fashion ; or another in long petticoat, with 
 embroidered sleeves and skirt, over which is a 
 sort of tunic of white woolen, and hair and neck 
 loaded with chains of coins strung- together, stops 
 somewhere in the bazaar, and passes a few words 
 with a fruit vender j or the high boots of the 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 1 49 
 
 Cretan costume stalk in now and then like the 
 veritable puss in the fairy tale, and linger before 
 some quaint stand loaded with appetizing mer- 
 chandise. Small boys hang around bareheaded, 
 and eye the baskets of nuts and dainties that 
 the kilted peddlers carry about for sale, some- 
 times venturing up with a few lepta, and going 
 off triumphant with a handful of these delicacies. 
 Wagon loads of perfect oranges block the road 
 at intervals huge, luscious fellows, yellow as 
 gold and sweet as sugar, with a flavor and an 
 aroma truly divine to the orange-liker. Pears 
 hang in strings like sausages, and tempt the mar- 
 ket-woman bent on a cheap dessert for dinner. 
 Knots of Murillesque figures munch melons and 
 figs in a corner, or perhaps carry on that opera- 
 tion which Dickens describes as the chief Sunday 
 employment of the Genoese. A man waters the 
 street with a wet broom, and thereby makes the 
 dust fly worse than ever. Platters of black olives 
 shine on barrel-heads ; a brace of young fellows 
 are eating out of a common plate in a sort of 
 wilderness of tomatoes, fish, and butcher's meat. 
 Mangy curs slip in and out, and snarl over their 
 bones under the tables. St. Bartholomew's Day 
 is revived on a small scale, but St. Bartholomew 
 baptized after the Greek rites. 
 
 Up the street is the Tower of the Winds, but it 
 seems to have transferred its Eolian versatility to 
 
150 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 this spot dedicated by Hadrian to Jupiter Panhel- 
 lenius, but now the Pantheon of peddlers. Not 
 many years ago dancing dervishes gave their per- 
 formances here, as if to fill up the measure of his- 
 toric incongruity. Greek and Muslim, hadji and 
 archimandrite, mosque and minaret, agora and 
 shrine what a whirl of panoramic confusion. 
 It is like a journey in a railway car, where fences, 
 fields, sea, and sky blend in an indistinguish- 
 able posy of dissolving views. Dirty canvases 
 are stretched from side to side to keep out the 
 cleansing sun. Immemorial fleas hop about in 
 the fetid twilight. Those scavengers of the air, 
 the flies, hold high carnival, and tattoo everything 
 with their touch. At the end of a dark avenue of 
 awnings is a burst of sunlight falling on the scar- 
 let bellies of tomatoes, and giving lustrous focus 
 to all these lines of light. At the end of another 
 the sunlight has fruited into globes of golden 
 oranges, that lie among their green leaves and 
 make a glory in the summer darkness. Then 
 piggins of white, cream-like butter catch the eye, 
 cheeses in classic goatskins, great brown loaves 
 of Attic bread (called i/^w/xt) on the corners, and 
 peasants roasting ears of corn in a brazier of 
 coals. It is chaffer, chaffer, chaffer, all day long. 
 Well does this spot justify its antique celeb- 
 rity, for near here was supposed to be situated a 
 subsidiary branch of the great Athenian Agora, 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 151 
 
 that lay between the Pnyx and the Areopagus 
 and converged and focalized the life of ancient 
 Athens. Something of the same diseased instinct 
 by which churches spring up perpetually on one 
 another's sites is exemplified here. Churches, 
 graveyards, and market-places have an elective 
 affinity for the spots of their ancient renown. 
 The gods, the graves, and the people will not 
 give up sites once sacred to them, and succeed by 
 a strange sort of primogeniture to their heredi- 
 tary possessions. In the guttural twang of this 
 market-place survives the silvery accent of Aspa- 
 sia. In the fantastic Orientalism of the costume 
 is a reflex of the white and blue and red of the 
 antique figures that frequented these marble pil- 
 lars and cast their painted shadows on the pave- 
 ment. In the sharpness of these shrilly tongues 
 is more than one reminiscence of the orators. 
 One recalls the "swarms of chattering poetas- 
 ters" called by Aristophanes "colleges of swal- 
 lows." 
 
 " Not tailed cicada, jay, or nightingale, 
 Not turtle-dove or grasshopper can match 
 Thy chattering." 
 
 Jebb, 
 
 In the wisdom of these terse proverbs terse 
 and Turkish and Athenian all in one is more 
 than one color from the palette of Theophrastus. 
 The nightingales that sang to Sophokles in that 
 
152 GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 exquisite chorus of the CEdipus are heard all 
 about the Athenian groves still. There is per- 
 haps an added note of pathetic richness since 
 the grand old poet died, but the Greek poets still 
 survive in their nightingales. So in this heap of 
 pictorial nastiness there has been a miraculous 
 preservation of habits and instincts. The brown, 
 olive-complexioned lads and lasses have not been 
 so Slavonized pace Fallmerayer ! that one 
 cannot distinguish resemblance enough to the 
 mutilated statuary through the museums of Eu- 
 rope, nor is it the resemblance of a dead man 
 across a glass case to his living self. Greece 
 lives Athenian loquacity lives in the fifty peri- 
 odicals of the place. Athenian litigiousness lives 
 in the animation of the courts. The pafiem et 
 ludos live in the agility and frequency with which 
 the Athenians, grasshopper-like, skip to the sea- 
 shore and hang over the opera of Phalerum from 
 evening to evening. The dead mountains live in 
 their honey and marble. The Lyceum, the Cyno- 
 sarges, and the Academy live in the university and 
 the Varvakion. Nothing could be more living 
 than the air and the sunlight and the olives, not 
 even the quick-stepping trot at which the droschke 
 horses are made to go, or the quick spasm of the 
 Greek speech for spasm and sputter it seems 
 to be in a political difference at a cafe. The 
 novelties intermixed with the antiquities of the - 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 1 53 
 
 place do not jar on one so much as at other 
 places ; as, for example, to find " Godey's Lady's 
 Book " on top of the Pyramids. The Athenians 
 were ever receiving and absorbing something 
 new. Their fleet, like a myriad nervous system, 
 was ever bringing them new impressions and 
 sensations. They had a plastic nature, like Alci- 
 biades', infinitely adaptable to all circumstances, 
 whether they sang at Syracuse or fluted at Sardis, 
 whether they dedicated with the radiant irrever- 
 ence of Aristophanes the finger and helm of 
 Athene Promachos, or whether they sat under 
 the solemn splendor of the stars in the awful 
 court of the Areopagus. They are the harle- 
 quins of history. 
 
 What a stream of embassies and expeditions, 
 truces and wars, processions and festivals, is this 
 brilliant Athenian antiquity. It is a game of 
 more than human athletes, and in everything they 
 did there is nearly always, as it were, the perfume 
 of some invisible ambrosial presence. Be it a 
 song of Anacreon or a snatch of Sappho, be it 
 the defense of Salamis or the chisel of Praxiteles, 
 there is an unapproachable grace, an unreacha- 
 bleness which we must ever despair over. The 
 sting of such a despair is just the most exquisite 
 stigma of art just the stimulus that has driven 
 the moderns to what they may have attained in 
 art. We see it inserted in the thigh of the Re- 
 
154 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 naissance and spurring on the Italians to a 
 frenzy of development, like some Jove-sent gad- 
 fly. We cannot look into a studio or a cathedral 
 without seeing the fruition of the Greek spirit 
 Here in Athens it survives to-day in the great in- 
 tellectual activity that prevails, in the curiosity of 
 the population, their eager thirst for knowledge, 
 their numerous schools and rapid improvement 
 in every direction. 
 
 There is a keen love of money, too, coupled in 
 many cases with extreme munificence. The old 
 ardor of the Greeks cannot be put out in a day 
 nor in a century. With Macedonia and Thessaly 
 Cyprus and Crete, the Greeks would rapidly 
 rise in importance and develop a real nationality. 
 Now, of course, Greece is a mere mass of rocks 
 and chatter. Athens is off the great lines of trade 
 and communication, but by being made an intel- 
 lectual centre is increasing far beyond any city in 
 the kingdom. Its university will catch for it the 
 miraculous draught of fishes will, one hopes, 
 be the great panhellenizing principle of this 
 strange agglomeration of islands, peninsulas, and 
 main-land. Twelve hundred students every year 
 in a vSmall nationality of one or two millions will 
 carry forth enthusiasm for the new culture into 
 all the provinces, and justify the help and inter- 
 est of foreigners. Whether the government can 
 grapple with its endless economical difficulties 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 1 55 
 
 is a grave question. There seems to be a lack of 
 astute statesmanship in this direction. But the 
 ability of the Greeks themselves to make money 
 and to prosper is unquestionable. They are the 
 bankers and the money-changers of the East. 
 There even runs a proverb about the Greeks of 
 Athens on this point. But an intelligent Greek 
 told me that the young men of Athens, \\ivWoi 
 Iv Tol% dxvpois (fleas in the straw, he called them), 
 instead of patronizing home industries will run 
 to their tailors for a French coat, and spend all 
 their money in foreign riff-raff. 
 
 The term " French dressing '' is sufficiently 
 distinctive here to be put in inverted commas. 
 But Heaven only knows what the Greeks would 
 do if they relied entirely on themselves. A 
 glance into their shop windows is almost comic. 
 All sorts of miscellaneous stuff, odds and ends 
 of ribbon and lace, heaps of common lawns and 
 calicoes, bundles of ordinary white umbrellas, 
 what seems like the refuse of the Parisian doufi- 
 ^//^ on the boulevard Montmartre, meet the eye 
 in sorrowful abundance. Yet the men dress well, 
 and the women of the upper classes too. The 
 parfum violet and the modes of Paris flame here 
 and there on gilded signs signs unspeakably 
 refreshing to the Athenian, who hurries by the 
 little bits of diablerie called " native " shops, and 
 finds relief in an adjacent cafe. Cafes are unfort- 
 
156 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 unately always adjacent here. At both elbows, 
 in front and behind, there is no escape from 
 their fumes till you are safe on the Acropolis 
 or in the olive groves, any more than there is 
 from the grease and tomato sauce of the table 
 d'hote. One picks up the bill of fare every day 
 in despair to find "poulets k la sauce tomates," 
 "gigot d'agneau auxtomates," "filet de bceuf a la 
 sauce tomates," "ane roti aux tomates," " creme 
 de la creme ^ la sauce tomates " staring one in 
 the face. Any civilized way of cooking tomatoes 
 
 baking, preserving, stewing, or in soup 
 seems utterly unknown to this tomato-ridden 
 people. From daylight in the morning they 
 begin to cry Tas rco/xaras ! ras rw/xaras ! in the 
 street below, interspersed with short slices and 
 spells of *H riaXti/yei/eo-ta, an everlasting news- 
 paper. Greece would have achieved something 
 long ago if it had not been for tomato sauce. 
 
 Then come beans and okra and pears and 
 TOLs Tw/xaras again. This succession of shrill and 
 unappetizing screams is anything but a pleasant 
 preparation for the inevitable tomatoes which 
 one is sure to find at dinner. There is an as- 
 cending series of sensations a gustatory stair- 
 case from the first cried tomatoes up through 
 successive stages of grease and sauce along about 
 midday, till the final and crushing culmination at 
 table d'hote. The market-place bleeds toma- 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 157 
 
 toes ; they are hawked at street corners and 
 howled on the house-tops, borne round by asses 
 and bought by asses, weighed out by the pound, 
 gleam through the twilight and gather at dusk. 
 Well, America has given the Greeks tomatoes and 
 female schools and missionaries j who can say 
 we have not done our part. There 's the table 
 d'hote bell now ! Tomatoes, tomatoes, toma- 
 toes ! 
 
 It would take another Athenseus to chronicle 
 all the curiosities of Greek cooking. This morn- 
 ing, descending gayly to our 11 o'clock break- 
 fast I was greeted (breakfast, mind you), as the 
 first course, with a plateful of rice saturated with 
 grease and tomato sauce. This on a delicate 
 stomach rendered almost morbid by long sleep ! 
 Then came a dish of raw tomatoes, which I 
 have myself introduced to the knowledge of our 
 head waiter a dish prepared in our favorite 
 American fashion, and a thousand times more 
 palatable than all their concoctions and confec- 
 tions. Then the waiter brought in with an ar- 
 tistic flourish a plate of indescribable stuff, a sort 
 of sausage covered all over with thick white 
 sauce and garnished with what tasted like boiled 
 cucumbers. Then but Heaven only knows 
 what he would have brought next ! After the 
 shrimps with olives that succeeded the soup at 
 dinner yesterday, one was prepared for anything. 
 
158 GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 But to our infinite relief he brought in a dish of 
 delicious apricots, which with the vin de Fames 
 somewhat counteracted the propylaea of grease 
 which introduced the breakfast. Greek cook- 
 ing is a mixture of Italian, Turkish, Albanian, 
 French, English, and native customs. The thick, 
 sweet, unsettled black coifee that succeeds every 
 meal more a confection than a coffee is 
 Turkish. The mountains of maccaroni dressed 
 with tomato sauce and cheese are a souvenir 
 of Naples. The frightful combinations of okra, 
 beans, and tomatoes in which they envelop their 
 lamb and veal must be purely and diabolically 
 Greek, for I have never seen anything similar 
 elsewhere. No wonder the Greeks are so slen- 
 der mere silhouettes of people. Such food 
 would wear an Occidental to a knife-blade. It 
 seems, however, to have had the contrary effect 
 on the women, who at a certain stage of their ex- 
 istence resemble bladders. They are human 
 cucumbers that have lain too long in the sun 
 and gotten yellow. Our dessert yesterday was a 
 cold rice pudding spiced with nutmeg and cin- 
 namon and garnished with red and green iced 
 cakes. The pie-crust, like the German, is sweet 
 and heavy. On Fridays and Sundays sardines 
 seem to be handed round as a sort of salami ; 
 sausage croquettes take the place of fish some- 
 times ; roast beef with salad of cucumbers, beets, 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 1 59 
 
 and lettuce varies the usual fowl-ness of the 
 last course. Yesterday nectarines and canta- 
 loupe were added to our constant figs, apricots, 
 oranges, and pears. There is Schweizer cheese, 
 but only a Greek or two affect it. Wine in this 
 climate is absolutely necessary, not only because 
 the water is generally bad (lemonade color), but 
 to help digest the ingenious horrors of a Greek 
 dinner. Even the famous peTo-Lvdro Kpaat res- 
 inous wine could be tolerated in these circum- 
 stances. And yet some of the Greeks God help 
 them ! seem to thrive on their fare. The men 
 are singularly handsome, while the married 
 women seem to become immediately stout ; there 
 is a strength and grace in the figures of the 
 former that we should expect from their open-air 
 life ; while some of the latter, though without the 
 florid bloom of the Teutonic women, have yet a 
 glow under their cucumber complexions that be- 
 tokens health. Occasionally one meets with a 
 very fine pair of eyes among them. Most women 
 who wear the Albanian fez whether from the 
 unbecomingness of its flat red folds and tassel, 
 or from the ungraceful way of dressing the hair 
 
 are homely. Not unf requently braids of hair 
 are wound round the fez in a very graceful way 
 
 in which case the fez is a mere red skull-cap, 
 often subdued in color by a black lace veil. 
 Many women of the lower classes wear our old- 
 
l60 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 fashioned Southern bandannas, which give them 
 a curiously mulattesque look. 
 
 Yesterday evening after dinner I strolled 
 down the 6S09 'A^uaXtas by the palace garden, 
 which from four till seven in the afternoon is 
 given up to nurses and baby Greek, toward the 
 Olympieum. Again and again I have to admire 
 the wonderful aesthetic and pictorial instinct of 
 the Greeks in selecting their sites for temples. 
 Sunium, ^gina, Olympia, Eleusis, Delphi, Delos, 
 all emphasize and illustrate this. Points just 
 where the morning rays may play about the 
 sculptured pediment, or the western sun blaze 
 pathetically on the columned whiteness of the 
 posticum ; points where the sea may be seen 
 sending its sapphire lance into the land and carv- 
 ing out a lustrous isle ; points where the ripple of 
 a mountain outline relieves the delicately curved 
 rectilinear lines of a stylobate, or evening-purpled 
 pictures may be glimpsed through the pillars 
 shining on the far seas, all these they picked 
 out with an infallible feeling of what was true 
 and beautiful. There could hardly be a finer 
 position for this great temple of Jupiter Olympius. 
 The beautiful swell and curve of the eminence 
 on which its fifteen surviving pillars rise, fifteen 
 out of the original one hundred and twenty-four, 
 its gentle slope toward the Ilissus and the 
 fountain of Callirrhoe, and the angle at which 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. l6l * 
 
 the Saronic Gulf sends its gorgeous blue laughing 
 up the Vale of Phalerum, in full sight of the 
 southern peristyle, make one indeed envy the (jtv- 
 Xlttj^s who in the Dark Ages made his hermitage 
 on one of these pillars, and unwittingly selected 
 a position that a very voluptuary in landscape 
 might have coveted. Then the Acropolis just 
 behind, with the Dionysiac Theatre, the Eleusin- 
 ium, the Odeum of Pericles, and the Odeum of 
 Herod encrusting its base. There is almost a 
 justice in Hadrian's erecting his arch and mak- 
 ing it a dividing line between the new city he 
 built and these antique glories. 
 
 I walked on and on, and found companies of 
 soldiers drilling to a bugle and fife in the plateia 
 or square which surrounds the temple. The 
 coffee-drinkers were there too, and the hookah- 
 smokers, reveling in the incomparable view from 
 this spot, or lounging away the evening till it was 
 time to go to the play. I went on down by the 
 gardens of the Graces, Muses, and Nymphs, 
 which two latter fill the beautiful isle in the Ilis- 
 sus once occupied by the shrine of Demeter, 
 crossed the Ilissus by a handsome stone bridge 
 faced with marble, and went over to look at the 
 excavations of the Panathenaic Stadium. On 
 this spot were revived a few years ago the cele- 
 brated Panathenaic games, in honor of the jubilee 
 of Greek independence. The excavations at the 
 
1 62 GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 back were carried out by order of King George I. 
 a few years ago, and laid bare the entire race- 
 course. There was the usual scabies of ignoble 
 huts at the entrance, while the marble which cov- 
 ered the tiers of seats had been converted into 
 lime by neighboring kilns. How perfectly re- 
 vealed is the site of this great Derby Day of 
 Antiquity, the Stadium, a huge parallelogram 
 in the hills, excluded from all views of the sur- 
 rounding country that might distract the contest- 
 ants, except at the entrance, where the Parthenon 
 stands forth on its hill like a glorious apparition 
 and the Ilissus murmurs and meanders between 
 the Stadium and the gardens and Aphrodisium of 
 Venus on the other side. Few views in Athens 
 must there have been from which the shimmer of 
 sanctuaries through the cypress and oleander was 
 excluded ! 
 
 I could not help stopping and lingering over 
 this glorious remnant of the religion and munifi- 
 cence of early Greece. Such munificence if 
 not such religion is to this day gracefully char- 
 acteristic of the Greeks, and to it modern Athens 
 owes the National Museum and the new theatre, 
 the observatory, the Vivarkeion, the Arsakeion, 
 and the new Academy. The theatre lay before 
 me, all devastated and shorn of its glory. The 
 excavations are sufficiently advanced to enable 
 the antiquarian to reconstruct its original propor- 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES, 1 63 
 
 tions : nearly seven hundred feet (663) of white 
 marble, the Sp6iJLo<s, the KajjcTrrrje, the /SaXfits and 
 the StavXos ; its slabs and drains, its mosaic pave- 
 ment and entablatured wall, its fan-like radia- 
 tions of semicircular seats decorated with an owl 
 at the end of each, its corridors, subterranean 
 vaulted passage, and stoa, its statuary, its slope 
 toward the classic Ilissus, and its sitting room for 
 fifty thousand Athenians. The semicircular end 
 is quite revealed, and all around is a multifarious 
 debris of broken columns and capitals. It was 
 not difficult to repeople it with animated thou- 
 sands, or to fill it with a white-tunicked, sandaled 
 throng. The bright blaze of multitudinous mar- 
 bles, the stoa of the judges, the stripped runners 
 with eagerly outstretched necks, the cries of the 
 mobile and applauding populace, all seem to 
 gleam and twinkle and echo along the air, and 
 roll like a tide of color and sound against the 
 cliffs of the Ilissus. What scenes must have been 
 these famous games games whose marble com- 
 memoration alone excites so much admiration. 
 
 Now in the diagonal distance stretches the 
 king's garden and the stuccoed palace. Stuc- 
 coed fences and gardens are springing up on the 
 site of Aphrodite's temple ; small suburbs and 
 clusters of new houses, Greek chapels, and Kac^- 
 cj^eveta (of course !) are beginning to appear in 
 the hollow of the hills and to form the out-works 
 
164 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 of a denser peopling and building up after a 
 while. 
 
 Greek priests promenade up and down the 
 classic race-course in the cool of the evening, and 
 an occasional antiquary may be found climbing 
 and peering about, trying to realize and recon- 
 struct the strange scene which this spot must 
 have presented in Lykurgus' or Herod's time. 
 Ruins of the marble-covered seats may be seen 
 all along the south side, and broken slabs and 
 columns lie about as reminders of the Panathe- 
 naic pomp. Goatherds, such as they appear in ' 
 the Greek novelettes of Achilles Tatius and 
 Longus, drive their flocks about the declivities 
 and dream in the midday sun under some tree 
 or cool ledge of rock. The dry Ilissus has a 
 cart track in the centre of its bed, and is as 
 empty as a twice told tale. All along here new 
 Athens is spreading. ZvBoizokCia or beer-gardens 
 are fighting for existence with the peeo-tvaro Kpaa-l 
 or resinated wine stands in this sacred vicinity. 
 The near slopes of Lycabettus are gradually 
 covering with new dwellings, shops, and inns ; 
 Trai/TOTTcoAeta or " notion " shops dot the hill-sides 
 and obtrude their wares on the gaze. A iaxaprja- 
 TrAao-Tctov or confectionery presents its curious 
 store of Greek and Turkish sweetmeats to the 
 passer-by, but faintly recaUing the famous dinner 
 in Petronius. Perambulating candy sellers march 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 1 6$ 
 
 Up and down the locality and cry their dainties 
 candied nuts and bonbons, borne about in trays 
 and baskets and dealt out in little tin cups. In 
 the intervals of the play these marchands, as 
 no doubt in Aristophanes' time, carry round 
 little baskets divided into four compartments, 
 and descant upon the deliciousness of their con- 
 tents. And these are mingled with little raga- 
 muffins who go about crying, Ta ySov/cerTa, Kvpioi ! 
 TO. l3ovKTTa ! (Bouquets, gentlemen, bouquets !) 
 The flower girls at Athens are boys and dirty 
 ones, too, like the SovXol or waiters. They give 
 you a great bunch of flowers for an obolus, none 
 of them rare flowers, all bound in a tight nose- 
 gay and wet with Heaven knows what. They 
 are thrown in great quantities to the favorite 
 actress or ballet-dancer (xopeuVpa) of the evening 
 
 to actors as well. 
 
 After a short inspection of the Stadium I 
 went on down the Ilissus and back by the palace 
 front to the Garden of the Nymphs, where the 
 evening was spent in listening to one of Moliere's 
 delightful comedies in Greek. The acting was 
 admirable. It was Molieresque in every sense 
 
 broad, comic, spirited, and noisy. The cos- 
 tumes were poor and plain, the scenery dirty, 
 the orchestra a few stammering fiddles and flutes. 
 But in spite of all these disadvantages, counter- 
 acted somewhat by the stars shining in brilliantly 
 
1 66 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 through the trees lender which we sat, I have sel- 
 dom enjoyed a theatrical representation more. 
 It was an adaptation, rather than a translation, 
 of the " Bourgeois Gentilhomme " (^ kp)^ovTo 
 Xo)ptoLT7]^), and its fun and frolic were rendered 
 with inimitable humor. The audience resembled 
 a highly charged Leyden jar. The least joke 
 would touch them off into a rapturous sparkle. 
 The songs were encored, and singers and song- 
 stresses pelted with bouquets. The final song 
 which I append, beginning, '^Epw?, cpw?, eh repi/'a) 
 fjLOL^ Kpd^L, was received with delight. The play 
 broke up amid universal good-humor. 
 
 SONG. 
 
 *'OAot 4y x^PV' 
 
 *Epcos, epcoSf els rep^cv jxas Kpd^eiy 
 7} Kavdra irphs Tt6ffiv KaKei. 
 "OffTis TTivei TTore dev (Trevd^ei, 
 Sei/ iparai cos K6p7] SeiX-f] 
 
 Kcpvare, TraiSia, 
 ye/jLara yva\id 
 fjL Tdiraa xp^^^'hy 
 ftcraivdro Kpaai 
 
 "E^ca TirXot, aocpia koI (pi]ix'r] 
 (})v ! fiaphs 6 aura iK^-qroou. 
 Elu rh -TTiveiv, deiy^ inLcrr'fiiJLT}, ' 
 eiv 6 epcas, debs rcov fiporuV' 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 167 
 
 One cannot but think the modern Greek ad- 
 mirably adapted to low comedy. The dialect is 
 full of drolleries and droll turns. What is want- 
 ing to the language and that is a great deal 
 is made up by an astounding flexibility of feature. 
 M. Jourdain's face was a real study. It was a 
 comedy in itself. There was not the winged hu- 
 mor of Jefferson, nor the least gleam of pathos 
 (which the play did not call for), but just the 
 most delicious jingle of fun all through. The 
 adaptation was, of course, an unpardonable muti- 
 lation of the great master's work, as much so as a 
 plaster nose would be on a faun of Praxiteles ; 
 but the surge and brightness of Moliere's genius 
 broke victoriously through it and sparkled more 
 brilliantly than the stars above us. There is a 
 lightness and lissomeness in the Greek constitu- 
 tion which peculiarly fits it for comedy. There 
 is a buoyance of animal spirits, a breadth of sus- 
 ceptibility, an activeness of perception, that com- 
 bine the best qualities of the rose, the shamrock, 
 and the thistle the Keltic, Gallic, and English 
 genius in them. It is almost impossible to think 
 of the Greeks as serious. They laugh at tragedy, 
 and seem struck irresistibly with the comic side 
 of it. 
 
 How different was this dash of Moliere from 
 the tragedy of 'H Aai8t 'Iwai^ny Fpei) which I wit- 
 nessed the oth^r evening at the Apollo Theatre. 
 
1 68 GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 Edward, VI. was represented by a weak-kneed 
 gawk in green pantalettes, with a suspiciously red 
 nose standing out in haut relief from the rest of 
 his powdered face ; Lady Jane was played by a 
 stout, heavy-headed blonde, with no more anima- 
 tion than a hogshead; the Princess Mary by a 
 shrill brunette, who delivered volleys of high-keyed 
 denunciation and had a pair of crank-like elbows 
 which she worked incessantly. The Greek audi- 
 ence fell into fits of exquisite laughter as scene 
 after scene of intolerable bombast unrolled be- 
 fore us. One really felt sorry for the poor actors : 
 Lady Jane looked as if she had the mumps, Ed- 
 ward was continually wiping his eyes and feeling 
 in the region of his stomach, and Mary swept 
 about like a hornet, stinging and slashing every- 
 body. After three acts I left, surfeited with 
 Anglo-Greek tragedy. And yet what drama ex- 
 cels the ancient Greek in sweetness, seriousness, 
 and majesty ? It was the intimate connection be- 
 tween their religion and the drama, coupled with 
 the finest art the world has seen, that solemnized 
 an ancient Greek audience and overwhelmed 
 it with a feeling of reverence. The myriad smile 
 of Aristophanes, the finished comedy of Menan- 
 der, whose divine "fragments " are almost equal 
 to the Sermon on the Mount, give the more 
 human side of this great scene of intellectual 
 wrestling. We have here the Greek spirit vol- 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 1 69 
 
 atilized into a rare perfume ; rare as the aloe- 
 blossom is rare with all its strangeness. We 
 cannot sympathize fully with their comedy as we 
 can with the legendary adventures of Thor and 
 the Berserkers in the Eddas, because it is part 
 and parcel of their peculiar antique life and our 
 plane is a different one. We can no more trans- 
 plant ourselves into it, even through the most 
 beautiful translations of Browning or Frere, than 
 we can transplant this pure Greek air to shine 
 over our mock Greek temples of the North. 
 There is the difference which Sainte-Beuve no- 
 ticed between ancient and modern portrait paint- 
 ing, the one sunny and simple, the other wrinkled 
 over with a thousand meanderings of painful 
 thought. The morbid psychologizing of our day 
 is and must be wholly unlike the bright health of 
 ancient Greece. They had their sicknesses, their 
 To^os or pensive yearning, but the feverish sad- 
 ness of our day was unknown except in the golden 
 decline of Theocritus' day. The passionate la- 
 ments of Moschus and Bion, the delicate and 
 dreamy beauty of Meleager, the vers de societe of 
 the later epigrammatists, all reveal the first golden 
 wing-tip of the butterfly born out of the ancient 
 sunshine, scattered over with the opal spots of a 
 newer life, tinged with a diviner tint of coming 
 morn. How exquisitely do many of these epi- 
 gram-writers sing their thanatopsis; but it is a 
 
I/O GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 sharp, shrill cry, smothered as it were in the vol- 
 umed melody of the present existence. There 
 is no coarse luxuriating in weakness and disease. 
 Compare the wit and wealth gleaned from the 
 Greek graveyards with the funeral bombast of a 
 modern cemetery. Compare the anthology with 
 any modern " wunderhorn." The difference will 
 come out strongly. 
 
 From Greek cooking to Greek comedy ! But 
 there is after all a natural connection. 
 
IV. 
 
 The antiquities of Athens are soon exhausted. 
 A mere pleasure - seeker would, therefore, soon 
 abandon the place to its flickering heat, the 
 cicadae, and the asses. But there is no place that 
 is such a fountain of memories. True, the con- 
 trast between former glories and present humil- 
 iations is very great ; but the scholar's eyes are 
 fortunately introspective and retrospective ; he 
 thinks not so much of the squalid present as of 
 the supreme past ; thus there is relief from much 
 that would be intolerable in modern Athens. Sir 
 Henry Holland, who visited Athens forty years 
 ago, says, " Those who expect to see in Athens 
 only the mere splendid and obvious testimonies 
 of its former state will be agreeably disappointed. 
 The Parthenon, the Temple of Theseus, the Pro- 
 pylaea are individually the most striking objects ; 
 yet it may perhaps be added that they have been 
 less interesting singly than in their combined re- 
 lation to that wonderful grouping of nature and 
 art which gives its peculiarity to Athens, and 
 renders the scenery of this spot something which 
 is ever unique to the eye and recollection. Here, 
 if anywhere, there is a certain genius of the place 
 
172 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 which unites and gives a character and coloring 
 to the whole ; and it is further worthy of remark 
 that this genius loci is one which strikingly con- 
 nects the modern Athens with the city of former 
 days. Every part of the surrounding landscape 
 may be recognized as harmonious and beautiful 
 in itself, and at the same time as furnishing those 
 features which are consecrated by ancient de- 
 scription, by the history of heroic actions, and 
 still more as the scene of those celebrated schools 
 of philosophy which have transmitted their in- 
 fluence to every succeeding age. The stranger 
 who is unable to appreciate the architectural 
 beauties of the temples of Athens yet can ad- 
 mire the splendid assemblage they form in their 
 position, outline, and coloring, can trace out the 
 pictures of the poets in the vale of Kephissus, the 
 hill of Colonos, and the ridge of Hymettus, can 
 look on one side on the sea of Salamis, on the 
 other on the heights of Phylae. Nowhere is an- 
 tiquity so well substantiated as at Athens, or its 
 outline more completely filled up to the eye and 
 to the imagination." 
 
 Yesterday evening, overwhelmed by the pe- 
 culiar depression produced by the sirocco, I set 
 forth on a walk along the Kephissia road, to visit 
 the birthplace of Socrates and Aristides. As 
 usual the rarest, tenderest evening sky, grand 
 masses of haggard golden cloud behind Lyca- 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 173 
 
 bettus, the lovely bath of heathery rose-color suf- 
 fusing the slopes of Hymettus and striking warm 
 and rich in on the wooded cleft of the monastery 
 of Kaesariani and its beautiful bright spring ; the 
 lemon fields through which the Eridanus and Ilis- 
 sus course, tinged with an indescribable softness 
 of light and shadow and looking for all the world 
 like a rich piece of golden brown sealskin. My 
 walk led past the monastery of Asomator, on the 
 site of the ancient gymnasium of the Cynics. In 
 the distance outlying spears of Pentelicon, painted 
 voluptuously by the pencil of advancing twilight, 
 mauve and azure, with the glimmer of the dying 
 sun on its naked limestone sides and the popu- 
 lous village of Kephissia nestling at its feet, 
 among the grapes and olives. One might al- 
 most imagine this approaching night one of the 
 Nodes AtticcB which Aulus Gellius celebrates, and 
 which he passed on this very spot. Villages with 
 strange sounding names are perched about, 
 Marusi, Kalavryta, and Ampelikopi, and the 
 most venerable of the Attic olive-trees thrive in 
 this plain. 
 
 A Turkish mosque peeps out of the foliage of 
 a plane-tree in the distance. The aqueduct of 
 the Pisistratidae runs along the hill-side and is 
 still in use for conveying water from the chief 
 source of the Kephissus, which is in this vicinage. 
 Donkeys, dogs, and goats with their blue-stock- 
 
 OF THE \ 
 
 UNIVERSITY I 
 
174 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 inged and red-vested attendants, rest along the 
 road, grouped with that instinct of the uncon- 
 scious picturesque which perpetually strikes a 
 traveler in this memorial land. Carriages full 
 of Greek 7ra7r7ra>, as they call the gowned and 
 bearded priests, pass to and fro. A band of the- 
 ological students, also in black gowns and low 
 brimless caps, stands at the gate of the IkkK-y]- 
 (TiacTTiKr) (TxoXr] (theological seminary) and re- 
 spectfully listens to the discourse of the accom- 
 panying master. One passes the TrroixoKo/xctoi/ 
 or poor house, with its neat garden, Byzantine 
 chapel, and bareheaded guests sitting on benches 
 in the open evening air. Several Zu^oTrwXeta or 
 beer gardens, from which a decided whiif of aro- 
 matic wine comes, are passed, as well as many 
 new houses with women peering through the blinds 
 their eternal attitude in the East or sitting 
 on the balconies. 
 
 The road rises and gives the loveliest glimpses 
 of the coast of Argolis and the Peloponnese set 
 in a jaspered floor of blue sea. Hymettus looks 
 as if one could stretch out one's hand and touch 
 it, or gather its pink wealth of wild thyme with 
 which the" air is loaded. The chapel of St. George 
 on Lycabettus (now called Monte San Georgio, 
 like so many other Italianized Greek mountains) 
 is a spot of vivid whiteness on its remarkable 
 height, and catches the blaze of the plenteous 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES, 1 75 
 
 sun full on its front. The hamlet of Sypseli that 
 clings to its side lies in a mellow bed of radiance 
 which likewise luminously accentuates the white- 
 sailed feluccas on the Saronic Gulf, far away to the 
 south. Everything has the painted and poetic 
 peace that hovers over a Greek landscape at 
 sunset, an indescribable tranquillity and beauty 
 springing from this world of harmonious tints 
 and sounds. The heat is lifted from one's shoul- 
 ders like a load, and there is left the upblowing 
 and upbreathing coolness of descending night, 
 a night that mellifluously veils the thousand-fold 
 pungencies of a Greek sun and sinks down upon 
 one with a sense of most eloquent relief. The 
 aching eyes may be lifted painlessly to these 
 cooling heights ; the far glory of the sea is no 
 longer a Medusa mask to turn one to stone ; 
 the honeyed hillocks of Monte Matto are no 
 longer focuses of a gleaming burning-glass ; the 
 Parthenon pillars leave a sheen on the satin air, 
 like the ripple of fingers in phosphorescent water j 
 the deep groves of Academe become the love- 
 liest musing places for tired brain and eyes and 
 feet; one may follow the horizon line with its 
 successive tessellations of inlaid color, its twi- 
 light green, its hues of silvery asphodel, its oc- 
 casional great fans of shooting rays over Lau- 
 rium ; the dust of the street is laid in the uni- 
 versal truce, and the strengthened eyes may trace 
 
176 GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 out the tortuosities of the classic rivers as they 
 flow on and on down the plain. The indispensa- 
 ble umbrella is thrown away or left at home. 
 The thirst for ices and ice-water and cooling 
 drinks is allayed, and one may move about with- 
 out critical searchings after shady streets or 
 shadow-throwing walls. Nothing could be more 
 beautiful than these dewless Greek nights. How 
 fast the shadows gathered as I continued my 
 walk toward 'AAcoTre/cr/ (Ampelikopi), the haunt of 
 Socrates' youth, and gathered the delightful wild 
 thyme, still in full blossom, by the way. I could 
 realize the beautiful effect of those oriental pict- 
 ures of evening that I have so often admired 
 the magnificent triangle of the Pyramids just 
 touched in the trembling dusk by a ray or two, 
 a fountain of Damascus with its romantic groups, 
 a lagoon of Venice on which a lateen sail all 
 gold and crimson lies bewitched. Delightful 
 memories passed through my mind, and I found 
 myself in unconscious harmony with the tranquil- 
 lized sweetness of the scene. 
 
 To walk in such an air and at such a time and 
 in such a scene was in itself an inspiration. Re- 
 turning I came back by the Garden of the Graces, 
 but did not feel myself equal to the four-act 
 tragedy of Lucrezia Borgia, in Greek, beginning 
 at half -past eight. So I idled on and sat down 
 among the ever-glorious pillars of the Olympi- 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES, 1 77 
 
 eum, which I return to again and again by a sort 
 of fascination, not from their artistic merit, which 
 is not very great, but from the grandeur of their 
 isolated soUtude and the indefinable harmony 
 which exists between the curvilinear principle of 
 their construction and the noble swell of the 
 ground on which they stand. I am unable to 
 define this subtle effect. It is like that " charm 
 of married brows " which was so delightful to 
 Theocritus and the epigrammatists. The empy- 
 rean soon filled with its sparkling populace, and 
 the mighty pillars lifted themselves heavenward 
 as if themselves feeling some starry instinct. 
 The block on which I sat had an inscription of 
 great age. 
 
 Besides the leprous-looking coffee-houses that 
 have sprung up at the feet of Olympian Jove and 
 desecrate the place, the peregrinating Greeks 
 make these splendid columns a sort of undress- 
 ing-room. It is the same with the tomb of 
 Themistocles, the prison of Socrates on the Mu- 
 seum Hill, the excavations in the Kerameikos, 
 and every accessible monument a little withdrawn 
 from the public gaze. Travelers in Italy will re- 
 member the same practice of the Italians.-^ The 
 habit is an heirloom of immemorial antiquity, and 
 goes hand in hand, I suppose, with the filth of 
 Martial and the foulness of Athenaeus. The Cam- 
 
 1 See Goethe's Italienische Reise. 
 12 
 
1/8 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 panile of Venice, and even the roof of the Cathe- 
 dral of Milan, are made hideous by these things. 
 
 There was a new moon, and its delicate curve 
 hung just over the monument of Philopappus on 
 the Hill of the Muses. Hadrian's Arch was dimly- 
 visible, and the obscure quarter of the ancient 
 city was full of lights. The plaintive quiet of 
 the scene was broken only occasionally by the 
 monotonous cries- of the gargons, whose custom 
 here, it seems, is to call out what you have or- 
 dered, as soon as you have ordered it, at the top 
 of their voices and in a peculiar nasal and disa- 
 greeable tone. But the great open space of the 
 temple was too wide to render a little contempla- 
 tion, even under such circumstances, unpleasant, 
 and so I remained till a tolerably late hour. 
 
 The heat is truly terrific. Perhaps one makes 
 a mistake in venturing to Greece in the summer, 
 for no one can be prepared for such a reception. 
 There is nearly always a breeze, too, and the 
 evenings are often delightful. But day after day 
 of such experience is enough to melt one's brain. 
 One feels positively sore at times. Add to this 
 the continual puncturing of mosquitoes, and the 
 impossibility of going out except early in the 
 morning and after a five o'clock dinner. It is no 
 wonder one sees so many people with blue-black 
 glasses, linen clothes, and white-cotton parasols. 
 One might go about in a carriage, at a drachma 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 1 79 
 
 a ride, if there were anywhere to go, or take a 
 horse, at eight drachmae a day, over the mount- 
 ains to Eleusis, Marathon, or Delphi. But even 
 this would entail a fatigue and exposure danger- 
 ous at this season, and perhaps attended by the 
 Greek fever. The marble monument at Colonos, 
 erected to the memory of the accomplished Gre- 
 cian, K. O. Miiller, is warning enough for the too 
 ardent tourist. There have been shady, cloudy 
 days when I have walked miles with impunity, 
 and explored the recesses of the iriZv ^Kttikov to 
 my heart's content. But this cannot be done 
 every day. With the indigestible food, the ver- 
 min at night, and the sun by day, one's health is 
 in serious jeopardy by a prolonged summer resi- 
 dence at Athens. The king has a villa at Corfu, 
 whither he betakes himself in the dog-days. It 
 is a delicious vision of verdure and freshness, 
 called by its royal owner 'H 'AvaTravo-ts Mow (My 
 Rest) ; and it is no wonder that King George and 
 Queen Olga, accustomed to the exquisite fertility 
 of the green Danish fields, should flee from the 
 sun-scathed hills of Attica during the summer 
 months, and hide themselves here for a brief 
 space. Most of the deputies, since the adjourn- 
 ment of the ^iivki]^ day before yesterday, have 
 gone to their Peloponnesian, island, or main-land 
 homes. 
 
 The streets and cafes are full of war rumors. 
 
I So GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 There are schemes of finance, schemes of mobili- 
 zation, schemes of defense, schemes of offense, 
 discussed and argued out at length over the thim- 
 bleful of Turkish coffee. Mr. Skinner, the corre- 
 spondent of the " Daily News," tells me that the 
 Greeks are undoubtedly going to make a coup^ 
 where, when, and how, he knows not, but he 
 thinks the time has come and they are in the 
 midst of silent but busy preparations. He was 
 decorated by the king the other day, and is a very 
 entertaining fellow. These warlike preparations 
 are an additional reason for not prolonging one's 
 residence in Greece. Quarantine, Turkish block- 
 ades, and possible bombardment of seaport towns, 
 are other elements of acceleration to pilgrim foot- 
 steps. 
 
 The Greeks blaze out in street oratory some- 
 times still. Yesterday evening a brown-fingered, 
 moustachioed Athenian harangued the crowd in 
 front of the palace square, with copious gesticu- 
 lation. The only reminiscence of Demosthenes 
 was the "action, action, action," in which he in- 
 dulged. The crowd applauded the good hits and 
 listened respectfully to the rest. One could not 
 help thinking of the orators of old, and wonder- 
 ing if their Greek was as indistinct as this man's. 
 The Olympian Perikles in the open air on the 
 step of the Bema crept into one's mind, with the 
 eager crowd filling the Pnyx below, and the busy 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. l8l 
 
 scene of the great Athenian Agora just before 
 him, surrounded on all sides by awful and ven- 
 erable heights and associations, with the scene 
 of ^schylus' " Eumenides " at the foot of the hill, 
 and the height from which ^geus precipitated 
 himself on his right. In what a robe of august 
 memories was an ancient Athenian py]Tiiip envel- 
 oped ! 
 
 Some important excavations have been made 
 in Athens since 187 1, in the quarter anciently 
 called Kerameikos, near the church of Agia Tri- 
 ada, at the railway station. The neighborhood 
 was in antiquity a very celebrated one. Here 
 lay the Dipylon, one of the fourteen gates of 
 Athens, leading on the one hand to the Agora, 
 Areopagus, and Propylaea, and on the other to 
 the sacred road to Eleusis through the olive 
 groves of the plain. Pausanias tells us of many 
 notabilities buried beside this sacred road : Zeno, 
 Perikles, Thrasyboulos, Armodios and Aristogei- 
 ton, and others. Relics of the ancient wall have 
 been laid bare, and deep channels of excavation 
 run in various directions, resulting in many in- 
 teresting discoveries : steles and slabs surmounted 
 by fan-like ornaments, broken columns of dark 
 Eleusinian marble, Pentelic sarcophagi, square, 
 oblong, or simple, with beautifully polished sur- 
 faces, lions in gray Hymettian stone, huge earth- 
 enware amphorae with the bottoms drawn out 
 
l82 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 to a point and recalling the origin of the term 
 "tumbler," inscribed tablets, a square family 
 burying-ground ornamented with sculptured ani- 
 mals at the corners, remains of regular and po- 
 lygonal walls, and half a dozen large and exqui- 
 site bas-reliefs. The whole discovery was brought 
 about by the unearthing of the monument of 
 Lysanias. A great deal of speculation and in- 
 genuity has been lavished on the graceful monu- 
 ment of Dexileus discovered near this, represent- 
 ing a knight slaying his opponent. Monuments 
 of Aristonautus, Antipater, and others have been 
 found here and removed to the cella of the 
 Theseum. Many of those still remaining on the 
 ground have been put in little wooden cages with 
 wire fronts, which renders it difficult to decipher 
 the inscriptions. They are, however, very neces- 
 sary from the exposed position of the monuments. 
 There is no other protection whatever to these 
 valuable finds save a sleepy fellow in a wooden 
 hut near by, who pretends to be the custode of 
 the graveyard. There are other fine reliefs quite 
 open to any mutilator that may come along. A 
 boy with a nail or a pen-knife may chip off what 
 he likes. There are several parting scenes of 
 great interest, slabs with numerous names in- 
 cised on them, a stooping slave, th-e well-known 
 group of " The Two Sisters," a bull with his legs 
 broken off, lying on his side, besides numerous 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES, 1 83 
 
 valuable fragments. This whole district is a 
 buried museum. Further excavations will no 
 doubt turn inestimable objects to the light, and 
 reveal to us more perfectly the extent and pro- 
 portions of this graveyard. At present there is a 
 hopeless irregularity in the outline of the explor- 
 ations, and they seem to run in every direction. 
 A large building striped yellow and red stands 
 right in the centre of the theatre of exploration 
 the Agia Triada itself.-^ 
 
 Lately I took a guide and made a pilgrimage 
 to various museums and places of interest. The 
 guide (Miltiades Vidis) entertained me with anec- 
 dotes of the amiable and accomplished Felton, 
 whom he said he accompanied in a three months' 
 excursion through the Morea and Rourrielia in 
 1853. He spoke of Felton's wonderful familiar- 
 ity with the Greek, and said (no doubt from hear- 
 say) he spoke the ancient Greek to perfection. 
 He mentioned Felton's anxiety to purchase the 
 highly ornamented sarcophagus called the tomb 
 of Theseus, and his vain efforts to carry out his 
 purpose. Our point was the new archaeological 
 museum on the Patissia road a rather large 
 
 1 See an interesting article by Percy Gardner on The 
 Greek Mind in the Presence of Death, in which he has 
 largely utilized the inscriptions found in these excavations. 
 It is an interesting chapter in the culturgeschichte of an- 
 tiquity. 
 
184 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 and ugly building of broken limestone, with 
 beautiful steps and portico of Pentelic marble. 
 The yard was strewn with spoils of various ex- 
 cavations sculptured sarcophagi (among them 
 one fine one representing the myth of Bac- 
 chus), steles, capitals, inscribed fragments a 
 wilderness of blue, white, and gray bits, all more 
 or less mutilated. Most of the valuable collec- 
 tion of antiquities that used to grace the cella of 
 the Theseum, all of the valuable ones except 
 the celebrated bas-relief of " Aristion," have been 
 removed to this new establishment, where abun- 
 dant space, beautiful light, and a series of hand- 
 some marble-lined rooms enable them to be seen 
 to advantage. I was particularly struck with a 
 fine Apollo. Here are placed many of the sculpt- 
 ured tombstones found in the Kerameikos 
 scenes of parting, cinerary urns, torsos of men 
 and animals, almost indistinguishable from age 
 and ruin. The fine figure found in the vicinity, 
 with Egyptian head-dress, is here on a pedestal, 
 as also several archaic Apollos, the double- 
 headed statue found in the Stadium, and a great 
 many portrait busts, which have been mounted 
 in plaster and present a varied appearance of 
 grotesque and hideous ruin. Miltiades insisted 
 on many of them being " professors of the uni- 
 versity," perhaps the remnants of Grote's pro- 
 fessors, the noseless professores ordinarii et ex- 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 1 85 
 
 traordinarii of the Lyceum, Academy, and Cyno- 
 sarges. The professors of the modern univer- 
 sity all have their noses, I beheve. There is an 
 ancient relief in red marble, supposed by some 
 to represent Diogenes and Alexander; another, 
 found in the neighborhood of the museum, sup- 
 posed to represent Socrates. But the condition 
 of the museums of Athens, uncatalogued as they 
 are, is shameful. It takes an acute archaeologist 
 to derive any pleasure from an inspection of their 
 contents. In not one that I have visited have I 
 found a single description or catalogue. A visitor 
 is thrown absolutely on his own resources, and is 
 often left to his own imagination, for the igno- 
 rant soldiers or women who guard these treasures 
 know little or nothing about them. He is thus 
 left to wander among a throng of perplexing mar- 
 bles, often involving the deepest questions of ar- 
 chaeology, with absolutely no help, except per- 
 haps in obscure German or Greek archaeological 
 societies' reports. And in such weather nobody 
 is able to carry on the excavations necessary to 
 disinter these reports an achievement perhaps 
 which, adding the tortuosities and speculations 
 of the modern German and Greek archaeological 
 schools, would be equal to Dr. Schliemann's. 
 Consequently one is led around in these hospi- 
 tals for crippled marbles like a child in leading- 
 strings, and issues from the Pentelic porch more 
 
1 86 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 bewildered than when one went in. There are no 
 labels, numbers, or descriptions whatever. Re- 
 cent discoveries are therefore completely passed 
 over, and for the old ones the visitor is remanded 
 to an antiquated guide-book. It seems to me 
 that in the boasted revival of Greek scholarship, 
 of which one hears so much among the Greeks 
 themselves, interest enough should be shown the 
 visiting public to issue catalogues of the antiqui- 
 ties scattered about the different museums in 
 Athens, got up in some accessible and intelligi- 
 ble form. These rooms and the yard in front are 
 full ^f marbles that deserve such notice, and yet 
 the Greeks, as Dr. Mahaffy says, are indignant at 
 the retention of the Parthenon and ^gina mar- 
 bles in London and Munich. Sir Charles Tre- 
 velyan writes sensitively on the same subject, and 
 there is a tone of sullenness among the Greeks 
 at the continued non-restoration. But, as Ma- 
 haffy says, until the Greeks learn to take care of 
 their precious monuments themselves, and show 
 them a proper regard, it is far better for foreign 
 countries to retain possession of the inestimable 
 relics that they have carried off. 
 
 From the museum, which is building in very 
 beautiful and spacious proportions, but is not yet 
 finished, we went over to the polytechnic institu- 
 tion adjoining, but were only shown through the 
 drawing and painting hall. There was nothing 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 187 
 
 in this of special interest, merely a panorama of 
 arid watery landscapes, figure-pieces, and studies 
 imitated from the Italian.^ The university build- 
 ings were our next point the pride and glory of 
 regenerated Hellas. The buildings cover two or 
 three squares. The university building proper 
 has a fine entrance supported by -two Ionic pil- 
 lars of white marble. In front and to one side 
 a charming garden has been laid out, and was 
 bright with oleander blossoms when we visited it. 
 The leaves, as everything else in Athens at pres- 
 ent, are overlaid with a crust of hoary dust. We 
 were shown the library, which, the librarian told 
 me, is in a nascent state, is still but partly ar- 
 ranged, and does not contain much of very great 
 value. There are, however, over one hundred 
 and twenty thousand volumes, mostly contributed 
 by foreign nations, and due to the solicitations 
 and patriotism of a former librarian. There is a 
 pleasant reading-room where I was delighted 
 to see a large number of foreign and domestic 
 periodicals, for the more light from without the 
 
 1 Recent travelers report the almost non-existence of ar- 
 tistic talent among the modern Greeks. There is no en- 
 couragement for it at home, and the one or two Greeks of 
 genius who cultivate art are settled in Munich or other 
 European art centres, vi^here their gifts are appreciated and 
 remunerated. Even these form no distinct school of them- 
 selves, but have been educated under the predominating 
 influence of Piloty, Kaulbach, and the German school. 
 
1 88 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 less darkness from within. The university is 
 poor, and the library, I believe, has no special 
 fund for buying new books. It cannot, therefore, 
 compare with the universities of Northern Europe 
 in completeness of appointments. The librarian 
 showed me some valuable manuscripts, an illu- 
 minated manuscript of St. John of the fifteenth 
 century, Chinese and Egyptian works, etc., and 
 told me he was himself engaged in an investiga- 
 tion into the relations between the ancient and 
 the modern Greek dialects. He was very cour- 
 teous, and seemed charmed to speak his native 
 language (German) again. The library is open 
 every day from 9 till 4, and is free to everybody 
 a delightful, cool spot, with a draught through 
 it, shelves of ancient vellum, bound books, 
 busts of Greek patriots and scholars, and an at- 
 mosphere of serene scholastic calm. The marble 
 face of Lord Byron (6 A.opSo<; Bijpoji^) glimmered 
 in this shadowy sanctuary of letters, while busts 
 of Korais and other literary or national celebri- 
 ties stood in alcoves and watched over these 
 germs of a new and nobler Hellas. It is through 
 letters that the Greeks will, if at all, reconquer 
 their lost supremacy. I was shown through the 
 natural history museum, where troops of wan- 
 dering peasants and poor people, hat in hand, 
 were roaming and gazing with naive rapture at 
 the stuffed birds and animals, and the anatomical 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 1 89 
 
 lecture-room, but the great aula was closed, and 
 the Suisse absent. 
 
 The University of Athens is doing admirable 
 work. There are some distinguished professors 
 lecturing, the students are numerous and ear- 
 nest, and there is everywhere a generally diffused 
 intelligence. The only thing to be regretted is 
 the astonishing number of lawyers and doctors 
 which it is turning out. Young men come from 
 all parts of Greece and Turkey, even walk to Ath- 
 ens ; then they enter service as menials in private 
 and public houses and carry on their studies at 
 the university simultaneously. Medicine and the 
 law are peculiarly attractive to them ; they plunge 
 into the study of these professions enthusiastic- 
 ally, and one result is a series of perpetual and 
 perpetuated demagogues hungry for office, full 
 of loquacious invective and insolence, bent on 
 turning out whatever ministry is in, and getting 
 themselves and their friends fed out of the pub- 
 lic crib. In a comparatively healthy country, the 
 physicians starve ; and the church, full of igno- 
 rance, fanaticism, and poverty as it is, offers no 
 career. There is the never-ceasing effort with 
 the Greek to climb higher, to better his social 
 condition, " to be as good as you are, and a littel 
 better too : " hinc jus et medicina. The Greek 
 mind simply needs to be turned away from the 
 absorbing pursuits of commerce and politics into 
 
190 GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 a literary channel to yield the abundant fruits of 
 culture. The Greeks cannot go back to the san- 
 dals and chiton of antiquity, which would be as 
 successful as the pseudo-classicism of the first 
 empire ; they cannot rehabilitate and edit their 
 newspapers in the Greek of Thucydides j but 
 their natural quickness and shrewdness may be 
 developed in honorable directions, their taste for 
 classical culture may be enriched and deepened, 
 and that remarkable imitative and assimilative 
 instinct which they possess turned to sound and 
 noble purposes. 
 
 Dr. Mahaffy's assertion that a Greek peasant 
 at first sight can understand the language of the 
 Periklean Greeks as well as an English peasant 
 can the language of Chaucer is surely exagge- 
 rated. Miltiades Vidis, who is a dragoman of 
 unusual intelligence, possessing a considerable 
 knowledge of several languages and tolerably 
 well informed in the history of his country, tells 
 me he cannot understand the ancient Greek at 
 all. I inquired of him on this point particularly, 
 and as he is one of a class of active-minded, to 
 some extent educated, persons, who make it their 
 business to be as thorough as possible in their 
 special profession as guides, I am inclined to ac- 
 cept his word on this subject with more satisfac- 
 tion than the Phil-Hellene doctor's. The lower 
 classes, indeed, are said to find the newspapers 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES, I9I 
 
 in which the new-old Greek is printed full of 
 hard words, often utterly beyond their compre- 
 hension. It is like putting a child to construing 
 " Paradise Lost." There are the sounds, the 
 particles, the cries and catchwords ; but there is 
 also a most formidable array of learned and ar- 
 chaic terms, which to the ordinary Greek who 
 may be able to read or write are little less than 
 jargon. The influence of the university, the 
 gymnasia, and the primary schools is fast tending 
 to cultivate this class up to a comprehension of 
 current literary Greek. But if any one takes up 
 a newspaper casually the Sroa (the Porch), the 
 "fipa (the Hour), or the 'Ec^T^/xcjOts (the Daily News), 
 for example and compares its careful use of 
 prepositions, antique flections, and particles with 
 the chaotic, flectionless, abbreviated jargon of the 
 streets and coffee-houses, this wide distinction 
 even between written and spoken 7nodern Greek, 
 not to speak of ancient^ will come out strikingly. 
 The girls of the Arsakeion are in their senior 
 class put to reading Thucydides and the poets ; 
 but in the same way as our students in their 
 school work on Langland, Chaucer, and Wiclif. 
 Morris, Skeat, Ellis, Sweet, as well as a thorough 
 knowledge of Anglo-Saxon grammar, are essen- 
 tial to our full enjoyment of the masterpieces of 
 Earl^r English. 
 
 So, the ancient Greek, as a practically obsolete 
 
192 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 and archaic dialect, must be critically studied 
 and acquired before its authors can be fully un- 
 derstood. Then, of course, as the last result of 
 an accomplished education, comes thorough and 
 spontaneous enjoyment. The phraseology of the 
 newspapers becomes transparent enough to one 
 thus cultivated. A foreigner of classical educa- 
 tion can read these as he can read the signs, 
 without much difficulty, for art and science have 
 familiarized him with many special vocabularies, 
 his classical reading recalls innumerable expres- 
 sions, and the slight gauze of strangeness which 
 the translation of the terms of European diplo- 
 macy, politics, trade, and discussion throws over 
 the subject is soon dispelled. In many points 
 modern Greek is a far less highly inflected lan- 
 guage than modern German, for example. The 
 difference between its two phases is much greater 
 than that between Goethe and the Lied of the 
 Nibelungen. And it is hardly agreed that a Ger- 
 man peasant can readily master the Lied of the 
 Nibelungen. One has but to run one's eye 
 through an ordinary " Manuel de la Conversation 
 Grec Moderne " to see how the most usual and 
 necessary words have a look and a substance en- 
 tirely foreign to the classic. Many classic words 
 no doubt survive, particularly in the. less visited 
 districts, in Arcadia, among the Tsakoni*, for 
 example ; even Homeric and Hesiodic words 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 1 93 
 
 may be found here and there, like the customs or 
 the implements of ancient times ; but it is haz- 
 ardous to insist too much on the similarity be- 
 tween antiquity and the present. Take the sim- 
 plest examples, the verbs to he and to have, and 
 see what changes they have undergone. Then 
 the important curiously abbreviated negative with 
 the indicative (8eV for ovhev), the formation of 
 compound tenses analytically and by strange 
 combinations, the peculiar way of expressing let 
 with the imperative, the use of 6a with the sub- 
 junctive and indicative to represent future and 
 conditional relations, the new declensions and 
 accentuation, the substitution of subjunctive for 
 infinitive in numerous complexes, with their vari- 
 ations no less marked. There is a strong resem- 
 blance between modern and the. New Testament 
 Greek, particularly the Gospel of St. John and 
 the Revelation ; and even the Septuagint comes 
 in for its share of relationship and analogies with 
 modern Greek. This fact is the less striking, 
 since the language of the Septuagint version 
 seems to have been markedly colloquial.^ Per- 
 haps when all the Greeks become as highly edu- 
 cated as the annual thousand or so that attend 
 the university, there may then be hopeful talk 
 about a "restoration." As it is, nobody can ex- 
 pect peddlers, barbers, washerwomen, and waiters 
 1 See Geldart, Relation of Modern to Anciejtt Greek. 
 13 
 
194 GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 to discourse in the declensions and conjugations 
 of Xenophon. Modern Greek conversation is 
 full of the strangest solecisms. "EAa, eXa, is their 
 cafe-cry for Viens^ vieiis! The talk is almost as 
 quaint as that of the Creoles of New Orleans. 
 
 From the university, by the side of which is 
 building ^the still unfinished National Academy, 
 at the expense of the munificent Greek Baron 
 Sinas, of Vienna, the noble structure in white 
 Pentelic marble which I formerly noticed, we were 
 driven to the BovAtJ ( Voidee they pronounce it) 
 or Parliament House, a plain, inexpensive build- 
 ing costing about a million drachmae, and striped 
 red and yellow. One cannot exactly admire this 
 fashion of stripes and glowing color combina- 
 tions, such as prevails often enough in the East- 
 ern churches and public buildings. The cit- 
 ron-colored Cathedral of Athens, with its chess- 
 board bands of red, is too bizarre to make an 
 agreeable impression. Ancient Athens, with its 
 multitude and multiplicity of buildings, porticoes, 
 temples, exchanges, arches, colonnades in white 
 marble, must at different times have presented an 
 appearance exquisitely and painfully beautiful. 
 The transcendent whiteness of the light must 
 have struck these polished surfaces, and in the 
 noonday sun evoked an insufferable splendor. 
 The Greeks would then, as they did, naturally 
 take refuge in color, in gilt, in star-spangled soffits, 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 1 95 
 
 blue triglyphs, gilded tympana to the temples, 
 the profuse pillars dyed ochre, the labyrinthine 
 draperies tinted and toned into something har- 
 monious to the eye a refuge from the fierce 
 recoil and hostility of the sun. Accordingly we 
 find remnants of color everywhere hanging about 
 the architectural masterpieces left to us, and 
 time has mercifully thrown over the noble suites 
 of pillars the lovely golden tone which the Greeks 
 produced at first artificially in the columns of 
 the Parthenon. In their modern building vari- 
 ous traditions are followed. Many private res- 
 idences are fronted with white marble, others 
 are in blue and gray marble or with white and 
 blue blended ; some few are in the polychro- 
 matic style. The Boule is perhaps after all more 
 pleasing as it is, its ruddy tints blending har- 
 moniously with the velvet air, though an Anglo- 
 Saxon might prefer the cooler shades. The main 
 room, where the Boule assembles, is an amphi- 
 theatre with semicircles of seats for the depu- 
 ties, a platform and ample desk-room for the 
 president, and a bema or tribune for the speaker. 
 Each seat is furnished with a plain sliding desk 
 and writing materials, and there is a line of 
 tables facing the first row, for the ministers. The 
 ceiling is richly ^nd rather gaudily gilded and 
 painted, and is supported by two enormous pil- 
 lars of grayish marble, which stand on each side 
 
196 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 of the president's place, and rather singularly 
 interrupt the distribution of the space, for they 
 are not in the middle, nor to one side, but simply 
 spring up like two gigantic exclamation points, a 
 constant astonishment to the spectator. All the 
 appointments library, committee rooms, and 
 reporters' gallery are quite unpretentious and 
 plain. The Boule is situated in new Athens, in 
 the quarter of the clubs, consulates, and ambassa- 
 dors. One marvels at the number of new houses 
 building in this quarter, in fact everywhere in the 
 city. 
 
 These naked-legged, bag-trousered Nesiote ma- 
 sons seem to do excellent work, too. Their work 
 is slowly but, I am told, capitally done, with 
 long siestas and resting spells on the part of the 
 workmen, no doubt with a due regard to per- 
 sonal comfort and the settling of the foundations ! 
 When one reflects that the Parthenon was built 
 in ten and the Propylaea in five years, one is 
 rather amazed at the slowness of Baron Sinas' 
 academy in drawing toward its completion. But 
 then there were 400,000 slaves in Attica accord- 
 ing to Demetrius Phalereus' census. Magical 
 work can be done under such circumstances. 
 
 It is a pleasure to see that the new streets are 
 being laid out on the boulevard system and 
 planted with trees. One comes on public wells, 
 with marble headpieces and a carved dolphin and 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 1 97 
 
 trident, everywhere in this quarter as in other 
 quarters of x\thens. The best water, however, 
 and very sparkling, cool, and delicious it is, for a 
 wonder, comes from Hymettus and is sold in 
 great barrels in the streets, at a sou a glass. 
 Such water seems to be unknown to the hotels 
 and cafes, especially to the latter, where the 
 water is detestable. These perambulating water- 
 men with their great barrel on wheels, protected 
 against the sun by thick matting and dried 
 branches, and gayly decked with clusters of 
 daphne blossoms, are a true blessing to thirsty 
 Athens in summer. There is not a cupful in 
 the Kephissus or the Ilissus ; one sees their 
 dusty beds with the pebbles and mud swept into 
 tortuous lines by the fierceness of the winter's 
 inundation, and the downward bending and grow- 
 ing shrubs hanging over, parched with imperish- 
 able drouth. The sparkling wealth of jeweled 
 water that is everywhere gathered into pictur- 
 esque fountains and made to spout out of rocks 
 and Tritons at Rome is sadly missed in this cli- 
 mate. A meagre barrel or two may be seen 
 rolled along the streets and ostensibly laying the 
 dust, but really making it rise and curl like 
 smoke under the tired wheels. This sprinkling 
 is done on the principal thoroughfares once or 
 twice a day, but with a necessary and chagrin- 
 ing stinginess. At the hotels, except for the 
 
198 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 meagre pittance of ice doled out at table d'hote, 
 the water is blood-warm and rarely clean, fastidi- 
 ous as the Greeks are said to be about their wa- 
 ter and passionate water-drinkers as they are. 
 Even in Hesiod's and Athenaeus' time there was 
 a Greek 'alf-and-'alf, five parts of water to two of 
 wine, or three of water to one of wine ; showing 
 an early and ancient love of water. There is 
 abundance of it, such as it is, but it rarely has a 
 fresh feeling or taste, and the Greeks seem un- 
 aware of the great summer luxury of washing in 
 water that has just the daintiest suspicion of a 
 sparkle in it. One sees innumerable Kovpaa or 
 barber-shops along Eolus and Hermes streets, so 
 that one would think a Greek's chief business 
 was to cultivate the never-failing mustache, and 
 get shaved and shampooed ; but I have noticed 
 only one Kovpetov that seemed well appointed for 
 this as for other purposes. We know from many 
 classic passages what favorite lounging-places 
 the perfumers' and barbers' shops were in olden 
 times. One feels uneasy, too, where one sees 
 people always scratching. Unsavory suspicions 
 obtrude themselves on the imagination, aided by 
 uneasy nights and uncomfortable days. The 
 Mohammedan's devotion to water makes us par- 
 don a thousand shortcomings in hijn. But there 
 is something ludicrously horrible in people being 
 dirty with the sea singing in their ears all the 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. IQQ 
 
 time. This of course cannot be said of the bet- 
 ter class of Greeks, for they appear to be exter- 
 nally neat enough. One's attention is called to 
 the subject by the general filth of the common 
 people, the really abominable dirtiness of the 
 gargons at the cafes, as a class, and the throngs 
 of unregenerate wenches and brats one sees sur- 
 rounding the wells of an evening. I have had 
 but one or two clean glasses of water outside of 
 the hotel since I have been in Athens. There 
 is a general and hereditary smell of oil and gar- 
 lic among the common people, which a frank use 
 of soap and water would banish if it were not a 
 smell by no means disagreeable to the Greek. 
 One is irresistibly reminded of Trygaeus' prayer, 
 that the market-place may be full of good things 
 ^' large garlic^ early cucumbers, apples, pome- 
 granates." One must say, however, in general, 
 for the Greeks that they are cleaner than the 
 Italians. A peep into an Italian trattoria is 
 more than sufficient for an Anglo-Saxon. Light 
 a candle suddenly after dark in an Italian cocina, 
 and one will witness the scampering of innumer- 
 able insects. 
 
 Mediaeval Athens is to the last degree uninvit- 
 ing. A few dilapidated churches are all that re- 
 mains. There is what is called the Old Cathedral, 
 built of massive blocks of white marble, some of 
 which are said to have been taken from pagan 
 
200 GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 temples. The style is Byzantine, and the church 
 contains, besides some curious carvings, the em- 
 balmed remains of the Patriarch Gregorius, mur- 
 dered by the Turks in the war of independence. 
 The churches of St. Theodore, St. Nicodemus, 
 and Kapnicarea are all more or less insignificant. 
 The Greeks have an uncanny habit of exhibiting 
 the remains of certain saints on great spiritual 
 and anniversary occasions. In Athens it is the 
 remains of the martyred Gregory; in Corfu the 
 desiccated skeleton of St. Spiridon (after whom 
 about half the boys in the island are named). 
 What is singular in the latter case is that the 
 skeleton of the saint has for ages been the means 
 of enriching the great Corfiote family to which it 
 belongs, and by whom it is handed down from 
 generation to generation as a money -making 
 heirloom. Ten dollars will procure a sight of its 
 blackened, emaciated, and jewel-laden toe. St. 
 Spiridon is supposed to be a famous night trav- 
 eler, goes on distant voyages, and returns with 
 abundant sea-weed clinging to his skirts, which 
 then performs miraculous cures on its fortunate 
 possessors. One member of this lucky family 
 must always be a priest in the church ; the thing 
 is carried round in gorgeous procession once or 
 twice a year, and offerings are poured into its 
 shrine, which is the coffer-box of the family. 
 Yesterday afternoon Miltiades called for me 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 201 
 
 again and we set out on a visit to the Varvakion 
 (a museum - gymnasium due to private munifi- 
 cence) and the Botanic Garden. Very interesting 
 is the small collection of the Varvakion, which 
 consists principally of terra-cottas, antique jew- 
 elry, vases, gold leaf arranged in crowns for vic- 
 tory at the games, glass, iridescent, pearl-colored, 
 blue and green bottles, antique metal looking- 
 glasses, pottery, marble statuettes, and a large 
 number of miniature torsos in marble. I was 
 particularly struck with some elegant gold arm- 
 lets, bracelets, and ear-rings found together, I 
 believe, in a tomb not far from Athens. The 
 armlets were set with stones and the bracelets 
 contained a series of very elegantly wrought let- 
 ters. Small boxes of rare gold, silver, and bronze 
 coins were kept in glass cases. The drawing on 
 some of the vases was spirited and masterly, and 
 many of them, though seamed with a multitude 
 of cracks and fractures, had been very skillfully 
 mended. The best thing in the collection (which 
 is private), after the gold ornaments, a large vase 
 representing a funeral scene, and a few very 
 precious terra-cottas, was a head in relief found 
 in the Stadium. This head has the most won- 
 derful mirthful expression. The marble laughs 
 and mantles with gayety, and the head seems 
 bent forward eagerly, looking after some mirth- 
 exciting object. The head-dress is very peculiar. 
 
202 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 I have never seen a side face that so shone with 
 living smiles. The disk on which the head and 
 face are carved is much mutilated, but the feat- 
 ures are fortunately intact. The marble, from 
 its translucency, seems to be Parian. It is kept 
 under glass and is highly polished. 
 
 After our visit to the Varvakion, during which 
 we were attended by a little red-eyed, bushy- 
 headed gnome of a custode, who kept sniffling 
 after us as if in deep grief, we turned our horses 
 toward the Botanic Garden, on the sacred road to 
 Eleusis. The garden looks like a country gentle- 
 man's orchard and flower-garden together. We 
 saw nothing particularly rare. Some fine pines, 
 of the variety from which the resin is extracted 
 with which they resinate their wines, a few splen- 
 did silver poplars, a tank of gold-fish, and long 
 sunny walks through straight beds filled with 
 scented and flowering shrubs are the chief at- 
 tractions. Gigantic Indian figs, crowded with 
 flowers and fruit, lifted their embattled fronds in 
 the afternoon glare, and seemed to resent our 
 unwelcome intrusion. A few drowsy Greeks lay 
 on the benches, or gossiped under the cypresses. 
 The gold-fish which strangely resemble the red 
 mullet they give us for dinner, broiled in oil 
 hovered near the surface of the heated water, and 
 appeared, like ourselves, panting for coolness. 
 Miltiades had the usual story of reckless English- 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 203 
 
 men (who no doubt transformed themselves into 
 reckless Americans when required) bathing in 
 the gold-fish tank one sunny day, while the labor- 
 ers were at their siesta. Trumpet flowers, sweet 
 basil (that favorite of Keats and Krishna), grape- 
 vines, and sky-blue bell-flowers clustered on the 
 walls, and gave delightful resting-places to the 
 glare-wearied eyes. The apricot-trees had been 
 stripped. The inexorable Miltiades was entreated 
 not to lead me up and down all the shadeless 
 lanes, and finally yielded. The subtle fragrance 
 of the pines smelt like the opening lines of The- 
 ocritus' first idyl, and recalled those graceful 
 stone-pines that lift up their bosky crowns in the 
 tremor and fire of the gold Italian hills. I pulled 
 a sprig of sweet basil (O Boccaccio !), that royal 
 weed, as a souvenir of our visit, and put it, with 
 other sentimentalities, in a book. One can go 
 nowhere in Athens without coming on pots of 
 sweet basil, in the windows, in the cafe-cor- 
 ners, on the counters, and in the gardens. It is 
 anti-malarial, and, like the gigantic sunflowers, 
 that lift their solar blossoms all through the pel- 
 lucid air of Greece, is purposely cultivated to 
 purify the atmosphere. The light and the per- 
 fume of the place were suggestive of the peren- 
 nial rhododaphnes that warm the Greek hills in 
 spring with their wild, winsome spray, and make 
 a close room morbidly sweet. The most luscious 
 
204 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 fragrances spring up out of this light Attic soil, 
 and gather into starry blossoms along the way. 
 In the warm wet May evenings everything is brill- 
 iant with glow-worms. Now it is beyond their 
 time, and the grapes are beginning to get green- 
 gold and purple-pink, with a dark spot on one 
 side and a fruity smell of ripeness that magnet- 
 izes bees and men. Nectarines are coming in, 
 too, and the quinces gleam primrose-colored in 
 their setting of green-white leaves. 
 
 We summoned our ever-siesta-ing cocher, and 
 then set out on the road home through the olives 
 of the Academy, across the Kephissus, and by 
 the " white-browed hill of Colonos." Miltiades 
 pointed out an enormous olive-tree, which he said 
 was twelve hundred years old. The olive is of 
 exceedingly slow, almost imperceptible growth; 
 hence one was able to put more faith than one 
 usually should, in such cases, in the age of this 
 grand gnarled trunk, with just the slightest shoot 
 of branches springing from it. The olives are 
 gathered here in winter; in Corfu they are al- 
 lowed to drop, and are then gathered ; in Zante 
 they are plucked from the trees. When we rec- 
 ollect what an important part the olive-tree plays 
 in the matrimonial contract, how anxiously the 
 bride's parents inquire after their number, qual- 
 ity, productiveness, etc., it is not difficult to un- 
 derstand the care taken of them, and the tender 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES, 205 
 
 and reverential regard with which they axe looked 
 upon. We drove along the winding road for 
 some time, and had the purplest and prettiest 
 glimpses of Athens through the frost-pale foliage. 
 Hymettus was gathering its evening rose-color 
 like a gauze over its naked shoulders, and the 
 white sides of Pentelicus, where the quarries lay, 
 shone drowsily in the fast-setting sun. This 
 bright Greek air, with its spots of feverish filmy 
 color, transfigures indescribably when the sun is 
 about to take leave of it. We passed along be- 
 side rich orchards full of pomegranates and figs, 
 between hot mud walls, and in blinding flour-like 
 dust, over the Kephissus, and beside quaint sub- 
 urban chapels, into the town again, to our oil 
 and tomato-sauce table d'hote. The evening was 
 concluded watching the twilight sea from the 
 grand laure of the Olympieum, and laughing at 
 the jokes of a funny little comedy in Greek at 
 the Kt^ttos tcoj/ ^ kvTpovTiiiv 'SvfxcjiCjv (Garden of the 
 Nymphs). 
 
V. 
 
 Homo est quod est : man is what he eats. We 
 have seen superficially what the Greeks eat. This 
 is, however, by no means what they are. They 
 are this plus an infinity of individuality. In a 
 tour of a few weeks or months the most expert 
 traveler can see only the physical aspects, the 
 molecular mass (everlastingly in motion, too !) of 
 this ingenious people. If " man possesses many 
 internal qualities, such as the imagination and the 
 milt, much more the Greek. Emerson called the 
 English ^'this inconsolable nation," and says an 
 Englishman's hilarity is like an attack of fever. 
 What would he have thought of these feverish 
 Greeks, this nation of fustanellas and mustaches, 
 politicians and polichinelles, patriots and talk- 
 ers ? "Ec^aye Awtoi/ ! (he has eaten the lotos !) cry 
 they of a man who has lost his senses. And 
 then they attitudinize in the most picturesque 
 manner and say AetAe! (poor fellow!)' Lotos-eat- 
 ing is the favorite occupation of this imaginative 
 people, with its streak of Eastern richness and 
 its gravity of the West. Attack a Greek on any 
 speculative subject and he is as fluent as a pump. 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 20/ 
 
 Answers he has at his tongue's end, though his 
 arguments are Hke the Valencian sock open at 
 both ends. Mere fluency one sees in rivers and 
 Greeks. ReHgion ? They will run over the Rag- 
 man's Roll of saints and theologians from the 
 Golden Mouth to Hagios Gregorios. Poetry ? 
 An endless torrent of mediaeval Greek scribblers. 
 Philology? The never-ending performances of 
 Korais. Heroism ? Canaris ! Miaulis ! Karais- 
 kakes ! Karaiskos ! 
 
 There is something pathetic in this passionate 
 worship of the heroes of the independence. Italy 
 is the land of humanity, said Winckelmann. 
 Greece is the fairy-land of patriots. How much 
 better be an Albanian Klepht than, according to 
 one, the Englishman who visits Mount ^tna and 
 carries his tea-kettle to the top ! The beauty of 
 it all is that Greece has so gracefully forgotten 
 the rags and roguery of these early athletes, and 
 now embalms them in lovely ballads of Soutzos. 
 It sees them with a glamour in its eyes it for- 
 gives and forgets. The long incubation of the 
 Turks has hatched out a nest of scorpions. 
 Never was such hatred as that written in Greek 
 letters and gleaming in Greek eyes. Give way to 
 the Greek for your vocabulary of hate. National 
 aspects are mirrored in words, each a tiny bit 
 of glass throwing back a thousand-fold image. 
 Singularly rich is the Anglo-Saxon of Caedmon 
 
208 GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 and Beowulf in words for *' man," ." hero," 
 " lord of life and light," " ship," " journeying ; " 
 rich in words for "mist," " wraith," phenomenal 
 weather aspects, are the Swedish and Norwegian ; 
 and how Homer exults in his glorious words for 
 battle-din, thunder of battle, battle-cries, car- 
 nage, and brightness of battle ! But the idiom 
 of the Greek eye when a Turk is mentioned is 
 the unmistakable idiom of hate. " lis s'amusent 
 tristement, selon la coutume de leur pays," says 
 Froissart of the English. The Greeks take sav- 
 age joy in denunciation of Turks and Turkey. 
 And why should they not ? The Turks have 
 punctuated their interminable edicts with Greek 
 heads. The sad watch-towers of Turkish islands 
 have been skulls of Hellas whitening on poles. 
 Their dead march has been the cry of ravens on 
 the battle-fields of Thessaly and Epirus. The 
 heraldic bird of Mussulmandom is the buzzard. 
 What strange stories we listened to in the long 
 mornings of Athenian summer, as our English 
 friend told us his experience in Crete, and set 
 before our eyes ghastly rows of decapitated pris- 
 oners ! The glowing sunshine looked bloodshot, 
 and there seemed to be an effusion of blood in 
 the air. Over Turkey there hovers a sort of dia- 
 bolic arch of crime, set there as an eternal prom- 
 ise and menace. What can be thought of a peo- 
 ple that has no heels to its shoes, indeed ? And 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 209 
 
 a sac for a human heart ? To the Spaniard, says 
 Hay, there is almost a feeUng of immorality as- 
 sociated with bathing all over. But how these 
 people have luxuriated in their Turkish bath of 
 blood ! The Castilian ladies used to glaze their 
 faces twice a week with white of ^gg^ in lieu of 
 the abhorred water. Mohammedanism is this 
 glaze. 
 
 In the brilliancy and purity of this air one can 
 see through and through, even to scowling Tur- 
 key, on the horizon. The very clouds hang low 
 there, as if full of hate. How beautiful and 
 bright it all looks now in the poetry in which it 
 has been enshrined : Mesolonghi and Patras, Na- 
 varino and Nauplia. It takes but fifty years for 
 a battle to become a sublime essence, a poem, a 
 strain of music. Ascending to the empyrean, it 
 descends through the marvelous channel of the 
 poet's brain and becomes Balaklava, Inkerman. 
 Every Greek mind is stored with these essences, 
 poems, and strains of music. Marathon is as 
 fresh as the last theft. Tall Greeks walk amid 
 these memories and seem to grow strangely taller 
 and graver. The boy Heine insisted that glanbe 
 was credit^ not religion^ in French. There could 
 be no such fantastic prank among these clear- 
 faced Hellenes. Whatever else they are, they 
 are in earnest. Thousands of them devote their 
 days and nights to cigarettes, but they do it with 
 14 
 
2IO GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 quite a terrible earnestness. Perhaps Froissart's 
 triste is the word of all words that describes them 
 best except when they are listening to Jean Po- 
 quelin's comedies. Then their intellectual plane 
 receives a tilt, and they spin around like the 
 radiometer on the point of its needle. Words- 
 worth's 
 
 " A yellow primrose at the brim, 
 
 A yellow primrose was to him, 
 
 And it was nothing more," 
 
 can scarcely be said of the Greeks. They see 
 deep significancy and symbolism where you see an 
 asphodel or a Peloponnesian poppy with its black 
 cross in its scarlet centre. If their mental nails 
 did not grow inward and produce the torture of 
 eternal recollection ! People who walk with 
 hooded eyes, and, like some flowers, exhale only 
 in the night, what can be expected of them ? 
 Surely not a sensible budget, administrative 
 reform, religious toleration, and macadamized 
 roads. And for all these the Greeks have bound- 
 less contempt. KaXa, KoXa \ they ejaculate, and 
 let things wag on as usual, reminding one hugely 
 of the Spanish crows that cry Cruz ! Cruz I in 
 perpetual reminiscence of the cross. KaXa (well) 
 is the stock in trade of the defeated Greek when 
 he has been overwhelmed in argument and been 
 made to feel the incisive emphasis of compari- 
 sons. The phrase is unique and significant. How 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 211 
 
 much more respect could one have for the mod- 
 ern Greeks if one did not unhappily remember 
 that the word for " being a citizen '' and the word 
 for " marketable '' (TroXtrevo/xat) are the same ! 
 A strange hyphen connects these words, which 
 cower under their common Romaic as under an 
 umbrella. The swagger and stilts of the Astu- 
 rian are theirs, too. Eyes will blaze and hands 
 gesticulate if the divine right of Greece to be 
 a nation be doubted. The doubt, however, is 
 wholesome, and is continually suggested by what 
 one sees there, eats there, feels and smells there. 
 No nation has the right divine or diabolic to rise 
 in revolt against the five senses ! If a man had 
 sight only, how lovely would be Greece. But un- 
 fortunately there are other senses equally im- 
 portunate. A nose or an ear alone would be the 
 greatest of misfortunes in Hellas. Let us cover 
 the carrion, but not as Charles Baudelaire did, 
 with a purple clout of verse. 
 
 " Tutto e pace e silenzio 
 E pill di lor non si ragiona," 
 
 says the poet. These sad and -.unutterable soli- 
 tudes of unpeopled Greece are full of pain. It is 
 as of a fullness emptied, a sunshine disillumined, 
 a country populous of ghosts and bereft of men. 
 Including the cicadae, the country has about a 
 million and a half of people. But every Greek 
 considers the rest of mankind a mere multiple 
 
212 GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 of zero, and he increases and multiplies in his 
 own imagination until his numerousness becomes 
 Greek for " dropping of water," myriad. The 
 one hundred and seventy miles of length and 
 one hundred and fifty miles of width of Greece 
 swell in his mind's eye to an illimitable pampas 
 and savanna smiling with fertility, and an avq- 
 piOfjiov yeXao-fxa of grain. A shock to this illusion 
 is the cruellest blow that could be given to a 
 democratic people. The climate is moderate, the 
 people immoderate ; the country is unhealthy, 
 the people healthy. The Greek is always in op- 
 position. No matter where you are, he is on the 
 other side. His astronomical term is apogee, 
 off in the seventh heaven of delectable vision. 
 Let him alone, and he will pin to his shoulders 
 the wings of a butterfly, and soar joyously sun- 
 ward. Then a ray scorches him, and he flutters 
 in the lamp. 
 
 One can never fancy a modern Greek in the 
 attitude of Faust deep in study night after 
 night, and watching the moon shining on his 
 Gothic vaults till wisdom comes. The moon is 
 there, and the watcher, but wisdom cometh not. 
 And there is such beautiful moonlight in Greece ! 
 What is the use of so much fine talk among the 
 Greeks, when Greece is always groveling in the 
 dust ? Still it is well to remember that Mount 
 Parnassus, with Pindar and Epaminondas, was a 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES, 213 
 
 Boeotian belonging ; that the land of the stupid 
 people culminated in the peak of the muses. 
 Much may be expected from Greece in spite of 
 flightiness, light-headedness, and anger. If sink- 
 ers could be tied to their imaginations, they might 
 catch fish. As it is, they are made of gas lighter 
 than hydrogen. When one sits in their cafes and 
 listens to their talk, one seems to be taking in a 
 sort of ether into one's ears, and there is a delic- 
 ious sensation of feet planted on nothing. Their 
 talk is like whipt eggs. No sooner is a govern- 
 ment or a coalition formed than it dissolves like a 
 lump of sugar. And then recombination, Goethe's 
 " application of a chemical principle to the moral 
 world," takes place, to be succeeded by the in- 
 stantaneous dropping to pieces of the same flower. 
 A tourist must not become a regular newspaper 
 reader while in Greece, for then "Ec^aye Awrw ! 
 Let him be content with eating leeks and minding 
 his business. In Greece everything is bounded 
 by water, and perhaps it is the eternal contempla- 
 tion of this changeful element that has reacted on 
 its inhabitants, and generated a moral idiosyn- 
 crasy. There is even symbolism in the innumer- 
 able islands-bits that light up the Ionian and 
 ^gean seas, for disintegration is the watchword 
 of the country. It is only astonishing that the 
 slight umbilical cord of six miles that holds con- 
 tinental and Peloponnesian Greece together has 
 
214 GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 not been long ago severed. But the continual 
 growl of the earthquake that haunts the neigh- 
 borhood of Corinth may be looked upon as the 
 earth-spirit^s dissent from the universal law ! A 
 weak current of life circulates through this cord, 
 and vitalizes the famished extremities. In the 
 Peloponnesus, as in the Mediterranean, there is 
 no tide. There is nothing but the dead glitter- 
 ing sunlight, the scathed hills, and malaria. Eu- 
 bcea, being under the influence of the Turkish 
 rot, is rich enough, and stretches its long lance of 
 verdure from Talanti to the province of Thebes. 
 It is, as it were, the anthers of the flower, and 
 scatters its golden pollen over the arid beauty of 
 adjacent provinces. More than one half the 
 country is occupied by rivers, lakes, and mount- 
 ains, the other half by half a dozen people. The 
 terrible sirocco blows over Attica and Morea, and 
 knocks down your animated Greeks like a row of 
 nine-pins ; or is it the siesta that clears the mid- 
 day streets ? The unutterable anguish of this 
 wind cannot be imagined. You feel as if you 
 had committed crimes, eaten garlic, or talked pol- 
 itics. Invisible fingers play along your nerves, 
 and drop a poison all through the system, which 
 results in an indefinable woe and lassitude. This 
 is the airy purgatory which Africa .sends over to 
 Greece to punish it for old scores. 
 
 Among the Greek imports there are few ideas. 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 21 5 
 
 Among their exports are much carbonic acid, 
 folly, and inconsistency. The soil is said to be 
 magnificent, but it produces nothing. To grow 
 wealthy in Greece would be a paradox, for all 
 leave the country, who can, and grow rich in 
 Manchester and Vienna. The geographical feat- 
 ures are reflected in the angular forms and indi- 
 vidualities of the inhabitants. One must grant 
 that there is a busy circulation of boats in the 
 Greek harbors and round the coast, and in the 
 vast inland gulfs. A sort of ergot has blighted 
 the Greek mind while it was in the milk, hence 
 the rarity of intellectual product. Greece is too 
 near to the sun to come to anything. It is the 
 apple of the sun's eye, and is burnt wheat-white 
 nearly all the year round. The soil yields a few 
 olives and grapes, and there are eels in Lake 
 Copais. Go to the Greek shops and find the 
 rest, which consists principally of the shopman. 
 One of the sorest disadvantages felt by Greek 
 agriculture is said to be the lack of large and 
 swift rivers. But I confess one is at a loss to find 
 out what these large and swift rivers would carry 
 off Greeks chiefly, I suspect. A nation that 
 follows Hesiod for its almanac will not grow 
 pease, beans, and rice. What streams they have 
 are running streams, hasting away with the fertil- 
 ity of the land. And when the skies water the 
 land, the water flies away with prodigious celerity, 
 
2l6 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 and reenters the empyrean by evaporation. If 
 there were rain in summer, the potatoes would 
 be ready boiled in the earth. Scarcely cotton 
 enough is grown in Argos and the Archipelago 
 to clothe nakedness, and the dreams of their 
 statesmen that these islands will one day com- 
 pete with the Southern States and India are 
 dreams. As soon as a Greek has taken too 
 much Kpacrt dreams; as soon as he lights a 
 cigarette dreams ; as soon as he is munching 
 his favorite morsel of roasted pumpkin-seed 
 dreams. It is some comfort to Greece, however, 
 that her currants help to make seven million dol- 
 lars' worth of English plum-puddings ; and nine 
 hundred thousand dollars' worth of olive oil in 
 1875 went into England's cruets. Despite Rhan- 
 gawis' lovely allegory, the olive seems to be to 
 Greece what the banana has become in the 
 Indies a source of laziness and demoraliza- 
 tion. Its teeming and spontaneous productive- 
 ness everywhere forestalls labor, and permits the 
 wretched peasantry to go on in their squalor as 
 long as a black olive will drop into their mouths. 
 One need not reproach them for lighting their 
 lamps with it, but when it kills out everything 
 else except indolence, it becomes an evil. Look 
 at our cotton-eating Southerners ! 
 
 One is glad to find the Greeks too clever for 
 drunkenness. Grapes are luxuriant, here and 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 21/ 
 
 there, chiefly out of Greece, in the islands. 
 Perhaps immemorial wine-drinking has made 
 them the spare, tense, sinewy people they are, 
 burning them out like an inner sunlight, and 
 making of them the half-translucent skeletons 
 that we see them. A crust is left behind, and 
 that too, cicada-like, hanging to the olive-tree. 
 From the multiplicity of olive-branches there is 
 no peace ; owing to the multitude of grapes there 
 is no intoxication. The vine is the most prolific 
 of Greek products except the Greeks themselves. 
 As in most poor communities, children swarm, 
 men and women are rare. The grape and the 
 olive peace and passion intertwine and give 
 birth to this population of babes. Think of the 
 grape growing principally over the exquisite col- 
 umns of buried Corinth and in the dells and 
 slopes of Arcadia ! One has a vision of white 
 capitals and pillared stoas, peripatetic philoso- 
 phers tangled in grape leaves, spells of Arcady, 
 and peace on perfect landscapes. 
 
 The Greek tobacco does not remain with me 
 as of very delicious perfume. I have reminis- 
 cences of half-hours of torture spent at cafes, in 
 hotels, and on steamers, when I was forced to 
 inhale the odors of the Argolic and Livadian 
 weed, to the uncontrollable trouble of olfactories. 
 When a Greek has smoked his hundredth ciga- 
 rette, he begins to think of dinner. Hence the 
 
2l8 GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 airiest of appetites. Send for a light, and the 
 amiable gargon will come back smoking your 
 cigarette for you. To such courtesy is this na- 
 tion addicted. The wet and spittle-flecked paper 
 is the waiter's offering on the altar of good-fellow- 
 ship. For this reason one eschews tobacco in 
 Greece or carries one's own KT^pia (tapers). Every 
 minute the cigarette is out, and, as one said of 
 the Iberians for the same reason, what can you 
 think of people who trifle with their only occu- 
 pation in that way ? Every /ca<^(^eretov is a cloudy 
 Olympus where the Pantheon is assembled under 
 the leadership of Momus. The male Hebes of 
 these establishments are of the earth earthy. 
 Judging by what one sees, their chief food in 
 summer seems to be cigarettes, nutshells, fig- 
 stems, and orange peel. The sunniest apricots 
 and goldenest lemons and whitest-blossomed al- 
 monds are gone before the traveler comes. Then 
 marvelous are the stories of Attic fertility, trop- 
 ical crops, and felicitous seasons dropped into his 
 incredulous ears. The figs are certainly as fla- 
 vorous as they were in antiquity, and the fig-leaf 
 as rare. They are greenish-yellow of aspect, 
 pink and full of seed inside, and form a delicious 
 thimbleful of aromatic fruit. They will not, how- 
 ever, compare with the celeste fig of the Gulf of 
 Mexico. With antiquity has disappeared the 
 race of sycophants that used to give the Attic 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 219 
 
 lawgiver so much trouble. A race of caterpillars 
 that live on the inns of court has taken their place. 
 If there were any figs in the country, beyond the 
 absolute needs of the consumers, they might be 
 exported without lese-majesty. But judging by 
 the great numbers of griddles and fritters and 
 quivering things, both alive and farinaceous, 
 which I saw in skillets, I should say the modern 
 Greeks speak historically when they refer to figs, 
 and live on quite different fare. The whole 
 quay was full of kicking and scintillating pans and 
 braziers, when we landed at Syra and threaded 
 our way as through an interminable kitchen. 
 The cooks did not seem to mind the donkeys' 
 switching their tails through the glowing oil 
 every now and then, and seasoning the morceaux 
 it was frying. It was all a delightful juxtaposi- 
 tion and picture of oriental life, oil and all. 
 
 The guide - books have umbrageous stories 
 about the forests of Greece, how they cover one 
 eighth of the whole territory of the kingdom. 
 I did not see them with my own eyes, and rather 
 think the boskiness exists only in the fruitful 
 fancies of the guide-book compilers. The Par- 
 nessian, Dorian, Eubcean, and Acarnanian forests 
 were famous for their density and beauty. The 
 silk-worm might hypothetically (as what might 
 not, all the world over ?) be cultivated with 
 profit, if But, adds the dolorous account, 
 
220 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 an account as frequent as the ever-recurring re- 
 sponse in the litany, this resource also has been 
 much neglected. Then it is useless to talk about 
 imaginary localities which might be clad in silk 
 and become luxuriant with mulberry. As it hap- 
 pens, they are not, and our concern is with things 
 present. We shall never see fustanellas of silk 
 trailing this storied dust, or proud pallikars 
 touching their silken caftans to the Phanariote 
 aristocrats, at least not until Greece pays the 
 interest on her debt. 
 
 Mines and quarries ? There may be, as a French 
 writer remarks, mountains of marble containing 
 enough material to construct another Parthenon, 
 only it will never be constructed. All that is 
 needed is workmen and wagons. Precisely, 
 w^orkmen and wagons, wagons and workmen, 
 workmen and wagons, one goes on mechanically 
 repeating as with an unmeaning phrase, in a 
 country where nothing is on wheels. " The road 
 is laid out from the mountains to the Piraeus," 
 adds this writer picturesquely, " and from the 
 Piraeus to the whole world.'' This is refresh- 
 ingly like Herodotus describing the wonders of 
 Egypt. It seems as if the Greek quarries of Paros 
 and Pentelicus were to give us no more beauteous 
 births of gods and goddesses, not only because 
 the skilled human hand is no longer there, but 
 because the brute marble itself cannot be got at 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES, 221 
 
 or made accessible without great expense. And 
 Italy loves with Buonarotti to linger among her 
 own Carrara quarries in the hope that genius and 
 memory may bring her a new renaissance. The 
 Greeks know of the existence of lead, silver, 
 emery, but this knowledge is as bad to them as 
 the Anglo-Saxon poet describes the knowledge 
 of good and evil to have been to Adam and Eve. 
 The mere knowledge of good, with attainment on 
 the other side of the sea, is a downright evil ; 
 and so what belongs by right to Hellas is falling 
 into the hands of greedy foreign capitalists, who 
 are picking among the trash left at Laurium by 
 the slaves of Nikias, and hope to turn a penny 
 thereby. One can imagine the emotions of the 
 people, as they stand by with empty pockets and 
 see the foreigners filling theirs. The Greeks 
 have not what the Germans call the SUberblick 
 (the silver eye), for where it is raining silver to 
 others, to them, poor people, it is a rain of lead. 
 Not that they do not desire silver, of all earthly 
 blessings and benedictions. The love of it has 
 given birth after laborious parturition, to be 
 sure, to really admirable traits in them. For 
 example, brothers will not marry till all their 
 sisters are provided for ; and there is careful talk 
 about how many olive-trees a prospective bride- 
 groom brings. On these will depend the happi- 
 ness of the Psalmist's olive plants, who are to 
 sit around the table. 
 
222 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 The chattiness of the Greeks may be inferred 
 from the two hundred thousand telegrams sent 
 over the telegraphic wires in 1875 i indeed, what 
 keeps the country from absolute inanition is the 
 fifteen hundred miles of wires that connect it with 
 itself and with " Europe." There are a few post- 
 offices, but the letters and papers sent through 
 them for the whole kingdom hardly exceed the 
 proportions of Chicago. 
 
 The Greeks belong to those unhappy people 
 who spend more than their incomes. Hence 
 tranquillity is not a nightly guest, and annual def- 
 icits have not been opiates to an unquiet con- 
 science. Think of bees being directly taxed to 
 help out this pitiable state of things ! And then 
 the gall mingled with that honey ! A matter of 
 $75,000 or $150,000 on the debit side of the ac- 
 count book is a formidable affair in this diminu- 
 tive territory. Men shrug their shoulders and 
 look grave ; the affair is a matter of life and 
 death, orange-peel this year and pumpkin-seed 
 next, through a series of excruciating economies. 
 The floating debt is sinking the country, letting 
 alone the enormous foreign debt of some eighty 
 millions. This is no small matter to a land all 
 beauty and brightness and aridness. Then pecu- 
 lation has its pickings ; and pensions, civil-list, 
 deputies, war-office, interior, administration, and 
 collection of revenues come in for a share of 
 plunder. 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 223 
 
 The Greek fleet, such as it is, abounds in picto- 
 rial names Basileus Giorgios, Salaminia, Glau- 
 kos, Polydeukes, Amphitrite, etc. Three or four 
 hundred sailors constitute the working force, with 
 half as many subalterns and a few officers. 
 Greece will not dispute the supremacy of the 
 seas with this force. But one should not smile 
 at these Liliputian dimensions, or at the mosaic 
 complexion of the army, with its tithe of nation- 
 alities, like a pope's guard. They do what they 
 can. And Greece has so long been a nursUng 
 of England that she is still as it were in her 
 night-gown and nurse's arms a dry nurse, too. 
 A handful of Anglo-Saxons and a bit of Lom- 
 bard Street would rehabilitate Greece wonder- 
 fully. Pity that England did not take charge of 
 continental rather than of insular Greece ; then 
 perhaps there might have been twenty miles of 
 roads or a navigable stream. As it is, one be- 
 strides an abnormally gaunt steed, with a sort of 
 wooden cold-frame for a saddle, and picks one's 
 patient way over the blessed fields. And this 
 Pickwickian jaunt is not interfered with by 
 fences. 
 
 A curious sort of religious toleration exists in 
 Greece. You may practice your own faith to 
 your heart's content ; but if you attempt to turn 
 a Greek from the error of his ways, you may be 
 thrown into prison. This accomplished people 
 
224 GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 consider their religion ultimate, and proselytism 
 treason. The Orthodox Eastern Church gazes 
 on Roman Catholic performances with amused 
 contempt. They consider them childish, super- 
 stitious, and irreverent, forgetting their own fa- 
 naticism, infatuation, and saint-worship. St. Spir- 
 idon annually has all Corfu on its knees, doing 
 obeisance to his wonder-working toe. One should 
 like to know if this is any better than popish 
 hagiology. Independent in all things, the Greek 
 Church is a secession from the patriarchate of 
 Constantinople, and has an incredible number of 
 archbishops and bishops for the size of its do- 
 main. The old scholastic quibble of how many 
 angels could dance on the point of a cambric 
 needle has become in Greece : How many bishops 
 and archbishops can find dioceses in the ep- 
 archies? There are no less than ^\^ of each in 
 the small Ionian islands, six of each in the insig- 
 nificant peninsula of Peloponnesus, and nearly 
 as many for continental Greece proper. Some of 
 the places are said to be purchased. Athens is 
 the seat of the metropolitan, who is the apex of 
 the ecclesiastical pyramid. Happy prelates who 
 are paid by the state ; unfortunate subordinates 
 who get precarious sustenance from matrimonial, 
 baptismal, and burial fees ! One can appreciate 
 the energy with which these good people marry, 
 baptize, and bury. Every lover's sigh is to them 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 225 
 
 a drachma ; every infant's wail a glad summons ; 
 every cypress planted the symbol of content. 
 
 " Come, come with me, and we will make short work ; 
 For by your leaves, you shall not stay alone, 
 Till holy church incorporate two in one ! " 
 
 cries the friar in " Romeo and Juliet." 
 
 It is hardly the province of a sketch-book to 
 enter into matters of dogma and describe the 
 differences between Catholics and Greeks. They 
 are at one in four, and at variance in eight 
 points \ the differences beginning with the altar- 
 railings and ending with the mode of making the 
 sign of the cross, and the agreements beginning 
 in the mysteries of transubstantiation and ending 
 in the mists of idol-worship. In spite of these 
 harmonies and discords, which would seem to 
 neutralize one another and produce peace, there 
 is mutual abhorrence. Of course the celibate Ro- 
 man despises the connubial Greek. Then there 
 is unseemly squabbling over the sacramental ele- 
 ments, over the observation of Easter, over the 
 dogma of purgatory, and over the reading of the 
 Scriptures. Into what infinity of detail all this 
 enters is unknown save to the churches them- 
 selves. It amounts, however, to sneers and laugh- 
 ter on both sides. 
 
 The same delightful vagueness about educa- 
 tional matters among the women exists in Greece 
 15 
 
226 GREEK VIGNETTES 
 
 as in Spain. We are told that even tolerably 
 schooled Spanish sehoritas cannot tell the differ- 
 ence between a b and a v^ and only seven or eight 
 per cent, of the Greek women can read and write 
 their own names. They are not by any means 
 tongue-tied, as one finds when riding in railway 
 carriages with them. Only a very small propor- 
 tion of the women attend the public schools, and 
 those of the better class have in the last forty 
 years been educated by Dr. Hill, the American 
 missionary. One is surprised now and then to 
 hear the women talking English at the theatres 
 in Greece. The general public-school system of 
 Greece is elaborate enough, but there are, I think, 
 more parrots than Persons educated by them. 
 Communal schools, Hellenic schools, gymnasia, 
 and the university, constitute the fourfold divis- 
 ion of the system. The communal schools are 
 elementary, and include the three R's and bits of 
 history, geography, and natural philosophy. The 
 Greeks are too quick-witted to learn much. With 
 them knowledge is inspiration and argument is 
 assertion. They will run round the navigable 
 and innavigable globe in less time than you can 
 say Jack Robinson, and display infinite ignorance 
 in the journey. And the institutions where all 
 this is taught are open to both sexes. 
 
 Then come the so-called Hellenic schools, de- 
 voted to French, Latin, and Greek (with " pony- 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES, 22/ 
 
 ing " from ancient into modern Greek). To judge 
 by specimens of table d'hote French to which I 
 was inquisitorially bound to Hsten, I should say 
 that the Greek French was at least as bad as the 
 French Greek. And this, too, despite the Institut 
 Frangais at Athens, a colony of the University 
 of France designed to promote classic and ar- 
 chaeological studies. What the Latin is may be 
 judged from the tortuous and torturing Italian 
 which one takes down with the atrocious Szexard 
 wine on board the steamers, on the quays, in the 
 salons, and on the streets. Omnes vulnerant, ul- 
 tima necat, read Theophile Gautier of the hours 
 on the hour-disk of the town-clock of Urrugue. 
 So with the Greek Italian. One delights to 
 know that the Greek girls really read " Thouky- 
 dee'des," as they call him, with fluency, in their 
 upper classes. And from the facile and melodi- 
 ous names appropriated to them Nausikaa, 
 Corinna, Sappho, Eurydike, Olympias one 
 might be misled to think they knew something 
 about ancient history. Such is seldom the case. 
 Then comes the next link, the gymnasia, high 
 schools or koles siiperieures^ where the scholars 
 " pursue " (without ever attaining) Latin and 
 Greek, and all the 'ics, 'isms, 'ologies, 'phies, 
 and lingos embraced under logic, ethics, phys- 
 ics, philosophy, French, English, and German. 
 And after it all I met but one man that could 
 
228 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 speak English, two that could speak French, and 
 none that could speak Greek. The Greek that 
 spoke French was a Russian ; M. Evangelides 
 had been educated in America ; and the Greeks 
 had not been educated at all. What philosophy 
 can be taught, or what logic, in this irrational list, 
 or whose ethics is exemplified in the shops and 
 iivo^o^cla (guest-holders), one is in the so fre- 
 quent predicament of the Greeks themselves 
 
 arropo^ to know. 
 
 Last of all, like the impedimenta of some vast 
 army, comes in the university. The course con- 
 sists principally of professors. Students are ad- 
 mitted and run up to large numbers. If the uni- 
 versity did not turn out so many pettifoggers and 
 theologues, it would be a really useful institution. 
 Litigation would be less perennial than it is, and 
 religion more religious. One cannot see the for- 
 est for the trees, said Richter. One cannot be- 
 lieve for the believers. Many men of celebrity 
 have been connected with the university patri- 
 ots, statesmen, even scholars. It is of too crude 
 growth and too recent establishment to ripen 
 and mature the intellects of Greece. Hence the 
 state of feverish inquietude, equinoctial uncer- 
 tainty ; hence the " mothery " condition of Greek 
 life. It is as with a young god full of the fury 
 of some divine wine. The nation is ever reeling 
 in political excitement, raging with dissensions, 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES, 229 
 
 oscillating between extremes. It has waked in 
 the night and is full of furious spring fever. It 
 is not the still and solemn sea ; it is the edge of 
 it as it lashes the shore in leonine surges and 
 scatters spray to the stars. When the sun has 
 sweetened and cleared all these wild juices ; 
 when Greece has won the tranquillity of culture ; 
 when the Boule ceases to be a marionnette thea- 
 tre and becomes a house of parliament ; when 
 there is a head to these thousand limbs and a 
 hand with a whip in it, then the university 
 will have accomplished its most noble missionary 
 work. And not till then will there be citizens 
 and scholars. At present one sees a nation of 
 school children, satchel in hand, going to the 
 newest sciences to be fed with the latest develop- 
 ments hearty, winsome, eloquent, and obliging 
 children withal, but entirely too much given to 
 gongs and pancakes. A sound castigation now 
 and then from reasonable people, a decided set- 
 down of national conceit, some glimmering intu- 
 itions of the geographical proportions and impor- 
 tance of other countries, a little logic of events, 
 and economy both political and private, both in 
 word and in deed ; these are elements towards 
 the realization of that pining for nationality 
 which has become a malady with the Greeks. 
 It is useless to climb frantic May-poles and 
 think to get a coup d^ceil of the universe. Stay 
 
230 GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 where you are, on the sober earth, with feet well 
 planted in facts, no matter how the nettles sting. 
 Then Soutzos' beautiful dream may again be 
 realized : 
 
 Xcjpa fieyaXocpvtag \ . . . . elg rovg KoT^Tzovg gov to nakai, 
 ''Qi narpig fiov \ at Ideal uvE(3?iaGT0vv at fj,Eyd?ML * 
 Kal TvpavvoKTOvov ^Idoc KpvTVTOvreg elg rug fzvpalvag 
 01 'ApfiodiOL uvcjpT^ovv laovofiovg rug ''k-dijvag. 
 "AXkoTE Qeol eirarovv ra edadTj gov, kol d^elav 
 "Ecjg G7/fiepov rj yrj gov avadldei evudiav, 
 
 Kal rj avpa rov ^scjivpov. 
 Ilviei Ti TTjv d/);^;amv fieTicpdiav tov 'Ofir^pov. 
 
 I suspect the Greeks will have to come down 
 to the narrow English notion of " comfort " be- 
 fore they ever become anything. A nation that 
 scorns many of the decencies and indecencies 
 of life, that waives hospitality, that calls a pipe 
 a smoke-syringe and a bed a wood-heap (ivXo- 
 KpalS/Sdnov), that is devoured by mosquitoes and 
 sun, and scorns sun-shades and mosquito-nets, 
 that calls an individual an afom (aro/xov), an offi- 
 cer axiomatic (dftto/xartKo?), a port a pore (iropos, 
 outlet), the spiritual life the pneumatic hereafter, 
 and makes a ghost {<noiy^iov^ element) of Sir Will- 
 iam Hamilton's stoicheiology ; a nation, more- 
 over, that twists philosophical terminology and 
 taunts a horse with being irrational (aXoyov, 
 horse), takes in vain the fine old term of the 
 Ionic philosophers, analysis^ the dissolution of 
 
 1 Vid. Geldart. 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 23 I 
 
 the elements of created things in decay or death, 
 and makes it dissolve a lump of sugar in the 
 abominable black coffee of Athens, and turns in- 
 side out the philosophic schema^ thesis^ and taxis 
 of Democritus and Leucippus, and makes them 
 mean respectively a monk's habit, a place in a 
 coach, and a class in a steam-packet or railway 
 carriage ; is such a nation, one breathlessly asks, 
 on the way to political regeneration ? In the fine 
 old Greek word for calm {yakqi'-r]) the ancients saw 
 "the smile of the sea"-^ (yeXav), In modern 
 times their descendants regard a calm, political 
 or otherwise, as a great discomfort. Who knows 
 what a little attention to Buckle's idea of the in- 
 fluence of food on the national life would evoke 
 in the way of health and wholesomeness in this 
 southern latitude. " Carry biscuits and provis- 
 ions," cried the Bayonnais to Gautier, on his way 
 to Spain, in 1840 ; " the Spaniards breakfast on 
 a teaspoonful of chocolate, dine on an onion 
 steeped in water, and sup on a paper cigarette ! " 
 And this has reduced Spain to what it is. 
 
 Of national traits there are some most amiable 
 ones ; of traitors no end, if one gives heed to the 
 denunciations of the men in office. A word of 
 abuse in Greece is always something concrete ; a 
 man who does not believe your way, or go the 
 length of your tether, is a dog, an assassin, an ass, 
 1 Vid. Geldart. 
 
232 GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 an idiot. No sooner does a man climb to the 
 height of his ambition, than people drag him 
 down to the depth of theirs. Nameless crimes 
 have been attributed to one of the best and 
 gentlest of kings. If their majesties gave a ball 
 every night in the year, it would not stop the 
 busy feet of the guests from kicking at them. As 
 the king is blond, they want him brun ; as he is 
 short, they want him tall ; as he is young, they 
 want him old. As for the queen, she is a Rus- 
 sian. Fortunately the children have all been 
 born in Greece, and there is a slight hope that the 
 Greeks will at last have a Hellenic king, and 
 the present Danish dynasty be perpetuated. A 
 child must be named Constantine, in view of the 
 immemorial hope of a restoration of the empire of 
 Constantine the Great. There is something pa- 
 thetic in the polygot of languages with which such 
 a royal child must be tormented : Danish, Rus- 
 sian, Greek, Italian, English, French, and German. 
 In the acquisition of these, kings forget to be con- 
 stitutional. In conning their Ollendorffs, they 
 neglect the law. In the purgatory of irregular 
 verbs, they hear not the cries of their subjects. 
 Genders are to them more than genius, and felic- 
 ity of phrase than the greatest common good. 
 Both Otho and George w^ere taken young, no 
 doubt that they might overcome the difficulties of 
 modern Greek. The one acquired the language 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 233 
 
 and lost his kingdom. The other rules to-day 
 surrounded by a troop of light-haired, happy- 
 hearted Danish children, with his queen Olga of 
 the golden hair and wonderful complexion. And 
 she with her low-bodiced dames of honor, her vast 
 palace, her carriages and horses, and her charm- 
 ing garden, loses hardly more than three nights' 
 rest a week in dread of revolution. Whether any 
 one of her bright princes and princesses will ever 
 sit on the throne of Greece no doubt affords the 
 royal mother many an hour of anxiety. Nobody 
 else seems anxious. To hear the Greeks talk, now 
 and then, one would think they adored their rulers 
 and prayed for their health and wealth every hour 
 in the day. So they did with poor Otho, till one 
 morning he went on a visit to the Peloponnesus, 
 and never came back again. A king on the 
 throne of Greece is in the attitude of the Parisian 
 who works the spiral velocipede : there is gyra- 
 tion, if there is not absolute revolution, all the 
 time. To the all-wise Greeks the quadrature of 
 the circle is a trifle ; they see through govern- 
 mental and administrative perplexities, and could 
 point you out a thousand modes of settling them. 
 But they never do. They see through the mill- 
 stone j but it grinds them no corn. Hence their 
 politics without a party, coalitions without a pol- 
 icy, dissolutions and recombinations in dizzying 
 succession. The people gaze and whip on the 
 
234 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 top : all which comes from six hundred and twen- 
 ty-two out of the twelve hundred university stu- 
 dents being lawyers. 
 
 The singular and spontaneous outburst of gam- 
 bling throughout Greece on New Year's Eve and 
 New Year's Day is a phenomenon. Though 
 strictly forbidden by law throughout Europe, with 
 the exception of Monaco, there is an annual re- 
 bellion in Greece which rages for several days 
 and involves all classes of the population. Banks 
 are improvised in the cafes, and groups of im- 
 passioned players and passionate pilgrims sur- 
 round the tables, dumbly staring or desperately 
 playing. Processions of boys move through the 
 streets at night, and press into all the coffee- 
 houses and wine-shops, with drummer and flute- 
 blower leading ; they drag around a great picture 
 of a vessel or steamship, or a dunce-cap of colored 
 paper on a frame, illuminated inside. The boys 
 crowd around the transparency and accompany 
 its progress through the town with a peculiar 
 Turkish-sounding chant. As soon as they enter 
 a cafe they hand round a plate and gather in 
 coppers. On New Year's Day itself the object of 
 these collections comes out : tables are set up in all 
 the streets, whereon roulette-dishes stand, a raga- 
 muffin plays croupier, and other, ragamuffins 
 stand round gloating on the game. Sometimes 
 playthings and confectionery, provided with num- 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 235 
 
 bers, are placed upon the table, and lottery num- 
 bers are drawn out of a bag. This gives a 
 glimpse of Young Greece. And they will ask 
 Your Brilliancy (o-a? Xa^jLTrpoTarrj^) for money with 
 all imaginable grace and glibness, and in times 
 of mourning will even crape their chimneys to 
 show^ their deep and indescribable grief. 
 
 American legislators night contemplate with 
 edification the salaries of three hundred and fifty 
 dollars apiece^ which the parliamentary deputies 
 get, and the two thousand given to the king's 
 ministers. These pittances, one is told, are en- 
 riched and increased by bribery, peculation, sales, 
 threats, and manoeuvring. Though the deputies 
 are allowed seats in the Boule, one is not allowed 
 or expected to sit down in the house of God, for 
 there are no seats. One's head swims before a 
 sort of mirage of antiquity on seeing Sophokles, 
 Socrates, Phil-Hellene, Stadion, and Euripides 
 Street, neatly painted in black and white, and 
 affixed to the house-corners. And if one hails 
 one of the Maltese commissionaires standing in 
 these streets, the incongruity may be increased 
 by an answer in Arabic. And further, ^^ Arabic 
 corn " will rouse the indignation of all true Amer- 
 icans as a name given to our maize. What with 
 saints' days, names, mendicancy, and pride ; what 
 with love of decorations and uniforms, quietness 
 in crowds, family affection, honesty of servants, 
 
236 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 and laxity in official life, one's view of these 
 strange people becomes touched with a thousand 
 tints, and ends, like Wagner's operas, in a grand 
 discord. Who was it who said that Athens be- 
 came the Byzantine Siberia ? Those gloomy 
 days are past, and we have a beautiful city, full 
 of the intensest modern life, the liveliest colors, 
 the newest modes and measures, gas, theatres, 
 newspapers, and a king. The Greeks must try 
 to be like everybody else, or perish in the effort. 
 They approach it as nearly as a people in petti- 
 coats can. True, their bookshops are unspeak- 
 ably dismal, and contain nothing ; Pindar's fiaBv- 
 ^(DvoL women still trip about the thoroughfares ; 
 they greet one with the antique x^^^P^ (hail !) ; the 
 men kiss each other on parting, and the priests 
 name the children ; but these little Hellenisms 
 will probably soon wear away, and we shall have 
 the Greeks as they desire to be fourth-rate im- 
 itations of the French. Lutetia Parisiorum, the 
 favorite of Julian the Apostate, is the fit Mecca of 
 these would-be apostate people. It is a French 
 novel or a ribald play that one picks up in an 
 Athenian bookstall, not often the erudite commen- 
 tary of some German scholar who has spent a life- 
 time on the Greek prepositions. And of the two 
 one prefers the novel. That is at least light and 
 handy, while the other is an interminable thicket 
 of references in crabbed type. The books that fa- 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 237 
 
 vor Greece are sometimes found there, and those 
 that do not, being on the index expurgatorius, are 
 seldom to be found. Thus they live in a delightful 
 atmosphere of perfumed self-complacency, and 
 think all the world is agape with admiration. Ad- 
 verse criticism is intolerable ; hence the odium of 
 About, Fallmerayer, and others. If you fall on 
 your knees and worship, then Greece may save 
 you ; but the least sparkle of a critical eye will 
 condemn to eternal banishment. The Greeks are 
 now somewhat in the attitude of the Americans 
 fifty years ago, new, self-conscious, arrogant, 
 and ignorant, fit subjects for the Halls and Trol- 
 lopes that excoriated them. Like all near-sighted 
 and slightly deaf people, they are suspicious, and 
 in inverse proportion to their having any reason 
 to be. Natural laughter and smiles they con- 
 strue into disapprobation ; a twitch of the mouth 
 is a taunt thrown at some institution ; tourists 
 are sbirros come to spy out the nakedness of 
 the land and immortalize it in some defamatory 
 book. Tuckerman tells us that they have a 
 rather unpleasant habit of writing letters to 
 strangers whom they imagine wealthy, and, if 
 they get anything, are occasionally seen enter- 
 taining themselves and their friends with it at 
 cafes. This I cannot vouch for, but it is cer- 
 tainly not peculiar to this folk. There are 
 kindly traits and good traits in them as in all j 
 
238 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 only, pretense is a little more ebullient in Greece 
 than elsewhere, and a habit of exaggeration is 
 strong in the nation. A nation without conceit 
 the illusion of (non-existent) greatness would 
 perhaps be little worth, for there is a grain of 
 gold in the vice, which sometimes helps people 
 into being eventually what they think they al- 
 ready are. There are no ghosts to those who do 
 not fear them, said Voltaire. The spectacle of 
 regenerated, purified, and law-abiding Hellas 
 would be a noble one for the world. Brigand- 
 age extinguished, roads built, the country de- 
 veloped, and foreign capital attracted, we should 
 see the youngest of nationalities entering on a 
 long and prosperous career, perhaps her ancient 
 glory revived, and an ingenuous and ingenious 
 population plucked from the grasp of scheming 
 politicians. This is too much to hope for, until 
 Greece has passed through the green and yeasty 
 stage in which she now finds herself, a stage 
 which our gardens exhibit every spring, and 
 which is not to be got through with till the long 
 autumn and afternoon ripen with their beneficent 
 heat. 
 
 What a curious aspect foreign proper names 
 have acquired in Greek ! Names familiar to us 
 are often unintelligible at the first glance. Gen- 
 eral Church, the former commander-in-chief of 
 the Greek army, has become Htpvprt,) Blooms- 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 239 
 
 bury Museum, in London, BAoi;/xo-/x7roupe Movo-etov ; 
 Washington and Webster, Bao-tyKrojF and Tovl/S- 
 (TTp; Manchester and Mahomet, Mdyx^o-rp ta and 
 McodfxeS ; Connecticut and WelUngton, KovveKTiKar 
 and VoveXtyKTUiv ; Clay, Monroe, and California, 
 KXatu, Movpoe, and KaXAt<^poi/ta ; Liverpool, Pic- 
 cadilly, Stanfield, and Finlay (the historian of 
 Greece), At^epTrouX, UiKaBlWo, Srai/c^tT^XS, and 
 ^LvXav ; Birmingham and Victoria, Btp/xtyya/x and 
 BiKTopia ; all ingenious and happy, but fantastic- 
 looking reproductions. 
 
 A similar transformation has taken place in the 
 folk-lore of ancient Greece. A delightful chapter 
 might be written by some competent person on 
 modern Greek folk-lore. It is full of the per- 
 fume of antiquity, strikingly original and poetic, 
 and abounds in archaeological interest. Bernhard 
 Schmidt -^ has made a most interesting collection 
 of contemporary Hellenic usage and tradition in 
 this respect ; but it is not accessible to the non- 
 German-reading investigator. " As a rule, good 
 books are in German," says Seeley, '^ and it may 
 happen that the student does not know German." 
 
 The nereid-legend is the loveliest of all, and 
 winds through popular life in Hellas like a 
 golden thread. "Beautiful as anereid," "nereid- 
 eyed," are common expressions even among the 
 
 1 Volksleheti der Neugriechen tmd das Hellenische Alter- 
 thum. Leipzig, 187 1. 
 
240 GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 lower classes. The nereids are no longer water- 
 nymphs exclusively, but run through every phase 
 of human and landscape life, embracing the 
 naiads, oreads, and dryads. They visit as The 
 Friendly Ones, the seas, rivers, springs, and fount- 
 ains, the forests, gorges, and caves, the high 
 mountains, valleys, and plains \ they nest in the 
 huge niched olive-trees and stone oaks ; they 
 give names to many localities ; they dance by 
 moonlight on the ancient spots consecrated to 
 them, like the Karykian cave of Parnassus, in 
 antiquity ; they are slender-figured, brilliant- 
 faced ; beautiful girls are said to be nereid-born ; 
 their favorite colors are white and red ; here and 
 there the splendid beauty attributed to them is 
 disfigured by goat-like feet ; they are astonish- 
 ingly light and agile, swing themselves in the air, 
 and traverse incredible distances ; they live more 
 than a thousand years, spin and weave for the 
 slumbering house-wife ; a filmy-tendriled, airy 
 climbing plant that twines about the peasants' 
 homes is called nereid-thread ; to dance like a 
 nereid is a proverb, and their song is enchanting; 
 their gladness and gayety, their intermarriage 
 with mortals, their dancing on the mountains to 
 the shepherd's flutes ; the multitude of beautiful 
 legends of young men of extraordinary comeli- 
 ness who became their lovers, and to whom they 
 delivered themselves up; the legendary descent 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 24 1 
 
 of many families from them ; the disastrous in- 
 fluence they exercise at noon, as The Hostile 
 Ones, especially in summer, near a stream, or in 
 the shadow of a plane, poplar, fig, or chestnut 
 tree, at cross-roads and beside mills ; the irre- 
 sistible power they exert over young people in 
 luring them to wander in the woods by themselves 
 until death overtakes them ; their dwelling in the 
 whirlwinds which visit Greece in summer, and the 
 deprecatory prayer the old women mutter at that 
 time Me At koI yaXa cttov Spofjio eras (milk and 
 honey on your path !) ; the curious and confused 
 medley of pagan and Christian myth blending in 
 the infinite legends about them : all this conspires 
 to cast a glamour over the rude rustic life, which 
 is close to the freshest morning imagination. It 
 shows extraordinary facility and vivacity of fancy, 
 and a strange persistence of legends current in 
 ancient and mediaeval times. 
 
 Then the dry mm that live in the water, the cu- 
 rious race of demons, called exotic., that haunt 
 graveyards and reeds and lonesome places by 
 night and at noon, the holy hour of the gods, 
 when it was dangerous to play on the flute, for 
 while the sun is glowing and glistening in the mid- 
 heavens men feel the need of rest and the gods 
 may walk forth undisturbed : these are the coun- 
 ter-balance on the dark side to the bright-haired, 
 beautiful-footed nereids. Demonic might, in the 
 16 
 
242 GREEK VIGNETTES, 
 
 popular superstition, is attributed to the lamia, 
 another series of sea-spirits, to whom has passed 
 much of the fantastical power over men and 
 music belonging to the sirens. They are the 
 bugaboo of children, and figure largely in the di- 
 lating twilight and magnifying dusk. Sea-demons, 
 the horrible striglce that fly by night to the cra- 
 dles of young children and suck their blood ; the 
 child-killing Gello, that transforms itself into a 
 fish, a swallow, and a strand of goat's hair ; the 
 monno, with which nurses frighten children ; the 
 Gorgona, descendant of the classic Gorgo ; the 
 kalika7itsari, the werewolves of Greece, who get 
 possession of the babes born between Christmas 
 and New Year, since it is sinful for mortal women 
 to bear children within the period consecrated to 
 the pangs and purification of the Holy Mother; 
 who come down the chimney and make ugly work 
 with the pots and kettles, but stand in mortal 
 dread of a black cock : all these furnish food to 
 the lively, illiterate peasantry in the long winter 
 nights, and interweave their singular influences 
 with the doings and sayings of the people. Neo- 
 Hellenic demonology has more than one rem- 
 iniscence of the ancient Pan and Hephaestus in 
 the lame demo?i and the demons of the flocks 
 and herds. The vampyre, which is the soul of a 
 dead man expiating some great crime, is another 
 thrilling creation of popular fancy. Then come 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 243 
 
 the telonia, or spirits of the air, that sparkle 
 electrically along the cordage of ships by night 
 in storms ; the guardian angels, that accompany 
 men through life; the house-snakes, that are local 
 spirits j the treasure-guarding dragons, that re- 
 call the Hesperides-myth, to conciliate whom a 
 little blood must be spilt under the treasure ; the 
 giants' graves, shown in many places ; the three 
 Fates, who are still so busy with the Greek im- 
 agination, and who are spinning, reeling off, and 
 clipping the thread of life as diligently as ever, 
 even their names (jxoipai) being unchanged : a 
 cluster of myths beautifully interwoven with all 
 manner of graceful custom, reminding one of 
 May-day superstitions and All Hallow E'en. Cha- 
 ron and the under-world open the earth and let 
 out a flight of strange, lovely, and poetic beliefs, 
 which mix in with the speech and habitudes of the 
 day, and give rise to phrases, songs, and sayings 
 innumerable. Charon is not only boatman of 
 the under-world, he is the mighty amro?, Death 
 himself, with his shadowy realm. He is even 
 taken into the service of the Christian Church 
 and made to minister in certain things ; now mild, 
 tender, and sympathetic, then menacing and re- 
 lentless. The joyless Homeric view of death as 
 the supreme evil is still rife. All, good and bad 
 alike, descend to Hades, and life only is the high- 
 est blessing. Countless lights burn in the king- 
 
244 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 dom of Charon, each one of which represen-ts a 
 human life one by one extinguished. Paradise 
 and Hades change places in this odd semi-pagan- 
 ized condition of mind so common in less visited 
 Greece, while the reeds that kiss each other in 
 the bending wind are the souls of lovers giving 
 the last caress. 
 
 All this is inextricably entangled with a mass 
 of Christian superstitions, legends of saints, mar- 
 tyrs, and devils, religious festivals and commem- 
 orations, mythological ideas of God, pictures, rel- 
 ics, vows, and consecrations. Here the Madonna- 
 legend has taken strongest and strangest hold, 
 and is now a tender, now a pathetic, and now a 
 sublime creation of loving and worshiping fancy. 
 
VI. 
 
 We left Athens by the Lucifer and a Lucifer 
 of a time we had ! It blew something of a gale 
 all day, and nearly everybody was laid out. I 
 was called at five in the morning, made my toilet, 
 drank a dish of tea, and then went down to my 
 good SatfX(i)v, Miltiades Vidis. We found nearly 
 all the servants of the establishment waiting, 
 hands out, including the dark-eyed, handsome 
 proprietor, and I gave fees to five of the attaches 
 {attaches indeed, for they stick to you like wax !), 
 and left as many open-mouthed, empty-handed, 
 and chagrined. Athens was very beautiful in 
 the early morning in the gray, dewy, sunlight- 
 flushed Attic morning. I had never felt the won- 
 derful beauty of its situation so fully before. The 
 deserted streets and closed houses ; the occa- 
 sional cry of an itinerant wood-vender, driving 
 his asses on the sunny side of the street j a car- 
 riage or two loitering in the square below ; the 
 bright, mysterious, fresco-like fringe of mountains 
 just beginning to live and lighten on the borders 
 of the Attic plain ; the cool distances of tender 
 blue sea singularly calm in this silent hour, 
 
246 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 what pangs of poetic reminiscence such a scene 
 awakens ! Then think how delightful it was to 
 drive in one of those comfortable Athenian ai^a- 
 iai, with a quick pair of horses, the top thrown 
 back, and the delicious sting of the fresh morning 
 air in one's face ! To see the Orient one must 
 see it in the early morning. The twin dusks of 
 morning and evening soften its ardent lights and 
 shadows, throw a veil over its intolerable suns, 
 and fill one's memory with enjoyable recollec- 
 tions. 
 
 We whirled on down the fine road to the Pi- 
 raeus (four miles distant), and I turned back 
 many times to take parting glances at the great 
 theatre of ancient history. The roads were just 
 being watered, and we were saved the annoyance 
 (which is perennial at Athens) of the subtile, wind- 
 blown lime dust. For a long distance the road is 
 a splendid avenue of silver-poplars, locusts, and 
 plane trees, with brown, sunburnt fields or vine- 
 yards loaded with grapes on each side. The 
 long stretch of noble olive-trees lay nestled in 
 silver uncertainty at this early hour. Far away 
 we could see the white walls of the Monastery of 
 St. Elias, at the entrance of the Pass of Daphne, 
 receiving an acute accent from the advancing 
 sun. Groups of market-people and donkeys, 
 wagons and peasants, passed us on their way to 
 Athens. In an hour we had reached the noisy 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 24/ 
 
 harbor of Piraeus, catching glimpses of the Long 
 AVall of Themistocles here and there. We paid 
 our five drachmae, got into the boat (two drach- 
 mae), and were rowed out to the Ltidfer, which I 
 was nearly the first to reach. Other passengers 
 soon came, and by eight o'clock a crowd had 
 gathered, several handsome Italian men and 
 women among them. Before we left the wind 
 had increased to violence, and filled the air far 
 out to sea with a cloud of dust. There was, how- 
 ever, an inconceivable refreshment in the wind 
 after the protracted heat and languor of Athens. 
 The Acropolis hung in the distance for a long 
 time after our departure, and did not finally dis- 
 appear till we were in the neighborhood of Su- 
 nium. Mournful and majestic it looked in this 
 silver silence, as we sped past the island of 
 Salamis, the shores of ^gina, the peak of Mount 
 Gerania, and the long and lofty range, of Isth- 
 mian and Peloponnesian mountains, all pure and 
 perfect in outline as a Chinese carving. Who in 
 this singularly magnificent scene of the Saronic 
 Gulf could help remembering that grand passage 
 in the " Agamemnon " of ^schylus where he 
 celebrates the beacon-lights shot into sudden 
 bloom on the mountain-tops by the fall of Troy? 
 Just so these fairy heights shot into ethereal 
 bloom under the golden touch of the morn, the 
 " Torch of Conquest '' and " Traveling Fire " 
 that lighted even to Agamemnon's battlements. 
 
248 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 There was the usual amount of distrait con- 
 versation at breakfast, carried on in voluble Ital- 
 ian or spasmodic Greek, copiously bedewed with 
 Szexard wine. And then the chicken buried in 
 rancid rice, the filet de bxuf pointed with tomato 
 sauce, the greasy potatoes and aromatic, oily 
 salad, followed, not by Gruyere oxfromage de Brie, 
 but by the usual melancholy mockery of with- 
 ered fruit and coffee. Then the gale came with 
 vehemence, followed by a scene of piteous and 
 indescribable woe : grewsome men and women 
 stretched out ; horrid children laid low ; puling 
 babies a-squeak ; handing about of hideous blue^ 
 porcelain pots ; impossibility of reading or keep- 
 ing still. Although we were passing down a neck- 
 lace of bright isles never out of sight of their 
 blueness and beauty and fantastical grace it 
 all seemed a mockery to the dismayed passen- 
 gers; and those who had taken breakfast, afid 
 those who had not, were equally loathly. The 
 fine ruined temple on Cape Sunium fortunately 
 passed before us ere this crisis of disenchant- 
 ing weather befell. And all this gale and tumult 
 of wind while the loveliest blue sky was beaming 
 above, the wildest and winsomest sunlight was 
 beating about us. 
 
 At 5 or 6 we steamed into Syra^-the island- 
 port of the Levant and anchored before the 
 charming little oriental city, being immediately 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES, 249 
 
 boarded and captured by a throng of rogues, 
 who would take us ashore in spite of ourselves. 
 I never saw such a set of wild monkeys as these 
 Greek islanders knowing just enough of sev- 
 eral languages to inspire you with faint hope, 
 and then allure you into inextricable difficulties, 
 insolent, rapacious, and sharp. We were to wait 
 till midnight for the great mail-steamer from 
 Constantinople to Corfu. The night, of course, 
 passed either sleeplessly or with troubled snatches 
 of ill-sufficing slumber, for at half-past one we 
 had to bargain with a boatman to carry us over 
 this Styx and put us on the mail-steamer. Rough 
 water, dim light, a throng of clamorous wretches 
 surrounding the Ettore, through whom, with Odys- 
 sean cunning, we vainly strove to make our way ; 
 a steep ladder on the, side of the ship to climb, 
 while the boat bounded wildly; an evident de- 
 sire on the part of the batteliere to make off 
 into the midnight with my baggage while I was 
 climbing ; a multitude of barges and passenger 
 barche, whose owners were all shouting and quar- 
 reling in chorus. What a night ! I felt several 
 years older when I finally got safe and sound 
 to the deck of the Ettore, and groped my way 
 in the darkness down into the cabin. A long 
 ship full of many-colored oriental life Ger- 
 mans, Austrians, Americans, English, Dalmatians, 
 Turks, Greeks, Italians, French, Moslems, and 
 
250 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 missionaries, soldiers and civilians, men in fezes, 
 pugguries, turbans, a band of wandering musi- 
 cians fleeing from Adrian ople, groups of Turks 
 lying about on rugs and bright-colored mattresses, 
 in the midst of melons, playing-cards, snoring, 
 eating, praying, prostrating themselves toward 
 Mecca ; Eastern women sprawling and squatting 
 here and there on the second-class deck ; fierce- 
 looking fellows with pistols sticking out of their 
 belts or swathed about the loins with gay-hued 
 sashes ; everywhere the flashing eyes, thick 
 brows, and pale skins of the Levant. 
 
 The deck looked like the ward of an Eastern 
 hospital : it was covered over with thick awnings 
 to keep out the sun ; pallets were spread every- 
 where j a huge, green, rollicking parrot peeped 
 out of one side of the gangway pavilion, and 
 the Dalmatian captain, smoking an enormous 
 hookah, sat in the other. The Germans chat- 
 tered ; the French shrugged and gesticulated ; the 
 English sang hymns over the wheel-house ; the 
 Turks played cards, munched melons, smoked 
 interminable cigarettes, and squatted on their 
 heels ; and the wandering musicians, recovering 
 from their seasickness, forgot their exile, and 
 gave us the liveliest waltzes and polkas for our 
 Sunday afternoon ! What a crowded, colored, 
 feverish three days it was ! My state-room com- 
 panions were Germans, a young clerk from 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 251 
 
 Smyrna; a florid-faced, gold-spectacled Frank- 
 forter from Athens, always talking about work- 
 ing for the Greeks, Lumpenpack, etc., etc. ; and 
 a pot-bellied Viennese, full of fun, ribaldry, and 
 beer, all the time. The cuisine was like a French 
 menu gone mad a mixture of all nationalities, 
 substances, and sauces, good enough in its way, 
 too, but for the infinite piquancy of its unknown 
 ingredients. The Austrian Lloyd's steamers fur- 
 nish an abundance of food, which is eatable 
 enough, but rather promiscuous. The attendance 
 is good. Mixed as the food was, I could not 
 help thinking how superior it appeared to the 
 brutal coarseness of an Atlantic steamer's fare, 
 where you have mountains of meat and not a 
 savory morsel, " thirty-two religions and but one 
 sauce ! " How gladly would one throw away the 
 long phalanx of abominable pastry for a single 
 dainty Italian or French dessert ! But the loaded 
 stomach must be sickened with fifty custards, 
 pies, and puddings, or J. Bull will grumble. An 
 ocean steamer is indeed (and alas ! ) but the ves- 
 tibule of our polyglot and polygluttonous Ameri- 
 can cookery. 
 
 The Ettore was what they call in Levant slang 
 a celere^ or fast steamer, and made good time. 
 At 7 in the morning Sunday morning we 
 left Syra, and in the evening we were round- 
 ing Cape Malea and steaming in and around the 
 
252 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 beautiful peaked and pointed land of the Pelo- 
 ponnese. A hermit dwells on this desolate but 
 brilliant Naze. The Etiore fired a gun as we 
 passed, but failed to draw him from his little hut, 
 which crowned a picturesque rock and was sur- 
 rounded by some evidences of a meagre garden. 
 There was a tiny chapel at a short distance, and 
 out in front the cincturing and opal-toned Med- 
 iterranean. 
 
 An infinite grotesguerie is this Peloponnesian 
 coast a piece of goblin (not Gobelins) tapestry, 
 for it shoots out and then in, with long inland- 
 stretching lapses of sunlit coast-line ; bold out- 
 tossings and upturnings of cragged and castled 
 promontory; distances hung thick with historic 
 mountains, curves, and crescent-like gulfs, in 
 short, a grand, gnarled Gothic coast, most brill- 
 iantly bare and pictorial. It is like a piece of 
 music by Liszt. Sailing in and out, up and 
 down it, is like following the lines of an old 
 Venetian globe ; now you are in the stars and 
 now in terra incognita; now among constellated 
 dragons, now meandering along the twisted 
 Indies. Half the day and night we seemed to 
 be pursuing this will-o'-the-wisp voyage round- 
 ing Cape Matapan, slipping by one lovely bit 
 of sea-surrounded rock after another, catching 
 up with other vessels and then leaving them 
 far behind, prolonging our walks and talks and 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 253 
 
 music far into the moonlit night, for the silver 
 spectre of the half-moon hung over the Pelopon- 
 nesus and dogged us as it did the Ancient Mari- 
 ner. All day Monday we passed over familiar 
 ground or, rather, water : Zante, Paxo, Cepha- 
 lonia, Ithaca, Santa Maura ; and lastly, late in 
 the night, reached Corfu, under the same serene, 
 sterile moonlight. The indescribable beauty of 
 the Ionian Islands need not be dwelt on again. 
 
 I took a boat and landed, and am now 
 " inned " (as Chaucer says) in the gray old Ho- 
 tel St. Georges, waiting for the Brindisi steamer. 
 This steamer sails to-morrow afternoon. I am 
 glad we stopped at Corfu. Those who do not 
 land here have little idea of its beauty, unrivaled 
 as the sea-glimpse of it is. The gray rocks, the 
 tropical vegetation, the tangled and tumultuous 
 line of mountain that so delightfully bewilders 
 the eye as it vainly attempts to follow its sinu- 
 osities ; the picturesque Albanian crags opposite, 
 some with villages grove-embowered and gleam- 
 ing; the long curves and expanses of lovely blue 
 water ; the drives, the walks, the soft and saintly 
 purples of the mountains, bright with an infinite 
 poesy, the world of graceful water and fertile 
 land, make up one of the richest pictures of 
 insular and oriental life. The coloring of the 
 houses is so mellow, and such a relief after the 
 painful whiteness of new Athens ! There are, 
 
254 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 too, numerous traces of the four hundred years' 
 Venetian occupation, in the quaint Venetianized 
 architecture j the narrow, winding streets spanned 
 by arches ; the graceful bell-towers, with their 
 time-worn clocks outside ; the embrasured win- 
 dows, lofty houses, tiny gardens of orange and 
 ilex, and traces of sculptured portals. The town 
 is all huddled together in a sort of valley between 
 the Fortrezza Nuova and the ancient, double- 
 peaked citadel. These double peaks gave the 
 ancient name (Corcyra) to the place. I have 
 not noticed even one respectable-looking shop, 
 but all is delightfully cramped, huddled, and old- 
 fashioned. About one half the buying and sell- 
 ing seems to be done in the streets. One comes 
 on a perfect nest of cobblers working in these 
 streets, gossiping, mending, working, laughing, 
 eating. Then a den of a cafe (^Ka^^^^vdov) hangs 
 out its sign in Greek and Italian, and bids you 
 come in and enjoy its delights. The whole town 
 seems given up to the sale of fruits glorious 
 oranges with pieces of the green limb still cling- 
 ing to them, pine-apples, pears, peaches, melons. 
 Then one comes on cheese-shops full of white 
 zimoto cream-cheeses cheeses yellow, green, 
 fresh, and fragrant. There is the usual quantum 
 of Romaic Tra^roTrwAeta, or groceries filled with 
 gastronomic curiosities. Then succeed long Bo- 
 lognese arcades, labyrinthine 68ot, or alleys, 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 255 
 
 with lines stretched across, full of newly-laun- 
 dried clothes, the painted blue-and-white arch of 
 a Byzantine chapel, a slender silhouette-like Ital- 
 ian campanile, all mellowness and mossy beauty, 
 a pile of steep-gabled cinque-cento houses, a 
 cluster of twisted, convoluted chimneys, a bit 
 of ruined, lichen-covered wall, a palace with a 
 statue in front, a gate whose arch and classic 
 balustrade frame exquisite pictures of sea and 
 mountains, an ancient inn with a belfry and win- 
 dow-embrasures green and gay with geraniums, 
 a turreted parapet looking down on the bright- 
 est wine-like water, a group of cypresses, a moat, 
 and a grand crag full of dismantled fortifications. 
 Such is an epitome of this town of twenty-five 
 thousand inhabitants. Unrivaled drives lead out 
 from it into the country on various sides, the 
 One-Gun Battery, Benizze, Coruna, the Oak, San 
 Pantaleone, not to speak of the countless in- 
 teresting bridle-paths that scatter and scamper 
 over the fields and hills in all directions. Then 
 there is life here. All the steamers east and 
 west make this their calling-place. The English 
 have civilized the country in point of roads, 
 though not of currencies. It is but twelve hours 
 across to Brindisi, and one is thus freed from the 
 sad isolation of continental Greece. The coun- 
 try is kept green by rain. The perpetual neu- 
 trality of Corfu, established when the English 
 
256 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 gave up their protectorate of the Ionian Islands, 
 conduces to a feeling of prosperous tranquillity. 
 Intensely Greek as are the Corfiotes, they are 
 too wise not to take advantage of this admirable 
 state of things, and get rich and independent as 
 soon as possible. After their singularly varied 
 and stormy history, beginning with the revolt 
 mentioned by Thucydides, this lull is just what 
 they wanted. One sees beggars, but perhaps 
 they are constitutionally such, for the island is 
 still what Xenophon, three hundred and fifty 
 years before Christ, described it, a paradise of 
 fertility. Perhaps, therefore, the beggars are the 
 conscientious or the constitutional ones. The 
 money one gives them clinks in their pockets 
 with other moneys they have harvested in other 
 rounds is, perhaps, even kept to give you 
 change. 
 
 The Hotel St. Georges, where I am staying 
 (the grand Hotel St. Georges, no matter how 
 small !), is a very funny old affair, full of cuddies 
 and corners, canary-birds in cages, innumerable 
 pots of blooming flowers lining the staircases and 
 entries, mirrors and slices of mirrors throwing 
 your silvered elongation into half-mystified dis- 
 tances ; with, too (positively), a mosquito-net on 
 the little brass bedstead in my room. It fronts 
 the esplanade and its rich shade trees, where I 
 hear the cicadae singing as they do in our dear 
 
GREEK VIGNETTES. 257 
 
 land, and where the nurses and babies play all 
 day long in the heavy-lidded sunlight. This es- 
 planade is just the spot for that " beautiful but 
 baneful influence of classic reverie " of which Dis- 
 raeli speaks \ that sweet meditation which takes 
 us back to Homer, Thucydides, Xenophon, Ac- 
 tium, and Lepanto. One can sit on the benches 
 under the elms and plane-trees and dream delight- 
 ful dreams of ancient poets and philosophers, re- 
 construct Plato's Republic, listen to the eloquent 
 talk of Socrates, glance down the coast of Elis, 
 and repeople it with the mighty song of Pindar. 
 The tzitzirbos sing so lazily in the sunny air ; a 
 far steamer, faint in the sea and morning light 
 of the horizon, creeps stealthily into greater and 
 greater clearness as you gaze over to the grand 
 Acroceraunian crags j the gray citadel, rising as 
 it does from clustering churches, looks lumi- 
 nously dim in this azure incandescent air, and 
 might tell you delightful contes of the doges and 
 the pashas ; cooling winds blow in from the 
 plate-glass sea and stir mellifluously among the 
 thicket of scarlet geraniums that faces the antique 
 lion of St. Mark's, carved in the wall of the castle- 
 moat. Looking on this eloquence of sunlight 
 and perfume and perfect sea and air, one is be- 
 witched as with the Lamia-gaze of some dazzling 
 serpent. I cannot think of a more charming 
 place than Corfu in the summer full of game, 
 17 
 
258 GREEK VIGNETTES. 
 
 fish, and fruit ; full of the gentle murmurs of 
 poetic antiquity ; full of grace, scenery, and 
 quaintness. Yesterday evening the full moon 
 burst from behind the Epirote mountains, at first 
 like the brilliant glistening crimson of a huge 
 pomegranate that has burst its bell and revealed 
 the scarlet beauty of its seed ; then more and 
 more like some wonderful flower, as it rose and 
 rose until it hung on tiptoe on the sharp mount- 
 ain-edge, then slipped into the starry ether in 
 luminous serenity. How weird Castrades, and 
 the pallid sun-shotten water, and the looming 
 castle looked, under the amber symphonies of 
 this fairy light ! In the evening, at six, I leave 
 by the Sultan from Smyrna/ for Brindisi. We 
 have had a slight shower, which has suffused the 
 arid silvery air with moisture, and left behind 
 the " Midsummer-Night's Dream " in clouds. 
 
 ^ OF THE ^ 
 
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
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 Return to desk from which borrowed. 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
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