young man humbly. "I have seen knowledge that brought not happiness, and wealth that dwelt not with contentment. I have seen pleasure allied to vice, and religion linked to cruelty. I have seen the wicked man perish miserably in his iniquity; and I have seen the righteous man go down to the grave in peace."

"In these things thou hast learned the true wisdom of life," replied the phantom. "Profit by the lesson thou hast received. Return to thy flocks, and murmur not that because of thy earthly nature there are some things hidden from thy sight of which it befitteth thee to remain ignorant. Be patient, just, and diligent, and when we meet again thy soul will greet me as The Deliverer, not The Destroyer."

The spirit ceased speaking, and Salam, convinced and humbled, prostrated himself at the feet of his instructor. When he arose, he was alone,

a

standing beside the dead lamb in the very spot where the spirit had first appeared to him. Slowly, but with breast overflowing with joy and gratitude to the Fountain of all knowledge, Salam turned his steps to his father's cottage an altered man. No longer distracted by the false lights of human wisdom in seeking for the knowledge which is from above, the tempest of his soul subsided into a peaceful calm, and he pressed the innocent Zilpah to his bosom with a lighter and a happier heart than he had enjoyed for many months, for he had now learned and acknowledged the sublime truth, that virtue alone is true happiness.

The venerable Naram lived to see the last fond wish of his heart accom plished, in the union of Salam and Zilpah; and then, in the language of the sacred text, "he slept with his fathers."

are

Mr. Wordsworth made a tour through several parts of Greece in 1832 and 1833; and the present work is the result of his researches in Athens and Attica. Mr. Wordsworth is a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and head master of Harrow school, and his subject is appropriate to such situations, classical illustrations for the benefit of his pupils both in college and at school; his enquiries therefore limited to a particular point, and from their very nature cannot afford much amusement to the general, however they may interest the classical reader. It is but right, however, to say, that the execution of the work accords with the place it describes. The book is got up with a kind of Attic elegance, the Greek inscriptions neatly executed, and the lithographic plates, some of the best illustrations we have seen in that kind of engraving. He commences his chapters also in an appropriate manner. The usage of quotations, from various authors as tables of contents, has been a practice with us at home since the days of the Spectator; but we believe Mr. Wordsworth

is the first who has adapted it to a book of foreign travels, and we think there is some taste in heading a chapter of a work on Athens with a passage from some Greek author, giving an account of the matter contained in it. And though there is not much to interest the general reader, there are many curious details to command the attention of the classical student. The whole work exhibits evident traces of a mind intimately acquainted with the literary remains of antiquity, and the enthusiastic perseverance with which the author traces every locality that may throw any light upon his favorite studies, hardly exceeds the accurate taste with which he applies the result of his inquiries to these illustrations. We quote the following description of the effects of the surrounding scene upon an Athenian audience. Speaking of the Pnyx he says :—

"In this spot it is impossible to resist the impulse of reflections arising from the place itself, upon some of the distinguishing characteristics supplied to Athenian oratory, by the very locality in which it was exerted. The Pnyx, from

its position and its openness, supplied the orator who spoke there, with sources of eloquence influencing himself, and objects of appeal acting on his audience, which no other place of a similar object, not even the Roman forum itself, has ever paralleled in number or in interest. First of all, the Athenian orator, standing on the Bema of the Pnyx, had the natural elements at his service. There was the sky of Attica above his head, the soil of Attica beneath his feet, and above all, the sea of Attica visible behind him. Appeals to the ruling powers of these elements in other places vague and unmeaning, here were generally just and sometimes necessary. Here without any unnatural constraint he could fetch the deities from those elements and place them as it were on this platform before him. There must, therefore, have been something inexpressibly solemn in the ejaculation, гn xaì ù! Oh Earth and Gods! uttered in his most sublime periods by Demosthenes in this place."

After a few reflections he proceeds: "Visible behind him, at no great distance, was the scene of Athenian glory, the Island of Salamis. Nearer was the Piræus with its arsenals lining the shore, and its fleets floating upon its bosom. Before him was the crowded city itself. In the city immediately below him was the circle of the Agora planted with plane trees, adorned with statues of marble, bronze, and gilded with painted porticoes, and stately edifices, monuments of Athenian gratitude and glory. A little beyond it was the Areopagus; and above all, towering to his right, rose the Acropolis itself, faced with its Propylæa as a frontlet, and surmounted with the Parthenon as a crown. Therefore the Athenian orator was enabled to speak with a power and almost an exultation, which the presence of such objects alone could give either to himself or his hearers."

He then quotes an apposite passage from Eschines in illustration of his remark, and goes on:-.

"It is evident, from the productions of eloquence of which this passage is a specimen, and from the considerations above suggested, that much of the peculiar spirit which distinguishes Athenian oratory is to be ascribed not merely to the character of the speaker, and the physical quickness of his audience; but also, if we may so say, to the natural scenery of that theatre in which that eloquence was displayed."

The two following extracts we select as containing curious and ingenious

"This practice (of referring to the stadium for a measure of time) is, I think, to be explained by the considera

tion of the fact, that the stadium of

Athens, from which these illustrations the spectators as they sat and listened are derived, was nearly in the front of to those narratives in the theatre. Being thus visible to the audience, the stadium was properly appealed to by the dramatist number of courses which could be traas a sort of theatrical chronometer; the versed by a swift runner in that stadium during the occurrence of any given event, would thus give a clear idea of its duration. They would be like degrees on a visible dial traversed by a shadow cast upon its face."

Colonus naturally suggests to our traveller the Edipus of Sophocles; and the conflicting traditions, as to the locality of his tomb; some placing it at Athens, some at Colonus; on the contrivance of the poet, to obviate the difficulty, he remarks

expe

"Thus he was embarrassed by the claims of a double obligation; the dient by which he has contrived to satisfy these conflicting demands, and to convert cal beauty, is well worthy of notice. A the difficulty itself into a source of poetifew scenes before the close of the play, he leaves Edipus alone; Edipus, without a guide, goes forth about to die; but whither he is going the audience are not told; still a slight local intimation directs their minds to the site of the Areopagus at Athens. His daughters fetch him some clear water from a spring; the site of this spring is specified; it is at the Temple of Demeter Euchloas, and that west angle of the Acropolis at Athens. temple stood on the ascent at the south

Thus are the minds of the hearers in

duced by a gentle suggestion, to suppose

Edipus in the immediate neighbourhood of that spot; the mention of the compact of Pirithous and Theseus more remotely, of the broken chasm of steep rock more nearly, for such was the character of the Furies' Temple at Athens, would confirm them in this supposition.

Thus did Sophocles endeavour to satisfy the popular belief of those who clung to the opinion, that the body of Edipus lay interred in that sacred site. Yet was not the poet faithless to his own native village; Colonus, and the Temple of the Furies there, might still be regarded as the depositories of the same venerable trust. In vain does Antigone conjure Theseus to inform her where the body of

her father lies. That is a secret which

cannot be divulged. But when her father was seen for the last time by the spectators, he was still lingering at Colonus ; the impression, therefore, might still remain on their minds, that he is yet there. Thus," our author remarks, has he improved the difficulty itself into a source of mysterious beauty-a beauty singularly appropriate to the dark and awful character of the story which he was handling."

The description of Athens, and the Panathenæan procession, and the examination of the present state of Attica, to fix the position of the ancient Demi, and the various localities alluded to by the poets and orators of Ancient Greece, display great learning and

name to the spectator; and so the Venetians called it in their own language Negro ponte, the black bridge, for the same reason as they called a district of Dalmatia Monte-negro, the black mountain; and there is no more foundation for the conjecture that it is a corruption of ancient Greek than that Cape Colonne, so named from the white and conspicuous pillars still standing on it, is any derivation from Gouvío, its ancient name.

It is thus that, though there is really much information both valuable and curious, to be acquired by the classical reader in the perusal of this volume, he must be content to meet with many pages dull, and not a little pedantic. The author has not only sometimes wasted his industry in exploring and completing insignificant inscriptions, altogether devoid of either interest or advantage; but in digressing into description, he sometimes exhibits quaintness of style, and pomposity of diction which is positively ludicrous; for example, in this distich :—

"For ever delicately marching
Through pellucid air,"

a

"The master of the house terminates this domestic series, which consists of ten persons-sleep soon comes and strings the whole family together like a row of beads in one common slumber. Farther beyond them, and separated from the family by a low partition, is the place allotted to the irrational members of the household. The fowls come there from the open air, to roost on the transverse rafters of the roof; the ox stands there at his manger, and eats his evening meal; and

the white faces of three asses are seen peering out of the darkness, and bending nearly over the sleeping master and his

children."

own

With the exception of the three asses with white faces, which are not so often met in Irish cottages, (would they had been pigs,) we should suppose the rest of the description copied from our "Academic Sportsman" of former notoriety, who, among the striking objects that were new to him, introduces "The cackling hen, the interloping goose, The pretty little lamb, that skips about the house." 'Tis true our author's description is an illustration of a passage from Xenophon's Anabasis, delineating an Armenian cottage, and taken as one of those headings of chapters, which we

mentioned before, as giving the contents of that to which it is prefixed; but our learned author seems to dwell on it con amore, as if the inside of a peasant's cottage was a novelty never seen or described by a traveller before. In effect, when men "in populous cities pent" go abroad into the country, every common sight and sound is new to them, and a source of such enjoyment, that Milton's beautiful description is no exaggeration ; but when men are shut up in a college, and not only their persons are secluded, but their minds abstracted from all intercourse with things with which every one else is quite familiar, there is no extravagance into which their simplicity does not fall, and the ignorance of common objects is incredible. it is in our own memory that Dr. Orkburne had a real and living representative in our Universitiy, who for the first time in his life, at the age of 40, saw a sheep and the sea at Clontarf, and described them afterwards at Commons as extraordinary objects.

That such secluded men should see danger and causes of alarm in strange places, is very natural; so our author was not without his apprehensions. He intimates the difficulty and peril of researches of the kind in which he was engaged, by the following fact:

"The delineation of a chart of Athens and its suburbs, was lately commenced by two architects resident here. They were desirous of completing it as expeditiously as possible. Instead, however, of being accomplished, their task has just been abandoned, on account of the insecurity with which they found that even within sight of the walls of Athens, their researches were attended."

This was written in the year 1832; but we are well pleased to find that the state of things is now altogether changed. There is no town that has had such a rapid mutation as Athens within a few years. It is thus described by a traveller who visited it in

1829:

"The city contains 1500 houses, of which 1000 are inhabited by Greeks. We traversed these; and perhaps you would wish to have an idea of their appearance, though it is not easy to describe a town where you see neither streets nor houses. Conceive, then, a mud wall, or one not much better or stronger than that of a parish pound, enclosing an area of about

two miles in circumference, and extending in a semicircle at each side to the base of the Acropolis conceive this area to be filled and intersected with long, crooked, narrow, dirty lanes, not half so wide or so clean as those of the worst fishing town in England-conceive those dark and winding passages, enclosed by high, mouldering walls, in which there are gates like prison-doors, hammered with nailheads, opening in the middle, and always fastened by an iron chain, passed across through two large rings on the outside, as if the master, like a jailer, had taken care to lock up all the prisoners when he and lifeless in these lanes, except at long went abroad-conceive every thing silent intervals a savage dog uttering a dismal howl, a solitary Turk loosening or fastening a chain to let himself in or out; or a woman cautiously peeping through a crevice beside the gate-and this will give you a general impression of the present city of Minerva."*

Even this miserable semblance of a town was destroyed in the following year; the Greeks first tearing down or setting fire to the houses of the Turks; and the Turks, on their return, retaliating on those of the Greeks, till the whole was an uniform heap of rubbish, exhibiting a perfect picture of the desolation that follows oriental warfare, even in modern times. When actual hostilities had ceased, the Klepts and Palicares, dismissed from regular service, were allowed to roam through the ing themselves by plunder, and concountry, in marauding bands, supportnived at by the feeble government, who no longer paid them, and for ten or twelve years, Athens consisted of little more than huts among rubbish, infested by a most brutal and ferocious population. With respect to the monuments of art, it was supposed that they shared the fate of the town. In the Parthenon stood a Turkish mosque, and in the temple of Theseus a Greek church; and it was justly apprehended that the contending parties would destroy those edifices, if it was for no other reason but because they contained the hated places of their respective worship; but it was not so, and we are proud to say the world is indebted to an Irishman for their preservation. Lord Strangford, then Ambassador at the Porte, used all his influence for this purpose, and procured a firman from the Sultan, enjoining the Turks to spare these edifices, and

representations were made to the Greeks on the same subject, who were naturally inclined to spare their own monuments of ancient art; so that it was found that amid the ruin and desolation of every thing else, those beautiful edifices sustained no more injury than the barbarous warfare of Turks and Venetians in former times had inflicted upon them.

Yet this very destruction and desolation of every modern edifice, were favourable to the aspect of what remained of antiquity. Ruined and dilapidated as the relics were, they were less so than everything about them.There was scarce a building in Modern Athens left in so perfect a state as the Temple of Theseus, "and the least ruined objects," as our author rather quaintly remarks, "were some of the ruins themselves."

We are happy to state that Athens is at this moment rising literally like a phoenix from its ashes. There is a letter now lying before us, from a resident there, dated in November 1836, not more than four months since, giving a most favourable account of its present tranquillity and growing prosperity since the seat of the Greek government was transferred to it.

"The rubbish has been pierced by two good streets, crossing each other in the centre, and extending from side to side of

the town. In these, Sir P. Malcolm, the Rev. Mr. Leeves, and other Englishmen, have built houses, and such is the increase of the British population, that nearly £1000 have been subscribed, and deposited in the hands of our resident here, Sir E. Lyons, for erecting an English church, which is to form one of the public edifices of the city. When Dr. Walsh visited Athens, the only congregation of Western Christians was about 20 Catholics, assembled in the lantern of Demosthenes, and the only Christianity known there was deformed by the errors and ignorance of the Greek and

We trust that this new church of the reformed faith erected in the capital will be the nucleus of a purer Christianity, and as the Bavarians are a people disposed, like other German states, to the Reformation, that it will at length become the established religion of regenerated Greece.

Meantime the press, its great precursor and companion, is in constant activity; no less than 18 newspapers and periodicals are published every week, and read with avidity; and such is the freedom of discussion, that some of them are in opposition to the present government, though all are favourable to the person and character of good King Otho, who is very popular. Stimulated by the suggestions of the press, every effort is being made to reedify the monuments of ancient art; and the marble ruins of the Acropolis are fast rising, and assuming their ori- . ginally beautiful forms. Already the Temple of Victory is rebuilt; the Cariatides restored, and the splendid Parhibits the revival of the arts: the paper thenon opened. Our very letter exon which it is written, is an epistolary sheet, surmounted by a neat engraving, representing the present state of the city, with the Acropolis and Temple of Theseus. On one side of the foreground is a group of camels with their attendants in oriental costume, exhibiting what the people of the city lately were; on the other, the king and his attendants in European habits, displaying, what we trust the city will henceforth be, separated from eastern barbarism, and received as a member of the civilized society of the western world.