perplexity I had been involved, in regard to the ruins of Sparta: they laughed and ridiculed the cicerone, and seemed to me to be much accustomed to foreigners.

The Morea in fact swarms with Levantines, Franks, Ragusans, Italians, and particularly with young physicians, from Venice and the Ionian islands, who repair hither to despatch the cadis and agas. The roads are very safe: you find tolerably good living, and enjoy a great deal of liberty, provided you possess a little firmness and prudence. It is upon the whole, a very easy tour, especially for a man who has lived among the savages of America. There are always some Englishmen to be met with on the roads of the Peloponnese: the papas informed me that they had lately seen some antiquaries and officers of that nation. At Misitra, there is even a Greek house called the Engfish Inn, where you may eat roast beef, and drink Port wine. In this particular, the traveller is under great obligations to the Engfish it is they who have established good inns all over Europe in Italy, in Switzerland, in Germany, in Spain, at Constantinople, at Athens, nay, even at the very gates of Sparta, in despite of Lycurgus.

The archbishop knew the French vice-consul at Athens, and I think he told me that M. Fauvel had been his guest in the two or three excursions which he has made to Misitra. After I had taken coffee, I was shown the archbishop's palace and the church. The latter, though it cuts a great figure in our books of geography, contains nothing remarkable. The Mosaic work of the pavement is common, and the pictures extolled by Guillet, absolutely resemble the daubings of the school that preceded Perugino. As to the architecture, nothing is to be seen but domes more or less dilapidated, and more or less numerous. This cathedral, dedicated to St. Dimitri, and not to the Virgin Mary, as some have asserted, has for its share seven of these domes. Since this ornament was employed at Constantinople, in the decline of the art, it has been introduced in all the monuments of Greece. It has neither the boldness of the Gothic, nor the simple beauty of the antique. When of very large dimensions, it is certainly majestic, but then it crushes the structure which it adorns: when small, it is a paltry cap that blends with no other member of the architecture, and rises above the entablaturs

for the express purpose of breaking the harmonious line of the ogee.

I observed in the archiepiscopal library, some treatises of the Greek fathers, books on controversial subjects, and two or three Byzantine historians, among the rest Pachymeres. It might be worth while to collate the text of this manuscript, with the texts which we possess: but it must doubtless have been examined by our two great Grecians, the abbé Fourmont, and d'Ansse de Villoison. The Venetians, who were long masters of the Morea, probably carried off the most valuable manu scripts.

My hosts officiously showed me printed translations of some French works; such as Telemachus, Rollin, and some modern books printed at Bucharest. Among these translations I durst not say that I found Attala; if M. Stamati had not also done me the honour to impart to my savage the language of Homer. The translation which I saw at Misitra was not finished: the translator was a Greek, a native of Zante, who happened to be at Venice, when Atala appeared there in Italian, and from this version he began his in vulgar Greek. I know not whether I concealed my name from pride or modesty; but my petty fame of authorship was so highly gratified to find itself beside the brilliant glory of Lacedæmon, that the archbishop's porter had reason to praise my liberality-a kind of liberality of which I have since repented.

It was dark when I left the residence of the archbishop: we traversed the most populous part of Misitra, and passed through the bazar, asserted in several descriptions to be the Agora of the ancients, under the idea that Misitra is Lacedæmon. This bazar is a wretched market place, resembling those which are to be seen in our small provincial towns. Paltry shops, shawls, mercery, and eatables, occupy its streets. These shops were then lighted by lamps of Italian manufacture. Two Mainottes were pointed out to me selling, by the light of these lamps, cuttle-fish and the species of marine polypus, distinguished at Naples by the name of frulli di mare. These fishermen, who were tall and stout, looked like peasants of Franche Comté: I observed in them nothing extraordinary. I purchased of them a dog of Taygetus

he was of middling size, with a yellow, shaggy coat, very wide nostrils, and a fierce look.

Fulvus Lacon,

Amica vis pastoribus.

I called him Argus, the same name which Ulysses gave to his dog. Unluckily I lost him a few days afterwards in the journey from Argos to Corinth.

We met several women wrapped in their long garments: we turned aside to give them the way, in compliance with a custom originating rather in jealousy than politeness. I could not discern their faces; so that I knew not whether Homer's epithet of Kuvana celebrated for fair women, be yet applicable to Sparta.

I returned to Ibrahim's, after an excursion of thirteen hours, during which I had taken but a few moments' rest. Not only can I easily bear fatigue, heat, and hunger, but I have observed, that a strong emotion protects me from weariness and gives me new strength. I am besides convinced, and perhaps more than any other person, that an inflexible determination surmounts every difficulty and even triumphs over time. I determined not to lie down, to employ the night in taking notes, to proceed the next day to the ruins of Sparta, and then continue my journey without returning to Misitra.

I took leave of Ibrahim; ordered Joseph and the guide to proceed, with their horses, along the road towards Argos, and to wait for me at the bridge of the Eurotas which we had already passed in our way to Tripolizza. I kept the janissary only to accompany me to the ruins of Sparta, and could I have dispensed with his services I would have gone alone to Magoula; for I had experienced how much you are harassed in the researches you are desirous of making by your attendants who grow tired and impatient.

Having made these arrangements, on the 18th, half an hour before day-light, I mounted my horse with the janissary, and having given something to the slaves of the kind Ibrahim, I set off at full gallop for Lacedæmon.

We had proceeded at that pace for an hour along a road running direct south-west, when at break of day, I perceived some

Ruins and a long wall of antique construction: my heart began to palpitate. The janissary turning towards me pointed with his whip to a whitish cottage on the right, and exclaimed with a look of satisfaction, "Palæochori!" I made up towards the principal ruin which I perceived upon an eminence. On turning this eminence by the north-west for the purpose of ascending it, I was suddenly struck with the sight of a vast ruin of semicircular form which I instantly recognized as an ancient theatre. I am not able to discribe the confused feelings which overpowered me. The hill at the foot of which I stood, was consequently the hill of the citadel of Sparta, since the theatre was contiguous to the citadel; the ruin which I beheld upon that hill was of course the temple of Minerva Chalciocos, since that temple was in the citadel, and the fragments of the long wall which I had passed lower down must have formed part of the quarter of the Cynosuri, since that quarter was to the north of the city. Sparta was then before me; and its theatre to which my good fortune conducted me on my first arrival, gave me immediately the positions of all the quarters and edifices. I alighted, and ran all the way up the hill of the citadel.

Just as I reached the top, the sun was rising behind the hills of Manelaion. What a magnificent spectacle! but how melancholy! The solitary stream of the Eurotas running beneath the remains of the bridge Babyx; ruins on every side, and not a creature to be seen among them. I stood motionless, in a kind of stupor, at the contemplation of this scene. A mixture of admiration and grief, checked the current of my thoughts and fixed me to the spot; profound silence reigned around me. Determined, at least, to make echo speak in a spot where the human voice is no longer heard, I shouted with all my might, "Leonidas! Leonidas!" No ruin repeated this great name, and Sparta herself seemed to have forgotten her hero.

If ruins to which brilliant recollections are attached, demonstrate the vanity of all terrestrial things, it must however, be admitted, that names which survive empires, and immortalize ages and places, are not an empty sound. After all, glory should not be too much slighted; for what is fairer, unless it be virtue? The highest degree of felicity would be to unite them both in this life,

and such was the purport of the only prayer which the Spartane addressed to the gods; ut pulchra bonis adderent!

When my agitation had subsided, I began to study the ruins around me. The summit of the hill was a platform encompassed, especially to the north-west by thick walls. I went twice round it, and counted one thousand five hundred and sixty, and one thousand five hundred and sixty six ordinary paces; or nearly seven hundred and eighty geometrical paces; but it should be remarked, that, in this circuit I comprehend the whole summit of the hill, including the surve formed by the excavation of the theatre in this hill. It was this theatre that Leroi examined.

Some ruins partly buried in the ground, and partly rising above the surface, indicate, nearly in the centre of this platform, the foundations of the temple of Minerva Chalciœcos,* where Pausanias in vain sought refuge and lost his life. A sort of flight of steps, seventy feet wide, and of an extremely gentle descent, leads from the south side of the hill down to the plain. This was perhaps the way that conducted to the citadel, which was not a place of any great strength till the time of the tyrants of Lacedæmon.

At the commencement of these steps, and above the theatre, I saw a small edifice of a circular form, three fourths destroyed: the niches within it seem equally well adapted for the reception of statues or of urns. Is it a tomb? Is it the temple of the armed Venus? the latter must have stood nearly on this spot and belonged to the quarter of the Egides. Cæsar who boasted of being descended from Venus, had the figure of the armed Venus engraved on his ring: it was in fact, the two-fold emblem of the weakness and glory of that great man.

If the reader will place himself with me upon the hill of the citadel, he will then have a view of the following objects around him:

To the east, that is, towards the Eurotas, a hill of an oblong form and levelled at the top, as if for the purpose of a race

Chalciocos, signifies a house of brass. We must not however take the text of Pausanias and Plutarch in a literal sense, and imagine that this temple was entirely of brass. Those writers only mean to say, that it was lined with brass internally and perhaps externally. I hope too, that nobody will confound the two Pausaniases mentioned here, the one in the text and the other in the note.