behind each column there is a pilaster of corresponding style and proportion. The Christians of the country assert that this is the very same structure which was dedicated to the Unknown God, and in which St. Paul preached at present it is used as a mosque, and the Turks assemble there to pray. The city enjoys a very serene air, and the most malignant stars divest themselves of their baleful influences when they turn towards this country. This may easily be perceived, both from its fertility, and from the marbles and stones, which, during the long period that they have been exposed to the atmosphere, are not in the least worn or decayed. You may sleep out of doors bare-headed without experiencing the smallest inconvenience; in a word, the air which you breathe is so agreeable and so temperate, that you perceive a great difference on your departure. As to the inhabitants of the country, they are all Greeks, and are cruelly and barbarously treated by the Turks residing there, though their number is but small. There is a cadi, who administers justice, a sherif, called soubachy, and some janissaries sent hither every three months by the Porte. All these officers received the Sieur Deshayes with great respect when we visited the place, and exempted him from all expences, at the cost of the Grand Signor.

On leaving Athens you pass through the great plain which is full of olive-trees, and watered by several streams that increase its fertility. After proceeding for a full hour, you reach the shore, where is a most excellent harbour, which was formerly defended by a chain. The people of the country call it the Lion's Harbour, from a large lion of stone which is still to be seen there; but by the ancients it was denominated the harbour of Piræus. It was at this place that the Athenians assembled their fleet, and were accustomed to embark."

The ignorance of Deshayes' secretary, for it is not Deshayes himself who writes, is astonishing; but we see what profound admiration was excited by the view of

the monuments of Athens, when the finest of those monuments still existed in all its glory.

A. D. 1630.
Stochove.

French consuls. The establishment of French consuls in Attica preceded by some years the visit of Deshayes. I conceived, at first, that Stochove had been at Athens in 1630; but, on comparing his text with that of Deshayes, I am convinced that this Flemish gentleman merely copied from the French ambassador.

A. D. 1635.
Ant. Pacific.

Father Antonio Pacifico published, in 1636, at Venice, his Description of the Morea, a work without method, in which Sparta is taken from Misitra.

A. D. 1645. French Mission

aries.

A few years afterwards Greece witnessed the arrival of some of those missionaries, who spread the name, the glory, and the love of France over the whole face of the globe. The Jesuits of Paris settled at Athens about the year 1645, the Capuchins in 1658, and in 1669, Father Simon purchased the Lantern of Demosthenes, which became the place of entertainment for strangers.

A. D. 1668. De

De Monceaux visited Greece in 1668. Monceaux. We have an extract from his travels printed at the end of Bruyn's. He has described antiquities, in the Morea, of which not a vestige is left. De Monceaux travelled with l'Aisné by order of Louis XIV,

The French missionaries whilst engaged in works of charity were not unmindful of those pursuits which were calculated to reflect honour on their country. Father Babin, a Jesuit, published, in 1672, an Account of the present State of the City of Athens. Spon was the editor of this work. Nothing so complete and so circumstantial on the antiquities of Athens had yet appeared.

A. D. 1672.
Fath. Babin.

A.D.1674. Noin

M. de Nointel, the French ambassador to tel and Galland. the Porte, passed through Athens in 1674; he was accompanied by Galland, the learned orientalist. He had drawings made of the basso-relievos of the Parthenon. The originals have perished, and we think

ourselves extremely fortunate in still possessing the copies of the Marquis de Nointel. None of these, however, has yet been published, except that which represents the pediment of the temple of Minerva.*

A. D. 1675. Guillet, or La Guilletiere.

In 1675, Guillet, under the assumed name of La Guilletière, published his Ancient and Modern Athens. This work, which is a mere romance, occasioned a violent quarrel among the antiquaries. Spon detected Guillet's falsehoods: the latter was nettled, and wrote an attack in the form of a dialogue, on the Travels of the physician of Lyons. Spon now determined not to spare his antagonist; he proved that Guillet, or La Guilletière, had never set foot in Athens, that he had composed his rhapsody from memoirs procured from the missionaries, and produced a list of questions transmitted by Guillet to a capuchin of Patras: nay, more, he gave a catalogue of one hundred and twelve errors, more or less gross, committed by the author of Ancient and Modern Athens in his romance.

A. D. 1676.

Spon and

Guillet, or La Guilletière, is consequently entitled to no credit as a traveller, but his work, at the time of its publication, was not without a degree of merit. Guillet made use of the accounts which he obtained from the Fathers Simon and Barnabas, both of whom were missionaries at Athens; and he mentions a monument, the Phanari tou Diogenis, which was not in existence in the time of Spon. The Travels of Spon and Wheeler, performed in 1675 and the following year, ap- Wheeler. peared in 1678. Every reader is acquainted with the merits of this work, in which the arts and antiquities are handled with a critical skill before unknown. Spon's style is heavy and incorrect; but it possesses the candour and the ease which characterize the publications of that day. The Earl of Winchelsea, ambassador from the court of London, also visited Athens in Winchelsea. 1676, and had several fragments of sculpture conveyed to England.

A. D. 1676.

While the general attention was thus directed to * In the atlas to the new edition of the Travels of Anacharsis. VOL. I. C

26

A. D. 1676.

Guillet, or La
Guilletiere.

INTRODUCTION.

Attica, Laconia was neglected. Guillet, encouraged by the sale of his first imposture, produced in 1676 his Ancient and Modern Lacedæmon. Meursius had published his different treatises de Populis Attica, de Festis Græcorum, &c. &c.; and thus furnished a stock of materials, ready prepared for any writer who chose to treat of Greece. Guillet's second work is full of the grossest blunders on the locality of Sparta. The author insists that Misitra is Lacedæmon; and it was he who first gained credit for that egregrious error. "Nevertheless," says Spon, 66 Misitra does not stand on the site of Sparta, as I know from M. Giraud, Mr. Vernon, and others."

Giraud.

Giraud had been the French consul at Athens for eighteen years when Spon travelled in Greece. He understood the Turkish and Greek languages, as well as the vulgar Greek. He had begun a description of the Morea, but, as he afterwards entered into the service of Great Britain, his manuscript probably fell into the hands of his last employers.

Vernon.. Vernon, an English traveller, has left nothing but a letter printed in the Philosophical Transactions for 1676. He gives a rapid sketch of his travels in Greece. Sparta," says he, "is a desert place: Misitra, which is four miles off, is inhabited. You find at Sparta almost all the walls of the towers and the foundations of the temples, with many columns demolished, as well as their capitals. A theatre is yet standing, perfect and entire. It was formerly five miles in circumference, and is situated about a quarter of a mile from the river Eurotas."

It should be observed, that Guillet, in the preface to his last work, mentions several manuscript memoirs on Lacedæmon. "The least defective," says he, "are in the possession of M. Saint Challier, secretary to the French embassy in Piedmont.

We have now arrived at another epoch in the history of the city of Athens. The travellers whom we have hitherto quoted beheld some of the most beautiful monuments of Pericles in all their integrity. Pococke,

Chandler, and Leroi, admired them only in their ruins. In 1687, while Louis XIV. was erecting the colonnade of the Louvre, the Venetians were demolishing the temple of Minerva. I shall speak hereafter of this deplorable event, a consequence of the victories of Konigsmark and Morosini.

A. D. 1688.
Coronelli.

In this same year, 1687, appeared at Ve- Pacifico. nice the Notizia del Ducato d'Atene, by Pietro Pacifico, a small work which displays no marks of taste or pains. Father Coronelli, in his Geographical Description of the Morea reconquered by the Venetians, has shown erudition; but he furnishes no new information, and his quotations and his maps should not be implicitly relied on. The petty military transactions extolled by Coronelli form a striking contrast with the places which are the theatre of them. Among the heroes of this conquest, we remark, however, a prince de Turenne, who fought near Pylos, says Coronelli, with the intrepidity natural to all the members of his house. Coronelli confounds Sparta with Misitra.

The Atene Attica, of Fanelli takes up the Fanelli. history of Athens from its origin, and brings it down to the period at which the author wrote. His work is of little importance as far as regards antiquities; but it contains curious particulars of the siege of Athens by the Venetians in 1687, and a plan of that city, of which Chandler seems to have availed himself.

A. D. 1704. Paul Lucas.

Paul Lucas enjoys a high reputation among the class of travellers, and I am astonished at it: not but that he amuses us with his fables; the battles which he fights single-handed against fifty robbers—the prodigious bones which he meets with at every step— the cities of giants which he discovers-the three or four thousand pyramids which he finds on a public road, and which nobody besides himself ever saw, are diverting stories enough: but then he mangles all the inscriptions that he copies; his plagiarisms are incessant, and his description of Jerusalem is taken verbatim from that of Deshayes. Lastly, he speaks of Athens as if he had