Vernon. 4. D. 1687. Pacifico. A. D. 1688. vice of Great Britain, his manuscript probably fell into the hands of his last employers. 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 Chalier, 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. Pocoke, Chandler, and Leroi, admired them only in their ruins. In 1687, while Louis XIV was erecting the colonade 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 Koningsmark and Morosini. In this same year, 1687, appeared at Venice, the Notizia del Ducato d'Atene by Pietro Pacifico, a small work which diplays no marks of taste or pains. Father Coronelly, 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 Tu renne, 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 history of Fanelli. 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. 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 stepthe 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 copied verbatim from that of Deshayes. Lastly, he speaks of Athens as if he had never been there, and what he says of that city is one of the most glaring falsehoods that ever traveller had the impudence to publish. "Its ruins," says he, "are, as may be supposed, the most remarkable part of Athens. In fact, though the houses are very numerous in that city, and the climate delicious, there are scarcely any inhabitants. Here you find an accommodation that you meet with no where else; whoever pleases may live here without paying any rent, the houses being given away for nothing. For the rest, if this celebrated city surpasses all those of antiquity in the number of monuments which it has consecrated to posterity; it may likewise be asserted, that the excellence of its climate has preserved them in better condition than those of any other place in the world, at least of all such as I have seen. It would seem as if elsewhere people had A. D. 1704. A. D. 1704. taken delight in the work of destruction: and war has, in almost every country, occasioned ravages which, while they have ruined the inhabitants, have at the same time disfigured all the monuments of their better days. Athens alone, either accidentally, or from that respect which must necessarily be commanded by a city, once the seat of the sciences, and to which the whole world is under obligation-Athens, I say, was alone spared in the universal destruction. In every part of it you meet with marbles of astonishing beauty and magnitude; they were profusely introduced; and at every step you discover columns of granite and of jasper." A. D. 1718. A. D. 1528. Athens is very populous; houses are not given away there, neither are columns of granite and jasper to be met with at every step: in a word, seventeen years prior to 1704, the monuments of that celebrated city had been demolished by the Venetians. The most singular circumstance is, that we were already in possession of M. de Nointel's drawings and Spon's travels, when Paul Lucas printed this account, worthy of a place in the Arabian Nights. The narrative of the travels of the Sieur Pellegrin, in the kingdom of Morea, is dated 1718. The author seems to have been a man of little education and still less science. His paltry pamphlet of one hundred and eighty-two pages is a collection of anecdotes of gallantry, songs and wretched poetry. The Venetians had remained masters of the Morea from 1685; they lost it in 1715. Pellegrin has sketched the history of this last conquest of the Turks, which is the only interesting part of his work. The abbé Fourmont went to the Levant, by order of Louis XV, in quest of inscriptions and manuscripts. I shall have occasion to mention in the present work some of the discoveries made at Sparta by that learned antiquary. His travels have remained in manuscript, and only some fragments of them are known; their publication would be highly desirable as we pos sess ntohing complete respecting the monuments of the Peleponnese. Pocoke. Pocoke visited Athens on his return from Egypt. A. D. 1739. He has described the monuments of Attica with that accuracy which communicates a knowledge of the arts, but excites no enthusiasm for them. Wood, Dawkins, and Bouverie were just then making their literary tour in honour of Homer. The first picteresque tour of Greece was that Leroi. A. D. 1740 Wood, Dawkins, and Bou of verie A. D. 1758. Chandler accuses the French artist of a vio- Leroi. lation of truth in some of his drawings; and I have myself remarked in them superfluous ornaments. Leroi's sections and plans have not the scrupulous fidelity of Stuart's; but taking it altogether, his work is a monument honourable to France. Leroi was at Lacedæmon, which he clearly distinguishes from Misitra, and where he recognized the theatre and the dromos. I know not, if the Ruins of Athens by Robert Sayer, A. D. 1759. be not an English translation of Leroi's book with Sayer, new engravings of the plates. I must likewise acknowledge my ignorance of Pars' work, which Chandler mentions with commendation. In 1761, Stuart enriched his country with his celebrated work, intituled, Antiquities of Athens. It is a grand undertaking, particularly useful to artists, and executed, with that accuracy of admeasurement, which is, at the present day, considered such a high recommendation: but the general effect of the prints is not good; the whole together is deficient in that truth which pervades the details. A. D; 1761. Chandler's Travels, which speedily followed Stu- A. D. 1764. art's Antiquities, might enable us to dispense with all the others. In this work the doctor has displayed un Chandler. common fidelity, a pleasing and yet profound erudi- A. D. 2764. tion, sound criticism and exquisite taste. I have only one fault to find with him, which is, that he frequently mentions Wheeler, but never introduces the name of Spon without a marked reluctance. Spon certainly deserves to be noticed when the partner of his labours is spoken of; Chandler, as a scholar and a traveller, ought to have forgotten that he was an Englishman. In 1805, he published his last work on Athens, which I have not been able to procure. Riedesel visited the Peloponnese and Attica in 1773. He has filled his little work with many grand reflections on the manners, laws, and religion of the Greeks and Turks. The baron travelled in the Morea three years after the Russian expedition. A great number of monuments had perished at Sparta, at Argos, and at Megalopolis, in consequence of this invasion; in the same manner as the antiquities of Athens owed their final destruction to the expedition of the Venetians. The first volume of M. de Choiseul's magnificent work appeared at the beginning of 1778. This performance I shall have frequent occasion to mention with deserved commendation. I shall merely remark in this place, that M. de Choiseul has not yet published the monuments of Attica and of the Peloponnese. The author was at Athens, in 1784; and it was the same year, I believe, that M. Chabert determined the latitude, and longitude of the temple of Minerva. The researches of Messrs. Foucherot and Fauvel began about 1780, and were prosecuted in the succeeding years. The memoirs of the latter describe places and antiquities heretofore unknown. M. Fauvel was my host at Athens, and of his labours I shall speak in another place. Our great Greek scholar d'Anse de Villoison travelled over Greece nearly about this period, but we have not reaped the benefit of his studies. M. Lechevalier paid a hasty visit to Athens in 1785. The travels of M. Scrofani bear the stamp of the age, that is to say, they are philosophical, political, economical, &c. To the study of antiquity they contribute nothing; but the author's observations on the |