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 Kama 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 proeeed, 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 Spartans 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 curve 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

Chalciccos, 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.

course or hippodrome. Two other hills, one on each side of that just mentioned, form with it two hollows, in which you perceive the ruins of the bridge Babyx, and the current of the Eurotas. Beyond the river, the view is bounded by a chain of reddish hills which compose mount Menelion. Beyond these hills, the high mountains which border the gulf of Argos, tower aloft in the distance.

In this space, seen to the eastward, between the citadel and the Eurotas, looking north and south by east, in a parallel direction to the course of the river, we must place the quarter of the Limnates, the temple of Lycurgus, the palace of king Damaratus, the quarters of the Egides and the Messoates, one of the Leschi, the monument of Cadmus, the temples of Hercules and Helen, and the Platanistæ. In this extensive space I counted seven ruins standing, and above ground, but absolutely shapeless and dilapidated. As I was at liberty to choose, I gave to one of these ruins the name of Helen's Temple, and another I called the Tomb of Aleman. In two others I fancied I heheld the heroic monuments of Ægeus and Cadmus; I thus determined in favour of fable, and assigned nothing to history but the temple of Lycurgus. I prefer, I must confess, to black broth and barley bread, the memory of the only poet that Lacadæmon has produced, and the garland of flowers gathered by the Spartan maidens for Helen in the isle of Platanistæ.

Now looking towards the north, as you still stand on the site of the citadel, you see a hill of considerable height, commanding even that on which the citadel was erected, though this contradicts the text of Pausanias. The valley formed by these two hills must have been the site of the public place and the structures that adorn it, as the buildings appropriated to the meetings of the Gerontes and Ephori, the portico of the Persice and other edifices. On this side there are no ruins. To the north west extended the quarter of the Cynosuri, by which I had entered Sparta, and where I observed the long wall and some other remains.

Let us now turn to the west, and we shall perceive upon level spot in the rear and at the foot of the theatre, three ruins ; one of which is of considerable height, and circular like a towIn this direction must have lain the quarter of the Pitanates, the Theomelis, the tombs of Pausanias and Leonidas, the Lesche of the Crotanes, and the temple of Diana Isora.

er.

Lastly, if you turn your eye to the south, you will see an uneven space, intersected here and there by the bases of walls that have been razed to the ground. The stones of which they were composed, must have been removed, for they are not to be discovered any where round about. In this part stood the resi dence of Menelaus; and beyond it, on the road towards Amycle, rose the temple of the Dioscuri and of the Graces. This description will be rendered more intelligible, if the reader will turn to Pausanias, or merely to the travels of Anacharsis.

The whole site of Lacedæmon is uncultivated-the sun parches it in silence, and is incessantly consuming the marble of the tombs. When I beheld this desert, not a plant adorned the ruins, not a bird, not an insect, not a creature enlivened them, save millions of lizards, which crawled without noise up and down the sides of the scorching walls. A dozen half wild horses were feeding here and there upon the withered grass; a shepherd was cultivating a few water-melons in a corner of the theatre; and, at Magoula, which gives its dismal name to Lacedæmor, I observed a small grove of cypresses. But this Magoula formerly a considerable Turkish village, has also perished in this scene of desolation; its buildings are overthrown, and the index of ruins is itself but a ruin.

I descended from the citadel, and, after walking about a quarter of an hour, I reached the Eurotas. Its appearance was nearly the same as two leagues higher, where I had passed it, without knowing what stream it was. Its breadth before Sparta, is about the same as that of the Marne above Charenton. The bed of the river, nearly dry in summer, is a sand intermixed with small pebbles, overgrown with reeds and rose-laurels, among which run a few rills of a cool and limpid water. I drank of it abundantly, for I was parched with thirst. From the beauty of its reeds the Eurotas certainly deserves the epithet xxxdova, given it by Euripides; but I know net whether it ought to retain that of olo