languages, that if left freely to operate would encourage the most pleasing hopes of a general expansion of their minds, and perhaps an ultimate restoration to some part of their ancient dignities. And to assist them to a certain extent in the prosecution of such noble purposes, they are abundantly supplied with grammars and dictionaries; but alas! the pusillanimous tyranny of the besotted Turk watches with murderous suspicion these symptoms of rising manhood, and suspends the instruments of the executioner over the cradle of liberty.

A Greek press has been long established at Venice, but "subject to the supervision and censures of a licenser; and transmitting, therefore, no ray of light calculated to pierce and dispel the thick gloom of ignorance." There is not a single library for the sale of books throughout the Levant; and of the books, either originals or translations, lately printed in the Romaïc character, from which any sound knowledge could be gained, the copies are so very thinly scattered, as to make little or no impression on the character of the Greeks, or to afford ground for expecting from them, in any considerable degree, the dispersion of useful knowledge. The philosophical treatises of Coraï, and Psallida the schoolmaster at Ioannina, are the best and purest in the vulgar idiom. But love and drinking songs, and occasional lampoons, are the prevailing subjects on which the genius of the modern Greek is employed; in which now and then a spark appears which serves only for an instant to illumine the surrounding vacancy, and render more visible the darkness of ignorance.

We are glad to learn from Mr. Hobhouse that, notwithstanding their state of degradation, the Greeks still cherish in secret the love of liberty, and a contempt for their oppressors. When the chanter from the minaret is announcing the death of a Mahometan, each Greek that meets a friend congratulates him that a "dog is dead." Though we are far from admiring this mode of gratifying their spleen, any more than the general habit of violent abuse and contumely, in which they are said to delight, yet without some elasticity against the pressure of the tyranny under which they groan, all hope of amelioration would be gone for ever. A small mountainous district in the island of Crete is said to contain the only portion of the Greeks which has not been reduced to subjection to the Turks, or Venetians. This tract is called Epaxia, and has one town and twenty villages, each governed by its own primates. It can send about 4,000 men into the field. In this island particularly, and generally throughout Greece, a lively sensation was felt when the French expedition to Egypt took place; and the health of Bonaparte is said to have been the daily toast at Athens. Mr. Hobhouse presents

us with the stanzas in trochaics of Polyzoïs, called "the war song of the Greeks in Egypt, fighting in the cause of freedom;" and declares it to be his opinion, that if Bonaparte had marched an army from Vallona, in Albania, across Macedonia to Constantinople, which he was considered as being prevented from doing only by his war with Russia, every Greek would have joined his standard.

After all, perhaps, upon their commercial spirit and experience in navigation the best hope of Greece may now be said to be founded. They navigate the Ottoman navy, and are well acquainted with the management of the largest ships. Their most expert sailors are the inhabitants of the small island of Hydra (the Aristera of the ancients), whose ships are built at Fiume. The Hydriotes have by their success in commerce, particularly in the carrying trade, acquired wealth enough to purchase from the Porte the election of their own magistrates. The number of Greeks employed at sea are said to amount to 50,000, and their capacity of making excellent sailors under the tuition of an European power, seems to justify the hint given by Mr. Hobhouse of the benefit to be derived from the occupation of the islands of the Archipelago.

We must now follow our ingenious traveller from Athens to Smyrna, the most considerable city of the Turkish empire, where they came to anchor in the port, after being more than thirty hours in passing up the gulf.

Notwithstanding the frequent recurrence of plagues and earthquakes to which this devoted city has been subject, it is said to increase rather than diminish in size. The present number of its inhabitants is nearly 150,000. It is built partly on a hill once called the Pagus, and partly on the plain at the foot of it; and the portion of the town which stretches along the edge of the water is for the most part inhabited by Franks, and has thence obtained the name of Frank Street. Mr. Hobhouse gives the following account of the buildings and state of society in this part of the city.

"The houses of the consuls and the principal merchants are built altogether in a very commodious fashion, enclosing on three sides a court or small garden, but are only one story in height, and composed of unburnt brick in frames of plaistered laths. The warehouses, stables, and offices, are below, the family apartments above; open galleries or terraces, on the top of the unraised part of the lower buildings, serve for communication, or as a place of promenade. The best houses are at the edge of the water, and as there is a stone pier for the whole length of the Frank town, are thus very conveniently situated for the loading and unloading of the

boats from the ships. The mansion of the English consul-general, as far as respects the interior of the building, is such as might do credit to any of the capital streets of London.-There is in the Frank quarter a very good hotel, besides several taverns and lodging-houses for the accommodation of travellers.

"The many English, French, Dutch, German, and Italian families who are settled in the place, and some of them intermarried with the principal Greeks, formed, before the revolutionary war, a very large and amicable society, and the Frank quarter at Smyrna deserved and was flattered by the name of Petite Paris. Since that period, although the good understanding between those who are protected by the English, and those who are protected by the French consul (to whom all not British, except a few Americans, and those under the Austrian minister, are now subject), has been interrupted by the manners of the new regime, yet there still subsists an institution which renders a residence in Smyrna agreeable to strangers as well as to settlers. This is a club, which supports a set of public rooms, fitted up in a very comfortable and splendid style, called, as in Italy, the Casino. Here there is a reading-room furnished with all the papers and gazettes of Europe, except the English, and there are two other apartments with billiard tables. Refreshments of every kind can be procured in the house for those who choose to form parties for supper. The rooms open at eight o'clock every evening; and during the carnival, the subscribers give a ball once a week, to which all the respectable Greeks and the ladies of their families are invited. The annual subscription is five guineas, and all strangers not residents of Smyrna are permitted to attend the Casino without any payment. Unfortunately the wars of monarchs have become the wars of the merchants of Smyrna, and the Casino, during our visit, was threatened to be overturned by the national feuds of the two belligerents.

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Nothing attracts the attention of a traveller in the Levant more than the consular establishment, which the Turks, so haughty and despotic, so averse to every thing Christian, have long suffered, and still suffer, to exist in almost all the principal towns of their empire. At Smyrna, the Frank town, no inconsiderable place of itself, may be said to be under the complete jurisdiction of the foreign powers. The consuls display the standards of their respective nations; they have their prisons, and their soldiers, who wait at their gates and precede them when they walk or ride, and their houses are sanctuaries which not even the Turk attempts to penetrate. On the night of the 10th of March, a Greek was murdered by an assassin, who took refuge in the house of the French consul. The next day the gate of the palace, as it is called, was besieged by Janissaries, and a crowd of the relations of the deceased. The man was not given up; and in conseqence a whole host of complainants surrounded the governor of the city as he was riding; but, as I myself saw, could get from him no other answer than that he would speak to the French minister." P. 618.

Mr. Hobhouse gives a very inviting account of the figs, grapes, pomegranates, lemons, oranges, and melons with which the gardens of the Franks abound: the tables also of these foreigners are no less distinguished by the delicacies with which they are supplied. Fish is very plentiful in the bay, particularly the red mullet. Oysters and sea-urchins, and other shell fish, amounting, according to Hasselquist, to ten different sorts, are dragged up from their beds, in different parts of the harbour. Hares, red-legged partridges, and snipes, are found in the vicinity of the city, in great abundance." The following account of the favourite pastime of the Turks, the throwing of the djerid, may amuse the reader.

"On the 11th of March, the spot was crowded with them mounted on horses superbly caparisoned, the Musselim himself, with the chief Agas of the city, being amongst the number. Several slaves, chiefly blacks, were attending on foot. Each of the riders was furnished with one or two djerids (straight white sticks, a little thinner than an umbrella stick, less at one end than at the other, and about an ell in length), together with a thin cane, crooked at the head. The sport soon began.

"The horsemen, perhaps a hundred in number, galloped about in as narrow a space as possible, throwing the djerids at each other, and shouting each man, selecting an opponent who had darted his djerid, and was for the moment without a weapon, rushed furiously towards him, screaming Ollóh! Ollóh!' The other fled, looking behind him, and the instant the dart was launched, either stooped downwards, almost touching the ground with his head, or wheeled his horse with an inconceivable rapidity, and picking up a djerid with his cane, or taking one from a running slave, in his turn pursued the enemy, who wheeled instantly on throwing his djerid. The greatest dexterity was requisite and practised, in order to avoid the concurrence of the different parties, and to escape the random blows of the djerids, which were flying in every direction.

"The chief performer was a Mameluke slave, mounted on an Arabian courser, whom I observed generally engaged with the Musselim, himself a very expert player, His djerid flew with a celerity almost sightless, perhaps for a hundred yards, and when it struck against the high back of the flying horseman's saddle, sounded through all the field. He would wheel in as small a space as would suffice for an expert scater; and not unfrequently he caught the flying djerid in the air, and returned them at his pursuer, before the other could have time to turn his horse.

"The sport is not a little hazardous: a blow on the temple might be fatal; and several accidents have occurred, which might reasonably deter any one from exposing himself on such occasions. The late Capudan Pasha, Kutchuc Hussein Pasha, cut off the head of one of his officers who wounded him on the shoulder with a djerid. The

conduct of Jussuff Pasha, twice Grand Vizier, was indeed very different. When he was Musselim of Erzeroum, a slave deprived him of his right eye by a similar accident: Jussuff, on recovering from the first stupefaction of the blow, ordered the man a purse of money, with an injunction to quit the city immediately; for,' added he, ' though I am not angry now, I know not what I may be when I come to feel the consequences of this accident."" P. 633.

The description of the country round Smyrna is very pleasing. We will extract the account of the favourite ride to the village of Bournabat, a large village about four miles up the country. "The whole road from the shore to Bournabat is between hedge

rows.

"When riding to the village, we found ourselves in a beautiful green lane, which, as we had seen nothing like it since the commencement of our tour, made us forget we were in Turkey. Trees thickly dispersed in the hedge, gave the whole country the woody appearance of one of our most cultivated English counties. They were chiefly of the sort producing amygdalon, or wild almond, which was then (March the 21st) green, and eaten by the peasants. The grounds on each side the road (which are of a chalky soil mixed with a portion of sand, and covered with a light black earth) were laid out in corn-fields, or cultivated with the cotton and tobacco plant, interspersed with many large gardens and olive-groves. The anemony, tulíp, and ranunculus, were blooming in wild profusion under the hedges and beside the path. A little way from the village we passed a very large burying-ground, shaded by an extensive forest of cypresses. From the magnitude of this cemetery Bournabat is supposed to have been once a town of some note, and, indeed, the first patents granted to our Levant consuls, gave them jurisdiction at Smyrna and Bonavre. At present the village is chiefly composed of very elegant country-houses, built in the European fashion, belonging to the merchants of Smyrna. It contains one open space, surrounded by a few neat shops, and shaded by several large and aged cedar trees, whose branches are hung with storks' nests. These birds had arrived from their winter quarters nearly at the time when we passed into Asia. They were stalking about on the flat roofs of the houses, and even in the streets of Bournabat, perfectly unmolested. Such, indeed, is the attachment of the storks to the habitation of man, that I do not recollect to have ever seen their nests in a tree at any distance from some human dwelling, and they build even in the tops of moscks and inhabited houses: I have observed many in the suburbs of Constantinople.-The traveller, in his walks amidst the ruins of ancient cities, is often awakened from his reverie by the loud chatterings of one of these domestic birds, perched on the fragment of a column, or on the shed of the solitary shepherd. The clapping of their long bills produces a sound similar to, and full as loud as, that of a watchman's rattle when turned round slowly, or of the wheel put in a garden to scare the birds.