North engendered; but where the rapture of Hope lit up the soul, until it saw in the trembling of the orange-tree, and the beauty of its bloom, in the spray of the cascade and the prism which arched it, a living presence of grace? A land, where harmony of thought and energy of action were equally illustrated, in the stirring representations of the drama, gliding from the masked actor with all the music of measured rhythm and a tuneful tongue; equally illustrated by the faithful eye and obedient hand of the artist, as his spirit caught a precision in delineation," which vanished imperceptibly into proportion, until there lived upon the rival canvas of Protogenes and Apelles, the charming creations of the ideal. A land where science and truth, even, yielded to the spirit of beauty; where stars and suns were compelled to move in harmony with a preconceived theory, in the unbroken circle, and not in the unharmonious ellipse; where the perfection of the standard would not allow the idea of beauty to be analyzed; although in its analysis the mind, like Newton, should separate its beam, clear, white, straight and dazzling, into the seven hues of the rainbow. Was it not a land for a poet to die in? Was it not a land wherein Byron, with his irrepressible poetic sensibility, should breathe his last wild note for the liberty of his adopted country?

We passed the ancient Arcadia within the hour. Although its coast has not so much of the beetling, craggy aspect as other parts of the Morea, yet in vain I looked for the green sward or vista of leafage, with Pan playing his lute upon the gnarled roots of the woodland. No pastoral repose softly swelled to the rising hill. The bleakness and harshness of the shore, spoke of the people who now indolently and sinfully draw out an ignoble existence, where once rural life joyed in her favorite haunt.

Yet we trust Greece has flung out the "banner with the strange device, EXCELSIOR." Twenty years ago, Athens had not a house. Now it numbers 20,000 people. Missions and schools, colleges and archæological societies, are exhuming the

ancient spirit. The zeal of the intelligent Greeks for their ancient literature is intense. In their schools are found little bright urchins, bearing the names of Leonidas, Aspasia, Demosthenes, and Miltiades.

The Morea can support five millions of people; yet there is not 900,000 within its borders, and among these not a farmer worth $1000. The government is poor, and it is as mean as poor. Greece is rich; how rich in its inheritance of greatness and in its future promise! It lacks the moral stamina which alone conserve the public weal, and which would send back to Bavaria the contemptible Otho and his truckling parasites, and scorn the influence of Russia, which even in this sunny clime is exercised to chill popular aspiration.

Well, we have arrived at Zante. As a sample of the Ionian isles, it is worth some notice. A rocky line, perpendicular and rough, forms the coast. A little art has been expended in making the harbor. On these heights are white houses irregularly distributed, which form a town. As our steamer rounds to, eager and crowded boats rush out of their coverts. Their steamers never land. They drop anchor, and the exit and entry are performed by little boats manned by jabbering Greeks. The scene which takes place at the gangway when these boats approach, is indescribable. Never did Hubbub hold a more Babel-revelry. The Greeks crawl up by chains and ropes, and though kicked off, manage to fall into a boat and again mount up. The water swarms with them to-day. An unusual number of Zanteotes, say 150, are going up to Corfu to attend a festival. These fètes number about 160 per annum, excluding Sunday, which is the biggest jollification of all. The Roman church has a goodly number of sacred days; but the Greek church overtops it. Why so many? Where can they find time? Bless you! Do you inquire after seeing these strutting dandies on deck, and those ladies dressed out and shivering with vanity like a pea-fowl on a chimney-top? They look and swell as if they were severally Presidents and Queens of these isles. But their fortune is on their back. Nice

patent-leather boots, fur-lined coats and jewelry, adorn the men, and embroidered silk and satin, with enormous flounces, apparel the women; but if you go into their houses, you see nothingabsolutely nothing. They live on gayety and olives. They dance all the time except in olive season, when a few have been seen to dig the ground.

Now as I write we leave the isle, and the olive trees, ever green, embowering each mound and hill-slope, tell of the only riches (except the currant, which grows spontaneously) these idlers possess. The Olive requires little cultivation, and less soil. It grows almost upon the bare rocks, interweaving its roots like ivy; the trees thus supporting each other. There is no water, no manure, to assist them. They grow on the principle that Sam Weller's horse went on; he was too poor to pull, but once start the cart, and the shafts would keep him up and going while the impulse continued.

The Zanteotes, I said, were a pattern of the present Greeks, not alone in their gayety, but in their mendacity and cunning. They play the rascal as a matter of course; and have no respeet for a man who does not. They live on little, are never in want, and keep their fêtes more to gratify their love of ease than any religious sentiment. What is singular too, is, that they have not changed, these islanders, since Homer's time. The Pagan has given way to the Christian(?) worship. That is all. Their moral character and pursuits, or rather lack of character and pursuits, are the same. The only pursuit they follow with perseverance is the dance, and it is the same miserable dance which frolicked under the olive shade when Ulysses came back and gave the natives a grand fandango. Their music is an old reed or pipe, precisely the same used by Pan, and a kind of a monotonous tum tum! tum !" made on a goat-skin spread over a wooden bowl. A slow drawling dance follows a slow drawling piping and thrumming; yet more than half the year these idlers thus pass the time. Well, the currant will grow and the olive will ripen, and the Zanteotes will enjoy life merrily behind their cliffs and peaks.

I learn from one of our English captains that he was Commandant of Ithaca, whose twin peaks lie off to the right, just as they did when Grecian song was young and Penelope watched (a pattern of a good wife, especially in her knitting!) for the coming of her lord. He informs me that there are many monu ments there, Ulysses' castle and Arethusa's fountain, for instance, which bespeak its primitive greatness. Cephalonia we now approach. The only distinguishing point in that isle is, that the inhabitants do not allow their ladies ever to be seen. Our boat at last runs between Cephalonia or Samos ("Dash down that cup of Samian wine,"-Byron) and Ithaca. A curious phenomenon is seen upon the former. The water of the sea flows into the land in currents or rivulets, which descend and are lost in the bowels of the earth. Grist-mills have been erected on them. They pay, too. Ithaca has the form of the figure 8, and is in the middle about a half mile wide. It is just as it was in Ulysses' time, devoid of any level lawn. Captain Lowry informs me that there is not one hundred square feet of level. Well might the Chief Ulysses refuse the present of horses offered him by the Persian monarch, for neither mead nor plain can supply the horse with food or indulge his speed.

The sun had gone down when we entered the straits between these two isles. The dark mountains hung over in deep shadow, which the moon relieved by silvering their tops and revealing the old ruins of the Castle of Ulysses, as well as the sight of the old city, whence came the twenty-four suitors of Penelope. Only one little white house gleams out of the shadows below. Above are the famous sarcophagi, populous with human bones. The clear water shines with phosphorescent sparkle and milder moonlight, as we dart out into the open sea, with our prow toward Corfu. The coasts of Albania glide low and dim in the far-off East. The heavy breakers begin to tell upon my sensibilities, and I retire to wake up in the harbor of Corfu.

The Ionian islands have an organization which externally resembles somewhat our own federation. The states are, to

be sure, under British influence and protection. Ionia was ceded to England by the treaty of Paris in 1815, and was thus rescued from the domination of Russia. The internal organization is regulated by a Parliament, consisting of a High Commissioner, a Senate, and a Legislative Assembly. The Commissioner, like our President, has a veto and is the executive, having under his control the police and foreign relations. He is represented by a President in each island, who stands in the relation .of our Governors to our States. The Senate is elective. The four larger isles, Corfu, Zante, Cephalonia and St. Maura, send one member each. The lower house is elective, and consists of forty members, and meets every second year. These isles of the Adriatic are prospering under this form of government. The care of Great Britain is tutelage to their inexperience. The Grecia mendax is as common here as in other parts of Attica, unfitting, by its corrupt influence, the people from exercising in its purity the suffrages of honest freemen. Indeed, in Greece itself, where universal suffrage obtains, the government never fails to triumph, by means of false boxes for ballots and other fraudulent contrivances. Hence the Russian party is always dominant. The Liberal party must first reform the morals of the mass, so that they can feel an outrage upon their rights, and then they may be able to vindicate them. Shade of Demosthenes! If you could only fulminate over Greece, and awake the consciences of your degenerate countrymen, then Hope, winged like the image of Victory on the Acropolis, might visit each sacred haunt to revivify the glories of the past.

At Zante, there are three forts very strong and extensive. Several regiments are stationed here, to which belong our two Captain-companions. They were of our party, when the Nubian slave rattanned our firman, and drove us away from the mosque of St. Sophia, in Constantinople. Our ignoble retreat before a negro was a bond of sympathy which has united us ever since. The retreat of the ten thousand under Xenophon was nothing to