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banks a richness I had no notion of, and the evergreen oak mixed with them, here an immense forest tree, is so light a green as not to have the wintry effect of our firs and spruce. The road winds, as if on purpose, first on one side of the ridge and then on the other, as if to give us the full view of both seas; sometimes it continues along the top with a valley on each side, open to the two seas. We stared and talked till we had exhausted every bit of our admiration, and were obliged to stare in silence. The southern view, including also some small islands, is bounded by the high ridge of the opposite promontory of Cape Falso. Its woods are still richer than the other, and the view in general is more confined. It has not such variety of objects, but some old, large monasteries placed among its woods, of which you see the turrets and battlements among the trees, seem the very temples of solitude and retirement. If I talk romantically you must lay it to the account of the place, for I can't describe it in other terms.

We descended a steep zigzag for a little way, to a large monastery below. When we were at it, we looked round on an amphitheatre covered with wood; through the middle of it runs a clear torrent, in most parts hid by the shrubs and trees that hang over it. On one side on the slope the monastery stands, a plain, large, venerable pile, made more so by the cypresses and large trees that rise amongst its walls. We were admitted into a large, clean, and comfortable room, and for the first half-hour were fixed at the window, and agreed very cordially in pitying all you poor people that stay at home; I have no hesitation in preferring it to everything I ever saw, even in Switzerland, and will never again suppose I have seen the finest thing in the world, for there is no limit to beauties of this sort. The view of a double sea, adorned to such a degree with islands and shores, was what I had not a notion of. The variety of these islands is another beauty. Thasos, a very mountain

ous island, wooded and cultivated. Samothrace, a high, craggy, barren mountain, with the boldest outline rising from the water. Imbros and Lemnos low and broken lines.

Now I have described our lodgings and situation, I will our company. Imagine one thing more dirty, sycophantish, and ignorant than another, you will have a faint idea of a Greek papa. This is the title of their priests. One or two of the superiors look sometimes rather cleaner, but are all equally ignorant. In one of the convents we were so popular that a papa proposed to attend my lordi as cook, and another told Stockdale we were all much too young to travel together, and proposed to attend us to take care of the party. I was highly flattered with the compliment, but we rather objected to a Greek travelling tutor.

CHAPTER VII

FROM ATHOS AND SALONICA THROUGH THESSALY AND BOEOTIA: ATHENS

SALONICA,

December 6.

I FINISHED this part of my letter at different times and places in my road here, and am now comfortably settled in an Englishman's house, who is our Consul here. I will, however, as usual, go on with my story. The last great monastery I have mentioned was that of St. George, where they pretend to show the tomb of their patron; we paid, of course, high reverence to them as Englishmen. The country eastward, after a short and romantic ride through a wood of oak, with fine rocks and torrents, grows less beautiful; the isthmus that joins Athos to the Continent is a low neck of land not more than three-quarters of a mile across. It was here Xerxes cut a road through for his navy, but, notwithstanding the fuss the "old ancients" make about him, the Duke of Bridgewater is certainly a much greater workman. There are now little or no remains of his ditch; in the part we crossed it was not traceable, but I thought there was some appearance of it near the seas.

From hence to Salonica is a tiresome journey of three days. Our first design was to have visited Amphipolis, but, besides there being some risk, we could not discover that there were any remains would repay our trouble in those parts. At Thasos are many, but you conceive we had no great desire to go there. We went, on these accounts, directly to

Salonica, and passed a country by much the worst and most inhospitable I have found in Turkey.

The few miserable villages we passed through are entirely inhabited by Greeks or Jews. The Greeks here have the power in their hands, and exercise it in so rascally a manner that we inquired after Turks as eagerly as we should elsewhere after Englishmen. What makes the people worse is, that in consideration of their working mines of iron and silver, of which there are many here, their enormities are connived at, and even protected, by the Porte. Everything you have to buy or order in these villages is a signal for the whole body to unite in cheating you. No redress from a Greek Aga; he only cheats higher than the rest. I assure you the Turks are so much more honourable a race that I believe, if ever this country was in the hands of the Greeks and Russians, it would be hardly livable. The country being here unsafe, from banditti, we had everywhere escorts from two to seven men, armed with muskets and pistols. With this formidable force, and our own arms, we passed very quietly. After a tiresome journey we got safe here, where we found a very hospitable reception at an English merchant's, and are refitting to go on through Larissa and Thermopylae to Athens. The road, we find, is very practicable, and so we can execute our whole scheme. To-morrow we mean to make a short trip in Macedonia, and then, after seeing Salonica, we shall set out.

After our perils by land and water, however, we are safe here, and likely to continue so, and I hope my next letter will be from Athens, if I do not, however, write another from hence by this post to my mother. All my letters, as we were long in getting here, have gone forward to Athens; and as the last post from England seems to have missed here, we are quite in the dark here about what you are all doing. Great reports are circulating, however, about a separate peace of the Prussians and Austrians with France; but

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merchants' news is generally a trade trick, as the peace raises or lowers the sale of cotton.

I am just now writing a good deal in a way you would if you were here, with a pretty little child of the Consul's on my knee, as witness her mark. So, you see, I am improved by my travels; but my little friend is so pretty, and talks such nice Greek, that I have been amused with talking to her.

The French are here, as in every other port of the Levant, in great numbers, and of all sorts. All, however, except one or two, have quitted their cockades. Society is in these places a curious and not unpleasant medley. You hear as many languages at once as you see men, and at present as many opinions as languages. What I have most inquired of, as having no bad opportunity, was the effects of the Revolution in the provincial towns of France, from which the émigrés had escaped at different times. The private history of it is, I think, both more interesting and more dreadful than the public, which is little more than the news of Paris. The sufferers, too, are more to be pitied, as they are not of the detestable class of aristocrats whose crimes and infamy raised the spirit in their country, but merchants and people of the middle rank of life, the most virtuous in every country, and the most exposed to plunder in their own.

I was much pleased with an expression of a poor young man here, whose father is imprisoned at Marseilles, without accusation, for he has had no part in the government of either side. He said, "Il n'y a contre nous, que l'honnêteté, et les richesses-crimes chez le gouvernement révolutionnaire." Another object of still more interest here is a poor young lady, whose father has been guillotined by these brutes, obliged, with horror in her heart, to wear the cockade amongst her black ribbons, that she may not expose the rest of her relations to the same fate. I have just seen her walking about with a party of them, and I own I almost joined with Edmund Burke in regretting the Age of