indeed, might have attained to a higher state of intellectual culture; but the modern Greeks were incapable of making the best use of the relics of which they were the hereditary guardians. They might have been collectors, copyists, and commentators; but they had not the strength or the art to build upon their own foundations. The tree of knowledge would have been planted in a worn-out and unkindly soil, and would have proved barren, even if it did not wither. It was reserved for the West to revive, and for the North to develop, the lessons which had been preserved so long in the East, partly uninjured, but wholly unimproved.

Accordingly, the intellectual condition of the monks in general is about as low as it can be. Belon, Rycaut, Colonel Leake, Mr. Curzon, and Mr. Bowen, form a catena of evidence to this point, extending almost from the fall of Constantinople to the present day. No doubt there have been and are exceptions to this rule. Learned men have been driven to the cloister by persecution or other causes, and have generally found their way to the highest offices. Yet even these are often filled by illiterate persons. Mr. Bowen tells us of an Epitropus at Batopedion who had never heard of Homer, and had a confused idea that Herodotus was a Father, not of History, but of the Church. Dr. Hunt found the Didascalos of Laura, who should have been ex officio a man of letters, reading an Arabic MS. with a Latin version. Let not the learned reader suppose that we censure him for the unscholarlike use of a crib.' The truth is, that he was as ignorant of one language as of the other, and was only making believe, like the Mormon prophet, for the benefit of enlightened travellers! In the last century, Eugenius Bulgari, a learned Corfiote, established a flourishing college near Batopedion. The monks loved not learning, and fairly drove him away. But the tide has at length turned, and the Holy Community has of its own accord established a school at Caryæ.

Lord Carlisle's Diary' is of more recent appearance than the other two works of which we have spoken. It contains the account of a tour in the Levant, and other parts of the Mediterranean, as well as to a part of the Black Sea, during the years 1853 and 1854. It is written in the form of notes entered day by day, in a journal, and therefore contains the original and spontaneous impressions produced by the many interesting scenes which he visited, at a moment when the attention of all Europe began to be concentrated around Constantinople and the Black Sea. In a region which has been examined and re-examined by travellers of every class and

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every nation, by antiquarians, men of science, divines, poets, and historians, by Italians, French, Germans, and English,it is not to be expected that Lord Carlisle should be able to make any new discoveries: but he has produced a pleasing and attractive book, in which every page bears the mark of an amiable, benevolent, and cultivated mind; and which contains many incidental notices of events and subjects, now holding the first place in importance and interest. He is remarkably free from the querulous and fault-finding tone of the ordinary traveller: he views everything with a favourable eye; he loves to praise rather than to blame; and he contrives to extract materials for consolation and gratitude out of a severe attack of the small-pox in the island of Rhodes, of which he recovered in the house and under the care of Mr. Charles Newton, who has been transferred, by Lord Granville, from the care of antiquities in the British Museum to the post of vice-consul in the classic isles of Greece.

We regret that our space will not admit of our following Lord Carlisle to the places which he successively visited, in and near the Mediterranean; but we will extract a few passages, which will serve to give some idea of the contents of his agreeable volume.

After a dinner at Mr. Forbes's, the British Minister at Dresden, he makes these reflections:

The talk of some of the guests rolled sonorously upon grand dukes and duchesses. I have some doubt whether this habit can be entirely referred to the spirit of courtiership in the human breast, and whether it is not, at least in part, derived from a far more universal tendency, that of taking an interest in the minute details of all interior family life. Subjects talk of the domestic concerns and habits of their rulers, just as country neighbours do of the proceedings at the castle, or the great manor-house, not only because they are great people, but because such details are more easily discoverable. It is precisely the same source of interest which attaches such charm to the unequalled dissection of character and development of minutiæ in Miss Austen's novels: when we can really learn all about them, we are as much engrossed with the households of the Bennetts and Woodhouses as if they were Hapsburgs or Romanoffs.' (P. 10.)

The custom of talking about the domestic life and habits of the great is, as Lord Carlisle remarks, doubtless owing, not merely to vanity, but also to the feeling of a common humanity. Another reason for this custom is, the sense of the importance of their private conduct to the rest of the community-a reason which applies particularly to royal personages.

Lord Carlisle describes a visit to the ambassador's house at Therapia, near Constantinople, in June 1853, and a dinner

with Lord Stratford; the importance of whose position, at a time when the allied fleets were in Besika Bay, and the Russian occupation of the Principalities was impending, is duly recognised.

His Excellency sat up talking with me till one; of course I do not introduce here the matter of such a conversation at a time of a great political crisis. I thought all that fell from him showed the intelligence and high-mindedness one should wish to find in a high British functionary; glad he seemed too, as so many of them are, to unbend from the engrossing gravities of the moment, among the lighter and more attractive recollections of literature. The position Lord Stratford at this moment holds must be one of almost painful responsibilities; for, as far as I can gather from others, the rulers of the country appear to pay him a nearly implicit deference, and it has rarely happened to any one to be so much, to all human appearance, the arbiter of peace and war, and of much of the approaching destiny of the human race. (P. 41.)

Lord Carlisle visits a country-house of the British Consul, Mr. Calvert, in the Troad; respecting whose operations as a practical Turkish farmer, he gives the following account.

'Besides this villa, he has two large farms, one in the Chersonese on the European side, the other on the plain of Troy, the last of 3000 acres. He holds them in the name of his wife, as the Turkish law does not allow males, not Mussulmen, to hold land. This example may possibly lead to a relaxation of this rule: the payment due to the State is a land-tax of about ten pounds a-year, and a tithe of the produce; under the former proprietor, even the land-tax was in arrear, and the tithes nil; in the third year of his occupancy, Mr. C.'s tithes alone amounted to 150l. He represents the resources of the country, both in vegetable and mineral productions, as inexhaustible. He can get Turkish labourers for three pounds a-year wages, besides their keep; but he finds it more-profitable to employ Greeks at ten pounds a-year: there is the present history of the two races. He thinks, very decidedly, that it is the best thing for the Christian races themselves to preserve the existing state of things for the present, till their growth has secured its own result. A Turk himself had told him the other day that it was becoming inevitable that gradually all the chief employments, and the army itself, must be recruited from the Christian population; and then, some day, the Ministers would tell the Sultan that he must become a Christian, and he would do so. Will it, then, be a convert or a conqueror,—a Constantine or a Ferdinand, who will be first crowned in Saint Sophia? (Pp. 77, 78.)

An argument on the site of the Homeric Troy, suggested to Lord Carlisle by a local investigation, will be read with interest by the classical scholar (pp. 79-94). We confess that we remain incredulous as to the possibility of discovering accurate

topographical details in the Iliad. That the Homeric Troy was supposed to be situated in the district known as the Troad in the historical age, is evident from the mention of places in the neighbourhood, such as the island of Tenedos, and mount Ida. Lord Carlisle states, that in a barrow recently opened by Mr. Calvert in his Troad farm, was found a layer of calcined human bones, about six feet in depth, and thirty feet in diameter, with one skeleton at the bottom, and below these a large quantity of ashes; and he suggests that these might have been the bones of the Trojans burned during the truce obtained by Priam in the seventh book of the Iliad. That these bones may be the identical bones mentioned by Homer we will not deny; but, considering the prevalence of the custom of burying in large mounds of earth, in different times and countries, we see no reason why the bones in question should not as well be subsequent to the Christian era as prior to it.

Lord Carlisle gives us his deliberate opinion upon that muchcontested point, the state and prospects of the Turkish Empire. We commend it to the reader's particular attention, with the remark that Lord Carlisle, though not long a resident at Constantinople or in the Levant, had, during his stay, opportunities of conversation with the best-informed persons, and that his character does not incline him to undue censure or gloomy anticipations.

Among the lower orders of the people, there is considerable simplicity and loyalty of character, and a fair disposition to be obliging and friendly. Among those who emerge from the mass, and have the opportunities of helping themselves to the good things of the world, the exceptions from thorough-paced corruption and extortion are most rare; and in the whole conduct of public business and routine of official life, under much apparent courtesy and undeviating good breeding, a spirit of servility, detraction, and vindictiveness appears constantly at work. The bulk of the people is incredibly uninformed and ignorant: I am told that now they fully believe that the French and English fleets have come in the pay of the Sultan; and when the Austrian special mission of Count Leningen arrived in the early part of this year, and led, by the way, to much of what has since occurred, they were persuaded that its object was to obtain the permission of the Sultan to the young Emperor to wear his crown. Upon the state of morals I debar myself from entering. Perhaps the most fatal, if not the most faulty bar to national progress, is the incredible indolence which pervades every class alike, from the Pasha, puffing his perfumed narghilé in his latticed kiosk on the Bosphorus, to the man in the ragged turban who sits crosslegged with his unadorned tchibouque in front of a mouldy coffee-shop in the meanest village. In fact, the conversation of every man whom I meet, who is well-informed on the state of the population,

with very few exceptions, might be taken down as an illustration, often very unconsciously on their part, of the sense usually assigned to the prediction in the Apocalypse of the waters of the Euphrates being dried up. On the continent, in the islands, it is the Greek peasant who works, and rises; the Turk reclines, smokes his pipe, and decays. The Greek village increases its population, and teems with children; in the Turkish village you find roofless walls and crumbling mosques. Statesmen who do not see these matters with their own eyes, if told of the rotten state of the Ottoman Empire, are apt to say, they do not at all perceive that: this Prussian General inspected their army the other day, and was highly pleased with its efficiency; this English Captain went on board their fleet, and saw them work their guns, and said that it could not be better done in any English ship. Their military hospitals are perfect models of arrangement and good order. I believe all this to be true, and I can well conceive that in one or two campaigns, on a first great outburst, the Turks might be victorious over their Russian opponents; but, when you leave the partial splendours of the capital and the great state establishments, what is it you find over the broad surface of a land which nature and climate have favoured beyond all others, once the home of all art and all civilisation? Look yourself — ask those who live there. deserted villages, uncultivated plains, bandittihaunted mountains, torpid laws, a corrupt administration, a disappearing people.' (Pp. 182-184.)

We regret to say that Lord Carlisle confirms the prevailing opinion respecting the badness of the present Bavarian government of Greece, and the failure of that experiment of a constitution manufactured by foreigners.

I have barely adverted to the politics of modern Greece: during one fortnight, at least, ancient Hellas repels all other intrusion, and truth to say, there is but little attraction in the modern competitor for notice. I should also shrink from any direct references to those with whom I have conversed; I may, however, most truthfully sum up, from all that I have seen or read, or heard among persons of different nations, stations, and principles, that the present Government of Greece seems to be about the most inefficient, corrupt, and, above all, contemptible, with which a nation was ever cursed. The Constitution is so worked as to be constantly and flagrantly evaded or violated; the liberty of election is shamefully infringed; and where no overt bribery or intimidation are employed,-charges from which we Englishmen can, I fear, by no means make out an exemption,— the absence of the voters, who regard the whole process as a mockery, is compensated by the electoral boxes being filled with voting-papers by the gens d'armerie,—a height of impudence to which we have not yet soared. Persons the most discredited by their characters and antecedents are forced on the reluctant constituencies, and even occasionally advanced to places of high trust and dignity. The absence of legislative checks is not atoned for by the vigour of the executive in promoting public improvements. Agriculture stag