Europe, he yet possesses high and honourable feeling. Many years ago, a trifling event occurred, which will give you an idea of the man and of the manners of the times. A treasurer was to be chosen for one of the Ionian isles, in which his estates lay, and in which he had spent his youth and early manhood. The men, with whom the nomination rested, were Venetians, utter strangers to the place, and its inhabitants. At a loss to choose for a situation of high trust, among candidates, of whom they absolutely knew nothing, they seated themselves at an open window of a house at the extremity of the town, and calling in every man as he passed by to his daily labour, inquired who among their nobles was the most honest and upright? The Count Asinelli was named by nine-tenths.

if

‹ The countess,— I can but smile at her title,-looks more like a slatternly cookmaid, than any thing else. She wears the Italian dress; indeed, I know only one Greek family among the higher orders, who persist in retaining their own costume. One day in the week, the lady is dressed for company; on any other day, if her friends call, she is "not at home: she goes about the house in a wrapping gown, and dirty untidy night-cap, a bunch of huge keys dangle from her waist, and an enormous pair of diamond ear-rings repose tranquilly on her shoulders. She can neither read nor write, but pickles and preserves to a nicety; and she is the sole nurse of her little grandchild. She is always regretting having left a house in the square, because, she says, "It was so nice; I could sit at the window all day, and call up the men when I wanted to buy cabbages and lemons." This good lady is a great enemy to all innovation, and will not eat a potatoe for the world; for she says, it is the very fruit with which the Devil tempted Eve. She has two sisters married and settled in India, and you ask her in what part, she will answer, "In the Isle of France." One day I showed her a map of Hindostan, and she pointed to the Ganges, and asked if it was the Jordan? On one present remarking, that India abounded in rivers, "Yes, indeed," she replied, "if these be their mouths," pointing to the lines which map-makers draw round the edge of the land. The eldest son, Count Giovanni, (in this country all the children of a nobleman take the title of count and countess, and you will not seldom hear inquiries after the Countess-sisi-na,) is married and lives in the house. As long as the father of a family lives, he claims the earnings of all his children, and keeps them all in utter dependence on him. Giovanni has travelled and seen the world; nay, I believe he spent three years in a college at Pisa; he fancies himself a prodigy of learning and talent, and because he had an English master for three months in Italy, he talks cleverly of Sterne's romances, and Goldsmith's sermons. He assured me very solemnly that the sun never shines in England; and when I asked with becoming humility, how, in that case, our fruits aud flowers come to perfection, he answered, "your fruits ripen in hothouses, and your roses are pretty enough, but they have not the least fragrance." This same clever person fancies himself an adept in politics, and knows the names of all our leading men by heart. We were holding a debate one evening, as to who should be appointed as successor to our late governor; one said, Lord Duncannon; another

named Sir Alexander; a third, wished for Sir Lowry Cole. Giovanni came in, and settled the matter in a moment:-"The Duke of York was coming out immediately." pp. 16—19.

Our next specimen is a sketch of the family of a Greek peasant. 'One of the count's servants married many years ago, and is settled in the little village of Castrades, about a mile out of town. As his cottage offers an admirable specimen of the Greek peasantry, I will describe it to you, only premising, that he is better off than many of the villagers. He does not stew myrtles for soup, or eat the weeds out of the fields, as many of them do. Stefanò, on his wedding-day, took his wife's mother to his house, and she still lives with them; he has two daughters, and a happier or more united family I never beheld. Stefanò is industrious, and very ingenious; his cottage contains two rooms; the outer one is neither ceiled nor floored; one door opens on the road, another opposite to a pretty garden; for furniture, it contains a few benches, a table, a large carved Venetian chest, and two portraits of some of the old Venetian governors; all want of other ornament is made up by a superabundance of live pets. These kind-hearted people take in all the stray dogs and birds of the neighbourhood; and Stella, the eldest girl, nurses them with the greatest fondness. In this very room are three singing birds, a whole family of pigeons under the table, a lame cat, and a little jumping black cur, who seems very well inclined to domineer over all the others. One day, we were caught in a shower, and ran in for refuge. Henrietta was mounted on a donkey, so Stefanò would not rest till the donkey was brought in also, and there he stood in the middle of the room, braying in perfect astonishment, to the great amusement of the rest of its inmates. The inner room, the sanctum, is finished with a far greater degree of neatness. I suspect that Stefanò spends half his earnings on it. It is floored, and what is still more uncommon, the floor is kept constantly scrubbed; in the next place, the beams and tiles are hidden by a very neat ceiling of bamboos closely twined together; and, lastly, the most expensive improvement of all, one window is actually glazed. The place of glass is generally supplied, in these lowly cottages, by cloth strained over a frame, or by gypsum, which is found in some parts of the island in pieces sufficiently large and thin. This room contains two beds, on handsome bedsteads, each covered with a white counterpane, and, folded neatly over at the top, is a snow-white frilled sheet; you may suppose these are taken off every night. Stefanò and his wife occupy one bed; the other is shared by the grandmother, two girls, and Chloe, the afore-named little black cur. Old Katrina assured me that she could not sleep without Chloe, and "he is just as fond of me, Signora," she continued; "he goes round to kiss them all every night, but he always comes to sleep on my arm." Every Greek housewife, even the poorest, prides herself on the whiteness and trimming of her bed-linen. Exactly opposite the door hangs a picture of the Virgin, a black beauty, and the back-ground, as in all the pictures of the Greek churches, is gilt; a lamp hangs before her, but it is only lighted on feast-days, though always full of oil. On St. John's eve, the lamp is emptied

before the house, and some wish is spoken for the good of the family, which is sure to be granted. The portraits of many other saints hang about the walls. On each side of the door stands a sofa, that indispensable piece of Greek furniture, and an old-fashioned bureau, decorated with the various curiosities of the children: among them, stands conspicuous an English doll, which we dressed for Angelica, carefully preserved under a paper case.

Behind the house is the flower-garden, neatly arranged with Maltese vases at the corners of the beds. There is a pleasant trelliced vine-walk all round, and in one corner a large stone well: this, too, is shaded by trellice-work, which forms a pretty arbour. Many an idle noontide hour have I loitered away there, gathering grapes, as they hung almost into my mouth, and listening to the auldwife-stories and country traditions of the good old "Nonna." Here, as everywhere, the old legends are passing into oblivion, and those ceremonies which the grandmother practised in her young days with superstitious reverence, are laughed at by her children. But I love these remnants of the olden day, these footprints of the fairies, and it is good and refreshing sometimes to turn away from the cold reasoning of truth, and hear the old woman tell how, in her maiden prime, she used to join a company of merry girls, on the eve of Midsummer day, and they would put a flower-bell, each choosing her own favourite, into a wide-mouthed bottle, and lower it into the well, walking round, and singing all the time, and each one uttering her secret invocation to the goddess Flora, with the name of some favourite peasant lad in her heart; and how, early on the following morn, they used to hasten thither, and woe to those lasses whose flowers were floating with their faces downwards! Then the old "Nonna" tells me never to walk out at noon in June and July, for then the evil spirits are abroad, free to work their wicked will; and if I admire any thing she values,-her grandchild's hair, or Chloe's silken ears, she spits on the floor, and exclaims, "Anathema," to avert the "evil eye.' This "evil eye" seems a very formidable bugbear. I never yet saw a Greek child without an amulet sown in a leathern bag, and hanging round its neck, to avert the dread influence.'

The little village is thus described.

'Castradès consists of one long straggling street, with shops, such as they are, on each side of it; tables covered with fish, roasted chesnuts, grapes, and brown bread; two or three churches, outside of which the papas stand pulling the bells, and dunning one with noise from morning till night. There is, too, an English alehouse, distinguished by the sign of the Two soldiers, and between this street and the sea there is a straggling irregular row of cottages, in one of which Stefanò lives. The inhabitants of Castradès are as remarkable for their peaceful, as those of Manducchio are for their quarrelsome dispositions; and of this you may perceive signs, even outside their dwellings. You will not pass a cottage in Castrades that has not flower-pots on the roof, and about the doorway, and a bird-cage hanging by the window ;-no man who loves birds and flowers is either a

VOL. XIII.-N.S.

Q

quarreller or a drunkard; and so indeed they say, that the English sailor who last kept the alehouse, failed for want of customers,-perhaps he loved too well to draw for himself. More than half these cottagers are supported by their potteries, which occupy the ground before and behind their cottages. The jugs and pitchers are all set out in squares, to harden in the sun, in front of the factory, which stands a little way back from the road. I assure you, I have had some very elegant Grecian vases manufactured there.-But it is not all this which renders Castradès so interesting to me. It is built on the site

of the ancient city of Corçira, the capital of the island.'

sesses.

I love this little peaceful village, as much for the veil which the days of departed grandeur have thrown over it, as for the interest which, being built by the sea, and inhabited by fishermen, it still posTherefore, I often bend my evening walk hither. At their cottage doors, the villagers, old and young, are seated; in various, always picturesque groups. A mother, with her playful children clinging about her, resting a moment from her work to caress them ;a young wife, with her first-born, looking, as much as may be, like a mummy in its swaddling-clothes, reposing on one arm, while the other hand flings back the falling veil;-two or three idle girls standing about a door-way, pretending to wind flax, and looking quite classical with their old-fashioned rocs and olive faces ;-a group of merry boys, with bamboos across their shoulders, imitating the English exercise ;a widow, making nets, fastened to the back of a chair, and looking far over the ocean all the time, to see if her only one is not returning ;-an old man, sitting on his door-step, with his pipe in his mouth, watching the movements of his grandchild in a go-cart beside him:-and all these several people have one common point of interest among them. The matron promises her children their supper, when their father shall come home; the young bride thinks the long long day will never finish; the maidens are impatient to join the evening dance; all are casting from time to time, anxious glances towards the sea.

And how beautiful is the little bay itself! Near the shore is a fisher's boat just come in. All the idle stragglers of the village wade off, knee deep, and surround it: then such shouting, and screaming, and laughter, and noise, as each fills his basket with fish, and wades back again to the shore! A little further on are twenty or thirty men, yoked together with ropes, and pulling with all their might at a very heavy net, in the contents of which they all hold some share. Scattered about the bay are many graceful latteen sails, waving with every slight breeze; farther off is the round white ruined mill, rising at the end of a mole which runs some little way into the sea. The sun, which is setting in the opposite quarter of the sky, lights it up with his last rays, and makes it shine forth like a beacon light. Away, beyond the blue waves, the view is bounded by the mountains, and gleaming in the distance is a little white shining speck. A seabird! No, it is a ship; it may be a noble English ship, bearing us good tidings from that dear land which, if it were not for these welcome visitants, we might, in this our island solitude, almost deem a fancied region.' pp. 90-99.

We meet with a good deal of information and many intelligent remarks upon the social character and religion of the Ionian Greeks; but unfortunately, the Writer's own observations are so scattered and intermixed with gleanings from books and scraps of dialogue, which we must presume to be in part imaginary, as to affect the authenticity of her description. Yet, we have no doubt of the substantial correctness of her representation. At pp. 134-139, we have a meagre and incorrect account of the Greek Church, and of the heathen superstitions still surviving among the Greeks, borrowed principally from Ponqueville, Not the least curious fact, if it be such, is, that there are yet 'people in Cefalonia, who remember seeing the obolo placed in the coffin to pay old Charon!' The following account of the ceremonies observed at Easter, is added, we presume, from the Writer's personal knowledge.

Exactly at noon, all the bells in the city burst out in one peal: at the same moment the bishop says, "Our Lord is risen ;" and crash, crash, crash, go all the broken pots and pans out of all the windows in all the narrow dirty streets of Corfù; while the old women, who have been on the qui vive for the moment, exclaim, "Avaunt fleas, bugs, and all vermin! make way for the Lord of all to enter! The people have eaten nothing but vegetables for forty days; and now, alas! for the lambs." At the door of every house may be seen the master with his white apron on, and knife in his hand: he cuts, himself, the throat of the poor little wretch, and ere life has quite departed, dips a lock of wool in the blood, and marks a cross on the lintel of the doorway.' p. 139.

'I have been for some time trying,' the Writer says in another place, to understand the religion of the Greeks. As far as I have hitherto succeeded, it appears a strange mixture of feasts and fasts, of ringing of bells and uttering jargon.' The religion is easily understood. It is the same superstition, substantially, that prevails on both shores of the Adriatic. The only difference consists in the dialect of the jargon, and in the names of the patron saints who occupy the place of the classic deities. Corfu worships St. Spiridion, whose image or mummy' is borne in grand military procession on his festival; and the British Governor, the representative of majesty, was to be seen following, bare⚫headed, the idol of the people! Well might the Author blush for her countrymen. Most disgraceful to the national character is such a prostitution of religious principle and decency *.

'Lit

* One of the (imaginary ?) interlocutors, Harry Dormer, is made to exclaim, after attending this procession, At last I have given them the slip. It is really a most abominable stretch of authority for the 'Governor to force us to take part in this ridiculous mummery. He sent