another English traveller, two servants, a Circassian and an Albanian, and a tail of pack-animals and muleteers. We sallied out by the Prevesa and Arta road, and as we rose over the first range of hills which bounds the Yanina plain to the south, we had a lovely view of the bright little capital of Epirus, its white houses gleaming amid the green foliage of many gardens, the dark walls of Ali Pasha's ruined castle projecting into the blue lake, the smooth waters studded with fleet sails, the little island where the revolted satrap was shot down in a Greek convent by the Turkish soldiery, the wall-like precipices of Mount Mytsekeli, and far beyond, the delicately sculptured crest of the Pindus already capped with winter snows. Our track soon diverged westward from the main road, and after climbing one or two steep ridges, we descended into the small secluded valley of Tcharakovista.

The site of Dodona was, until lately, a muchvexed question; and when Byron asked

"Oh where, Dodona, is thine aged grove,
Prophetic fount and oracle divine?

What valley echoed the response of Jove?

What trace remaineth of the Thunderer's shrine ?"

-there was none to answer him. But the excavations begun in the valley of Tcharakovista. by M. Mineyko, a Polish engineer in the Ottoman service, and continued by M. Karapanosthe statues, inscriptions, and other relics unearthed by those gentlemen's exertions-have, it is generally admitted, finally settled the question, and the traveller who enters this peaceful little vale knows that he is treading the same holy ground to which the pilgrims of Hellas wandered with pious steps three thousand years ago. Dodona was the earliest, as it was also the most venerable, of Hellenic sanctuaries. Long before the development of Greek polytheism, a national shrine existed there, embodying the primitive conception of the Divinity which created and maintained the universe. There it was that, at a later period, the supreme force which formed and ruled the world was personified in Zeus, who received as emblems the thunderbolts that shattered the crests of Mount Tomaros, the eagle that nested in its ravines, the oak that grew on its flanks; while the water which gushed out of its rocks to permeate and fertilise the soil, formed another of

his attributes, and gave him the surname of Naïos. Then the productive earth was identified with Dione, the primitive spouse of Zeus; and Love, the fructifying element in nature, was represented by Aphrodite, the daughter of Zeus and Dione, whose emblem was the dove, the sacred bird of Dodona; while to the genius of Destruction and of Death were assigned the precipices of the southern slopes of the Tomaros, where the Acheron led through inaccessible ravines to the infernal regions. Little wonder that the shrine which thus embodied their faith in the higher powers that rule all things should have been the resort of Greeks from all parts of Hellas whenever issues of great moment were at hand. To the oracle of Dodona Inachus goes for advice when Io has related to him her dreams. The priestess of Dodona foretells to Io her relations with the father of the gods, and to Hercules the end of his labours. To Zeus Dodonaios Achilles appeals to protect his beloved Patroclus to him Ulysses journeys to learn how he is to return to Ithaca. Orestes, the son of Agamemnon, consults his oracle; and Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles, weds Larissa, the niece

of Hercules, before his altars. Eneas and his Trojans, who have experienced in the fate of war the strong hand of the Greek gods, travel to Dodona to inquire where they are to found their new colony. Verily the shrine which thus sanctified the laws and actions of kings-which predicted the issues of wars, and gave counsel in all things, private and public -which informed the ideas and feelings of a primitive nation, and often maintained union where there was no bond of political unity,may still be approached in a spirit of reverence, even by those who would say with the French poet

"Je suis venu trop tard dans un monde trop vieux,
Où d'un siècle sans foi naît un siècle sans crainte."

But the days are now far away when from all towns of Greece offerings flowed in to the temple of Zeus amid the splendid pomp of a solemn ritual, and Demosthenes, addressing the representatives of Dodona, welcomed them as the ambassadors of a city which he esteemed of all cities the most blessed and the most beloved of gods, for that Zeus Dodonaios and

Dione and the Pythian Apollo spake through the mouth of its oracles, and showered their favours upon the town. There is little left, save confused heaps of stone, of these once world-famous temples. A massive wall of early Hellenic structure, however, still marks the limits of the town which grew up beside the sanctuary, and bushes of stunted ilex have taken the place of the sacred groves where pilgrims were wont to wander in a dim religious twilight. One monument alone has escaped the ravages of time and the fiercer hand of man. The theatre, where the Naïan games were celebrated in honour of Zeus and Dione, still remains in comparative preservation, one of the best specimens among similar relics of ancient Greece. It is built against a natural hollow in the hillside, just beyond the walls of the town, and its fifty rows of stone seats are supported on masses of carefully cut, uncemented stone-work. Hence the spectators could survey the temples and groves of the sanctuary, the lofty peaks of Mount Tomaros (now called Mount Olytzika), which still bears on its flanks black patches of oak forests, and through the

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