Wife, children, husband, were all in motion; the janissary alone sat still amidst the general bustle, smoking his pipe, and enjoying his exemption from all this trouble, by which, however, he hoped to be a gainer. Since the suppression of the mysteries by Alaric, never had there been such a feast at Eleusis. We sat down to table, that is to say, we squatted upon the floor, around the repast: our hostess had baked some bread, which, though not very good, was soft and smoking from the oven. Fain would I have renewed the cry Xaige, shμnteg, Hail Ceres ! This bread, made from corn of the late harvest, proved the fallacy of a prediction recorded by Chandler. At the period of that traveller's visit, it was a current saying at Eleusis, that if ever the mutilated statue of the goddess were removed, the plain would cease to be fertile. Ceres is gone to England, and the fields of Eleusis are not the less favoured by that real Deity, who invites all mankind to the knowledge of his mysteries, who is not afraid of being dethroned, who paints the flowers with a thousand lovely hues, who tends the fruits from their first formation to maturity, and bestows, in due measure, sunshine and rain, and refreshing dews.

This good cheer, and the peace in which we partook of it, I enjoyed the more, as we were indebted for them, in some measure, to the protection of France. Thirty or forty years ago, the coasts of Greece in general, and the ports of Corinth, Megara, and Eleusis in particular, were infested by pirates. The good order established in our stations in the Levant, gradually suppressed this system of plunder; our frigates kept a vigilant look out; and under the French flag, the subjects of the Porte tasted the sweets of security. The recent revolutions in Europe occasioned for a short time other combinations of powers; but the corsairs have not again made their appearance. We drank therefore to the glory of those arms which protected our entertainment at Eleusis, with the same feelings as the Athenians must have expressed towards Alcibiades when he had conducted the procession of Iacchus in safety to the temple of Ceres.

At length arrived the great day of our entrance into Athens. On the 23d, at three in the morning, we were all on horseback, and proceeded in silence along the Sacred Way; and never did the most devout of the initiated experience transports equal o

nine. We had put on our best clothes for the solemn occasion; the janissary had turned his turban, and, as an extraordinary thing, the horses had been rubbed down and cleaned. We crossed the bed of a stream called Saranta-Potamo, or the Forty Rivers, probably the Eleusinian Cephisus; and saw some ruins of Christian churches, which stand on the site of the tomb of that Zarex whom Apollo himself instructed in the art of song. Other ruins indicated the monuments of Eumolpe and Hippothoon. We found the Rhiti, or currents of salt water, where, during the feasts of Eleusis, the populace insulted passengers in memory of the abuse with which an old woman had once loaded Ceres. Proceeding thence to the extreme point of the canal of Salamis, we entered the defile formed by Mount Parnes and Mount Egaleon; this part of the Sacred Way was denominated the Mystic. We perceived the monastery of Daphne, erected on the ruins of the temple of Apollo, and the church of which is one of the most ancient in Attica. A little farther we observed some remains of a temple of Venus. The defile then began to widen; we made a circuit round Mount Poecile placed in the middle of the road as if to hide the scenery beyond it, and the plain of Athens suddenly burst upon our view.

The travellers who visit the city of Cecrops, usually arrive by the Piræus, or by the way of Negropont. They then lose part of the sight, for nothing but the citadel can be perceived as you approach from the sea; and the Anchesmus intercepts the prospect as you come from Euboea. My lucky star had conducted me the proper way for viewing Athens in all its glory.

The first thing that struck me was the citadel illumined by the rising sun. It was exactly opposite to me on the other side of the plain, and seemed to be supported by Mount Hymettus, which formed the back-ground of the picture. It exhibited, in a confused assemblage, the capitals of the Propylæa, the columns of the Parthenon, and of the temple of Erectheus, the embrasures of a wall planted with cannon, the Gothic ruins of the Christians, and the edifices of the Mussulmans.

Two small hills, the Anchesmus and the Museum, rose to the north and south of the Acropolis. Between these two hills, and at the foot of the Acropolis, appeared Athens itself. Its flat roofs interspersed with minarets, cypresses, ruins, detached columns,

and the domes of its mosques crowned with the large nests of storks, produced a pleasing effect in the sun's rays. But if Athens might yet be recognised by its ruins, it was obvious at the same time, from the general appearance of its architecture, and the character of its edifices, that the city of Minerva was no longer inhabited by her people.

A barrier of mountains, which terminates at the sea, forms the plain or basin of Athens. From the point whence I beheld this plain, at Mount Pœcile, it seemed to be divided into three strips or regions running in a parallel direction from north to south. The first and the nearest to me was uncultivated, and covered with heath; the second consisted of land in tillage, from which the crops had recently been carried; and the third exhibited a long wood of olives, extending somewhat in the form of a bow, from the sources of the Ilissus, by the foot of the Anchesmus towards the port of Phalereus. The Cephisus runs through this forest, which, from its venerable age, seems to be descended from that olive-tree which Minerva caused to spring from the earth. On the other side of Athens, between Mount Hymettus and the city, is the dry channel of the Ilissus. The plain is not perfectly level: a number of small hills, detached from Mount Hymettus, diversify its surface, and form the dif ferent eminences which Athens gradually crowned with its moauments.

It is not in the first moment of a strong emotion that you derive most enjoyment from your feelings. I proceeded towards Athene with a kind of pleasure which deprived me of the power of reflection; not that I experienced any thing like what I had felt at the sight of Lacedæmon. Sparta and Athens have, even in their ruins, retained their different characteristics; those of the former, are gloomy, grave, and solitary; those of the latter, pleasing, light, and social. At the sight of the land of Lycurgus, every idea becomes serious, manly, and profound; the soul, fraught with new energies, seems to be elevated and expanded: before the city of Solon, you are enchanted, as it were, by the magic of genius; you are filled with the idea of the perfection of man, considered as an intelligent and immortal being. The lofty sentiments of human nature assumed, at Athens, a degree of elegance which they had not at Sparta. Among the

Athenians, patriotism and the love of independence, were not a blind instinct, but an enlightened sentiment, springing from that love of the beautiful in general, with which heaven had so liberally endowed them. In a word, as I passed from the ruins of Lacedæmon to the ruins of Athens, I felt that I should have liked to die with Leonidas, and to live with Pericles.

We advanced towards that little town whose territory extended fifteen or twenty leagues, whose population was not equal to that of a suburb of Paris, and which, nevertheless, rivals the Roman empire in renown. With my eyes steadfastly fixed on its ruins, I applied to it the verses of Lucretius :

Primæ frugiferos fœtus mortalibus ægris

Dediderunt quondam præclaro nomine Athenæ;
Et recreaverunt vitam, legesque rogârunt;
Et prima dediderunt solatia dulcia vite.

I know nothing more glorious to the Greeks than these words of Cicero: Recollect, Quintius, that you govern Greeks, who civilized all nations by teaching them mildness and humanity, and to whom Rome is indebted for all the knowledge she posses." When we consider what Rome was at the time of Pompey and Cæsar, what Cicero himself was, we shall find in these words a magnificent panegyric.*

ses.

We proceeded rapidly through the two first of the regions into which the plain of Athens appeared to be divided, the waste and the cultivated region. On this part of the road nothing is to be seen of the monument of the Rhodian, and the tomb of the courtezan; but you perceive the ruins of some churches. We entered the olive wood; and before we reached the Cephisus wo met with two tombs and an altar to Jupiter the Indulgent. We soon distinguished the bed of the Cephisus, between the trunks of the olive-trees which bordered it like aged willows. I alighted to salute the river and to drink of its water; I found just as much as I wanted in a hollow, close to the bank; the rest had been turned off higher up, to irrigate the plantations of olives. I have always taken a pleasure in drinking at the cele brated rivers which I have passed in my life: thus I have drunk

* Pliny the younger writes in nearly the same terins to Maximus, proconsul of Achaia.

of the water of the Mississippi, the Thames, the Rhine, the Po, the Tiber, the Eurotas, the Cephisus, the Hermus, the Granicus, the Jordan, the Nila, the Tagus, and the Ebro. What numbers on the banks of those rivers might say with the Israelites : Sedimus et flevimus !

I perceived, at some distance on my left, the ruins of the bridge over the Cephisus, built by Xenocles of Lindus. I mounted my horse without looking for the sacred fig-tree, the altar of Zephyrus, or the pillar of Anthemocritus; for the modern road deviates in this part from the ancient Sacred Way. On leaving the olive-wood, we came to a garden surrounded with walls, which occupies nearly the site of the outer Ceramicus. We proceeded for about half an hour, through wheat stubbles, before we reached Athens. A modern wall, recently repaired, and resembling a garden wall, encompasses the city. We passed through the gate, and entered little rural streets, cool, and very clean: each house has its garden, planted with orange and figtrees. The inhabitants appeared to me to be lively and inquisitive, and had not the dejected look of the people of the Morea. We were shown the house of the consul.

I could not have had a better recommendation than to M. Fauvel, for seeing Athens. He has resided for many years in the city of Minerva, and is much better acquainted with its minutest details than a Parisian is with Paris. Some excellent Memoirs by him, have been published; and to him we are indebted for most interesting discoveries relative to the site of Olympia, the plain of Marathon, the tomb of Themistocles at the Piræus, the temple of Venus in the gardens, &c. Invested with the appointment of consul at Athens, which merely serves him as a protection, he has been, and still is engaged as draughtsman upon the Voyage pittoresque de la Grèce. M. de Choiseul Gouffier, the author of that work, had favoured me with a letter for the artist, and I was furnished, by the minister,* with another for the consul.

It will certainly not be expected that I should here give a complete description of Athens: as to its history, from the Romans to the present time, that may be seen in the Introduction to this volume. In regard to the monuments of ancient Athens,

M. de Taleyrand.