There is a cadi, who administers justice, a sheriff, A. D. 1625. called soubachy, and some janizaries sent hither every three months by the Porte. All these officers received the Sieur Deshayes with great respect when he visited the place, and exempted him from all expenses, at the cost of the grand signior.

"On leaving Athens you pass through the great plain which is full of olive-trees, and watered by several streams that increase its fertility. After proceeding for a full hour you reach the shore, where is a most excellent harbour, which was formerly defended by a chain. The people of the country call it the Lion's Harbour, from a large lion of stone which is still to be seen there; but by the ancients it was denominated the harbour of Piræus. It was at this place that the Athenians assembled their fleet and were accustomed to embark."

The ignorance of Deshayes' secretary, for it is not Deshayes himself who writes, is astonishing; but we see what profound admiration was excited by the view of the monuments of Athens, when the finest of those monuments still existed in all its glory.

The establishment of French consuls in Attica pre- French cons

ceded, by some years the visit of Deshayes.

suls.

A. D. 1630.

Stockhove.

I conceived, at first, that Stockhove had been at Athens in 1630; but on comparing his text with that of Deshayes, I am convinced that this Flemish gentleman merely copied from the French ambassador. Father Antonio Pacifico published, in 1636, at A. D. 1636. Ant. Pacific. Venice, his Description of the Morea, a work without method, in which Sparta is taken for Misitra.

A few years afterwards Greece witnessed the arrival of some of those missionaries who spread the name, the glory, and the love of France over the whole face of the globe. The Jesuits of Paris settled at Athens about the year 1645, the Capuchins in 1658, and in 1669, father Simon purchased the Lantern of Demosthenes, which became the place of entertainment for strangers.

E

A. D. 1645. French Missionaries.

A. D. 1668. De Monceaux.

AD 1672.
Fath. Babin.

A. D. 1674.
Nointel and
Gailand.

A. D. 1674.

Guilletière,

De Monceaux visited Greece in 1663. We have an extract from his travels printed at the end of Bruyn's. He has described antiquities, especially in the Morea, of which not a vestige is left. De Monceaux travelled with l'Aisné by order of Louis XIV. The French missionaries whilst engaged in works of charity, were not unmindful of those pursuits which were calculated to reflect honour on their country, Father Babin, a Jesuit, published, in 1672, an Account of the present state of the city of Athens. Spon was the editor of this work. Nothing so complete and so circumstantial on the antiquities of Athens had yet appeared.

M. de Nointel, the French ambassador to the Porte, passed through Athens in 1674; he was accompanied by Galland, the learned orientalist. He had drawings made of the basso relievos of the Parthenon. The originals have perished, and we think ourselves extremely fortunate in still possessing the copies of the marquis de Nointel. None of these, however, have yet been published, except that which represents the pediment of the temple of Minerva.*

In 1675, Guillet, under the assumed name of La Guillet, or La Guilletière, published his Ancient and Modern Athens. This work, which is a mere romance, occasioned a violent quarrel among the antiquaries. Spon detected Guillet's falsehoods: the latter was nettled, and wrote an attack in the form of a dialogue, on the Travels of the physician of Lyons. Spon now determined not to spare his antagonist; he proved that Guillet or La Guillatiére had never set foot in Athens, that he had composed his rhapsody from memoirs procured. from the missionaries, and produced a list of questions transmitted by Guillet to a capuchin of Patras : nay, more, he gave a catalogue of one hundred and twelve errors, more or less gross, which had escaped the author of Ancient and Modern Athens in his ro

mance.

*In the atlas to the new edition of the travels of Anacharsis.

Guillet or La Guilletière is consequently entitled to A. D, 1674, no credit as a traveller, but his work, at the time of its publication, was not without a degree of merit. Guillet made use of the accounts which he obtained from the fathers Simon and Barnabas, both of whom were missionaries at Athens; and he mentions a monument the Phanari tou Diogenis, which was not in existence in the time of Spon.

The travels of Spon and Wheeler, performed in A. D. 1676. 1675, and the following year appeared in 1678. Every Wheeler. Spon and reader is acquainted with the merits of this work, in which the arts and antiquities are handled with a critical skill before unknown. Spon's style is heavy and incorrect; but it possesses the candour and the ease which characterize the publications of that day. The earl of Winchelsea, ambassador from the A. D. 1676. Winchelsea. court of London, also visited Athens in 1676, and had several fragments of sculpture conveyed to England.

While the general attention was thus directed to Attica, Laconia was neglected. Guillet encouraged A. D. 1676. Guillet, or La by the sale of his first imposture, produced, in 1676, Guilletiere. his Ancient and Modern Lacedæmon. Meursius had published his different treatises, de Populis Allicæ, de Festis Græcorum, &c. &c.; and thus furnished a stock of materials ready prepared for any writer who chose to treat of Greece. Guillet's second work is full of the most egregious blunders on the locality of Sparta. The author insists that Misitra is Lacedæmon, and it was he who first gained credit for that egregious error. "Nevertheless," says Spon," Misitra does not stand on the site of Sparta, as I know from M. Giraud, Mr. Vernon, ond others."

Giraud had been the French consul at Athens for Giraud. eighteen years when Spon travelled in Greece. He understood the Turkish and Greek languages as well as the vulgar Greek. He had begun a description of the Morea, but as he afterwards entered into the ser

Vernon.

A. D. 1687.

Pacifico.

A. D. 1688.
Coronelli.

vice of Great Britain, his manuscript probably fell into the hands of his last employers.

Vernon, an English traveller, has left nothing but a letter printed in the Philosophical Transactions for 1676. He gives a rapid sketch of his travels in Greece. "Sparta," says he, is a desert place: Misitra which is four miles off, is inhabited. You find at Sparta almost all the walls of the towers and the foun dations of the temples, with many columns demolished, as well as their capitals. A theatre is yet standing, perfect and entire. It was formerly five miles in circumference, and is situated about a quarter of a mile from the river Eurotas."

It should be observed, that Guillet, in the preface to his last work, mentions several manuscript memoirs on Lacedæmon. "The least defective," says he are in the possession of M. Saint Chalier, secretary to the French embassy in Piedmont."

We have now arrived at another epoch in the history of the city of Athens. The travellers whom we have hitherto quoted, beheld some of the most beautiful monuments of Pericles in all their integrity. Pocoke, Chandler, and Leroi, admired them only in their ruins. In 1687, while Louis XIV was erecting the colonade of the Louvre, the Venetians were demolishing the temple of Minerva. I shall speak hereafter of this deplorable event, a consequence of the victories of Koningsmark and Morosini.

In this same year, 1687, appeared at Venice, the Notizia del Ducato d'Atene by Pietro Pacifico, a small work which diplays no marks of taste or pains.

Father Coronelly, in his Geographical Description of the Morea reconquered by the Venetians, has shown erudition; but he furnishes no new information, and his quotations and his maps should not be implicitly relied on. The petty military transactions extolled by Coronelli, form a striking contrast with the places which are the theatre of them. Among the heroes of this conquest, we remark, however, a prince de Tu

renne, who fought near Pylos, says Coronelli, with the intrepidity natural to all the members of his house. Coronelli confounds Sparta with Misitra.

The Atene Attica of Fanelli takes up the history of Athens from its origin, and brings it down to the period at which the author wrote. His work is of little importance as far as regards antiquities; but it contains curious particulars of the siege of Athens by the Venetians in 1687, and a plan of that city, of which Chandler seems to have availed himself.

Fanelli.

Paul Lucas

Paul Lucas enjoys a high reputation among the A. D. 1704. class of travellers, and I am astonished at it: not but that he amuses us with his fables; the battles which he fights single-handed against fifty robbers-the prodigious bones which he meets with at every stepthe cities of giants which he discovers the three or four thousand pyramids which he finds on a public road, and which nobody besides himself ever saw, are diverting stories enough; but then he mangles all the inscriptions that he copies, his plagiarisms are incessant, and his description of Jerusalem is copied verbatim from that of Deshayes. Lastly, he speaks of Athens as if he had never been there, and what he says of that city is one of the most glaring falsehoods that ever traveller had the impudence to publish.

"Its ruins," says he, “are, as may be supposed, the most remarkable part of Athens. In fact, though the houses are very numerous in that city, and the climate delicious, there are scarcely any inhabitants. Here you find an accommodation that you meet with no where else; whoever pleases may live here without paying any rent, the houses being given away for nothing. For the rest, if this celebrated city surpasses all those of antiquity in the number of monuments which it has consecrated to posterity; it may likewise be asserted, that the excellence of its climate has pre served them in better condition than those of any other place in the world, at least of all such as I have seen. It would seem as if elsewhere people had