Argos. Upon this island Ulysses was cast naked after his shipwreck. Would to God that the country of Alcinus had never been celebrated, but for fictitious misfortunes! In spite of myself, I called to mind the troubles of Corcyra, which Thucydides. has so eloquently related. It seems, however, as if Homer, in singing the gardens of Alcinous, had attached something poetical and marvelous to the destinies of Scheria. There Aristotle expiated, in banishment, the errors of a passion which philosophy has not always the strength to surmount. Alexander in his youth, having quitted the court of his father Philip, landed at Corcyra, and the islanders beheld the first step of the armed stranger, who was destined to visit all the nations of the globe. Several natives of Corcyra won crowns at the Olympic games; their names were immortalized by the verses of Simonides, and the statues of Polyclctus. Consistently with its two-fold destiny, Corcyra continued to be, under the Romans, the theatre of glory and of misfortune. Cato, after the battle of Pharsalia, met Cicero at Corcyra. What a fine subject to work upon would be the interview between these two Romans! What men! what sorrows! what vicissitudes of fortune? We should behold Cato offering to relinquish to Cicero the command of the last republican legions, because Cicero had been consul. They would then separate; the one to tear out his bowels at Utica, the other to carry his head to the triumvirs. Not long afterwards, Anthony and Octavia celebrated at Corcyra, that fatal marriage which proved the source of so much affliction to the world; and scarcely had half a century elapsed, when Agrippina repaired to the same place, to pay funeral honours to Germanicus: as if this island were destined to furnish two historians, rivals in genius as in language,* with the subject of the most admirable of their pictures.

Another order of things and events, of men and manners frequently brings forward the name of Corcyra, at that time Corfu, in the histories of Byzantium, of Naples, and of Venice, and in the collection entitled Gesta Dei per Francos. It was from Corfu that the army of crusaders, which seated a French gentleman on the throne of Constantinople, took its departure. But, were I to say any thing concerning Apollidorus, bishop of Corfu,.

Thucydides and Tacitus.

who distinguished himself by his doctrine at the council of Nice, concerning St. Arsenius and George, likewise prelates of this island; were I to observe that the church of Corfu was the only one which escaped the persecution of Dioclesian, or that Helena, the mother of Constantine, set out from Corfu on her pilgrimage to the east, I should be afraid of exciting a smile of compassion in the face of the free-thinker. How is it possible to bring in the names of St. Jason and St. Sopistratus, apostles of the Corcyræans, during the reign of Claudius, after having mentioned Homer, Aristotle, Alexander, Cicero, Cato, and Germanicus? And yet is a martyr to independence a greater character than a martyr to truth? Is Cato, devoting himself for the liberties of Rome, more heroic than Sopistratus, suffering himself to be burned in a brazen bull, for proclaiming to men that they are brethren; that they ought to love and succour one another, and exalt themselves to the presence of the true God, by the practice of virtue?

I had abundant leisure for these reflections on beholding the shores of Corfu, off which we were detained by a profound calm. The reader perhaps wishes for a favourable wind to waft me to Greece, and to relieve him from my digressions: such a wind we had on the morning of the 7th. A breeze from the north-west sprung up, and we passed Cefalonia. On the 8th, we had, on our left Leucate, now St. Maura, which was blended in the view with a lofty promontory of the island of Ithaca and the low-lands of Cefalonia. You no longer discover in the country of Ulysses, either the forest of Mount Nereus, or the thirteen pear-trees of Laertes. These last have disappeared as well as the two still more venerable trees of the same kind, which Henry IV gave for a watch-word to his army at the battle of Ivry. I paid my distant salutations to the cottage of Eumæus, and to the tomb of the faithful dog. We know of but one dog celebrated for his ingratitude; he was called Math, and belonged, if I recollect rightly, to one of the kings of England, of the house of Lancaster. History has been at the pains of recording the name of this ungrateful animal, as she preserves the name of a man who continues faithful amidst adversity.

On the 9th, we coasted along Cafalonia, and rapidly approached Zante, the nemorosa Zacynthos. The inhabitants of this island were looked upon in ancient times, as being of Trojan origin:

they pretended to be the descendants of Zacynthus, the son of Dardanus, who conducted a colony hither. They founded Saguntum, in Spain; they were fond of the arts, and delighted in hearing the verses of Homer sung: they frequently afforded an asylum to proscribed Romans, and it has even been asserted that Cicero's ashes were found among them. If Zante has actually been the refuge of exiles, gladly would I decree it any honours and subscribe to its appellations of Isola d'oro, and Fior di Levante. The latter reminds me that the hyacinth originally eame from Zante, and that this island received its name from the flower which it had produced; thus, in order to confer honour on a mother, the ancients sometimes added the name of her daughter to her own. In middle ages, we find a tradition that is not generally known, relative to the island of Zante, Robert Guiscard, duke of Apulia, died at Zante, on his way to Palestine. It had been foretold that he should expire at Jerusalem; whence it has been concluded, that in the fourteenth century, the whole island, or some place in it, was thus denominated. At the present day Zante is celebrated for its springs of petroleum, as it was in the time of Herodotus, and its currants rival those of Corinth.

Between the Norman pilgrim Robert Guiscard, and myself, a Breton pilgrim, it is, indeed, a good many years; but in this interval, the Seigneur de Villamont, my countryman, passed by Zante. He set out in 1588, from the dutchy of Bretagne for Jerusalem. "Courteous reader," says he, at the commencement of his Travels, "thou wilt receive this my little work, and correct, if thou pleasest, the faults which it may happen to contain; and, receiving it with as good a will as I present it to thee, thou wilt give me courage in future not to be sparing of the good things which I have had leisure and opportunity to collect; serving France according to my desire."

The Seigneur de Villamont did not land at Zante: he came like me, in sight of the island, and like me, was driven by a strong west wind towards Morea. I awaited with impatience the moment when I should discover the coasts of Greece; I kept my eyes fixed on the horizon, and fancied every cloud to be the wished-for object. On the morning of the 10th, I was upon deck before the sun had risen. As he issued from the deep, I per

ceived confused and lofty mountains in the distance; they were the mountains of Elis. Glory must surely be something real, since it makes the heart of him who is but the judge of it, throb with such violence. At ten we passed Navarin the ancient Pylos, covered by the island of Sphacteria; names equally celebrated, the one in fable, the other in history. At noon we came to an anchor off Modon formerly Methone, in Messenia. In another hour I was on shore, I trod the classic soil of Greece I was but ten leagues from Olympia, thirty from Sparta, on the road which Telemachus followed when repairing to Menelaus to make inquiries respecting his father; and it was not yet a month since I quitted Paris.

Our ship had ́anchored half a league from Modon, in the passage formed by the continent and the islands of Sapienza and Cabrera, formerly Œnusse. Viewed from this point, the coast of Peloponnesus, towards Navarin, appears dreary and barren. Beyond this coast, at some distance inland, rise mountains, seemingly of white sand, covered by withered herbage: these were nevertheless the Egalean mountains, at the foot of which Pylos was built. Modon has the appearance of a town of the middle ages, surrounded with Gothic fortifications, half in ruins. Not a vessel in the harbour, not a creature upon the shore; all was silence, solitude, and dessolation.

I went into the ship's boat with the captain, to get intelligence on land. We approached the beach: I was ready to spring out upon a desert shore, and to salute the native country of arts and of genius, when we were hailed from one of the gates of the town. We were obliged to change our course, and make for the castle of Modon. We perceived at a distance, on the top of a rock, some janissaries, completely armed, and a number of Turks drawn thither by curiosity. As soon as we were within hearing, they called out to us in Italian: Ben venuti! Like a true Greek, I took notice of these first words of good omen, that greeted my ears on the shore of Messenia. The Turks plunged into the water for the purpose of hauling our boat to land, and assisted us to leap upon the rock. They all spoke at once, and asked a thousand questions of the captain in Greek and Italian. We entered by the half ruined gate of the town, and advanced into a street, or rather into a real camp, which instantly reminded me

of the beautiful expression used by M. de Bonald: "The Turks have encamped in Europe." It is scarcely possible to conceive how just is this expression in its fullest extent, and in all its bearings. These Tartars of Modon were seated before their doors, cross-legged, on a kind of stalls or wooden tables, beneath the shade of tattered canvas, extended from one house to another. They were smoking their pipes and drinking coffee, and, contrary to the idea which I had formed of the taciturnity of the Turks, they laughed, and made a good deal of noise.

We repaired to the Aga, a poor wretch lying upon a sort of camp-bed in a penthouse; he received me with great kindness. The object of my voyage being explained to him, he replied, that he would take care that I should be furnished with horses and a janissary to take me to Coron, to the French consul, M. Vial; that I should find no difficulty in traversing the Morea, because the roads were clear, since examples had been made of three or four hundred banditti; and that there were now no impediments to travelling.

The history of these three or four hundred banditti, is as follows:-Near Mount Ithome there was a band of about fifty rob-bers, who infested the roads. The Pacha of the Morea, Osman Pacha repaired to the spot; he surrounded the villages where the robbers were accustomed to take up their quarters. It would have been too tedious and troublesome for a Turk to distinguish between the innocent and the guilty: all within the Pacha's inclosure were despatched like wild beasts. The robbers it is true, were exterminated; but with them perished three hundred Greek peasants, who were accounted as nothing in this affair.

From the house of the Aga, we proceeded to the habitation of the German vice-consul, for France had not then an agent at Modon. He resided in the quarter of the Greeks, without the town. In all those places that are military posts, the Greeks live separate from the Turks. The vice-consul confirmed what the Aga had told me respecting the state of the Morea, he offered me hospitality for the night, which I accepted, and returned for a moment to the ship in a galley boat, which was afterwards to carry me back to the shore.

I left Julian my French servant, on board, with directions to wait for me in the ship, at the promontory of Attica, or at Smyr