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rest, the condition of the Albanian peasantry, CHAP. who cultivate the plains of Greece, is so much the same, and their way of living so uniform, that the description of a single family may apply to the whole community. The great plains of Boeotia and Thessaly may be said to surpass all other in the world in beauty and fertility. To our eyes, the plain of Boeotia appeared like one vast natural garden. Yet the labouring peasants, who are all of them Albanians, (the idea of industry in Greece having no other association than that of an Albanian peasant,) complain everywhere of oppression: and indeed the labours of the plough can hardly be considered as a peaceful occupation, in a land where the husbandmen appear in the fields armed as for battle. Such, however, seems to have been the condition of the country eyer since the days of Homer. When the traveller enters one of the houses, every thing he sees calls to mind the simplicity of manners which characterized the inhabitants of Hellas in the first ages of its history. The bread is always made into cakes, which are baked upon the hearth, beneath the embers: while this is preparing by the women, the men are engaged in peeling and splitting the onions to be served with it. The master of the house, after receiving his guests, as it has been before stated, takes the post of

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CHAP. honour, by seating himself against his sacks of corn, which often occupy a considerable portion of the floor of his cottage: there he remains, issuing his orders to his family until the meal is over; when he encourages his guests to take their rest, by first setting the example, and consigning himself to sleep, without moving from the spot where he finished his repast.

over Mount

Journey The next morning, December the ninth, we left HELICON. Neocorio, and immediately began to ascend MOUNT HELICON in a N. w. direction, above the village; passing the ruined chapel before noticed, which we believed to be the building where Wheler found the inscription relating to THESPIA. Below us, upon our right hand, there was a rivulet, formed by a stream of water falling from HELICON, towards the plain of Neocorio, or THESPIA; and beyond this, upon the opposite side of the dingle through which this rivulet fell, standing upon an eminence, we saw a village, called Panaja'. Our road conducted us along the north-east side of the mountain; and in about Monastery an hour we arrived at the little Monastery of St. St. Nicholo. Nicholo, within a sheltered recess of HELICON. The description of this remarkable scene shall

of

(1) Πᾶν ἅγια.

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be given from notes written upon the spot, with- CHAP. out the slightest alteration. A more delightful retreat can hardly be found in the romantic passes of Swisserland. It is surrounded on all

sides by the mountain; one small opening alone presenting a picturesque view of a ruined tower belonging to Panaja, upon an eminence, in front. The air was filled with spicy odours, from numberless aromatic plants covering the soil. A perennial fountain, gushing from the side of a rock, poured down its clear and babbling waters into the rivulet below. A thick grove almost concealed the monastery; and every tree that contributed to its beauty or luxuriance appeared to be the wild and spontaneous produce of the mountain'. Nothing interrupted the still silence of this solitude, but the humming of bees, and the sound of falling waters. As we drew near to the fountain, we found it covered with moss, and with creeping plants, which spread everywere their pendent foliage, hanging gracefully from the trees by which it was shaded. Such

(2) The number and variety of the trees growing near the Monastery of St. Nicholo were so remarkable, that we made a list of them: and as the natural productions of HELICON are probably the same now that they were formerly, this list may give the Reader some idea of the Grove of the Muses, as it existed during the celebration of the MOTZEIA. 1. Walnut

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are the natural beauties of this Aönian bower. It may next perhaps be manifest, that nothing in its natural character is likely to excite half the interest afforded by its antient history.

Monasteries and chapels, throughout this country, may generally be regarded as favourable indications of the former situation of the shrines and sanctuaries of Antient Greece. The ruins of the Pagan Hieron afforded to the pious labours of hermits and monks, in the first ages of Christianity, the most ready materials for building their own places of religious worship. The simple altars they put together, consisted often of

Also a tree, called, by the Greeks, Koxiλía. We took the seed of it, but it produced no plants in England. To this list might also be added the Woodbine (Lonicera); and many parasitical plants, heaths, &c.

little more than so many rude heaps of stone,
which were afterwards enlarged, and more regu- ~
larly constructed, as the number of their followers
increased. Contiguous buildings were then
added to those altars, and thus monasteries were
erected. In this manner many of the most va-
'luable antiquities were either buried, broken, and
destroyed, or they were accidentally preserved;
accordingly as they were required for the pur-
poses either of laying foundations, or for making
lime; or as they were casually suited, by their
shape and size, to facilitate the barbarous
masonry now conspicuous in all the walls and
pavements of those ecclesiastical structures. Yet,
if we attribute such a style of building entirely
to the Modern Greeks and to the Turks, we may
perhaps be liable to error. The works of the
Antients themselves were sometimes charac-

terized by similar disorder. Evidence may be
adduced to prove that even the walls of Athens,
in the time of the Peloponnesian war', exhibited
the style of building which is now generally

CHAP.

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(1) This evidence occurs in the First Book of Thucydides; and, considering the curious fact it contains, it has been unaccountably overlooked by those who have written upon the antiquities of Athens. Πολλαί τε Στῆλαι ἀπὸ Σημάτων καὶ λίθοι εἰργασμένοι ἐγκατελέγησαν. μείζων γὰρ ¡¡rpíßodos wavraxñ ieńxen rūs módems. Thucydid. lib. i. c.93. p. 52. edit. Hudsoni. Oxon. 1696.