If the potentates of Europe, interested in the welfare of Greece when it was declared independent, had sent schoolmasters instead of representatives, we should not have found the country in its present demoralized state. Representatives who appear to have no other object in view than to wrangle with each other, and to sow discord among all classes and shades of political opinion, in their endeavours to gain a party favourable to the interest of their respective courts. Add to this, the jealousies and heart-burnings their fine horses, carriages, and servants must always excite in the mind of the poor Greek official, who has not the means of keeping pace with them in the race of fashion, without resorting to bribery and corruption to fill an empty exchequer. A consul, to fulfil the duties of political agent as we see in the independent principality of Servia, would have been much more suitable to a petty State scarcely numbering a million, with a ruined aristocracy, a pauperized clergy, and a population decicimated and impoverished by a long revolutionary

war.

It might be presumed that Greece, governed by the united wisdom of a German Prince and an army of plenipotentiaries, chargé-d'affaires, consuls, and viceconsuls, with their attachés and secretaries from every court in Europe, would have made rapid strides in prosperity-quite the reverse. We see the country a bankrupt, and its inhabitants more demoralised than when they were under the rule of the Turk. While the

VOL. II.

U

principality of Servia, as we before observed,* left to its own resources and under the rule of its native Prince, has continued to advance steadily in all that can add to the dignity and well-being of a young country, and what few Governments can boast of in the present day; it has an increasing revenue, together with several millions overplus in the National Bank at Belgrade.

Even in the more civilised countries of the West, politics and religion too often exercise a paralyzing influence on the pleasures of social intercourse; but among this vivid, easily excited people, so well schooled by their European teachers, you find a perfect tissue of political intrigues and plots, weaving by the inmates of every house you enter, from the King's palace down to the dwelling of the lowest mirarquc. You hear no other conversation but politics, and the same eternal song, "Down with the constitution," and vice versa, according to the opinion of the performers. Viewing the unsettled state of Greece and the rancour of parties, we must be of opinion that had the hero of the day, General Kalergis, when he compelled the King to grant a constitution, at the same time given the foreign diplomats their congé, he would have conferred an enduring and substantial benefit upon his country.

During my stay at Athens, I happened to be on intimate terms with M. Persiani, the highly respected representative of Russia, making the house of one of his

* Sce page 109, Vol. 1.

attachés my home, by whom I was frequently accompanied, together with one or two Russians, travellers like myself, to visit the lions of the town and the neighbourhood. Less than this, would have been sufficient to excite the curiosity of the wonder-loving politicians of this little gossipping town. An inquiry was immediately instituted, to solve the mystery which shrouded a man who was constantly wandering from the palace of the English minister to that of the Russian. It must be admitted when the united intellect of a Greek and a Frenchman is brought to bear upon a question, no secret can escape their penetration, with the additional advantage that if they fail in giving a true solution, a most fruitful imagination supplies one. Consequently the mysterious stranger was suddenly metamorphosed into an agent of perfidious Albion, and iron-willed Russia employed on some deep intrigue, having for its object a division of European Turkey between the cormorant of the West and the vulture of the North! and this absolutely led to a violent article in the "Journal des Débats" and the "Constitutionnel" at Paris, under the head of a letter from their correspondent at Athens! The French Revolution followed shortly after, together with the fall and exile of Louis-Phillippe-the grand abettor of the political movements in Greece. These events completely broke up the school of intrigue at Athens, whose students now having no better employment amuse themselves with games of chance. Even poor King Otho, aware of the lowering clouds gathering

around him, found it more congenial to his health to try a change of air and retired to Fatherland, leaving his excellent and highly popular Queen, by her amiable and condescending manners, to allay the popular dis

content.

293

CHAPTER XVI.

French steamer-Passengers-A hint to manufacturers-Smyrna -Inhabitants-Beauty of the women-Increasing prosperity of the town-Observations on the English Consular system in the Levant-Description of the town-Spanish Jews of Smyrna Their hospitality-Gratitude of a Spanish Jew-Visit to Ephesus-Travelling in Asia Minor-Caravan-Turkoman Tatars-Ai-Soluk-Bivouac-Ruins of Ephesus-Descriptions of the country-Characteristics of the inhabitants-Bards and story-tellers-A scene at the han.

WE left the Piræus in the French steamer the 'Tancred,' and gladly exchanged the heated atmosphere of Athens for the cool and bracing sea-air. Of every other place, the deck of a steamer is the one best adapted to facilitate the formation of acquaintance. In addition to several of my friends from Athens, Prince Constantine Soutza, M. de Grille, and M. Lintz, bound for the city of the Sultan, we had Mr. Rawdon Power and Major Charlton, on their way to India, Mr. Purdy, a Queen's messenger, who brought us the latest news from England, with the usual compliment