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sometimes justly accused, it may be doubted, always excepting France and England, in what useful points of knowledge they are excelled by other nations. Is it in the common arts of life? In their manufactures? Is a Turkish sabre inferior to a Toledo? or is a Turk worse clothed or lodged, or fed and taught, than a Spaniard? Are their Pachas worse educated than a Grandee? or an Effendi than a Knight of St. Jago? I think not.

I remember Mahmout, the grandson of Ali Pacha, asking whether my fellow-traveller and myself were in the upper or lower House of Parliament. Now, this question from a boy of ten years old proved that his education had not been neglected. It may be doubted if an English boy at that age knows the difference of the Divan from a College of Dervises; but I am very sure a Spaniard does not. How little Mahmout, surrounded, as he had been, entirely by his Turkish tutors, had learned that there was such a thing as a Parliament, it were useless to conjecture, unless we suppose that his instructors did not confine his studies to the Koran.

In all the mosques there are schools established, which are very regularly attended; and the poor are taught without the church of Turkey being put into peril. I believe the system is not yet printed (though there is such a thing as a Turkish press, and books printed on the late military institution of the Nizam Gedidd); nor have I heard whether the Mufti and the Mollas have subscribed, or the Caimacan and the Tefterdar taken the alarm, for fear the ingenuous youth of the turban should be taught not to "pray to God their way." The Greeks also-a kind of Eastern Irish papists-have a college of their own at Maynooth, -no, at Haivali; where the heterodox receive much the same kind of countenance from the Ottoman as the Catholic college from the English legislature. Who shall then affirm that the Turks are ignorant bigots, when they thus evince the exact proportion of Christian charity which is tolerated in the most prosperous and orthodox of all possible kingdoms? But though they allow all this, they will not suffer the Greeks to participate in their privileges: no, let them fight their battles, and pay their haratch (taxes), be drubbed in this world, and damned in the next. And shall we then emancipate our Irish Helots? Mahomet forbid! We should then be bad Mussulmans, and worse Christians: at present we unite the best of both-- jesuitical faith, and something not much inferior to Turkish toleration.

63.-Stanza Ixxvii., line 4.

Receive the fiery Frank, her former guest;

When taken by the Latins, and retained for several years.

64.-Stanza Ixxvii., line 6

The prophet's tomb of all its pious spoil,

Mecca and Medina were taken some time ago by the Wahabces, a sect yearly increasing.

65.-Stanza Ixxix., line 2.

Oh Stamboul! once the empress of their reign?

[Of Constantinople Lord Byron says,-"I have traversed great part of Turkey, and many other parts of Europe, and some of Asia; but I never beheld a work of nature or art which yielded an impression like the prospect on each side, from the Seven Towers to the end of the Golden Horn."]

66.-Stanza lxxxv., line 3.

Thy vales of evergreen, thy hills of snow,

On many of the mountains, particularly Liakura, the snow never is entirely melted, notwithstanding the intense heat of the summer; but I never saw it lie on the plains, even in winter.

67.-Stanza lxxxvi., line 2.

Above its prostrate brethren of the cave;

Of Mount Pentelicus, from whence the marble was dug that constructed the public edifices of Athens. The modern name is Mount Mendeli. An immense cave, forined by the quarries, still remains, and will till the end of time.

68.-Stanza 1xxxvi., line 4.

Colonna's cliff, and gleams along the wave;

In all Attica, if we except Athens itself and Marathon, there is no scene more interesting than Cape Colonna. To the antiquary and artist, sixteen columns are an inexhaustible source of observation and design; to the philosopher, the supposed scene of some of Plato's conversations will not be unwelcome; and the traveller will be struck with the beauty of the prospect over "Isles that crown the Egean deep" but, for an Englishman, Colonna has yet an additional interest, as the actual spot of Falconer's shipwreck. Pallas and Plato are forgotten, in the recollection of Falconer and Campbell:

"Here in the dead of night by Lonna's steep,

The seaman's cry was heard along the deep."

This temple of Minerva may be seen at sea from a great distance. In two journeys which I made, and one voyage to Cape Colonna, the view from either side, by land, was less striking than the approach from the isles. In our second land excursion, we had a narrow escape from a party of Mainotes, concealed in the caverns beneath. We were told afterwards, by one of their prisoners, subsequently ransomed, that they were deterred from attacking us by the appearance of my two Albanians: conjecturing very sagaciously, but falsely, that we had a complete guard of these Arnaouts at hand, they remained stationary, and thus saved our party, which was too small to have opposed any effectual resistance. Colonna is no less a resort of painters than of pirates; there

"The hireling artist plants his paltry desk,
And makes degraded nature picturesque.'

(See Hodgson's Lady Jane Grey, &c.)

But there Nature, with the aid of Art, has done that for herself. I was fortunate enough to engage a very superior German artist; and hope to renew my acquaintance with this and many other Levantine scenes, by the arrival of his performances.

69. Stanza Ixxxvii., line 9.

Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair.

[The following passage, in Harris's Philosophical Inquiries, contains the pith of this stanza:-"Notwithstanding the various fortunes of Athens as a city, Attica is still famous for olives, and Mount Hymettus for honey. Human institutions perish, but Nature is permanent." once pointed out the coincidence to Lord Byron, but he assured me that he had never even seen this work of Harris.-MOORE.]

70.-Stanza Ixxxix., line 7.

When Marathon became a magic word;

I

"Siste Viator-heroa calcas!" was the epitaph on the famous Count Merci;-what then must be our feelings when standing on the tumulus of the two hundred (Greeks) who fell on Marathon? The principal barrow has recently been opened by Fauvel: few or no relics, as vases, &c. were found by the excavator. The plain of Marathon was offered to me for sale at the sum of sixteen thousand piastres, about nine hundred pounds! Alas!-" Expende-quot libras in duce summo-invenies!"was the dust of Miltiades worth no more? It could scarcely have fetched less if sold by weight.

71. Stanza xcii., line 9.

Or gazing o'er the plains where Greek and Persian died.

[The original MS. closes with this stanza. The rest was added while the canto was passing through the press.]

72.-Stanza xcviii., line 4.

And be alone on earth, as I am now.

[This stanza was composed October 11, 1811; upon which day the poct writes thus to a friend: "I have been again shocked with a death, and have lost one very dear to me in happier times; but I have almost forgot the taste of grief,' and 'supped full of horrors' till I have become callous, nor have I a tear left for an event which, five years ago, would have bowed down my head to the earth. It seems as though I were to experience in my youth the greatest misery of age. My friends fall around me, and I shall be left a lonely tree before I am withered. Other men can always take refuge in their families: I have no resource but my own reflections, and they present no prospect here or hereafter, except the selfish satisfaction of surviving my friends. I am indeed very wretched, and you will excuse my saying so, as you know I am not apt to cant of sensibility."]

CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE.

CANTO THE THIRD.

"Afin que cette application vous forçât de penser à autre chose; il n'y a en vérité de remède que celui-là et le temps."

Lettre du Roi de Prusse à D'Alembert, Sept. 7, 1776

INTRODUCTION TO CANTO III.

IN a month from the appearance of "The Siege of Corinth," and "Parasina," Lord Byron wrote to Moore (March 8, 1816) that his poetical feelings began and ended with eastern countries, and that having exhausted the subject, he could make nothing of any other. When a restless spirit, satiated with the monotony of a stationary life, and, above all, anguish at the marriage of his early love, Miss Chaworth, sent him to rove in 1809, the effect was to inspire the two first Cantos of Childe Harold-the earliest poem worthy of his present name. Another domestic catastrophe-the refusal of his wife in Jan. 1816, to live with him any longer-and the consequent clamour which was raised against him, drove him, at the end of April, into a second and final exile. The poetical result was the same as before. The soil which, on the eve of starting, he declared to be exhausted, immediately threw out the richest vintage it had hitherto produced. He travelled through Flanders and the Rhine country to Switzerland, and there completed, before the end of June, the third canto of Childe Harold. "It is," he says, "a fine indistinct piece of poetical desolation, and my favourite. I was half mad during the time of its composition, between metaphysics, mountains, lakes, love inextinguishable, thoughts unutterable, and the nightmare of my own delinquencies." All these subjects are depicted in his stanzas, which may be considered the poetical autobiography of perhaps the most melancholy period of his not less melancholy than glorious life. The notes of woe were extorted by his domestic misery; the metaphysics, which imparted an occasional mysticism to his strains, he owed to Shelley, whom he met at Geneva; and the admiration of this companion for Wordsworth, was also the cause why Lord Byron wrote of the lakes and mountains in a spirit akin to that of the Rydal bard, though expressed in nobler and more animating terms. The third canto was bought by Mr. Murray for 1500 guineas, and published in August 1816. Since the appearance of its precursors, the mind of Lord Byron had gained in depth and energy. The descriptions of nature are grander the reflections profounder and more impassioned, the words more burning and concise. The stanzas upon Waterloo, those on the thunderstorm in the mountains, and the characters of Rousseau, Voltaire, and Gibbon, are among the very finest passages in English verse. Yet so difficult is it to rekindle by a continuation the original enthusiasm, that many gave the palm to the previous cantos, and even Jeffrey did no more than express his confidence, that it would not be thought inferior and might probably be preferred. But a generous article by Sir Walter Scott, in the Quarterly Review, did justice both to the poem and its author-turned back the tide of obloquy which had set in against Lord Byron, and convinced the world that his genius was still on the ascendant.

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