Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

great stamina and noble elements in the modern Greek character-generations of independence will carry this character to excellence; but still we affirm that he who looks for direct descendants from the race of Miltiades, Pericles, or Epaminondas is likely to be disappointed; and most disappointed in that Athens, which for all of us alike (as appealing to our imaginative feelings) still continues to be what it was for Cicero-true and very Greece; in which, therefore, of all cities locally recalling the classical times, we can least brook a disappointment.

II.-If not the People of Greece, is it then the NATURAL SCENERY of Greece which can justify the tourist in this preference? Upon this subject it is difficult to dispute. What a man is likely to relish in scenery, what style or mode of the natural picturesque, and, secondly, what weight or value he will allow to his own preferences-are questions exceedingly variable. And the latter of these questions is the more important; for the objection is far less likely to arise against this mode of scenery or that, since every characteristic mode is relished as a change, than universally against all modes alike as adequate indemnifications for the toils of travelling. Female travellers are apt to talk of "scenery' as all in all, but men require a social interest superadded. Mere scenery palls upon the mind where it is the sole and ever-present attraction relied on. It should come unbidden and unthought of, like the warbling of birds, to sustain itself in power. And at feeding-time we observe that men of all nations and languages, Tros Tyriusve, grow savage if, by a fine scene, you endeavour to make amends for a bad beefsteak. The scenery of the Himalaya will not "draw houses " till it finds itself on a line of good hotels.

[ocr errors]

This difference, noted above, between the knowledge and the power of a scenery-hunter may be often seen illustrated in the fields of art. How common is the old sapless connoisseur in pictures who retains his learned eye and his distinguished skill, but whose sensibilities are as dry as summer dust to the interests of the art? On the other hand, daily you see young people whose hearts and souls are in the forests and the hills, but for whom the eye is perfectly untutored. If, now, to the differences in this respect you add the

extensive differences which prevail as to the kinds of scenery, it is easy to understand how rich in the materials for schism must be every party that starts up on the excitement of mere scenery. Some laud the Caucasus; some the northern and eastern valleys of Spain; some the Alpine scenery; some the Pyrenean. All these are different; and from all alike differs again what Mr. Mure classes as the classical character of scenery. For this he thinks a regular education of the eye requisite. Such an education he himself had obtained from a residence in Italy. And, subject to that condition, he supposes the scenery on the Eurotas (to the eastern side of the Peloponnesus) the most delightful in Europe. We know not. It may be so. For ourselves, the obscure sense of being or moving under a vast superincumbency of some great natural power, as of a mighty forest or a trackless succession of mountainous labyrinths, has a charm of secret force far better than any distinct scenes to which we are introduced. Such things ought not to be; but still so it is, that tours in search of the picturesque are particularly apt to break up in quarrels,—perhaps on the same principle which has caused a fact generally noticed, viz. that conchologists, butterfly-fanciers, &c., are unusually prone to commit felonies, because too little of a human interest circulates through their arid pursuits. The morbid irritation accumulates until the amateur rushes out with a knife, lets blood in some quarter, and so restores his own connexion with the vitalities of human nature. In any case, we advise the Greek tourist to have at least two strings to his bow besides scenery.

III.—Is it, then, the monuments of the antique, the memorials of Pericles and Phidias, which a man should seek in Greece? If so, no great use in going beyond Athens. Because, though more solemn images survive in other places, associated with powers more mysterious and ages more remote, as the gate of Lions at Mycenæ, or the relics yet standing (and perhaps to stand for ever) of Cyclopean cities,-forms of art that for thousands of years have been dying away through dimness of outlines and vegetable overgrowth into forms of nature, yet in Athens only is there a great open museum of such monuments. The Athenian buildings, though none of them Homeric in point of origin, are old enough for us.

Two-and-a-half millennia satisfy our grovelling aspirations. And Mr. Mure himself, whilst insisting on their too youthful character, admits that they are "superior in number, variety, and elegance to those which the united cities of Greece can now show." Yet even these pure monuments have been combined with modern aftergrowths, as in the case of the Propylæa, of which multitudes doubt (Mr. Mure in particular) whether they can now be detached from the connexion with effect. For more reasons than one, it will, perhaps, be advisable to leave them in their present condition; and that is as hybrid as the population. But, with respect to Athenian buildings, it strikes our feelings that finish and harmony are essential conditions to their effect. Ruins are becoming to Gothic buildings; decay is there seen in a graceful form; but to an Attic building decay is more expressive of disease: it is scrofula; it is phagedænic ulcer. And, unless the Bavarian government can do more than is now held out or hoped towards the restoration and disengagement of the public buildings surmounting the city, we doubt whether there will not be as much of pain as of an artist's pleasure in a visit to the Athenian capital, though now raised to the rank of metropolis for universal Greece.

IV.—There are, however, mixed monuments, not artificial in their origin, but which gradually come to act upon the feelings as such from their use and habitual connexion with human purposes. Such, for instance, is the Acro-Corinthus ; of which Mr. Mure says that it "is by far the most striking "object that I have ever seen, either abroad or at home. "Neither the Acropolis of Athens, nor the Larissa of Argos,

66

nor even Gibraltar, can enter into the remotest competition "with this gigantic citadel." Indeed, when a man is aware of the impression produced by a perpendicular rock over six hundred feet high, he may judge of the stupendous effect from a citadel rising almost insulated in the centre of a plain sloping to the sea and ascending to the height of nineteen hundred feet.

Objects of this class, together with the mournful Pelasgic remains, the ruins or ruined plans which point back to Egypt, and to Phoenicia,-these may serve as a further bribe to the tourist in Greece. If a collection of all the objects in every

class, according to the best order of succession for the traveller, were arranged skilfully, we believe that a maritime circuit of Greece, with a few landings and short excursions, would bring the whole of what is first-rate within a brief period of weeks and an easy effort. As to the people, they will become more or less entitled to a separate interest, according to the improvement and improved popularity of their government. And upon that will depend much of the comfort, much even of the safety, to be looked for by tourists. The prospects at present are not brilliant. A Government and a Court drawn from a needy aristocracy like the Bavarian are not suited to a needy people, struggling with the difficulties of a new colony. However, we will hope for the best. And, for the tourist in Greece as it is, perhaps Mr. Mure's work is the best fitted for popularity. He touches all things sufficiently, but exhausts none. And we add, very sincerely, this antithesis, as due to him that of what may be called personal guides, or those who maintain a current of personal interest in their adventures, or in the selecting from their private experience, he is the most learned; whilst of learned guides he is, in the sense explained, the most amusingly personal.

REVOLT OF THE TARTARS

OR, FLIGHT OF THE KALMUCK KHAN AND HIS PEOPLE FROM 1 THE RUSSIAN TERRITORIES TO THE FRONTIERS OF CHINA

THERE is no great event in modern history, or, perhaps it may be said more broadly, none in all history from its earliest records, less generally known, or more striking to the imagination, than the flight eastwards of a principal Tartar nation across the boundless steppes of Asia in the latter half of the last century. The terminus a quo of this flight, and the terminus ad quem, are equally magnificent; the mightiest of Christian thrones being the one, the mightiest of Pagan the other. And the grandeur of these two terminal objects is harmoniously supported by the romantic circumstances of the flight. In the abruptness of its commencement, and the fierce velocity of its execution, we read the wild barbaric character of those who conducted the movement. In the unity of purpose connecting this myriad of wills, and in the blind but unerring aim at a mark so remote, there is something which recalls to the mind those almighty instincts that propel the migrations of the swallow and the leeming,2 or the life-withering marches of the locust. Then, again, in the gloomy vengeance of Russia and her vast artillery, which hung upon the rear and the skirts of the fugitive vassals, we are reminded of Miltonic images-such, for instance, as that

1 From Blackwood's Magazine for July 1837: reprinted by De Quincey, with but slight verbal changes, in 1854, in the fourth volume of his Collected Writings.-M.

2 "And the leeming :-These words are an addition in the reprint of 1854.-M.

« ForrigeFortsæt »