Chapter 15

But were not some tribes amongst the Greeks celebrated for their stature? Yes; the Daulians, for instance, both men and women: and in some modern tourist we remember a distinction of the same kind claimed for the _present_ occupants of Daulis. But the ancient claim bad reference only to the Grecian scale. Tall, were they? Yes, but tall for Grecians. The Romans were possibly a shade taller than the Greeks, but they also were a little race of men. This is certain. And, if a man were incautious enough to plead in answer the standard of the modern Italians, who are often both tall and athletic, he must be reminded that to Tramontanes, in fact, such as Goths, Heruli, Scyrra, Lombards, and other tribes of the Rhine, Lech, or Danube, Italy is indebted for the improved breed of her carcasses. [Footnote 4] Man, instead of degenerating according to the scandalous folly of books, very slowly improves everywhere; and the carcasses of the existing generation, weighed off, million for million, against the carcasses of any pre-Christian generation, we feel confident would be found to have the advantage by many thousands of stones [the butchers' stone is eight pounds] upon each million. And universally the best _prima facie_ title to a pure Greek descent will be an elegantly formed, but somewhat under-sized, person, with a lively, animated, and intelligent physiognomy; of which last may be said, that, if never in the highest sense rising to the noble, on the other hand, it never sinks to the brutal. At Liverpool we used to see in one day many hundreds of Greek sailors from all parts of the Levant; these were amongst the most probable descendants from the children of Ion or of OEolus, and the character of their person was what we describe--short but symmetrical figures and faces, upon the whole, delicately chiselled. These men generally came from the Greek islands.

Meantime, what is Mr. Mure's opinion upon this much-vexed question? Into the general problem he declines to enter; not, we may be sure, from want of ability to treat it with novelty and truth. But we collect that he sees no reason for disputing the general impression, that an Albanian or hybrid population is mainly in possession of the soil, and that perhaps he would say, _lis est de paupere regno_; for, if there is no beauty concerned in the decision, nor any of the quality of physical superiority, the less seems the value of the dispute. To appropriate a set of plain faces, to identify the descent of ordinary bodies, seems labor lost. And in the race now nominally claiming to be Grecian, Mr. Mure evidently finds only plain faces, and ordinary bodies. Those, whom at any time he commends for beauty or other advantages of person, are tribes confessedly alien; and, on the other hand, with respect to those claiming to be Greek, he pronounces a pointed condemnation by disparaging their women. It is notoriously a duty of the female sex to be beautiful, if they can, with a view to the recreation of us males--whom Lily's Grammar affirms to be 'of the worthier gender.' Sitting at breakfast, (which consisted 'of red herrings and Gruyere cheese,') upon the shore of Megara, Mr. Mure beheld the Megarensian lasses mustering in force for a general ablution of the Megarensian linen. The nymphs had not turned out upon the usual principles of feminine gatherings--

'Spectatum venit, venit spectentur it ipsae;'

and yet, between them, the two parties reciprocated the functions. Each to the other was a true spectacle. A long Scotchman,

'Qui sicca solus secum spatiatur arena,'

and holding in his dexter mauley a red herring, whilst a white table-cloth (the centre of his motions) would proclaim some mysterious rite, must to the young ladies have seemed a merman suddenly come up from the sea, without sound of conch; whilst to him the large deputation from female Megara furnished an extra theatre for the inspection of Greek beauty. 'There was no river mouth visible, the operation being performed in the briny sea itself;' and, so far from this being unusual, Mr. Mure notices it as a question of embarrassment to the men of Plutarch's age, why the Phoeacian princess in the Odyssey did _not_ wash in the sea, but mysteriously preferred the river, (_Sympos, I. qu._ 9;) but as to beauty, says Mr. Mure, 'I looked in vain for a figure, which either as to face or form could claim even a remote resemblance to Nausicaa. The modern Greek woman indeed appeared to me, upon the whole, about the most ill-favored I have met with in any country.' And it attests the sef-consistency of Mr. Mure, that in Aracova, the only place where he notices the women as having any pretensions to beauty, he and others agree that their countenances are not true to the national type; they are generally reputed to offer something much nearer to the bloom and the _embonpoint_ of female rustics in Germany; and accordingly, it is by the Bavarian officers of King Otho's army that these fair Aracovites have been chiefly raised into celebrity. We cannot immediately find the passage in Mr. Mure's book relating to Aracova; but we remember that, although admitting the men to be a tolerably handsome race, he was disappointed in the females. Tall they are, and stout, but not, he thinks, beautiful.

Yet, in dismissing this subject of personal appearance, as the most plausible test now surviving for the claim of a pure Greek descent, we must not forget to explain--that it is far from our design to countenance the hypothesis of any _abrupt_ supercession, at any period or by any means, to the old Grecian blood. The very phrase of 'national type,' which we used in the last paragraph, and the diffusion of a language essentially Greek, argue at once a slow and gradational transition of the population into its present physical condition. Mr. Mure somewhere describes, as amongst the characteristics of the present race, swarth-iness and leanness. These we suspect to have been also characteristics of the old original _ton d'apameibomenoi_ Greeks. If so, the fact would seem to argue, that the changes, after all, had not been on a scale sufficient to obliterate the primitive type of Hellenic nature; whilst the existence of any _diffused_ type marks a tendency to national unity, and shows that some one element has so much predominated as to fuse the rest into a homogeneous whole. Indeed, it is pretty certain that a powerful cross in any human breed, whatever effects it may have in other respects, leaves the intellect improved--if not in the very highest qualities, yet in mobility, activity, and pertinacity of attention. The Greek nation has also shown itself morally improved; their revolutionary war evoked and tried, as in a furnace, the very finest qualities of courage, both adventurous and enduring; and we heartily agree in the sentiment delivered so ably by Mr. Mure, that the struggles of these poor shepherds and herdsmen, driven into caves and thickets, and having no great rallying principle but the banner of the Cross against the Crescent, were as much more truly sublime in suffering and in daring, than the classical struggles against the Persians, as they are and will be more obscure in the page of general history. We do not at all question 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 Miliades, 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.

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 endeavor to make amends for a bad beef-steak. The scenery of the Himalaya will not 'draw houses' till it finds itself on a line of good hotels.

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 peculiarly 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 connection 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 Mycense, or the relics yet standing (and perhaps to stand for ever) of Cyclopian 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 Propylyoea, of which multitudes doubt [Mr. Mure in particular] whether they can now be detached from the connection 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 phagedoenic 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 came to act upon the feelings as such from their use, and habitual connection 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, 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.

NOTES.

NOTE 1.

Chief Justice squinted probably at the Versailles affair, where parties were incinerated; for which, in Yorkshire, there is a local word--_crozelled,_ applied to those who lie down upon a treacherous lime-pit, whose crust gives way to their weight. But if he meant security in the sense of public funds, Chief-Justice was still more in error, as he will soon learn. For the British Railways now yield a regular income of three millions per annum--one tenth of the interest of the national debt; offer as steady an investment as the 3 per cent consols; and will soon be quoted in other securities.

NOTE 2.

As respects the _elegance_ of this translation, there is good reason to warn the reader--that much of the Odyssey was let off by-contract, like any poor-house proposal for 'clods' and 'stickings' of beef, to low undertakers, such as Broome and Fenton. Considering the ample fortune which Pope drew from the whole work, we have often been struck by the inexplicable indulgence with which this scandalous partition is treated by Pope's biographers. It is simply the lowest act of self- degradation ever connected with literature.

NOTE 3.

Some will urge the intolerance of the Greeks for Christians of the Latin Church. But that did not hinder alliances, and ambitious attempts at such alliances, with their Venetian masters in the most distinguished of the Greek houses. Witness the infernal atrocities by which the Venetian government avenged at times what they viewed as unpardonable presumption. See their own records.

NOTE 4.

It may be remarked, as a general prevailing tendency amongst the great Italian masters of painting, that there is the same conspicuous leaning to regard the gigantic as a vulgar straining after effect. Witness St. Paul before Agrippa, and St. Paul at Athens; Alexander the Great, or the Archangel Michael. Nowhere throughout the whole world is the opposite defect carried to a more intolerable excess than amongst the low (but we regret to add--and in all but the very highest) of London artists. Many things, which the wretched Von Raumer said of English art, were abominable and malicious falsehooods; circulated not for London, but for Berlin, and Dresden, where English engravers and landscape-painters are too justly prized by the wealthy purchasers nor to be hated by the needy sellers. Indeed to hear Von Raumer's account of our water-color exhibitions, you would suppose that such men as Turner, Dewint, Prout, and many others, had no merit whatever, and no name except in London. Raumer is not an honest man. But had he fixed his charges on the book-decorators amongst us, what an unlimited field for ridicule the most reasonable! In most sentimental poems, the musing young gentlemen and ladies usually run to seven and eight feet high. And in a late popular novel connected with the Tower of London, by Mr. Ainsworth, [which really pushes its falsifications of history to an unpardonable length, as e.g. in the case of the gentle victim lady Jane Grey,] the Spanish ambassador seems to us at least fourteen feet high; and his legs meant for some ambassador who happened to be twenty-seven feet high.

LORD CARLISLE ON POPE.

[1851.]

Lord Carlisle's recent lecture upon Pope, addressed to an audience of artisans, drew the public attention first of all upon himself--_that_ was inevitable. No man can depart conspicuously from the usages or the apparent sympathies of his own class, under whatsoever motive, but that of necessity he will awaken for the _immediate_ and the first result of his act an emotion of curiosity. But all curiosity is allied to the comic, and is not an ennobling emotion, either for him who feels it or for him who is its object. A second, however, and more thoughtful consideration of such an act may redeem it from this vulgarizing taint of oddity. Reflection may satisfy us, as in the present case it _did_ satisfy those persons who were best acquainted with Lord Carlisle's public character, that this eccentric step had been adopted, not in ostentation, with any view to its eccentricity, but _in spite_ of its eccentricity, and from impulses of large prospective benignity that would not suffer itself to be defeated by the chances of immediate misconstruction.

Whether advantageous, therefore, to Lord Carlisle, or disadvantageous (and in that case, I believe, most unjust), the first impressions derived from this remarkable lecture pointed themselves exclusively to the person of the lecturer--to his general qualifications for such a task, and to his possible motives for undertaking it. Nobody inquired _what_ it was that the noble lord had been discussing, so great was every man's astonishment that before such an audience any noble lord should have condescended to discuss anything at all. But gradually all wonder subsides--_de jure_, in nine days; and, after this collapse of the primary interest, there was leisure for a secondary interest to gather about the _subject_ of the patrician lecture. Had it any cryptical meaning? Coming from a man so closely connected with the government, could it be open to any hieroglyphic or ulterior interpretations, intelligible to Whigs, and significant to ministerial partisans? Finally, this secondary interest has usurped upon what originally had been a purely personal interest. POPE! What novelty was there, still open to even literary gleaners, about _him_, a man that had been in his grave for one hundred and six years? What _could_ there remain to say on such a theme? And what was it, in fact, that Lord Carlisle _had_ said to his Yorkshire audience?

There was, therefore, a double aspect in the public interest--one looking to the rank of the lecturer, one to the singularity of his theme. There was the curiosity that connected itself with the assumption of a troublesome duty in the service of the lowest ranks by a volunteer from the highest; and, secondly, there was another curiosity connecting itself with the choice of a subject that had no special reference to this particular generation, and seemed to have no special adaptation to the intellectual capacities of a working audience.

This double aspect of the public surprise suggests a double question. The volunteer assumption by a nobleman of this particular office in this particular service may, in the eyes of some people, bear a philosophic value, as though it indicated some changes going on beneath the surface of society in the relations of our English aristocracy to our English laboring body. On the other hand, it will be regarded by multitudes as the casual caprice of an individual--a caprice of vanity by those who do not know Lord Carlisle's personal qualities, a caprice of patriotic benevolence by those who do. According to the construction of the case as thus indicated, oscillating between a question of profound revolution moving subterraneously amongst us, and a purely personal question, such a discussion would ascend to the philosophic level, or sink to the level of gossip. The other direction of the public surprise points to a question that will interest a far greater body of thinkers. Whatever judgment may be formed on the general fact that a nobleman of ancient descent has thought fit to come forward as a lecturer to the humblest of his countrymen upon subjects detached from politics, there will yet remain a call for a second judgment upon the fitness of the particular subject selected for a lecture under such remarkable circumstances. The two questions are entirely disconnected. It is on the latter, viz., the character and pretensions of Pope, as selected by Lord Carlisle for such an inaugural experiment, that I myself feel much interest. Universally it must have been felt as an objection, that such a selection had no special adaptation to the age or to the audience. I say this with no wish to undervalue the lecture, which I understand to have been ably composed, nor the services of the lecturer, whose motives and public character, in common with most of his countrymen, I admire. I speak of it at all only as a public opportunity suddenly laid open for drawing attention to the true pretensions of Pope, as the most brilliant writer of his own class in European literature; or, at least, of drawing attention to some characteristics in the most popular section of Pope's works which hitherto have lurked unnoticed.