To which I bear my only child! When some high chieftain bow'd to fate; No stranger's hand thy corse defiled! Found for thy valiant race a grave- Than thus to gnaw the oppressor's chains! And rich carved stonework round me spread, The moon burst from behind the cloud, His soul was for a moment bow'd- Which was in that stern moment vow'd! Proclaims his mortal race is run! H. R. A GREEK WEDDING. Conjugi ΔΟΥΛΚΙΣΣΙΜΩ. Ancient Inscription. THERE cannot be imagined a more delightful retreat for the philosophy which is fatigued with the stir and passions of large cities, than the cheerful seclusion of the small town of Athens during those two or three thoughtful months with which the summer closes and the autumn begins. It is not that you find, either in its scenery or remains, any of that sullen, overmastering magnificence which absorbs the stranger on the first aspect of Rome, and infuses an instant disgust for all that is modern and mortal; or that its limited society is capable of adding any great stimulant to the current even of a contemplative existence; but that within its compact precincts the modern pilgrim, like the ancient, finds every variety of food for the most fastidious intellectual appetite, and nothing in the prose occurrences of every-day life which can detract from that higher poetic temper with which meditation over ancient sites and histories ought, more or less, to be connected. I have remarked a very singular coincidence between the sites of ancient cities and their histories. Jerusalem, Thebes, Sparta, have the known peculiarities of their inhabitants written in broad and emphatic characters in their geography, and no one can gaze upon the actual aspect of these places, disfigured as they may be by change and interpolation, without instantly peopling them with that very race of corresponding beings, whom we afterwards meet with in their history. Athens, in an especial manner, is illustrative of this position; and if we discover on the bare basaltic rocks of Jerusalem, remembrances of the terrible and dark of the Old Testament, and in the iron range of Taygetus, suggestions of the hardy and inflexible of the Spartan character, we do not less trace, in the graceful forms, the felicitous intermixture of sea and land, plain and mountain, wood and waste, of the Athenian landscape, clothed as it is in an atmosphere transparent and enlivening beyond measure, all those inexplicable delicacies, those finely woven susceptibilities, those instincts of taste and feeling, from whose aggregate at length arose the completion and perfection of the Athenian. To stand on Hymettus, on a tranquil evening towards the close of June, and to travel gradually through the enlarging panorama around you, is reading in some measure, not only an epitome of their unrivalled history, but in a still greater degree unweaving a portion of the natural causes from which such history sprung. The landscape below, and the sky above, explain the Acropolis and the Theseum; in such a climate the Garden and the Academy were natural. Even at this distance, the mind drinks in something of the same mellow inspiration; and meditation, without any of its northern austerity, penetrates, insensibly, the entire being. Thinking here is like breathing; and where the atmosphere is all balm, breathing is a delightful act of the will. Nor is there any marring feature, or warping influence, in the accompaniments of such a scene. The shepherd you see at your feet is an Albanian; but though his features are dashed with some of the fears and ferocities of the times, it is only ascending a little higher in the annals, from Pericles to Theseus, and you bring him at once within the range of your picture. The Turk, too, stimulates you into contrast, and that chord at once touched, you have the glorious choruses of Eschylus, the spirit-stirring narrative of Herodotus-the Persian, and the Invader-but sooner or later, before or behind, the Greek, but principally and finally the Greek before you. The cloud of dust from the herd or cavalry in the plain, thus attracts your attention for an instant, but it soon remounts to its original contemplation, and your imagination is again absorbed by the Parthenon and the Acropolis. The society, if so indeed can be termed a few scattered groups connected only by an identity of pursuit, was strictly in harmony with this admirable local. There was just enough of the native, and the nation, for a substratum to work on. You had the primates and the archons, and one or two of the Greek papas, and the semi-Greek consuls, for your Grecks-the Turks were rather slovenly represented by the Disdar Aga, and his indolent guards, sleeping over their pipes and beads, on the shattered steps of the Parthenon. The traveller and artist were constantly changing-but a few were denizens, and now for many years Fauvel and Lusieri went far to make up the stranger's idea of Athens. Nothing could invite more attractively to the mood of the place than Fauvel, and his truly Attic court-yard. There was a fragment there on entering, shorn it is true of the finish and feature it once boasted, but then so pregnant still with its ancient spirit, that you stopped short and hungrily before it-then, on passing, you saw whole heaps of these were thrown lavishly up and down around the walls, luxuriously imbedded in flowers, and tendrils, and ivy; and the sun which played upon them through the sweeping vines from the trellis work above, and the winds which whispered through their crevices, and the dripping of waters near, and the feeble tracery of their sculpture, threw the soul into a sort of dreaminess, from which nothing could so well awake it as the antiquarian bustle and French gaiety of Fauvel himself. It was below one of these little arcades, half made up from the picked contributions of antiquity, that I first saw him, in deep meditation over his wax model of the city. He had changed one of his hillocks backwards and forwards two or three times in the day, with perhaps more regard to Pausanias than Nature, and seemed inclined, in a moment of vexation, to plough up the whole town with a blow of his penknife, and to sow it, in revenge, with dust and salt. The moment he perceived me, the Frenchman superseded every other consideration. Years and absence had not tamed any thing of the aboriginal spirit, or soured in the least that wine of life, that childlike cheerfulness of heart and head, which is the enviable apanage of our neighbours. He was brisk, buoyant, and rapid; and his black silk costume, close and punctilious as that of an Abbé under Louis XV., his dried and dwindled form, and the social brilliancy of his language and manners, brought you back, in an instant, to the heart of Paris and the middle of the last century. France was strangely mingled in his affections with Athens; out of the two countries he made himself one. going out, his Albanian nurse, or gouvernante, flaring with the costume of her country, fat and authoritative, came in with his mid-day coffee. She sate down on the fragment of a sarcophagus, on which Loves and Genii were playing below, and watched him taking it with a smile. Near was his black crow, which he nursed and loved for want of an eagle. Fauvel's crow was known through the whole republic. It made its excursions every morning after breakfast to the neighbour On Poor hood of Athens, and came home affectionately at night. It was scarcely less respected than his Consul's colours, and the bitterest Moslem allowed it to wander ad libitum, like a stork, over his mosque. Fauvel! the calamities which afterwards weighed on this fated country did not spare him-his museum, his Albanian, his crow, and all but his courage and philosophy, perished in the general visitation. He still survives at Smyrna, and his only consolation for the loss of Athens is its waxen model, and the daily pursuit of his unending task to its achievement. I was one evening sitting with him, in one of the most delightful recesses of this sanctuary, and making my usual enquiries about the statu quo of his hills and hillocks, when a brother of Logotheti's (the English consul) entered, and proposed to conduct me to a Greek wedding, which was to be celebrated in the neighbourhood. I liked the man, and was curious to see the ceremony. In a few minutes we turned down a narrow lane near the walls, and soon discovered, by the unusual clamour which issued from behind the mud enclosure, that we had reached our destination. Logotheti's brother was a tall and portly papas, with a mind and muscle far more fitted for the halberd than the crosier. His eye laughed with an air of avowed and arch contempt at the slavery of his countrymen, and with something more, but whether at their faith, their manners, or their condition, I could scarcely dare to say. He was known as an intelligent lover of good cheer,' and his cheek and tongue bore grave evidence to these propensities. With this strange interblending of this world with the other, he still preserved, if not the veneration, at least what is not usual in other countries, the attachment of his flock. No man could be more welcome at a baptism or a marriage: he was in some sort the genius of such festivities, and his voice and tread was the signal for the commencement or renewal of every description of gaiety. No wonder then that his knock on the outer door was recognized with a cry of jubilee, or that I entered with a“πρоσкvvw σās” from every part of the court under the guidance of so ghostly a director. 66 It was the residence of the bride and her family-and the "bringing out," or procession to that of the bridegroom, had not yet commenced. The house was of that neither good nor bad description which at Athens gives rank amongst the first of the bourgeoisie. A dislocated stone staircase conducted externally to the first story. It was crowded with visitors and performers in the ceremonial. An unceasing tumult, half between the clashing and jangling of cymbals, and the rough rolling of a sort of drum or tamborine, by way of prelude to the Epithalamium, with now and then an intervening nasal whoop, prepared the nerves and imagination of the guests for the approaching festivity. The performers were few, but strenuous and effective. It was with difficulty a word could be distinguished or heard. I was now conducted, after bustling with considerable difficulty through the crowd, by the stone staircase, to the principal chamber. The bride was seated in the centre, and her relatives ranged in various groups around. It was a singular spectacle. The ceremony of her toilette had not yet been completed. Her nurse was engaged in adding sequin after sequin, and flower after flower, to her enormous head-dress, and perfecting into a more entire ugliness the hideous disfigurements of her counte nance. The contrast was characteristic. The nurse, now beyond all reach of the vanities of the world, at least for herself, seemed still to live anew in the vanity of her pupil. She was corpulent, comfortable, and teeming with recollections, and burning with anticipations. Her eye brightened at every touch of her picture, and she drew back on her knees, from time to time, with a self-applauding hem, claiming the approbation of the circle as her creation every instant rose into some newer absurdity before her. Such was the nurse ;-the Juliet was, if possible, still more ludicrous. She was about eighteen, of a prepossessing physiognomy, without any strict claims to beauty, but strikingly Greek, and what is worse, Athenian. Her eyes were round, deep, and dark, but they had farther been enlarged and mellowed by artificial assistance. The blackening of the eyebrows and eyelashes threw a melting and voluptuous melancholy into their lustre, but at the same time seemed to stifle all the more refined shades and gradations, and to give that frigidness and pious stare to their look which is so easily recognisable in the Greek madamas. Her real colour was not discoverable, under the heavy hand, and liberal painting of her ame d'atours. White and red concealed every gleam of nature and truth from the enquirer. Her head-dress was an immense pile, built up stage upon stage, and glaringly festooned with coins of various descriptions, flowers, gold-paper, &c. A cousin near pointed with admiration to the edifice. It was a flattering proof of the importance of the family; for it is thus in general that is exhibited the amount total of their dowry. This, however, by no means prevented another portion of the ceremonial. The moment the attiring had been completed, a plate was handed round for subscriptions to the guests; the contributions were very considerable, and the entire, when the circle had been gone through, was transferred to the bride, and counted over with very leisurely simplicity on her knees. But the sun was now setting, and it was full time for the procession to commence. The bride rose with extreme difficulty, and with a bridesmaid on each side to support the weight of her head-dress, under which she seemed literally bowing, proceeded to the head of the stonestaircase. This was the signal for the Epithalamium. It began in alternate stanzas, sung with abundance of strange gesticulation, and in the strained and high-pitched nasal swing of the most horrible of all music, the Greek cantilene. On tottering down the steps, a young boy preceded her with a mirror, which he held constantly elevated for her inspection. She seemed to profit, however, but very rarely by this rather too ostentatious excitement and appeal to her vanity. Her deep dull eyelids hung lazily over her eyes, and every emotion seemed drowned in the physical endurance of the portentous head-dress. On leaving her habitation, nuts and flowers were flung upon her as she passed, with every good augury which ancient tradition, and the still picturesque phraseology of the language, could supply. Torches were then lighted, and the procession (marshalled with as much attention as the narrowness of the streets and the exuberant exultation of the performers would permit) followed slowly on, and, after numerous windings, at last reached the residence of the intended husband. The domestic despotism of the ancients still lives in their descendants, and the Greek, in his relations with the female portion of his fa |