A NEW ACQUAINTANCE.

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of the petit-maître too, in his dress and manner; it was evident he had been somewhat of a beau in his younger days. His trowsers, tight, and somewhat shrunken, scarcely came down to his ankles; pink striped stockings succeeded, and shoes. His coat was short-waisted, with long thin tails to it; a huge watch-chain and seals dangled from his waistcoat; his bushy white whiskers seemed nearly to meet across his face, and his shirt collar cut up into the middle of his hollow cheeks. Entering at last upon his business, he explained that there was now a small vessel bound for Syra, in the harbour, in which he had taken his passage; and learning that there was a Signor Inglese at the convent bound to the same port, he had come to propose that we should make our provisions for the voyage in common, in which, from his great experience, he should be able to save me some little trouble. I thanked him warmly; in fact, such a proposal was just the very thing I could have wished for. Next day, the wind being fair, and our preparations completed, I took leave of the cynical cook and worthy superior. Some years afterwards, I happened to touch at the same port, and ran to the convent to greet my ancient acquaintances; but the grave had closed over the old man, and whither the other had wandered no one knew.

In voyaging by these little Levantine boats, the passengers are obliged to provide their own food, and prepare it on deck, at a small fire-place. Occupying the posts of honour, we had the first turn at the cooking-place; and it was quite a sight to see my tall friend, regularly at noon, bending his long back, and going through the operations of the cuisine, with a solemn gravity worthy of Quixote himself. Seated on the deck, over our soup and bouilli, we were the best of friends, and I soon became the confidant of some of the old gentleman's gallantries, real or apocryphal, and also of the misfortunes which caused him to wander about the Levant. He was, as it appeared, an old captain of Ragusa, in the Adriatic Gulf; who had been all

H

his lifetime beating about in quest of a quiet haven, yet had encountered nothing but foul weather and scurvy treatment at the hands of the unstable goddess, whom alone he seemed to worship; and was now as far from port as ever, while his hull was somewhat battered by time and tempest, and his rigging sadly out of order.

During the four days that we were sailing through the romantic islands of the Archipelago, not without an uneasy look out for skulking pirates, my companion beguiled the time with many an amusing anecdote and narrative; and whatever might have been my answer, had I been required to give a categorical opinion as to his religious or moral character, I must frankly confess that "I could have better spared a better man.'

On reaching the island of Syra, we were immediately clapped into quarantine, for ten mortal days, in a den swarming with rats and every sort of abomination, of which I spare the reader a more particular account. On coming forth, I took leave of my entertaining fellow-traveller, in order to return to my home, little expecting that I should ever fall in with him again. In this respect, however, I was fated to be disappointed, nor was the disappointment entirely disagreeable; but as the meeting took place in a land but little, if at all, visited by those whose honoured footsteps I have proposed to trace, in this instance also I spare my reader any further details.

CHAPTER III.

ALEXANDRIA TO ATHENS-LYCABETTUS-MARS' HILL-TEMPLE OF THESEUS— ACROPOLIS- TEMPLE OF JUPITER- CENCHREA CORINTH

PROPYLEA
PATRAS.

HAVING, on my return from Egypt, an opportunity of paying at least a hasty visit to Greece, I took my passage in the French Government steamer, from Alexandria to Athens. Nothing of any interest signalized the voyage, unless I may except the passing off the headland of Cape Salmone, on the east end of Cyprus, mentioned in St. Paul's last voyage to Rome. We reached the shores of Greece in the night; and when, roused from my slumbers, I went on deck, I found we were at anchor in the harbour of the Piræus.

Among the miserable imitations by eastern powers, of usages that the western are just learning to throw off, is that of the establishment of quarantine. We had been put into confinement in Egypt, the very land of plague, for coming from Syria, where it was said that the disease was raging, although we had never encountered it, and we were now again imprisoned for coming from Egypt, although it was notorious that, at that time, there was not a single case in the country. My arrival in this glorious land was signalized by a week's solitary confinement in the Lazaretto of the Piræus.

Being at length emancipated from this "durance vile," I prepared to start for Athens, without a moment's loss of time. On issuing forth, and walking round the port, I found it wearing that look of awakening animation which then began to

characterise Greece. Subjected for centuries to the desolating sway of Turkish despotism, her harbours empty, her fields uncultivated, she still wore, in general, that melancholy air of decay, so finely described by Lord Byron—

"So coldly sweet-
t-so deadly fair,

We start-for soul is wanting there!"

Having, at length, after a long and exhausting struggle, succeeded, although with an alien upon the throne, in achieving independence, signs of life and hope were just beginning to appear. New buildings had sprung up; there was something of the bustle of traffic in the port, and of activity in the habits of the people. The introduction of western usages was commencing; and among other signs of improvement, was a rank of crazy-looking vehicles, intended to imitate our cabs; but, instead of a sullen fellow, in a dirty-drab mackintosh, the driver was a "gay and gilded Greek," in red jacket and cap, and white juxtonika, or more correctly, petticoats and leggings. Signalling one of these men, I entered his carriage, drove to the gate of the Lazaret, took in my baggage, and turned my back upon the Piræus, with a feeling of bitterness which not all its heroic associations (I had enjoyed a view of the scene of the battle of Salamis for a whole week)-could succeed in driving away.

The Piræus is the port of Athens; from which it is five miles distant across the plain. It was connected with the city by the two parallel long walls, as they were called, built by Themistocles, and might thus be esteemed almost a part of the city itself. On the right of our road we had some traces of these famous bulwarks; and at the extremity of the long perspective towered the brown rock of the Acropolis, crowned with the wrecks of the Parthenon. The ranges of Hymettus and Pentelicus closed in the view. After about an hour's drive, during which time we swallowed as much dust as during any similar period in our remembrance, the cab rolled into the streets of modern Athens,

and deposited us at the gate of a tolerably decent sort of Frenchlooking hotel.

After luncheon, I sallied forth to see a little of the town, and also to make my way to the top of Mount Lycabettus, a lofty cone-shaped hill, towering up in the distance, and which, I expected, would afford an excellent view of the city and its environs. There are few places so utterly disappointing, or that so thoroughly demolish all preconceived ideas, as Modern Athens. Brimfull of classics and heroics, or striving to recall the fading traces of early lessons, as the case may be, the traveller hurries. out of doors, and finds himself amid a maze of paltry streets and alleys, resembling the faubourgs of some second-rate French town, hastily run up among the tottering ruins of the old Turkish houses, which were infinitely more picturesque. Shabby estaminets and grog-houses-petty milliners' shops-stinking repositories for olives, salt-fish, and all unutterable things-or some English warehouse for cheese and pickles and bottled porter, kept by the inevitable Brown or Smith-compose the degrading picture. There is the same mean and mongrel look about the population, which seems, one cannot somehow help thinking, to comprise an unusual proportion of scamps; and while everything betokens a transition from an old state of things to a new, it is by no means evident that the change is, for the present, an improvement. Advancing from the centre of the town to the suburb, the prospect brightens up a little; neat, well-built houses, with green blinds, and gardens, salute the eye, giving promise of a handsome city hereafter. But with all this, I could not help wishing that the capital of modern Greece had been fixed either at the Piræus, or in some other eligible place; and that the wrecks of the ancient city, clear of all obstruction, had been kept apart, as in a glass case, to receive the reverential homage of pilgrims from all parts of the civilized world.

With the feeling of disappointment produced by these incongruities, I found myself at last clear of the city, and at the foot