for a new town, and the rapid spread of new structures over the portion of the ancient site where the noblest edifices were formerly accumulated, has permanently extinguished all hopes of profiting by these favourable circumstances. As regards the Acropolis it may further be remembered that the natural features of this rock have at all periods rendered its summit a dangerous position for the monuments that adorn it; and the wonder is, perhaps, how any portion of them should have survived the vicissitudes to which they have already been exposed. As long as the capital of the country surrounds its base-in spite of all the present schemes to convert it into a great museum of art-an Acropolis, in the military sense of the word, it must still remain. While Greece continues to enjoy the uninterrupted blessings of peace, the improvements of Signor Pittákys may continue to be successfully prosecuted; but should she, as can hardly fail to be the case at no very distant period, again become the theatre of war, foreign or domestic, the site of the Parthenon will probably be one of the first victims of its ravages. On the approach of an enemy, by sea or by land, it can hardly fail to become, if not the chosen stronghold of a faction, a place of refuge for persons and goods. Motives of public or personal security will then outweigh all considerations of taste and virtù; its museums and temples will afford, even in its present dismantled state, too convenient a material for its re-fortification; and will again be converted into magazines or bastions, and their valuables into weapons of defence. 'The best mode of promoting the interests of Greek art, as concentrated around Athens, would have been to have made her, not the London or Paris, but the Windsor or Versailles of the new court. The seat of government might have been fixed at Nauplia, or in what ever other position was considered most central and convenient: Athens might have become the favourite villa or country residence of the sovereign. The town being then limited to such buildings as were requisite for the accommodation of his court, might have been so planned as to encroach as little as possible on the area of the ancient city, which would thus have been left as one extensive field for the prosecution of the most interesting of all researches.'-Vol. ii., pp. 74-76. The late war, it is remarkable, seems hardly to have injured any of the great, or even of the smaller, monuments of antiquity : There is indeed nothing which conveys a more distinct idea of the excellence of the ancient masonry than the almost complete state of preservation in which we still find every fragment that existed at the commencement of the revolution, amid the total and often reiterat ed ruin of the surrounding modern edifices with which they were in many cases connected as integral parts, and in common with which they have been exposed to all the recent vicissitudes of fire, battery, bombardment, and wilful dilapidation. Yet there they stand, both at Athens and elsewhere, each in its place, fresh and entire, as drawn by the last generation of travellers. I scarcely think I missed a single ruin, or even a single stone, noted by either Dodwell, Gell, or Leake, on our line of route, with the exception of such as have been carried off by antiquarian plunderers. During the various sieges of Athens at least 6000 cannon-shot or shells were aimed at the Acropolis; yet, by a strange enough fatality, the only very serious damage its building sustained, the fall of the porch of the Erechtheum, was caused, not by the shot, but by the precautions taken by Gouras, the chief of the garrison, to render it harmless. Having selected this edifice as his own quarters, he attempted to render it bomb-proof by heaping earth on its roof, which, after his own death, sinking beneath the weight, buried under its ruins his widow, so distinguished for her beauty and virtue, together with some of the principal ladies of Athens, who had sought the same place of refuge during the bombardment. In a large number of cases, indeed, the desolation of the war has been, in so far, beneficial to the present race of antiquaries by disencumbering ancient relics of the Turco-Greek habitations under which they were concealed. The successive sacks and sieges have here performed the same service, in stripping them of these unseemly appendages, as the aquafortis in cleansing the surface of a gem or vase from the filth with which it had been encrusted in its subterranean abode. Among the more pointed illustrations of these remarks may be quoted, in addition to this elegant monument [the Choragic Monuinent of Lysicrates], which, from its diminutive size, tended more immediately to suggest them, the neighbouring Tower of Andronicus Cyrrhestes and the Doric Temple of Corinth. By reference to the old drawings of these remains it will be seen that, previous to the war, both were in a great measure encased in modern masonry. Both now stand in the centre of a considerable extent of free space.'—Vol. ii., pp. 93, 94. If the Turks and Greeks had been better skilled in the arts of attack and defence, the result might not have been so favourable; and there is little security that future convulsions will be conducted with such feeble and ill-concerted measures. War has no æsthetic reverence for works of art—a chance bomb first made the fatal breach in the Parthenon, which had defied centuries of ordinary decay; and should the Acropolis ever endure a civilized battering, the subsequent traveller would speak gently enough of antiquarian plunderers.' We will hope indeed that these are but remote dangers; and we confess we look with more immediate apprehension on the questionable proceedings of restoration which have been adopted-and are, it seems, to be carried much farther-doubtless from the best of motives, by the present government. As yet these operations have been confined to the Acropolis. There can be, be perfect; even if time-and in that atno doubt of the general propriety of the mosphere it would require a very long recent proceedings as far as regards disen- time-should harmonize the new and the cumbering the ancient ruins on this spot old work so as to soften away the patched from modern structures. Mr. Mure, how- and mended appearance; should the sculpever, pleads eloquently, and we think suc- tures be copied by accurate casts from those cessfully, for one which forms a main in England and elsewhere-it will not, it feature in all the views of the Acropolis, cannot be the Parthenon of the Athenian rethe great square Frank tower on the south- public; Signor Pyttàkys cannot be Phiern side:dias, or King Otho-Pericles. All may look smooth and bright, and finished-the columns may stand in their ancient regularity, and a well-poised roof protect us from the weather-a marble pavement may be agreeable to the tread-but the temple in which Aristides, and Socrates, and Demosthenes worshipped is gone; the temple (let us revert to our own sacred associations) on which St. Paul gazed from the Areopagus is no more: we say nothing of the loss of the picturesque effect of the ruins-which Mr. Mure, looking upon their yet unviolated outlines, is so feelingly anxious to preserve; but we plead for all the deep and indelible associations, which are more to us than the highest architectural majesty and beauty. That we should have the Parthenon as it was, is now impossible; but let us still indulge the undisturbed conviction that all which we do see belongs to the real, the Periclean, the Phidian Parthenon. It is built almost entirely of solid blocks of marble, from the ruins of the Propylæa, or of other ancient buildings in the neighbourhood. While its materials, therefore, are the same, its masonry is also so compact and substantial, as to require a somewhat close examination before any great difference can be perceived between its style or merit and that of the contiguous works of the Periclean age. It forms, whether as seen from the interior of the Acropolis or the immediate environs, a great addition both to its dignity as a fortress, and to its picturesque beauty; and in the distance gives its whole outline a relief and effect which the other more classical edifices on its summit fail to impart. The ancient building on which it is erected, the right wing or bastion of the Propylæa, is confessedly but an unimportant constituent part of that edifice, being much smaller than the one on the opposite side, containing the Pinacothek; nor is there good reason to suppose that the materials of the tower itself comprise any valuable remains of antiquity. Under all these circumstances I cannot but think that its demolition would be an act of Gothic barbarism, little short of that of which its constructors may have been guilty in the robbery of the neighbouring buildings to procure materials for their work. Vol. ii., p. 66. No one unquestionably can object to the reconstruction of the small Temple of Victory, which had totally disappeared since the days of Spon and Wheler, and which has been completely recomposed from its old materials. The walls, the porticoes, the entablature, with its reliefs, belonging to a very perfect period of Grecian art, were found almost in a perfect state of preservation, and replaced with great skill:the whole temple has re-appeared like a new edifice; its white marble columns and walls stand glittering in the sun with a splendour little short of that which they displayed when fresh from the chisels of their original constructors. Many fragments, likewise, of the Erechtheum have been disenterred and replaced, and to this there can be no objection, though we have great doubt as to the new Caryatis, which is in process of execution by a Swiss sculptor. But against the restoration of the Parthenon we enter our strongest protest; even if, and that is most improbable, the proportions of every restored part should VOL. LXX. 11 even We are unwilling to leave the subject without some notice of the curious discoveries made in the excavations of the Acropolis, the legitimate spoils of which have already filled one museum, and require another. Of this museum Mr. Mure writes, 'Among its more interesting contents are the architectural fragments of the old Hecatompedon or primitive Parthenon, destroyed by the Persians; which were found imbedded in the rubbish employed, after the completion of the new structure, to level the surrounding area. They with stucco, on which the ornamental portions are of stone, of not very fine quality, covered are painted of various colours, chiefly blue, red, and yellow.* There have also been discovered, similarly buried, numerous large blocks of marble, wrought and unwrought, among which are some colossal drums of columns, originally destined for the peristyle of the new temple, but * No doubt most ofour readers have seen some of the masterly drawings and paintings of Egyptian temples, &c., executed during a recent tour by Mr. Roberts, R. A. The splendid colouring of the pillars and interior walls of those edifices had not been seen with careless eyes by the old Greek travellers. We are glad to observe that Mr. Roberts is publishing a series of engravings from his delineations, both of these Egyptian remains and of the most interesting architectural monuments of the Holy Land; numbers of the work have reached us, and most beautiful they are. two thrown aside from some defect in the material | dom of making great roads, at very conor the execution. A large portion of the rubbish | siderable cost, where there is no traffic, and in which they are imbedded consists of marble where the communication of this kind does chippings, the same doubtless that once strewed the workshops of Ictinus and Phidias. From not seem to be demanded by public conthe midst of it have also been culled many of venience. This, however, we cannot but that minor class of relics, which, by their very He is chiefly think questionable censure. homeliness, realize more effectually to the ima- opposed, however, to the erection of the gination the epoch from whence they have been vast marble palace for the king, while the preserved, and thus speak more directly and exigencies of the state are so considerable, powerfully to the sympathies, than gigantic and even the streets of Athens are unpavruins or high-wrought works of finished art. Such are the fragments of the tools handled by ed, filthy, and inconvenient. We have an the workmen, or even perhaps by the great engraving of this palace, as the frontismasters themselves, to whom these precious piece of a work which we have received models of the perfection of art are indebted for and read with much interest, though of their existence; the lead pencils employed in course, as regards the opinions of the writsketching the design, the chisel and mallet in er, not with entire and unquestioning conits execution; the wooden dovetails that con- fidence. We allude to Mr. Strong's offinected the drums of the columns, and other contiguous blocks of the masonry of the Heca- cial, and it should seem, authorised account It presents tompedon; pieces of charred wood, still fresh of Greece as a kingdom." from the flames of the Persian conflagration; the statistics of Greece from the governbesides small bronze images and coeval fragments ment returns in as ample and various forms, of the inferior departments of art.'--Vol. ii., pp. though in a far more compendious shape, 77, 78.* than that vast pile of blue books which annually accumulate on the floors of an English member of parliament, and over which Joseph Hume is brooding with parental solicitude. We are disposed to make some extracts from this work, which in a literary poiut of view is very well executed, in order to show, more clearly than we could from any other quarter, the actual state of things in the kingdom of Otho. The Grecian dominions, according to the bounda ries finally established by the intervention of the great powers, contain 'in all 13,887.68 British geographical square miles -which are equal to about 12,000,000 acres; of these not one-ninth part is private property, by far the greater portion belonging to the state.' We may here break off our account of Mr. Mure's observations on the antiquities of Greece, which we have kept as much as might be apart from other subjects, at the same time strongly recommending our readers to follow him in his Peloponnesian tour to Corinth, Argos, Mycenae, Lacedæmon, and Olympia. Mr. Mure surveyed the existing state of things in this young kingdom, we have said, with dispassionate impartiality; our general impression of the measures of the government from his journal would not be altogether favourable, but he gives a striking summary of its peculiar difficulties. His general principle seems to be, that with its limited resources, the primary object should be to promote that which is clearly and practically useful, rather than to enter into larger and more magnificent schemes. He doubts the wis * A Russian traveller of large fortune, M. Davidoff, who received part of his education in this country, and is now, we believe, in the diplomatic service of the Emperor Nicolas, published a few years ago in his own language a magnificent work on the remains of Greek Architecture, the engravings of which we can understand rather better than the text. These afford far minuter details of the actual working of the ancient builders and masons than can be found in any other work whatever. The section on the Parthenon is especially curious and valuable, and we are surprised it at least has not No. 4.-Table of cultivated Lands belonging to Government and Individuals. No. 5.-Table of uncultivated Lands belonging to Government and Individuals. Before they poll they Ορκίζω εἰς τὴν Ὑπεραγίαν καὶ 'Αδιαίρετον Τριάδα καὶ εἰς τὸ Ἱερὸν Εὐαγγέλιον, ὅτι θέλω δώσει τὴν Ψηφὸν μου κατά συνείδησιν, καὶ ἔχων πρὸ ὀφθαλμῶν μόνον τὰ πρὸς τὸν Βασιλέα μου, πρὸς τὴν Πατρίδα, καὶ πρὸς τὸν Δήμου μοῦ χρέη, ελεύθερος ἀπὸ πᾶσαν ξένην ἐπιρροήν, κατ' ιδίαν μου πεποίθησιν, καὶ ὅτι δέν ἐδέχθην, οὔτε θέλω δεχθὴ ποτὲ ἐπι τούτῳ δῶρα ἢ ὑποσχέσεις ἀμέσως ἢ ἐμμέσως. The number of inhabitants to the square five years of age. (British) mile was, according to the census take a bribery-oath, which we are bound to of 1836, in the Morea 63; on the continent insert, partly as a specimen of the current 26; in the Islands 35. The total popula- official language, partly as it may afford tion had risen between the returns of 1836 some hint to Mr. Roebuck in his Catonian and 1840, from 751,077 to 856,470. Mr. plans to restore the immaculate virtue of Mure gives the population at only 560,000 our ten-pound voters. If it were adminisbefore the war, but thinks this a high es- tered in its original Greek among the contimate; he quotes however a government stituencies of Sudbury, 'Harwich, or Ipsreturn in 1837, as giving 926,000: differ-wich, could its awful sounds be without efing from Mr. Strong, whose returns show fect?less than that amount in 1840. The population of Athens is 26,237, including the garrison, 1367, and foreigners, 3573. The price of provisions is tempting. We subjoin a few items. Beef, in British money, is 2d the British pound; mutton, 234. Vegetables are very cheap; and the fruit, apricots, figs, and even peaches, are cheaper than apples and pears, at 1d. or 11⁄2d. To return to the population: throughout the kingdom the small number of illegitimate children speaks favourably for the state of morality in Greece. In several entire provinces there are none at all, in others only one or two. The proportion is considerably less than 1 per cent. on the whole amount of births. The climate appears unfavourable to the rearing of children. One-half of the deaths take place at a very tender age. Teething appears to be a very difficult process. As to the constitution, the king is a monarch in the highest sense, and considering the large proportion of the land which is in the actual possession of the state, it is impossible to conceive authority more fully vested in the sovereign. He is assisted by a council of state, now consisting of about twenty members nominated by himself. The whole territory is divided into communes (Ano) of three classes: 1st, cantaining a population of 10,000 and upwards: 2d, from 2,000 to 10,000; 3d, of less than 2000, The communes of the first class are goyerned by a mayor (Anpapxos), forty-six aldermen (Пaptopo), and a municipal council (Anpovikov ExpBovior) of eighteen members. In the smaller communes there is a Anpapxos, but proportionably fewer aldermen and a less numerous council. The demarchos is the 'great unpaid;' his office is purely honorary; he receives no salary, and has no exemption from public imposts: he is guaranteed, however, the expenses of his office. He administers with the advice and assistance of his Пapedpot and council, the whole local government of the district. All the municipal of ficers are elected by the commune. The privilege of election is, with some restrictions, in all male inhabitants above twenty I swear by the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity, and the Holy Gospels, to deliver my vote conscientiously, and with due regard to my king, my country, and my commune, to the best foreign influence; and further, that I have not of my conscience, independently and free of any received, nor will I ever receive, any money, present, or bribe from any one whatsoever, either directly or indirectly, for the purpose of influencing me in my vote,' Every commune is responsible for the acts of violence and of robbery committed within its jurisdiction. It is bound to the restitution of property, and to indemnify persons wounded by violence, or, in case of their death, their wives and families. Some of Mr. Mure's adventures, and others which he relates, intimate pretty clearly that this law has not yet been found quite effective to correct the kleftic or heroic habits of centuries. Commerce and agriculture, but chiefly the latter, must be the conservative, or rather the civilizing, elements of modern Greece. On the commerce, as well as on all other points, the work of Mr. Strong affords ample details: we will only observe that the mercantile navy of Greece, according to the returns, exhibits a progressive increase in the total of the tonnage employed in commerce. In 1841 it amounted to 111,201 tons, employing 18,609 mariners. The number of persons employed solely in agriculture is about 100,000, being nearly one-half of the male (adult?) and about one-eighth of the total population of the kingdom. But though possessing such an extent of fertile and uncultivated land, Greece still imports corn, chiefly from the ports of the Black Sea. The two great practical defects in Grecian agriculture are, the awkwardness of their implements, which have hardly improved |