Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

MODERN GREECE.

WHAT are the nuisances, special to Greece, which repel tourists from that country? They are three ;-robbers, fleas, and dogs. It is remarkable that all are, in one sense, respectable nuisances-they are ancient, and of classical descent. The monuments still existing from pre-Christian ages, in memory of honest travellers assassinated by brigands or klephts, (KλETTαi,) show that the old respectable calling of freebooters by sea and land, which Thucydides, in a well-known passage, describes as so reputable an investment for capital during the times preceding his own, and, as to northern Greece, even during his own, had never entirely languished, as with us it has done, for two generations, on the heaths of Bagshot, Hounslow, or Finchley.

Well situated as these grounds were for doing business, lying at such convenient distances from the metropolis, and studying the convenience of all parties, (since, if a man were destined to lose a burden on his road, surely it was pleasing to his feelings that he had not been suffered to act as porter over ninety or a hundred miles, in the service of one who would neither pay him nor thank him ;) yet, finally, what through banks and what through policemen, the concern has dwindled to nothing. In England, we believe, this concern was technically known, amongst men of business and "family men," as the "Low Toby." In Greece it was called Anote; and, Homerically speaking, it was perhaps the only profession thoroughly respectable. A few other callings are mentioned in the Odyssey as furnishing regular bread to decent men, viz. the doctor's, the fortuneteller's or conjurer's, and the armourer's. Indeed it is clear, from the offer made to Ulysses of a job in the way of hedging and ditching, that sturdy big-boned beggars, or what used to be called " Abraham men" in southern England, were not held to have forfeited any heraldic dignity attached to the rank of pauper, (which was considerable,) by taking a far

66

mer's pay where mendicancy happened to " be looking downwards." Even honest labour was tolerated, though, of course, disgraceful. But the Corinthian order of society, to borrow Burke's image, was the bold sea-rover, the bucanier, or (if you will call him so) the robber in all his varieties. Titles were, at that time, not much in use-honorary titles, we mean; but had our prefix of" Right Honourable" existed, it would have been assigned to burglars, and by no means to privycouncillors; as, again, our English prefix of "Venerable" would have been settled, not on so sheepish a character as the archdeacon, but on the spirited appropriator of church plate. We were surprised lately to find, in a German work of some authority, so gross a misconception of Thucydides as that of supposing him to be in jest. Nothing of the sort. The question which he represents as once current, on speaking a ship in the Mediterranean,- Pray, gentlemen, are you robbers?" actually occurs in Homer; and to Homer, no doubt, the historian alludes. It neither was, nor could be conceived, as other than complimentary; for the alternative supposition presumed him that mean and wellknown character-the merchant, who basely paid for what he took. It was plainly asking-Are you a knight grand-cross of some martial order, or a sort of costermonger? And we give it as no hasty or fanciful opinion, that the South Sea islands (which Bougainville held to be in a state of considerable civilization) had, in fact, reached the precise stage of Homeric Greece. The power of levying war, as yet not sequestered by the ruling power of each community, was a pri vate right inherent in every individual of any one state against all individuals of any other. Captain Cook's ship the Resolution, and her consort the Adventure, were as much independent states and objects of lawful war to the islanders, as Owyhee in the Sandwich group was to Tongataboo in the Friendly group. So that to have

"Journal of a Tour in Greece and the Ionian Islands." By William Mure of Caldwell. In Two Volumes. 1842.

taken an Old Bailey view of the thefts committed was unjust, and, besides, ineffectual; the true remedy being by way of treaty or convention with the chiefs of every island. And perhaps, if Homer had tried it, the same remedy (in effect, regular payments of black-mail) might have been found available in his day.

It is too late to suggest that idea now. The princely pirates are gone; and the last dividend has been paid upon their booty; so that, whether he gained or lost by them, Homer's estate is not liable to any future inquisitions from commissioners of bankruptcy or other sharks. He, whether amongst the plundered, or, as is more probable, a considerable shareholder in the joint-stock privateers from Tenedos, &c., is safe both from further funding and refunding. We are not. And the first question of moment to any future tourist is, what may be the present value, at a British insurance office, of any given ife risked upon a tour in Greece? Much will, of course, depend upon the extent and the particular route. A late prime minister of Greece, under the reigning king Otho, actually perished by means of one day's pleasure excursion from Athens, though meeting neither thief nor robber. He lost his way and this being scandalous in an ex-chancellor of the exchequer having ladies under his guidance, who were obliged, like those in the Midsummer Night's Dream, to pass the night in an Athenian wood, his excellency died of vexation. Where may not men find a death? But we ask after the calculation of any office which takes extra risks and, as a basis for such a calculation, we submit the range of tour sketched by Pausanias, more than sixteen centuries back-that Ilavσaviann περιοδος, as Colonel Leake describes it, which carries a man through the heart of all that can chiefly interest in Greece. What are the chances upon such a compass of Greek travelling, having only the ordinary escort and arms, or having no arms, (which the learned agree in thinking the safer plan at present) that a given traveller will revisit the glimpses of an English moon, or again embrace his "placens uxor?" As with regard to Ireland, it is one stock trick of Whiggery to treat the chances of assassination in the light of an English hypochondria

But

cal chimæra, so for a different reason it has been with regard to Italy, and soon will be for Greece. Twenty years ago it was a fine subject for jesting the English idea of stilettos in Rome, and masqued bravos, and as sassins who charged so much an inch for the depth of their wounds. all the laughter did not save a youthful English marriage party from being atrociously massacred; a grave English professional man with his wife from being carried off to a mountainous captivity, and reserved from slaughter only by the prospect of ransom; a British nobleman's son from death or the consequences of Italian barbarity; or a prince, the brother of Napoleon, from having the security of his mansion violated, and the most valuable captives carried off by daylight from his household. In Greece apparently the state of things is worse, because absolutely worse under a far slighter temptation. But Mr Mure is of opinion that Greek robbers have private reasons as yet for sparing English tourists.

So far then is certain: viz. that the positive danger is greater in povertystricken Greece than in rich and splendid Italy. But as to the valuation of the danger, it is probably as yet imperfect from mere defect of experience: the total amount of travellers is unknown. And it may be argued that at least Colonel Leake, Mr Dodwell, and our present Mr Mure, with as many more as have written books, cannot be among the killed, wounded, or missing. There is evidence in octavo that they are yet" to the fore." Stil with respect to books, after all, they may have been posthumous works: or, to put the case in another form, who knows how many excellent works in medium quarto, not less than crown octavo, may have been suppressed and intercepted in their rudiments by these expurgatorial ruffians? Mr Mure mentions as the exquisite reason for the present fashion of shooting from an ambush first, and settling accounts afterwards, that by this means they evade the chances of a contest. The Greek robber, it seems, knows as well as Cicero that "non semper viator a latrone, nonnunquam etiam latro a viatore occiditur"- -a disappointment that makes one laugh exceedingly. Now this rule as to armed travellers is likely to bear hard upon

[blocks in formation]

Et vacuus cantat coram latrone viator;

Vacuus not of money, but of pistols. Yet on the other hand, though possibly sound law for the thickets of Mount Citharon, this would be too unsafe a policy as a general rule: too often it is the exposure of a helpless exterior which first suggests the outrage. And perhaps the best sugges tion for the present would be, that travellers should carry in their hands an apparent telescope or a reputed walking-cane; which peaceful and natural part of his appointinents will first operate to draw out his lurking forest friend from his advantage; and on closer colloquy, if this friend should turn restive, then the "Tuscan artist's tube," contrived of course a double debt to pay, will suddenly reveal another sort of tube, insinuating an argument sufficient for the refutation of any sophism whatever, This is the best compromise which we can put forward with the present dilemma in Greece, where it seems that to be armed or to be unarmed is almost equally perilous. But our secret opinion is, that in all countries alike, the only absolute safeguard against highway robbery is a railway: for then the tables are turned; not he who is stopped incurs the risk, but he who stops: we question whether Samson himself could have pulled up his namesake on the Liverpool railway. Recently, indeed, in the Court of Common Pleas, on a motion to show cause by Sergeant Bompas, in Hewitt v. Price, Tindal (Chief-Justice) said "We cannot call a railway a public security, I think," (laughter) but we think otherwise. In spite of laughter," we consider it a specific against the Low Toby. And, en attendant, there is but one step to

*

wards amelioration of things for Greece, which lies in summary ejecting of the Bavarian locusts. Where all offices of profit or honour are engrossed by needy aliens, you cannot expect a cheerful temper in the people. And, unhappily, from moody discontent in Greece to the taking of is a short transition.

purses

man

Thus have we disposed of "St Nicholas's Clerks." Next we come to Fleas and Dog ogs:- -Have we a remedy for these? We have but, as to fleas, applicable or not, according to the purpose with which a travels. If, as happened at times to Mr Mure, a natural, and, for his readers, a beneficial anxiety to see something of domestic habits, overcomes all sense of personal inconvenience, he will wish, at any cost, to sleep in Grecian bedrooms, and to sit by Grecian hearths. On the other hand, though sensible of the honour attached to being bit by a flea lineally descended from an Athenian flea, that in one day may possibly have bit three such men as Pericles, Phidias, and Euripides, many quiet unambitious travellers might choose to dispense with "glory," and content themselves with the view of Greek external nature. To these persons we would recommend the plan of carrying amongst their baggage a tent, with portable campbeds: one of those, as originally invented upon the encouragement of the Peninsular campaigns from 1809 to 1814, and subsequently improved, would meet all ordinary wants. It is objected, indeed, that by this time the Grecian fleas must have colonized the very hills and woods: as once, we remember, upon Westminster Bridge, to a person who proposed bathing in the Thames by way of a ready ablution from the July dust, another replied, "My dear sir, by no means; the river itself is dusty. Consider what it is to have received the dust of London for nineteen hundred years since Cæsar's invasion." But in any case the water-cups, in which the bed

* 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 the 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 mi lions 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.

posts rest, forbid the transit of creatures not able to swim or to fly. A flea indeed, leaps; and, by all report, in a way that far beats a tiger-taking

the standard of measurement from the bodies of the competitors. But even this may be remedied: giving the maximum leap of a normal flea, it is always easy to raise the bed indefinitely from the ground-space upwards is unlimited-and the supporters of the bed may be made to meet in one pillar, coated with so viscous a substance as to put even a flea into chancery,

As to dogs, the case is not so easily settled; and before the reader is in a condition to judge of our remedy, he ought to know the evil in its whole extent. After all allowances for vermin that waken you before your time, or assassins that send you to sleep before your time, no single Greek nuisance can be placed on the same scale with the dogs attached to every ménage, whether household or pastoral. Surely as a stranger approaches to any inhospitable door of the peasantry, often before he knows of such a door as in rerum naturâ, out bounds upon him by huge careering leaps a horrid infuriated ruffian of a dog-oftentimes à huge moloss, big as an English cow active as a leopard, fierce as a hyena, but more powerful by much, and quite as little disposed to hear reason. So situated-seeing an enemy in motion with whom it would be as idle to negotiate as with an earthquake-what is the bravest man to do? Shoot him? Ay; that was pretty much the course taken by a young man who lived before Troy ; and see what came of it. This man, in fact a boy of seventeen, had walked out to see the city of Mycenæ, leaving his elder cousin at the hotel sipping his wine. Out sprang a huge dog from the principal house in what you might call the High Street of Mycenae; the young man's heart began to palpitate; he was in that state of excitement which affects most people when fear mingles with excessive anger. What was he to do? Pistols he had none. And, as nobody came out to his aid, he put his hand to the ground; seized a chermadion, (or paving-stone,) smashed the skull of the odious brute, and with quite as much merit as Count Robert of Paris was entitled to have claimed from his

lucky hit in the dungeon, then walked off to report his little exploit to his cousin at the hotel. But what followed? The wretches in the house, who never cared to show themselves so long as it might only be the dog killing a boy, all came tumbling out by crowds when it became clear that a boy had killed the dog. "A la lanterne!"

they yelled out; valiantly charged en masse and amongst them they managed to kill the boy. But there was

a

reckoning to pay for this. Had they known who it was that sat drinking at the hotel, they would have thought twice before they backed their brute. That cousin, whom the poor boy had left at his wine, happened to be an ugly customer-Hercules incog. It is needless to specify

the result. The child unborn had reason to rue the murder of the boy. For his cousin proved quite as deaf to all argument or submission as their own foul thief of a dog or themselves. Suffice it that the royal house of Mycenæ, in the language of Napoleon's edicts, ceased to reign. But here is the evil; few men leave a Hercules at their hotel; and all will have to stand the vindictive fury of the natives for their canine friends, if you should pistol them. Be it in deliverance of your own life, or even of a lady's by your side, no apology will be listened

to.

In fact, besides the disproportionate annoyance to a traveller's nerves, that he shall be kept uneasy at every turn of the road in mere anxiety as to the next recurrence of struggles so desperate, it arms the indignation of a bold Briton beforehand -that a horrid brute shall be thought entitled to kill him, and if he does, it is pronounced an accident: but if he, a son of the mighty island, kills the brute, instantly a little hybrid Greek peasant shall treat it as murder.

Many years ago, we experienced the selfsame annoyance in the north of England. Let no man talk of courage in such cases. Most justly did Maréchal Saxe ask an officer sneeringly, who protested that he had never known the sensation of fear, and could not well imagine what it was like, had he ever suuffed a candle with his fingers? "because in that case," said the veteran, "I fancy you must have felt afraid of burning your thumb." A brave man, on a service of known danger, braces up his mind by a dis

tinct effort to the necessities of his duty. The great sentiment that it is his duty, the sentiments of honour and of country, reconcile him to the service whilst it lasts. No use, besides, in ducking before shot, or dodging, or skulking; he that faces the storm most cheerfully, has after all the best chance of escaping-were that the object of consideration. But, as soon as this trial is over, and the energy called forth by a high tension of duty has relaxed, the very same man often shrinks from ordinary trials of his prowess. Having, perhaps, little reason for confidence in his own bodily strength, seeing no honour in the struggle, and sure that no duty would be hallowed by any result, he shrinks from it in a way which surprises those who have heard of his martial character. Brave men in extremities are many times the most nervous, and the shyest under perils of a mean order. We, without claiming the benefit of these particular distinctions, happened to be specially "soft" on this one danger from dogs. Not from the mere terror of a bite, but for the shocking doubt besieging such a case for four or five months that hydrophobia may supervene. Think, excellent reader, if we should suddenly prove hydrophobous in the middle of this paper, how could you distinguish the hydrophobous from the nonhydrophobous part? You would say, as Voltaice of Rousseau, "sa plume apparemment brûlera le papier. Such being the horror ever before our mind, images of eyeballs starting from their sockets, spasms suffocating the throat-we could not see a dog starting off into a yell of sudden discovery bound for the foot of our legs, but that undoubtedly a mixed sensation of panic and fury overshadowed us; a χερμάδιον was not always at hand; aud without practice we could have little confidence in our power of sending it home, else many is the head we should have crushed. Sometimes, where more than one dog happened to be accomplices in the outrage, we were not altogether out of danger. "Euripides," we said, really torn to pieces by the dogs of a sovereign prince; in Hounslow, but a month since, a little girl was all but worried by the buck hounds of a greater sovereign than Archelaus; and why not we by the dogs of a farmer?"

[ocr errors]

66 was

The scene lay in Westmoreland and Cumberland. Often times it would happen that in summer we had turned aside from the road, or perhaps the road itself forced us to pass a farmhouse from which the family might be absent in the hay-field. Unhappily the dogs in such a case are often left behind. And many have been the fierce contests in which we have embarked; for, as to retreating, be it known that there (as in Greece) the murderous savages will pursue yousometimes far into the high-road. That result it was which uniformly brought us back to a sense of our own wrongs, and finally-of our rights. "Come," we used to say, "this is too much; here at least is the king's highway, and things are come to a pretty pass indeed, if we, who partake of a common nature with the king, and write good Latin, whereas all the world knows what sort of Latin is found among dogs, may not have as good a right to standing-room as a low-bred quadruped with a tail like you." Non usque adeo summis permiscuit ima longa dies, &c. We remember no instance which ever so powerfully illustrated the courage given by the consciousness of rectitude. So long as we felt that we were trespassing on the grounds of a stranger, we certainly sneaked, we seek not to deny it. But once landed on the high-road, where we knew our own title to be as good as the dog's, not all the world should have persuaded us to budge one foot.

Our reason for going back to these old Cumbrian remembrances will be found in what follows. Deeply incensed at the insults we had been obliged to put up with for years, brooding oftentimes over "Wrongs unredress'd, and insults unavenged,"

we asked ourselves - Is vengeance hopeless? And at length we hit upon the following scheme of retribution. This it is which we propose as applicable to Greece. Well acquainted with the indomitable spirit of the bulldog, and the fidelity of the mastiff, we determined to obtain two such companions; to re-traverse our old ground; to make a point of visiting every house where we had been grossly insulted by dogs; and to commit our cause to the management of these new

« ZurückWeiter »