The Press. — London, England, 1858-07-10 00:00:00

nature. What the aforesaid Timon may have been we have no meant of knowing. His contemporaries would not listen to him, and he had no reading public to fall back upon, composed of persona who once a year, according to the fashion, forsook the city and wandered about the moun• tains, Timone for the nonce. The chapters on Tegea, Mantinea, and Tripolitza are chiefly topographical or political ; but the following passage describing the view over the plain of Sparta cannot fail to be read with interest : Through the valley looking eastward ran a narrow stream, the ancient (Enna, along a broad gravelly bed, fringed with plane•ttees. On the level ground by the banks, and on the lower slopes of Mount Farnon beyond, were green cornfields mixed with red, newly-ploughed fellows ; and higher up on the hillsides pasture grounds dotted with white flocks (from which the sound of many tinkling sheep bells came borne upon the wind), inter• spersed with thickets of holly, lentisk, arbutus, and the yellow broom, and broken by pinnacles of grey rock. Where the watercourses swept down to the valley there ran as it were a s ream of richer, greener foliage, thickening, widening, and deepening, as it descended. We were loath to leave so beautiful a place, even for the greater beauties in store fur ns. At eight o'clock we set off. Our patti, constantly ascending, wound through a wood, or rather shrubbery, with fresh green leaves " fulfilled with lite and prodigal of song." Now the branches interlacing seemed to bar the way, now the thicket opened and left a green glade all blazing with scarlet anemones ; while the winding path was recessed into many a shady covert starrsd with shy woodland dowers on which the dew lay till noon. A jubilant clamour of singing birds—nightingale, thrush, linnet—mized with notes that were unfamiliar, rang round us on all sides. All sights and sounds reminded us that we were in the prime of " scarlet•blosso►ned spring," and recalled and justified 'the fond epithets which ell poets of all ages have heaped upon the youth of the year. Atter attaining the summit of the pass, and as one descends through winding paths on the western side, beauties of quite another kind present, themselves. Instead of a succession of f►rest glades and alleys—dainty vig nettes—we have before us a wide prospect of mountain scenery—a panorama on a scale of magnificence, which, except among the high Alps, cannot be paralleled in Europe. And seen iii the early spring, when the summits and ridges between are still covered with a continuous robe of snow, Taygetus presents to the eye and the imagination a picture which loses nothing by a comparison with the re collections of Mont Blanc or the Oberland of Berne. From the main chain, here visible almost from one ectl to the other, huge masses project at regular intervals, descending by a succession of precipices to the plain—like a great Titanic wall flanked with buttresses and cumbered about its base with immemorial rain. A rare verdure clothes the hollows and the slopes between, and at the foot stretches the plain of Spam, green with mulberry, olive, maize, and vine, seamed here and there with red scars, the crumpling earthbanks between which flow the Eurotas and its tributaries. Among the classical sites in the Morea which Mr. Clark visited, none is more interesting than Messene, both on account of its glorious historical associations, and from the circumstance that the walls, an excellent specimen of Greek masonry, were built under the direction of Evaminondas, and remain extremely perfect to the present day. We can do no more than direct attention to this chapter, which is one of the most attractive in the book, and must merely refer to the pic turesque glimpses of scenery elsewhere inter spersed ; the rich forests clothing the sides of the dove-coloured limestone mountains; the "sandy Ladon's lilied banks"; the thickets of oleander and lentisk ; and the spreading plane-tree, beneath which the traveller eats h►s noonday meal, by the side of some clear, dark pool, fringed, according to the poetical Greek expression, with lashes of waving fern. But there are two points to which it will be well to advert. One of these is the author's account of Sphacteria, in which he successfully combats the view which Dr Arnold attempted to substitute for the received notion about the locality. The latter maintained that the long narrow island, now called Sphagia, is not the scene of that famous capture of the Spartans, by which Cleon made good his rash vaunt at Athens; but that Palaio Navarino is the real Sphacteria, and that it has only become a peninsula through the subsequent deposit of sand. After mentioning the objections to this view urged by Mr. Grote and others, our author remarks that in viewing Koryphasium (i.q. Palaio Navarino, or Pylos) as an island, for the sake of getting two channels narrow enough to fit the description of Thucydides, Dr. Arnold has for gotten that a third, and by far the widest, channel, that, namely, between the south end of Sphagia and the mainland, would thus remain, and that this would have been quite open to the Athenians. lie accounts for the discrepancy between the actual measurements and the statements of the historian by supposing that Thucydides had never been there, and was misinformed, and that, at any rate, the closing up of the channel was never HE PRESS, JULY 10, 1858. more than a project, and perhaps could not have been executed at all. We may also draw attention to Mr. Clark's estimate of the accuracy of Homer; a matter in which he would probably be found on the oppo site side to such writers as Colonel Mure and Mr. Gladstone. Thus, in his visit to the bridge at Xero-Kampo—a curious and very ancient structure over a stream flowing from Taygetus, south-west of Sparta,—he opposes the opinion of the first-named writer, who conjectures that it may have been this very bridge which enabled Telemachus to drive from Pherie t 3 Sparta in one day, as related at the end of the third book of the Odyssey. Mr. Clark found upon inquiry that no road could ever have existed over the mountains sufficient for the passage of vehicles, and draws his conclusion accordingly as to the incorrectness of Homer. Ile does not, however, notice in his quotation that the passage occurs partly at the end of one book, and partly at the beginning of the next, and that an opening is thus left for supposing Telemachus to hive halted for the first evening after leaving Pherte at some place before reaching Sparta. In the note, too, at p. 156, Mr. Clark adopts Buttmann's view that " Lacedsomon" means the country, and not the city ; on which hypothesis Telemachus might be supposed to have reached the frontier, and have proceeded to Sparta next day. lie also refers to the discrepancies of Homer on the topography of Ithaca, a point in which the poet is probably less defensible. The exact correctness of Homer on so unim portant a point is, perhaps, of little consequence. But Mr. Clark calls it in .iuestion with respect to a site about which scholars have hitherto been uniformly agreed. In the north of Arcadia, the valley of the Crathis terminates in a narrow gorge running up into the heart of the mountains, and closed at the upper end by a lofty barrier of rock, over which falls a stream of water with a sheer descent of several hundred feet. The view bears some resemblance to that which, in the valley of Lauterbrunnen in Switzerland, the tra veller leaves on his right before ascending the Wengern Alp. On the strength of the descrip tion of this spot in Pausanias, and certain lines of Hesiod, this waterfall has been identified with the xami3op.Eyov /1-vvOc Law' p,--tTuyO; aiiEd iii9 r a, of Homer. Mr. Clark, on the contrary, urges that Ilomer does not mention the Styx in speaking of Arcadia in the Catalogue of Ships, and does men tion it in speaking of Thessaly ; that it is in voked, along with " earth " and " heaven," to witness to oaths ; and that, as this clearly shows that it represents the remaining part of the uni verse, or infernal regions, it must therefore be long to the subterranean world. He also thinks that if Homer had been acquainted with this, one of the wildest spots in Arcadia, he would have known accurately places which were more easy of access ; but he shows ignorance respecting many of the latter, therefore the former was unknown to him. Allowing all due weight to the first and last of these arguments, we cannot but think that Mr. Clark lays far too great stress upon the definiteness of position which he ima gined to have been assigned by Homer to the river in question. Our notions of the ancient Hades are insensibly coloured by the particu larity of the descriptions in Virgil's lEneid ; but everything in Homer which relates to the sub ject is vague and inexact, and belongs as much to the surface as to the under-world. When Ulysses converses with the ghosts, he does not descend into a cave, but digs a trench on the Cimmerian shore, where they come and surround him. There seems no reason why any one of Homer's hearers might not go and do the same. The Muses live on Parnassus and the Gods on Olympus —both perfectly accessible mountains. The In ferno of the Greeks does not seem of necessity to have been wholly " in the cellarage," as Hamlet would say, but seems to be conce►ved as a vast subterranean region which " crops out " here and there in localities which from some cause or other were sanctified by religious awe. The state of feeling which could behold a perfectly material river and yet regard it as an infernal one is somewhat difficult to describe, but not wholly impossible to realize. It seems analogous to the "taboo" which prevails among certain savage tribes, or to the mystic genealogy which Mr. Grote refers to as existing in New Zealand, where the chief of a tribe will affirm a mountain to be his actual progenitor, or the ancestor of his race. Nor, even on the hypothesis of an underground Hades, would the notion of a river which belonged both to the visible and invisible world present much difficulty to one conversant with a country where so many streams are swallowed in the ground in the plenitude of their waters, and where so many spring full-grown from the soil after an indefinite period of aubterraneous travel. Mr. Clark's style is good, without any attempt at fine writing, and the carefulness with which his diary seems to have been kept would make the volume a useful as well as agreeable com panion in a similar tour. We must, however, say a word of complaint about the map, which ought at least to have expressed with accuracy the places encountered on the route. The mountain ranges are particularly defective, and the pass between Karya and Mantinea—which figures in one of our extracts—does not appear at all. The pass of Mount Parnon, between Trip litza and Sparta, is similarly omitted. It is not every one who can have Kiepert or Spruner at his elbow in reading a work like this, and a little more pains would have been well bestowed on so indispensable an adjunct to a book of travels. Mr. Clark presumes in his readers a sufficient knowledge of ancient lore to enable them to follow him ; but on mediaeval and modern history he has done well to be more copious ; and though no associations can compete in vitality with the classical ones, there are many spots not thus dig nified which some tale of French adventure or Turkish oppression will prevent the tourist from passing with complete indifference. Mr. Clark's volume—though its author is far from being either a Stanley, a Kinglake, or a Warbur ton—may take a creditable place both on the shelf of the library and in the saddlebag of the traveller. The Outcast and the Poor of London; or, Our Present Duties towards the Poor. A Course of Sermons preached at the Chapel Royal, White hall. By the Rev. Frederick ➢leyrick, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Trinity College, Oxford, London : Rivingtons. A VOLUME of sermons is seldom interesting except to a small section of admirers of the preacher, to those among the clergy who are in want of models, and to some ladies who have a special taste for this kind of literature. To the rest of the community a sermon is interesting enough to be listened to, but not interesting enough to be read. And as few sermons contain anything new or even anything moderately old, if they are difficult to read, they are, as a general rule, still more difficult to review. It may perhaps be the preacher's function to repeat old truths in old language, and to eschew novelty as he would eschew heresy ; but if so, the reviewers of literature must eschew him, and he must refrain from making pretensions to literary dis tinction. The author of the present volume does not, however, regard his own office exactly so : his sermons contain much that, if not new, is at least not familiarly known to everybody ; and, in consequence, though the matter of the book might not have tempted us to review it at length, yet the innovation of putting such matter into sermons deserves some comment. Mr. Meyrick's plan is described by himself in the preface : About two years ago (he says), there was a cry raised against sermons. It was said that the clergy did not deal with any subject in which the heart of the nation was interested. but that they continued repeating the same dry truths to each generation us it came, without attempt• ing to grapple with its peculiar needs. There is always some truth at the bottom of a cry, and there is generally some untrudi mixed with it. No one who considers the master thoughtfully can for a moment doubt that it is the primary duty of the o'ergyman to preach the good tidings of salvation in their simplest form to the flock with which the Great Shepherd hes intrusted him. But there are certain occasions on which the needs of the nation, or of the church at large, msy be well treated from the pulpit. We think that this extract is a very fair index of Mr. Meyrick's character and talents. A candid man, prepared to listen to the voice of truth, even when it conveys reproaches against his own order but not accustomed to exact from himself a precise account of the words he uses, and not superior to all the prejudices which his profession, like every other profession, clique, or class, cherishes.