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

WEDNESDAY.

There is a Court of Cassation in France ; then
why not in England ? The House sanctioned,
so far as to pass the second reading, Mr.
M‘MAnow's Bill for establishing a Court of Cri-
minal Appeal. Judges and juries were fallible,
and the prisoner whom they convicted ought, it
was argued, to be allowed some means of having
the evidence revised and the conviction quashed,
if erroneous. This was conceded; and the case
Mr. BARBER conies very apropos.

THURSDAY.
With a few " last words," chiefly benedictory
and approving, the Indian Government Bill
passed its last stage in the Commons.
The Irish Police Bill, as explained b 7 Lord
NAAS, was opposed by Mr. PATRICK 0 BLURS.
After a pause, no member rising, the question
was put, and the second reading carried. Sundry
Irish representatives grumbled at this sudden
stop to their loquacity, and found means to revive
the debate, which they urged for several hours,
spiced with divers personalities, and imbued with
a gradually deepening tone of acrimony. At
last the discussion seemed fast verging on a
" row," when it was suspended for the time, at
half an hour after midnight, by adjournment.

FRIDAY.
A morning sitting was ordered, in the hope of
getting through a little Supply. In the prelimi-
nary: discussion Mr. Cox: discoursed upon the
state of the Thames, with the object apparently
of feeling the pulse of the House on the money
question, whether London alone, or all England,
should pay for cleansing the metropolitan river.
Some debate ensued, which was speedily hushed
when Mr. DISRAF.T.I announced that a Govern-
ment Bill on the subject would be introduced
early next week. The House afterwards got into
committee, but could not get through a single
vote before the time arrived for leaving off. In
the evening the usual volley of questions was
fired off, upon the motion for adjournment until
Monday. Various Ministerial replies were made,
of course, but no game of any importance was
either started or bagged. Supply was afterwards
resumed, and two or three money votes actually
got in.

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THE PRESS, JULY 10, 1858. 655
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fittraturt,

Peloponnesus : Notes of Study and Travel. By
William George Clark, Fellow and Tutor of
Trinity College, Cambridge. London : John
W. Parker and Son.
OP the two chief regions of classical antiquity,
Greece is probably the one which presents to a
modern traveller the greater amount of poetic
interest. The associations of Italy are, indeed,
more copious and more capable of exact verifica-
tion. But that which makes them so, brings
them for those very reasons more into connection
with the prosaic side of history ; with its useful
and practical aspect; with its laws, its govern-
ments, and its material civilization. The tradi-
tions, too, of Italy—except in the case of Pom-
peii and Herculaneum—form an almost unbroken
series, in which the ancient portion is not abruptly
separated, but is shaded off into mediaeval and
modern, by insensible gradations. And the
latter portions, including as they do events of
surpassing magnitude and importance, set up, as
it were, a rivalry with the earlier, and dim its
splendour by the lustre of recent glory. The
long line of consuls and emperors is matched by
the protracted lineage of the Catholic hierarchy ;
the Mamertine prison of the accomplices of
Catiline, of Jugurtha, and of Sejanus, is conse-
crated by tradition as the cell of St. Peter ; the
Vatican, vast enough for an eighth hill of Rome,
emulates, in fact as in aspect, the modernized
Capitol ; the " eloquent air breathes, burns with"
Rienzi as well as with Cicero ; and if the amphi-
theatre of Vespasian recalls the butchery of
gladiators, whose savage progeny returned to
avenge them on the declining empire of his suc-
cessors, not less does the dome of Michaelangelo
suggest those corruptions of faith and practice
which originated the sale of indulgences and
roused to action the resistless spirit of Luther.
The landscape reflects these features of its his-
tory equally with the stronghold of imperial
power. Soracte, indeed, and Bandusia remain,
and the Anio still irrigates the orchards of
Tibur; but frowning feudal fortress and pictu-
resque mediaeval monastery dispute with Cyclo-
pean walls and shattered columns the dominion
of the land they once swayed or sanctified.
In Greece, all is different. There the events
of the period, when the land had a history of its
own, stand out clear and distinct ; and no suc-
cession of subsequent occurrences affiliates the
events of yesterday to the twilight of fable.
• Ancient Greece means races and nationalities ;
modern Greece is "a geographical expression."
Between the last efforts of the Achtean league
and the history of modern Europe is fixed a
great desert, peopled only by the phantoms of
expiring philosophies, or the spectres of those
ruined cities which Sulpicius saw as he
sailed from /Egina to Megara.—Homer and
Phidias, Themistocles, Brasidas, and Plato, hold
their territory still by the tenure of genius and
immortality, with no competitor save the solitary
figure whose letters were read at Corinth, and
who preached from the platform of the Areo-
pagus the knowledge of the Unknown God.
The history of Italy is like one of its own rivers,
flowing through every variety of scenery, but
traceable through all the sinuosities of its course;
the history of Greece and of the Greeks is
like one of those streams which the traveller
constantly encounters in its limestone districts,
brilliant, youthful, and abundant in the valleys
of its birth, but either lost, as it proceeds, in a
marsh, or dried up in its stony channel, or swal-
lowed, in full vigour, by a chasm, again to re-
appear, if at all, with diminished importance and
doubtful authenticity.
Greece, too, like Spain and Palestine, is
one of those countries where facilities of move-
ment and appliances of civilization have done
little or nothing to vulgarize the scenes of in-
terest. Inns are infrequent ; roads hardly
exist; no railway-engine, as in the Bay of Naples,
sends the shrill scream of Progress into the ear
of dusty Antiquity • and the distances are too
great to accommodate the knapsack-bearing
Pedestrians who people the paths of Switzerland,
with the certainty of rest, refreshment, and
society at the close of each day's journey. Nor
is a tour in Greece likely to be a cheap one. In-
dependently of the long distance from England,

the means of locomotion are expensive, and the
discomfort occasionally considerable. Consider-
ing also the kind of knowledge which is required
for the due appreciation of Hellenic sites, it will
be evident that the class of travellers in Greece
must always be of a somewhat limited and ex-
clusive character. But no country could be
imagined more attractive to a well-read English-
man, with sufficient money, health, and leisure
before him ' • and in such regions, a Cambridge
tutor, neither undistinguished in scholarship nor
unversed in the ways of popular literature, may
well be expected to make not the worst use of
his time.

Mr. Clark's tour seems to have lasted between
two and three months,—part of March, April, and
May, 1856,—and was a tolerably complete one,
comprehending Corinth, Alycenm, Argos, Man-
tinca, Sparta, Kalamata, Navarino, Messene,
Olympia, Pyrgo, Elis, Patras, and Sicyon. Any
one who takes a map and observes the relative
position of these places will see that the route
which connects them passes through the most
interesting localities in the Pelopennesus. The
author kept a careful diary, and his volume is
the result of personal observation combined with
an examination, on the spot, of Colonel Leake's
" Travels" and Murray's " Handbook," and en-
riched by references to classical authorities at
home. Its value is mainly topographical, and
many portions will afford but little interest to the
general reader ; but it abounds in picturesque
passages—not purple patches in a dry setting of
antiquarian dissertation, but clear descriptions
of the scenery, fresh with somewhat of the air of
a southern spring, and radiant with somewhat of
the colour of Greek sky, soil, and foliage. With
its sober enthusiasm, its critical tone, its out-of-
door spirit, and its classical intention, it is as cha-
racteristic of the English college Don as Mm.
About's volume, with its mercurial carelessness,
its pictorial grouping, and its tales of piquant
scandal, is of the modern French litti:rateur. Mr.
Clark has striven to " interest, not merely ar-
" chteologists, but educated men generally," and
to make his hook " grave in substance and light
" in manner." We do not think that it will, as he
fears, prove "trivial to the one class and pe-
dantic to the other" ; but most persons who have
no immediate concern with the identification of
ancient sites will reserve the topographical por-
tions for perusal on the spots to which they refer,
and will find themselves attracted by the para-
graphs which relate either to the grand natural
features of the country or to the memorable his-
tory of its inhabitants.
In verifying Hellenic remains, Mr. Clark is by
no means satisfied with the ipse dixit of Colonel
Leake or of any other writer. Thus, he questions
the received notions that 2Eschylus and So-
phocles, in the Agamemnon and Electra respec-
tively, intended to adhere to the true topography
of either Argos or Mycente. Ile shares the
doubts of Colonel Mure as to the underground
chambers at the latter place, and conjectures
them to have probably been constructed as tombs.
We content ourselves with drawing attention to
these points, which it would he useless to inves-
tigate from the data afforded by description
alone, and turn with more confidence to the phy-
sical features of the spot,—the level plain, dotted
with green fruit-trees and black spires of cypress,
and bounded by precipitous mountain ranges,
over which tower in the distance the snow-clad
summits of Parnassus.
From Argos Mr. Clark proceeded to Karya,
a village which does not appear to represent any
ancient site, but the beauty of which makes it
deserving of commemoration for its own sake.
After the "thirst" plain of Argos, it was a plea-
sant change to ride up the valley of the Cha-
radrus and face the fresh breezes which, over
greener herbage and more sparkling waters,
brought tidings of the pastoral Arcadia. Karya
itself seems to resemble those Italian villages
near Itadicofani which, with their red-tiled roofs
and slender towers, peer forth from the rich
woodlands of Mount Amiata, and refresh the
eye of the traveller, wearied with the inter-
minable slopes of the yellow Apennine, by their
similarity to the cool landscapes of Claude or
Poassin :
In about four hours and a half we came to Karya, a little
village nestling in a tt ell-watered, well-sheltered hollow, on
the main range of Arteluisitim. The white-walled, red-
roofed houses are scattered on the slope, each with its own
green plot of field and garden beside it. A wreath of blue
smoke curled up froui each chinineyless roof, finding ita

way through the tiles as best it might. We thought that w e
had never seen anything so beautiful. There are, I dar e
Ray, a thousand villages, in high Alpine valleys, which ar e
every whit as beautiful as Karya ; but it is only after the
eye has been wearied with a succession of barren grey
mountains and burnt brown plains
.that it feels the true
pleasure of resting on verdure.
• • • •

We left Karya about seven next morning, and . . . . .
waited fur our troop at an angle of the road which looks
over the peaceful village with its smoking roofs. Close by
was a water•mill, constructed thus :—a strong buttress of
wall is built against the hillside, and on the lop of it a
series of wooden troughs convey a runlet of water at the
proper angle to the wheel. The dripping wall was tufted
with lady-ferns and all manner of luxuriant grasses. We
had often occasion to admire the patient ingenuity with
which a scanty stream of water was brought for miles, in a
channel made along the hillside, to turn one of these mill-
wheels, and then distributed to the fields below.
It was often our lot to rest in the neighbourhood of such
a mill, for there we were sure to find the two essential
requisites, water and shade.
I remember, in particular, this of Karya, and the pleasant
half-hour we spent listening to the groaning of the wheel
and the plashing of the water. There was a fresh Alpine
breeze blowing, a bright sunshine glistening on dewy grass
—earth and sky " washed," as it were," with morning." It
was a scene which would have inspired Theocritus with an
idyl, destitute indeed of sentiment, but full of that frank
and genuine human feeling which is the salt of literature.
I am persuaded that if travellers' books were written in
the same honest spirit, and without reference to the effect
to be produced on sentimental readers, we should find that
the scenes which dwelt most vividly on their memory were
those associated,with recollections of personal comfort and
enjoyment.

The latter passage supplies the key-note to
Mr. Clark's own tone of mind, and inaugurates the
discussion of a theme on which much has lately
been written, but which must still be interesting
—the taste for the Picturesque among the ancient
Greeks. Mr. Clark is not entirely satisfied
with the reasons usually assigned for the
neglect of it, such as the indifference produced
by familiarity, the practical and sensuous
character of the people, and the deification of
natural objects, which drew off admiration from
the visible tree or fountain to fix it upon the
latent divinity. He thinks that such a mountain
as Taygetus would still be sublime to an
Athenian ; that a practical turn of character does
not necessarily (witness Scott—and we may add,
most of his countrymen) involve indifference to
such matters ; and that the genuine belief in
natural divinities had died out before the historic
age of Greece. He believes that the language in
which that deification was expressed, conveyed
to a Greek ear the feelings of beauty and majesty
which in modern times are embodied in a
picturesque description; and that the epithets
attached on certain occasions to natural objects
prove that their aspect was felt to be sympatheti-
cally associated with certain moods of the mind
that perceived them. He further observes that
the present taste for fine scenery is of compara-
tively modern growth, arising from "the growth
"of the natural sciences, the exhaustion of old
" subjects for poetry and painting, and the habit
"of holiday-tours " ; and believes that itwill pass
away, making the poems of Wordsworth and
others affected or unintelligible to our de-
scendants. In these remarks he is corroborated
by high authorities. Macaulay, in speaking of
the Highlands, expresses his conviction that
scenery cannot be enjoyed when the road is
dangerous. Carlyle, in " Sartor Resartus,"
sneers at the fondness for " view-hunting,"
which he deems a purely modern fashion. Emerl
son remarks that the beauty of Nature, if too
eagerly hunted, becomes a show merely,
and mocks us with its unreality. And
Dr. Sewell, in commenting on the " bit of
green" in Plato's " Pluedrus," is severe on the
propensity as sickly and sentimental, and traces
it, like many other bad things, to the declamations
of the Sophists. We do not think that any of
these views is entirely conclusive, or that even
Mr. Cope's interesting Essay (Cambridge Essays,
1856) quite exhausted the subject. But as we
do not, on the other hand, profess to have attained
to a complete solution of the difficulty, we may
for the present be content with registering the
additional idea which Mr. Clark has contributed,
and which appears to us both novel and im-
portant :
But there was one reason which has not been brought
forward yet, why this could not have been. It is a
mood of mind which requires seclusion and solitude for
its aliment. The Greeks were the most gregarious of
people; their literature was intended tar the theatre and the
stow, to be declaimed and recited and sung is public, not
read in the closet. It is impossible for a thousand people
at once to be sentimental and tender on the beauties of