The Sun.
London, England, 1865-11-17 00:00:00

National Choral Society.

The sixth season of this society, which its
'ounder, Mr. G. W. Martin, has brought to such a
great degree of excellence, commenced last night,
on which occasion the large area of Exeter Hall was
quite incapable of comfortably accommodating the
vast audience assembled last evening to hear
Mendelssohn's magnificent oratorio " Elijah." To
the great disappointment of the entire audience,
Mr. Santley, who had been announced for the prin-
cipal part, was absent ; and although the regret at
such a circumstance was general, the cause that led
to it was a matter of still greater sorrow, viz., the
death of his son, of whom the highest expectations
had been formed. 'To a person of ordinary
courage, such an unlooked - for event would
have entirely precluded the performance of
the oratorio, but with that energy which has
throughout marked Mr. Martin's career he sought
for a substitute, and was fortunate enough
to prevail upon Mr. Renwick to sustain the
part originally assigned to Mr. Santley. As
the substitute of so renowned a vocalist, Mr. Ren-
wick at once secured the sympathy of the audience,
but it was in a great measure unneeded, for he sang
the music with a taste and expression ' that won
the most enthusiastic and well-deserved applause—
tie great airs, "Is not His word," and "It is
enough, 0 Lord," each securing an encore.
Madame Rudersdorff sang the soprano music to
the admiration of the entire audience—and Miss
Palmer, Miss Armytage, and Miss Lisle, each sang
\ano
their respective parts with commendable expres-
sion. One of the important events of the evening
V
appearance s
uo
sf ua u
an ffeeNci new tenor,
pleasurea Mr.
. Leigh
\\ s
, theff
dt ar
drecordto
it as a brilliant and d
un oubted success. His voice is of
fine tone, it has been highly •
cultivated, and from
the reception his efforts •
received last evening, it
will be at no very distant
date that he will take his
place as one of the most accomplished and genuine
singers of the day. In the great song, "Then shall
the righteous shine," he showed that
he was a
thorough musician, and such was the taste and feel-
ing with which the piece was executed that a rapturous
encore had to be complied with. The choruses
were given with all that steadiness and precision
that so greatly distinguish the performances of this
society. Mr. Martin conducted the oratorio in the
most effective manner, and, despite the disappoint
went above alluded to, the'performance was brought
to a most successful conclusion

The next performance of the society will be
Haydn'a "Creation." ;

An Excursion in the Peloponnese in the Year 1858.
By the late Right Hon. Thomas Wyse,
8.C.8. Edited by his Nee, Winifrede M.
Wyse. Two Volumes. Da3and Son.
We have examined these page with very mingled
feelings indeed—with feelings t once of the most
profound regret and of the sicerest admiration.
To our thinking, they constitui, beyond all com-
parison, the best book of trtiels descriptive of
Greece as it actually is, contrastd with Greece as it
used to be in its halcyon day, when a great and
heroic nation. It appears to 13 to be not only, as
we have here said, incompaably the best book
of travels upon the subjec that has ever yet
appeared to our knowledge, but, in point of fact,
the only one intrinsically Tprthy of its theme
—the only book worthy of being the expositor
of Greece as it is, when iewed through r the
remembrance of what Greece was wont to be in
the golden age of classic aniquity, when so re-
garded by the intelligence, andafterwards described
by the hand of a lettered Englshman. Scholars of
eminence have no doubt visited Greece before now,
and written books about it after their return home-
ward, but their writings as compared with the
two volumes here submitted to our consideration have
been either frivolous and suprficial—or dull with
the dullness of Peter Bell—" lull beyond all expres-
sion dull," tediously erudite and didactically dry.
To particularise amongst those predecessors of Sir
Thomas Wyse, might possiby be invidious, would
certainly be sheer waste of time. It could, in
no possible manner, serve our present purpose
—meaning a candid examination of these two
noble volumes, descriptive of modern Greece—
volumes shadowing forth through their vivid and
picturesane and thoroughly appreci.tive mum-a=
tion of nac:. Greeef4_the far grander outlines of
the glorious Greece of antiquity. For—amongst
the ablest of his precursors, there is not one with
whom the author of the remarkable work now under
review can be brought seriously, even for one single
instant, into comparison. His scholarship was ripe
and ready. His eloquence was as captivating
and as persuasive when be took pen in hand,
as when, in his Parliamentary days, he was wont to
address with his lips intelligent and delighted audi-
ences, now within, now without the walls of the
imperial Legislature. And hence—by means simply
of the judicious combination of his lore and of his
rhetoric, in his jotting down thus in the simple form
of a diary the varying impressions produced upon
his mind during his latest excursion among the
desolate ruins and thinly-peopled dwelling-places
of the Peloponnesus, Sir Thomas Wyse contrived
to write a book as instructive as a paper contributed
to the Philosophical Transactions, yet as sparklingly
vivacious and as entertaining as one of the happiest
hits in a Paris feuilleton. The work altogether—
that is, regarded as a whole, looked at in its
symmetrical completeness—is, so far as any one could
reasonably desire it, completely exhaustive of its
theme : namely, as a description of the country, of
the people, of the manners and customs, of the
institutions, both civil and political, of the material
condition and of the intellectual and moral status
of all that is signified, now-a-days, under the one
comprehensive term of the Peloponnesus. It is as
minutely detailed as well digested and as scrupu-
lously well-arranged in its accummulation of illus-
trative facts and statistics, as though it were a
blue book compiled by the labours of a commis-
sion, to be placed afterwards for the enlighten-
ment of our legislators on the tables of the Lords
and Commons by command of the Sovereign.
But—in this instance, unlike any blue book that
was ever printed, certainly quite unlike any that
ever yet came under our own observation—the
work, amply furnished though it is with statistics
and other such illustrative or elucidatory materials,
is, nevertheless, from the beginning of the opening
chapter in the first volume, down to the conclusion
of the final chapter in the second, not only thoroughly
readable, but often as exhilarating and refreshing,
in the mere sparkle and animation of its manner, as
the conversations of a wit or the correspondence of
a humorist. We read on—never once bored—always
entertained—very frequently delighted. Having
opened the book with c1.11.10A1 EMT', closed it
with admiration : but, as intimated at the outset of
these remarks, with an admiration that is mingled with
regret. And that regret?—who is there who knows
anything at all about Sir Thomas Wyse who will not
recognise the source of it upon the instant ? A regret
arising simply, solely and wholely, from our con-
viction that that distinguished servant of the Crown
was unexpectedly prevented by his death not merely
from giving this effusion himself to the world, but
from giving to the world, together with it, very
speedily afterwards, other and yet ampler illustra-
tions of the rare and refined powers that were in
him. From whatever untoward or fortuitous cir-
cumstance it may have arisen, certain are we, from
all that we have been able to learn in regard to his
career and his writings, that Sir Thomas Wyse
never did himself full justice in the manifestation of
his gifts and capabilities, insomuch that those
gifts and capabilities of his are to this hour, we be-
lieve, in no way adequately appreciated. His Speeches
—and they alone would make a noble volume—have
yet, .we believe, to be collected. His History of the
Catholic Association is the only substantial literary
production that was fully completed by him during
his lifetime. His great work upon Education—
which promised to become the text-book upon that
subject of vital import to every civilised commu-
nity—never advanced, at any rate in a published
form, beyond the limits of a First Volume. Never-
theless, judging that work through merely its one
opening volume—estimating its proportions thus
in a manner ex pede Herculem—its augury of the
work as a completed whole, was magnificent. As a
preliminary treatise upon Education, it was a master-
piece. Turning, however, from a consideration of his

career as a Parliamentary orator, as a champion, nay,
in his day, as the arch-champion of the great cause of
National Education, as a legislator, a debater, a man
of letters, an administrator, and a patriotic philan-
thropist—turning from an examination of those ear-
lier phases of his career to the latest epoch of that
career, to the latest manifestation of his powers, that
is to say, in his capacity as a diplomatist, we have, if
that be possible, a yet more striking illustration of
the singularly regrettable, the almost disheartening
fact we are now alluding to, in the history of the
memorable " Financial Commission to inquire into
the Resources of Greece"—the Commission for-

mally appointed after the occupation of Athens dur-
ing the progress of the Crimean War, and of which
Commission Sir Thomas Wyse was from first to
last the active and distinguished President. Here,
again—as finally and conclusively illustrative of those

vexatious casualties that somehow intervened be-

tween the application of the rare abilities of Sir
Thomas Wyse to any given theme intrinsically
worthy of them, and the conspicuous manifestation
of the skill with which those powers had been so ap-
plied—the light of this Commission was in a man-
ner, as one may say, placed under a bushel. It was

a Commission, it may be remembered, appointed, in
the first instance, for the solution of the long-

bewildering problem as to whether the resources of
Greece could really be regarded as sufficing
for the regular payment thenceforth of the interest

upon the loan guaranteed by the three protecting
Powers, that is to say, byEngland, France, and Russia.

That those resources did not suffice, the Greek Go-

vernment had persistently maintained, from year to

year, their doing so being in truth their one only

excuse for the non-fulfilment of their solemnly
stipulated engagements. Consequently to inquire
for once and for all into the validity of this asser-
tion, the Financial Commission referred to was for-

finally constituted. It consisted of the English,

the French, and the Russian ambassadors then at the
Court of Athens, those three ministers having as-

sociated with them, in the labours of the Commis-

sion two assistant-Commissioners. Sixty-two sit-

tings in all were held by those five members of the
Financial Commission. Sir Thomas Wyse, at each
of those sittings, presiding. Elaborate reports were
drawn up on the several departments of the Greek
Government. Those reports showed as clearly as
written words could do, the actual condition of
the administration. They suggested remedies and
improvements, wherever such were deemed to be

feasible, and their arguments were based upon parti-
culars supplied to them by documents furnished to that
very end by the Greek Ministers themselves. After
all this had been done, and the labours of the Commis-
sion were to all intents and purposes completed, the
commissioners thereupon invited to a Conference
upon the whole matter, the members of the Greek
Government individually and collectively. At that
Conference the Reports of the Commission (observe
the plural here italicised) were submitted, each re-
port to the head of the respective department, to the
end that any errors of fact that might peradventure
ty sheer casualty have crept in might there and
then be detected, and either struck out altogether
or scrupulously corrected. Afterwards—that is,
after the completion of this conference between the
members of the Financial Commission and the
members of the Greek Government—the epitomised
labours of the Commission were by the Commis-
sioners embodied in A Report—which report (and
no more than which report) was eventually laid
before Parliament and published. All the prelimi-
nary Reports already particularised—the whole of
the accumulation of valuable (some among them
it might be said wholely invaluable) docu-
ments accompanying that one final and isolated
Report, which was eventually published, being
summarily and en masse suppressed, or at any rate
cushioned. " A mine of knowledge and instruction" it
was proounced to be at the time—this accumulation
of papers accompanying the report—by those who
had the privilege of dipping into them. And, among
those elaborate documents, several were drawn up
by Sir Thomas Wyse himself, the President of the
Commission—conspicuous amongst his papers being
one on " Justice," one on the " Church," and one
upon that always congenial theMe for him,
" Education." Those three treatises, of themselves,
would, if produced, we feel certain, be of ines-
timable value._ not only for the student of modern
history, but for the future guidance of the Greek
Government. But no !—manuscript they remain, in
common with much, we feel certain that might no
less radiantly illustrate the rare ability of the accom-
plished man who from 1849 to 1862 (an interval of
profound anxiety at Athens to all the diplomatists
there resident) occupied at the Court of Greece the
delicate and responsible position of H.M.'s Envoy
Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary. At
any rate, in the midst of the regrets thus called to
mind by the publication of this splendid posthumous
work of Sir Thomas Wyse' upon the Peloponnesus
—we at the least can exult in possessing this one
work of his upon the Peloponnesus. Among all those
of his literary performances which as have as yet
seen the light, it is, in every way, the most felici-
tous. And we say this, moreover, with no dis-
paragement whatever to his earlier productions.
Whatever else he may have written, and that may
yet be lying hid away from our ken in manuscript
like those three treatises of his upon Justice, and
the Church, and Education in Greece, which have
in a manner, as we have said, been shelved by the
Government, this posthumous work by Sir Thomas
Wyse is certainly, among all his published works,
the one likely to win the largest amount of popu-
larity, and to enhance and extend his reputation
very considerably. It is written delightfully. Not
intelligently alone, but delightfully. We have read it
with a relish : and yet, for all that, we have read it at
every turn of the leaf with an appreciable sense of
instruction. It yields an ampler amount of infor-
mation, we believe—of solid and valuable informa-
tion upon Greece and the Greeks—the Greece and
Greeks of nowadays—than any other two volumes
that were ever before printed. Nevertheless, while
doing so, the work never once wearies us with its
stores of information. We:read on willingly, and
are almost unconsciously instructed while we are
very conscieusly, indeed, entertained.
The charm of the very style of the composition
is perpetually around us like any atmosphere.
And we may safely say that any mere fragmen-
tary quotations, however well selected, could
afford no adequate notion whatever of the fascina-
tion of Sir Thomas's manner as an author, as the
appreciation of it grows upon us while reading his
book continuously. Whatever his theme at the
moment chances to be, it is the same. If, for
example, he has reason to contrast in a passing
sentence the bright, ingenuous, fresh-complexioned
Spartan boys with the Athenian urchins who are
the vnry reverse of being bright, or• ingenuous,
or fresh-complexioned, he does so thus by a
touch or two of his pen, resulting in an equiva-
lent to a pencilled vignette by Stothard—remark-
ing of the stripling Spartans that " Well set on
their light, clean limbs, they looked as ready as
their own goats for a tough mountain walk, and
resembled in nothing the rickety build or listless
movement of the sharp-nosed, thin-lipped, sallow-
checked, imp-like creatures packed up in the
schools at Athens." Or, to give ampler evidence of
our;author's skill in word:'painting, take the follow-
ing exquisitively picturesque and vivid description
of the forest scenery traversed by him on the
road to Psophis. Heard of previously at Douka, as
a sylvan region, eminently worthy of examination,
this richly wooded Arcadian landscape appears to
kave beguiled the travellers on by its varied beauties
for as many as throe or four consecutive hours.
Descanting upon it with manifest delight, the
author of the Peloponnesus thus comments upon
the aspect of the Greek woodland :
It presents the richest variety of forest scenery. Plane-
trees, valonea, and pines stand in masses or separate.
Hazel, arbutus, prinari, chyrysoxylo, form the intermediate
foliage whilst vigorous groups of myrtle, bay, lentisk, in-
terwoven with angus cactus, fill up the foreground. This
forest belongs to the Government, and it bears the usual
marks of such proprietorship. It bas been cut, or rather
destroyed, and apparently at random. Trees, tapped for
resin, and consequently perishing, others half-burnt, others
undermined, not by rule, but as the caprice or cupidity of
the trespasser impelled him, show how ineffectual is
government control at all times, and here, how directly
pernicious. No division of district exists, and no appoint
ment of seasons or limttation of time for cutting the tim
ber ; all seem welcome to do what injury they can ; wha
belongs to Government belongs to every one, and no one
Yet foresters—Saoocht')XaKir—there absolutely are.

as in Franca and Germany, and also a sort of second-hand
German and French forest code. But the foresters sleep
the whole year, day and night, in the villages; at most
they pus through the woods two or three times a year.
* * A rough and harsh mountain country succeeded the
forest. Passing through stony grey defiles, where stunted
wild olives and ragged firs with difficulty broke their way,

we at last reached, in the heart of this region, and on tho

side of one of these craggy crumbling rocks, the miserable
khan of Birbisi. To enter was impossible.
Here, therefore, the travellers pause awhile for
the enjoyment of an al fresco meal spread for
them by their attendant Dimitri, under the
shadow of a plane-tree. While the mules and
horses of the cavalcade are yet enjoying their

repast, and while the companions of Sir Thomas

are yet luxuriating in their siesta, he himself is
happily tempted to wander down into one of the

defiles sweeping away from their momentary iest-
ting place. Happily tempted, we say advisedly,
and this for the simple reason enough that our
author's so doing enables him to complete not
only his pencilled sketch, but (in the manner
following) his pen and ink description also of
the immediate neigbourhood

A wild, broken up district it was—the mountains soamed
by olives, and here and there topped by villages, uot un-
like a tamer Switzerland. At the bottoni of a deep de-
scent, we reached a rough torrent bed, with the customary
decoration of plane trees, and following it for some time,

we came upon a more open pathway to Tripotama. The
whole aspect was rough, and dislocated by the perpetual

action of mountain wind, waier, and snow. The winter
climate is nearly alpine, but with this difference, that it
does not leave behind it those vividly green pasturages,
in the bosoms and hollows of mountain, edged by a cluster

of chalet; which atone for tho devastations of winter in

Switzerland. Shepherd wanderers are occasionally seen

tending widely-scattered herds of goats and sheep flocks :
but entire tracts lie silent, stony, and desolate. Great
cloven rocks overhead, regularly split and hewn, now and
then bear the semblance of some toppling mountain fast-
ness. In other cases, real remnants of ancient defences
are confounded with the natural rock. All these small in-

ternal states, in a normal condition of unceasing feud and
fear, had to look narrowly to every approach, and to keep
their sword ready for aggression on every side. No treaty
had effect longer than suited the convienco of either party
at best, their treaties were but a series of loose and brief

armistices. Border warfare in all countries consists of

ambush, surprise, sudden foray, and successful treachery ;
and every state in Greece stood in the position of a bor-

derer surrounded by enemies. Many of these overhanging
cliffs, now go bare, had their castles—Opoi;pia,
and many now taken by the traveller for freaks of nature,
show, OA closer cxamination, substpctions of fortified

We gradually emerged from these defiles into a plain
somewhat better cultivated, and shut in by two ranges of
mountain. At its extremity, a rather lofty summit, vast
and gloomy, seemed to bar our passage, or to intimate that
the plain we were traversing was only an interruption, a
favoured exception to the general ruggedness. Over its
whole extent, no village, and scarcely a habitation, was
perceptible. As sunset approached, our Agoyiates talked
widely of khans and monasteries, but we could not yet
discover any. At length, the evening sun struck on a
small dwelling, a few miles distant. This single house in
the middle of this desert was the—khan. But the village?
"There is no village," answered our guide. "It is the
khan of Tripotamo." In another half-hour we stood before
it. A more forbidding lodging it were impossible to im-
agine, or one more deserted. At pistol-shot distance wore
some enclosures for cattle; and a ruined church, once con-
nected with a monastery' stood on the declivity opposite.
All was silence. Even the khan seemed untenanted. It
was not without effort that we brought ourselves to enter
it, scrambled as we could up the brokon steps; and yet it
had rooms and " apartments," though no kitchen, and we
had to dig a hole in the neighbouring earth for our cookery,
which fortunately was simple. Then, by the warning
twilight, wo made a reconnaisance of the surrounding
scenery. Tripotamo, or Tripotamos—so called from the
junction of the "three rivers," the Erymanthus, the
Aronius, and Liopesi—is the ancient Psophis. The
mountain opposite was the site of the town and citadel,
and the river flowing between is one of the three from
which it takes its modern designation. The Liopesi runs
immediately behind the khan. The long ridge of hill,
higher than the lower part of the mountain facing us, was
that on mhinh .m.„mped.
It is in a strain thus picturesque that the whole
narrative of this evidently most delightful Excursion
through the Peloponnesus is penned by her Ma-
jesty's late ambassador at Athens. That he was
not spared to see the work passed through the press
under his own direction is a matter of profound re-
gret to us—purely for his own sake, however, and not
for the book's ! We can hardly imagine any posthu-
mous publication produced with more exquisite care
for everything that might be supposed to have been
among the deceased author's wishes in its regard,
than that which has been lavished, with a bright in-
telligence and a tender affection, by the niece of Sir
Thomas Wyse, upon these two volumes, upon these
657 pages of his work upon the Peloponnesus.
Charming though the graceful deprecation put forth
by Miss Wyse in her Preface—her deprecation, that is
to say, of anything like a rigidly searching scrutiny
of her editorial labours upon the book under review
—it is in itself altogether superfluous. Her affec-
tionate regard for what she (better, surely, than
any one else that could be named) knew to be the
wishes and intentions of the departed author, in
the transformation of his manuscript into print, has
enabled her to accomplish what scholarship and
literary aptitude alone would certainly have failed
to effect. Aided, she has been, here and there, as
she takes occasion herself very warmly to acknow-
ledge before the close of her prefatory remarks, by
several kind and learned friends, who, during her
performance of her labour of love, have offered her
—some their assistance, all their encouragement.
Nevertheless, it is easy enough to recognise,
while reading the work itself in its in-
tegrity as a whole, that the brunt of the
toil has appertained exclusively to the Editress of
these volumes, to the author's niece, " Winefrede
M. Wyse," to give her name here simply as it
appears on the titlepage. From Monemvasia,
where we first arrive in company with Sir Thomas
and his fellow-excursionists on to Gythium, to
Sparta, to Mistra, to Trype and the Langada, to
Kalamata and Mount Ithome, to Upper Messenia
and the Stenyklarian Plain on to Eira, and
Phigaleia, and Bassm, along the Valley of the
Alpheus, within the august precincts of Olympia, on
to Lala and Psophis, to Kalavryta and Megaspi-
lion, to Vostitza or lEgium, along the Achaian coast,
to Sicyon, and round by way of Corinth back once
more to the starting-point of Athens, or rather to
its outport of the Piraeus, we make the tour of me
whole Peloponnesus. How profitably any one
might predicate without reading one page of the
work under notice, bearing in remembrance simply
the fact that the late Sir Thomas Wyse is the writer,
and that his theme is Greece. How pleasantly—no
one could possibly conjecture who has not himself
read the book and read it, too, not casually, here and
there, but consecutively and throughout. Every-
thing that could be wished for the work in regard
to its mere material getting up has been
done for it by its publishers, the Messrs.
Day and Son, the eminent lithographers of Gate-
street, Lincoln's Inn Fields. Numerous embellish-
ments are scattered through the two volumes—
illustrations etched with a delicate and wonderfully
accurate needle, by Mr. A. Severn, from drawings
made upon the spot by Signor V. Lanza, and by
the accomplished author himself—Sir Thomas
handling his pencil, it should be said, as an
artist—almost as skilfully as he handled his
pen as a man of letters.' Folding panoramas,
an outline map of the route taken by the
tourists, woodcut diagrams introduced here and
there among the letterpress—whenever desirable for
the purposes of elucidation, enhance the value and
interest of the two volumes as an illustrated publi
cation. Its general excellence we have in our fore

going remarks in no way exaggerated. They are
discernible in regard to this work alike at its heart

and upon its surface. Even a superficial reader of
it becomes aware of them in spite of himself, in de-
spite, that is, of the merely cursory glance bestowed
by him upon a work so alarmingly elaborated as
a two-volumed record of an Excursion in the Pelo-

ponnesus. Does any one doubt what we are here

saying or regard our tributary phrases as expres-
sive in any way- of an extravagance ? Let another

fragmentary passage answer, a passage culled almost
hap-hazard from these posthumous pages of Sir
Thomas Wyse—descriptive (how charmingly let
our readers judge for themselves) of Parori,
otherwise, _of _ the sweet waters of Mistra,

as they babble and sparkle to view upon
our opening (at page 150 of Vol. I.) this
doubly pictorial book upon the Peloponnesus
Pausing upon the brink of Taygetus, he runs on

_ - -
thus radiantly and eloquently in his description
of the place—

A clear cloven wall, with such a profusion of ivy, so
moist, so green, that we refused to believe we were in
Greece, where all is so intensely dry and brown. Caverns
' '

and clefts, however, there were sufficient to let out whole

torrents, and masses of verdure with them, in spring and
summer. Just under this rock the Mahomedan love of
shade and water collected the streams into their usual form

of fountain, pieced-up with fragments wherever they could
get them, and fitted together as journeymen masons
might deem best. A Doric frieze, supported by an
injured inscription, figured on a sort of cornice.

This not being of any antiquity harmonised sufficiently
with the coarse fieuron ornaments near. Besides the

fountain stood a group of Spartan, or at least Lako-
nian, damsels, who in health and form would not

have shamed their countrywomen in the Lysistrata. They

were busily propared in washing—preparing, as they told
us, for the bridal of the youngest of the party, whieh was
to be celebrated in a day or two. The Nausikaa was very

active and practical, and did not allow the presence
of strangers to interfere with the prosecution of her work
The great plane tree spread its fine green branches over
the party, and joined its shadows with those of the rock in
protecting them from the sun. If there lives a tree in
Greece which deserves, or appears to have, a Dryad to
take care of it, it is assuredly the plane. Oaks themselves
are dwarfs beside it, to say nothing of that artless art with
which, while grasping rock and block below (I have seen
them keep defiant hold on both in the very face of a Tay-
getan torrent) with roots like claws and talons, worthy of
the Blocksberg roots of Ooethe, they ruu out above, re-
sembling a sort of hugh convolvulus, the arms apparently
as pliant as tendrils, but loaded with shade sufficient for
a whole squadron. Nor is it massive heavy shade, but of
a light twinkling kind ; the exquisite sharpness of the
foliage moved by every breeze, and discovering at each
turn all the grey, silver, and brown purple of its lining in
rich harmony with its bright verdure. around this one--
evidently an old favourite—its Turkish admirers, as in
other parts of Greece, had built up a circular dais, where
pasha and peasant, sleeping, smoking, coffee-drinking, or
eating, might find at any hour of the four-and-twenty the
fulness of Southern and Oriental enjoyment.

Surely a charming picture, charmingly pencilled_
pencilled with a touch of refined and subtle appre-