The Sun.
London, England, 1835-06-17 00:00:00

GREECE.

The following interesting account of Greece, its
inhabitants, and its Parliament, in the Summer of
1832, is from Miss Landon's elegant translation of
Lamartine's " Pilgrimage to the Holy Land," just

published by Bentley :
" I rose with the sun, to view as near as possible, the
Gulph of Argos—Argos itself, and Nauplia, the present
capital of Greece. Deception is here complete. Nauplia
is a miserable village built on the borders of a deep, narrow
gulph, on a margin of earth fallen from the high mountains
which cover all the coast. The houses have nothing pe-
culiar about them, but are built in the common form of
the lowest habitations of the villages of France and Savoy.

The greater part of them are in ruins ; and the masses of
walls thrown down by cannon during the late war, are still
lying in the middle of the streets. Two or three new
houses painted in coarse colours, rise on the quay, and a
few coffee-houses and shops are built upon piles in the sea ;
those coffee-houses, and the balconies on the water are now
covered with two or three hundred guests in their Sunday
clothes, but extremely dirty. They are either sitting, or
lying on planks or on the sand, and certainly form
very picturesque groups ; their physiognomies are hand-
some, but sad and ferocious; the load of indolence
weighing heavily on all their attitudes. The indolence
of the Neapolitans is mild, serene, and gay—the care-
lessness of happiness ; while that of the Greeks is heavy,
morose, and sombre ; it is a vice which punishes itself.
We turn our eyes from Nauplia to admire the fine fortress of
Palamide, which extends along the mountain commanding the
town ; the turreted walls resemble those of a natural rock.

But where is Argos ?—A vast, barren, naked plain, inter-
sected with marshes, extends in a circular form at the bottom
of the gulph ; it is bounded on every side by chains of grey
mountains. At the end of the plain, about two leagues
inland, we perceive a mound with some fortified walls on its
summit, and which protects by its shade, a small town in ruins.
This is Argos I Close by is the tomb of Agamemnon l"
* S * * *

" We are on shore, in the room of a bad inn opposite the
barracks of the Greek troops. The soldiers lie stretched out
all day under the shade of ruined walls in the middle of the
streets and other places of the town. Their costumes are
rich and picturesque, but their features bear the imprint of
poverty, despair, and all those ferocious passions which civil
war lights and foments in these savage breasts. Anarchy
the most complete reigns at this moment in the Morea.
Every day one faction triumphs over another, and we hear the
firing of the musketry of the Kleftes, the Colocotronis,
who are fighting, on the other side of the gulph, against the
troops of the government. We learn from every courier who
descends the mountains, the burning of a town, the pillage of a
plain, the massacre of a population by one of these parties
which are ravagers of their own country ; one cannot go out of
the gates of Nauplia without running the risk of being fired at."
* * * ,Of 9F 4

" I attended this morning at a sitting of the Greek Parlia-
ment. The parliament house is a wooden shed, the walls and
the roof being of badly joined fir planks or boards. The depu-
ties are seated on raised forms or benches ; the floor is covered
with sand ; and they speak from their places. We sat down to
see them arrive, on a stone at the entrance of the shed.
They came successively on horseback, each accompanied by
an escort more or less numerous, according to the rank of
the chief. The deputy having dismounted, his pilikars, with
their glittering arms, go and form a group at a little distance
in the plain, which presents the image of an encampment or a
caravan.
The attitude of the deputies is martial and haughty; they
speak without confusion and without hesitation, in a tene of
voice which displays feeling, but is at the same tinie firm,
measured, and harmonious. We see no 10nv,..:r those fe-
rocious figures repulsive to the eye, which are encountered in
the streets of Nauplia ; but the chiefs of an heroic people,
who still hold in their hands the gun or sabre with which they
have been combatting for their deliverance, and who consult
together on the means of securing the triumph of their li-
berty. Their parliament is a council of war.
One can conceive nothing more simple, and at the same
time more imposing, than this spectacle of an armed nation,
deliberating thus amid the ruins of their country, under a roof
of boards raised in the open air ; while the soldiers polish
their arms at the very door of the senate-house, and the horses
neigh, impatient to resume the path of the mountains. Some
of the heads of the deputies are admirable for a display of
beauty, intelligence, and heroism. These men are from the
mountains : the Greek merchants of the Isles are easily distin-
guished by their features (which are more effeminate), and the
impress of deceit, which is legible on their countenances. The
spirit of trade, and the indolence of their habits, have indeed
effaced all traits of nobleness or force, and stamped instead,
those of fraud and vulgar cunning."
* * * S
" I can write nothing : my soul is withered and sad as the
dismal country which surrounds me : naked rocks, red or black
earth, dusty creeping. shrubs, marshy plains, where the icy
wind of the north whistles through crops of rushes : this is all.
The land of Greece is no better than the inding-sheet of a
people ; it resembles an old sepulchre despoiled of its bones,
and of which the very stones are dispersed arid discoloured by
time. Where is the so much vaunted beauty of Greece, where