The Litchfield County post., 1827-01-19
From Black,oood's Magazine.
 GREECE.

!
 1 ,FrOn, Blacktoood's Magaziue.
 GREECE.
 Concluded
 The climate, lovely as it is, and genial to the perfect growth of mind and body, will not account for this pre-eminencc The face 1 ofthe territory, though diversified with all the brilliant variety of the most picturesque land, intersected and enlyened by sea the love- est in calm or storm on the globe, will not ac- count for this. The climate of Italy was scarcely less genial. the land less diversified, the sea less magnificent or less animating Yet the whole surviving literature of tke twelve hundred years of Rome is not equal to third of the literature of Greece during the little more than a century aid a half | from the battle of Marathon, in the year 49O before the Christian era, to the reign of Alex ander.
 But no due estimate can be formed of the vigor and industry, the almost preternatral energy of the Greek mind without recollect- ing under how slight stimulant it threw out its powers. It is true, that in the free repub-
 lies of Greece, some kinds of ability were the very wings of ambition; the soldier, the statesman, and the orator, had the noblest vision of public life glittering and expanding before them. But without the art of printing, without the general taste for reading, which has sprung up from that art, that second gift ot lHmg soul, and q speech comprehensive as the world, writing wanted vast portion of its later settlements; yet what literature of modern nations can compete with dead Greece in the multitude of her works of genius Yet have we the tenth part of these that deserved to he immortal or what have we but the. remnant snatched from the plunder of her cities, the ruin of her libraries, the utter dis persion and waste of hel fortunes Glorious and unrivalled relics of mind, more worthy of homage than all the saints of Rome, vet still but relics, sacred fragments, the scattered jewels of a magnifcence that all the wealth of later days must despair to outshine What | comparison can the literature of France, from ] the time of Francis the First, to the present | hour, from the commencement of the six teenth century to the nineteenth with all its royal patronage, with its command of pane gyric from all Europe, with it's opulent encour- agements to ability, sustain against the solita- ry literature of a land scarcely larger than one of it's provinces! What comparison can Germany, with her crowd of universities, her Ilndefatigable love of literary labor, her native vlgor of intellect, her host of authors covering | the land! What comparison can even Eng land, the land nearest to Greece in spirit and genius, with her rbomdless empire, her unspa- ring patronage, her unlimited freedom of dis cussion, her untameable mind Here the ri- valry may be tried on the largest scale; yet for our oratOry, as for all the noble public arts, for our architecture, for our sculpture for all our models of grace, beauty, grandeur, to what other shrine do We knecl than to that broken monument of glory and misfor- | tune !
 With this evidence of the original distinc- ton ofthe Greek mind, it becomes important to know how far the lineage has been preser- ved. It is the conclusion of the most compe- | tent travellers, that the true Greek blood has been preserved to an extraordinary degree.- The unanswerable argumentis.the permanen- cy of the language. Ofgreat changes ofpop- uation the first characteristic is tic change of language. In all the other European cOun- tries, the ancient language has been superse- ded or mingled with the foreign idiOm, until 1t has become new dialect distinct from both. In Greece we can trace the direct in- fux of strangers and settlers, by the same ev- idence, change oflanguage in their district.-- The WAllachian colony that has settled on Mount Pindus, and on the Thessalian and Ma cedonian border, is WaIlachian still, and speaks the LatiniZed dialect that is brought from Dacia. The Albanian settled in Be- tia, Attica, and Argols, has not forgotten his native dialect in two hundred years, and may retain it for ages to come. In Asia Minor, where the Turks are more numerous, the Greeks, original and settlers, have adopted a language, nearly unintelligible to the Pen insnla. Where the Thessalians have min- gled with the Albanian colonists, their Ian gtIage IS mixture of the Creek and Albani- an. The Greek of Attica bears the traces of its Italian dukes. Wherever it can be shown that the stranger had settled, there has he left his stamp upon the language; the obvious in- ference must be, that where he has not left that stamp, the ancient race still surviye.--- There is no other country of Europe in which the native is so slightly changed or so exten- siveIy spoken. The Romaic is the tongue of the whole territory that was included in Hell las, the land from the Tanarian PromontOry to Upper Macedonia, with the islands and coasts of the Egean. The distinctions be- tween the Romaic and the ancient Greek are