Yet if, as holiest men have deemed, there be To hear each voice we feared to hear no more! The Bactrian, Samian sage, and all who taught the right! Lord Byron's indignation was excited (and we must say, as it appears to us, rather needlessly) at the proceedings of Lord Elgin, who preserved the remains of the works of art in Athens from the destruction to which they were doomed, and sent them to England. Some angry verses and some bitter notes are devoted to this subject, which we shall be obliged to recur to in mentioning another poem-(Minerva's Curse.') Lord Byron speaks of Albania with great delight, and seems to have been more pleased with this part of Greece, and its people, than with any other. He thus apostrophizes it: Land of Albania! where Iskander rose, Theme of the young, and beacon of the wise, Through many a cypress grove within each city's ken. A very long note is subjoined, which is highly characteristic of the author; and its interest will be heightened when the reader learns that it conveys a very true notion of the spirit and tone of Lord Byron's conversation. He was in the habit of speaking exactly in the manner in which this note is written : • Albania comprises part of Macedonia, Illyria, Chaonia, and Epirus. Iskander is the Turkish word for Alexander; and the celebrated Scanderbeg (Lord Alexander) is alluded to in the third and fourth lines of the thirty-eighth stanza. I do not know whether I am correct in making Scanderbeg the countryman of Alexander, who was born at Pella in Macedon; but Mr. Gibbon terms him so, and adds Pyrrhus to the list in speaking of his exploits. 'Of Albania Gibbon remarks, that a country "within sight of Italy is less known than the interior of America." Circumstances, of little consequence to mention, led Mr. Hobhouse and myself into that country before we visited any other part of the Ottoman dominions; and with the exception of Major Leake, then officially resident at Joannina, no other Englishmen have ever advanced beyond the capital into the interior, as that gentleman very lately assured me. Ali Pacha was at that time (October, 1809) carrying on war against Ibrahim Pacha, whom he had driven to Berat, a strong fortress which he was then besieging on our arrival at Joannina we were invited to Tepaleni, his highness's birth-place, and favorite Serai, only one day's distance from Berat: at this juncture the Vizier had made it his head-quarters. 'After some stay in the capital we accordingly followed; but though furnished with every accommodation, and escorted by one of the Vizier's secretaries, we were nine days (on account of the rains) in accomplishing a journey, which, on our return, barely occupied four. 'On our route we passed two cities, Argyrocastro and Libochabo, apparently little inferior to Yanina in size; and no pencil or pen cau ever do justice to the scenery in the vicinity of Zitza and Delvinachi, the frontier villages of Epirus and Albania Proper. 'On Albania and its inhabitants I am unwilling to descant, because this will be done so much better by my fellow-traveller, in a work which may probably precede this in publication, that I as little wish to follow as I would to anticipate him. But some few observations are necessary to the text. 'The Arnaouts, or Albanese, struck me forcibly by their resemblance to the Highlanders of Scotland in dress, figure, and manner of living. Their very mountains seemed Caledonian with a kinder climate. The kilt, though white; the spare, active form; their dialect, Celtic in its sound; and their hardy habits; all carried me back to Morven. No nation are so detested and dreaded by their neighbours as the Albanese : the Greeks hardly regard them as Christians, or the Turks as Moslems; and in fact they are a mixture of both, and sometimes neither. Their habits are predatory: all are armed; and the red-shawled Arnaouts, the Montenegrins, Chimariots, and Gegdes, are treacherous: the others differ somewhat in garb, and essentially in character. As far as my own experience goes, I can speak favorably. I was attended by two, an Infidel and a Mussulman, to Constantinople, and every other part of Turkey which came within my observation; and more faithful in peril, or indefatigable in service, are rarely to be found. The Infidel was named Basilius; the Moslem, Dervish Tahiri: the former a man of middle age, and the latter about my own. Basili was strictly charged by Ali Pacha in person to attend us; and Dervish was one of fifty who accompanied us through the forests of Acarnania to the banks of Achelous, and onward to Messalunghi in Etolia. There I took him into my own service, and never had occasion to repent it till the moment of my departure. When, in 1810, after the departure of my friend Mr. H. for England, I was seized with a severe fever in the Morea, these men saved my life by frightening away my physician, whose throat they threatened to cut if I was not cured within a given time. To this consolatory assurance of posthumous retribution, and a resolute refusal of Dr. Romanelli's prescriptions, I attributed my recovery. I had left my last remaining English servant at Athens; my dragoman was as ill as myself, and my poor Arnaouts nursed me with an attention which would have done honour to civilization. "They had a variety of adventures; for the Moslem, Dervish, being a remarkably handsome man, was always squabbling with the husbands of Athens; insomuch that four of the principal Turks paid me a visit of remonstrance at the convent, on the subject of his having taken a woman from the bath-whom he had lawfully bought, however—a thing quite contrary to etiquette. 'Basili also was extremely gallant amongst his own persuasion, and had the greatest veneration for the church, mixed with the highest coutempt of churchmen, whom he cuffed upon occasion in a most heterodox manner. Yet he never passed a church without crossing himself; and I remember the risk he ran in entering St. Sophia, in Stambol, because it had once been a place of his worship. On remonstrating with him on his inconsistent proceedings, he invariably answered “Our church is holy, our priests are thieves ;" and then he crossed himself as usual, and boxed the ears of the first " papas" who refused to assist in any required operation, as was always found to be necessary where a priest had any influence with the Cogia Bashi of his village. Indeed a more abandoned race of miscreants cannot exist than the lower orders of the Greek clergy. When preparations were made for my return, my Albanians were summoned to receive their pay. Basili took his with an awkward show of regret at my intended departure, and marched away to his quarters with his bag of piastres. I sent for Dervish, but for some time he was not to be found at last he entered, just as Signor Logotheti, father to the ci-devant Auglo-consul of Athens, and some other of my Greek acquaintances, paid me a visit. Dervish took the money, but on a sudden dashed it to the ground; and clasping his hands, which he raised to his forehead, rushed out of the room weeping bitterly. From that moment to the hour of my embarkation he continued bis lamentations, and all our efforts to console him only produced this answer, "M'aQEIVEL," "He leaves me." Signor Logotheti, who never wept before for any thing less than the loss of a para,* melted; the padre of the convent, my attendants, my visitors-and I verily believe that even "Sterne's foolish fat scullion," would have left her "fishkettle," to sympathize with the unaffected and unexpected sorrow of this barbarian. For my own part, when I remembered that, a short time before my departure from England, a noble and most intimate associate had excused himself from taking leave of me because he had to attend a relation" to a milliner's," I felt no less surprised than humiliated by the present occurrence and the past recollection. "That Dervish would leave me with some regret was to be expected: when master and man have been scrambling over the mountains of a dozen provinces together, they are unwilling to separate; but his present feelings, contrasted with his native ferocity, improved my opinion of the human heart. I believe this almost feudal fidelity is frequent amongst them. One day, on our journey over Parnassus, an Englishman in my service gave him a push in some dispute about the baggage, which he unluckily mistook for a blow: he spoke not, but sat down, leaning his head upon his hands. Foreseeing the consequences, we endeavored to explain away the affront, which produced the following answer:-"I have been a robber, 1 am a soldier; no captain ever struck me: you are my master, I have eaten your bread; but by that bread! (an usual oath,) had it been otherwise, I would have stabbed the dog your servant, and gone to the mountains." So the affair ended, but from that day forward he never thoroughly forgave the thoughtless fellow who insulted him. 'Dervish excelled in the dance of his country, conjectured to be a remnant of the ancient Pyrrhic: be that as it may, it is manly, and requires wonderful agility. It is very distinct from the stupid Ro maika, the dull roundabout of the Greeks, of which our Athenian party had so many specimens last winter. 'The Albanians in general (I do not mean the cultivators of the earth in the provinces, who have also that appellation, but the mountaineers) have a fiue cast of countenance; and the most beautiful women I ever beheld, in stature and in features, we saw levelling the road broken down by the torrents between Delvinachi and Libochabo. Their manner of walking is truly theatrical; but this strut is probably the effect of the capote, or cloak, depending from one shoulder. Their long hair reminds you of the Spartans, and their courage in desultory warfare is unquestionable. Though they have some cavalry amongst the Gegdes, I never saw a good Arnaout horseman: my own preferred the English saddles, which, however, they could never keep. But on foot they are not to be subdued by fatigue.' In the course of his journey Lord Byron paid a visit to Ali Pacha, by whom he was treated with a kindness and hospitality beyond that which the Old Wolf was in the habit of bestowing upon Europeans, and particularly upon European travellers. The description of his approach to Tepalen, where Ali held his court at that period, is very picturesque ; He passed bleak Pindus, Acherusia's lake, And left the primal city of the land, And onwards did his further journey take To greet Albania's chief, whose dread command He sways a nation turbulent and bold: Yet here and there some daring mountain-baud Thou small, but favored, spot of holy ground! What rainbow tints, what magic charms, are found! * Five thousand Suliotes, among the rocks and in the castle of Suli, withstood 30,000 Albanians for eighteen years: the castle at last was taken by bribery. In this contest there were several acts performed not unworthy of the better days of Greece. + The convent and village of Zitza are four hours' journey from Joannina, or Yanina, the capital of the Pachalic. In the valley the river Kalamas (once the Acheron) flows, and not far from Zitza forms a fine cataract. The situation is perhaps the finest in Greece, though the approach to Delvinachi and parts of Acar |