Chapter X: Introduction (10)

A sad association belongs to my sojourn among the Maronites at Zachly; a large village on the further side of Lebanon, on the slopes of the Haraun. I slept there on my outward way in my tent pitched in an angle of grass outside one of the first houses, and on my return journey I obtained the use of the principal room of the same house from my kind hosts, as the cold outside was too considerable for tent life in comfort. Zachly was a very humble, simple place. The houses were all of mud, with flat roofs made of branches laid across and covered with more mud. A stem of a living tree usually stood in the middle of the house supporting the whole erection, which was divided into two or three chambers. A recess in the wall held piles of mats, and of the hard cushions made of raw cotton, which form both seats, beds, and pillows. The rough, unplaned door, with wooden lock, the window half stuffed up, the abundant population of cocks and hens, cats and dogs and rosy little boys and girls, strongly reminded me of Balisk! I was welcomed most kindly after a brief negotiation with Hassan; and the simple women and girls clustered round me with soft words and presents of carrots and daffodils. One old woman having kissed my hands as a beginning, proceeded to put her arms round my neck and embrace me in a most motherly way. To amuse the party, I showed them my travelling bag, luncheon and writing and drawing apparatus, and made them taste my biscuits and smell my toilet vinegar. Screams of “Taib, Taib! Katiyeh!” (good, very good) rewarded my small efforts, and then I made them tell me all their names, which I wrote in my note-book. They were very pretty: Helena, Mareen, Yasmeen, Myrrhi, Maroon, Georgi, Malachee, Yussef, and several others, the last being Salieh, the young village priest, a tall, grand-looking young man with high cylindrical black hat, black robe and flowing brown hair. I made him a respectful salutation at which he seemed pleased. On my second visit to Zachly I attended the vesper service in his little chapel as the sun went down over Lebanon. It was a plain quadrangle of mud walls, brown without and whitewashed within; a flat roof of branches and mortar; a post for support in the centre; a confessional at one side; a little lectern; an altar without crucifix and only decorated by two candlesticks; a jar of fresh daffodils; some poor prints; a blue tea-cup for sacramental plate, and a little cottage-window into which the setting sun was shining softly;—such was the chapel of Zachly. A few men knelt to the left, a few women to the right; in front of the altar was a group of children, also kneeling, and waiting to take their part in the service. At the lectern stood the noble figure of young Papas Salieh, leaning on one of the crutches which in all Eastern churches are provided to relieve the fatigue of the attendants, who, like Abraham, “worship, leaning on the top of a staff.” Beside the Papas stood a ragged but intelligent little acolyte, who chanted very well, and on the other side of the lectern an aged peasant, who also took his part. The prayers were, of course, unintelligible to me, being in Arabic; but I recognised in the Gospel the chapter of genealogies in Luke, over whose hard names the priest helped his friend quite unaffectedly. The reading over, Papas Salieh took off his black and red cap, and, kneeling before the altar, commenced another chanted prayer, while the women beside me bowed till they kissed the ground in Eastern prostration, beating their breasts with resounding blows. The group of children made the responses at intervals; and then the priest blessed us, and the simple service was over, having occupied about twenty minutes. While we were departing, the Papas seated himself in the confessional and a man went immediately into the penitents’ place beside him. There was something very affecting to me in this poor little church of clay, with its humble efforts at cleanliness and flowers and music; all built and adorned by the worshippers’ own hands, and served by the young peasant priest, doubtless the son and brother of some of his own flock.

As I have said there are sad associations connected with this visit of mine to Zachly. A very short time afterwards the Druses came down with irresistible force,—massacred the greater number of the unhappy Maronites and burned the village. The spot where I had been so kindly received was left a heap of blackened ruins, and what became of sweet, motherly Helena and her dear little children and good Papas Salieh and the rest, I have never been able to learn.

It took six hours of hard riding in a bitter wind to carry me from Zachly to Baalbec; but anticipation bore me on wings, and to beguile the way I repeated to myself as my good memory permitted, the whole of Moore’s poem of _Paradise and the Peri_, culminating in the scene which the Peri beheld “When o’er the vale of Baalbec winging.” In vain, however, I cross-questioned Hassan (we talked Italian _tant bien que mal_) about Peris. He had never heard of such beings. But of Djinns in general he knew only too much; and notably that they had built the vast ruins of Baalbec, which no mortal hands _could_ have raised; and that to the present time they haunt them so constantly and in such terrific shape, that it is very perilous for anybody to go there alone and quite impossible to do so after nightfall. I had reason to bless this belief in the Djinns of Baalbec for it left me the undisturbed solitary enjoyment of the mighty enclosure within the Saracenic walls for the best part of two days, unvexed by the inquisitive presence or observation of the population of the Arab village outside.

To pitch my tent among the ruins, however, was more than I could bring Hassan to do by any cajoling, and I consented finally to sleep in a small cabin consisting of a single chamber of which I could lock the door inside. When I prepared for sleep on the hard cotton cushions laid over a stone bench, and with the two unglazed windows admitting volumes of cold air, I was frightened to find I had every symptom of approaching fever. Into what an awful position,—I reflected,—had I put myself, with no one but that old Turk Hassan, and the Arab from whom I had hired this little house for the night, to take care of me should I have a real bad fever, and be kept there between life and death for weeks! Reflecting what I could possibly do to avert the danger, brought on, of course, by cold and fatigue, I took from my bag the half-bottle of Raki (a very pure spirit made from rice) which my travelling friends had brought from the monastery at Mar Saba and had kindly shared with me; and to a large dose of this I was able to add some hot water from a sort of coffee-pot left, by good luck, in the yet warm brazier of charcoal in the middle of my room. I drank my Raki-toddy to the last drop, and then slept the sleep of the just,—to awaken quite well the next morning! And if any of my teetotal friends think I did wrong to take it, I beg entirely to differ from them on the subject.

The days which I spent in and around Baalbec were more than repayment for the fatigues and perils of the passage of “Sainted Lebanon;” whose famous Cedars, by the way, I was unable to visit; the region where they stand being at that season too deeply covered with snow. Here is a description I gave of Baalbec to Harriet St. Leger just after my visit:—

“I had two wonderful days indeed in Baalbec. The number of the vast
solitary ruins exceeded all my anticipations, and their grandeur
impresses one as no remains less completely isolated can do. Imagine a
space about that of Newbridge garden surrounded by enormous Saracenic
walls with a sweet, bright brook running round it, and then left to
entire solitude. A few cattle browse on the short grass, and now and
then, I suppose, some one enters by one or other of the different gaps
in the wall to look after them; but in the Temple of Jupiter, shut in
by its great walls, to which the displacement of a single stone makes
now the sole entrance, no one ever enters. The fear of Djinns renders
the place even doubly alarming! Among the most awful things in Baalbec
are stupendous subterranean tunnels running in various directions
under the ruined city. I groped through several of them, they opened
out with great doorways into others which, having no light, I would
not explore, but which seemed abysses of awe! The stones of all these
works are enormous. Those 5 or 6 feet and 12 or 15 feet long are among
the smallest. In the temple were some which I could not span with five
extensions of my arms, _i.e._, something like 30 feet, but there are
still larger elsewhere among the ruins.”

The shafts of the columns of the two Temples,—the six left standing of the great Temple of the Sun which

“Stand sublime
Casting their shadows from on high
Like Dials which the wizard Time
Had raised to count his ages by”—

and those of the hypæthral temple of Zeus of which only a few have fallen, are alike miracles of size and perfection of moulding. The fragments of palaces reveal magnificence unparalleled. All these enormous edifices are wrought with such lavish luxuriance of imagination, such perfection of detail in harmony with the luscious Corinthian style which pervades the whole, that the idea of the Arabs that they are the work not of men but of Genii, seemed quite natural. I recalled what Vitruvius (who wrote about the time in which the best of these temples was erected), says of the methods by which, in his day, the largest stones were moved from quarries and lifted to their places, but I failed to comprehend how the colossal work was achieved here.

Passing out of the great ruined gateway I came to vast square and hexagonal courts with walls forming exedræ, loaded with profusion of ornaments; columns, entablatures, niches and seats overhung with carvings of garlands of flowers and the wings of fanciful creatures. Streets, gateways and palaces, hardly distinguishable in their ruin, follow on beyond the courts and portico. I climbed up a shattered stair to the summit of the Saracenic wall and felt a sort of shock to behold the living world below me; the glittering brook, the almond trees in blossom and Anti-Lebanon beyond. Here I caught sight of the well-known exquisite little circular temple with its colonnade of six Corinthian columns, of which the architraves are recurved inwards from column to column. If I am not mistaken a reproduction of this lovely little building was set up in Kew Gardens in the last century.

Last of all I returned to the Temple of Zeus—or of Baal as it is sometimes called—to spend there in secure solitude (except for Djinns!) the closing hours of that long, rich day. The large walls are almost perfect; the colonnades of enormous pillars are mostly still standing. From the inner portal with its magnificent lintel half fallen from its place, the view is probably the finest of any fane of the ancient world, and was to me impressive beyond description. Even the spot where the statue of the god has stood can easily be traced. A great stone lying overturned on the pavement was doubtless the pedestal. I remained for hours in this temple; sometimes feebly trying to sketch what I saw, sometimes lost in ponderings on the faiths and worships of the past and present. A hawk, which probably had never before found a human visitor at eventide in that weird place, came swooping over me; then gave a wild shriek and flew away. A little later the moon rose over the walls. The calm and silence and beauty of that scene can never be forgotten.

I was unable to pursue my journey to Damascus as I had designed. The muleteer, with all my baggage, contrived to miss us on the road among the hills in Anti-Lebanon; and, eventually, after another visit to the ruins and to the quarries from whence the vast stones were taken, I rode back to Zachly and thence (a two days’ ride) over Lebanon to Beyrout.

I remained a few days at the hotel which then existed a mile from the town, while I waited for the steamer to take me to Athens, and much enjoyed the lovely scene of rich mulberry and almond gardens beside the shell-strewn strand, with snowy Lebanon behind, towering over the fir-woods into the deep blue sky. The Syrian peasant women are sweet, courteous creatures. One day as I sat under a cactus-hedge reading Shelley, a pretty young mother came by, and after interchanging a “Peace be with you,” proceeded unhesitatingly, and without a word of explanation, to deposit her baby,—Mustapha by name,—in my lap. I was very willing to nurse Mustapha, and we made friends at once as easily as his mother had done; and my heart was the better for the encounter!

After I had paid off Hassan and settled my account at the hotel, I found my financial condition exceedingly bad! I had just enough cash remaining to carry me (omitting a few meals) by second-class passage to Athens: which was the nearest place where I had opened a credit from my bankers, or where I had any introductions. There was nothing for it but to take a second-class place on board the Austrian Lloyd’s steamer _L’Impératrice_; though it was not a pleasant arrangement, seeing that there was no other woman passenger and no stewardess on the ship at all. Nevertheless this was just one of the cases in which knocking about the world brought me favourable experience of human nature. The Captain of the _Impératrice_, an Italian gentleman, did his utmost, with extreme delicacy and good taste, to make my position comfortable. He ordered his own dinner to be served in the second cabin that he might preside at the table instead of one of his subordinates; and during the day he came often to see that I was well placed and shaded on deck, and to interchange a little pleasant talk, without intrusion.

It is truly one of the silliest of the many silly things in the education of women that we are taught little or nothing about the simplest matters of banking and stock-and-share buying and selling. I, who had always had money in abundance given me _straight into my hand_, knew absolutely nothing, when my father’s death left me to arrange my affairs, how such business is done, how shares are bought and sold, how credits are open at corresponding bankers; how, even, _to draw a cheque_! It all seemed to me a most perilous matter, and I feared that I might, in those remote regions, come to grief any day by the refusal of some local banker to honour my cheques or by the neglect of my London bankers to bespeak credit for me. My means were so narrow, and I had so little experience of the expenses of living and travelling, that I was greatly exercised as to my small concerns. I brought with me (generally tied by a string round my neck and concealed) a very valuable diamond ring to sell in case I came to real disaster; but it had been constantly worn by my mother; and I felt at Beyrout that, sooner than sell it, I would live on short commons for much more than a week!

One day of our voyage I spent at Cyprus where I admired the ancient church of San Lazzaro, half mosque, half church, and said to be the final grave of Lazarus. I had visited his, supposed, _temporary_ one in Bethany. Another day I landed at Rhodes and was able to see the ruined street which bears over each house the arms of the Knight to whom it belonged. At the upper end of the way are still visible the arch and shattered relics of their church. Writing to Miss St. Leger March 28th, I described my environment thus:

“Dearest Harriet,

“Behold me seated _à la Turque_ close to a party of Moslem gentlemen
who alternately smoke and say their prayers all day long. We are
steaming up through the lovely “Isles of Greece,” having left Rhodes
this morning and Cos an hour ago. As we pass each wild cape and green
shore I take up a certain opera glass with ‘H. S.’ on the top of the
box, and wish very much I could see through it the dear, kind eyes
that used it once. They would be pleasanter to see than all these
scenes, glorious as they are. The sun is going down into the calm blue
sea and throwing purple lights already on the countless islands
through which the vessel winds its way. White sea-gulls follow us and
beautiful little quaint-sailed boats appear every now and then round
the islands. The peculiar beauty of this famous passage is derived,
however, from the bold and varied outline of the islands and adjoining
coast of Asia Minor. From little rocks not larger than the ship
itself, up to large provinces with extensive towns like Cos, there is
an endless variety and boldness of form. Ireland’s Eye magnified to
twice the height, is, I should say, the commonest type. In some almost
inaccessible cliffs one sees hermitages; in others convents. I shall
post this at Smyrna.”

As the _Impératrice_ stopped two or three days in the magnificent harbour of Smyrna, I had good opportunity to land and make my way to the scene of Polycarp’s Martyrdom amid the colossal cypresses which outdo all those of Italy except the quincentenarians in the Giusti garden in Verona. It was Easter, and a ridiculous incident occurred on the Saturday. I was busy writing in the cabin of the _Impératrice_ at mid-day, when, _subito!_ there were explosions in our vessel and in a hundred other vessels in the harbour, again and again and again, as if a battle of Trafalgar were going on all round! I rushed on deck and found the steward standing calm and cheerful amid the terrific noise and smoke, “For God’s sake what has happened?” I cried breathless. “Nothing, Signora, nothing! It is the Royal Salute all the ships are firing, of 21 guns.”

“In honour of whom?” I asked, somewhat less alarmed.

“Iddio, Signora! Gesù Cristo, sicuro! È il momento della Resurrezione, si sà.”

“O, no!” I said, “Not on Saturday. It was on Sunday, you know!”

“Che, che! Dicono forse cosi i Protestanti! Sappiamo noi altri, che era il Sabato.”

I never got to the bottom of this mystery, but can testify that at Smyrna in 1858 there were many scores of these Royal Salutes (!) on Holy Saturday at noon in honour of the Resurrection.

It was one of the brightest hours of my happy life, that on which I stood on the deck of our ship at sunrise and passed under “Sunium’s marble steep” and knew that I was approaching Athens. As we steamed up the gulf, the red clouds flamed over Parnes and Hymettus and lighted up the hills of Peloponnesus. The bright blue waves were dancing under our prow, and I could see over them far away the “rocky brow which looks o’er sea-born Salamis,” where Xerxes sat on his silver-footed throne on such a morn as this. Above, to our right, over the olive woods with the rising sun behind it, like a crowned hill was the Acropolis of Athens and the Parthenon upon it.

Very soon I had landed at the Piræus and had engaged a carriage (there was no railway then) to take me to Athens. The drive was enchanting, between olive groves and vineyards, and with the Temple of Theseus and the buildings on the Acropolis coming into view as I approached Athens, till I was beside myself with delight and excitement. The first thing to do was to drive to the private house of the banker to whom I was recommended, to arouse the poor old gentleman (nothing loath apparently to do business even at seven o’clock) to draw fifty sovereigns, and then to go to the French Hotel, choose a room with a fine view of the Parthenon, and to say to the master: “Send me the very best _déjeuner_ you can provide and a bottle of Samian wine, and let this letter be taken to Mr. Finlay.” That breakfast, with that view, was a feast of the gods after my many abstinencies, though I nearly “dashed down the cup of Samian wine,” not in patriotic despair for Greece, but because it was so abominably bad that no poetry could have been made out of it by Anacreon himself. Hardly had I finished my meal, when Mr. Finlay appeared at my door, having hurried with infinite kindness to welcome me, and do honour to the introduction of his cousin, my dear sister-in-law. “I put myself,” said he, “at your orders for the day. We will go wherever you please.”

It would be unfair to inflict on the reader a detailed account of all I saw at Athens under the admirable guidance of Mr. Finlay during a week of intensest enjoyment. Mr. Finlay (it can scarcely yet be forgotten) went out to Greece a few weeks or months before Byron and fought with him and after him, through the War of Independence. After this, having married a beautiful Armenian lady, he bought much land in Eubœa, built himself a handsome house in Athens and lived there for the rest of his life, writing his great History (in five volumes) of _Greece under Foreign Domination_; making a magnificent collection of coins; and acting for many years as the _Times_ correspondent at Athens. He was not only a highly erudite archæologist, but an enthusiast for the land of his adoption and all its triumphs of art; in short, the best of all possible ciceroni. I was fortunately not wholly unprepared to profit by his learned expositions and delicate observation on the architecture of the glorious ruins, for I had made copies of prints of all at Athens and elsewhere in Greece with ground-plans and restorations and notes of everything I could learn about them, many years before when I was wont to amuse myself with drawing, while my mother read to me. I found that I knew beforehand nearly exactly what remained of the Parthenon and the Erechtheum and the Temple of Victory, the Propylæum on the Acropolis and the Theseium below; and it was of intensest interest to me to learn, under Mr. Finlay’s guidance, precisely where the Elgin Marbles had stood, and to note the extraordinary fact, on which he insisted much,—that there is not a single straight line in the whole Parthenon. _Everything_, down to single stones in the entablatures and friezes, is curved, in some cases, he felt assured, _after_ they had been placed _in situ_. The extreme entasis of the columns and the great pyramidal inclination of the whole building, were most noticeable when attention was once drawn to them. As we approached the majestic ruins of Adrian’s Temple of Jupiter on the plains below, (that enormous temple which had double rows of columns surrounding it and quadruple rows in front and back, of ten columns each) I exclaimed “Why! there ought to be _three_ columns standing at that far angle!” “Quite true,” said Mr. Finlay, “one of them fell just six weeks ago.”

Since this visit of mine to Athens a vast deal has been done to clear away the remains of the Turkish tower and other barbaric buildings which obstructed and desecrated the summit of the Acropolis; and the fortunate visitor may now see the whole Propylæum and all the spaces open and free, beside examining the very numerous statues and bas reliefs some quaintly archaic, some of the best age and splendidly beautiful, which have been dug out in recent years in Greece.

I envy every visitor to Athens now, but console myself by procuring photographs of all the _finds_ from those excellent artists, Thomaïdes, Brothers.

Mr. Finlay spoke much of Byron in answer to my questions, and described him as a most singular combination of romance and astuteness. The Greeks imagined that a man capable of such enthusiasm as to go to war for their enfranchisement must have a rather soft head as well as warm heart; but they were much mistaken when they tried in their simplicity to _exploiter_ him in matters of finance. There were self-devoted and disinterested patriots, but there were also (as was inevitable), among the insurgents many others who had a sharp eye to their own financial and political schemes Byron saw through these men (Mr. Finlay said), with astounding quickness, and never allowed them to guide or get the better of him in any negotiation. About money matters he considered he was inclined to be “close-fisted.” This was an opinion strongly confirmed to me some months later by Walter Savage Landor, who repeatedly remarked that Byron’s behaviour in several occurrences, while in Italy, was far from liberal and that, luxuriously as he chose to live, he was by no means ready to pay freely for his luxury. Shelley on the contrary, though he lived most simply and was always hard pressed for money by William Godwin (who Fanny Kemble delightfully described to me _àpropos_ of Dowden’s _Memoirs_, as “one of those greatly gifted _and greatly borrowing_ people!”), was punctilious to the last degree in paying his debts and even those of his friends. There was a story of a boat purchased by both Byron and Shelley which I cannot trust my memory to recall accurately as Mr. Landor told it to me, and which I do not exactly recognise in the _Memoirs_, but which certainly amounted to this,—that Byron left Shelley to pay for their joint purchase, and that Shelley did so, though at the time he was in extreme straits for money. All the impressions, I may here remark, which I gathered at that time in Greece and Italy (1858), where there were yet a few alive who personally knew both these great poets, was in favour of Shelley and against Byron. Talking over them many years afterwards with Mazzini I was startled by the vehemence with which he pronounced his preference for Byron, as the one who had tried to put his sympathy with a struggling nation into practice, and had died in the noble attempt. This was natural enough on the part of the Italian patriot; but I think the vanity and tendency to “pose,” which formed so large a part of Byron’s character had probably more to do with this last _acted_ Canto of _Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage_, than Mazzini, (who had no such foibles) was likely to understand. The following curious glimpse of Byron at Venice before he went to Greece, occurs in an autograph letter in my possession, by Mrs. Hemans to the late Miss Margaret Lloyd. It seems worth quoting here.

“Bronwylfa, 8th April, 1819.

“Your affection of Lord Byron will not be much increased by the
description I am going to transcribe for you of his appearance and
manners abroad. My sister, who is now at Venice, has sent me the
following sketch of the _Giaour_:—‘We were presented at the
Governor’s, after which we went to a conversazione at Madlle.
Benzoni’s, where we saw Lord Byron; and now my curiosity is gratified,
I have no wish ever to see him again. A more wretched,
depraved-looking countenance it is impossible to imagine! His hair
streaming almost down to his shoulders and his whole appearance
slovenly and even dirty. Still there is a something which impels you
to look at his face, although it inspires you with aversion, a
something entirely different from any expression on any countenance I
ever beheld before. His character, I hear, is worse than ever;
dreadful it must be, since everyone says he is the most dissipated
person in Italy, exceeding even the Italians themselves.’”

Shortly before my visit to Athens an article, or book, by Mr. Trelawney had been published in England, in which that writer asserted that Byron’s lame leg was a most portentous deformity, like the fleshless leg of a Satyr. I mentioned this to Mr. Finlay, who laughed, and said: “That reminds me of what Byron said of Trelawney; ‘If we could but make Trelawney wash his hands and speak the truth, we might make a gentleman of him!’ Of course,” continued Mr. Finlay, “I saw Byron’s legs scores of times, for we bathed together daily whenever we were near the sea or a river, and there was nothing wrong with the _leg_, only an ordinary and not very bad, club-_foot_.”

Among the interesting facts which Mr. Finlay gave me as the results of his historical researches in Greece was that a school of philosophy continued to be held in the Groves of the Academè (through which we were walking at the moment), for 900 years from the time of Plato. A fine collection of gold and silver coins which he had made, afforded, under his guidance, a sort of running commentary on the history of the Byzantine Empire. There were series of three and four reigns during which the coins became visibly worse and worse, till at last there was no silver in them at all, only base metal of some sort; and then, things having come to the worst, there was a revolution, a new dynasty, and a brand new and pure coinage.

The kindness of this very able man and of his charming wife was not limited to playing cicerone to me. Nothing could exceed their hospitality. The first day I dined at their house a party of agreeable and particularly fashionably dressed Greek ladies and gentlemen were assembled. As we waited for dinner the door opened and a magnificent figure appeared, whom I naturally took for, at least, an Albanian Chief, and prepared myself for an interesting presentation. He wore a short green velvet jacket covered with gold embroidery, a crimson sash, an enormous white muslin _kilt_ (I afterwards learned it contained 60 yards of muslin, and that the washing thereof is a function of the highest responsibility), and leggings of green and gold to match the jacket. One moment this splendid vision stood six feet high in the doorway; the next he bowed profoundly and pronounced the consecrated formula:—

“_Madame est servie!_”

and we went to dinner, where he waited admirably.

Some year or two later, after I had published some records of my travels, and sent them to Mr. Finlay, I received from him the following letter:—

“Athens, 26th May.

“My dear Miss Cobbe,

“Baron von Schmidthals sent me your letter of the 18th April with the
_Cities of the Past_ yesterday; his baggage having been detained at
Syria. This post brought me _Fraser_ with a ‘_Day at Athens_’ with due
regularity, and now accept my sincere thanks for both. I am ashamed of
my neglect in not thanking you sooner for _Fraser_, but I did not know
your address. I felt grateful for it, having been very, very often
tired of ‘Days at Athens!’ It was a treat to meet so pleasant a ‘day,’
and have another pleasant day recalled. Others to whom I lent
_Fraser_, told me the ‘Day,’ was delightful. I had heard of your
misfortune but I hoped you had entirely recovered, and I regret to
hear that you use crutches still. I, too, am weak and can walk little,
but my complaint is old age. The _Saturday Review_ has told me that
you have poured some valuable thoughts into the river that flows
through ages.

‘Rè degli altri; superbo, altero fiume!’

Solomon tried to couch its cataracts in vain. If you lived at Athens
you would hardly believe that man can grow wiser by being made to
think. It only makes him more wicked here in Greece. But the river of
thought must be intended to fertilize the future.

“I wish I could send you some news that would interest or amuse you,
but you may recollect that I live like a hermit and come into contact
with society chiefly in the matter of politics which I cannot expect
to render interesting to you and which is anything but an amusing
subject to me; I being one of the Greek landlords on whose head Kings
and National Assemblies practise the art of shaving. Our revolution
has done some good by clearing away old abuses, but the positive gain
has been small. England sent us a boy-king, and Denmark with him a
Count Sponneck, whom the Greeks, not inaccurately, call his ‘_alter_
NEMO.’ Still, though we are all very much dissatisfied, I fancy
sometimes that fate has served Greece better than England, Denmark, or
the National Assembly. The evils of this country were augmented by the
devotion of the people to power and pelf, but devotion to nullity or
its _alter ego_ is a weak sentiment, and an empty treasury turns the
devotion to pelf into useful channels.

“I was rather amused yesterday by learning that loyalty to King George
has extended the commercial relations of the Greeks with the Turks.
Greece has imported some boatloads of myrtle branches to make
triumphal arches at Syra where the King was expected yesterday. Queen
Amalia disciplined King Otho’s subjects to welcome him in this way.
The idea of Greeks being ‘green’ in anything, though it was only
loyalty, amused her in those days. I suppose she knows now that they
were not so ‘green’ as their myrtles made them look! It is odd,
however, to find that their outrageous loyalty succeeded in
exterminating myrtle plants in the islands of the Ægean, and that they
must now import their emblems of loyalty from the Sultan’s dominions.
If a new Venus rise out of the Grecian sea she will have to swim over
to the Turkish coast to hide herself in myrtles. There is a new fact
for Lord Strangford’s oriental Chaos!

“My wife desires to be most kindly remembered to you.

“Believe me, my dear Miss Cobbe,
“Yours sincerely,
“GEORGE FINLAY.”

I left Athens and my kind friends with great regret and embarked at the Piræus for Constantinople, but not before I had managed to secure a luxurious swim in one of the exquisite rocky coves along the coast near the Tomb of Themistocles.

Stamboul was rather a disappointment to me. The weather was cold and cloudy and unfit to display the beauty of the Golden Horn; and I went about with a _valet de place_ in rather a disheartened way to see the Dolma Batchi Palace and a few other things accessible to me. The Scutari Hospital across the Bosphorus where Miss Nightingale had worked only four years before, of course, greatly attracted my interest. How much do all women owe to that brave heart who led them on so far on the road to their public duties, and who has paid for her marvellous achievements by just forty years of invalidism! Those pages of Kinglake’s History in which he pays tribute to her power, and compares her great administrative triumph in bringing order out of chaos with the miserable failures of the male officials who had brought about the disastrous muddle, ought to be quoted again and again by all the friends of women, and never suffered to drop into oblivion.

Of course the reader will assume that I saw St. Sophia. But I did not do so, and to the last, I fear I shall owe a little grudge to the people whose extraordinary behaviour made me lose my sole opportunity of enjoying that most interesting sight. I told my _valet de place_ to learn what parties of foreigners were going to obtain the needful firmaun for visiting the Mosque and to arrange for me in the usual way to join one of them, paying my share of the expense, which at that time amounted to £5. Some days were lost, and then I learned that there was only one party, consisting of American ladies and gentlemen, who were then intending to visit the place, and that for some reason their courier would not consent to my joining them. I thought it was some stupid _imbroglio_ of servants wanting fees, and having the utmost confidence in American kindness and good manners, I called on the family in question at their hotel and begged they would do me the favour to allow me to pay part of the £5, and to enter the doors of St. Sophia with them accordingly; at such time as might suit them. To my amazement the gentleman and ladies looked at each other; and then the gentleman spoke, “O! I leave _all that_ to my courier!” “In that case,” I said, “I wish you good morning.” It was a great bore for me, with my great love for architecture, to fail to see so unique a building, but I could not think of spending £5 on a firmaun myself, and had no choice but to relinquish the hope of entering, and merely walk round the Mosque and peep in where it was possible to do so. I was well cursed in doing this by the old Turks for my presumption!

Nemesis overtook these unmannerly people ere long, for they reached Florence a month after me and found I had naturally told my tale of disappointment to the Brownings, (whom they particularly desired to cultivate), the Somervilles, Trollopes and others who had become my friends; and I believe they heard a good deal of the matter. Mrs. Browning, I know, frankly expressed her astonishment at their behaviour; and Mrs. Somerville would have nothing to say to them. They sent me several messages of conciliation and apology, which of course I ignored. They had done a rude and unkind thing to an unknown and friendless woman. They were ready to make advances to one who had plenty of friends. It was the only case, in all my experience of Americans, in which I have found them wanting in either courtesy or kindness.

I had intended to go from Constantinople _viâ_ the Black Sea and the Danube to Vienna and thence by the railway to Adelsberg and Trieste, but a cold, stormy March morning rendered that excursion far less tempting than a return to the sunny waters of Greece; and, as I had nobody to consult, I simply embarked on a different steamer from the one I had designed to take. At Syra (I think) I changed to the most luxurious and delightful vessel on which I have ever sailed—the Austrian Lloyd’s _Neptune_, Captain Braun. It was splendidly equipped, even to a _camera obscura_ on deck; and every arrangement for luxurious baths and good food was perfect, and the old Captain’s attention and kindness to everyone extreme. I have still the picture of the _Neptune_, which he drew in my little sketch book for me. There were several very pleasant passengers on board, among others the Marquis of Headfort (nephew of our old neighbour at Newbridge, Mr. Taylor of Ardgillan) and Lady Headfort, who had gone through awful experiences in India, when married to her first husband, Sir William Macnaghten. It was said that when Sir William was cut to pieces, she offered large rewards for the poor relics and received them all, _except his head_. Months afterwards when she had returned to Calcutta and was expecting some ordinary box of clothes, or the like, she opened a parcel hastily, and was suddenly confronted with a frightful spectacle of her husband’s half-preserved head!

Whether this story be true I cannot say, but Lady Headfort made herself a most agreeable fellow passenger, and we sat up every night till the small hours telling ghost stories. At Corfu I paid a visit to my father’s cousin, Lady Emily Kozzaris (_née_ Trench) whom I had known at Newbridge and who welcomed me as a bit of Ireland, fallen on her

“Isle under Ionian skies
Beautiful as a wreck of paradise.”

I seemed to be _en pays de connaissance_ once more. After two days in Trieste I went up by rail to Adelsberg through the extraordinary district (geologically speaking) of Carniola, where the whole superficial area of the ground is perfectly barren but honey-combed with circular holes of varying depths and size and of the shape of inverted truncated cones; the bottoms of each being highly fertile and cultivated like gardens.

The cavern of Adelsberg was to me one of the most fearsome places in the world. I cannot give any accurate description of it for the sense of awe which always seizes me in the darkness and foul air of caverns and tunnels and pyramids, renders me incapable of listening to details of heights and lengths. I wrote my recollections not long afterwards.

“There were long, long galleries, and chambers, and domes succeeding
one another, as it seemed, for ever. Sometimes narrow and low,
compelling the visitor to bend and climb; sometimes so wide and lofty
that the eye vainly sought to pierce the expanse. And through all the
endless labyrinth appeared vaguely in the gloom the forms taken by the
stalactites, now white as salt, now yellow and stained as if with
age,—representing to the fancy all conceivable objects of earth and
sea, piled up in this cave as if in some vast lumberhouse of creation.
It was Chaos, when yet all things slept in darkness waiting the fiat
of existence. It was the final Ruin when all things shall return to
everlasting night, and man and all his works grow into stone and lie
buried beside the mammoth and the ichthyosaur. Here were temples and
tombs, and vast dim faces, and giant forms lying prone and headless,
and huge lions sleeping in dark dens, and white ghosts with phantom
raiment flickering in the gloom. And through the caverns, amid all the
forms of awe and wonder, rolled a river black as midnight; a deep and
rapid river which broke here and there over the rocks as in mockery of
the sunny waterfalls of the woods, and gleamed for a moment, white and
ghastly, then plunged lower under the black arch into

‘Caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.’

“It is in this deadly river, which never reflects the light of day,
that live those strange fleshy lizards without eyes, and seemingly
without natural skin, hideous reptiles which have dwelt in darkness
from unknown ages, till the organs of sight are effaced.[15]

“Over this dismal Styx the traveller passes on further and further
into the cavern, through seemingly endless corridors and vast
cathedral aisles and halls without number. One of these large spaces
is so enormous that it seemed as if St. Peter’s whole church and dome
could lie beneath it. The men who were with us scaled the walls, threw
coloured lights around and rockets up to the roof and dimly revealed
the stupendous expanse; an underground hall, where Eblis and all his
peers might hold the councils of hell. Further, on yet, through more
corridors, more chambers and aisles and domes, with the couchant lions
and the altar-tombs and the ghosts and the great white faces all
around; and then into a cavern, more lately found than the rest, where
the white and yellow marble took forms of screens and organ pipes and
richest Gothic tracery of windows,—the region where the Genius of the
Cavern had made his royal Oratory. It was all a great, dim, uneasy
dream. Things were, and were not. As in dreams we picture places and
identify them with those of waking life in some strange unreal
identity, while in every particular they vary from the actual place;
and as also in dreams we think we have beheld the same objects over
and over again, while we only dream we see them, and go on wandering
further and further, seeking for some unknown thing, and finding, not
that which we seek, but every other thing in existence, and pass
through all manner of narrow doors and impenetrable screens, and men
speak to us and we cannot hear them, and show us open graves holding
dead corpses whose features we cannot discern, and all the world is
dim and dark and full of doubt and dread—even so is the Cavern of
Adelsberg.”

Returning to Trieste I passed on to Venice, the beauty of which I _learned_ (rather slowly perhaps), to feel by degrees as I rowed in my gondola from church to church and from gallery to palace. The Austrians were then masters of the city, and it was no doubt German music which I heard for the first time at the church of the Scalzi, very finely performed. It was not seldom in the usual English style of sacred music; (I dare say it was not strictly _sacred_ music at all, perhaps quite a profane opera!) but, in the mood I was in, it seemed to me to have a great sanctity of its own; to be a _Week-day Song of Heaven_. This was one of the rare occasions in my life in which music has reached the deeper springs in me, and it affected me very much. I suppose as the daffodils did Wordsworth.

Naturally being again in a town and at a good hotel, I resumed better clothes than I had worn in my rough rides, and they were, of course that year, deep mourning with much crape on them. I imagine it must have been this English mourning apparel which provoked among the colour-loving Venetians a strange display of _Heteropathy_,—that deep-seated animal instinct of hatred and anger against grief and suffering, the exact reverse of _sympathy_, which causes brutes and birds to gore and peck and slay their diseased and dying companions and brutal men to trample on their weeping, starving wives. I was walking alone rather sadly, bent down over the shells on the beach of the Lido, comparing them in my mind to the old venuses and pectens and beautiful pholases which I used to collect on my father’s long stretch of sandy shore in Ireland,—when suddenly I found myself assailed with a shower of stones. Looking up, I saw a little crowd of women and boys jeering at me and pelting me with whatever they could pick up. Of course they could not really hurt me, but after an effort or two at remonstrance, I was fain to give up my walk and return to my gondola and to Venice. Years afterwards, speaking of this incident to Gibson, he told me he had seen at Venice a much worse scene, for the victim was a poor helpless dog which had somehow got into a position from whence it could not escape, and the miserable, hooting, laughing crowd deliberately _stoned it to death_. The dog looked from one to another of its persecutors as if appealing for mercy and saying, “What have I done to deserve this?” But there was no mercy in those hard hearts.

Ever since I sat on the spot where St. Stephen was stoned, I have felt that that particular form of death must have been one of the most _morally_ trying and dreadful to the sufferer, and the most utterly destructive of the finer instincts in those who inflicted it. If Jews be, as alleged, more prone to cruelty than other nations, the fact seems to me almost explained by the “set of the brains” of a race accustomed to account it a duty to join in stoning an offender to death and watching pitilessly his agonies when mangled, blinded, deafened and bleeding he lies crushed on the ground.

From Venice I travelled very pleasantly in a returning vettura which I was fortunate enough to engage, by Padua and Ferrara over the Apennines to Florence. One day I walked a long way in front during my vetturino’s dinner-hour, and made friends with some poor peasants who welcomed me to their house and to a share of their meal of Polenta and wine. The Polenta was much inferior to Irish oatmeal stirabout or Scotch porridge; and the black wine was like the coarsest vinegar. I tried in vain, out of good manners to drink it. The lives of these poor _contadini_ are obviously in all ways cruelly hard.

Spending one night in a desolate “ramshackle” inn on the road high up on the Apennines, I sat up late writing a description of the place (as “creepy” as I could make it!) to amuse my mother’s dear old servant “Joney,” who possessed a volume of Washington Irving’s stories wherein that of the “_Inn at Terracina_” had served constantly to excite delightful awe in her breast and in my own as a child. I took my letter next day with me to post in Florence, but alas! found there waiting for me one from my brother announcing that our dear old servant was dead. She had never held up her head after I had left Newbridge, and had cease to drop into her cottage for tea.

At Florence I remained many months (or rather on the hill of Bellosguardo above the city) and made some of the most precious friendships of my life; Mrs. Somerville’s first of all, I also had the privilege to know at that time both Mr. and Mrs. Browning, Adolphus Trollope, Walter Savage Landor, Isa Blagden, Miss White (now Madame Villari), and many other very interesting men and women. I shall, however, write a separate chapter combining this and my subsequent visits to Italy.

Late in the summer I travelled with a party through Milan over St. Gothard to Lucerne, and thence to the Pays de Vaud, where I joined a very pleasant couple,—Rev. W. and Mrs. Biedermann,—in taking the _Château du Grand Clos_, in the Valley of the Rhone; a curious miniature French country house, built some years before by the man who called himself Louis XVII., or Duc de Normandie; and who had collected (as we found) a considerable library of books, all relating to the French Revolution.

From Switzerland I travelled back to England viâ the Rhine with my dear American friends, the Apthorps, who had joined me at Montreux. The perils and fatigues of my eleven months of solitary wanderings were over. I was stronger and more active in body than I had ever been, and so enriched in mind and heart by the things I had seen and the people I had known, that I could afford to smile at the depression and loneliness of my departure.

As we approached the Black Forest I had a fancy to quit my kind companions for a few days; and leaving them to explore Strasburg, and some other places, I went on to Heidelberg and thence made my way into the beautiful woods. The following lines were written there, September 23rd, 1858:—

ALONE IN THE SCHWARZWALD.

Lord of the Forest Sanctuary! Thou
By the grey fathers of the world in these
Thine own self-fashioned shrines dimly adored,
“All-Father Odin,” “Mover” of the spheres;
Zeus! Brahm! Ormusd! Lord of Light Divine!
GOD, blessed God! the Good One! Best of names,
By noblest Saxon race found Thee at last,—
O Father! when the slow revolving years
Bring forth the day when men shall see Thy face
Unveiled from superstition’s web of errors old,
Shall they not seek Thee here amid the woods,
Rather than in the pillared aisle, or dome
By loftiest genius reared?

Six months have rolled
Since I stood solitary in the fane
Of desolate Baalbec. The huge walls closed
Round me sublime as when millenniums past
Lost nations worshipped there. I sate beside
The altar stone o’erthrown. For hours I sate
Until the homeward-winging hawk at even
Shrieked when he saw me there, a human form
Where human feet tread once perchance a year,
Then the moon slowly rose above the walls
And then I knelt. It was a glorious fane
All, all my own.

But not that grand Baalbec,
Nor Parthenon, nor Rome’s stupendous pile,
Nor lovelier Milan, nor the Sepulchre
So dark and solemn where the Christ was laid,
Nor even yet that dreadful field of death
At Ghizeh where the eternal Pyramids
Have, from a world of graves, pointed to Heav’n
For fifty ages past,—not all these shrines
Are holy to my soul as are the woods.
Lo! how God Himself has planned this place
So that all sweet and calm and solemn thoughts
Should have their nests amid the shadowy trees!
How the rude work-day world is all closed out
By the thick curtained foliage, and the sky
Alone revealed, a deep zenith heaven,
Fitly beheld through clasped and upraised arms
Of prayer-like trees. There is no sound more loud
Than the low insect hum, the chirp of birds,
The rustling murmur of embracing boughs,
The gentle dropping of the autumn leaves.
The wood’s sweet breath is incense. From the pines
And larch and chestnut come rich odours pure;
All things are pure and sweet and holy here.