For the first mile or two from Monmouth, the hermit of the woods is nothing to boast of. The banks are low; the water sluggish; and the scenery common-place. The beauties begin at a bend of the river, where Mr Blakemore has built a large and comfortable-looking house. On a high, conical hill above the mansion, there stands a lofty gazebo of open iron-work, commanding a view of we don't remember how many counties; but before our cicerone had got half-way into an account of each of them, with their capital towns, the names of the present mayors, and the noble families he had supplied with cricket-bats, we had passed far away among the noble scenery of the oak district; and our friend launched into a description of oak plantations in general—the value of oaks per acre—the sum paid to Lord George for his estate, which was bought by government fourteen years ago, the last time the duke was in power—

"What duke?"

An unlucky question, for it led into a disquisition o all dukes, ancient and modern, and an encomium on the late Duke of Beaufort, as the best soldier that England had ever produced. "He was a true soldier's friend, and flogged every soul that came on parade-ground with a dirty shirt. I don't think there was ever seen such a militia regiment—there was a sight more flogging in it than the reg'lars—so it was quite a comfort to some fellers that didn't like it, to go into the line. I was in it myself; but I liked the duke, though he would have flogged me as soon as look at me. And such dinners he gave us when our time was over—it was dreadful—six of our corporals died of drinking in one month. He was certainly the greatest officer ever I see. I was threatened myself with a thing they call delirium tremens, for he dined us in tents for a fortnight at a time. It's a pity the French never landed; we would have licked them like sacks. I hates a Frenchman, and hope to have a fling at 'em yet."

In the mean time we had glided further and further into the leafy recesses of the river. Such banks are nowhere else to be seen—high perpendicular cliffs, broken off in all manner of fantastic shapes; sometimes a great rock standing up bare, smooth, and majestic, like a vast tower of some gigantic cathedral; sometimes a solitary column, higher and more massive than any of an architect's designing, with its capital ornamented with self-sown shrubs, and its base washed by the rippling water. Each of these called forth an anecdote from our guide, philosopher, and friend—one was "the scene of the great fight between Characterus and the Romans. The Romans licked 'em; for them Welsh was never no great shakes. I could lick any three ancient Britons I ever saw myself—and they knows it. And, as to Characterus, he could be no great general, or he never would have fought on that side of the water. He should have come across to the other side, and he would have licked them Romans to a certainty."

We thought it was a pity Mr Williams, who, in spite of his contempt for the ancient Britons, was as true a Welshman as ever ate his leek, had not been of the council of war of Caractacus—for it was the scene of his great struggle we were passing. The ground still bears the name of Slaughter Field, and was a fit altar on which to offer the last victims to national freedom. The scenery all round it is of the noblest character—rock and wood, and the mountain chain that they hoped had shut out the invader. The river bends round it, and enables you to keep for a long time in view the plain where the battle was fought, and the rude remains of what is considered to have been the Roman encampment. After an hour or two delightfully spent in gliding under enormous cliffs, and winding among woods of all hues and sizes, hanging over the precipice, and waving their branches almost down to the water's edge, we arrived at our point of destination, a high rock called Simon's Yatt, which our agreeable companion described as the finest thing in the world. On bringing to at the landing-place, we found we had nearly a mile to walk up a steep road, newly escarped on the side of the hill; and setting ourselves manfully to the effort, we began our march—Williams insisted on being the useful member of the party. He offered, in the plenitude of his strength, to carry the shawls, to carry a couple of children, to carry ourselves; he thought nothing of weights; he was used to hard labour; he rather liked some difficult thing to do; and finally, nearly broke down under the burden of one of the provision baskets; stopping every now and then to rest, and evidently over-tasked. The day was very hot—the soil was a red ironstone—there was no shelter from the pervading sun—and the ascent was on an inclination of at least one foot in six; at last, however, urged on by a desire to enjoy the prospect—and the lunch—and also with a malicious intention, shared by the whole party, to walk our companion to death, we surmounted all difficulties, wound round a rocky eminence at the top, and suddenly found ourselves on a beautifully wooded platform, six or seven hundred feet above the river, and in the enjoyment of the most surprising view we ever saw. The river Wye takes a sharp turn round the foot of this enormous projection, not only winding round the extremity, but actually flowing down on one side exactly as it flowed up on the other, leaving Simon's Yatt as a sort of wedge inserted in its course; and presents the extraordinary effect of the same river at the same moment running both north and south. The summit of Simon's Yatt is not above fifty feet wide, and the descent on one side is perpendicular, showing the river directly under your feet, and on the other is nearly precipitous, leaving only room, between its base and the river, for a most picturesque assemblage of cottages called the New-Weir village. Directly in front is the rich level champaign, containing the town of Ross at a considerable distance, Goodrich Priory, and many other residences, from the feudal Castle to the undated Grange. On the horizon-line you recognise Ledbury, the Malvern hills; and the whole outline of the Black mountains. On the right, where the river careers along in its backward course, you see the interminable foliage of the forest of Dean, and the rich valleys of Glo'stershire. A very handsome house, about a mile down the river, attracted our attention. "It's a reg'lar good billet," said Mr Williams, breaking off from some other piece of information with which he was regaling the idle wind, for by this time we had acquired a power of not hearing a word he said; "and it's a great shame, the gent as owns it never lives in it. He is a very great man in foreign parts; and the Pope is his uncle. So, in course, he always lives in France to be near his great relations." No cross-examination could shake his statement of this genealogical curiosity; so we looked with increased interest on the mansion of the Pope's nephew, whose principal merit by the by, in Mr William's eyes, was, that he had once furnished him with a coracle. After gratifying our eyes for a long time with the surprising prospect, we found a nice shady spot in a plantation at a little distance; spread shawls and cloaks upon the grass, and were soon engaged in the mysteries of cold meat, hard-boiled eggs, an excellent salad, and Guinness's porter—not to mention a beautiful gooseberry tart and sparkling ginger-beer. Some feasts have been more splendid, and some perhaps more seasoned with eloquence and wisdom—but, as the Vicar of Wakefield says of the united party of the Primroses and the Flamboroughs, "If there was not much wit among the company, there was a great deal of laughter, and that did just as well." So we laughed a good hour among the shady walks at Simon's Yatt—managed for five whole minutes to stop our companion's conversation by filling his mouth with beef and porter, distributed the fragments among a hungry and admiring population of young coal-heavers who looked on—like a group starting out of Murillo's pictures—and with empty baskets and joyous hearts set off on our homeward way. We glided at our own sweet will down the river, exchanged the bark for our plethoric gig, and in due course of time, after twelve starts at the twelve milestones, arrived in safety at our home.

By this time there were no symptoms left of deficient health and strength—the invalid would have done for an honorary member of the club of fat people recorded in the Spectator; and we looked, with disdain on the level territory on the banks of the Usk, and longed for hills to climb, and walls to get over, and rocks to overcome, like knights-errant in search of adventures. No walk was too great for us. We thought of challenging Captain Barclay to a match against time, or of travelling through England as the Pedestrian Wonders. Walker, the twopenny postman, would have had no chance against us. So, merely by way of practice, we started off one day, with straw-hats and short summer frocks, and every other accompaniment of a professed pedestrian's turn-out, and away we went on a pilgrimage to the churchyard of Llanvair Kilgiden. Through rich fields of grass we sauntered—over stiles we leapt—through hedges we dashed—and occasionally became prosaic enough to walk on for half a mile or so in a country lane, but generally we preferred trespassing through a corn-field, and losing our way in searching for a short cut across a plantation; and at last, after many hairbreadth 'scapes—after being terrified by the bellowing of a bull, which turned out to be a sentimental cow giving vent to her agitated feelings in what somebody calls a "gentle voice and low"—after nearly losing half the party by the faithlessness of a plank that crossed a ditch that swarmed with an innumerable multitude of tadpoles—after surpassing these, and many other perils, we at last got into the quiet road that leads from Penty Goitre bridge down to the church of Llanvair—a large, solemn-looking churchyard, ornamented with a goodly array of splendid yew-trees, and boasting, at some former period, a majestic stone cross, now of course defaced, and the very square it stood upon moss-grown and in ruins. The church itself is a plain quiet structure, but the sylvan beauty and peaceful seclusion of the situation cannot be surpassed. We measured the great yews, and several of them were twenty-four or twenty-five feet in circumference at four feet from the ground. There were some graves enclosed in railings, and surrounded by evergreens and rose-trees; and the sentiment of the place was not destroyed by a few nibbling sheep that cropped the short grass on the graves where the rude forefathers of the hamlet slept. Can the sepulchral muses have found their way to so remote a district as this? Have "afflictions sore" and "vain physicians" obtained a sculptor among the headstones of this out-of-the-way place? We made a survey of the inscriptions, as a very sure guide to the state of education among the peasantry, and are compelled to confess that the schoolmaster had decidedly gone abroad. Even monuments of some pretension to grandeur, with full-cheeked cherubs on the sides, and solid stones on the top, offered no better specimens of spelling and composition that this:—

"Laden with age my years they flew— The Lord is holy, just, and trew."

And on the slab, over a child of three years old, the following pithy observation:—

"If life and care could death pervent, My days would not so soon been spent."

The sculptor, in many instances, (being tired probably of chiselling the same words over and over,) had attempted an improvement by altering the arrangement of the lines,—an ingenious device on his part, and a pleasing puzzle to the spectator:—

"A tender husband and a father dear, a faithful friend lies buried hear, he was true and just in all his ways, he do deserve this worthey praise."

To the memory of Margaret, wife of John Hall, appeared some lines of a superior kind, with which we never met elsewhere:—

"You see around me richer neighbours lie As deep and still in this cold ground as I; From ease and plenty they were called away— Could I in lingering sickness wish to stay? When faith supports the body worn with pain, To live is nothing but to die is gain."

But as if to show that the muse had made a very flying visit to the hamlet, and had left the mason, on the next occasion, to his own unassisted genius, the epitaph on two other members of the same family runs thus:—

"When in the world we did remain, Our latter days was grief and pain, But God above he thought it best To take we to a place of rest."

What can it be that induces people, who were probably as unpoetical as Audrey in their lives, to wish the ornament of verse upon their tombstones? The effect must be almost ludicrous upon those who were acquainted with the living individual, to hear "the long resounding march and energy divine" of heroics and Alexandrines proceeding from him, now he is dead. Philosophy put by the epitaph-writer in the mouths of a chaw-bacon—moral reflections on the loveliness of virtue in the mouth of a poor-law overseer—and noble incitements to follow a good example in the mouth of the bully or drunkard of the parish, must be far from useful to the surviving generation. We therefore highly approve of the remarks of a sententious gentleman in this churchyard, who seems to lay no great claim to extraordinary merit himself, but favours his co-parishioners with very useful advice:—

"Farewell, vain world, I've seen enough of thee, And now am careless what thou say'st of me,— Thy smiles I court not, nor thy frowns I fear; My cares are past; my head lies quiet here— What faults thou see'st in me take care to shun— Look well at home; enough there's to be done."

By the time we had transferred these and other inscriptions to our note-book, the party were refreshed and ready for the homeward walk. We got over the same stiles and underwent the same dangers as before, and happily completed our voyage of discovery to the beautiful churchyard of Llanvair.

Day after day saw us all busy in ferreting out fine views or old manor-houses—the little Skirrid or old Llangattock. Sometimes we crossed the river and wandered through the delicious lanes of Llanover, or passed through Llanellen on our way to the Blorenge. As our courage and strength expanded, we tried bolder flights—spent a day among the smoke and thunder of the Nantiglo ironworks—with processions of thousands of men hurrying off amidst music, and shouts of the most tremendous loudness, to a dinner at their club. Great, hard-featured, savage-looking fellows they were, though in their holiday attire, and accompanied by one or two of the Bailey family—the real iron kings of the neighbourhood; and a sight of their grim features and brawny arms gave us a more vivid respect for the courage of Sir Thomas Philips, who drove them back from the sack and massacre of Newport; and also a clearer idea of the almost justifiable hardihood of the worshipful Mister Frost, in thinking that with ten or twelve thousand souls, made of fire, and children of the mine, he could upset Old England, and be himself the legitimate successor of King Coal.

Another day we spent among the ruins of Llantony Abbey, one of the finest remains of ecclesiastical architecture in the kingdom. The person who owns the ground and the ruins, is a poet, a philosopher, a scholar, so at least he wishes to be thought; but from the condition of the abbey, (a small pot-house protruding its vulgar sign from one of the noble entrances, and a skittle-ground being established in the main aisle—desolation, neglect, and dirtiness all around,) we formed no very high estimate of the taste or feeling of Mr Walter Savage Landor. If he had no higher object than merely to keep up the beauty of the building, you might expect that he would have guarded it from the degradation of beer, tobacco, and British spirits. A man of a poetical mind would have taken care to prevent such miserable associations as are supplied by a tap and skittle-ground;—a person of loftier and purer sentiments would have shown more reverence for the genius loci, and would have remembered that the walls were once vocal with Christian prayers, and that what in other instances would be only negligence, is profanation here. But probably the innkeeper pays his rent regularly, and we hope will be made the interlocutor in an imaginary conversation with the last abbot of Llantony.

The object we had in coming into Wales was now entirely gained; and after ten weeks most happy wanderings over hill and dale, and constantly breathing the clear fresh air of Monmouthshire, we packed up bag and baggage, and returned to our home with a stock of health laid in for winter use, which will keep us constantly in mind of the benefits we derived from change of scene.



NEAPOLITAN SKETCHES.

GARDEN OF THE VILLA REALE.

This garden—which, during the winter months, is the lounge of the English idler at Naples, and then looks as flowerless and dingy as Kensington in an east wind—assumes a very different appearance in spring. On the 7th of May, we, who had passed the winter at Rome, were at once struck with the brilliancy of unusual blossoms, and the number of distinguished vegetable foreigners who lifted their heads out of parterres, of the very existence of which in winter one is scarcely conscious. The formal line of clipt Ilex that looks towards the sea, had changed its dusky hue for a warmer tint; statues that had been doing sentinel all the winter without relief, now seem to bend delighted over fragrant flower-beds, and enjoy the spring. Two high shrubs in flower (Metresiglias) hoist from opposite beds, the one its white, the other its red banner. Two of the Muses, the Speciosa and Paravisogna, or bread-tree plant, were raising their light spiry trunks out of a corbeille taller than a life-guardsman. They want no hothouse in Naples:—would you shade your face from the sun, an elsewhere exotic, the Brazilian Camarotta at your feet, furnishes you with a screen. The white flocks of the Acacia verticillata are peeping out from the ranks of those small triangular leaves, which are so singularly attached, without stalks, by one of these angles to the stem. Amidst these pleasant perfumes camphor would be unwelcome, but there is the laurel that yields it. Fennel has here become a tree, in which, like the mustard of the Gospels, the fowls of the air may lodge; we are dwarfs beside it! Three kinds of the soft, slimy Mallow of the Marsh are here so much WOODY and so tall, that we must pick their flowers on tiptoe. The flattened disk of the sky-blue Nana arborea contrasts with the Betula sanguinea, glowing deeply in the flower-bed of many lighter-coloured petals; the sweet-scented African laurel grows against the long-leafed Babylonian willow, which susurrates droopingly over your head, as if it were "by the waters of Babylon." The fountains, with their hydrophilous tribes, add to the charm; and many a beautiful Launaria aquatica had already buoyed himself up on his large cordate leaves on the surface of the tazza, and was filling his vegetable skin with water. All these beauties and peculiarities, a mere scantling of the whole of the Villa Reale, escape the lounger, and the nurserymaids, and children, and those of either sex who have appointments to keep, or to look out for; and the soldiers, and the police, and the Neapolitan nobility and gentry, and the pickpockets, and others:—to the nurseryman and botanist, things not to be forgotten; and at present the weather is not too hot to interfere with their enjoyment.

SERVI DI PENA.

At Castel Nuovo, a penal settlement of Naples, we held conversation with a man sentenced to the galleys, and wearing, accordingly, a yellow jacket; but yellow is not here, as at Leghorn, the deepest dye. Here, it is red cloth and manacles that go together. We asked him his crime. "Un piccolo omicidio." "A small homicide, provoked by a dispute for a single ducat! I quarrelled with a man now in paradise. I killed him at one stab, but the devil possessed me to give him another colpo di coltello after he had fallen; and as the judges asked me why I did this, and I could not perfectly satisfy them, they concluded I was a sanguinary fellow, and gave me eighteen years galleys—but, as you see, I have no chains; nor ever had—mai! mai!" and he extended his hands in somewhat of the attitude of Raphael's Paul before Festus, to suit the action to the word. "No! he was of a very different order of criminals to a boatful of birboni in red jackets, all bad cases of homicide and robbery!"

"What do you call bad cases?"

"Why, I call it a bad case to kill a man for NOTHING."

"Well, but theft to any amount is not so bad as taking away life."

"Oh! as to that, the police are quite right! A decent and a devout man does not commit homicides every day: but he that steals at all, steals always!" So that our culprit reasoned, like Paley, on the tendency of crimes. It was his Chapter of the Silver Spoon, with a new exposition from the mouth of a Galeote! And they pluck men at Cambridge for not getting up their Paley! Our philosophical criminal seemed satisfied with his lot.

"We are not so badly off after all: we walk out with an obliging escort, who let us do pretty much as we like; and all our work is confined to sweeping the courts in front of the king's palace. We are free of the castle, and allowed to conduct strangers over it, as in your case. Oh! for the fellows at St Stefano, it is quite another matter; as a part of their punishment, they are compelled to be idle!"

Our rascal was allowed a new coat once every eighteen months, with two pair of drawers and as many shirts, and a penny a-day for pocket-money! These piccoli omicidii at home do not get off so cheap, but stabbing is endemic at Naples. When a queen of Naples brings the Neapolitans a new prince—great joy of course!—all the penal settlements except St Stefano receive three years' mitigation of their sentence; but the crimes that consign to that island are senza grazia—the rays of royal bounty do not reach those dark and solitary cells. The St Stefano convicts form a body of three hundred doomed men, incorrigible housebreakers or systematic assassins. The food of all classes of criminals is the same, whatever the offence, and consists of twenty-four ounces of bread, with half-a-pint measure of beans and some oil—a basin of cabbage soup, without meat, for dinner, and meat once in fourteen days: there are eight thousand out-of-doors convicts, many of whom being under sentence for a less space than two years, work in their own clothes—which is, of course, a considerable saving to government. Although all the galley-slave establishments are full, no place swarms like Naples with so many meritorious candidates for the red and yellow liveries of the state.

ST CARLO, &c.

St Carlo is, as the guide-books tell us, "a very fine theatre." What we particularly like, is the absence of all side-lights round its boxes. Two hundred burners, arranged in three rows round a small chandelier, give just light enough to set off the fine chastened white and gold, and the one quiet fresco which embellishes the ceiling. A pit of vast size, divided into comfortable sittings, six tiers of boxes, and an orchestra of great space, suited to the extraordinary size of the house, secure a far less adulterated playhouse atmosphere than we are used to; and so exempt from the ordinary inconveniences, that we were able to sit out the Semiramide, even with Ronzi di Begnis, now old and out of keeping, for the heroine. Surely she never should have been Semiramis, even in her palmy day! Actors and actresses will not know that words written for them, scenery and dresses adapted for them, and attitudes invented for them, can never make them the personages mentioned in the playbill. On returning home, we stood at our balcony gazing on the lovely face of a true Naples night—a night beyond description!—the whole vault of heaven lighted by one light: a full moon, like a subdued sunshine over earth and water. A world of light, that shone on a world of darkness, tinging the air, gilding the mountain-tops, and making the sea run like melted phosphorus. And what a silence abroad! not the perilous cessation of sound which so often only anticipates the storm; nor the sultry stillness of an exhausting noon; but a mighty and godlike display, as it were, of the first full moon after creation shining on an entranced world!

POZZUOLI.

An amphitheatre is one of those few ruins that leave no problem to solve. Here we have a grey antiquity without any mutilation of form, and merely spoliated of its benches. The patron saint of Naples was, they say, imprisoned here. A little chapel ascertains the spot, but he does no miracles on this arena. When we come to temples, we are always at a great loss for proprietors. The very large one here is called of Jupiter Serapis. The remaining columns of this temple, whatever it was, exhibit a very remarkable appearance. Three pillars, forty-two feet in height, up to about twelve feet above their pedestals, have the surface of the marble as smooth as any in the Forum; then comes a portion of nine or ten feet, of which the marble has been bored, drilled in all directions, by that persevering bivalve the Lithodomus; the perforations are so considerable, and go so deep, as to prove "the long-continued abode" of these animals within the stone, and by consequence, as Mr Lyell observes, "a long-continued immersion of the columns in the sea at some period recent, comparatively, with that of its erection." Indeed, there is abundant evidence adduced in the fourth volume of his Geology to show, that all this ground was at a no very distant period under the sea, like Monte Nuovo in its neighbourhood, and was thrust out of the water to its present level. When the ground on which this temple stood, collapsed, the bottom part of its columns was protected by "the rubbish of decayed buildings and strata of turf;" the middle or perforated part was left exposed to the action of the sea bivalves above alluded to; and the upper part, which was never under the water, remained smooth and free from perforation. But these columns not only prove by internal evidence the general fact of the ground on which they stand having been submerged—they also furnish an exact measure of the degree to which it sunk; viz. twenty feet—i.e. the height where these perforations terminate at present. You can only cross the floor of this building on stepping-stones; and as you do so, you see shoals of small sea-fish darting about in the shallow water which occupies its area, into which the sea has been admitted on purpose, to prevent the accumulation of the stagnant water that had infected this particular spot with intense malaria.

BAIAE.

We took a hot bath under the soi-disant villa of Lucullus. Steam, sulphur, and hot water, may be had cheap any where along this coast. An awful place it was to enter naked, and be kept in the dark, stifling, as we were, for some seconds which seemed minutes, till our guide returned with a milord's dressing-gown, which he assured us had been hung up as a votive offering for cured rheumatism. Being candidates ourselves for a similar benefit, we desired to be rubbed down like milord, till aluminous perspiration stood thick upon us, the alum being deposited from the walls and atmosphere of the place. We were soon obliged to beg for quarter. The milord, whose dressing-gown we were possessed of, was so bad as to be obliged to be rubbed sitting; but so powerful is the remedy, that after fifteen such sittings, he walked round the lake (two miles), and went home in his carriage "guerito!" "Such baths!" that had cured he knew not how many persons:—

"Men who'd spent all upon physician's fees, Who'd never slept, nor had a moment's ease, Were now as roaches sound, and all as brisk as bees!"—CRABBE.

What with its hot water, sulphur, vapour, and alum, we too should have fancied Naples might have been comparatively exempt from rheumatisms and skin diseases, in both of which it abounds.

LUCRINE AND AVERNUS LAKES.

From the sea and its inlet called the Lucrine Lake, we pass along a pleasant green lane, about a mile long, which issues on Avernus, whose waters we find both limpid and clear; but are instructed that two months later will change them to a dark-red colour, and that the neighbourhood will then become very malarious and unsafe. A piece of semicircular wall on one side of the lake, indicates the whereabouts of a temple of Proserpine, or Apollo, or any god or goddess you please. We were so absurd as to pay a scudo to be taken through a vile tunnel, accompanied by two torch-bearers, and two other dirty wretches, who often carry us pick-a-back through one black hole into another, splashing us through dark pools, putting us down here and there as they pleased, picking us up again, grinning like demons, and by dint of shaking their torches above, and disturbing the water below, raising foul smells enough to intoxicate fifty Sybils. At length, half suffocated by those classical delights, we cry Enough! enough! and beg to be put into our saddles again. The Stufa di Nerone, a little further on the high-road, is another volcanic calidarium in full activity, where you may boil eggs or scald yourself in a dark cavern. There you may deposit your mattrass and yourself in any one of a store of berths wrought into that most unpicturesque tufa, of which the exterior face constitutes the whole of the sea view of Baiae. If ever there were decorations in these caverns, they are gone; but there probably never were. Diana, Mercury, Venus, and Apollo all claim brick tenements, called temples, in this little bay, all close together on the seaside, and none having any claim at present either on the artist or the poet.

We quit the seaside at this spot, and reach the summit of the hill above, where there is more torch-work and more disappointment for those that go a Sybil-seeking with the sixth book of Virgil for a guide. Those who like it may also grope their way through Nero's prisons, and descend into the Piscina Mirabilis, that vast pilastered cellar like an underground dissenting chapel. They say the Roman fleet was supplied with water from this huge tank; but if this had been the intention of its construction, why obstruct it with more pillars or supports of square masonry than the roof absolutely required, without which incumbrances a reservoir of half its size would have held more water,—and for water it was evidently meant? Ascending the hill we see a man or two working away at a newly-discovered tomb, from which he told us he had removed several skulls in perfect preservation, even to the teeth of both jaws, together with some small sepulchral lamps and old copper coins. We dine on the summit of a low hill, immediately opposite a cape better known to fame than the Cape of Good Hope—the promontory of Misenum, with Procida and Ischia on our right, and Nisida with its white lazaretto, and Puteoli (Pozzuoli,) where St Paul landed, on our left. We took to plant collecting after dinner, and were glad to learn that we should find at Puzzuoli a celebrated botanist of the locality, who could declare to us the unknown of all we should collect. On our return, therefore, the man of science was fetched to look at our wild nose-gay and at us. We show him a specimen; he calls it by some outlandish name; we tell him what we want is its Latin one. It is Latin, he says, which he is actually speaking! We thought not. A crowd of fishermen and rustics are fast collecting around us; we try him with another one of the grasses. "Questo e asparago," cries a bumpkin, unasked, from behind. "Che asparagi?" says il mio Maestro, "e Pimpinella." We show him a Cytisus, and he calls it a Campanula. Seeing that so great a difference exists between our friend and Linnaeus, we ask no further questions.

Tench and eels abound in Avernus, and coot and teal also blunder here occasionally, as if to contradict Virgil and confute etymology—for Avernus is [Greek: aornos] (birdless,) and Latinised as every one knows. However, few birds are to be found here. The Lucrine is now a mere salt-water pond of small extent, affording the little sea fish, in rough weather, a sort of playground. No Lucrine oysters now, though these dainties are of excellent quality at Naples, and might have satisfied Montanus himself. As to the Mare Mortuum, it is another rank, unwholesome, unpicturesque pond. We walked all round it, and have a right to say so; and, if we had done so twice after sunset, might perchance have had to say more.

PROCIDA.

"Ego vel Prochytam praepono Suburrae," says Juvenal, and so would we if compelled to live in that nasty St Giles's beyond the Coliseum; but as the "vel" seems strangely misapplied—for the situation of Procida must always have been delightful—the poet's preference must be understood as of a dull unlively place, with few inhabitants or resources, to a dense and dangerous population. Baiae itself is not three miles from Procida; but the Roman Baiae was thronged with good society, and this little island was doubtless then as unpeopled as it is now populous. Procida is about three-fourths of an hour's fair rowing from Miniseolae, on the Baian side; but you may run your boat over on a fine day in half an hour. As you approach the houses, you discern the not unpicturesque frontage of a little fishing town; but all is as revolting within as fair without. Something of the Greek or Albanese costume is still preserved here, and they offer to dress up one of their families in full parure for our further satisfaction, if we will pay them. The view from the leads of the fort (under which the galley-slaves are confined) is fine indeed! Ischia and Vesuvius, and the whole stretch of the bay, and Sorrento, and the promontory of Minerva. Procida builds good enough trading vessels. We saw two in the harbour of Baiae, as we rowed back on a delicious evening towards sunset; they were going on a first voyage, bound for our London docks;—and a propos of the London docks, all this country is, as it always was, rich in productive vineyards and bad wine. Every hill once gave its own epithet to wines celebrated in longs and shorts of immortal celebrity, whereas the land round Rome could never have been viniferous. You may still drink Falernian, if so minded, on its native seat of St Agatha. The wine of Gaurus has not deserted Monte Babaro, and Lachryma, though not classical, has its own celebrity; and the islands of Ischia and Procida also produce a strong, heating, white wine. But there is not any wine, from the Alps to Messina, to be compared to those of the Garonne, and the Rhine, or the Moselle. The Barbarians subdued by the Roman legions have long had it all their own way, not only in this, but in every other good thing except sunshine; but the vine, growing as it grows, suspended as it is suspended, and wreathed round the hills of Italy, is still the plant which secures the loudest admiration of the foreigner. "The vine of Italy for ever!"—so we join the chorus of all travellers, and say-"till it lies bruised, bleeding, fermenting in the vat! then commend us to the Bacchus of lands far nearer home." And here, feeling ourselves called upon for a song, we will sing one.

A VINTAGE SONG.

ABRIDGED FROM BERANGER.

"Amidst the Celtic hordes of old That gather'd round his wayworn band, The cumbrous booty to behold Brought from Ausonia's sunny land, Thus Brennus spake—'This lance of mine Bears Rome's best gift—Behold—the Vine! Plant, plant the Vine, to whose fair reign belong The arts of Peace, and all the realms of Song!

"'They told us of its wondrous juice; We fought to taste it, and have won! Now o'er your hills new wealth diffuse And cherish well the warrior's boon. Plant, plant the Vine, &c.

"'Nor for ourselves alone we tore That stem away; your ships shall bear The freighted joy to many a shore, And spread the unknown gladness there. Plant, plant the Vine, &c.'

"He ended, and in face of all, While deep in earth he strikes the lance And plants the shoot—unconscious Gaul Prepares the world's vast vineyard—France!"[9]

THE PALACE OF CASERTA.

About thirteen miles from Naples is one of the finest kingly residences in Europe—so say all the guide-books, and they are right. Vanvitelli is the very Michael Angelo of palace-rearing! Its shape is a parallelogram approaching to a square. Counting mezzanines, it has six stories besides the attics; and is pierced with no less than 1700 windows. Its stair, the very perfection of that sort of construction, is vast in all its dimensions, and so very easy, that you look down from its summit admiring, with untried lungs, the enormous height you have reached. It starts double from the ground, and twenty persons might ascent either branch abreast, and meet one another at the spot where it begins to return upon itself; so that the noble octagonal landing above finds itself just over the starting-place below. From this post four large windows command four spacious courts, and the simple construction of this gigantic edifice stands unveiled. You now begin your journey through vast, lofty, magnificently marbled, and very ill-furnished apartments, of which, before you have completed the half circuit of a single floor, you are heartily tired, for, beyond the architecture, there is nothing to see. The commonest broker's shop would furnish better pictures. Boar-hunts of course, to represent how Neapolitan kings kill boars at Portici, and shoot wild-ducks on the Lago di Fusina. There is also an ample historical fresco on the ceiling of the antechamber to the throne-room, on which Murat had caused to be represented some notable charge where he proved victorious; but after he was shot, Ferdinand, with great taste, judgment, and good feeling, erased, interpolated, and altered the picture into a harmless battle of Trojans against Greeks, or some such thing! The palace has two theatres and a chapel; and you must change your conductor four times if you would be led through the whole. For this enormous edifice boasts of only twelve servants, at eleven dollars a-month from the privy purse. Caserta, which, even in its present imperfect state, has cost 7,000,000 scudi, is raised amidst a swarm of paupers, who are permitted to besiege the stranger, and impede his progress, with an importunity such as could be shown by none but men on the eve of famishing. We never saw such a population of beggars as those which infest the walls of this most sumptuous palace and its park—but the park is a park indeed! It may have something of the formality of Versailles or Chantilly; but its leading features are essentially English; its thickets and copses abound in hares and pheasants. The ilex attains twice the height we remember to have seen it reach elsewhere. Its islands and fishponds, its kitchen and flower-gardens, put one in mind of a first-rate English country-seat. The ornamental water is fetched, by an aqueduct worthy of old Rome, from mountains seven miles off, first emptying its whole charge over a high ledge of rock, making a waterfall (which you see from the drawing-room window) over a series of steps and terraces, which get wider as they get lower, till they terminate in a superb basin within a quarter of a mile of the palace, where the water makes its last bound, and forms a broad lake fit for Diana and her nymphs, amidst woods fit for Actaeon and his dogs. Of course we asked to be conducted to these stone terraces, over which the dash of the mountain stream into the lake is effected: but as we passed the latter, we were surprised by our guide approaching the water, and, beginning to whistle, he begs us to observe the water begins to be troubled at a distance, and the more he whistles the more the commotion increases. Ten, twenty, and in half a second hundreds of immense fish come trooping up, and, undeterred by our presence, approach as near as they dare to the surface of the water where he stands; they swim backwards and forwards, and lash the water with their tails. What is the matter? Why! they come to be fed! and such is the ferocious impatience of this aquatic menagerie, that we long to assist in quelling it; and so we dip our hand into the man's basket of frogs, and drop a few right over the swarm—and now the water is bubbling and lathering with the workings and plungings of these mad fish; and so large are they, so strong, so numerous, that, all angler as we are, we really felt unpleasantly, nor would we, after what we saw, have trusted hand or foot in the domain of such shark-like rapacity. They consume five basketsful of frogs and minnows a-day. Except that of the Caserta beggars, we never saw any thing like the hunger of the Caserta fish.

THE SILK MANUFACTORY.

The silk manufactory at Caserta is worth a visit. The labour is chiefly accomplished by the hand, as is all labour in Naples. Silk is wound off into skeins by a mill turned by the artificial falls of the aqueduct. At one extremity you see the unpromising cocoons; at the other the most rare and beautiful velvets and gros de Naples. The locality of this manufactory is delightful, and the old queen preferred its comforts and cheerfulness to the solitary grandeur of the palace in the plain. In place of occupying and paying the poor round his palace to make silk and satins for his court and the Pope, the present king spends his money in gunpowder and soldiering. They accuse him of having less compassion for the misfortunes of the poor than even his father Francis, or his grandfather Ferdinand of blessed memory. The view from this spot of the huge palace itself, with Vesuvius smoking to our right, and Capri shining before it, is one of those not to be forgotten.

THE SNAKE TAMER.

Behold the old snake-finder with his sack! "Ola! vecchio, che cosa avete pigliato quest' oggi?" was a question put from our one-horse cart, till then going at a great rate through the village of Somma, to a little old man, with a humpback, a sack, and a large shallow box. He was dressed in a queer costume, had a wolf's brush in his hat, and remarkably tight-fitting leather leggings. "Tre! fra altri una vipera meschia." "Oh! oh! aspetta," added we—we must see the viper. Upon which there was a broad grin all round the circle; but the driver stopped, and down we got. The old man, seeing our intention to be serious, got a chair for us from a cottage, and putting his box on his knee, looked knowing, and thus began.

"Gentlemen, you have all seen a viper, basta feroce—a reptile that every one runs from except me, and those who know, as I do, how to humour him. I have a viper in this box whom I have so perfectly tamed, that he lives with two others, and never quarrels with them. I will open the box, and, as you will see, they will all lie as if they were dead, until I notice one, when he will put up his head that I may take him out."

He opened the box, where lay coiled, and perfectly still, a spotted viper, an immense black snake, and one very light and silvery like an eel.

"Here's my family," said the old man; and catching the viper round the middle, brought him out, while the others wriggled a little, as if in expectation of being caressed in their turn. "This animal, signor, is not so bad in his temper as you have been told. It is only when he is making love that he is poisonous—to all but his females; but in this, gentlemen, he is scarcely worse than many of yourselves, whom it is not safe then to approach."

"Bravo, bravo, vecchaccio! ancora! Go it again!" sounds every where from the circle collected round the old snake-charmer.

"If you tread upon his tail, gentlemen, what can you expect but a bite? Would not you bite if you had your tails trodden on?"

The viper now raised his head, and darted it out, with about half of his body behind it, at the crowd. The two nearest peasants fell back. The viper, missing his spring, turns round to bite the hand that is holding him, but no sooner touches it, than off it glides from the horny finger, wriggling both head and tail at a great rate.

"He has been warmed by my hand, sirs, and wants to escape! Ingrato! Come, I have something to tell you that these gentlemen must not hear!"

And he opened his month, and the viper thrust his head between his lips; upon which the old man closes them and makes believe to mumble the horrid head, the body appearing violently convulsed, as if it really suffered violence.

"He has lost his teeth," said one, "and can't bite."

"Sicuro," said another, and began to yawn.

"No," said the old man, "his teeth are all in his head. You doubt it, do you? See here, then."

And catching him by the head, and drawing down his lower jaw, having forced the mouth to its full stretch, he drew the red surface of his upper-jaw smartly over the back of his own hand two or three times, so as to bring blood from six or seven orifices. Then, drying the blood off his hand, he returns his viper to the box, and asks a baiocco for the exhibition.

"What's the price of your viper?" ask we.

"Two carlines, excellenza."

"Here, tie him up for me in my handkerchief." Which was accordingly done, and we popped him into spirits of wine, as a souvenir of Monte Somma, and of the old man whom we saw handling him.

"Does he gain a livelihood by his trade?" we enquired.

"He teaches people how to catch serpents; and by familiarizing them with the danger, they work in greater comfort, and are not afraid of going over any part of Monte Somma, which, as it abounds in vipers and snakes, still deters the unpractised a little. Besides, they like to see the snake caught and exhibited, and every body gives him something."



A MEDITATION.

Some hidden disappointment clings To all of man—to all his schemes, And life has little fair it brings, Save idle dreams.

The peace that may be ours to-day, Scarce heed we, looking for the morrow; The slighted moments steal away, And then comes sorrow.

The light of promise that may glow Where life shines fair in bud or bloom, Ere fruit hath ripen'd forth to show, Is quench'd in gloom.

The rapture softest blush imparts, Dies with the bloom that fades away, And glory from the wave departs At close of day.

Where we have garner'd up our hearts, And fixed our earnest love and trust, The very life-blood thence departs, And all is dust.

Then, Nature, let us turn to thee; For in thy countless changes thou Still bearest immortality Upon they brow.

Thy seasons, in their endless round Of sunshine, tempest, calm or blight, Yet leave thee like an empress crown'd With jewels bright.

Thy very storms are life to thee, 'Tis but a sleep thy seeming death; We see thee wake in flower and tree At spring's soft breath.

We view the ruin of our youth, Decay's wan trace on all we cherish; But thou, in thine unfailing truth, Canst never perish.

J.D.



ON THE OLD YEAR.

With mournful tone I hear thee say, "Alas, another year hath sped!" As if within that circlet lay Life's garland dead.

Vain thought! Thy measure is not Time's; Not thus yields life each glowing hue; Fair fruit may fall—the tendril climbs, And clasps anew.

Time hath mute landmarks of his own; They are not such as man may raise; Not his the rudely number'd stone On life's broad ways.

The record measuring his speed Is but a shadow softer spread— A browner leaf—a broken reed, Or mildew shed.

And if his footfall crush the flower, How sweet the spicy perfume springs! His mildew stain upon the tower A glory brings.

Then let the murmuring voice be still, The heart hold fast its treasure bright; The hearth glows warm when sunbeams chill; Life hath no night.

J.D.



CORALI.

Soft-brow'd, majestic Corali! Thou like a memory serene Seemest to me—or melody, Or moonlight scene.

With thee life in soft plumage glides, As on the ruffled lake the swan, Whose downy breast the struggle hides That speeds it on.

In thy fair presence wakes no care; Harsh discords into music melt; Thy harmony alone is there— Alone is felt.

The heart, unsway'd by hope or dread, Safe haven'd in a clime of balm, Nor chain'd in ice, nor tempest-sped, Lies rock'd in calm.

J.D.



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF FRANK ABNEY HASTINGS.

"Man wrongs and time avenges, and my name May form a monument not all obscure."

The success of the Greek insurrection against the Turks, is the event in contemporary history concerning which it is most difficult to form a precise and correct idea. Causes and effects seem, to the ordinary observer, to be utterly disproportionate. Its progress set the calculations of statesmen at defiance; and while congresses, ambassadors, and protocols, were attempting to fetter it in one direction, it generally advanced with increased speed in some other, totally unexpected.

It was very natural that the Greeks should take up arms to emancipate themselves from Turkish oppression, the moment a favourable opportunity presented itself; but certainly, few foreigners conceived that the time they selected afforded them much chance of success. Kolocotroni, however, appears to have understood the internal condition of the Ottoman empire rather better than Metternich. The unwarlike habits of the majority of the Greek population, contrasted with the military feelings of the Turks, and with the numbers and valour of the Ottoman armies, rendered their cause desperate for some years, even in the opinion of their most enthusiastic friends. The whole progress of the Revolution was filled with anomalous occurrences; and the wisdom of the statesman, and the skill of the warrior, were constantly set at nought by events, the causes of which have still been too generally overlooked by the professional politicians of all nations who mix in the affairs of Greece.

Unquestionably, therefore, there exists much in the condition of the Greek nation, and in the character of the people, which has been completely misunderstood by foreigners. Nor do we entertain any hope of seeing the affairs of Greece placed on a better footing, until the Greeks themselves collect and publish detailed information concerning the statistics and the administration of the kingdom.

Hitherto, not a single report of any value has been published on any branch of the public service; so that the foreign ministers at Athens are, from absolute want of materials, compelled to confine their active exertions for the good of Greece to recommending King Otho to choose particular individuals, devoted to the English, French, or Russian party, as the case may be, to the office of cabinet ministers. Not even an army list has yet been published in Greece, though the Hellenic kingdom is in the twelfth year of its existence. But as the publication of an army list would put some restraint on political jobbing and ministerial patronage, each minister leaves it to be done by his successor.

The fate of all the foreigners who have taken an active part in the Greek Revolution is worthy of notice. Many persons of high, and of deservedly high, reputation embarked in the cause, yet not one of the number added to his previous fame by his exploits. Although the names of Byron, Cochrane, and Capo d'Istrias appear in the annals of Greece, it is doubtful whether their actions in the country exercised any direct influence on the course of events. We think we may safely assert that they did not, and that these distinguished and able men were all carried along by the current of events. To us, it appears that the fate of Greece would have undergone no change if these great men had changed places;—if Capo d'Istrias had enacted the part of lord high admiral, Lord Cochrane that of commander-in-chief at Missolonghi, and Lord Byron, in his day, that of president of the Greek republic, things would have been little better and no worse. The ambassadors with their treaties and protocols at London, and the admirals with their untoward event at Navarin, were almost as unfortunate as all other volunteers in the Greek cause. The ambassadors were occupied for years in trying to hinder the Greek state from attaining the form it ultimately assumed; and, in spite of the battle of Navarin, Ibrahim Pasha carried away from the Peloponnesus an immense number of Greek prisoners, in the very fleet the allied admirals supposed they had destroyed.

The insignificance of individual exertions in this truly national Revolution, has been equally remarkable among the Greeks themselves. Indeed it has been made a capital charge against them by strangers, that no man of distinguished talent has arisen to direct the destinies of the country. Perhaps there is a worse feature than this prominent in the Greek community, and this is a disposition to calumniate whatever little merit may exist. Here again, however, we cannot refrain from remarking, that a singular resemblance may be traced between the conduct of the strangers in Greece, and the Greeks themselves. A vice so predominant must doubtless be nourished by some inherent defect in the constitution of society in Greece, rather than in the characters of individuals.

If no Greek has succeeded in gaining a glorious pre-eminence by the Revolution, we must recollect that the foreigners who have visited the country have contrived to bury there all the fame they brought with them. Singular too as it may appear, a love of quarrelling and a passion for calumny have been found to be as decidedly characteristic of the foreigners in Greece, as of the natives. The Philhellenes were notoriously a most insubordinate body; the English in Greece have never been able to live together in amity and concord; the three European powers who signed a treaty to aid and protect Greece, have rarely been able to agree on the means of carrying their good intentions into execution on a systematic plan. The Regency sent to civilize the country during King Otho's minority, though consisting of only three members, set the Greeks an example of what the Litany calls "blindness of heart, pride, vain-glory, and hypocrisy, envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness." The corps diplomatique has often astounded the Greeks by its feuds and dissensions. The Bavarians made their sojourn in the country one prolonged querelle d'Allemande. Even the American missionaries at Athens have not escaped severe attacks of the universal epidemic, and during the paroxysms of the malady have made all Greece spectators of their quarrels.[10]

The single exception which so often occurs to confirm the general ruler, exists in this case as in so many others. One European officer rendered very important services to Greece, and so conducted himself as to acquire the respect and esteem of every party in that singularly factious land. This officer was Frank Abney Hastings; but he always made it his rule of life to act, amidst the license and anarchy of society in Greece, precisely as he would have felt himself called upon to act in similar circumstances, could they have occurred, in England. We shall now attempt to erect a humble monument to his memory. The pages of Maga have frequently rescued much that is good from the shadow of oblivion; and, in this instance, we hope that a short account of the actions of the best of the Philhellenes will not only do honour to his memory, but will likewise throw some new light on the history of the Greek Revolution.

Frank Abney Hastings was the younger son of the late Lieutenant-general Sir Charles Hastings, Bart., and his elder brother Sir Charles Abney Hastings inherited the baronetcy. The late Sir Charles Hastings was colonel of the 12th foot, and knight grand cross of the Guelphic order; he possessed a large fortune, and he was well known for his singularity at Carlton House, and in the fashionable circles of London, about the beginning of the present century. The present baronet, Sir Charles Abney Hastings, entered the army when young, but retired after having served some time in the Mediterranean. Frank was born on the 14th of February 1794, and was placed in the navy when about eleven years old. Hardly six months after he became a midshipman, he was present at the battle of Trafalgar on board the Neptune. An explosion of powder between the decks of the Neptune during the action, by which several men were killed and wounded, early directed his attention to the service of artillery on board ship; and the science of gunnery became his favourite study. Hastings was subsequently serving in the Seahorse when that frigate engaged two Turkish men-of-war, and captured one of them, which proved to be a frigate much larger than herself. During his career of service, he visited every quarter of the globe.

After having served nearly fifteen years, he was sent to the West Indies in command of the Kangaroo, a vessel destined for the surveying service, carrying out his commission as commander. On arriving in the harbour of Port-Royal, in Jamaica, he was supposed to have brought the Kangaroo to an anchor in an improper manner. The flag-captain of the admiral's ship, then in the harbour considered this offence so extraordinary, that he took a still more extraordinary manner of expressing his dissatisfaction. We cannot give our readers a better idea of the circumstance than by transcribing the words of a letter which Hastings, on his return to England, addressed to Lord Melville, then first lord of the Admiralty. "He thought proper to hail me in a voice that rang through the whole of Port-Royal, saying—'You have overlayed our anchor—you ought to be ashamed of yourself—you damned lubber, you—who are you?'" Of course such an insult, both personal and professional, could never be overlooked. Hastings, however, feeling the importance of any step he might take to his future reputation, both as a sailor and a gentleman, waited until he had delivered up the command of the Kangaroo to the officer appointed to conduct the survey; and having received his commission as commander, and being ready to return to England on half-pay, he sent a challenge to the flag-captain who had thus insulted him.

The admiral on the station was, by some circumstance, informed of this challenge, and on his representation of the affair to the Admiralty, Hastings was dismissed the service. We shall conclude our mention of this most unfortunate business by quoting a few more words from the letter of Hastings to Lord Melville, which we have already alluded to:—"I have served fourteen years under various captains, and on almost all stations. I have certainly seen greater errors committed before; yet I never was witness to such language used to the commander of a British vessel bearing a pendant." "Your lordship may, perhaps, find officers that will submit to such language, but I do not envy them their dearly purchased rank; and God forbid that the British navy should have no better supporters of its character than such spiritless creatures." These words express the deep attachment he always felt to the service.

"Alas! how bitter is his country's curse To him who for that country would expire."

Hastings now found that all his hopes of advancement at home were blasted, and, without any loss of time, he determined to qualify himself for foreign service. He flattered himself that he might acquire a reputation abroad, which would one day obtain for him the restoration of his rank in the navy in a distinguished manner. He resided in France for some time, in order to acquire a thorough knowledge of the French language, which, by dint of close application, he soon spoke and wrote with ease and correctness.

About three years after his dismissal from the navy, the position of the Greeks induced him to believe that in Greece he should find an opportunity of putting in practice several plans for the improvement of maritime warfare which he had long meditated. He embarked at Marseilles on the 12th of March 1822, and arrived at Hydra on the 3d of April. Here he was kindly received by the two brothers Jakomaki and Manoli Tombazis, and their acquaintance soon ripened into friendship.

The Greek fleet was preparing to sail from Hydra to encounter the Turks, and Hastings was anxious to accompany it, in order to witness the manner in which the Greeks and Turks conducted their naval warfare. As it was necessary for a stranger to receive an authorization from the general government before embarking in the fleet, Hastings repaired to Corinth, which was then the seat of the executive power. The hostility displayed to the Greek cause by Sir Thomas Maitland, the lord high commissioner in the Ionian islands, had rendered the British name exceedingly unpopular at this time, in Greece, and Alexander Maurocordatos, (called at that period Prince Maurocordatos,) who was president of the Greek Republic, partook of the popular prejudice against Englishmen.

On arriving at Corinth Hastings met with a very cool reception, and spies were placed to watch his conduct; for though the president had made no progress in organizing the naval, military, or financial administration, he had already established a numerous and active secret police. For several days Hastings was unable to obtain an audience of Maurocordatos; but an American, Mr Jarvis, (afterwards a lieutenant-general in the Greek service,) to whom Hastings had given a passage from Marseilles, was received with great attention. Jarvis, as well as Hastings, observed "that the police was very severe and vigilant in Corinth;" and on the 15th of April he wrote thus:—"I paid my respects to the prince, and was invited to come in the evening. I had a long conversation with him, and he was particularly kind to me, and liked me the more, as he said, for being an American. He told me many of the bad actions of the English, and plainly told me he and the rest took my friend and companion for a spy. I then answered what was necessary—approved his dislike of the English and his foresight, but showed him that he was in the wrong in this case."

These suspicions being mentioned to Hastings, he immediately addressed a letter to the president, demanding that his offer of serving on board the fleet should be either definitely refused or accepted by the Greek government. He, at the same time, pointed out to Maurocordatos the absurdity of suspecting him as a spy. We translate his own letter, which is in French. "I am suspected by your excellency of being an English spy. Considering the conduct of the British government to Greece, I expected to meet with some prejudice against the English among the ignorant; but I own I was not prepared to find this illiberality among men of rank and education. If the English government required a spy in Greece, it would not address itself to a person of my condition. I am the younger son of Sir Charles Hastings, Baronet, a general in the army, and who was educated in his youth with the Marquis of Hastings, governor-general of India; so that I could surely find a more lucrative, less dangerous, and more respectable employment in India than that of a spy in Greece. I quitted England because I considered the government treated me with injustice, in arbitrarily dismissing me from the navy, after more than fourteen years of active service, for an affair of honour, while I was on half-pay." This letter obtained for Hastings an audience of the president, and his services were at length accepted.

On the 3d of May 1822, the Greek fleet began to get under weigh at Hydra, and Hastings embarked as a volunteer on board the Themistocles, a corvette belonging to the brothers Tombazis. The scene presented by the Hydriote ships hauling out of harbour was calculated to depress the hopes of the most sanguine friend of Greece. Those of the crew who chose to come on board did so; the rest remained on shore, and came off as it suited their convenience. When it became necessary to make sail, the men loosed the sails, but shortly found that no sheets were rove, and the bow-lines bent to the bunt line cringles. At last sheets were rove. But as the ships were getting clear of the harbour, a squall came on; then every man on board shouted to take in sail; but there were no clue-lines bent, and the men were obliged to go out on the jib-boom to haul down the sail by hand. The same thing occurred with the topgallant sails. The crews, however, were gradually collected; things assumed some slight appearance of order; and after this singular exhibition of anarchy and confusion, the fleet bore up for Psara.

It is needless to describe the scenes of misery Hastings witnessed when the fleet arrived at Scio, as the particulars of the frightful manner in which that island had been devastated by the Turks are generally known. The war was at this period carried on with unexampled barbarity, both by the Greeks and Turks. As an illustration of the manner in which naval warfare had been previously conducted in the Levant, we shall quote the account given by an English sailor of the conduct of the Russo-Greek privateers in 1788. The modern atrocities were not perpetrated on so large a scale, and the officers rarely countenanced them, but still it would be too invidious to cite single examples. We shall therefore copy a short extract from Davidson's narrative of a cruise on board one of the vessels connected with the expedition of the famous Greek privateer and pirate, Lambro. "The prize had on board eighty-five hands, which we took on board us, and confined in the hold until next day; when they were called up one by one, and had their heads cut off in the same manner as we cut off ducks' heads at home, and we then threw them overboard. This was the first time we were obliged to take it by turns to put them to death. The English, when called upon, at first refused it; but when the captain told them they were cowards, and that he could not believe they were Englishmen, they went and did the same as the rest; and afterwards were even worse than the others, for they always were first when such work was going on. Sometimes we had three or four in a day to put to death for each man's share." Things are certainly better than this in our times; but the statesmen who have constituted the kingdom of Greece should recollect, that these occurrences took place in the dominions of King Otho on the 21st of May 1789, and that similar scenes, though not on so extensive a scale, were witnessed by Hastings in the month of May 1822.

The Greek naval force at this period consisted entirely of merchant ships, fitted out at the private expense of their owners. These vessels were generally commanded either by the owners or their near relations, whose whole fortune frequently consisted in the vessel they were to lead into action. It is not surprising that under such circumstances many brave men, who would willingly have exposed their lives, felt some hesitation in risking their property. The Greek ships, previously to the breaking out of the Revolution, had been navigated by crews interested in certain fixed proportions in the profits of the cargo. As the proprietor of the ship, the captain, and the sailors formed a kind of joint-stock company, they were in the habit of deliberating together on the measures to be adopted, and in discussing the destination of the vessel. The disorder and want of discipline naturally arising from such habits, were greatly increased by the practice which was introduced at the breaking out of the Revolution, of always paying the sailors their wages in advance. In a fleet so composed and manned, Hastings soon perceived that there was no hope of executing any of his projects for the improvement of naval artillery. After fitting locks and sights to the guns in the Themistocles, and building up a furnace for heating shot in her hold, he found that all his arrangements were of no avail. Some order was absolutely necessary, but he discovered by experience that there was nothing the Albanians of Hydra held in so much honour as disorder.

The naval campaign of 1822 was signalized by the successful attack of the Greek fire-ships on the fleet of the Capitan Pasha off Scio. Kanaris, who conducted his vessel with admirable courage and presence of mind, set fire to the ship bearing the pasha's flag, which was completely destroyed. Pepinos, who commanded the Hydriot fire-ship, was not so fortunate in his attack on the ship of the Reala Bey. His vessel was disengaged, and though it drifted on board another line-of-battle ship, the Turks succeeded in extinguishing the flames in both.

Hastings, having failed to persuade the Greeks to fit out one or two gun-boats with long guns of large calibre and furnaces for heating shot, became disgusted with the service on board the fleet, which was confined to sending marauding parties to the coast of Asia Minor, where the plunder was oftener taken from the poor Greek villagers than from their Ottoman masters. These expeditions were conducted with unparalleled disorder, and without any plan. Before quitting the fleet, Hastings made a last attempt to inspire the councils of the admiral with some of his own energy. He waited on the celebrated Admiral Miaoulis with a plan for capturing a Turkish frigate then anchored at Tenedos. This interview between these two remarkable men is of great importance for the appreciation of their respective characters and views at this period. In order to convey to our readers as vividly as possible the impression which it produced on the mind of Hastings, we shall transcribe the account of it in his own words. "I proposed to direct a fire-ship and three other vessels upon the frigate, and, when near the enemy, to set fire to certain combustibles which should throw out a great flame; the enemy would naturally conclude they were all fire-ships. The vessels were then to attach themselves to the frigate, fire broadsides double-shotted, throwing on board the enemy at the same time combustible balls which give a great smoke without flame. This would doubtless induce him to believe he was on fire, and give a most favourable opportunity for boarding him. However, the admiral returned my plan, saying only [Greek: chalho], without asking a single question, or wishing me to explain its details; and I observed a kind of insolent contempt in his manner, which no doubt arose from the late success of Kanaris. This interview with the admiral disgusted me. They place you in a position in which it is impossible to render any service, and then they boast of their own superiority, and of the uselessness of the Franks (as they call us) in Turkish warfare." It must be recollected, in justification of Miaoulis, that he had not then had time to avail himself of the enlarged experience he subsequently acquired in his capacity of admiral of the Greek fleet. He was then little more than a judicious and courageous captain of a merchant brig, just elected by the suffrage of his equals to lead them. As one of the owners of the ships hired by government, his attention was naturally rather directed to the destruction than to the capture of the large Turkish men-of-war; and it is probable that he considered the total want of discipline among the Hydriotes as presenting insuperable difficulties to the execution of the plan, and as likely to render the Turkish frigate, even if captured, utterly useless to the Greeks, who would doubtless have allowed her to rot in port.

Shortly after this disagreeable affair, Hastings had an opportunity of acquiring considerable personal reputation among the Hydriote sailors, by saving the corvette of Tombazis in circumstances of great danger. In pursuing some Turkish sakolevas off the north of Mytilene, they ran in near Cape Baba, and made for the shore under a cliff, where a considerable number of armed men soon collected from the neighbouring town. The captain and crew of the Themistocles, eager for prizes, pursued them; when the ship was suddenly becalmed within gun-shot of a battery at the town, which opened a well-directed fire on the corvette. In getting from under the fire of the battery, a baffling wind and strong current drove the ship within sixty yards of the high rocky cliff where the Turkish soldiers were posted. These troops opened a sharp but ill-directed fire of musketry on the deck of the Themistocles; and on this occasion the total want of order, and the disrespect habitually shown to the officers, had very nearly caused the loss of the vessel. The whole crew sought shelter from the Turkish fire under the bulwarks, and no one could be induced to obey the orders which every one issued. A single man would spring forward for a few seconds, at intervals, to execute the most necessary manoeuvre. Hastings was the only person on deck who remained silently watching the ship slowly drifting towards the rocks. He was fortunately the first to perceive the change in the direction of a light breeze which sprang up, and by immediately springing forward on the bowsprit, he succeeded in getting the ship's head round. Her sails soon filled, and she moved out of her awkward position. As upwards of two hundred and fifty Turks were assembled on the rocks above, and fresh men were arriving every moment, there can be no doubt that in a short time the enemy would have brought a piece of artillery to bear on the Themistocles from a position inaccessible to her fire; so that, even if she had escaped going on shore on the rocks, her destruction seemed inevitable, had she remained an hour within gun-shot of the cliff. Thus, the finest vessel in the Greek fleet was in imminent danger of being lost, through the carelessness and obstinacy of the captain, who, though repeatedly entreated by Hastings to have a small anchor constantly in readiness, could never be induced to take this necessary precaution.

On this occasion, however, both the captain and the crew of the Themistocles did Hastings ample justice. Though they had refused to avail themselves of his skill, and neglected his advice, they now showed no jealousy in acknowledging his gallant conduct, and he became a permanent favourite with the crew ever after this exploit. Though he treated all with great reserve and coldness, as a means of insuring respect, there was not a man on board that was not always ready to do him any service. Indeed the candid and hearty way in which they acknowledged the courage of Hastings, and blamed their own conduct in allowing a stranger to expose his life in so dangerous a manner to save them, afforded unquestionable proof that so much real generosity was inseparable from courage, and that, with proper discipline and good officers, the sailors of the Greek fleet would have had few superiors.

When the naval campaign was concluded, Hastings joined the troops engaged in the siege of Nauplia. That force was exposed to the greatest danger by the irruption of a large Turkish army into the Morea, commanded by Dramali Pasha. While engaged in defending the little fort of Bourdzi in the port of Nauplia, and under the guns of that fortress, he became intimately acquainted with Mr Hane, a young artillery officer, who subsequently served under his orders with great distinction. At this time Hastings raised a company of fifty men, whom he armed and equipped at his own expense. But as his actions on shore are not immediately connected with the great results of his services to Greece, we shall confine this sketch exclusively to the share he took in the naval warfare. He served the campaign of 1823 in Crete, as commander of the artillery; but a violent fever compelling him to quit that island in autumn, he found, on his return to Hydra, that Lord Byron had arrived at Cephalonia.

It was of great importance to the Greek cause that the services of Lord Byron should be usefully directed, and it was equally necessary that the funds collected by the Greek committee in London should be expended in the way most likely to be of permanent advantage to Greece. The moment appeared suitable for one who, like Hastings, had acquired some experience by active service, both with the fleet and army, to offer his advice. He accordingly drew up a project for the construction and armament of a steam-vessel, which he recommended as the most effectual mode of advancing the Greek cause, by giving the fleet a decided superiority over the Turks at sea. It appeared to Hastings that it was only by the introduction of a well-disciplined naval force, directly dependent on the central government, that order could be introduced into the administration, as well as a superiority secured over the enemy. It is not necessary to enter into all the professional details of this memoir, as we shall have occasion to state the manner in which Hastings carried his views into execution a few years later. Its conclusion was to recommend Lord Byron to direct his attention to the purchase or construction of a steam-vessel, armed with heavy guns, and fitted up for the use of hot shot and shells as its ordinary projectiles.

Neither Lord Byron nor Colonel Stanhope, the agent of the Greek committee, seem to have appreciated the military science of Hastings, and the plan met with little support from either.

The Greek government shortly after this obtained its first loan in England; and, during the summer of 1824, Hastings endeavoured to impress its members with the necessity of rendering the national cause not entirely dependent on the disorderly and tumultuous merchant marine, which it was compelled to hire at an exorbitant price. It is needless to record all the difficulties and opposition he met with from a government consisting in part of shipowners, eager to obtain a share of the loan as hire for their ships. These ships were in some danger of rotting in harbour, in case a national navy should be formed. The loan, however, appeared inexhaustible; and in the autumn of 1824, Hastings returned to England, with a promise that the Greek government would lose no time in instructing their deputies in London to procure a steam-vessel to be armed under his inspection, and of which he was promised the command. This promise was soon forgotten; a number of favourable accidents deluded the members of the Greek government into the belief that their deliverance from the Turkish yoke was already achieved, and they began to neglect the dictates of common prudence. The Greek committee in London emulated the example of the Greek government at Nauplia; and in place of acting according to the suggestions of common sense and common honesty, that body engaged in a number of tortuous transactions, ending in the concoction of a dish called "the Greek pie." Ibrahim Pasha awakened the heroes at Nauplia from their dreams, and Cobbett disturbed the reveries of the sages in London.

The success which attended Ibrahim Pasha on his landing in the Peloponnesus in 1825, and the improvement displayed by the Turks in their naval operations, seriously alarmed the Greeks. The advice of Hastings occurred to their remembrance; but, even then, it required the active exertions of two judicious friends of Greece in London to induce the Greek deputies to take the necessary measures for fitting out a steamer. Hastings, in a letter addressed to the Greeks, which he wrote on his return to Greece, declared distinctly that the gratitude of the Greek nation was due to the Right Honourable Edward Ellice and to Sir John Hobhouse, and not to the Greek deputies in London, if the steam-vessel he commanded proved of any service to the cause.

Greece was then in a desperate condition. Navarin was taken by Ibrahim Pasha, the Romeliat army was completely defeated, and the Egyptians encamped in the centre of the Peloponnesus, after routing every body of troops which attempted to arrest their progress. The Turkish and Egyptian fleets kept the sea in spite of the gallant attacks of Miaoulis; and the partial successes of the Greeks were more honourable to their courage than injurious to the real strength of their enemies. In the mean time, the Greek government had lost all power of commanding either respect or obedience at home, in consequence of the civil wars which prevailed previously to the arrival of the Egyptians, and the intrigues of Maurocordatos and Kolettis to obtain the sole direction of affairs.

At this conjuncture, Lord Cochrane's name excited universal attention in England, and he was engaged by the Greek deputies, and some friends of the cause, to enter the Greek service. He received for his services L37,000 sterling, in cash; and an additional sum of L20,000 was paid into the hands of Sir Francis Burdett, to be given to Lord Cochrane whenever the independence of Greece should be secured.

This transaction happened in the month of August 1825; but in the month of March, a steam-vessel, called the Perseverance, of about four hundred tons, had already been ordered; and Hastings had been named to command her, and received authority to arm her with sixty-eight pounders, according to the plan he had submitted to the Greek government. When Lord Cochrane was appointed commander-in-chief of the Greek fleet, five more steam-vessels were ordered to be built; but it may be observed, that only two of these ever reached Greece. The equipment of the Perseverance was then kept back, in order that the whole squadron might sail together under the auspices of Lord Cochrane. The news of the taking of Missolonghi by the Turks at last threw the friends of Greece into such a state of alarm, and the outcry against the dilatory manner in which the steam-boat expedition in the Thames was fitting out, became so violent over all Europe, that the Perseverance was hastily completed, and allowed to sail alone.

After a series of difficulties and disappointments, which it required all the extraordinary perseverance and energy of Hastings to overcome, he was hurried away from Deptford on the twenty-sixth of May 1826, though the engine of the Perseverance was evidently in a very defective state. The boiler burst in the Mediterranean; and the ship was detained at Cagliari, reconstructing a boiler, until the twenty-eighth of August. She arrived in Greece too late to be of any use in the naval campaign of that year. The winter was spent in aiding the operations of the army, which was endeavouring to raise the siege of Athens.

The Karteria, which was the name of the Perseverance in the Greek navy, was armed on the principle which Hastings had laid down as necessary to place the Greeks with small vessels on some degree of equality with the line-of-battle ships and large frigates of the Turks: namely, that of using projectiles more destructive than the shot of the enemy. These projectiles were hot shot and shells, instead of the cold round-shot of the Turks. We have already mentioned that the Karteria was armed with sixty-eight pounders. Of these she mounted eight; four were carronades of the government pattern, and four were guns of a new form, cast after a model prepared by Hastings himself. These guns were seven feet four inches long in the bore, and weighed fifty-eight hundred-weight. They had the form of carronades in every thing but the addition of trunnions to mount them like long guns; these trunnions, however, were, contrary to the usual practice, placed so that their centre intersected a line through the centre of the bore of the gun. They were mounted on ten-inch howitzer carriages, which answered the purpose admirably. The shells used were generally strapped to wooden bottoms; but they were more than once employed without any precaution, except that of putting them in the gun with the fusees towards the muzzle. The hot shot were heated in the engine fires, and were brought on deck by two men in a machine resembling a double coal-box, which was easily tilted up at the muzzle of the gun to be loaded.