GREECE BY HERMANN HETTNER. * Discaremorr, archteology, and the social condition
and prospects of Modern Greece, are the topics of Hermann Hettners book. The descriptions are somewhat overdone ; or rather, like most descrip- tions, they are deficient in interest from failing to present ideas with which the mind can sympathize. The archeology is the work of a man with a keen enjoyment of the beautiful, cultivated 'into critical perception ; a scholarly knowledge of history and art, saved from precipitate conclusions or indiscriminate enthusiasm by I sensible mind. The student who wishes to get an idea of what the more celebrated cities and temples of Greece were, and what they now are, should go carefully through this volume with a good map. The picture of the condition and prospect of modern Greece is valuable, for the information it furnishes upon an European kingdom to which much interest attaches from old associations and as a political experiment,—the trifling matter of the loan we have guaranteed being altogether put aside. Just now, the subject has an immediate attraction from the Russian leanings of Greece, the part she has taken in the war, and the difficulties that may yet spring up in dealing with her. And the author's opinion is likely to be the more trustworthy from his having written in 1852, before the present complications were visible ; and from the circumstance that a German, even if not a Bavarian, is hardly likely to be prejudiced against Greece. His picture is dark and sad enough. Poor, bigoted, prejudiced, depopulated, the mass of leer people in barbarous ignorance, and the few of her educated sons exhibiting a foreign half-civilization incongruously covering their native Orientalism, her restoration is impossible ; and the continuance of her seeming vitality is dependent on the jealousy of the other powers. " Greece falls the moment any important event introduces a serious alteration in the distribution of territory, which forms the basis of what is called the balance of power." The reasons for this conclusion of Hermann Hettner are various. He seems to hold that a people which has done its work in the world must pass away—that its mind or blood is, so to speak, effete, and not adapted to a newer state, even which it may have largely contributed to produce. He has reasons, however, of a more tan- gible and cogent character. The country is greatly underpeopled for industrial occupations, either manufacturing or agricultural. "In Athens, a labourer's daily wages amount to nearly three shillings, besides his meals. Several attempts have been made by Frenchmen and Englishmen to establish factories of various kinds ; but, with labour at such a high price, foreign competition soon proved too much for them." The Greeks have not the means to make excavations; will not allow foreigners to undertake them, lest they should carry away the spoils ; even when an extensive excavation was proposed to them, and every relic discovered was guaranteed to the Museum, it was not permitted. Colonization on a large scale—and it may be added, large capital too—is the only means of creating an agricultural prosperity; for the most fertile hands require extensive draining: but colonization of any kind the vain and envious Greeks will not permit. The following passage refers to Corinth and its neighbourhood. "The country has become a wilderness ; and the utter neglect of the soil has engendered pestilence in the air. For a number of years there have been two German physicians here, both of whom have found an. extensive
• Athens and, the Peloponnese; with Sketches of Northern Greece. From the German of Hermann esettner. [Constable's Miscellany of Foreign Literature.] Published by Constable and Co., Edinburgh.
and lucrative practice ; in a few weeks they will leave Corinth ; they and their families are the victims-of incessant attacks of fever.
" Colonization on the most extensive scale is the only hope of Greece. But the Greeks hate foreigners, and contrive effectually to baffle all attempts at a comprehensive system of colonization. In the year 1846, a Bavarian captain of artillery, named Hutz, wished to plant a German village on the isthmus. Ministers had signified their approbation : in Bavaria, the emi- grants were already preparing for their departure, and most of the houses were built and ready to receive them; but in the mean time, the Ministry had brought the matter before the Chamber of Representatives, who refused to give their consent. The houses are now falling to ruin without having ever been inhabited. There is no help for those who will not be advised. " But we Germans have little reason to complain that the emigration to Greece has of late ceased. Experience has shown that settlements there are always unsuccessful. And they must remain so till they take place on a scale of such magnitude as shall insure the recovery of the soil from the desolation of two thousand years of barbarism, by its careful, thorough, and systematic cultivation, from one end of the land to the other."
From some statements in other parts of the volume, a doubt may be entertained whether this extensive cultivation could be praotically carried out, with a profit. Without implicitly agree- ing with them, Hettner quotes the views of Karl Frans the bo- tanist ; who had long resided in Greece, and frequently visited every part of it; and who declares the "real regeneration of Greece to be a physical impossibility."
"And this physical impossibility he finds in the want of wood and water.
"He says, ship-building, Iron-founding, glass-manufacturing, sugar- manufacturing, house-building, lime-burning, in short, manufactures of every description, require wood and water power. Homer and Heeded fre- quently mention forests. Theopbrastus speaks of extensive forests on Par- nassus and Helicon, on Taygetus and Cyllene, but especially in the higher regions of Arcadia. There is now scarcely any wood in the districts of Greece which are of easy access ; on Parnassus, wood commences at a height of two thousand feet—at the convent of Jerusalem, with the silver fir. The continually encroaching desert-climate has forced the wood in all quarters back to the highest mountain-ranges. It is found abundantly only in the highlands of Etolia, and Eastern Acarnania, in Phthiotis, and central Eubeea, and in the ravines of Cyllene and Taygetus. Artificial forest-cul- tore is impossible ; the conservation of what still remains is attended with almost insuperable difficulties. Whence would come the support of the flocks and herds—half the wealth of the country—if the goat-herds were not at liberty to wander through the land from Athrys and Tymphrestus to Teenarus and Nalea ?—whence the fruitfulness of the naked hills, if the low wood were no longer to be burnt down and its ashes used as manure ? The restoration of the ancient forests is impossible, more especially because the geographical limits of the elements regulating the ylora, have been altogether changed by the destruction of the luxuriant natural vegetation. The want of wood, on the arid and calcareous soil, has materially increased the heat and dryness of the air ; the springs grow constantly more scanty, and the parched earth draws no precipitations from the atmosphere. The sirocco blows' hotter and hotter over the hills, which derive no shelter from their dwarfish and parched shrubbery ; and it finds no springs, nb rivers nor lakes, from which to extract fertilizing vapours. The mountain. pastures do not begin at a height of three thousand feet, they are first found at a height of five thousand. These pastures are covered throughout the summer with flocks of sheep ; on Parnassus alone, eighty thousand head have been counted, which teed in winter in the plains of Salons, Phocis, and Bceotia. But even on the elevated pasture-grounds, owing to the want of springs, the herbage depends for nourishment entirely on atmospheric moisture and the melting snow ; hence the grass is everywhere of short and stunted growth,—a circumstance, however, not unfavourable to the. sheep. In short, where formerly there was wood, there is now only low shrubbery; where formerly there was pasturage, there is now only the vegetation of a steppe. The country, physically considered, has essentially degenerated. And though we may not believe that poor exhausted Greece has, in the course of time, made Gyphts and Wallachians of the ancient Myrniidons and Pelasgians, still we cannot but own that even the pure blood of the heroes of Marathon, or of the Platonic Academy—supposing it had come down to our times undiluted and undeteriorated—would find only the very scantiest, frequently absolutely no external aids, in the competition with those nations which at present contest the prize of progress in Europe and America."
We could easily extend these quotations, by sketches of the people, by pictures of the condition of ancient cities or the sites of ancient oracles, as well as by remarks on art, including a disquisition on the disputed question of did the ancients colour their statues and buildings P—but the book is cheap and easily pro- curable. It forms the second volume of "Constable's Miscellany of Foreign Literature " ; a series which will be valuable both to the public and proprietor, if it include many such works as this.
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