Dn. WORDSWORTH'S 0 REECE.
TUE completion of this work, whose periodical appearance we have frequently noticed, forms one of the most elegant and richly- illustrated volumes on classical subjects we have met with. Typographical beauty and pictorial illustration are not, however, its sole merit. Dr. WORDSWORTH has infused into its literature the learning of the scholar, the science of the natural philosopher, the observation of the traveller, and the just opinions of a man of enlarged sense. And he has animated the whole by a spirit and vivacity rarely to be found in works of a topographical or archmo- logical character. The mere style, too, is worthy of commenda- tion ; being clear and scholastic, with a touch of the sermon-writer, which is rather peculiar than offensive. It must be observed, how- ever, that the remote, and to borrow a phrase applied to languages, the dead nature of the subject, limits its interest. The work may be defined as, essentially, a description and a de- scriptive tour. First placing himself on Mount Zygo, the ancient Lacmos, the most Northern elevation of Greece, Dr. WORDSWORTH comprehensively traces the physical features of the country, as marked 'ay its mountains, rivers, plains, and values; describing the appearance and productions of each, and noting the probable effects which geographical circumstances had in forming the character of the respective inhabitants. Having thus possessed his reader with a general view of Greece and its most striking features, natural and artificial, our author begins his tour, which extends through the whole country—embracing Attica, Bceotia, Thessaly, Epirus, the Ionian Islands, and Peloponnesus. It is not, how- ever, in strictness a tour, nor is it a mere topographical de- scription. Classical Greece is Dr. Wonoswowna's main object ; and though he describes the present as it now appears, his first business is to revive the past —to restore by means of history, or criticism, both literary and artistical, the ruins as they pro- bably were in their pristine state, and the habits of the people who lived amongst them. lie deals not, however, with sites alone, but with scenes ; some no longer the same—as the sea-deserted pass of Thermopylke. ; some unchanged—as the plain of Mara- thon, or the field of Platica ; sonic unchangeable save by Nature's convulsion—as Actium. But there are other claims than history on the classical tourist. Superstition calls him aside, as from the mountain of /Egalens to the Thriasian plain, where, a few days before the fight of Salamis, the "two persons" in the Persian army saw the visionary procession, as they supposed, of Bacchus, and conjectured the impending discomfiture of the " Great Rine Religion induces him to pause upon certain places—as at Delphi; or the ancient gymnastics claim a description — as when he reaches Olympia. Other matters, too, attract him. The quarries whence came the materials of the Grecian structures, and of their statues, are pointed out : near Haack we go with the tourist to the farm of PLATO, and accompany him in tracing the voyage or ULYSSES through the Grecian Archipelago, and listen to his argu.. ment in favour of' the veritable Ithaca against the German geo- grapher,—first, on the large and general principle, that no prince could hope to attract much attention to his adventures who began by a blunder about his own dominions ; second, by a neat explanas tion of the passage. But we also get beyond the Homeric age; now' listening, on the scene of their exploits, to a disquisition OR the character of the older heroes—as Theseus ; now gazing on those vast Cyclopean remains, visibly the production of a society more advanced than any HOMER describes, but which extends beyond the range of history or tradition, and of which flible tells nothing that is intelligible. This account may convey a dim notion of the plan and character of Dr. WORDSWORTH'S volume; but an idea of its execution can only be given 4 extracts. For this purpose we will take a few passages of a miscellaneous kind, not as the best, but as the hest adapted to our crowded columns.
MOUNT About this little village, as Trachis now is, and around its few cottages and small Acids and vioeyards, the verses of' Sophocles bave thrown an interest as lasting as the sea ;Ind mountains by which they are surrounded, by means of the beautiful recital which he has made of the cares and liars iii .Deianeira when dwelling On this spot, and counting the tedious days which had elapsed front the time of her husband's departure, and those which were to pass away before his retina. We look upon the female peasants v ho stand tt the doors 1,1„,.,,t tatsfounnerthale ot' their cottages here with a feeling of regard, and zdniost of reverence, Si the descendants of the Trachinian women of the A.thenian ..... Across this bay the hero [Hercules] svas ferried, wiwo .nilb ring the agonies of approaching death. Prom t he Traehinian shore lle W a.; ciurrolt() the summit of (Eta, which hangs over the site ot' Trachis. Ile was then pyre made of' pines, and oaks, and lentisks,—trees and shrubs which have grown on from age to age on this majestic mountain ; and here, on its summit, noblest altar in the world, the son of Jove, having performed a sacrifice to his father, WOb himself offered as a victim on his tittlitr's mountain ; and having finished all his earthly toils, he thence ascended in a cloud of lire to the peace and joys of the Olympian heaven. To this scene, as exhibiting, in the person of Hercules, time apotheosis of the heroic character,—in which time strength and dignity attn. gods -were conceived to consist, and to concur with the wants and weaknesses of humanity,—iti unison with whieh idea Hercules was transported in triumph front earth to heaven, but by the hand of a woman, the Greek looked with a feeling of awe which made this mountain to him not merely an object of admiration, but a moral teacher both of meekness and courage. This spot was therefore consecrated by the sanctions and solemnities of his religion. By the Greeks of an early age it was vi i,ed with the zeal and frequency of an ardent and regular devotion. It was the object or processions and the scene of sacrifices ; and in later days, even a Consul of Huzielestothatisthede aside from the line of a militaq march to offer his homage to Ili: l spot from whieh he was supposed to have passed from earl I i to lleavoi. Such being the reverence with which the sunitnit of Youint (Eta was re. garded by the inhabitants of this country, and even by those who came there from a distant land, we may well suppose that it exerted a very strong influence of the same kind upon those W110 could number Me hero, u ho tiled. and was adored here, among their own progenitors; and at no other time would this influence be more deeply felt by them, than when, like 11:1n, they v ere called to undergo toils, meet dangers, and struggle with difficulties which would lout them, as they fiwesaw, like him, to death ; aud after it, as they hoped, like him, to glory and repose. The Spartan kings traced their origin to Hercules through the Heraelithe, Eurysthe nes and Procks. Therefore we may well siippose that it seemed to the greatest of them, Leonidas—when he stood with his three handfed Spartans near this spot, and knew that where he sto,,I, 110i h he and they must soon die—to be a distinguished proof of the favour or the gods to- wards himself and them, that he and his chosen few were cal.ed upou to fight and fall beneath the shade of Mount (Eta at Thermopylie. lie felt, we may well believe, no small satisfaction that this spot, above all others, was to be the scene of their glorious struggle and heroic death. The Spartans, on this site, in the last hours of their life, while they saw the countless host of Persia ma their front, while the Immortals of Xerxes were rushing to the charge up= their rear, yet had above Ham the summit of 3lount (Eta ; and thence they drew courage and hope from the reminiscence which it supplied if their great ancestor, or the labours which Iler: tiles had undergone, of the death which he had there suffered, and the glory which be had won. The 71UniC of Thertnopyhe itself i connerted with the liktory of Hercules. The warm springs, which flow across the ra:: filen the fiset of Mount (Eta to• wards the Malian Gulf on the North, were brought out of the earth for his use by the halut of Minerva. This passage was the scene of numerous struggles at various periods of Greek history : it was defended by the Phociatis against the Thes,alonians; subse- quently, by Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans, against Persia ; again, by the .1:tolians against Philip, by Antiochns against the htiemws, ;old by the Greeks against Breton's MI the Gauls. In the three latter instances, the same 111111111Mvre—naniely, the detachment on the parts of the aggressors of 3 force which, having scaled the heights of Anopma or Callidrom us, was to fall on the rear of the defenders of the pas—was uniformly res.wted to, as it had been employed by the Persians, and with the same success. The Pass of Thertnopylie was never stormed by main force. Its conqueror, and its only one, has been Nature. So great is the change w hich has been effected by her means in the character and features of Ilium platm, that it has ceased to be an object of military importance. While the rivet: Sperchetus haS brought down in its channel a copious supply of alluvial deposit MIL the coast, the waters of the Malian Gulf have retired so far to the North-East as to ex- tend what was once a narrow defile of a few yards into a broad and swampy plain. When such a revolution has been wrought in the grander features of this remarkable place—when the rivers which flowed through the Pass of Thermo - mite have formed for themselves new beds—when fields of rice, and salt pits, occupy the place which was once sea, it is agreeable to observe that the smaller objects which were characteristic of the spot in the tinte of Leonidas, are still visible here, to call to the mind of the traveller that he is treading the sod of Thermopylm. The hot springs which supplied a name to the place, and' which are con- fleeted with the history both of Hercules and Leonidas, still flow from the earth and expand their streams into pools of the clearest blue, as they did in the ages of the demigod and of the king, while the broad Spercheitts has wan- dered from its course, and while it is no longer possible to trace upon the spot the aucient coast-line of the Malian Sea. PANEGYRIC ON ATTICA. The superficial extent of Attica is estimated at seven hundred square miles; its greatest length is fifty, and its breadth thirty miles. If it is compared in size with some of the provinces of Europe, and much more with the wilds of Africa or the forests of America, it sinks into the insignificance of some baro- nial estate, or of a private allotment in a colonial dependency. This, it is evi- dent, is the case if we look at it physical dimensions. But from a considera- tion of these we pass to another view of the subject. While, strictly speaking, it occupies a space in the map tvhieh is hardly perceptible, to how many square miles or rather thousands of square miles, in the social and political geography of the world, does Attica extend This is, in truth, a contemplation which fills the mind of man with a feeling Of triumph and exultation, and with an ennobling sense of its own dignify, ss compared with that of the accidents and qualities of all the material objects of the world ; which inspires him with a sublime sense of the energies of the in tel- Waal and moral, and, may we not add, of the divine and spiritual part of his own nature ? tbr it presents to his sight a small province, confined within those narrow bounds which have been specified, yet stretching itself, like a living agent, from its contracted limits, by the vigorous growth and expansive activity , ofthose powers, to a comprehensive vastness, nay, even to a kind of intellectual omnipresence upon the surface of the earth. There exists not a corner in the civilized world which is not, as it were, breathed on by the air of Attica. Its influence makes itself felt in the thoughts, and shows itself in the speech of men ; and it will never cease to do so : it is not enough to say that it lives in the inspirations of the poet, in the eloquence °like orator, and in the speculations of the philosopher. Besides this, it ex- hibits itself ill visible shapes; it is the soul which animates and informs the most heautilid creations of art. The works of the architect and of the sculptor, in every quarter of the elohe, speak of Attica; of Attica the galleries of princes and nations arc full ; of Attica the temples and palaces and libraries and coon- MI-rooms of capital cities give sensible witness, and will do for ever. But above all, it is due to the intellectual results produced by the inhabitants of this small canton of Europe, that the language in which they spoke and in which they it rote, became the vernacular tongue of the whole %%mad. The genius of ,■thenians made their speech universal; the treasures which they de- posited m it rendered its acquisition essential to all ; and thus the sway, unlimited in extent and invincible in power, which was wielded over the universe bv the arms of Rome, was exercised over Rome itself by the arts of ..Ithens. 'to Attica, therefore, it is to he attributed that, first, precisely at the season when such t channel of general communication Ivas most needed, there existed a common language in the world; and, secondly, that this language was Greek; or, in other words, that there was, at the time of the first !propagation of the gcspel, a tongue in which it could be preached to the whole earth, and that Greek, the most worthy of' such a distinction, was the language of inspiration— the tongue of the earliest preachers and writers of Christianity. Therefore we may regard Attica, viewed in this light, as engaged in the same cause and leagued in n holy confederacy with Palestine; we may consider the philosophers mu orators and poets of this country as preparing the way, by a special dis- pensation of God's providence, for the apostles aud titthers and apologists of the Church of Christ. SILVER MINES OF LAUREUM AN!) COINAGE OF ATHENS. These mines were the property of the Athenian State, and were tranferred by it to individuals for payments made partly as purchase-money and partly as reservcd rent ; the amount of the former being regulated by the extent and sup- posed value of the mine, that of the latter by its actual produetiveness. They were worked at a period of very early antiquity : in the days of Themistocles the supply front them was very abundant; when Xenophon wrote, they were beginning to fail; in Stratho.s age they were exhausted. Pansanias Inedis of them only as it monument of the past. They consisted of large vamts, sup • ported by columns aired and lighted by vents, and divided into compartments. Many thousand columns, were employed in working them. From these dark cavities, now shaded with pines and overgrown with junipers and lentisks, was derived the wealth which enabled Athens to create and maintain the navy by Whiell she first coped with sEgina and afterwards freed Greece. Hence, too, issuedthe coin of Athens, which circulated in every part of the civilized world, find was nowhere surpassed hi purity. For a long tune she had no other term in her language for money than that which signified silver : whether she ever coined gold is doubtful, but before she used it in her currency, her liberties were lost. It was the boast of Athens. that her coinage was so excellent that it was overrwhere exchanged with profit by its possessor; and it is worthy of remark, that; in order to preserve its credit in foreign lands, she studiously retained upon it the original archaic type of the head of Minerva, which looked rather at if it had proceeded from Egypt than front the most polished capital of Greece: thus, while in all the other arts of design she inlvanced from the rude outline to consummate symmetry, in numismatics she remained stationary, mil while all her other productions were unrivalled in elegance, her 11101IeV was ai Mimeos in beauty, as it claimed to be superior in value, to that of nearly all the other states of Greece. The advantage of wood-cuts in illustrating the descriptions of the writer, is strikingly exemplified in this beautitbl volume : at every point where the pen reaches the limits of its power, the Pencil comes in to supply the deficiency, with a pictured image of the scene or object ; thus incorporating words and things. The perfection that wood- engraving has attained renders these fragments of art, with which the text is protbsely inlaid, equally ornamental and useful. Pelion and Ossa ; the skiey head of blue Olympus," the Acropolis of Athens rising from the plain, like the turret- crown of' Cybele ; the " solemn temples" that, " great in ruin," seem to defy the worlil to rival their majestic beauty ; and sculp- tures where the marble all but breathes : these form the pictorial features of the work. The name of the artist who has furnished the great majority of the designs is Smto ENT ; but a few landscapes by DAURIGNY, and bassi relieri by PINEL1.1., stand out from the mass with that prominence which they acquire from a combination of knowledge and power on the part of the draughtsman. Omits SMIT11, and TuomAs and Al ARY ANN WILLIAMS, are the names that most frequently occurred when the beauty of the cuts led us to see who was the. engraver. There are several smooth landscapes engraved in steel, but their style is generally tame, and the prevail- ing effect gloomy : Hom.aso is the only artist who has not given an English atmosplwre to the sunny clime of Greece.
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