him to the dukedom of Alcudia, &c. &c. It is to this man that the Spaniards universally impute the ruin of their country. 9. Bears in his cap the badge of crimson hue, Which tells you whom to shun and whom to greet. Stanza I. lines 2 and 3. The red cockade with "Fernando Septimo" in the centre. 10. The ball-piled pyramid, the ever-blazing match. Stanza li. line last. All who have seen a battery will recollect the pyramidal form in which shot and shells are piled. The Sierra Morena was fortified in every defile through which I passed in my way to Seville. 11. Foil'd by a woman's hand, before a batter'd wall. Stanza Ivi. line last. Such were the exploits of the Maid of Saragoza. When the author was at Seville she walked daily on the Prado, decorated with medals and orders, by command of the Junta. 12. The seal Love's dimpling finger hath impress'd Stanza Iviii. lines 1 and 2. Sigilla in mento impressa Amoris digitulo 13. Oh, thou Parnassus ! Aul. Gel, Stanza Ix. line 1. These stanzas were written in Castri (Delphos), at the foot of Parnassus, now called Axxuga-Liakura. 14. Fair is proud Seville; let her country boast Stanza lxv. lines 1 and 2. Seville was the Hispalis of the Romans. Ask 15. ye, Boeotian shades! the reason why? Stanza Ixx. line 5. This was written at Thebes, and consequently in the best situation for asking and answering such a question; not as the birthplace of Pindar, but as the capital of Boeotia, where the first riddle was propounded and solved. 16. Some bitter o'er the flowers its bubbling venom flings. "Medio de fonte leporum Stanza Ixxxii. line last. "Surgit amari aliquid quod in ipsis floribus angat." Luc, 17. A traitor only fell beneath the feud. Stanza Ixxxv. line 7. Alluding to the conduct and death of Selano, the Governor of Cadiz. "War to the knife." "Palafox's answer to the French General at the siege of Saragoza. The Honourable I*. W**. of the Guards, who died of a fever at Coimbra. I had known him ten years, the better half of his life, and the happiest part of mine. In the short space of one month I have lost her who gave me being, and most of those who had made that being tolerable. To me the lines of Young are no fiction: "Insatiate archer! could not one suffice? Thy shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain, I should have ventured a verse to the memory of the late Charles Skinner Matthews, Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge, were he not too much above all praise of mine. His powers of mind, shown in the attainment of greater honours, against the ablest candidates, than those of any graduate on record at Cambridge, have sufficiently established his fame on the spot where it was acquired, while his softer qualities live in the recollection of friends who loved him too well to envy his superiority. NOTES TO Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. CANTO II. 1 -despite of war and wasting fire Stanza i. line 4. PART of the Acropolis was destroyed by the explosion of a magazine during she Venetian siege. 2. But worse than steel and flame, and ages slow, Is the dread sceptre and dominion dire Of men who never felt the sacred glow That thoughts of thee and thine on polish'd breasts bestow. Stanza i. line 6. We can all feel, or imagine, the regret with which the ruins of cities, once the capitals of empires, are beheld; the reflections suggested by such objects are too trite to require recapitulation. But never did the littleness of man, and the vanity of his very best virtues, of patriotism to exalt, and of valour to defend, his country, appear more conspicuous in the record of what Athens was, and the certainty of what she now is. This theatre of contention between mighty factions, of the struggles of orators, the exaltation and deposition of tyrants, the triumph and punishment of generals, is now become a scene of petty intrigue and perpetual disturbance, between the bickering agents of certain British nobility and gentry. "The wild foxes, the owls and serpents in the ruins of Babylon," were surely less degrading than such inhabitants. The Turks have the plea of conquest for their tyranny, and the Greeks have only suffered the fortune of war, incidental to the bravest; but how are the mighty fallen, when two painters contest the privilege of plundering the Parthenon, and triumph in turn, according to the tenor of each succeeding firman! Sylla could but punish, Philip subdue, and Xerxes burn Athens; but it remained for the paltry antiquarian, and his despicable agents, to render her contemptible as himself and his pursuits. In The Parthenon, before its destruction in part, by fire during the Venetian siege, had been a temple, a church, and a mosque. each point of view it is an object of regard it changed its wor shippers; but still it was a place of worship thrice sacred to devo. tion: its violation is a triple sacrilege. But "Man, vain man, "Drest in a little brief authority, "Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven 3. For on the solitary shore he sleeps. Stanza v. line 2. It was not always the custom of the Greeks to burn their dead; the greater Ajax in particular was interred entire. Almost all the chiefs became gods after their decease, and he was indeed neglected who had not annual games near his tomb, or festivals in honour of his memory by his countrymen, as Achilles, Brasidas, &c. and at last even Antinous, whose death was as heroic as his life was infa mous. 4. Here son of Saturn! was thy fav'rite throne. Stanza x. line 3. The temple of Jupiter Olympius, of which sixteen columns entirely of marble yet survive: originally there were 150. These columns however, are by many supposed to have belonged to the Pantheon. 5. And bear these altars o'er the long-reluctant brine. The ship was wrecked in the Archipelago. 6. To rive what Goth, and Turk, and Time hath spared. At this moment (January 3, 1809), besides what has been already deposited in London, an Hydriot vessel is in the Piræus to receive every portable relic. Thus, as I heard a young Greek observe in common with many of his countrymen-for, lost as they are, they yet feel on this occasion-thus may Lord Elgin boast of having ruined Athens. An Italian painter of the first eminence, named Lusieri, is the agent of devastation; and like the Greek finder of Verres in Sicily, who followed the same profession, he has proved the able instrument of plunder. Between this artist and the French Consul Fauvel, who wishes to rescue the remains for his own government, there is now a violent dispute concerning a car employed in their conveyance, the wheel of which-I wish they were both broken upon it-has been locked up by the Consul, and Lusieri has laid his complaint before the Waywode. Lord Elgin has been extremely happy in his choice of Signor Lusieri. During a residence of ten years in Athens, he never had the curiosity to proceed as far as Sunium, till he accompanied us in our second Now Cape Colonna. In all Attica, if we except Athens itself and Marathon, there is no scene more interesting than Cape Colonna. To the antiquary and artist, sixteen columns are an inexhaustible source of observation and design; to the philosopher, the supposed scene of some of Plato's conversations will not be unwelcome; and the traveller will be struck with the beauty of the prospect over “ Isles that crown the Agean deep;" but for an Englishman, Colonna has yet an additional interest, as the actual spot of Falconer's Shipwreck. Pallas and Plato are forgotten, in the recollection of Falconer and Campbell: excursion. However, his works, as far as they go, are most beautiful; but they are almost all unfinished. While he and his patrons confine themselves to tasting medals, appreciating cameos, sketching columns, and cheapening gems, their little absurdities are as harmless as insect or fox-hunting, maiden-speechifying, barouchedriving, or any such pastime: but when they carry away three or four shiploads of the most valuable and massy relics that time and barbarism have left to the most injured and most celebrated of cities; when they destroy, in a vain attempt to tear down, those works which have been the admiration of ages, I know no motive which can excuse, no name which can designate, the perpetrators of this dastardly devastation. It was not the least of the crimes laid to the charge of Verres, that he had plundered Sicily, in the manner since imitated at Athens.-The most unblushing impudence could hardly go farther than to affix the name of its plunderer to the walls of the Acropolis; while the wanton and useless defacement of the whole range of the basso-relievos, in one compartment of the temple, will never permit that name to be pronounced by an observer without execration. On this occasion I speak impartially: I am not a collector or admirer of collections, consequently no rival; but I have some early prepossession in favour of Greece, and do not think the honour of England advanced by plunder, whether of India or Attica. Another noble Lord has done better, because he has done less, but some others, more or less noble, yet all honourable men," have done best, because, after a deal of excavation and execration, bribery to Waywode, mining and countermining, they have done nothing at all. We had such ink-shed, and wine shed, which almost ended in bloodshed! Lord E.'s "prig."-see Jonathan Wylde for the definition of "priggism,"-quarrelled with another, Gropius,* "Here in the dead of night by Lonna's steep, This temple of Minerva may be seen at sea from a great distancein two journeys which I made, and one voyage to Cape Colonna, the view from either side, by land, was less striking than the ap proach from the isles. In our second land excursion, we had a narrow escape from a party of Mainnotes, concealed in the caverns beneath. We were told afterwards, by one of their prisoners subsequently ransomed, that they were deterred from attacking us by the appearance of my two Albanians: conjecturing very saga ciously, but falsely, that we had a complete guard of these Arnaouts at hand, they remained stationary, and thus saved our party, which was too small to have opposed any effected resistance. Colonna is no less a resort of painters than of pirates; there "The hireling artist plants his paltry desk, (See Hodgson's Lady Jane Grey, &c.) But there Nature, with the aid of Art, has done that for herself. I was fortunate enough to engage a very superior German artist; and hope to renew my acquaintance with this and many other Levantine scenes, by the arrival of his performances. *This Sr. Gropius was employed by a noble Lord for the sole purpose of sketching, in which he excels; but I am sorry to say, |