Eothen; Or, Traces of Travel Brought Home from the East

y by assuring him that I could not delay my departure beyond an early hour in the afternoon, I induced him to allow my dining with his family instead of banquet

with me. Finding herself inexorably condemned to bear with the dreaded gaze of European eyes, she tried to save her innocent children from the hard fate awaiting herself, but I obtained that all of them (and I think there were four or five) should sit at the table. You wil

hink, immortal names-names too which they owed to tradition, and certainly not to any classical enthusiasm of their parents. Every instant I was delighted by some such phrases as these, "Themistocles, my love, don't fight."-"Alcibiades, can't you sit still?"-"Socrates, put d

presently, however, informed me that there was one anomalous circumstance attended upon the practical working of our political system which he had never been able to hear explained in a manner satisfactory to himself. From the fact of his having found a difficulty in his subject, I began to think that my host might really know rather more of it than his announcement of a thorough knowledge had led me to expect. I felt interested at being about to hear from the lips of an intelligent Greek, quite remote from the influence of European opinions, what might seem to him the most astonishing and incomprehensible of all those results which

they are either striking in themselves, or else serve to mark some spot on which my fancy loves to dwell. I knew that the ruins of Pa

ening Jove, and hear him answer with approving thunder-to be blessed with divine counsels from the lips of Pallas Athenie-to believe-ay, only to believe-to believe for one rapturous moment that in the gloomy depths of the grove, by the mountain's side, t

and of the thousand bright-leaved shrubs that twined their arms together in lovesome tangles. The air that came to my lips was warm and fragrant as the ambrosial breath of the goddess, infecting me, not (of course) with a faith in the old religion of the isle, but with a

emple. There was a Greek husbandman there who (not for emolument, but for the sake of the protection and dignity which it afforded) had got leave from the man at Limasol to hoist his flag as a sort of deputy-provisionary-sub-vice-pro-acting-consul of the British sovereign: the poor fellow in

nd can't affect to look for inscriptions, there is some awkwardness in coming to the end of a merely sentimental pilgrimage; when the feeling which impelled you has gone, you have nothing to do but to laugh the thing off as well as you can, and, by-the-bye, it is not a bad plan to turn the conversation (or rather, allow the natives to turn it)

ens, respectfully listening, and chickens of tender years so well brought up, as scarcely to betray in their conduct the careless levity of youth. The vice-consul stood for a moment quite calm, collecting his strength; then suddenly he rushed into the midst of the congre

the cap, which made me shrink from offering coin, and as I mounted my horse on departing I gave him the only thing fit for a present that I happened to have with me, a rather handsome clasp-dagger, brought from Vienna. The poor fellow was ineffably grateful, and I had some difficulty in tearing myself from out of the reach of his thanks. At last I gave him what I supposed to be the last farewell, and

nt influx of visitors, who came to offer their congratulations. A few of these were men, but most of them were young, graceful girls. Almost all of them went through the ceremony with the utmost precision and formality; each in succession spoke her blessing, in the tone of a person repeating a set fo

, and passes the waist in sumptuous braids. Of all other women with Grecian blood in their veins the costume is graciously beautiful, but these, the maidens of Limasol-their robes are more gently, more sweetly imagined, and fall like Julia's cashmere in soft, luxurious folds. The common voice of the Levant allows that in face the women of Cyprus are less beautiful than their brilliant sisters of Smyrna; and yet, says the Greek, he may trust himself to one and all the bright cities of the ?gean, and may yet weigh anchor with a heart entire, but that so surely as he ventures upon the enchante

city of the isle, and over