struction was judiciously encouraged by the administration of Count Capodistria. In the early part of King Otho's reign an edict was issued for the establishment of elementary schools in every deme, or commune, throughout Greece; and though this law, like most other useful measures, has never been fully carried into effect, yet instruction is very widely diffused. So great is the thirst for information among the Greek people, that there are many instances of the sons of the poorer classes serving gratuitously as domestics in the towns, on condition that they be allowed to spend a portion of their time in attendance at the public schools.

Besides elementary and normal schools, there are 14 gymnasia (Tvμváoia) answering to the Colleges of France, at Athens, Nauplia, Patras, Syra, and other large towns. Of the University of Athens, founded in 1837, and of the other chief educational establishments of the Greek capital, a full account will be given under ROUTE 2.

There are several scientific institutions at Athens, and several literary periodicals are published there. The Press in Greece is free from censorship, but few of the numerous Athenian journals display talent or information. A considerable number of books and pamphlets, chiefly educational, theological, or translations of works of fiction, are now annually published at Athens. For a sketch of the progress and present condition of the Modern Greek language, see GENERAL INTRODUCTION, n.

Army. By the present law, the army consists of 11,000 men, levied by a conscription. The duration of service is fixed at four years, and all Greeks are liable to serve from the age of 18 to 30, except those claiming exemption as married men, university students, ecclesiastics, civil servants of the State, only sons, &c. Service by substitute is allowed. The troops are chiefly stationed at Athens, Nauplia, Corinth, Patras, and on the Turkish frontier. The uniform is dark-blue; four of the 14 battalions (light infantry) are dressed in the national costume. The Greek flag is striped blue and white, with a white cross on a blue ground in the upper canton next the staff. The veterans of the War of Independence have honorary rank assigned to them in the brigade called the Phalanx, which is not now on active service. The police (xwpopuλakes) included in the above numbers, constitute a force analogous to the French gendarmes, and are dispersed in small bodies throughout the kingdom.

Navy.-The Royal Navy of Greece consists of two iron-plated ships, one of 1591 tons and 400 horse-power, carrying 8 guns; the other of 1044 tons and 350 horse-power, carrying 4 guns; of five wooden vessels of from 300 to 400 horse-power each; and of six small gun-boats, and three schooners and three cutters. At the island of Poros, about 30 miles distant from Athens, are the government dockyard, arsenal, &c.

It was in their mercantile navy and commerce that the progress made by the Greek people after their emancipation was most conspicuous. The physical configuration of the country has admirably adapted it for trade in all ages: their commerce, next to their freedom, was the grand source of the renown and prosperity of the Hellenic states of antiquity. We have pointed out that the ingenuity and perseverance of the modern Greeks were displayed in an extraordinary degree by the manner in which they contrived, in so short a time, to found their extensive traffic, and to build a great mercantile navy. "It may not be uninteresting to point out," writes Mr. Mongredian, nearly twenty years ago, "that the large corn trade from the Mediterranean and Black Sea is exclusively in the hands of a small body of merchants, connected together by the ties of nationality, of religion, and, in great measure, of kindred. They created this cargo trade, and they probably will keep it to themselves. The history, progress, and position of that small but powerful commercial phalanx, the Greek merchants, present most remarkable features. In 1820, the

trade with the Levant, then of small extent, was wholly in the hands of British merchants. In that year two or three Greek houses were established in London, with moderate capitals and humble pretensions. Their operations, though at first limited, were highly successful, and received rapid development. Other Greek establishments were formed, and gradually the whole of the trade passed away from the British houses into the hands of the Greeks, who realised rapid, and in many instances colossal fortunes. The trade, which formerly was confined chiefly to the districts to which Constantinople and Smyrna formed the outlets, has now extended to the valley of the Danube, to the shores of the Black Sea, to Persia-to the vast provinces of which Aleppo and Damascus are the chief marts to Egypt, whose powers of production and consumption have only recently been stimulated into activity, and has, through the enterprise, activity and sagacity of the Greek merchants, penetrated into distant and semi-barbarian regions, where Manchester fabrics were before as unknown as the very name itself of England. The number of Greek firms engaged in this trade, and established in England, increased from 5 in 1822 to about 200 in 1852. The imports and exports from and to the districts, whose trade is conducted, I might almost say monopolised, by the Greeks, amounted in 1822 to a mere trifle, whereas they have now attained a magnitude which, in the scale of our dealings with foreign nations, gives that trade the third or fourth rank. A calculation has been made that the aggregate trading capital of all the Greek houses established here in 1822, could not much have exceeded 50,000l. There is now a single Greek firm whose yearly income is known to be more than fourfold that amount; and as to the aggregate capital now invested by the Greek merchants in their gigantic operations, though the precise number of millions it may be difficult to fix, yet this much is certain, that many houses have large sums lying unemployed, that the field of their enterprise, large as it is, is inadequate to absorb their resources, and that branch houses are daily being founded by the Greeks in distant countries-in North and South America, in India, Russia, &c.,-in order to utilize their redundant capital. It is only since 1846 that the English Corn-trade has attracted the attention of the Greeks. As long as the extreme fluctuations in prices incidental to the sliding-scale alternately enriched and ruined foreign importers, the Greeks were too prudent to engage in so dangerous a trade; but when operations in foreign corn were freed by Sir R. Peel from fiscal influences, and brought within the natural conditions of legitimate commercial enterprise, the Greeks embarked with their usual energy into the trade. With exceptions too insignificant to notice, all the grain imported into the United Kingdom from the Mediterranean passes through their hands." It should, however, be stated that the Greek commercial navy has, since the above was written, considerably decreased relatively to those of other nations.

Character. As to the character and manners of the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Greece, there is little to add to what has already been said in the GENERAL INTRODUCTION, O. We subjoin, however, the remarks of the accomplished German scholar Thiersch: "There is a tolerably marked distinction between the inhabitants of the three great divisions of the Greek kingdomGreece north of the Isthmus, the Peloponnesus, and the Islands. The people of Northern Greece have retained a chivalrous and warlike spirit, with a simplicity of manners and mode of life which strongly remind us of the pictures of the heroic age. The soil here is very generally cultivated by Albanians and Wallachians. In Eastern Greece, Parnassus, with its natural bulwarks, is the chief place where the Hellenic race has maintained itself; the mountainous parts of Western Greece are also peopled by the Hellenic stock. In these districts the language is spoken with more purity than elsewhere. The population of the Peloponnesus consists nearly of the same races as that of Northern Greece, but the Peloponnesians have the reputation of being more ignorant and

less honest. The Albanians occupy Argolis and parts of the ancient Corinthia and Triphylia. Among the rest of the inhabitants, who all speak Greek, there are considerable social differences. The population of the towns is of a mixed character, as in Northern Greece; there is everywhere in the towns an active and intelligent body of proprietors, merchants, and artisans. The Mainotes form a separate class of the Peloponnesian population; they are generally called Mainotes from the name of one of their districts; but they are the descendants of the Eleuthero-Lacones, and probably of the ancient Spartans. They occupy the lofty and sterile mountains between the Gulfs of Laconia and Messinia the representatives of a race driven from the sunny valley of the Eurotas to the bleak and inhospitable tracts of Taygetus; though the plains which are spread out below them are no longer held by a conqueror, and a large portion of the fertile lands lies uncultivated for want of labourers. In the islands there is a singular mixture of Greeks and Albanians. The Albanians of Hydra and Spetzia have long been known as active traders and excellent mariners. The Hydriots made great sacrifices for the cause of independence in the late war; the Spetziots, more prudent and calculating, increased their wealth and their merchant navy. The island of Syra, which has long been the centre of an active commerce, now contains a large part of the former population of Psara and Chios. The Psariots are an agile and handsome race, and skilful seamen ; the Chians, following the habits of their ancestors, are fond of staying at home and attending to their shops and mercantile speculations; they amass wealth, but they employ it in founding establishments of public utility, and in the education of their children. In Tenos, the peasants, who are also the proprietors, cultivate the vine and the fig even among the most barren rocks; in Syra, Santorin, and at Naxos, they are the tenants of a miserable race of nobility, whose origin ascends to the time of the Crusades, and who still retain the Latin creed of their forefathers. Besides these, there are various bodies of Suliots, of people from the heights of Olympus, Cretans, many Greek families from Asia Minor, Phanariots, and others, who have emigrated, or been driven by circumstances within the limits of the new kingdom of Greece. The Psariots are those who are supposed to have the least intermixture of foreign blood. They have the handsome and characteristic Hellenic features, as preserved in the marbles of Phidias and other ancient sculptors; they are ingenious, loquacious, lively to excess, active, enterprising, vapouring and disputatious. The modern Greeks, generally, are rather above the middle height and well-shaped; they have the face oval, features regular and expressive, eyes large, dark, and animated, eyebrows arched, hair long and dark, and complexions olivecoloured."

The islanders are commonly darker and of a stronger make than the rest; but the Greeks are all active, hardy, brave, and capable of enduring long privations. Generally speaking, the women of the islands and of Northern Greece are handsomer than those of the Peloponnesus. The character of the Greeks has greatly improved in many respects since their emancipation; their portrait, while still under the yoke of the Turks, was drawn in a masterly manner by the hand of Mr. Hope in Anastasius'; we will quote one striking passage from that work (vol. i. pp. 78–80), premising that it has now become partly obsolete :-"The complexion of the modern Greek may receive a different cast from different surrounding objects: the case is still the same as in the days of Pericles. Credulity, versatility, and the thirst of distinctions, from the earliest periods formed, still form, and ever will form, the basis of the Greek character. When patriotism, public spirit, and pre-eminence in arts, science, literature, and warfare, were the road to distinction, the Greeks shone the first of patriots, of heroes, of painters, of poets, and of philosophers. Now that craft and subtlety, adulation and intrigue, are the only paths to greatness, the same Greeks are-what you see them!"

General Gordon* has summed up in the following manner the character of the Greeks at the commencement of the war of independence :-"Those who are best acquainted with the Greeks cannot fail to remark the numerous and striking features of resemblance that connect them with their ancestors: they have the same ingenious and active bent of mind, joined to a thirst of knowledge and improvement; the same emulation in their pursuits, love of novelty and adventure, vanity and loquacity, restless ambition, and subtlety. The Grecian character was, however, so long tried in the furnace of misfortune, that the sterling metal had mostly evaporated, and little but dross remained; having obliterated whatever was laudable in the institutions of their forefathers, their recent masters had taught them only evil. It would, no doubt, be possible to cite a more cruel oppression than that of the Turks towards their Christian subjects, but none so fitted to break men's spirit, or less mitigated by those sympathies which in ordinary cases bind the people to their rulers. To the Moslems themselves, the Sultan's tyranny is a common form of Oriental despotism, but his sway is far more intolerable to the Rayahs, exposed to the caprices not of one or of a few persons, but of a whole dominant nation, the slaves, in fact, of slaves.

"In Constantinople and other great cities, immediately under the eye of Government (although looked down upon with haughty contempt), they were indeed protected, and occasionally favoured; and in some secluded or insular situations, seem to have almost escaped the observation of their masters; and this was the happiest lot that could befal them. But in general throughout the empire they were, in the habitual intercourse of life, subject to vexations, affronts, and exactions from Mahommedans of every rank; spoiled of their goods, insulted in their religion and domestic honour, they could rarely obtain justice; the slightest flash of courageous resentment brought down swift destruction on their heads, and cringing humility alone enabled them to live in ease, or even safety. The insolent superiority assumed by the Turks was the more galling, that it arose entirely out of a principle of fanatical intolerance, which renders Mussulman superiority singularly bitter and odious to people of a different faith. We ought not to be surprised at detecting in a majority of Greeks, meanness, cunning, cowardice and dissimulation, but rather to wonder that they had firmness enough to adhere to their religion, and eat the bread of affliction, since an act of apostasy opened the road to employment and wealth, and, from the meanest serfs, aggregated them to the caste of oppressors. Amongst themselves certain shades of distinction are drawn; the Rumeliots (or inhabitants of Northern Greece) being reckoned brave and hardy, the Moreots (or Peloponnesians) timid and deceitful, the Islanders of the Archipelago (or Ægean) and natives of the shore of Asia, acute and dexterous, but inclined to indolence and frivolity. A considerable difference also exists between the Greeks and Christian Albanians: the latter are less ingenious, less disposed to learn, graver, more taciturn, more industrious, and of a sterner temper."

It has been remarked that the Albanians may be said to bear the same relation to the Greeks that the Doric bore to the Ionic population in ancient times. See GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

2. CLIMATE, SOIL, &c.

It has been already said that Greece possesses in a high degree those geographical features which distinguish Europe at large. No part of the continent is so remarkable for the irregularity of its shape, its shores, and its

* See the Introduction to his 'History of the Greek Revolution.' This Introduction forms an admirable Essay, which should be carefully studied by all persons who desire to make themselves well acquainted with Greece and the Greeks.

surface. It is so mountainous that scarcely any room is left for plains. Such as exist are principally along the sea-shore, or near the mouths of rivers, or else are mere basins, enclosed on all sides by lofty hills, or communicating with each other only by deep and narrow gorges. The most flourishing cities of antiquity, and the principal towns of modern Greece, have been erected in the midst or on the borders of such plains.

The climate, in a country the surface of which is so uneven, must, of course, vary considerably, but the medium temperature of the year in the plains of Greece is about 62° Fahr. At Athens the thermometer in the summer is generally in the daytime nearly 90° and frequently rises to near 100° Fahr. Snow falls in the highlands by the middle of October; and even in the plains it is occasionally 6 inches deep, but it is never lies long in the latter. The mountains are capped with snow from November to June, and in the hollows unexposed to the sun it may sometimes be found throughout the year. The winter at Athens may be said to be confined to January and February. Both spring and autumn, particularly the latter, are rainy seasons; Athens enjoys a drier atmosphere than any other province-a circumstance to which the better preservation of its splendid monuments of ancient art is mainly owing. The harvest in Greece usually takes place in June. Violent storms of thunder and lightning, and slight earthquakes, are not uncommon. The country may, in general, be called healthy, except in the low and marshy tracts round the shores and lakes, where intermittent fevers are very prevalent.

The vegetable products of Greece are, for the most part, similar to those of southern Italy. It is much to be regretted that the fine forests which once clothed the Greek hills should have been so extensively laid waste, destroyed by the inhabitants for firewood, or by the wanton ravages of the Turkish troops, who carried fire and sword into the remote fastnesses of the mountains. There are still, however, noble woods of oak, pine, &c., in Euboea, in Ætolia, and Acarnania, on Parnassus, and in the western provinces of the Peloponnesus. The destruction of the forests is probably the cause of the drought of summer, and consequently of the want of navigable rivers. Most of the streams of the kingdom of Greece are little better than mountain-torrents, while the lakes are chiefly mere swamps, and become nearly dry in hot weather. The Achelous, between Etolia and Acarnania, still deserves its Homeric title of King of the Greek rivers. The deficiency of inland navigation in Greece is, however, partly supplied by the numerous gulfs and inlets of the sea, which indent the coasts on every side, and afford unusual facilities to commerce, while they add to the beauty and variety of the

scenery.

Geology, &c.-Greece, generally speaking, is a region of compact grey limestone-the material of which the chain of Eta, as well as Mounts Parnassus and Helicon, is almost entirely composed. Primitive rocks and tertiary formations are, however, found in the range of Pindus, and in many other localities; and volcanic action is clearly traceable, particularly in some of the islands. The whole of Greece abounds with caverns and fissures, whence sulphureous and other mephitic vapours arise, which were taken advantage of in antiquity at Delphi and elsewhere, for practising religious deceptions. There are numerous hot and cold mineral springs, but few of them have yet been analysed. Marbles of various colours and several minerals are among the natural products. According to Thiersch (i. 274), the gold, silver, copper, and lead mines of Attica, and of the islands of Siphnos and Seriphos, are far from being exhausted. There is iron in Skyros, Laconia, and in Euboea; where, as also in Elis, there are abundant seams of coal. For a list of the known minerals of Greece see a memorandum by Professor Landerer of Athens, an appendix to a report on the lead-smelting works at Ergasteria, published