treatises still asks, "How Homer or Sophocles should be read?" let him reflect that it was probably never intended that they should be read at all, but rather chanted, or recited, as in the recitative of a modern opera. And every one knows that accentuation in singing is a very different thing from accentuation in reading.

We may give some practical directions for the pronunciation of Greek letters according to the practice of the modern Greeks, without entering upon the vexata quæstio of how far their system agrees with that of the ancients. Those sounds only will be noted wherein we Englishmen are at variance with the Greeks. Some explanation will be subjoined of the more striking peculiarities of the Neo-Hellenic grammar and syntax.

a is pronounced by the Greeks like a
€ and ai

in father.

e

etch.

mē.

αυ EU

Again, B invariably has the force of

after, avow.
effort, ever.

vin English.

(When Greeks wish to express in writing the B and D of English names, they use μ and T.) y has a sound between the English g and y consonant, before akin to that of the same letter in German. Before 7, K, έ, x, it has the sound of ng. When the Greeks wish to give the sound of our g the slender vowels, they use yк.

d is pronounced like th in thus.
th think.

0

x is pronounced like the English h, with the addition of a slight guttural intonation. There are corresponding sounds in Irish, Scotch, and Spanish. Aspirations are placed by the moderns in writing wherever they were used by the ancients; but in speaking they are quite dropped, as in Italian. Accents are placed wherever they were placed by the ancients. No distinction of sound is made between the circumflex and the acute accent. Number, case, and gender. The same as in the Hellenic grammar among educated moderns, except that the dual seems universally dropped.

Articles. The definite article is the same as in Hellenic. The indefinite article is borrowed, as in other modern languages, from the first numeral, εις, μία, ἕν.

Substantives are declined, as in Hellenic, by the educated in writing, though all sorts of solecisms are committed colloquially. Thus the accusative of imparisyllabic nouns is frequently substituted for the nominative in names both of places and of things. An analogous practice in Latin very probably produced Italian, for the nouns of that language are generally formed from the oblique cases of Latin; e. g. regno from regnum ; arte from ars, &c.

It is to be observed that many of the substantives taken from the Hellenic have undergone a remarkable change of meaning. Leake says, "The use of generals for specifics, of specifics for generals, of attributes and accidents for the objects themselves, will account for the etymology of many words in the modern dialect." Thus &λoyos, irrational, converted into a neuter substantive, has become the common word for horse, as being the irrational animal most frequently mentioned.

Diminutives are used in Modern Greek, as in Italian, in a caressing or endearing sense, like the жокорioμós of the ancients (Arist. Rhet., iii.), e. g.

Taidi, a child; αidáni, a little child. Augmentatives are very rare e. g. Town from Tólos. Sometimes caressing expressions are applied to hateful ideas, e. g. the small-pox is called eupλoyía, just as the Furies were called of old Eumenides, as if to disarm their wrath. Another class of diminutives is come into great use as patronymics, which have been frequently formed by adding zouxos (from wλos, by a common and ancient conversion) to the name of a father or ancestor, e. g. Christopulos (XpiσTónovλos) is made the family name of the descendants of a Christos, &c. Other patronymics have been formed in ons. Before the Revolution Greek peasants rarely had any surnames. Like their ancestors, individuals of the same name were distinguished by the addition of the names of their fathers, and by those of their native places. Parallel examples may be found in the nomenclature of clans and families in Wales and Scotland.

Adjectives are theoretically the same as in Hellenic; but in practice there are many corruptions, especially in the degrees of comparison, e. g. μeyaλńτερος for μείζων.

Pronouns. As in Homer, so in Modern Greek, the oblique cases of the article are often used for the third personal pronoun. The enclitics used possessively for the plural of ov and yw are oas and μas, perhaps archaic forms. The ancient possessive pronouns are, however, returning into use among the learned and polished; but the more common way of expressing them is by attaching to nouns the genitive of the primitive pronoun as an enclitic, e. g. yváμn μov, my opinion. There are a host of irregular pronominal adjectives in vulgar use

e. g. KάTI, some

kde, each} indecl. &c. &c.

Verbs have undergone little change in most of their inflections. The 3rd pers. pl. of the pres. ind. generally ends in v instead of o-e. g. ypάpovv for γράφουσι.

The moderns have adopted as auxiliary verbs the present and imperfect of θέλω, and the past tense of ἔχω; e. g., θέλω γράψει, I will write; ἤθελον ypável, I would have written; elxa ypayei, I had written. The future active is supplied by the present tense of @éλw and the Hellenic first future infinitive, with the final v elided, according to a common practice. In the passive voice the adjunct is formed by the elision of vai from the 1st aorist infinitive. The gradual neglect of the future, and the growing use of its substitute, may be traced up to the earliest period of the decline of the Greek language. Leake quotes from an old Romaic poet the following lines which exemplify the formation of these adjuncts:

θέλεις χαρῆν καὶ τιμηθῆν καὶ ζήσειν καὶ πλουτίσειν,

καὶ τοὺς ἐχθρούς σου στὸν λαιμὸν θέλεις καταπατήσειν.

These verses, moreover, are a sample of the usual metre of Romaic ballad poetry-a metre which Lord Byron compares to that of the famous ditty:

"A captain bold of Halifax who lived in country quarters."*

• Gibbon (chap. liii.) is very severe on the Byzantine poetry: "The tragic, epic, and lyric muses, were silent and inglorious: the bards of Constantinople seldom rose above a riddle or an epigram, a panegyric or tale; they forgot even the rules of prosody; and with the melody of Homer yet sounding in their ears, they confound all measure of feet and syllables in the impotent strains which have received the name of political or city verses." He adds in a note: "The versus politici, those common prostitutes, as, from their easiness, they are styled by Leo Allatius, usually consist of fifteen syllables. They are used by Constantine Manasses, John Tzetzes, &c."

The substantive verb Tiμai (èiμi) is not used as an auxiliary, but it has many irregular inflexions, of which the principal are:-

The Imperative Mood in a present or future sense is expressed by as (contracted from apes, let) with the Hellenic subjunctive; e. g., às ypá¥n, let him write.

The Infinitive Mood is beginning again to be used as a noun of neuter gender, but as a verb its place is supplied by prefixing và (iva) to the Hellenic present or 1st aorist subjunctive; e. g., Biάšeis và ypaчw, you force me to write.

Adverbs, Conjunctions, &c., are, among the highly educated, the same as in Hellenic; but there are many corrupted forms in vulgar use.

Prepositions have now, in theory, the same rules as in Hellenic, but, in practice, they are generally all coupled with the accusative case.

It is necessary to remark, in conclusion, that the foregoing observations are by no means intended to embrace an entire system of Neo-Hellenic grammar; much less, it is hoped, will they be construed into an ambitious attempt to reduce into order the irregularities of the modern tongue. The uncertainties and variations to which a dialect not yet thoroughly methodised is liable, render almost impossible any such endeavour even in a native of Greece. All that has been attempted is to give such a sketch of the present condition of the language, as spoken by educated Greeks, as will explain some of its apparent anomalies, and facilitate its acquisition sufficiently for common purposes. The majority of the English travellers who pass annually through Greece converse with few individuals among the natives above the rank of a guide or a muleteer, and because the dialect of such men is not purely classical, they jump to the conclusion that the modern Greeks no longer speak the language of Eschylus and Thucydides. These hasty critics forget that if a Greek traveller, well acquainted with English literature (as many Greeks are), were to associate in our own country with none but highland gillies and London cabmen, he might with about equal reason pronounce that the modern English no longer speak the language of Milton and Clarendon.*

Mr. W. Wagner, in the Academy,' June 15, 1871, says:—

"It is mere waste of time to discuss the questions concerning the pronunciation of the ancient Greeks with the Greeks of the present day; for the same unpractical vanity as induces them to identify themselves with the ancient Greeks, and the same retrograde attempt, in the face of all historical development and the spirit of modern times, to work back a modern language to the position of an old speech-cause them to consider the genuineness of their modern pronunciation a point of national honour.

"Two preliminary questions must be settled before coming to the main question, how are we to pronounce Greek?

"1. What were the differences of the Greeks according to the various periods of their language?

"2. What are the variations existing at the present day, and how far can they be traced back to ancient times?

"Considerable materials exist for pursuing this investigation through recorded facts, but they have not yet been carefully collected and chronologically arranged; when this has been done, it is probable that even the most patriotic and prejudiced of modern Greeks will not insist that it is either classical or reasonable to give the same pronunciation to the vowels, and v, and to the diphthongs et, oc, and vt, pronouncing these six symbols of sound in the same way."

0. CHARACTER, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS OF THE INHABITANTS OF GREECE, AND OF THE GREEK PROVINCES OF TURKEY.

Besides a few thousand Jews in some of the chief towns, and the Turks who form the ruling caste, and but a small minority of the population, in the Greek provinces of the Ottoman Empire, the three distinct nations inhabiting the countries described in the present work are-1. The Greeks; 2. The Albanians. 3. The Wallachs.

1. The Greeks (Hellenes).

The following observations are extracted from a letter which appeared in an English journal some years ago:-"Travellers in Greece are generally of the following classes-classical and literary, who concern themselves little with what has happened there since the days of Pericles, or at least of Marcus Agrippa. The next most numerous are naval and military; touching rapidly in many parts, they have only seen the mixed population of the towns, and confuse the Greeks of Hellas with the Montenegrins, the Albanians, the Ionians, the Turkish Greeks, and the islanders. Again, young men run over a part of Greece rapidly, cast a glance at its mountains and ruins, find muleteers and boatmen cheat them, and at once condemn the whole race, without knowing a single gentleman, or even a single peasant in the country, or having learned a single sentence of the language.

"Next come the book writers, whose books are like Chinese maps, the writer himself representing the Celestial Empire, and the subject some small islands which fill up the rest of the world. These authors are not likely to give any very accurate ideas to their respective countrymen.

"Lastly, there are the disappointed jobbers, would-be settlers, &c. They have found Greeks a good deal keener at a bargain than themselves, or as they think, stupidly waiting while the Pactolus is flowing before them, and while, in fact, they are aye biding their time.' Thus it is that fewer travellers can give a decent account of Greece than of any other country, and scarcely any have attempted to speak of the Greeks from personal knowledge, for this simple reason-they have never been able to speak to them for want of a common language."

In forming an estimate of the character and condition of the Greeks, it is only just to bear in mind that we are contemplating a people divided among different states, and of which more than a moiety is still subject to the despotism of Turkey, while a generation has scarcely passed away since the kingdom of Greece emerged from a war of extermination. With their manifold disadvantages the progress effected by the Greek nation during the last half century entitles it in some respects to admiration. The hereditary ingenuity and perseverance of the Greeks are displayed to an extraordinary degree by the manner in which they have contrived to found and retain their present extensive commerce. The large and rapidly increasing corn trade of the Black Sea, and a great portion of the general traffic of the Mediterranean, are almost exclusively in the hands of Greek merchants. Nor are there many great cities in Europe, Asia, or America, where there are not extensive Greek mercantile houses. In an official report Mr. Green, late British consul at the Piræus, declares-" Though it would be ridiculous to say that the Greeks are not sharp to a defect, I have no doubt but that their success is to be attributed to their talents, foresight, experience, untiring activity, economical habits, and the local advantages which they possess. Those who deal in general accusations against the Greek mercantile body would be more likely to compete with it by the

imitation of some of the above-named qualities." The Greek firms in England itself, with branch houses in the Levant, are a numerous body, and the yearly amount of their transactions in the grain trade alone has been computed at no less than four millions sterling. Their business is universally allowed to be conducted with the utmost diligence and exactness; and even in Great Britain the Greeks successfully compete with merchants from all parts of the world. This part of our subject may be summed up in the words of the author of The Ionian Islands under British Protection':-"We shall indeed be proud and happy if any labours of ours, now or hereafter, can prove of service to any part of the Greek race, by diffusing in England accurate information as to their present condition and character. They have been much misrepresented, partly through ignorance, partly through prejudice. Classical travellers have been too ready to look down with cold disdain on the forlorn estate of a people for whose ancestors they profess even an extravagant veneration :-foreigners resident among them have been too ready to accuse of every meanness and every vice the sons of those fathers who taught honour and virtue to the ancient world.

"No doubt the Greek character has suffered much from centuries of slavery. All the vices which tyranny generates-the abject vices which it generates in those who quail under it-the ferocious vices which it generates in those who struggle against it-have occasionally been exhibited by Greeks in modern times. The valour which of old won the great battle of European civilization, which saved the West and conquered the East, was often most eminently displayed by pirates and robbers. The ingenuity of old so conspicuous in eloquence, in poetry, in philosophy, in the fine arts, in every department of physical and moral science, was often found to have sunk into a timid and servile cunning. Still, to repeat-as foreigners in the Levant are continually repeating-that the Turks have more honour and honesty than the Greeks, is but faint praise. They have never had the same necessity, or, at least, the same sore temptation, to practise fraud and falsehood. What other arms against their Latin and Moslem oppressors were left for many centuries to the unhappy Greeks?

"We envy neither the head nor the heart of the man who can travel from Thermopyla to Sparta, and from Sparta to Corcyra, and say that all is barren, or who is ever seeking for motes in the bright eyes of Hellas. For our own part we love the country and the race. Despite their many faults we call to mind their misfortunes and the blood that is in them, and still love the Greeks. Their forefathers were the intellectual aristocracy of mankind. To them may be traced the beginnings of all mental refinement, and of all free political institutions. Christianity itself is inseparably connected with the Greek language. No other nation can ever do for the human race what the Greeks did. It has been said of Newton that he was a fortunate man, for there was only one system of the universe to discover. We may, in like manner, say of the Greeks that they were a fortunate people for they took the one great step from the stationary into the progressive form of society; the advance from the darkness of Asiastic barbarism into the light of European civilization could only be made once. Lord Bacon is 'Il gran maestro di color che sano' in the modern, as Dante said of Aristotle in the ancient world; and he has thus written of the Greeks' Scientiæ quas habemus, ferè a Græcis fluxerunt. Quæ enim scriptores Romani, aut Arabes, aut recentiores addiderunt, non multa aut magni momenti sunt; et, qualiacunque sint, fundata sunt super basim eorum quæ inventa sunt a Græcis" (Novum Organon, i. 71).

The manners and customs of the higher and best educated classes among