tion by accent with pronunciation by quantity. 2. How to pronounce the letters of the Greek alphabet, so as to be understood by the Greeks themselves. It is necessary, therefore, to make some practical remarks on these subjects, referring those who wish for full and methodical information to1. Leake's Researches in Greece;' 2. An article, ascribed to Bishop Blomfield, in the 'Quarterly Review,' No. 45 (for May, 1820); 3. Tennent's Modern History of Greece,' chap. xiii.; 4. Pennington's excellent volume on the Pronunciation of the Greek Language;' 5. Blackie On Greek Pronunciation;' 6. Corpe's or Donaldson's Modern Greek Grammar.'

The study of Greek was revived in western Europe by the Greek scholars who fled from Constantinople on its capture by the Turks, and who naturally taught their own language according to their own pronunciation. This method was afterwards successfully impugned by Erasmus, after whom the pronunciation still in vogue in England—but of late years very generally discarded in Germany and elsewhere on the continent-is denominated the Erasmian system. Its introduction was long and violently opposed in our Universities, especially by Bishop Gardiner, Chancellor of Cambridge, who in 1542 fulminated a furious decree against the new-fangled heretical method and all who encouraged it. But it worked its way, perhaps quite as much as a badge of Protestantism as of true philology; and since the time of Elizabeth-to quote honest old Thomas Fuller-"this new pronunciation has prevailed, whereby we Englishmen speak Greek, and are able to understand one another, which nobody else can.'

The pronunciation of Greek, whether prose or verse, is regulated by the Grecks themselves solely according to accent, no regard being paid to quantity. Indeed, the prosody of the ancient language is little studied by the moderns, except as a matter of antiquarian curiosity. In England we are generally negligent of accents, because they interfere with quantity; whereas in Greece they are generally negligent of quantity, because it interferes with accent. An English scholar, who, for the first time, hears a Greek read or recite his own language, will probably consider his accentuation destructive of every kind of harmony. If asked by the Greek on what principle we pronounce in England, he will, in all likelihood, reply, “According to quantity." But the Greek will soon prove to him that it is not so. For instance, Englishmen say Miltiades, not Miltiades, as they should, if they adhered to the principles which they profess. Again: take the two first lines of the Iliad;;-an Englishman places the accent on the first short syllables of ea and ovλoμévny; whereas the Greeks, by placing the accent on the final syllable of 0eá, adapt the pronunciation to quantity in an instance where an Englishman does not so adapt it; and, by accenting the third syllable of the dactyl in oùλouévny, they recede from quantity only in the same degree as the Englishman. In fact, we Englishmen, in reading Hellenic poetry, fall into the very same error of violating the quantity, of which we accuse the Greeks; for we have come, according to the practice of our own language, to throw back the accent as often as possible on the ante-penultima; in other words, we do pronounce Greek chiefly by accent, and not quantity; but we put our English accents on Greek words, disregarding the traditional accentuation of the Greeks themselves. truth probably is, that the elevation and depression of tone in a syllable—in other words, its accent-has no necessary connection with its quantity, i. e. its extension. Thus there is no reason why the accent on the first syllable of Ovμos should make that syllable long in point of time, any more than there is any reason why the accent on the first syllable of the English word honestly should make that syllable long, or the second syllable short. Moreover, if any practical Englishman-after reading Pennington's and Blackie's

The

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 grainmar and syntax.

(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, akin to that of the same letter in German. Before y, K, &, x, it has the sound of ng. When the Greeks wish to give the sound of our g before the slender vowels, they use yк.

χ

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 vжокоpiouós of the ancients (Arist. Rhet., iii.), e. g.

παιδί, a child; παιδάκι, a little child. Augmentatives are very rare: e. g. Toovn from Tótos. 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 Touλos (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 σas 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. vváμn μov, my opinion. There are a host of irregular pronominal adjectives in vulgar use

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. pápov 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 ypayer, I had written. The future active is supplied by the present tense of @éxw 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 vat 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 Tipai (èiu) 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 ypávy, 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., Biášeis và ypa¥w, 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 n, and v, and to the diphthongs et, ot, and v, 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