making wooden spoons. Pococke found them employed in drying figs, walnuts, and grapes, and learned that they made a little wine and brandy for their own use, which, I hope, occasionally enabled them to forget their cares. To complete their misery, no women were ever permitted to enter their territories.

Leaving this haunt of hypochondriacal drones, he proceeded along the shores of the Gulf of Contessa, and took the road to Salonica. The road along the northern shores of the Thermaic Gulf was beset with too many dangers to be attempted, and he therefore embarked for Caritza in Thessaly, and, arriving next day, took up his quarters for the night at the foot of Mount Ossa. Next morning he proceeded to the banks of the Peneus, which constitute the Vale of Tempé, celebrated by ancient poets as the most beautiful spot in Greece; but either the valley had lost its charms, or our traveller all taste for the picturesque, for he passes it over with still greater coolness than the poetical scenes of Cyprus. However, his mind was at this time so full of the battle of Pharsalia, Cæsar, and Pompey, that it would have been wonderful indeed if he had paused a moment to admire the pastoral scenes of Tempé. Having then reached the blood-stained spot where the greater tyrant triumphed over the lesser, and paved the way for the glorious Ides of March, our traveller examined with attention the various positions said to have been occupied by the contending armies. From thence he descended towards the Maliac Bay through Phthiotis, the native country of Achilles, which was situated in the Thessalian Thebes, the inhabitants of which, according to Strabo, obtained the name of ants on account of their industrious habits.

On his arrival at Zeiton, which appears to occupy the site of the ancient Lamia, he took lodgings in a caravansary, where, in order to enjoy a cooler air, and escape the vermin which usually abound in such places, he spread out his carpet in an open gallery,

and fell asleep. He had not been long in the enjoyment of repose, however, before he was awakened by a fearful noise; when, starting up, he saw by the light of the moon that a large portion of the building had been overthrown, and beheld the terrified horses bursting out of the stables and flying away with the utmost rapidity. Amazed and confounded, he was at first unable to comprehend what had happened; but his servant informed him it was an earthquake, which doubly increased his consternation. They now began to think of effecting their escape, but the building had been so shattered, and such immense heaps of ruins choked up the passages, that although they were apprehensive a second shock might follow and bury them beneath the tottering walls, they were some time in making their way into the street. Here they found that a poor Turk, who had thrown himself down before the door to sleep, had been buried under the ruins; but by prompt assistance he was dug out uninjured. Though there was a beautiful moonlight, so thick a cloud of dust arose from the houses which had fallen down, or were still falling all around, that it was impossible to discern any object at the distance of ten paces; and from amid this dense canopy, which hung suspended over the whole city, shrieks, groans, and sobs, wild lamentations for the dead, the moans of the crushed and wounded, yells of agony, and exclamations of terror were heard on all sides. Humanity, however, in the midst of this awful scene was busy at the work of salvation. Men, goaded on by the sting of affection, rushed desperately in between the threatening ruins in search of the objects of their love,-their wives, their parents, their children,-and returned, some joyously with their living friends in their arms, others with livid and ghastly looks bearing the corpses of those in whom all their earthly happiness had centred. The earth still continued agitated, rocking and heaving like the sea. Pococke caused

VOL. II.-L

his baggage to be transported to a spot which was at a distance from all buildings, where in the course of two hours he counted nearly twenty shocks, some of which were exceedingly terrible. The whole scene was tremendous. A multitude of human beings standing in darkness, fearful that the earth would open beneath their feet and ingulf them; not daring to fly, lest they should tumble into chasms already formed around them; incapable of aiding each other; a prey to every terrible idea, to every horrible foreboding. But at length the earth became still, and while the inhabitants were preparing to bury their dead, our traveller obtained horses and fled away from the city.

Crossing the ancient Sperchius, the stream to which Achilles had vowed his golden hair, and proceeding along the shore of the Maliac Gulf, he soon discovered in the distance the famous pass of Thermopylæ, a spot which men will tread with a holy pride and triumph so long as a sympathy for heroic valour and patriotism shall remain upon earth. Such are the places to which men should go in pilgrimage, -places sanctified by the dust of the glorious and the great, whose names are rendered eternal by Providence, that even in the basest and most degenerate times mankind might never be reduced to a disbelief of virtue.

From Thermopyla Pococke proceeded through the country of the Opuntian Locrians to the Euripus, into which Aristotle is absurdly reported by vulgar tradition to have thrown himself, from a despair of discovering the cause of its manifold tides. The ancients relate that the tide here ebbs and flows seven times in the day; but our traveller learned that the motions of the Euripus are irregular, sometimes ebbing and flowing as often as fourteen times in the day, and at others not more than twice. He next directed his course to the shores of the Copaic Lake, the eels of which Aristophanes seems to have so passionately

longed for during the Peloponnesian war, visited Thebes, and then crossed Mount Pentelicus into Attica. The ruins of Athens were then far less imperfect than they are at present, and he examined them with the eye of a learned antiquary; but extensive as was his learning, he does not seem to have possessed that sort of reading which would have enabled him thoroughly to enjoy a tour through Greece. It is for those who have entered deeply into the private history, literature, and philosophy of the Greeks that Attica has real charms. He should be able to determine or imagine the exact spot where Socrates sat under the plane-tree with Phædrus in order to discuss the merits of Lysias's style; he should be interested in discovering where the house of Callias stood, to which the impatient Hippocrates would have led Socrates before day, that he might lose no time in being introduced to Protagoras; he should walk up and down the banks of the Ilyssus, that he might be sure of having visited the spot where Sophocles nestled all night among the reeds to enjoy the song of the nightingale: this is the sort of traveller who should visit Greece. Otherwise, with Strabo, Pausanias, and Vitruvius in hand, he may determine the sites of cities and measure the height of columns to a hair; our feelings go not along with him, and his researches become tiresome in proportion as they are circumstantial and exact.

From Athens Pococke proceeded westward, crossed the ancient territories of Megara, visited Corinth, and continuing his journey along the southern shores of the Gulf of Lepanto, arrived at Patras, where he embarked for Sicily. He then crossed over into Italy, and hurried on through Germany, Switzerland, and France, to England, and arrived in London on the 30th of August, 1741, exactly eight years from the day of his first departure for the Continent.

Being now happily arrived in port, with a pro

digious quantity of materials, Pococke, anxious to enjoy the reputation to which he aspired, immediately commenced the compilation of his travels, the first volume of which appeared in 1743, under the title of "A Description of the East," &c. Two years afterward the second volume, divided into two parts, was published; and shortly afterward he added to his travels a large collection of Greek and Latin inscriptions, which are said by M. St. Martin to be so exceedingly incorrect as to be almost unintelligible. As Pococke can very well dispense with the credit arising from "this kind of researches," I have not thought it necessary to examine whether the reproach of the Frenchman be well founded or not; but I cannot help congratulating that writer upon the felicitous manner in which he commences his account of our traveller, "the obscure and insignificant particulars of whose life," he tells us, are scarcely worth relating;" which is certainly a peculiarly ingenious application of those rules of rhetoric that teach us how to vivify and adorn a barren subject. The readers of the "Biographie Universelle" may perhaps suspect, however, that M. St. Martin was deterred from seeking for the "obscure and insignificant particulars" of Pococke's life, by the vast bulk of his volumes, through which they lie scattered at wide intervals; but few who have perused those volumes, replete with interest and information, will allow that their author deserved no more than one little page in an unwieldy collection, where so many obscure scribblers, whose very names are forgotten by the public, are commemorated at such disproportionate length.

66

Pococke, whose reputation was quickly diffused throughout Europe, having taken orders, was promoted, in 1756, to the archdeaconry of Ossory, in Ireland; and in 1765 was made bishop of Elphin. This honour he was not destined long to enjoy, however, for in the month of September, of the same