had recently sustained in the Morea, and eager to let loose their vengeance to the uttermost on the heads of the unwarlike Sciotes. So unsparingly and perseveringly was the slaughter of men, women and infants carried on, that, nine months after it had commenced, the inhabitants of solitary houses, the most remote from the city, and on the opposite side of the island, who, from their secluded position, might have expected to escape, saw the murderers approach.

Such was the fate of Scio.In Crete, on the other hand, it must be allowed that neither of the two hostile parties was much behind the other in relentless cruelty; and nearly equal atrocities were committed on both sides. As the Turks, when they surprised a village belonging to their adversaries, destroyed every dwelling, and massacred every living creature, so the Greeks retaliated in kind to the full, when their turn arrived to gain an advantage over their foes, —ὅταν ἦλθε ὁ χρόνος," when the time came,' as one of them expressed it to me. The very grave-yards were rifled, and the dead bodies dug up, and "given to be meat to the fowls of the heaven, and to the beasts of the earth." As I stood in a Christian burial-ground which had been thus desecrated, near to Canea, a young Greek, addressing me in the French tongue, pro

1 Ps. lxxix.

ceeded to explain the barbarity of the Turkish leader whose troops had committed the ravages on which I looked. "Les siens," said the Greek, "entraient et mangeaient les corps." The expression, "les siens," seemed to mean, "his partisans or followers," and might be taken to imply the incredible averment that the Turks had eaten the dead bodies of their enemies. On consideration, it occurred to me that, as the Greeks have no sound in their language like the ch in French, for which they substitute s, my informant meant to say that the dogs,"les chiens,"-had "entered and devoured the corpses."

The fortified city of Canea occupies the site of the ancient Cydonia, on the northwest coast of Crete, about four miles from the Bay of Sonda; is the chief commercial port of the island, and second in population to Candia, the capital. The inhabitants of Candia are at present about 12,000. Those of Canea do not exceed 9,000, nearly twothirds of whom are Greek Christians, the remainder being chiefly Turks. The wide Bay of Canea, from Cape Spado on the west to Cape Melek on the east, presents no safe anchorage excepting within the small pier of the harbour, which affords shelter for about ten vessels, of not above 100 tons each. The principal exports of the place are oil and the soft white soap which sup

plies the markets of Constantinople, and is esteemed the best in the Levant. The country around Canea, sloping gently upwards from the sea, is very favourable for the cultivation of corn and vines. Peachtrees in full bloom, at present, adorn the landscape in all directions. Within the walls of the city, its decaying mansions and grassgrown pavements mark the share suffered by Canea in the general adversity which intestine strife has inflicted on the land. The only architectural remains worthy of notice are those which bear engraven "the lions of the deep;" marks commemorating the occupation of Crete by the Venetians, for nearly four centuries, from 1252 to 1645. Canea was wrested from the Venetians by the Turks in 1645. Twenty-four years after, Candia, the capital, fell also into the power of the Mussulman, who became undisputed lord of the island. From that period it has been sinking into decline, yet still retains sufficient of its ancient character to suggest continual comparisons between the present and the past. There is still one street of palaces in Canea, but desolate and falling into ruin. There still remain entire, in the arsenal, ten of the arches which once gave shelter to the famed galleys of Venice.

Among all vicissitudes brought round on the wheel of time, none is, here, to my mind more striking than the turn of events which

brings Missionaries from America, from the banks of the Mississippi and the Ohio, to instruct and enlighten natives of Crete and Athens; regions which, of old, supplied us with teachers and guides in the arts that adorn social life. The Cretan Mission and schools established in Canea, by the American Episcopal Church, under the superintendence of the Rev. Mr. Benton, present objects of the highest interest. The zeal of Greek school-boys for their lessons is something marvellous. I have remarked, even on a holy-day of the Greek Church, when I knew that the school would not be opened, a large attendance of boys seated with their books and slates at a long table outside the door of their school-room. Mr. Benton informed me that they will often assemble in this manner, between school-hours, out of mere love and affection towards the place of their studies. Besides his school of 114 boys, there is also an Infant school for both sexes, under the direction of Mrs. Benton and her sister. An assistant schoolmaster, a Greek, opens and closes the school daily with a religious service. Should Mr. Benton take this office on himself, he assures me that the awakened jealousy of parents on the point of religious instruction would shortly lead to the withdrawal of all the pupils. The remarkable success of the Episcopalian Missionary Schools, in Crete, and at Syra, and

at Athens, is, no doubt, greatly attributable to careful regard to the principle of non-interference with the tenets of the Greek Church.

The eagerness for knowledge of all kinds which distinguished the Greeks in the time of St. Paul, has been transmitted to their descendants. Still do "the Greeks seek after wisdom." (1 Cor. i. 22.) Dr. Korck, agent to the English "Church Missionary Society," who established, in 1828, in the island of Syra, the first Missionary school for Greece, assured me that, during ten years' experience in tuition, he had never, in a single instance, found it necessary to resort to the slightest measures of a coercive kind, in order to make a Greek boy learn his lessons. There is an eastern proverb to the effect that the Almighty has distributed, severally, to three different tribes of mankind, three especial gifts: to the Chinese, a hand; to the Arabs, a language; to the Greeks, wisdom. With respect, indeed, to the last named, this is no other than the sentence pronounced long since by Horace:

"Graiis ingenium."-De Arte Poetica, 1. 323.

There appears to me to be much truth in the opinion given by Hobhouse, in his "Albania," that the characteristics, both physical and moral, of the Greeks in the present day are but little changed from those which distinguished their forefathers in ages called heroic. If it be objected as marking