k at them as they are.

And here it is impossible to reconcile the contrariety of opinions:
some, particularly the merchants, decrying the Greeks in the strongest
language; others, generally travellers, turning periods in their eulogy,
and publishing very curious speculations grafted on their former state,
which can have no more effect on their present lot, than the existence
of the Incas on the future fortunes of Peru.

One very ingenious person terms them the "natural allies of Englishmen;"
another no less ingenious, will not allow them to be the allies of
anybody, and denies their very descent from the ancients; a third, more
ingenious than either, builds a Greek empire on a Russian foundation,
and realises (on paper) all the chimeras of Catharine II. As to the
question of their descent, what can it import whether the Mainotes[238]
are the lineal Laconians or not? or the present Athenians as indigenous
as the bees of Hymettus, or as the grasshoppers, to which they once
likened themselves? What Englishman cares if he be of a Danish, Saxon,
Norman, or Trojan blood? or who, except a Welshman, is afflicted with a
desire of being descended from Caractacus?

The poor Greeks do not so much abound in the good things of this world,
as to render even their claims to antiquity an object of envy; it is
very cruel, then, in Mr. Thornton to disturb them in the possession of
all that time has left them; viz. their pedigree, of which they are the
more tenacious, as it is all they can call their own. It would be worth
while to publish together, and compare, the works of Messrs. Thornton
and De Pauw, Eton and Sonnini; paradox on one side, and prejudice on the
other. Mr. Thornton conceives himself to have claims to public
confidence from a fourteen years' residence at Pera; perhaps he may on
the subject of the Turks, but this can give him no more insight into the
real state of Greece and her inhabitants, than as many years spent in
Wapping into that of the Western Highlands.

The Greeks of Constantinople live in Fanal;[239] and if Mr. Thornton did
not oftener cross the Golden Horn than his brother merchants are
accustomed to do, I should place no great reliance on his information. I
actually heard one of these gentlemen boast of their little general
intercourse with the city, and assert of himself, with an air of
triumph, that he had been but four times at Constantinople in as many
years.

As to Mr. Thornton's voyages in the Black