d give. There is, however, a wide and wild
difference between the curiosity that prompts the wish to know the
exactitude of any feeling or idea, and the direful passions that
instigate to guilty gratifications.

Being landed, according to his request, with his valet, two
Albanians, and a Tartar, on the shore of Zea, it may be easily
conceived that he saw the ship depart with a feeling before unfelt.
It was the first time he was left companionless, and the scene around
was calculated to nourish stern fancies, even though there was not
much of suffering to be withstood.

The landing-place in the port of Zea, I recollect distinctly. The
port itself is a small land-locked gulf, or, as the Scottish
Highlander would call it, a loch. The banks are rocky and
forbidding; the hills, which rise to the altitude of mountains, have,
in a long course of ages, been always inhabited by a civilized
people. Their precipitous sides are formed into innumerable
artificial terraces, the aspect of which, austere, ruinous, and
ancient, produces on the mind of the stranger a sense of the presence
of a greater antiquity than the sight of monuments of mere labour and
art. The town stands high upon the mountain, I counted on the lower
side of the road which leads to it forty-nine of those terraces at
one place under me, and on the opposite hills, in several places,
upwards of sixty. Whether Lord Byron ascended to the town is
doubtful. I have never heard him mention that he had; and I am
inclined to think that he proceeded at once to Athens by one of the
boats which frequent the harbour.

At Athens he met an old fellow-collegian, the Marquis of Sligo, with
whom he soon after travelled as far as Corinth; the Marquis turning
off there for Tripolizza, while Byron went forward to Patras, where
he had some needful business to transact with the consul. He then
made the tour of the Morea, in the course of which he visited the
Vizier Velhi Pasha, by whom he was treated, as every other English
traveller of the time was, with great distinction and hospitality.

Having occasion to go back to Patras, he was seized by the local
fever there, and reduced to death's door. On his recovery he
returned to Athens, where he found the Marquis, with Lady Hester
Stanhope, and Mr Bruce, afterward so celebrated for his adventures in
assisting the escape of the French General Lavalette. He took
possession of the apartments which I had occupied in the monastery,