feet of the epic father, and say
whether Homer's self would not acknowledge these groups as worthy of the
soil.

Now this is all pleasant exceedingly, but to enjoy this sort of thing
sustainedly one should not have an English constitution. We are a
phlegmatic set, to whom such zests should be dealt out
homoeopathically: else do we soon begin to criticise and take
exceptions. Now it so happens that we had entered upon the experience of
this delectability with every good disposition towards it, but a still
better disposition towards the getting beyond it if we could, that we
might see something of the real state of the people. We soon voted
Smyrna a bore, as was likely with those who in coming thither had been
bent on using it only as a stepping-stone to get farther. But this was
more easily said than done with us, who were travellers not for our own
fancy's sake, but in the service of her most gracious Majesty. Had we
been simply unfettered, our will was good to have started directly
coastward, and to have explored those vast tracts of Asia Minor, of so
much of which nothing is known. The country between the coast and the
western border of Persia, explored in a direct line, not going towards
Eszeroun, and a divergence southward towards and about Caramania, would
be a fine field for travel. We could well afford to receive some
addition to our knowledge of the central parts of Asia Minor, and I
should like right well to be one of two bound to the borders of lake
Van, to pay a visit to the Armenian patriarch. But such an expedition
would take a deal of time and of money. Now we had but the short
interval of time at our disposal, during which it was judged that
Britannic interests might suffer our absence without detriment. Happily
for us, we knew that foreign infection was but skin deep in this
country; so that, although the curious recesses were beyond our reach,
we might, by a comparatively short expedition, arrive at the texture and
substance of the mass. Two cities invited us, Aidin, and Magnesia, both
of which are, as nearly as possible, free from foreigners: for the
rajahs, though they be Christians, are not, of course, to be considered
foreign to that soil, in which they have been implanted since before its
occupation by the Turks. In Magnesia, so far as we could discover, there
dwelt but a single Frank, who was consular agent for England, as he was,
probably, for half-a-dozen other European powers, an office little