een ourselves, the brick
and wood which formed it, the actual tenements, where flesh and blood
had to lodge (always excepting the mansions of great men of the place),
do not seem to have been much better than those of Greek or Turkish
towns, which are at this moment a topic of interest and ridicule in the
public prints. A lively picture has lately been set before us of
Gallipoli. Take, says the writer, a multitude of the dilapidated
outhouses found in farm-yards in England, of the rickety old wooden
tenements, the cracked, shutterless structures of planks and tiles, the
sheds and stalls, which our bye lanes, or fish-markets, or river-sides
can supply; tumble them down on the declivity of a bare bald hill; let
the spaces between house and house, thus accidentally determined, be
understood to form streets, winding of course for no reason, and with
no meaning, up and down the town; the roadway always narrow, the
breadth never uniform, the separate houses bulging or retiring below,
as circumstances may have determined, and leaning forward till they
meet overhead;--and you have a good idea of Gallipoli. I question
whether this picture would not nearly correspond to the special seat of
the Muses in ancient times. Learned writers assure us distinctly that
the houses of Athens were for the most part small and mean; that the
streets were crooked and narrow; that the upper stories projected over
the roadway; and that staircases, balustrades, and doors that opened
outwards, obstructed it;--a remarkable coincidence of description. I
do not doubt at all, though history is silent, that that roadway was
jolting to carriages, and all but impassable; and that it was traversed
by drains, as freely as any Turkish town now. Athens seems in these
respects to have been below the average cities of its time. "A
stranger," says an ancient, "might doubt, on the sudden view, if really
he saw Athens."

I grant all this, and much more, if you will; but, recollect, Athens
was the home of the intellectual, and beautiful; not of low mechanical
contrivances, and material organization. Why stop within your lodgings
counting the rents in your wall or the holes in your tiling, when
nature and art call you away? You must put up with such a chamber, and
a table, and a stool, and a sleeping board, any where else in the three
continents; one place does not differ from another indoors; your
magalia in Africa, or your grottos in Syria are not perfectio